WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate investigation concludes waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to congressional aides and outside experts familiar with a still-secret, 6,200-page report. The finding could deepen the worst rift in years between lawmakers and the CIA.

The CIA disputes the conclusion and already is locked with the Senate intelligence committee in an acrimonious fight amid dueling charges of snooping and competing criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The public may soon get the chance to decide, with the congressional panel planning to vote Thursday to demand a summary of its review be declassified.

From the moment of bin Laden's death almost three years ago, former Bush administration figures and top CIA officials have cited the evidence trail leading to the al-Qaida mastermind's walled Pakistani compound as vindication of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" they authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Democratic and some Republican senators have called that account misleading, saying simulated drownings known as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other such practices were cruel and ineffective.

The intelligence committee's report, congressional aides and outside experts said, backs up that case after examining the treatment of several high-level terror detainees and the information they provided on bin Laden. The aides and people briefed on the report demanded anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the confidential document.

The most high-profile detainee linked to the bin Laden investigation was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused 9/11 mastermind who was waterboarded 183 times. Mohammed, intelligence officials have noted, confirmed after his 2003 capture that he knew an important al-Qaida courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

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FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2008, file photo, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, left, speaks in Bost …

The Senate report concludes such information wasn't critical, according to the aides. Mohammed only discussed al-Kuwaiti months after being waterboarded, while he was under standard interrogation, they said. And Mohammed neither acknowledged al-Kuwaiti's significance nor provided interrogators with the courier's real name.

The debate over how investigators put the pieces together is significant because years later, the courier led U.S. intelligence to the sleepy Pakistani military town of Abbottabad. There, in May 2011, Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in a secret mission.

The CIA also has pointed to the value of information provided by senior al-Qaida operative Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was captured in 2005 and held at a secret prison run by the agency.

In previous accounts, U.S. officials have described how al-Libi made up a name for a trusted courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti. Al-Libi was so adamant and unbelievable in his denial that the CIA took it as confirmation he and Mohammed were protecting the courier.

The Senate report concludes evidence gathered from al-Libi wasn't significant either, aides said.

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FILE - This Jan. 15, 2009, file photo shows then-CIA Director Michael Hayden, and a former National …

Essentially, they argue, Mohammed, al-Libi and others subjected to harsh treatment confirmed only what investigators already knew about the courier. And when they denied the courier's significance or provided misleading information, investigators would only have considered that significant if they already presumed the courier's importance.

The aides did not address information provided by yet another al-Qaida operative: Hassan Ghul, captured in Iraq in 2004. Intelligence officials have described Ghul as the true linchpin of the bin Laden investigation after he identified al-Kuwaiti as a critical courier.

In a 2012 news release, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., acknowledged an unidentified "third detainee" had provided relevant information on the courier. But they said he did so the day before he was subjected to harsh CIA interrogation. "This information will be detailed in the Intelligence committee's report," the senators said at the time.

In any case, it still took the CIA years to learn al-Kuwaiti's real identity: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. How the U.S. learned of Ahmed's name is still unclear.

Without providing full details, aides said the Senate report illustrates the importance of the National Security Agency's efforts overseas.

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FILE - This March 27, 2014, file photo shows Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinste …

Intelligence officials have previously described how in the years when the CIA couldn't find where bin Laden's courier was, NSA eavesdroppers came up with nothing until 2010 — when Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone monitored by U.S. intelligence.

At that point, U.S. intelligence was able to follow Ahmed to bin Laden's hideout.

Feinstein and other senators have spoken only vaguely of the contents of the classified review.

But they have made references to the divergence between their understanding of how the bin Laden operation came together and assertions of former CIA and Bush administration officials who have defended harsh interrogations.

Responding to former CIA deputy director Jose Rodriguez's argument that Mohammed and al-Libi provided the "lead information" on the bin Laden operation, Feinstein and Levin said, "The original lead information had no connection to CIA detainees."

They rejected former CIA Director Michael Hayden's claim that evidence on the couriers began with interrogations at black sites and Attorney General Michael Mukasey's declaration that intelligence leading to bin Laden began with Mohammed.

The facts, they said, show that the CIA learned of the courier, his true name and location "through means unrelated to the CIA detention and interrogation program." They have cited a "wide variety of intelligence sources and methods."

Terror suspects who were waterboarded "provided no new information about the courier" and offered no indication of where bin Laden was hiding, the senators said.

Feinstein will hold a vote of her 15-member committee Thursday to release of a 400-page summary of the report, according to aides. Approval would start a declassification process with the CIA that could take several months before documents are made public. Among her strongest backers are Levin and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was tortured in a North Vietnamese prison during the U.S. conflict in Vietnam.

