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Monday, June 11, 2007
Two Reports
Here's a description of the CIA's High Value Detainee (HVD) interrogation program from the Pentagon's website: ...Over the ensuing months, the CIA designed a new interrogation program that would be safe, effective, and legal. - The CIA sought and obtained legal guidance from the Department of Justice that none of the new procedures violated the US statues prohibiting torture. Policymakers were also briefed and approved of the use of the procedures.
- The procedures proved highly effective...
CIA's interrogation program is designed to ensure that intelligence is collected in a manner that does not violate the US Constitution, any US statute, or US treaty obligations... - The Department of Justice has reviewed procedures proposed by the CIA on more than one occasion and determined them to be lawful...
Multiple safeguards have been built into the program to assure its professionalism. All those involved in the questioning of detainees are carefully chosen and screened for demonstrated professional judgment and maturity... - Specific senior CIA officers, and currently only the Director of the CIA, must approve -- prior to use -- each and every one of the mawful interrogation procedures to be used. No deviation from the approved procedures and methods is permitted.
Here's how the Council of Europe's Dick Marty described the program in a report based on interviews with former interrogators and detainees (pp. 52-53): 247. Detainees went through months of solitary confinement and extreme sensory deprivation in cramped cells, shackled and handcuffed at all times...
252. A common feature for many detainees was the four-month isolation regime. During this period of over 120 days, absolutely no human contact was granted with anyone but masked, silent guards...
254. The air in many cells emanated from a ventilation hole in the ceiling, which was often controlled to produce extremes of temperature: sometimes so hot one would gasp for breath, sometimes freezing cold... 257. Detainees never experienced natural light or natural darkness, although most were
blindfolded many times so they could see nothing...
266. There was a shackling ring in the wall of the cell, about half a metre up off the floor.
Detainees’ hands and feet were clamped in handcuffs and leg irons. Bodies were regularly forced into contorted shapes and chained to this ring for long, painful periods... 269. Detainees were subjected to relentless noise and disturbance were deprived of the chance to sleep (sic)... 271. The gradual escalation of applied physical and psychological exertion, combined in some cases with more concentrated pressure periods for the purposes of interrogation, is said to have caused many of those held by the CIA to develop enduring psychiatric and mental problems.
As Andrew Sullivan pointed out in a post detailing the origin of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques", even the Gestapo took care to codify, that is to legalize, torture. Are we the moral equivalent of the Gestapo? Of course not. Did we legalize and apply torture? Yes.
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