As someone who has conducted evaluations of torture victims, the “evaluation” of high-value detainee Abu Zubaydah is a fascinating, if sickening, look at how the CIA goes about their kind of business. In the course of this article, we’ll learn more about how this “psychological evaluation” was used to further torture, making its drafting an [...]
It only took 24 hours for the Washington Post to go from the sublime to the ridiculous. On Saturday morning, the newspaper described the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Muhammad (KSM), standing before “U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called ‘terrorist tutorials.’”
From the Archive: John Yoo, the author of one of the infamous Aug. 1, 2002, “torture” memos that formed the legal basis for so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques against high-level terrorist detainees, used a statute governing health benefits when he provided the White House with a legal opinion defining torture.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that former Vice President Dick Cheney has his facts wrong on the Obama administration’s policies for terror detainee interrogations.
The lead story in today’s Washington Post, headlined “How a Detainee Became An Asset,” provides a one-sided and distorted account of the torture and abuse of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM) and demonstrates the urgent need for a blue ribbon bipartisan commission to create a comprehensive and authoritative narrative of the eight years of misgovernment of the Bush administration.
The CIA released a declassified version of a 2004 inspector general’s report that was sharply critical of the agency’s detention and torture program. The long-awaited report contains shocking details about the treatment of detainees and states in no uncertain terms that high-level CIA officials in Langley micromanaged the torture of detainees. The inspector general’s probe [...]
John Helgerson, the former CIA inspector general, who conducted a year-long investigation into the agency detention and torture practices, criticized the Obama administration’s decision to redact a crucial section of his report that was declassified Monday. “I am disappointed that the Government did not release even a redacted version of the Recommendations, which described a [...]
Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor Monday to conduct a “preliminary review” of about a dozen cases of torture involving “war on terror” detainees carried out during the Bush administration’s tenure in office. Those cases had been previously closed by Justice Department attorneys for unknown reasons. His announcement was made shortly before the [...]
Three of the country’s former top counterterrorism interrogators and intelligence experts, are speaking out publicly in support of a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the Bush administration’s use of torture against “war on terror” detainees, and have also urged Congress to launch a separate probe to review how the policies that lead to torture were created.
Nine Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Eric Holder Wednesday saying the U.S. could be attacked by terrorists if the attorney general appoints a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA’s use of torture against alleged terrorists captured in the “war on terror.”
