Inside the CIA's black site torture room
October 9, 2017 1:47 PM Subscribe
There were twenty cells inside the prison, each a stand-alone concrete box. In sixteen, prisoners were shackled to a metal ring in the wall.
In four, designed for sleep deprivation, they stood chained by the wrists to an overhead bar. Those in the regular cells had a plastic bucket; those in sleep deprivation wore diapers. When diapers weren’t available, guards crafted substitutes with duct tape, or prisoners were chained naked in their cells. The cellblock was unheated, pitch black day and night, with music blaring around the clock.
In four, designed for sleep deprivation, they stood chained by the wrists to an overhead bar. Those in the regular cells had a plastic bucket; those in sleep deprivation wore diapers. When diapers weren’t available, guards crafted substitutes with duct tape, or prisoners were chained naked in their cells. The cellblock was unheated, pitch black day and night, with music blaring around the clock.
American exceptionalism.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:00 PM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:00 PM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
there's no way to know the counterfactual, but imagine if gore had won 18 months earlier.... gotta think things would have been managed differently by some substantial degree. if nader voters had known this would happen less than 2 years later, would they have made a different choice?
posted by wibari at 2:12 PM on October 9, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by wibari at 2:12 PM on October 9, 2017 [3 favorites]
Extraordinary rendition started under Clinton, so having Gore as president would've only meant the cia gulags would've been run marginally more competent.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:19 PM on October 9, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by MartinWisse at 2:19 PM on October 9, 2017 [8 favorites]
Shining city on a hill. Sen. John McCain would condemn it, but then he would vote for it.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:24 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:24 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
how brutal and futile Mitchell and Jessen’s tactics were, and how thoroughly they were rejected inside the CIA more than a decade ago.
Not thoroughly enough to have those responsible prosecuted, or even dismissed. And Obama didn't want to rock the boat, so he just moved on.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:05 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
I often get odd looks when I posit that Barack Obama is a war criminal not only for his trigger-happy drone proclivities, but also for his choice not to investigate and prosecute the crimes of his predecessors.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:06 PM on October 9, 2017 [18 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:06 PM on October 9, 2017 [18 favorites]
I can accept there may be rare situations in which kidnapping (aka arresting a person in a place where don't have police powers) might be called for. I cannot accept that there is ever any need to torture people or even to fail to acknowledge they are in our custody.
posted by wierdo at 3:07 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by wierdo at 3:07 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
how brutal and futile Mitchell and Jessen’s tactics were, and how thoroughly they were rejected inside the CIA more than a decade ago.
Let's be honest, this was never about getting intelligence. In the first few years after Sept. 11, a very large number of Americans wanted to torture people. They didn't necessarily care who, or to what ends, they just wanted to fuck someone up. And the Bush administration was perfectly willing to accommodate them. This was clear from the words of the Vice President, from the Attorney General, from John Yoo, even from a sitting member of the Supreme Court. Go ahead and torture some motherfuckers, it's fine.
I am also fully convinced that Mitchell and Jessen, both former Air Force psychologists who had helped administer the Air Force survival school, were completely aware of this and, having seen the writing on the wall from the top of the CoC, were more than happy to provide a rationale for torture. The CIA was only willing to repudiate their methods after things had died down a bit. Certainly, there was (or should have been) enough institutional knowledge at Langley to already tell them that torture does not provide valuable intelligence.
However, Mitchell and Jessen will also never be prosecuted, because that would require America to examine their own complicity in a policy of extra-judicial torture.
There's a reason 24 was such popular show in the early part of the century.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:35 PM on October 9, 2017 [27 favorites]
Let's be honest, this was never about getting intelligence. In the first few years after Sept. 11, a very large number of Americans wanted to torture people. They didn't necessarily care who, or to what ends, they just wanted to fuck someone up. And the Bush administration was perfectly willing to accommodate them. This was clear from the words of the Vice President, from the Attorney General, from John Yoo, even from a sitting member of the Supreme Court. Go ahead and torture some motherfuckers, it's fine.
I am also fully convinced that Mitchell and Jessen, both former Air Force psychologists who had helped administer the Air Force survival school, were completely aware of this and, having seen the writing on the wall from the top of the CoC, were more than happy to provide a rationale for torture. The CIA was only willing to repudiate their methods after things had died down a bit. Certainly, there was (or should have been) enough institutional knowledge at Langley to already tell them that torture does not provide valuable intelligence.
