|
Outing Secret Jails
By Douglas Waller
11/07/05 "Time
Magazine" -- -- After the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA
was eager to whisk captured terrorists off to secret locations
around the world where its operatives could interrogate them out of
the reach of the U.S. legal system and human-rights organizations.
But four years later, with about three dozen of al-Qaeda's most
hard-core agents in CIA custody, America's new spy chief seems less
enthusiastic about the leeway his operatives have had. At a secret
briefing for U.S. Senators on Oct. 26, a senior U.S. intelligence
official tells TIME, Director of National Intelligence John
Negroponte was pointedly neutral on Vice President Dick Cheney's
Capitol Hill lobbying to have the CIA exempted from legislation
banning mistreatment of detainees. "It's above my pay grade," the
spymaster said, then artfully dodged another question about whether
the harsher interrogation tactics Cheney wants the agency to be free
to use actually produce valuable intelligence.
Negroponte's surprising hedge comes at a time when the once dominant
Bush hard-liners, including the Vice President, appear increasingly
isolated within the Administration. An intense internal debate has
erupted over whether new Pentagon procedures for handling captured
terrorists should adopt the Geneva Conventions' ban on cruel and
degrading treatment. A senior Administration source says National
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and top military officers favor including the Geneva standards,
while Cheney has managed to round up only a few senior Pentagon
civilians, such as Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone, to
back his opposition to them. Adding to the pressure is the growing
international controversy over what amounts to a clandestine CIA
prison system. The Washington Post reported last week that the
agency at different times has had top al-Qaeda detainees stashed at
"black sites" in several East European countries, as well as in
Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Counterterrorism sources have confirmed to TIME that the CIA has had
covert detention centers in Thailand and Guantanamo Bay, which are
no longer operating, and that the agency continues to run similar
facilities in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. In Afghanistan, the
agency's prison was once located in an old brick factory near
Kabul's airport, nicknamed the Salt Pit by the CIA and the Darkness
Prison by inmates. Detainees who have escaped or been released from
the prison claim they were kept in cold, dark cells underground, fed
once every three days and sometimes chained wet and naked to the
wall overnight.
At the request of senior U.S. officials, the Post didn't identify
the East European sites. But Human Rights Watch, which has tracked
flight routes for a Boeing 737 the CIA has used to transport
prisoners, says agency detention facilities have probably been in
Poland and Romania, staunch U.S. allies in the Iraq war. Officials
from both countries have denied holding CIA prisoners, as have Thai
authorities.
The CIA refuses to comment, but Hadley insists that prisoners being
held secretly are treated humanely: "The United States will not
torture." Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for the European Union, to
which Poland belongs and Romania aspires, says secret prisons would
be illegal under E.U. rules requiring member states to abide by such
legal conventions as due process and the right of prisoners to a
lawyer. But Abbing added that the E.U. would accept the denials of
Poland and Romania "unless we see hard evidence to the contrary."
So far the CIA has been able to escape the kind of congressional
scrutiny the Pentagon endured after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse
scandal. Only a few senior members of the congressional intelligence
committees are briefed on the CIA's secret prisons, and the agency
refuses to publicly disclose its interrogation procedures. But the
agency may not be able to enjoy such latitude in the future. Cheney
is meeting fierce resistance from Senator John McCain, a former
Vietnam POW, in the Vice President's campaign to persuade Congress
to exclude the CIA from a measure that McCain easily got through the
Senate prohibiting cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in
U.S. custody. And Negroponte's muteness on Cheney's push to exempt
the CIA seemed to signal a reply of "thanks, but no thanks" from the
chief of the spies.
Copyright © 2005 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
