A Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic says the release overnight of a US Senate report on its investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) interrogation and detention program is extremely important for liberal democracies.

Dr Patrick Walsh, senior lecturer in intelligence and security studies at the CSU Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, says the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report provides an opportunity to re-evaluate the methods and types of intelligence collection desirable and permissible.

"Given that the US, Australia and allies are in the long-haul against global terrorism, the report into the CIA's interrogation and detention program operating from late 2001 and early 2009 shines a powerful spotlight on the kind of intelligence collection we will tolerate and methods that may make us as primitive and unlawful as the groups we are trying to stop," Dr Walsh said.

The long-awaited report by the US Senate Select Committee for Intelligence is over 6 000 pages but only the first 524 pages - the Executive Summary, findings, and conclusions - have been released. The Chairman of the Senate Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California), said the report is a 'stain on our values and history', and is 'an important step in showing the world that we are a just society'. Other motivation for releasing the report she says is so that the US can learn from its mistakes and make the necessary institutional remedies to the US intelligence community.

Dr Walsh says the release of this report has been consistently delayed since the Committee started its investigation in 2009.

"Perhaps understandably, the CIA and other public officials were very reluctant for any public release of the report," he said. "I suspect for many in the CIA the attitude was, 'do we need to rehash the already well documented excesses of the Bush Administration?' After all, much is already known about the extent of the kinds of coercive interrogation techniques, including water boarding, meted out to over 120 detainees in CIA locations around the world. What could be new? And given the current heightened state of global terrorism, particularly from the brutal Islamic State, is it sensible to release such a report?

"As to the first question, I think the answer is the Executive Summary does provide new insights into the torture program authorised under the Bush Administration, including details about unapproved methods of interrogation that it seems the Administration may not have known about.

"Regarding the second question, Islamic State and other terrorists groups are in for the long-haul and while they may point to this report to help justify their murderous and criminal activity, the release of this report is just a temporary blip on their broader anti-Western narrative. They would continue to kill innocent people with or without the release of this report."

Dr Walsh says the report makes several useful findings, and some are more troubling than others.

"For example, that the CIA was 'over-selling' the effectiveness of torture methods to gain information that could have been retrieved by other means," he said. "Also, there was no serious attempt to internally review these methods as to how successful they were. Effective and comprehensive internal oversight of these programs was missing.

"The US intelligence community is large and unwieldy, and oversight is fragmented, despite the role of the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees. More needs to be done to oversee intelligence collection practices. This fact came out of the Edward Snowden intelligence leaks too.  The US could benefit from a completely independent non-partisan accountability body such as Australia's Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), but I doubt this is likely anytime soon."

Dr Walsh is the author of Intelligence and Intelligence Analysis (2011) published by Routledge.