However, Mitchell and Jessen will also never be prosecuted, because that would require America to examine their own complicity in a policy of extra-judicial torture.
There's a reason 24 was such popular show in the early part of the century.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:35 PM on October 9, 2017 [27 favorites]
Extraordinary rendition started under Clinton, so having Gore as president would've only meant the cia gulags would've been run marginally more competent.
The expansion in scale and legal justification for extraordinary rendition that came after September 11 suggest that having others in charge at that moment would've resulted in something other than more competent gulags.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 3:41 PM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
The expansion in scale and legal justification for extraordinary rendition that came after September 11 suggest that having others in charge at that moment would've resulted in something other than more competent gulags.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 3:41 PM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
And this my usual reminder that Gore, as VP, developed some excellent anti-terrorism proposals (including regarding airport security) that Bush rejected just because they were his ideas, raising the possibility that President Gore might have prevented "9/11" from even happening.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:50 PM on October 9, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:50 PM on October 9, 2017 [11 favorites]
Friendly interrogation is more productive than is torture, according to what I've read. Why torture has been so embraced by Americans, and others, says something about human nature we'd like to ignore.
posted by kozad at 4:38 PM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by kozad at 4:38 PM on October 9, 2017 [5 favorites]
I'm just going to put this out there. It might well be axed. So be it.
If you are an American, and that is the majority of people here; what did you do to try and stop this evil?
Voting for the other side doesn't count as each are guilty of perpetuating this monstrosity.
I don't really expect an answer but I would like you to reflect what your inaction (if you were inactive) helped perpetuate.
posted by adamvasco at 4:41 PM on October 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
If you are an American, and that is the majority of people here; what did you do to try and stop this evil?
Voting for the other side doesn't count as each are guilty of perpetuating this monstrosity.
I don't really expect an answer but I would like you to reflect what your inaction (if you were inactive) helped perpetuate.
posted by adamvasco at 4:41 PM on October 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
For all the good it did me, I went out and protested in the streets, against both the war and the illegal and immoral policies of "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation."
I also wrote to my representatives in Congress and the Senate, to tell them to oppose these policies, on the grounds that they were not only unconstitutional, but that they serious jeopardized the United States' international reputation, and the safety of its fighting forces.
What did you do?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:05 PM on October 9, 2017 [11 favorites]
I also wrote to my representatives in Congress and the Senate, to tell them to oppose these policies, on the grounds that they were not only unconstitutional, but that they serious jeopardized the United States' international reputation, and the safety of its fighting forces.
What did you do?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:05 PM on October 9, 2017 [11 favorites]
The decline of the American Empire began a while ago, but a significant date is 15 September 2006, when the US president dismissed Geneva Conventions. I'd grown up in the cold war era watching WWII movies on TV where American prisoners often cited "Geneva Conventions" when they were roughly handled by German prison guards. This led me to wonder if the real USA forces were actually worse than the Nazis, which were mythic figures of pure evil in the WWII movies on TV.
posted by ovvl at 5:11 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 5:11 PM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]
Instead of starting with big issues like this. Why not just work to fix gerrymandering of districts? The US needs reform from bottom to top. Doing it the peaceful way will take generations, but is very much worth it. Or pull a France and start the 2nd Republic.
posted by sety at 5:25 PM on October 9, 2017
posted by sety at 5:25 PM on October 9, 2017
Yeah, the 2nd Republic really didn't work out too well. In fact, it ended in a situation that has some interesting parallels with the one faced by the US right now.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:28 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:28 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah, the 2nd Republic really didn't work out too well. In fact, it ended in a situation that has some interesting parallels with the one faced by the US right now.
I still think it sounds cathartic as fuck.
posted by Madame Defarge at 5:35 PM on October 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
I still think it sounds cathartic as fuck.
posted by Madame Defarge at 5:35 PM on October 9, 2017 [6 favorites]
ovvi, I agree with the sentiment, but I am confused as my memory, confirmed by your link, indicates the Geneva Conventions were ratified AFTER WWII, in 1949. So why would American prisoners in WWII cite those conventions?
posted by Schmucko at 6:08 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Schmucko at 6:08 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
Ok, I think maybe you mean the Geneva Protocols from 1925?
posted by Schmucko at 6:09 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Schmucko at 6:09 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
I wonder how much of America's refusal to oppose Assad in Syria was due to his status as a reliable torture contractor.
posted by benzenedream at 7:33 PM on October 9, 2017
posted by benzenedream at 7:33 PM on October 9, 2017
ovvi, I agree with the sentiment, but I am confused as my memory, confirmed by your link, indicates the Geneva Conventions were ratified AFTER WWII, in 1949. So why would American prisoners in WWII cite those conventions?
