CIA torture report: How the agency program spiralled out of control

Nick O'Malley US correspondent for Fairfax Media

 One detainee simply froze to death while chained to floor of his cell in a secret CIA prison. Others were shackled standing – or at times swinging – from ceilings.

Some were dragged naked down corridors while being punched and slapped. Some held naked in baths while cold water was poured over them in air-conditioned cells.

They were waterboarded and sleep-deprived and held in darkened boxes.

One was told his children would be murdered, another that his mother would be raped, then have her throat cut.

As we were warned, the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture is chilling to read. But it is not just the clinical detail of the brutality of American agents that makes the report shocking, it is how chaotic and in the end, pointless, the entire program proved to be.

It was marked by sloppiness, blurred chains of command and crossed purposes.

According to the report the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" never produced the intelligence to "stop a ticking bomb", and it was often conducted by freelancers who had never been trained in even basic interrogation.

And soon after the program began, many of the agents conducting it went rogue. They were soon using techniques not authorised by even the most aggressive members of the Bush administration, against detainees that the CIA's senior staff did not even know existed.

There was little oversight and no methodology, according to the report, just a network of prisons in unnamed countries in which unnamed agents and contractors abused suspects of crimes for intelligence of questionable value.

The origins of the torture program can be traced to a memo drafted by president George Bush on September 17, 2001, before America had even finished counting its dead after the September 11 attacks. In it he directed the director of central intelligence to, "undertake operations designed to capture and detain persons who pose a continuing, serious threat of violence or death to US persons and interests or who are planning terrorist activities".

In late November a CIA lawyer wrote a memo saying the agency "could argue that the torture was necessary to prevent imminent, significant, physical harm to persons, where there is no other available means to prevent the harm."

Just a month later Mr Bush declared that those suspected terrorists it detained were not legal combatants and were therefore not protected by the Geneva Convention.The following January that memo appears to have been acted upon, with the CIA writing to  Mr Bush arguing that  the agency should be exempt from the Geneva Convention protocols on torture, saying they would "significantly hamper the ability of CIA to obtain critical threat information necessary to save American lives".

But even granted this extraordinary latitude, the CIA was soon exceeding the boundaries set by the White House. Its headquarters instructed agents not only to detain high-level targets, but anyone that might have information leading to such a target.

That very same month one of the first targets of the CIA program was captured, Abu Zubaydah, who was at first thought to be a high-level al Qaeda operative. His treatment in CIA captivity was not atypical of those that were to follow.

In late March 2002, Abu Zubaydah was shot twice during the raid in which he was detained by the CIA, then turned over the FBI for treatment and initial questioning. He says he wants to cooperate and soon identifies Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and provides additional information about him.

Over the  next months the CIA and FBI both interrogated Abu Zubaydah, and both agencies claim success in extracting further information from him.

But in February the CIA proposed a plan to use sensory deprivation techniques on him, which the FBI opposes. The CIA eventually got its way.

Between June 18 and August 4, Abu Zubaydah spent 47 days in isolation, part of a CIA plan to break his resistance.

In July, CIA agents discussed "novel interrogation techniques" with two outside "experts" who had never taken part in an actual interrogation. In the report they are referred to by the pseudonyms Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar (The New York Times has named these men as psychologists James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen).

They suggested techniques including face slapping, sleep deprivation, use of insects and nappies, waterboarding and mock burials.

The techniques were based on torture used by the North Vietnamese to coerce US airmen to confess to crimes during the Vietnam War for propaganda purposes, rather that to extract information. There was no evidence that they were suited to extracting intelligence, and indeed the CIA had dismissed torture as a useful intelligence gather method years earlier.

As the CIA agents managed to secure control of Abu Zubaydah over the FBI, its most senior officials in  Washington were working to build a legal justification for his torture.

Towards the end of July, US attorney-general John Ashcroft verbally agreed to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, including face slapping and waterboarding. The legal opinions were given on the basis that these techniques were required to force Abu Zubaydah to reveal further plots against the US.

The torture began in August. The details in the report suggest the interrogators quickly exceeded the boundaries that even Ashcroft had set.

"From August 4, 2002, through August 23, 2002, the CIA subjected Abu Zubaydah to its enhanced interrogation techniques on a near 24-hour-per-day basis," the report says.  "After Abu Zubaydah had been in complete isolation for 47 days, the most aggressive interrogation phase began at approximately 11:50am  on August 4, 2002.

This was when Abu Zubaydah was first waterboarded. According to the report CIA agents and contractors came into his cell and slammed him into a wall. He was then asked to provide information on terrorist operations planned against the US, including the names, phone numbers, email addresses, weapon caches, and safe houses of anyone involved. Each time he denied having any information he was slapped or "face grabbed".

A coffin shaped box was brought into the room, which he was forced into at times.

