Over the past two decades, decisions made in the name of U.S. national security have proven to have hefty, long-term ramifications – legally, politically, and in our relationships with allies abroad.  The inherent overreach of our leadership – combined with severe and unacceptable mistakes (i.e. torture, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib) – has sowed distrust and division within our citizenship, called into question our national core values, and threatened our global image as a world leader.  Quite simply, this episode in our history makes us look like total hypocrites.   

 

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush launched an aggressive campaign to secure this nation, authorizing a number of activities that went far beyond the parameters of traditional law enforcement.  Specifically, the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program implemented by the CIA was a global counter-terrorism effort tasked with disrupting al-Qaeda and protecting the United States against another large-scale domestic attack.  

 

In 2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 528-page executive summary of its study of this program (the entire classified report, approved in 2012, is over 6,700 pages).  In part, the Committee found that the interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers, and that the conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented.  The report describes detainees who were "stripped and shackled nude, placed in the standing position for sleep deprivation, or subjected to other CIA enhanced interrogation techniques prior to being questioned by an interrogator."

 

One detainee, alleged Afghan fighter Gul Rahman, was taken to detention site Cobalt (aka The Salt Pit), a CIA facility located north of Kabul. There he was “shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor.”  His dead body was found the next day.  "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 is also detailed in the Senate report.  Abu Zubaydah, another detainee, was waterboarded to the point that he became "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."  "Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad (KSM) as evolving into a 'series of near drownings.'"  The report also found that the CIA waterboarded KSM at least 183 times, and that KSM's reporting included "significant fabricated information."  

 

The most damaging – and devastating – part of the Senate report comes under the heading:  "The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate."  "The CIA never conducted a comprehensive audit or developed a complete and accurate list of the individuals it had detained or subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques. CIA statements to the Committee and later to the public that the CIA detained fewer than 100 individuals, and that less than a third of those 100 detainees were subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, were inaccurate.  The Committee's review of CIA records determined that the CIA detained at least 119 individuals, of whom at least 39 were subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.  Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification."   

 

In response to the Senate report, the CIA admitted mistakes and acknowledged that the Agency "was unprepared and lacked core competencies to respond effectively to the decision made in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that the Agency undertake what would be an unprecedented program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists.  This lack of preparation and competencies resulted in significant lapses in the Agency's ability to develop and monitor its initial detention and interrogation activities."  Read the CIA's entire response here.

 

Thankfully, the CIA did not use enhanced interrogation techniques after November 8, 2007, and no detainee was held by the CIA after April 2008.  In January 2009, President Obama signed executive orders to end CIA secret prisons, and to declare that all interrogations must follow the non-coercive methods of the Army Field Manual.  Read the Executive Orders here.

 

 

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Evidence:

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Chief Justice Aharon Barak, Israeli Supreme Court.  September 1999

United States.  Department of the Interior.  National Park Service.  "Lincoln On the 1864 Election." 10 Nov 1864  

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  "Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program." 13 Dec 2012

Central Intelligence Agency.  "Response to the SSCI Study on the Former Detention and Interrogation Program."  June 2013

United States.  National Archives and Records Administration.  "Barack Obama Executive Orders Disposition Tables:  Executive Order 13491."  30 June 2018

United States.  National Archives and Records Administration.  "Barack Obama Executive Orders Disposition Tables:  Executive Order 13492."  30 June 2018

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