{"id":51272,"date":"2014-12-22T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51272"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:09","slug":"what-is-in-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-on-cia-torture-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/what-is-in-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-on-cia-torture-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is in the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on CIA Torture (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

16 Dec 2014 – This is the first of three articles summarizing the contents of the unclassified executive summary of the US Senate Intelligence Committee\u2019s 6,700-page report on the CIA torture program, released last week.<\/em><\/p>\n

The US Senate Intelligence Committee Report on the Central Intelligence Agency\u2019s \u201cenhanced interrogation program\u201d exposes the CIA as a globe-spanning enterprise of criminality, deceit, and violence\u2014as well as rank incompetence, petty intriguing, and porno-sadistic depravity.<\/p>\n

With the support of the political establishment in the US and its international accomplices, the CIA operates without accountability or restraint\u2014lying, brutalizing, and bungling its way around the world in pursuit of the interests of American imperialism.<\/p>\n

From a legal standpoint, the war crimes and crimes against humanity that are documented in the report warrant the immediate arrest, indictment and prosecution of every individual involved in the program, from the torturers themselves and their \u201coutside contractors\u201d all the way up to senior officials in the Bush and Obama administrations who presided over the program and subsequently attempted to cover it up. The Watergate scandal, which resulted in Nixon\u2019s resignation, pales in comparison. However, the perpetrators remain at large and nobody has been held accountable.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The report was heavily redacted by the CIA.<\/p><\/div>\n

The full committee study, which amounts to 6,700 pages and contains 38,000 footnotes, remains classified and has not been publicly released. The document published last week, at 525 pages and heavily redacted, is the executive summary. It was originally completed on December 13, 2012, but its publication was obstructed by the Obama administration for a further two years.<\/p>\n

This article, the first of a series presented by the World Socialist Web Site<\/em>, aims to provide a synopsis and analysis of the report.<\/p>\n

The executive summary opens with a letter by Democratic senator Diane Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. The letter essentially reads as an apology for the CIA crimes documented in the report. \u201cIt is worth remembering the pervasive fear in late 2001 and how immediate the threat felt,\u201d she writes, tendentiously recalling her personal memories of the September 11, 2001, attacks. \u201cI can understand the CIA\u2019s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield,\u201d she continues, \u201cand the CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feinstein\u2019s introductory letter makes clear that her opposition to CIA torture is not fundamentally because is depraved and a war crime, but from the standpoint that it has not resulted in useful intelligence. When her committee launched its investigation in 2009, she wrote that its purpose was \u201cto review the program and to shape detention and interrogation policies in the future.\u201d In her letter, Feinstein cites the CIA\u2019s own documents as evidence that the \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d (i.e., torture) techniques \u201cdo not produce intelligence,\u201d \u201cwill probably result in false answers,\u201d and have historically proven to be ineffective.<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d program has its origins at the highest levels of the Bush administration following the September 11 attacks. As early as November 2001, the report states, \u201cCIA officers had begun researching potential legal defenses for using interrogation techniques that were considered torture by foreign governments and a non-governmental organization.\u201d In other words, the first step was to concoct a pseudo-legal justification for something that everyone knew was prohibited by international law, American law, and even the CIA\u2019s own internal policies.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration was likely concerned that public trials of the individuals suspected of involvement in the September 11 attacks would shed too much light on the American intelligence agencies\u2019 long and sordid history of partnerships with groups such as Al Qaeda, and would perhaps lead to unpleasant questions being asked about what the those agencies knew in advance of the attacks. Instead, a plan was devised to round up all of these individuals and hold them incommunicado.<\/p>\n

