ASPEN, Colo. — About a dozen former CIA officials named in a classified Senate report on decade-old agency interrogation practices were notified in recent days that they would be able to review parts of the document in a secure room in suburban Washington after signing a secrecy agreement.
Then, on Friday, many were told they would not be able to see it after all.
Some of them were furious, while Democratic Senate aides were angry that they were given the chance in the first place.
It is the latest chapter in the drama and recriminations that have been playing out behind the scenes in connection with what some call the Senate torture report, a summary of which is being declassified and is expected to be released in the coming weeks.
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‘‘I am outraged,’’ said John Rizzo, one of the former officials who was offered, and then refused, a chance to see the summary report before publication. He retired in 2009 as the CIA’s top lawyer after playing a key role in the interrogation program.
‘‘They are accusing people of misleading Congress, of misleading the Justice Department, and they never even asked to talk to us,’’ he said. ‘‘And now they won’t let us read the report before it is made public.’’
Former CIA officials, including George J. Tenet, the agency’s former director, believe the report contains distortions and are trying to discredit it.
The 6,300-page report, along with a CIA rebuttal, represents the most detailed accounting to date of a set of bitterly controversial interrogation, rendition, and detention practices the CIA carried out in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — practices many Americans now consider to have been immoral or illegal.
President Obama stopped the practices when he took office, but he decided against a ‘‘truth commission’’ to examine what happened. Criminal investigations conducted in secret resulted in no charges.
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Advocacy groups say the Senate report’s 600-page executive summary, which is to be released along with a CIA response and a minority dissent, will be the last chance for public accountability.
For months, the former officials who are implicated in the report have strategized about how to rebut it. Many of them sincerely believe that they did what the country asked of them after Sept. 11 and that they are being impugned now because the political winds have shifted.
About a dozen officials were called in recent days and told they could read the executive summary at a secure room at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, four former officials said.
The move came after two letters to CIA Director John Brennan — one from three former CIA directors and a second from a larger group of former officers. The letters argued that it was only fair that the former officers be given a chance to learn in advance what the report said about them.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, chairwoman of the intelligence committee, agreed to let some former officials read the report, on condition they do so at a secure facility and sign a promise not to talk about it with the news media.
Then, on Friday, CIA officials called some of the former officials and told them that due to a miscommunication, only former CIA directors and deputy directors would be given that privilege. Former directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, and George Tenet have been invited to read it, as have former acting directors John McLaughlin and Michael Morell.
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Senate aides familiar with the matter say Feinstein protested to the White House that it had no business allowing so many retired officials to read a Senate oversight report. Representatives for Feinstein, the CIA, and the White House had no comment.
Several people who have read the full report, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss still-classified material, say it shows that the CIA interrogation program was far more brutal than previously understood and that CIA officials repeatedly misled Congress and the Justice Department about what was being done to Al Qaeda detainees. The report asserts that no unique, life-saving intelligence was gleaned from the harsh techniques.
It has long been known the CIA used slapping, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and other harsh tactics on several detainees and a near-drowning technique known as water-boarding on three of them.
The CIA’s use of water-boarding has drawn particular scrutiny since it is considered the harshest technique on the list of those used, but the report asserts that the other tactics, as applied, were extremely harsh.
Torture is illegal under US law. CIA officials dispute that water-boarding amounted to torture.
CIA interrogators were acting under since-repudiated Justice Department legal opinions saying that the techniques were not torture. Obama decided that anyone who followed legal guidance would not be prosecuted.
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The report asserts, however, that the Justice Department’s narrow, meticulous rules for how the harsh techniques were supposed to be applied were not always followed, those who have read the full report said. The CIA inspector general reached that conclusion a decade ago.