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CIA Torture Reports, 2014, Dec.

Posted by Tamohara dasa ADMIN. on December 9, 2014 at 16:41 in News and World Events

December 09, 2014


CIA Torture Reports: Frozen to Death; Rectal Rehydration, Broken Limbs; 54 Countries Assist US; Dick Cheney War Criminal

Today the US released its CIA report on torture. The results are shocking. For example, the New York Times provides 7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Torture Report.

  1. The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed.
  2. The C.I.A. interrogation program was mismanaged and was not subject to adequate oversight.
  3. The C.I.A. misled members of Congress and the White House about the effectiveness and extent of its brutal interrogation techniques.
  4. Interrogators in the field who tried to stop the brutal techniques were repeatedly overruled by senior C.I.A. officials.
  5. The C.I.A. repeatedly underreported the number of people it detained and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques under the program.
  6. At least 26 detainees were wrongfully held and did not meet the government’s standard for detention.
  7. The C.I.A. leaked classified information to journalists, exaggerating the success of interrogation methods in an effort to gain public support.

Here's the full 525-page sanitized and redacted Congressional Study on CIA Torture. Various reports and excerpts follow:

Rectal Rehydration, Broken Limbs, 180 Hrs of Sleep Deprivation

The Guardian reports Rectal Rehydration and Broken Limbs: Grisliest Findings in CIA Torture Report.
While parts of the programme had been known – and much more will never be revealed – the catalogue of abuse is nightmarish and reads like something invented by the Marquis de Sade or Hieronymous Bosch.

Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing, sometimes with their arms shackled above their heads.

Prisoners were subjected to “rectal feeding” without medical necessity. Rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”. The report highlights one prisoner later diagnosed with anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and “symptomatic rectal prolapse”.

The report mentions mock executions, Russian roulette. US agents threatened to slit the throat of a detainee’s mother, sexually abuse another and threatened prisoners’ children. One prisoner died of hypothermia brought on in part by being forced to sit on a bare concrete floor without pants.
Frozen to Death
At COBALT, the CIA interrogated in 2002 Gul Rahman, described as a suspected Islamic extremist. He was subjected to “48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment”.

CIA headquarters suggested “enhanced measures” might be needed to get him to comply. A CIA officer at COBALT ordered Rahman be “shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor”.

He was only wearing a sweatshirt as a CIA officer has ordered his clothes to be removed earlier after judging him to be uncooperative during an interrogation.

The next day, guards found Rahman dead. An internal CIA review and autopsy assessed he likely died from hypothermia – “in part from having been forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants”.
Forgotten Man Chained to a Wall
One CIA interrogator at COBALT reported that “‘literally, a detainee could go for days or weeks without anyone looking at him’, and that his team found one detainee who ‘as far as we could detrmined’, had been chained to a wall in a standing position for 17 days’.’ Some prisoners were said to be like dogs in kennels: “When the doors to their cells were pened, ‘they cowered.’”
Lies

What did all of this accomplish? The answer as any rational person might speculate is "nothing".

Please consider Senate Report on CIA Torture Claims Spy Agency Lied About 'Ineffective' Program.

Also consider Stop Believing the Lies: America Tortured More than 'Some Folks' – and Covered It Up.
For the past few days, we have seen many of the same resentful politicians and former CIA leaders in charge of the torture-denial regime being handed virtual royalty status by the American media to respond to pre-emptively respond to the report without much of any pushback. Dick Cheney basically got to write his own interview in the New York Times, while Michael Hayden, the former NSA and CIA director in charge of lying to the Senate for years, was handed softball after softball by Bob Schieffer of CBS News to make his case. It is borderline propaganda.
Still Classified

Borderline propaganda? No, it's blatantly obvious political propaganda of the worst kind. By the way, the full committee study, at 6,700 pages, remains classified. What the hell else has yet to be disclosed?

Map: 54 Countries Assist US

Vox has a nice Map of 54 countries that helped the CIA with its torture-linked rendition program.
The CIA torture program was even bigger than the details released in the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report might suggest. The reason is that the CIA didn't just have its own torture program, run out of its "black site" secret detention and torture prisons broad. It also used a vast network of other countries to help capture, detain, transport, and, yes, torture detainees.

That network is best shown by looking at the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. This is the program under which the CIA would detain and transport suspected terrorists with the help of foreign governments. In all, a stunning 54 countries participated in the CIA-run rendition program. Here they are:



Whether or not all 54 of those countries are complicit in the CIA torture program is debatable. The program could work in a number of different ways; each of these countries supported the CIA's rendition program, but not every country directly participated in torture. ...
Cheney Praises Torture

Yesterday, in advance of the release, Former Vice President Dick Cheney Dismissed Senate Report.

The reported conclusion by the Senate Intelligence Committee that the C.I.A. misled the White House, he added, “is just a crock.”

“They deserve a lot of praise,” Mr. Cheney said. “As far as I’m concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized.”

Dick Cheney War Criminal

My take is that Dick Cheney is a war criminal. He should be tried in a court of law, and if justice is served, sentenced to death and buried in the same grave as Sadaam Hussein.

