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Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2014 22:30:32 GMT
Parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA-enhanced interrogations read like the script of a blood-soaked horror movie. Interrogating terrorist suspects is clearly not an activity for the faint of heart, but the committee argues that in many cases, the CIA interrogation program descended into a kind of mindless brutality. The summary of the report, compiled by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the CIA had misled Americans about what it was doing. The information the CIA collected this way failed to secure information that foiled any threats, the report said. In a statement, the CIA insisted the interrogations had helped save lives. "The intelligence gained from the programme was critical to our understanding of al-Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day," director John Brennan said. •Sleep deprivation: "According to CIA records, Abu Ja'far al-Iraqi was subjected to nudity, dietary manipulation, insult slaps, abdominal slaps ... stress positions and water dousing with 44-degree Fahrenheit water for 18 minutes. He was shackled in the standing position for 54 hours as part of sleep deprivation and experienced swelling in his lower legs requiring blood thinner and spiral ace bandages. He was moved to a sitting position, and his sleep deprivation was extended to 78 hours. After the swelling subsided, he was provided with more blood thinner and was returned to the standing position. "The sleep deprivation was extended to 102 hours. After four hours of sleep, Abu Ja'far al-Iraqi was subjected to an additional 52 hours of sleep deprivation, after which CIA headquarters informed interrogators that eight hours was the minimum rest period between sleep deprivation sessions exceeding 48 hours." •Transport by plane: "Detainees transported by the CIA by aircraft were typically hooded with their hands and feet shackled. The detainees wore large headsets to eliminate their ability to hear, and these headsets were typically affixed to a detainee's head with duct tape that ran the circumference of the detainee's head. "CIA detainees were placed in diapers and not permitted to use the lavatory on the aircraft. Depending on the aircraft, detainees were either strapped into seats during the flights, or laid down and strapped to the floor of the plane horizontally like cargo." •Stress positions: "The Office of Inspector General later described additional allegations of unauthorized techniques used against (Abd al-Rahim) al-Nashiri by [CIA OFFICER 2] and other interrogators, including slapping 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's 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's shoulders would be dislocated using the stress positions." •Nudity: In November 2002, a CIA officer "ordered that Gul Rahman be shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor. Rahman was wearing only a sweatshirt, as [CIA OFFICER 1] had ordered that Rahman's clothing be removed when he had been judged to be uncooperative during an earlier interrogation. "The next day, the guards found Gul Rahman's dead body. An internal CIA review and autopsy assessed that Rahman likely died from hypothermia — in part from having been forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants." •Waterboarding: According to the report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — often described as the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks — was waterboarded at least 183 times. This is a technique that simulates drowning, in which the detainee is strapped to a board while water is poured in his mouth and nose. "During these sessions, KSM ingested a significant amount of water. CIA records state that KSM's 'abdomen was somewhat distended, and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed.' KSM's gastric contents were so diluted by water that the medical officer present was 'not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM's esophagus.' The officer was, however, concerned about water intoxication and dilution of electrolytes and requested that the interrogators use saline in future waterboarding sessions. The medical officer later wrote ... that KSM was 'ingesting and aspiration [sic] a LOT of water' and that 'in the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.' " •Rectal Feeding/hydration: Detainees who refused food or drink were forced to ingest food or water rectally. According to the report, a CIA officer "provided a description of the procedure, writing that '[r]egarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self-regulate, sloshing up the large intestines.' "Referencing the experience of the medical officer who subjected KSM to rectal rehydration, the officer wrote that, '[w]hat I infer is that you get a tube up as far as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag — let gravity do the work.'" Another case describes forcing Ensure into a detainee rectally, and in a third instance, "Majid Khan's 'lunch tray,' consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was 'pureed' and rectally infused."