The conspiracy to implement the illegal program reached all the way up to the Oval Office. President Bush issued a memorandum in February 2002 stating that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, \u201crequiring humane treatment of individuals in a conflict, did not apply to al-Qa\u2019ida or Taliban detainees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate Intelligence Committee found that at least 119 individuals had been targeted by the program during its existence, contrary to the CIA\u2019s claims that the number of individuals involved was \u201cless than a hundred.\u201d (This was one of a very long list of CIA lies documented in the report.) The committee found that at least 26 of those individuals (or 22 percent of the total) \u201cdid not meet the standard for detention\u201d\u2014that is, they were innocent victims.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the program, the CIA had no personnel trained in how to perform torture, so to implement the torture program, the agency retained two psychologists as outside contractors: \u201cDr. Grayson SWIGERT and Dr. Hammond DUNBAR.\u201d These psychologists (identified by the New York Times<\/em> and NBC News as Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen) had no field experience with respect to interrogation and had only prepared a research paper on the subject of how CIA agents could resist torture. Nevertheless, in 2006, \u201cthe value of the CIA\u2019s base contract with the company formed by the psychologists with all options exercised was in excess of $180 million; the contractors received $81 million prior to the contract\u2019s termination in 2009.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen and allegedly a low- or mid-ranking Al Qaeda figure, was among the first victims of the program. He was initially questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which provided him with medical care and established a rapport with him. Zubaydah cooperated with the FBI, identifying Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as the \u201cmastermind\u201d of the September 11, 2001, attacks and providing other information.<\/p>\n

\"Abu<\/a>

Abu Zubaydah<\/p><\/div>\n

Abruptly, the CIA intervened and took over the interrogation of Zubaydah, demanding the exclusion of the FBI personnel who had been previously involved. The FBI, which is the criminal investigative agency belonging to the federal Department of Justice, apparently objected to this intervention.<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s openly declared strategy was to impose \u201clearned helplessness\u201d on Zubaydah through torture. But after taking custody of Zubaydah, the CIA agents responsible for his interrogation went on vacation, taking \u201ctime off for a break and to attend to personal matters\u201d and leaving Zubaydah in isolation for 47 days. So much for the danger of imminent terrorist attacks!<\/p>\n

In 2002, the CIA began meeting with top officials in the Bush administration to obtain authorization for torturing Zubaydah. The CIA insisted that its interrogation of Zubaydah take precedence over Zubaydah\u2019s medical care, and even established a contingency plan for what should be done in the event that Zubaydah died while being tortured.<\/p>\n

On July 24, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft directly authorized a number of torture techniques, including \u201cattention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap (insult slap), cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, use of diapers, and use of insects.\u201d<\/p>\n

On July 26, 2002, Ashcroft expressly approved waterboarding. With the blessing of Ashcroft and other senior Bush administration officials, Zubaydah was tortured around the clock during the month of August 2002. By the end of the first week of the interrogations, the CIA determined that it was unlikely that Zubaydah would provide any useful information, but the torture continued anyway.<\/p>\n

During waterboarding, internal CIA documents described Zubaydah as \u201chysterical\u201d and \u201cdistressed to the level that he was unable to effectively communicate.\u201d Waterboarding Zubaydah \u201cresulted in immediate fluid intake and involuntary leg, chest and arm spasms\u201d and \u201chysterical pleas.\u201d At least once during waterboarding, Zubaydah \u201cbecame completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.\u201d During Zubaydah\u2019s torture, he lost his left eye. The CIA subsequently destroyed video evidence of these interrogations to prevent it from coming into the hands of investigators.<\/p>\n

The Senate report confirms that the torture of Zubaydah did not result in any meaningful intelligence\u2014but CIA headquarters falsely insisted to the Bush administration at the time that the torture of Zubaydah was effective and was \u201cproducing meaningful results,\u201d and that it \u201cshould be used as a template for future interrogation of high value captives.\u201d The CIA also falsely claimed that the information that was obtained through the FBI\u2019s successful interviews of Zubaydah was actually the fruit of its own \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d strategies.<\/p>\n

In July of this year, the European Court of Human Rights awarded Zubaydah \u20ac100,000 in damages and \u20ac30,000 in costs against the Polish government, which had allowed the CIA to torture him on its territory.<\/p>\n

In 2002, the CIA established a dedicated torture facility codenamed DETENTION SITE COBALT. (In one of many examples of the gratuitous redactions in the report, the fact that the COBALT facility is located in Afghanistan was redacted, even though that fact is available through other sources.)<\/p>\n

