WASHINGTON — At times, waterboarding rendered al-Qaida terror suspect Abu Zubaydah hysterical. But later, a message to CIA headquarters described an interrogator merely lifting his eyebrow and snapping his fingers, leading Zubaydah to “slowly (walk) on his own to the water table” to lie down.

The Senate torture report released earlier this month describes how the CIA’s harsh interrogation program sought to make detainees passive and powerless to resist, using techniques from sleep deprivation to stress positions to waterboarding to induce a state that psychologists call “learned helplessness.” ‘’Compliant” was the interrogators’ description of Zubaydah.