Senate investigators and CIA officials have yet to cool their dispute, which boiled out into the open earlier this month. Feinstein accused the agency of improperly monitoring the computer use of Senate staffers and deleting files, undermining the Constitution's separation of powers. The CIA alleges the intelligence panel illegally accessed certain documents.

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Senate report: Torture did not lead to bin Laden

Classified document reportedly contradicts former Bush administration figures and top intelligence officials.
CIA disputes

Liberia confirms spread of 'unprecedented' Ebola epidemic

Liberia has confirmed the first two cases of Ebola, after spreading from neighboring Guinea

Guinea's health ministry this year has reported 122 "suspicious cases" of viral haemorrhagic fever, including 78 deaths, with 22 of the samples taken from patients testing positive for the highly contagious tropical pathogen.

"We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country: Gueckedou, Macenta, Kissidougou, Nzerekore, and now Conakry," Mariano Lugli, the organisation's coordinator in the Guinean capital, said in a statement.

The group, known by its French initials MSF, said that by the end of the week it would have around 60 international field workers with experience in working on haemorrhagic fever divided between Conakry and the south-east of the country.

"MSF has intervened in almost all reported Ebola outbreaks in recent years, but they were much more geographically contained and involved more remote locations," Lugli said.

"This geographical spread is worrisome because it will greatly complicate the tasks of the organisations working to control the epidemic."

The World Health Organization (WHO) and local health authorities have announced two Ebola cases among seven samples tested from Liberia's northern Foya district, confirming for the first time the spread of the virus across international borders.

Liberian Health Minister Walter Gwenigale told reporters the patients were sisters, one of whom had died.

The surviving sister returned to Monrovia in a taxi before she could be isolated and the authorities fear she may have spread the virus to her taxi driver and four members of her family.

The woman and those with whom she has come into contact are in quarantine in a hospital 48 kilometres (30 miles) south-east of Monrovia, Gwenigale said.

-- Unstoppable bleeding --

Ebola has killed almost 1,600 people since it was first observed in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo but this is the first fatal outbreak in west Africa.

The tropical virus leads to haemorrhagic fever, causing muscle pain, weakness, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.

The WHO said Sierra Leone has also identified two suspected cases, both of whom died, but neither has been confirmed to be Ebola.

No treatment or vaccine is available for the bug, and the Zaire strain detected in Guinea has a historic death rate of up to 90 percent.

It can be transmitted to humans from wild animals, and between humans through direct contact with another's blood, faeces or sweat, as well as sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

MSF said it had stepped up support for the isolation of patients in Conakry, in collaboration with the Guinean health authorities and the WHO.

"Other patients in other health structures are still hospitalised in non-optimal conditions and isolation must be reinforced in the coming days," it added.

The WHO said it was not recommending travel or trade restrictions to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone based on the current information available about the outbreak.

But Senegal has closed border crossings to Guinea "until further notice".

Guinea's Ebola outbreak called unprecedented

The World Health Organization confirms that the virus has spread across international borders.
'Facing an epidemic'

By Eric M. Johnson

DARRINGTON, Washington (Reuters) - Recovery teams struggling through thick mud up to their armpits and heavy downpours at the site of a devastating landslide in Washington state are facing yet another challenge - an unseen and potentially more dangerous stew of toxic contaminants.

Sewage, propane, household solvents and other chemicals lie beneath the surface of the gray mud and rubble that engulfed hundreds of acres of a rural community after the mudslide that left dozens of people dead or missing northeast of Seattle on the morning of March 22, authorities said.

The official death toll was raised to 24 on Monday - up from 21 a day earlier - with 30 people still listed as unaccounted for nine days after a rain-soaked hillside collapsed above the north fork of the Stillaguamish River.

Managers of the recovery operation were taking special measures to protect the hundreds of workers on the scene from chemical exposure and to prevent toxic sludge from being carried offsite.

"We're worried about dysentery, we're worried about tetanus, we're worried about contamination," local fire Lieutenant Richard Burke, a spokesman for the operation, told reporters visiting the disaster site on Sunday. "The last thing we want to do is take any of these contaminants out of here and take them into town, back to our families."

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Rescue dog Tryon, muddied from the day's work, stands with his handler near the west side of the …

The torrent of mud released by the slide roared over both stream banks of the river and across state Highway 530, flattening dozens of homes on the outskirts of the town of Oso in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

The county medical examiner's office said on Monday it had received a total of 24 victims from the slide, with 17 positively identified. The dead included a 4-month-old infant and two older children, ages 5 and 6.

That number was up from an official toll of 21 victims announced late on Sunday, when officials said they had also located four additional sets of remains that were omitted from the official tally without explanation.