Medical officers stood by as the interrogation progressed and one reported to senior officers in an email entitled, "And so it begins,": "The sessions accelerated rapidly progressing quickly to the water board after large box, walling, and small box periods. [Abu Zubaydah] seems very resistant to the water board. Longest time with the cloth over his face so far has been 17 seconds. This is sure to increase shortly. NO useful information so far … He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It's been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed Ensure [a liquid nutritional supplement] for a while now. I'm head[ing] back for another water board session."

Throughout August Abu Zubaydah "spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin size) confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of 21 inches, a depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet," says the report. "The CIA interrogators told Abu Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped  confinement box." 

But as early as the sixth day the interrogators told their superiors they did not believe he had any information they were seeking and appealed to their superiors to either visit the site and witness what they were doing, or at least watch it via video link.

In one memo an officer wrote that the team believed they were  "approach[ing] the legal limit".

The chief of the CIA's Counter Terrorism Centre  Jose Rodriguez, responded coldly. "Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-a-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic)," he wrote in a cable. "Such language is not helpful."

As the torture went on the cables from the black site to the CIA headquarters soon began including the increasing impact of the torture on the CIA staff.

"Want to caution [medical officer] that this is almost certainly not a place he's ever been before in his medical career ... It is visually and psychologically very uncomfortable."

On August 8 another said, "Today's first session ... had a profound effect on all staff members present ... it seems the collective opinion that we should not go much further ... everyone seems strong for now but if the group has to continue ... we cannot guarantee how much longer."

Also on that day: "Several on the team profoundly affected. some to the point of tears and choking up."

On August 9 it was reported that: "two, perhaps three [personnel] likely to elect transfer" away from the detention site if the decision is made to continue with the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques".

And on the 12th^:  "Viewing the pressures on Abu Zubaydah on video "has produced strong feelings of futility (and legality) of escalating or even maintaining the pressure."

In reference to the impact of viewing the tapes, the cable said "prepare for something not seen previously".

Later Rodriguez ordered those tapes destroyed. In the end Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in August alone. While the personnel conducting the interrogation believed he had no actionable intelligence, they were ordered to continue the torture.

The interrogation team later deemed the use of the enhanced interrogation techniques a success, not because it resulted in critical threat information, but because Abu Zubaydah had no more actionable information.

Despite this, when Congressional committees did ask the CIA about enhanced interrogation, its leadership claimed it was used to prevent attacks.

The report also says the CIA's claims that the program led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden is false.

The dispute centers around the case of Hassan Ghul, who provided information leading to Bin Laden's personal courier, Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, prior to being subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques.  After his enhanced interrogation began, Ghul gave the CIA nothing of value, according to the report. 

Three former CIA directors, George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, have disputed thisin a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday, calling the Senate report "wrong."

However, the report reveals impressive evidence about the 12 detainees who provided evidence about Bin Laden's courier, citing the CIA's own records, including the fact that five of the 12 revealed their information before being handed over to the CIA and that five of the nine who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided the information prior to harsh interrogation. 

Though Abu Zubaydah surrendered more useful intelligence during the early days of his captivity to the FBI who used standard interrogation techniques – including building a rapport with him – his torture became the model for the treatment high-level detainees in black sites around the world.

Eventually the CIA came to believe he was of far less significance in al-Qaeda than they first thought. The American journalist Ron Suskind, an expert on the program, concluded he had been a minor logistic man in the organisation rather than the trusted associate of Bin Laden. He remains in Guantanamo Bay.

Exactly how many people the CIA tortured is not known, because it did not keep accurate records, and at times lied to Congress about the number they were holding, the report alleges.

According to the report, as the program went on, even the CIA headquarters lost control of field agents, who began using enhanced interrogation without approval.

The report estimates that between 2002 and 2006, 119 detainees were held in black sites  and of those, 39 are known to have been subjected to what the report calls "EIT" or enhanced interrogation techniques. Seven of those detainees never produced any intelligence.

Others sought to relieve their suffering by inventing false material, confusing the investigation into ongoing anti-terrorism activities.

At least 26 were wrongfully detained in the first place, not meeting the administration's standard of detention. One was captured and tortured for a month before agents recommended his release, believing he should not have been detained at all. He remained in custody for another four years.

Speaking after the report's release, Senator John McCain, who had been tortured during the Vietnam War, told the Senate, "I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies. Our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights which are protected by international conventions, [which] the United States not only joined but for the most part, authored.

"I dispute wholeheartedly it was right for [CIA officers] to use these methods, which this report makes clear were neither in the best interest of justice, nor our security, nor the ideals we have sacrificed so much blood and treasure to defend," he said.

US President Barack Obama, who banned the techniques upon his election said they "did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners."

The CIA acknowledged in a statement that "mistakes" had been made and that the program had "shortcomings", but it said its harsh interrogations did gather critical intelligence and saved lives.

Dick Cheney, the former vice president and architect of the wars after September 11 called the report "a crock".

The program, he said, was "the right thing to do, and if I had to do it over again, I would do it."

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/cia-torture-report-how-the-agency-program-spiralled-out-of-control-20141210-123xqq.html