In early 2009, Senator
Dianne Feinstein selects Senate staffer
Daniel J. Jones, who has just spent two years investigating
the 2005 destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, to lead a review of six million pages of CIA materials related to the agency's use of
enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). Jones and his team of six get to work in a
sensitive compartmented information facility at a covert CIA site in Virginia. Intelligence psychologists
Bruce Jessen and
James Elmer Mitchell were contracted in 2002 to instruct the CIA in EITs. They started their work on
Abu Zubaydah, for whom the FBI initially used the CIA rapport-building, where they started using EITs. Jones learned from an FBI agent that he gathered crucial intelligence from Zubaydah before the CIA took over the interrogations, though the agency claims that most valuable intel came from EITs. He shows evidence from the CIA's own records that prove that the agency falsely claimed that Zubaydah was a high-ranking member of
Al-Qaeda to received authorization to start using EITs on him. A
physician assistant with the Office of Medical Services who works at a
CIA black site secretly reveals to Jones that he and other medical professionals had complained that the EITs were torture. However, they only got told to stop putting their objections in writing by the Director. Among files provided by the CIA, Jones finds the
Panetta Review, a critical internal CIA review of the EIT program that was prepared in 2009 but never shared. A pundit on the news later claims that EITs had yielded good intelligence and prevented terrorist attacks. Jones stays up all night to disprove the claims, and the CIA's own records show that crucial information it is claiming to have obtained by subjecting a terrorist to torture was obtained by other means. Jones finishes the 6,200-page report, and it is approved by the
Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Feinstein, on December 13, 2012, and sent to the CIA for final comments. Two months later,
John Brennan is sworn in as the new
director of the CIA. Brennan sets up meetings with CIA personnel and Jones to try to get the committee to change elements of the report. However, Jones repeatedly provides evidence to back up everything they want to change. Feinstein decides to stop this discussion with the CIA and keep the report as it is. Frustrated, Jones reveals the Panetta Review to Senator
Mark Udall of the Intelligence Committee. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the nomination of the CIA general counsel, Udall asks why both the committee's reports and the Panetta Review conflict with the CIA's official position. The CIA, humiliated by Udall's revelation, conducts an illegal search and threaten to prosecute Jones for "stealing" the Panetta Review from the CIA's computers. Jones hints the search to the
New York Times national security reporter, which ultimately leads Feinstein to
formally accuse the CIA of unlawfully searching the Senate's computers in violation of the
separation of powers. Brennan and the CIA are forced to back down, and the charges against Jones are dropped. Feinstein tells Jones that she is prepared to release a shorter summary of the report, but President
Barack Obama grants the CIA broad authority to redact it first. When it becomes uncertain if the released document will have any useful information after redaction, Jones again meets with the
Times reporter, but ultimately decides not to leak the report to the media. The
Republican Party wins control of the Senate in the
November 2014 midterm elections, meaning that the report will likely be buried forever when the new Congress is sworn in January 2015. Faced with this deadline, the Senate agrees to release the summary of the report. Feinstein gives a speech summarizing the report and its implications, and then Senator
John McCain, who was tortured as a
prisoner of war during the
Vietnam War, gives an impassioned speech supporting the report. Jones leaves his job as a Senate staffer after the report summary released. No CIA officers are criminally charged in connection with the actions outlined in the report, with many promoted, and one later becomes the agency director. ==Cast==