The COBALT facility, also known as the \u201cSalt Pit,\u201d was one of the many \u201cblack site\u201d torture facilities used by the CIA during the course of the program. Its windows \u201cwere blacked out and detainees were kept in total darkness\u2026. While in their cells, detainees were shackled to the wall and given buckets for human waste. Four of the twenty cells at the facility included a bar across the top of the cell. Later reports describe detainees being shackled to the bar with their hands above their heads, forcing them to stand, and therefore not allowing the detainees to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

In November 2002, Gul Rahman died at the COBALT facility. Rahman was innocent\u2014a case of \u201cmistaken identity.\u201d He was traveling to Islamabad for a medical checkup when he was kidnapped and murdered by the CIA, which did not even bother to notify his wife and four children of his death. No one was ever charged with a crime in connection with Rahman\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\"Gul<\/a>

Gul Rahman<\/p><\/div>\n

According to the report, Rahman was \u201cshackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor,\u201d and the warden \u201chad ordered that Rahman\u2019s clothing be removed when he had been judged to be uncooperative during an earlier interrogation.\u201d In other words, he was stripped for the purpose of humiliating him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next day, the guards found Gul Rahman\u2019s dead body.\u201d The cause of death was determined to be hypothermia, \u201cin part from having been forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants.\u201d Rahman\u2019s corpse was also discovered to be covered with bruises and abrasions.<\/p>\n

The CIA officer assigned as warden of the COBALT facility was someone who had \u201clittle to no experience with interrogating or handling prisoners,\u201d according to the report. A previous CIA supervisor had determined that the warden lacked \u201chonesty, judgment, and maturity.\u201d However, four months after Rahman\u2019s death, the CIA recommended that the warden receive a \u201ccash award\u201d of $2,500 for his \u201cconsistently superior work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other torture techniques in use at the COBALT facility included \u201cstanding sleep deprivation in which a detainee\u2019s arms were shackled above his head, nudity, dietary manipulation, exposure to cold temperatures, cold showers, \u2018rough takedowns,\u2019 and, in at least two instances, the use of mock executions.\u201d At the COBALT facility, \u201cCIA officers (including personnel not trained in interrogation) could, at their discretion, strip a detainee naked, shackle him in the standing position for up to 72 hours, and douse the detainee repeatedly with cold water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Cobalt torture camp<\/p><\/div>\n

Beginning in 2002, the CIA began providing special \u201cinterrogation training\u201d (torture training) to selected officers. The Senate Intelligence Committee noted that individuals who were selected by the CIA as torturers included \u201cinexperienced, marginal, underperforming\u201d officers from other assignments and \u201cindividuals who, among other issues, had engaged in inappropriate detainee interrogations, had workplace anger management issues, and had reportedly admitted to sexual assault.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the CIA was deliberately seeking out, cultivating, and advancing psychopaths within its ranks.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the network of secret CIA torture facilities continued to grow. The COBALT facility held \u201ca total of 64 detainees during the period of its operation between September 2002 and [redacted] 2004,\u201d while \u201cDETENTION SITE GRAY held eight detainees\u2026DETENTION SITE ORANGE\u2026held 34 detainees\u2026and DETENTION SITE BROWN\u2026held 12 detainees\u201d during the period of their operation.<\/p>\n

The torture of Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, who was alleged to have been involved in the USS Cole<\/em> bombing and the 1998 East Africa US Embassy bombings, is a representative case. The torture of Al-Nashiri included placing \u201ca pistol near al-Nashiri\u2019s head and operat[ing] a cordless drill near al-Nashiri\u2019s body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides waterboarding, other techniques included \u201cslapping al-Nashiri multiple times on the back of the head during interrogations; implying that his mother would be brought before him and sexually abused; blowing cigar smoke in al-Nashiri\u2019s face; giving al-Nashiri a forced bath using a stiff brush; and using improvised stress positions that caused cuts and bruises resulting in the intervention of a medical officer, who was concerned that al-Nashiri\u2019s shoulders would be dislocated using the stress positions.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point, al-Nashiri went on a hunger strike, to which the CIA responded by force-feeding him \u201crectally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another detainee, as a result of repeated waterboarding, developed an abdomen that \u201cwas somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed.\u201d CIA documents indicate that \u201c[i]n the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most infamous of the torture techniques described in the report is \u201crectal rehydration, without evidence of medical necessity.\u201d CIA documents quote one medical officer who described the technique as follows: \u201cyou get a tube up as far as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag\u2014let gravity do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

