Not game related but CIA related news of interest Re: secret prisons & torture info

[aka_tom_w]

According to sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system, it began with the capture of Abu Zabayda in Pakistan. After treatment there for gunshot wounds, he was whisked by the CIA to Thailand where he was housed in a small, disused warehouse on an active airbase. There, his cell was kept under 24-hour closed circuit TV surveillance and his life-threatening wounds were tended to by a CIA doctor specially sent from Langley headquarters to assure Abu Zubaydah was given proper care, sources said. Once healthy, he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell, and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after 0.31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate.

While in the secret facilities in Eastern Europe, Abu Zubaydah and his fellow captives were fed breakfasts that included yogurt and fruit, lunches that included steamed vegetables and beans, and dinners that included meat or chicken and more vegetables and rice, sources say. In exchange for cooperation, prisoners were sometimes given hard candies, desserts and chocolates. Abu Zubaydah was partial to Kit Kats, the same treat Saddam Hussein fancied in his captivity.

"One of the difficult issues in this new kind of conflict is what to do with captured individuals who we know or believe to be terrorists," Rice said. "The individuals come from many countries and are often captured far from their original homes. Among them are those who are effectively stateless, owing allegiance only to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism. Many are extremely dangerous. And some have information that may save lives, perhaps even thousands of lives."

Sources tell ABC News that Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Saudis, Pakistanis, Uzbekistanis and Chinese citizens have been returned to their nations' intelligence services after initial debriefing by U.S. intelligence officers. Rice said renditions such as these are vital to the war on terror. "Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism," she said.

Of the 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked. Ramzi bin al-Shibh broke down in tears after he was walked past the cell of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational planner for Sept. 11. Visibly shaken, he started to cry and became as cooperative as if he had been tied down to a water board, sources said.

web page source ABC

WOW

if all that is true should it not be classified and remain NOT disclosed for public consumption!

Its says they were Waterboarded and it worked!!!

Of the 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked

Is that "torture lite" is that JUST torture?

Also from ABC

This morning, Goss insisted that the CIA and its officers are not breaking U.S. law.

"We do debriefings because debriefings are the nature of our business — to get information, and we do all that, and we do it in a way that does not involve torture because torture is counterproductive," Goss said.

The CIA maintains its interrogation techniques are in legal guidance with the Justice Department. And current and former CIA officers tell ABC News there is a presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft approving the techniques, including water boarding.

History of Waterboarding ABC news source

This web page says there is a prison in Morroco

web page not a good source Anti-America

The ghost prison network stretches around the globe. The biggest American-run facilities are at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, where around 400 men are held, and in Iraq, where tens of thousands of detainees are held. Saddam Hussein and dozens of top Baath party officials are held in a prison at Baghdad airport.

However, Washington is relying heavily on allies. In Morocco, scores of detainees once held by the Americans are believed to be held at the al-Tamara interrogation centre sited in a forest five miles outside the capital, Rabat. Many of the detainees were originally captured by the Pakistani authorities, who passed them on to the Americans.

One is Abdallah Tabarak, a militant who is alleged to have been Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and was seized in late 2001 by the Pakistanis. Tabarak was handed over to US agents, sent to Bagram and then to Guantanamo, before being flown to Morocco. Last November, Amnesty International criticised the 'sharp rise' in torture during 2003 in Moroccan prisons.

In Syria, detainees sent by Washington are held at 'the Palestine wing' of the main intelligence headquarters and a series of jails in Damascus and other cities. Egypt has also received a steady flow of militants from American installations. Many other militants have been sent to Egypt by other countries through transfers assisted by the Americans, often using planes run by the CIA.

In Cairo, prisoners are kept in the interrogation centre in the general intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison, according to Montasser al-Zayat, an Islamist lawyer in Cairo and former spokesman for outlawed militant groups.

More info on Waterboarding

Former intelligence officials say that lawyers from the C.I.A. and the Justice Department have been involved in intensive discussions in recent months to review the legal basis for some extreme tactics used at those secret centers, including "waterboarding," in which a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned.

"Policies and procedures on detention interrogation in Iraq and elsewhere have been the focus of intense oversight and scrutiny, and very close attention has been paid to making them lawful," a senior intelligence official said on Friday.

-tom w

[ December 06, 2005, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Sgt Joch]

It is a delicate issue.

There is a good article in the New Yorker about an Iraqi suspect who died while he was being "interrogated" by the CIA.

A Deadly Interrogation

"After being removed from his house, Jamadi was manhandled by several of the SEALs, who gave him a black eye and a cut on his face; he was then transferred to C.I.A. custody, for interrogation at Abu Ghraib. According to witnesses, Jamadi was walking and speaking when he arrived at the prison. He was taken to a shower room for interrogation. Some forty-five minutes later, he was dead."

It also appears that there may be other similar cases.

"The C.I.A. has reportedly been implicated in at least four deaths of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq, including that of Jamadi, and has referred eight potentially criminal cases involving abuse and misconduct to the Justice Department."

Of course, we should not be surprised that these cases are appearing. The Bush administration has been steadily expanding what is permissible in terms of interrogation. It was only a matter of time before deaths occured.

