The programme, devised by two agency contractors to squeeze information from suspects after the Sept 11 2001 attacks, was ineffective and never led to the disruption of a single plot, the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee said.
The programme ran from 2002 to 2006 and involved questioning al Qaeda and other captives in secret detention facilities in various countries, including Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Thailand.
The report, which followed a five-year investigation, found the techniques used were "far more brutal" than the CIA told the public or policymakers.
Its release prompted a boost of security at US facilities abroad.
"This document examines the CIA's secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive interrogation techniques - in some cases amounting to torture," committee chair Dianne Feinstein said.
Sleep deprivation
Some captives were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, at times with their hands shackled above their heads, and the report recorded cases of "rectal feeding" or "rectal hydration" without any documented medical need.
It described one secret CIA prison, whose location was not identified, as a "dungeon" where detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in isolated cells, bombarded with loud noise and given only a bucket in which to relieve themselves.
It says that during one of the 83 occasions on which he was subjected to a simulated drowning technique the CIA called "waterboarding", an al Qaeda detainee known as Abu Zubaydah became "completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth", though he later was revived.
The report said CIA records showed that seven of 39 CIA detainees subjected to harsh interrogations produced no intelligence at all while in CIA custody.
Others made up stories, "resulting in faulty intelligence".
It said: "The methods in question, which were based on discredited coercive interrogation techniques such as those used by torturous regimes during the Cold War to elicit false confessions, regularly resulted in fabricated information."
The report also said the CIA had failed to use adequately trained and vetted personnel.
Two psychologists were contracted to set up the programme and run it, but neither had any experience in interrogation or specialised knowledge of al Qaeda.
One detainee subjected to some of the harshest treatment, al Qaeda commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of being the mastermind of the Sept 11 hijacked plane attacks, was among the militants who gave interrogators false information, the report said.
In his case, such information included a bogus claim that he had assigned Dhiren Barot, a British al Qaeda operative, to recruit African-Americans in Montana to the Qaeda cause.
The report said internal CIA records described the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as evolving into a "series of near drownings".
President Barack Obama said in a statement the techniques damaged American interests abroad without serving broad counter terrorism efforts.
"Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong, in the past," he said.
CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged that the CIA detention and interrogation programme "had shortcomings and that the agency made mistakes".
But he denied the agency misled anyone about it and said the agency's own review indicated that detainees who were subjected to harsh interrogations "did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives".
A law enforcement official said that the Justice Department had no plans to conduct any investigation of the CIA's actions in light of the release of the report.
Intelligence officials said that at one point, the Justice Department, through a specially-designated prosecutor conducted a criminal investigation into around 20 cases of allegations the CIA abused detainees.
However, that investigation was closed without charges being filed.
Endangering lives
The report charts the history of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" programme, which President George W Bush authorised after the Sept 11 attacks.
Bush ended many aspects of the programme before leaving office, and Obama swiftly banned "enhanced interrogation techniques" after his 2009 inauguration.