At the risk of attempting to generalize my personal experience, I would think that a lot of people conflate the Geneva Protocol and the Geneva Conventions. They're both an attempt to regulate the scope and excess of 20th century warfare. I would also be willing to bet the Hollywood of the 50s and 60s, followed by television writers of the 70s and 80s all used The Geneva Convention and that added to the confusion.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 7:39 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
At the risk of attempting to generalize my personal experience, I would think that a lot of people conflate the Geneva Protocol and the Geneva Conventions. They're both an attempt to regulate the scope and excess of 20th century warfare. I would also be willing to bet the Hollywood of the 50s and 60s, followed by television writers of the 70s and 80s all used The Geneva Convention and that added to the confusion.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 7:39 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
→ The Hague, 3050mi ----->
Except for the “Hague Invasion Act” …
posted by scruss at 7:41 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
Except for the “Hague Invasion Act” …
posted by scruss at 7:41 PM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]
Previously.
From an earlier NYT piece:
posted by runcifex at 7:58 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
From an earlier NYT piece:
When those at the prison wanted to end the waterboarding sessions as no longer useful, C.I.A. supervisors — including Jose Rodriguez, then the head of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and a witness who testified under oath in the lawsuit — ordered them to continue.It's a bit rich that this kind of blatant Eichmann-Milgram non-defence should come from a "psychologist".
“They kept telling me every day a nuclear bomb was going to be exploded in the United States and that because I had told them to stop, I had lost my nerve and it was going to be my fault if I didn’t continue,” Dr. Jessen testified.
Dr. Mitchell said that the C.I.A. officials told them: “‘You guys have lost your spine.’ I think the word that was actually used is that you guys are pussies. There was going to be another attack in America and the blood of dead civilians are going to be on your hands.”
posted by runcifex at 7:58 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
The fact that Americans are seemingly quite happy for this sort of thing to be done in their names leads me to despair for democracy.
Where is the fucking OUTRAGE?
posted by HiroProtagonist at 9:17 PM on October 9, 2017
Where is the fucking OUTRAGE?
posted by HiroProtagonist at 9:17 PM on October 9, 2017
> Where is the fucking OUTRAGE?For some, absent, because the belligerent-sexual euphoria of torture is all.
For others, eclipsed by cognitive blind spots.
posted by runcifex at 9:47 PM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
This makes me physically sick.
I bet they had lots of flags at this institution. Can‘t have enough damn flags.
posted by The Toad at 10:05 PM on October 9, 2017
I bet they had lots of flags at this institution. Can‘t have enough damn flags.
posted by The Toad at 10:05 PM on October 9, 2017
Abu Zubaydah’s cooperation “did not correlate well with his waterboarding sessions”, the CIA’s office of medical services concluded in one internal review. When Zubaydah was forthcoming, it was not because he had been waterboarded, but because “questioning had changed to subjects on which he had information”.
Wow imagine that.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:38 AM on October 10, 2017 [4 favorites]
Wow imagine that.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:38 AM on October 10, 2017 [4 favorites]
I would also be willing to bet the Hollywood of the 50s and 60s, followed by television writers of the 70s and 80s all used The Geneva Convention and that added to the confusion.
Yes. Hollywood/mass media reflects and shapes popular cultural views. TV/movies of the mid-20th century represented the WWII American military as basically decent, in contrast to their immoral antagonists. TheWhiteSkull makes a good point in a comment above that the GWB-era TV show '24' was essentially just pop-media propaganda justifying the use of torture. That show really annoyed me.
My views on the use of torture are influenced by an old issue of Harper's that excerpted the comments of French intelligence officer who was involved with interrogations in the Algerian Conflicts. He stated that inflicting pain was virtually useless for extracting useful data when compared with any other method of interview.
I feel that the use of torture is essentially a ritual. It is presented as a show of extracting data, but it's real function is to assert dominance. And of course, the only reason to make a show of asserting dominance is when there is a sense of insecurity about one's dominance. Torture is committed by torturers to remind themselves that they are in command, to re-assure themselves in morally dubious situations.