CONFLICTING NUMBERS

The death toll in the disaster has been somewhat of a moving target in recent days as county officials have reported locating a number of bodies without adding them to their fatality toll.

Some rescue crews in Washington state on much-need …Play video

Search crews, with the help of dogs, have been regularly finding and retrieving more remains, at least four to six times a day on the eastern half of the massive debris pile, recovery team supervisor Steve Harris told a news conference.

Authorities have said the process of accounting for the number of dead has been complicated by the fact that the bodies are not always found intact.

Harris said the mudslide struck with such force that whole cars were "compacted down to about the size of a refrigerator, just smashed to the point where you can hardly tell it was a vehicle."

No one has been pulled out alive and no signs of life have been detected in the disaster zone in the nine days since the slide hit. At least eight people were injured but survived.

Officials have conceded it may be impossible to account for everyone lost in the disaster, and that some victims might end up being permanently entombed under the giant mound of muck and debris. The county has said the slide covered about 1 square mile, but maps of the site appear to show a debris field that extends over an area about half that size.

Mudslide crews and search dogs take much-needed re …Play video

DRY FORECAST

Scores of recovery workers, including National Guard troops just back from Afghanistan, picked through the swampy, rubble-strewn mud on Monday under fair skies that provided a welcome respite from heavy rains of last week.

Weather forecasts for the week ahead showed a continued drying trend, "which will help crews and reduce the risk of flooding and additional slides," the county said in a statement.

Some parts of the slide area, buried beneath 15 to 75 feet of mud, twisted tree trunks and wreckage, were still too dangerous to enter, Burke told reporters.

Like most workers at the site, Burke's boots were sealed to his trousers with duct tape, a precaution to keep toxic sludge out of his clothing. National Guard troops also set up a decontamination station where workers scrubbed themselves with soap and hot water before leaving the site.

"This is going to be a hazardous materials site for many years while we try to get this cleaned up," Burke said.

Governor Jay Inslee, who toured the disaster zone by helicopter on Sunday, asked President Barack Obama on Monday for a major disaster declaration that would make a federal programs available to assist individuals, households and businesses affected by the slide.

The request followed the approval of a federal emergency declaration last week that paved the way for the U.S. government to send in its own disaster team and specialized personnel.

In a bid to boost gloomy spirits in the community, members of two of Seattle's professional sports teams, the Seahawks of the National Football League and the Sounders Major League Soccer team planned to visit the area later on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in Oso and Bill Rigby and Bryan Cohen in Arlington, Wash; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Dan Grebler)

Sewage, propane, household solvents, and other chemicals lie beneath the collapsed hillside's thick mud.
Long-term hazard

FILE - In this April 6, 2012, file photo, Rev. Wilton Gregory, the Archbishop of Atlanta holds a cross during the 32nd annual Good Friday Pilgrimage at Hurt Park in Atlanta. Gregory apologized Monday, March 31, 2014, for building a $2.2 million mansion for himself, a decision criticized by local Catholics who cited the example of austerity set by the new pope. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jason Getz, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Atlanta apologized Monday for building a $2.2 million mansion for himself, a decision criticized by local Catholics who cited the example of austerity set by the new pope.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory recently moved into a nearly 6,400-square-foot (595-square-meter) residence. Its construction was made possible by a large donation from the estate of Joseph Mitchell, nephew of Margaret Mitchell, author of "Gone With The Wind," the Civil War epic that made his family wealthy. When Mitchell died in 2011, he left an estate worth more than $15 million to the archdiocese on the condition it be used for "general religious and charitable purposes."

Gregory said that he has received criticism over the spending in letters, emails and telephone messages.

"I am disappointed that, while my advisors (sic) and I were able to justify this project fiscally, logistically and practically, I personally failed to project the cost in terms of my own integrity and pastoral credibility with the people of God of north and central Georgia," Gregory said in a column posted on the website of the archdiocesan newspaper, The Georgia Bulletin.

"I failed to consider the impact on the families throughout the Archdiocese who, though struggling to pay their mortgages, utilities, tuition and other bills, faithfully respond year after year to my pleas to assist with funding our ministries and services," he added.

The Catholic leader said he will discuss the situation with several diocesan councils, including a special meeting of its finance council. If church representatives want the bishop to sell the home, Gregory said he will do so and move elsewhere.

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FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2008, file photo, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta exits the St. Clair C …

The purchase of the sprawling home was part of a real estate deal made possible by money from Joseph Mitchell's estate.