The same goes for everyone involved in the torture schemes especially former CIA director George Tenet.

There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of behavior. Ever.

By the way, at a meeting on December 12, 2002, Tenet assured president Bush that the evidence that Iraq had WMDs amounted to a "slam dunk case."

Obama's Limp Response

Today president Obama issued this limp response: "I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong, in the past. ... It reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests."

No charges will be filed and the rest of the classified report will be swept under the rug. And just two days ago Obama transferred Six Guantanamo Detainees to Uruguay.
The detainees were a Tunisian, a Palestinian and four Syrians who were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan more than a decade ago and turned over to U.S. forces. "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel initially was reluctant to approve the transfer."
Obama's Promise to Close Guantánamo Bay Torture Facility

In 2008 president Obama promised to close our Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility in Cuba. We are still there.

On January 28, 2013, The Wire posted a Timeline of Obama's Failed Promise to Close Gitmo noting "the office responsible for closing the prison has itself been closed."

On January 22, 2014, the National Journal reported Five Years After Obama Vowed to Shut It Down, Guantanamo Bay Remains Open.
"The pace of the push to close the controversial camp has slowed in recent years, and doesn't show signs of picking up."

On this day in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that called for the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to be closed within a year. A month later, in his first State of the Union address, the president told Americans he had ordered the closure of the controversial camp in Cuba, and "will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists." Guantanamo, which remains open, has not been mentioned in the president's annual speech since.
Why is the US Still in Cuba?

Can anyone please explain why the US is still running a torture operation in Cuba?

Obviously not. As usual, it's nothing but a pack of lies from this president.

Color Me Cynical

As far as torture goes, I am cynical of Obama's announcements.

I suspect the biggest change will be for the CIA to stop putting its torture practices in reports as opposed to actually stopping the torture.

Cynicism aside, there is a zero percent chance president Obama will ever hold those responsible for the torture accountable.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/12/cia-torture-reports-frozen-to-death.html#7cMIvQV822g63kGj.99
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  • Tamohara dasa ADMIN. December 10, 2014 4:31

    Report Portrays a Broken C.I.A. Devoted to a Failed Approach

    By SCOTT SHANEDEC. 9, 2014

    A 2003 satellite image by Space Imaging IKONOS of the covert prison known as the Salt Pit.

     Space Imaging, via Getty Images

    WASHINGTON — In January 2003, 10 months into the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prison program, the agency’s chief of interrogations sent an email to colleagues saying that the relentlessly brutal treatment of prisoners was a train wreck “waiting to happen and I intend to get the hell off the train before it happens.” He said he had told his bosses he had “serious reservations” about the program and no longer wanted to be associated with it “in any way.”

    The bitter infighting in the C.I.A. interrogation program was only one symptom of the dysfunction, disorganization, incompetence, greed and deception described in a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. In more than 500 pages, the summary, released on Tuesday, paints a devastating picture of an agency that was ill equipped to take on the task of questioning Al Qaeda suspects, bungled the job and then misrepresented the results.



    On Tuesday morning, the C.I.A. acknowledged problems in the early months of the program but suggested that they had been fixed. “The study as a whole leads the reader to believe that the management shortcomings that marked the initial months persisted throughout the program, which is historically inaccurate,” the agency said.


    cia-torture-report-document-1418141035431-master180.png

    Document: The Senate Committee’s Report on the C.I.A.’s Use of Torture

    The Senate report is the most sweeping condemnation of the C.I.A. since the Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, accused the agency in the 1970s of domestic spying, botched assassinations and giving LSD to unwitting subjects, among other misconduct. That report led to a series of new laws and restrictions on C.I.A. activities.

    The protest from the chief of interrogations came amid weeks of torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a leading suspect in the bombing of two American embassies and a Navy ship. C.I.A. personnel working on the secret program had split into two camps. On one side were the chief of interrogations and nearly all of the personnel who had been questioning Mr. Nashiri. After two months of harsh questioning, the chief wrote, they believed that the prisoner had “been mainly truthful and is not withholding significant information.”

    On the other side were James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two former military psychologists who had advised the agency to use waterboarding and other coercive methods. With the support of C.I.A. headquarters, they insisted that Mr. Nashiri and other prisoners were still withholding crucial information, and that the application of sufficient pain and disorientation would eventually force them to disclose it. They thought the other faction was “running a ‘sissified’ interrogation program,” the report says.


    Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is a leading suspect in the bombing of two American embassies and a Navy ship. ABC, via Associated Press

    If those questioning Mr. Nashiri just had “the latitude to use the full range of enhanced exploitation and interrogation measures,” including waterboarding, Dr. Jessen wrote, they would be able to get more information. Such treatment, he wrote, after the two previous months of extremely harsh handling of Mr. Nashiri, would produce “the desired level of helplessness.”

    The report said the agency had evidently forgotten its own conclusion, sent to Congress in 1989, that “inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.” The Democratic Senate staff members who studied the post-Sept. 11 program came up with an identical assessment: that waterboarding, wall-slamming, nudity, cold and other ill treatment produced little information of value in preventing terrorism.