One detainee who was subjected to this procedure was later \u201cdiagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse.\u201d In other words, his large intestine was protruding out of his body.<\/p>\n

The report describes how detainee Majid Khan\u2019s \u201clunch tray, consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was \u2018pureed\u2019 and rectally infused.\u201d This procedure was repeated a number of times for no apparent medical reason.<\/p>\n

In response to this treatment, Majid Khan repeatedly attempted to kill himself, including \u201cattempting to cut his wrist on two occasions, an attempt to chew into his arm at the inner elbow, an attempt to cut a vein in the top of his foot, and an attempt to cut into his skin at the elbow joint using a filed toothbrush.\u201d<\/p>\n

A man \u201chad to stand up for five days straight and answer questions;\u201d a man was \u201cforced to strip naked and stand in front of a female interrogator;\u201d a man was \u201csubjected to baths in which ice water was used;\u201d a man was forced to stand on a broken limb until the leg swelled up; a man was forced to stand up for 56 hours straight, until he began to hallucinate; a man was deprived of sleep \u201cfor a total of 138.5 hours\u201d in a row; men were subjected to loud music around the clock; a broomstick was placed behind the knees of a man in a stress position, recalling the techniques employed by the medieval Inquisition.<\/p>\n

In another episode, \u201cwater dousing was used on Abu Hazim, a cloth covered Abu Hazim\u2019s face, and [redacted] poured cold water directly on Abu Hazim\u2019s face to disrupt his breathing. [The linguist] said that when Abu Hazim turned blue, Physician\u2019s Assistant [redacted] removed the cloth so that Abu Hazim could breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n

CIA officers willfully ignored recommendations by doctors against the torture methods that were being employed and pressed ahead anyway, even when the person being tortured had no information to provide. Many of the men subjected to torture developed behavioral and psychological problems, including hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, suicidal ideation, and other complications, with some suffering total breakdowns.<\/p>\n

The report is not limited to torture, but depicts the CIA as engaged in what amounts to organized crime on a daily basis. In one episode, the political leadership of a country where a secret CIA torture facility was located \u201crejected the transfer\u201d of certain detainees, apparently uncomfortable over the political ramifications of CIA torture taking place within its borders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe following month [redacted] provided [redacted]$ million to Country [redacted]\u2019s [redacted] which officials, for Country [redacted] political leadership, indicated that Country [redacted] was now flexible with regard to the number of CIA detainees at the facility and when the facility would eventually be closed.\u201d In other words, the CIA paid millions in cash bribes to keep the torture facility operational.<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s torture program was accompanied by constant turf-warring and factional maneuvering by the agency within the Bush administration. While the CIA provided information about its activities to its factional allies, it provided inaccurate information to everyone else or kept them in the dark entirely, dispensing information as a kind of patronage.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2006, virtually all of the top officials in the Bush administration knew about the torture program, making them all accomplices in it. When President Bush was finally briefed about the program in April 2006, he \u201cexpressed discomfort\u201d only with an \u201cimage of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s interrogation program did not, it appears, achieve anything at all from an intelligence or national security standpoint. With the country supposedly at risk of an imminent terrorist attack, the CIA at various times lost track of how many detainees it had.<\/p>\n

The Senate Intelligence Committee report focuses on the CIA\u2019s inept and mismanaged implementation the program, and there are definite political reasons behind this emphasis. Nevertheless, the CIA\u2019s incompetence is a further reflection of the extent to which democratic norms\u2014as well as professionalism and basic human decency\u2014have disappeared from the internal machinery of the state, which is instead permeated through and through with criminality and corruption.<\/p>\n

To be continued.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Dec 2014 – This is the first of three articles summarizing the contents of the unclassified executive summary of the US Senate Intelligence Committee\u2019s 6,700-page report on the CIA torture program, released last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}