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Exposed : CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques
Sources Say Agency's Tactics Lead to Questionable Confessions,
Sometimes to Death
By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO
Click to watch video
11/18/05 "ABC" -- -- Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by
top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and
the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized
in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current
intelligence officers and supervisors.
They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and
their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the
direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the
condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions
of their accounts are corrobrated by public statements of former CIA
officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified
CIA Inspector General's report.
Other portions of their accounts echo the accounts of escaped
prisoners from one CIA prison in Afghanistan.
"They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down,
stand up, sit down. Don't sleep. Don't lie on the floor," one
prisoner said through a translator. The detainees were also forced
to listen to rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was
so foreign to them it made them frantic, sources said.
Contacted after the completion of the ABC News investigation, CIA
officials would neither confirm nor deny the accounts. They simply
declined to comment.
The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation
Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a
dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret
locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe.
According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are
trained and authorized to use the techniques:
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt
front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and
triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim
is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised
against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most
effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their
feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours.
Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding
confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept
near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is
doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet
raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over
the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the
gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to
almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to
the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before
caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik
Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to
last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to
confess.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really
amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international
law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
The techniques are controversial among experienced intelligence
agency and military interrogators. Many feel that a confession
obtained this way is an unreliable tool. Two experienced officers
have told ABC that there is little to be gained by these techniques
that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful,
psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified
report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and
issued in 2004, the techniques "appeared to constitute cruel, and
degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention," the New York
Times reported on Nov. 9, 2005.
It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to
anything if the torture's bad enough," said former CIA officer Bob
Baer.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the
State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the
Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is
that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract
quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis
and the Soviets."
One argument in favor of their use: time. In the early days of al
Qaeda captures, it was hoped that speeding confessions would result
in the development of important operational knowledge in a timely
fashion.
However, ABC News was told that at least three CIA officers declined
to be trained in the techniques before a cadre of 14 were selected
to use them on a dozen top al Qaeda suspects in order to obtain
critical information. In at least one instance, ABC News was told
that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at
pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a
significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.
According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of
enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell
the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had
been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in
turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to
stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold
water at regular intervals.
His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration
claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical
weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al
Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated
the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.
"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so
desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to
hear," one source said.
However, sources said, al Libbi does not appear to have sought to
intentionally misinform investigators, as at least one account has
stated. The distinction in this murky world is nonetheless an
important one. Al Libbi sought to please his investigators, not lead
them down a false path, two sources with firsthand knowledge of the
statements said.
When properly used, the techniques appear to be closely monitored
and are signed off on in writing on a case-by-case,
technique-by-technique basis, according to highly placed current and
former intelligence officers involved in the program. In this way,
they say, enhanced interrogations have been authorized for about a
dozen high value al Qaeda targets -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed among
them. According to the sources, all of these have confessed, none of
them has died, and all of them remain incarcerated.
While some media accounts have described the locations where these
detainees are located as a string of secret CIA prisons -- a gulag,
as it were -- in fact, sources say, there are a very limited number
of these locations in use at any time, and most often they consist
of a secure building on an existing or former military base. In
addition, they say, the prisoners usually are not scattered but
travel together to these locations, so that information can be
extracted from one and compared with others. Currently, it is
believed that one or more former Soviet bloc air bases and military
installations are the Eastern European location of the top suspects.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed is among the suspects detained there, sources
said.
The sources told ABC that the techniques, while progressively
aggressive, are not deemed torture, and the debate among
intelligence officers as to whether they are effective should not be
underestimated. There are many who feel these techniques, properly
supervised, are both valid and necessary, the sources said. While
harsh, they say, they are not torture and are reserved only for the
most important and most difficult prisoners.
According to the sources, when an interrogator wishes to use a
particular technique on a prisoner, the policy at the CIA is that
each step of the interrogation process must be signed off at the
highest level -- by the deputy director for operations for the CIA.
A cable must be sent and a reply received each time a progressively
harsher technique is used. The described oversight appears tough but
critics say it could be tougher. In reality, sources said, there are
few known instances when an approval has not been granted. Still,
even the toughest critics of the techniques say they are relatively
well monitored and limited in use.
Two sources also told ABC that the techniques -- authorized for use
by only a handful of trained CIA officers -- have been misapplied in
at least one instance.
The sources said that in that case a young, untrained junior officer
caused the death of one detainee at a mud fort dubbed the "salt pit"
that is used as a prison. They say the death occurred when the
prisoner was left to stand naked throughout the harsh Afghanistan
night after being doused with cold water. He died, they say, of
hypothermia.
According to the sources, a second CIA detainee died in Iraq and a
third detainee died following harsh interrogation by Department of
Defense personnel and contractors in Iraq. CIA sources said that in
the DOD case, the interrogation was harsh, but did not involve the
CIA.
The Kabul fort has also been the subject of confusion. Several
intelligence sources involved in both the enhanced interrogation
program and the program to ship detainees back to their own country
for interrogation -- a process described as rendition, say that the
number of detainees in each program has been added together to
suggest as many as 100 detainees are moved around the world from one
secret CIA facility to another. In the rendition program, foreign
nationals captured in the conflict zones are shipped back to their
own countries on occasion for interrogation and prosecution.
There have been several dozen instances of rendition. There have
been a little over a dozen authorized enhanced interrogations. As a
result, the enhanced interrogation program has been described as one
encompassing 100 or more prisoners. Multiple CIA sources told ABC
that it is not. The renditions have also been described as illegal.
They are not, our sources said, although they acknowledge the
procedures are in an ethical gray area and are at times used for the
convenience of extracting information under harsher conditions that
the U.S. would allow.
ABC was told that several dozen renditions of this kind have
occurred. Jordan is one country recently cited as an "emerging"
center for renditions, according to published reports. The ABC
sources said that rendition of this sort are legal and should not be
confused with illegal "snatches" of targets off the streets of a
home country by officers of yet another country. The United States
is currently charged with such an illegal rendition in Italy. Israel
and at least one European nation have also been accused of such
renditions.
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