    The report spends little time condemning torture on moral or legal grounds. Instead, it addresses mainly a practical question: Did torture accomplish anything of value? Looking at case after case, the report answers with an unqualified no.


    Graphic

    7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Torture Report

    Among the report’s findings: The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and the number of detainees higher than the agency portrayed.


    cia-torture-report-key-points-1418137266450-master495.png
    OPEN Graphic

    In fact, it says, “C.I.A. officers regularly called into question whether the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques were effective, assessing that the use of the techniques failed to elicit detainee cooperation or produce accurate intelligence.” Still, higher-ups ordered that the methods be continued and told Congress, the White House and journalists that they were having great success.

    Just as striking as that central finding is the detailed account of C.I.A. mismanagement. Both factions in the fight over interrogations were led by people with histories that might have been expected to disqualify them.

    The chief of interrogations, who is not named in the report, was given the job in fall 2002 even though the agency’s inspector general had urged that he be “orally admonished for inappropriate use of interrogation techniques” in a training program in Latin America in the 1980s.


    Gul Rahman was found dead of hypothermia at the Salt Pit, C.I.A. detention site in Afghanistan Habib Rahman/Associated Press

    And Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen, identified by the pseudonyms Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar in the report, had not conducted a single real interrogation. They had helped run a Cold War-era training program for the Air Force in which personnel were given a taste of the harsh treatment they might face if captured by Communist enemies. The program — called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape — had never been intended for use in American interrogations, and involved methods that had produced false confessions when used on American airmen held by the Chinese in the Korean War.

    The program allowed the psychologists to assess their own work — they gave it excellent grades — and to charge a daily rate of $1,800 each, four times the pay of other interrogators, to waterboard detainees. Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen later started a company that took over the C.I.A. program from 2005 until it was closed in 2009. The C.I.A. paid it $81 million, plus $1 million to protect the company from legal liability.

    Early in the program, the report says, “a junior officer on his first overseas assignment,” who had no experience with prisons or interrogations, was placed in charge of a C.I.A. detention site in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. Other C.I.A. officers had previously proposed that he be stripped of access to classified information because of a “lack of honesty, judgment and maturity.”


    A military base in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland, that was said to be used by the C.I.A. to detain and question terrorism suspects. Tomasz Waszcuk/European Pressphoto Agency

    At the Salt Pit, the junior officer ordered a prisoner, Gul Rahman, shackled to the wall of his cell and stripped of most of his clothing. Mr. Rahman was found dead of hypothermia the next morning, lying on the bare concrete floor. Four months later, the junior officer was recommended for a cash award of $2,500 for his “consistently superior work.”

    A C.I.A. accountability board later recommended disciplinary action against one of the officers involved in the death at the Salt Pit. But in that instance and another, the board was overruled. The “director strongly believes that mistakes should be expected in a business filled with uncertainty,” an agency memo said.

    In response to Mr. Rahman’s death at the Salt Pit, called “COBALT” in the report, George J. Tenet, then the C.I.A. director, signed the first formal guidelines for confinement and interrogation in the program in January 2003, according to the report.

    In 2001, the agency had proposed meeting United States prison standards. But the guidelines approved by Mr. Tenet were so minimal that they were met even by the Salt Pit, where “detainees were kept shackled in complete darkness and isolation, with a bucket for human waste, and without notable heat” in the winter, the report says.

    The agency even had trouble keeping track of the people it held. In a December 2003 cable to C.I.A. headquarters from a country with a secret prison, the station chief wrote, “We have made the unsettling discovery that we are holding a number of detainees about whom we know very little.” Most of the prisoners had not been questioned for months and seemed to have little intelligence value, the cable said.

    But little of this kind of disarray came to the attention of the congressional oversight agencies, the White House or the public, which were repeatedly assured by a succession of C.I.A. directors that the program was professional and successful.


    Graphic

    A History of the C.I.A.’s Secret Interrogation Program

    The Central Intelligence Agency used waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques on dozens of the men it detained in secret prisons between 2002 and 2008.


    timeline-of-cias-secret-interrogation-program-1418137762182-master495-v2.png
    OPEN Graphic

    During the program’s later years, after a damning report in 2004 by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, much of the agency’s effort appears to have gone into public relations to counter dismal news coverage. In 2007, Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “all of those involved in the questioning of detainees are carefully chosen and screened for demonstrated professional judgment and maturity.”

    In fact, the Senate report concludes, no such vetting took place. The interrogation teams included people with “notable derogatory information” in their records, including one with “workplace anger management issues” and another who “had reportedly admitted to sexual assault.”

    Former C.I.A. officials have denounced the Senate review as inaccurate and unfair, and plan to mount a vigorous pushback. On the question of personnel vetting, however, as on many other issues, the most critical voices in the Senate report are those of agency officers who were offended by what they saw.

    “I am concerned at what appears to be a lack of resolve at headquarters to deploy to the field the brightest and most qualified officers,” wrote a C.I.A. officer running one of the secret prisons in 2005. “More than a few are basically incompetent.”

    He added: “We see no evidence that thought is being given to deploying an ‘A team.’ The result, quite naturally, is the production of mediocre or, I dare say, useless intelligence

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