But that said, "The Jim & Bruce Show" was a bit different. I don't think that they had anything personal to prove, they just sub-contracted the conceptual "sense of insecurity" about the occupation because it was easy money for them. (For the same deeper reason why Iraq was invaded, just to make Cheney some easy money by supplying sub-contractors).
posted by ovvl at 5:57 PM on October 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yes. Hollywood/mass media reflects and shapes popular cultural views. TV/movies of the mid-20th century represented the WWII American military as basically decent, in contrast to their immoral antagonists. TheWhiteSkull makes a good point in a comment above that the GWB-era TV show '24' was essentially just pop-media propaganda justifying the use of torture. That show really annoyed me.
My views on the use of torture are influenced by an old issue of Harper's that excerpted the comments of French intelligence officer who was involved with interrogations in the Algerian Conflicts. He stated that inflicting pain was virtually useless for extracting useful data when compared with any other method of interview.
I feel that the use of torture is essentially a ritual. It is presented as a show of extracting data, but it's real function is to assert dominance. And of course, the only reason to make a show of asserting dominance is when there is a sense of insecurity about one's dominance. Torture is committed by torturers to remind themselves that they are in command, to re-assure themselves in morally dubious situations.
But that said, "The Jim & Bruce Show" was a bit different. I don't think that they had anything personal to prove, they just sub-contracted the conceptual "sense of insecurity" about the occupation because it was easy money for them. (For the same deeper reason why Iraq was invaded, just to make Cheney some easy money by supplying sub-contractors).
posted by ovvl at 5:57 PM on October 10, 2017 [1 favorite]
I just got back from a month in Germany where I spent way more time than I wanted to learning about Nazi history. One of my last experiences there was visiting for a second time the Topography of Terror, a detailed documentation of Nazi crimes against humanity. What the Nazis did and how it happened in Germany. This exhibit is part of a process they call Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to overcome your evil past. A key part of it is neutral documentation of facts.
We don't like to document the facts of our crimes in America. These CIA tortures are an example of those crimes, things mostly now forgotten or ignored even though we committed them just 15 years ago. The torturers and killers are still alive and part of society. Against the scale of Nazi genocide, African American slavery, or Native American genocide these CIA tortures are a pretty small act. But they were an intentional act, done in modern times by our democratic society. We must understand that.
posted by Nelson at 6:46 AM on October 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
We don't like to document the facts of our crimes in America. These CIA tortures are an example of those crimes, things mostly now forgotten or ignored even though we committed them just 15 years ago. The torturers and killers are still alive and part of society. Against the scale of Nazi genocide, African American slavery, or Native American genocide these CIA tortures are a pretty small act. But they were an intentional act, done in modern times by our democratic society. We must understand that.
posted by Nelson at 6:46 AM on October 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
I am in Guantánamo Bay. The US government is starving me to death.
I started hunger strike because I was so I have been locked up here so far from my family for 15 years. I have never been charged with a crime and I have never been allowed to prove my innocence. Yet I am still here. And now President Donald Trump says that none of us – the 26 “forever” prisoners who have apparently committed no crime, but merit no trial – will ever leave here so long as he is in charge.
posted by adamvasco at 4:31 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
I started hunger strike because I was so
posted by adamvasco at 4:31 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
Timely Long read from the Guardian: The scientists persuading terrorists to spill their secrets.
Expert interrogators know torture doesn’t work – but until now, nobody could prove it. By analysing hundreds of top-secret interviews with terror suspects, two British scientists have revolutionised the art of extracting the truth.
But the real problem is and always will be is that there is a certain subsection of society that enjoys torture and those who should condem it instead condone it.
It has frequently been said that what America likes most is not Justice but Revenge.
posted by adamvasco at 9:26 AM on October 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
Expert interrogators know torture doesn’t work – but until now, nobody could prove it. By analysing hundreds of top-secret interviews with terror suspects, two British scientists have revolutionised the art of extracting the truth.
But the real problem is and always will be is that there is a certain subsection of society that enjoys torture and those who should condem it instead condone it.
It has frequently been said that what America likes most is not Justice but Revenge.
posted by adamvasco at 9:26 AM on October 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by Slackermagee at 1:51 PM on October 9, 2017 [14 favorites]