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Post by Admin on Dec 10, 2014 22:42:33 GMT
One of two psychologists whose firm was paid $81 million to design the CIA's interrogation techniques for terror suspects is blasting a Senate report that criticized the program's brutality and effectiveness. "I always sleep comfortably at night," James Mitchell told NBC News on Wednesday. "I think the American people ought to know the men and women of the CIA and the armed services have given up their lives and their security to protect them. It's not always pretty," he added. "I wish this report had come out in a bipartisan way." In an earlier interview with the Associated Press, Mitchell said Senate report's accusation that he and his partner did not have experience as interrogators or an understanding of Al Qaeda is "flat wrong." He said he understood the shocked reaction to the report's claims. "I would be upset by it too, if it were true," he said. "What they are asking you to believe is that multiple directors of the CIA and analysts who made their living for years doing this lied to the federal government, or were too stupid to know that the intelligence they were getting wasn't useful," Mitchell told the AP. Mitchell, who spent 30 years in the U.S. Air Force, is identified by the alias Grayson Swigert in the report. His former business partner, John "Bruce" Jessen, is identifed as Hammond Dunbar. The report says that their firm had a $180 million contract but collected just $81 million before the contract was terminated in 2009.
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Post by Admin on Dec 12, 2014 22:37:14 GMT
Torture is a crime, a violation of the Federal Torture Act. Those who engaged in the torture documented in such exhaustive detail in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report should be prosecuted, and those who conspired in that torture should also be prosecuted. They include UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo, says Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Law School at the University of California Irvine. Yoo was co-author of the infamous “torture memo” of 2002, when he was Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Bush Justice Department. In the memo he declared that—in the words of Jane Mayer in her book The Dark Side, “cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees could be authorized, with few restrictions.” Yoo’s memo “directly led to the torture policy that resulted,” Chemerinsky said in an interview, citing Mayer’s evidence. “That’s being part of a conspiracy to violate a federal statute. Someone isn’t excused from criminal liability just because they work for the federal government.” The Federal Torture Act defines torture broadly, as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control.” The penalty for violating the Torture Act is imprisonment “for not more than 20 years.” Most important for the case of John Yoo, the Federal Torture Act specifically includes conspiracy, stating that “A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties . . . as the penalties prescribed for the offense.” That means Yoo could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. “I think he should be,” Chemerinsky said. “All who planned, all who implemented, all who carried out the torture should be criminally prosecuted. How else do we as a society express our outrage? How else do we deter it in the future—except by criminal prosecutions?” Chemerinsky, an authority on constitutional law who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, is the founding Dean of the law school at UC Irvine, a sister campus of Berkeley in the University of California System. He is the author hundreds of law review articles and eight books, including most recently The Case Against the Supreme Court.
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Post by Admin on Dec 14, 2014 22:36:14 GMT
Dick Cheney said he would do it all again. The blunt former veep on Sunday aggressively defended the brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks, defiantly maintaining that they helped protect the homeland. “We've avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. And we did capture Bin Laden,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I'd do it again in a minute.” Cheney, despite accusations to the contrary, said the CIA “very carefully avoided” torture in its enhanced interrogation techniques, which, according to an investigative Senate report released last week, included waterboardings, beatings, extreme stress positions and forced “rectal feedings” and “rectal rehydrations.” “Torture, to me is an American citizen on a cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York City on 9/11. There's this notion that somehow there's moral equivalence between what the terrorists and what we do. And that's absolutely not true,” Cheney said. Former Bush adviser Karl Rove also defended the controversial tactics, specifically saying that “rectal rehydration” was necessary to nourish detainees on hunger strikes — even though the Senate report said they were subjected to the brutal procedure without “documented necessity.” “Let’s get the rectal feedings out (of the discussion),” Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There are in this report nine references on 14 pages to rectal feeding. In four of those five it is discussed as being a result of a hunger strike by the detainee.” Rove also claimed that then-President George W. Bush knew about the harsh techniques and even authorized their use. “He was briefed and intimately involved in the decision,” Rove said, citing Bush’s 2010 memoir, “Decision Points.” “He made the decision … he was presented, I believe, 12 techniques, he authorized the use of 10 of them, including waterboarding.” The Senate report stated that the CIA kept the White House in the dark about the use of the techniques.
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