World/Nation

Report: U.S. brutalized terror suspects

WASHINGTON - The United States brutalized scores of terror suspects with interrogation tactics that turned secret CIA prisons into chambers of suffering and did nothing to make America safer after the 9/11 attacks, Senate investigators concluded Tuesday.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, years in the making, accused the CIA of misleading its political masters about what it was doing with its "black site" captives and deceiving the nation about the effectiveness of its techniques.

The report was the first public accounting of tactics employed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and it described far harsher actions than had been widely known.

Tactics included confinement to small boxes, weeks of sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, slapping and slamming, and threats to kill, harm or sexually abuse families of the captives.

Senate report cites detainee Zubaydah as key

WASHINGTON - Abu Zubaydah was the CIA's guinea pig.

He was the first high-profile al Qaida terror suspect captured after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the first to vanish into the spy agency's secret prisons, the first subjected to grinding white noise and sleep deprivation tactics and the first to gasp under the simulated drowning of waterboarding. Zubaydah's stark ordeal became the CIA's blueprint for the brutal treatment of terror suspects, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report released Tuesday.

The newly released report cites Zubaydah's detention in Pakistan in March 2002 as a turning point in the Bush administration's no-holds-barred approach to terror suspects and the CIA's development of coercive interrogation tactics.

The United States brutalized scores of terror suspects with interrogation tactics that turned secret CIA prisons into chambers of suffering and did nothing to make America safer after the 9/11 attacks, Senate investigators concluded Tuesday.

Obama health adviser Gruber apologizes

WASHINGTON - MIT economist Jonathan Gruber - an often-quoted adviser on the president's health care law - told Congress on Tuesday he was glib and "inexcusably arrogant" when he said it was "the stupidity of the American voter" that led to the law's passage. Democrats tried to limit the damage as Republicans raked Gruber at a four-hour hearing, but acknowledged he gave the GOP a political gift "wrapped in a bow."

Gruber told groups in 2012 and 2013 that voter stupidity and a "lack of transparency" were important to passing the hard-fought legislation. Appearing before the House Oversight committee Tuesday, Gruber expanded on earlier apologies, repeatedly saying "I was conjecturing in areas beyond my expertise."

Enduring one fierce lecture after another, Gruber said his earlier comments were uninformed, "glib, thoughtless and sometimes downright insulting." He said he was showing off before various groups, and "trying to be something, I'm not, which was a political expert."

He said the law's passage was actually transparent and heavily debated in public, despite his earlier comments. And Gruber said he was not the "architect" of the law, as some press accounts had claimed.

Lawmakers OK spending bill, avoid shutdown

WASHINGTON - Time running short, Republicans and Democrats agreed Tuesday on a $1.1 trillion spending bill to avoid a government shutdown and delay a politically-charged struggle over President Barack Obama's new immigration policy until the new year.

In an unexpected move, lawmakers also agreed on legislation expected to be incorporated into the spending measure that will permit a reduction in benefits for current retirees at economically distressed multiemployer pension plans. Supporters said it was part of an effort to prevent a slow-motion collapse of a system that provides retirement income to millions, but critics objected vehemently.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the bill.

At 1,603 pages, the spending bill adheres to strict caps negotiated earlier between the White House and deficit- conscious Republicans, and is also salted with GOP policy proposals. As described by unhappy liberals, one would roll back new regulations that prohibit banks from using federal deposit insurance to cover investments on some complex financial instruments.

Release of last French hostage rekindles debate

PARIS - France's last hostage was freed Tuesday after being held for more than three years by al-Qaida's North Africa branch - rekindling debate over whether countries should negotiate with extremists or stick to a muscular, uncompromising policy that runs the risk of a beheading or a botched rescue attempt.

French President Francois Hollande announced the "happy news" that 51-year-old Serge Lazarevic had been freed from captivity in Mali, prompting a standing ovation in the National Assembly.

"We no longer have any hostages in any country of the world, and we should not have any," Hollande said.

TV images hours later showed a smiling Lazarevic - bald, goateed and 40 pounds (20 kilograms) lighter - as he met with Niger's president. He was to fly to France early Wednesday.

The release stood in sharp contrast to the failed rescue in Yemen last weekend that ended in the deaths of an American journalist and a South African aid worker held by al-Qaida's branch in the Arabian Peninsula.