In his will, Mitchell requested that primary consideration be given to the Cathedral of Christ The King, where he worshipped. The cathedral received $7.5 million for its capital fund and spent roughly $1.9 million to buy the archbishop's old home, according to tax records. Cathedral officials are planning to spend an additional $292,000 to expand Gregory's old home so its priests can live there, freeing up space on the cathedral's cramped campus.

After selling his home, Gregory needed a new residence.

The archbishop said that he made a mistake while designing a home with large meeting spaces and rooms for receptions and gatherings.

"What we didn't stop to consider, and that oversight rests with me and me alone, was that the world and the Church have changed," Gregory said.

He demolished the one-story home on Mitchell's property, which was donated to the church, and replaced it with a Tudor-style mansion. In January, a group of local Catholics met with the archbishop and asked that he sell the large home and return to his old residence. They cited the example of Pope Francis, who turned down living quarters in a Vatican palace and drives a simple car.

"The example of the Holy Father, and the way people of every sector of our society have responded to his message of gentle joy and compassion without pretense, has set the bar for every Catholic and even for many who don't share our communion," Gregory said.

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Gregory's column in The Georgia Bulletin: http://www.georgiabulletin.org/commentary/2014/03/the-archbishop-responds/

The sprawling home was built when the diocese received a donation meant for "religious and charitable purposes."
What's next

A new index based on 12 indicators that measure a child's success from birth to adulthood by race

NEW YORK (AP) — In every region of America, white and Asian children are far better positioned for success than black, Latino and American Indian children, according to a new report appealing for urgent action to bridge this racial gap.

Titled "Race for Results," the report is being released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which for decades has worked to improve child well-being in the United States.

The foundation also produces annual "Kids Count" reports, with reams of state-specific data, but these generally have not focused on race. The new report tackles the topic head-on, with charts and ratings that convey dramatic racial discrepancies.

At the core of the report is a newly devised index based on 12 indicators measuring a child's success from birth to adulthood. The indicators include reading and math proficiency, high school graduation data, teen birthrates, employment prospects, family income and education levels, and neighborhood poverty levels.

Using a single composite score with a scale of one to 1,000, Asian children have the highest index score at 776, followed by white children at 704.

"Scores for Latino (404), American-Indian (387) and African-American (345) children are distressingly lower, and this pattern holds true in nearly every state," said the report.

Patrick McCarthy, the Casey Foundation's president, said the findings are "a call to action that requires serious and sustained attention from the private, nonprofit, philanthropic and government sectors to create equitable opportunities for children of color."

The report was based on data from 2012, including census figures tallying the number of U.S. children under 18 at 39 million whites, 17.6 million Latinos, 10.2 million blacks, 3.4 million of Asian descent, and 640,000 American Indians, as well as about 2.8 million children of two or more races. Under census definitions, Latinos can be of various racial groups.

The report described the challenges facing African-American children as "a national crisis."

For black children, the states with the lowest scores were in the South and upper Midwest — with Wisconsin at the bottom, followed closely by Mississippi and Michigan. The highest scores were in states with relatively small black populations — Hawaii, New Hampshire, Utah and Alaska.

Outcomes varied for different subgroups of Asian and Latino children. For example, in terms of family income levels, children of Southeast Asian descent — Burmese, Hmong, Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese — faced greater hurdles than children whose families came from India, Japan, the Philippines and China.

Among Latinos, children of Mexican and Central American descent faced the biggest barriers to success; those of Cuban and South American descent fared better in the index.

The state with the highest score for Latino children was Alaska, at 573. The lowest was Alabama, at 331.

Only 25 states provided enough data to compile scores for American Indian children. Their scores were highest in Texas (631), Alabama (568), Florida (554) and Kansas (553), and lowest in the upper Midwest, the Southwest and the Mountain States. The score for Indian children in South Dakota — 185 — was the lowest of any group in any state on the index.

Some of South Dakota's Indian reservations are among the poorest nationwide, which contributes to high levels of domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse, fetal-alcohol syndrome, teen pregnancy and low graduation rates.

The report found sharp differences in Indian children's outcomes based on tribal affiliation. For example, Apache children were far more likely than Choctaw children to live in economically struggling families.

Among its recommendations, the report urged concerted efforts to collect and analyze race-specific data on child well-being that could be used to develop programs capable of bridging the racial gap. It said special emphasis should be placed on expanding job opportunities as children in the disadvantaged groups enter adulthood.

"Regardless of our own racial background or socio-economic position, we are inextricably interconnected as a society," the report concluded. "We must view all children in America as our own — and as key contributors to our nation's future."

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Annie E. Casey Foundation: http://www.aecf.org/

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Follow David Crary on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CraryAP

A new report finds dramatic racial discrepancies in how America's children are positioned for success.
'A call to action'