"One reason these C.I.A. officials may not be facing charges is that, in recent years, the Justice Department has established a strikingly narrow definition of torture. In August, 2002, the department’s Office of Legal Counsel sent a memo on interrogations to the White House, which argued that a coercive technique was torture only when it induced pain equivalent to what a person experiencing death or organ failure might suffer. By implication, all lesser forms of physical and psychological mistreatment—what critics have called “torture lite”—were legal. The memo also said that torture was illegal only when it could be proved that the interrogator intended to cause the required level of pain. And it provided interrogators with another large exemption: torture might be acceptable if an interrogator was acting in accordance with military “necessity.” A source familiar with the memo’s origins, who declined to speak on the record, said that it “was written as an immunity, a blank check.” In 2004, the “torture memo,” as it became known, was leaked, complicating the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be Attorney General; as White House counsel, Gonzales had approved the memo. The Administration subsequently revised the guidelines, using language that seemed more restrictive. But a little-noticed footnote protected the coercive methods permitted by the “torture memo,” stating that they did not violate the “standards set forth in this memorandum.”

The Bush Administration has resisted disclosing the contents of two Justice Department memos that established a detailed interrogation policy for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. A March, 2003, classified memo was “breathtaking,” the same source said. The document dismissed virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of prisoners, including war-crimes and assault statutes, and it was radical in its view that in wartime the President can fight enemies by whatever means he sees fit. According to the memo, Congress has no constitutional right to interfere with the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief, including making laws that limit the ways in which prisoners may be interrogated. Another classified Justice Department memo, issued in August, 2002, is said to authorize numerous “enhanced” interrogation techniques for the C.I.A. These two memos sanction such extreme measures that, even if the agency wanted to discipline or prosecute agents who stray beyond its own comfort level, the legal tools to do so may no longer exist. Like the torture memo, these documents are believed to have been signed by Jay Bybee, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, but written by a Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, who is now a professor of law at Berkeley.

For nearly a year, Democratic senators critical of alleged abuses have been demanding to see these memos. “We need to know what was authorized,” Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, told me. “Was it waterboarding? The use of dogs? Stripping detainees? . . . The refusal to give us these documents is totally inexcusable.” Levin is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to have an oversight role in relation to the C.I.A. “The Administration is getting away with just saying no,” he went on. “There’s no claim of executive privilege. There’s no claim of national security—we’ve offered to keep it classified. It’s just bull****. They just don’t want us to know what they’re doing, or have done,"

This case cetainly raises the question of whether it is permissible to torture and kill suspects, whether in the context of the war in Iraq or the war on terror.

[aka_tom_w]

oh yes

one thing is for sure

"It IS a delicate issue"

I made a new thread because I can't believe ABC released all the information about the new secret prision in North Africa and the water boarding because ALL that stuff should be classified and not for public consumption.

I supposed except for all those "news/media" types that are constantly waving "The people have the RIGHT to know !" flag about freedom of the press and freedom of speech and freedom to release classified information like the identity of CIA ex-spy Valorie Plame. (and so on)

-tom w

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

Its says they were Waterboarded and it worked!!! [/QB]

Oh boy, Tom!!!! If it was in the press, it must be TRUE!! That's GREAT!!!

Torture rarely works effectively.

[akd]

So we use American water sports on these terrorists. Truly barbaric.

I'd spill the beans after an hour or so of serious recreating. Totally.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

Its says they were Waterboarded and it worked!!!

Oh boy, Tom!!!! If it was in the press, it must be TRUE!! That's GREAT!!!

Torture rarely works effectively. [/QB]</font>

[aka_tom_w]

Torture lite was used effectively to find Saddam...

U.S. "TORTURE LITE" LED TO SADDAM’S CAPTURE

"This guy was in interrogation. He wasn't willingly giving stuff up." That’s what an officer involved in Saddam’s capture told the Washington Post. If the informant who led U.S. forces to Saddam wasn’t giving information willingly, why did he give any information at all? It is hard to avoid thinking about the the dirty word that everyone is too polite to mention, the "T-word": torture.

Col. James Hickey, who commanded the capture operation, tells the story a bit differently, according to the Chicago Sun-Times: "’Once in our custody the informant was cooperative, and he did provide the crucial information. But will he receive the $25 million?’ he laughed. ‘I seriously doubt it.’"

If he cooperated voluntarily, why not give him the reward? The guy who fingered Saddam’s two sons got $30 million, because he came forward voluntarily. Apparently, the guy who fingered Saddam cooperated involuntarily. CNN explained: "It is unclear whether anyone will receive the $25 million bounty because the information leading to his capture came under duress." A "senior administration official" confirmed to Newsday that the man "didn't provide any information willingly." Col. Hickey told reporters that the informant first gave false information, and "there was three or four hours of questioning before he blurted Saddam’s location."

What happened in those three or four (some reports say five or more) hours? Probably not torture, in the technical jargon of U.S. officialdom. No electric shock, no hot irons, no fingernails pulled. At least that’s what U.S. officials insist.

They say it was just "interrogation," which is torture lite. Things like bags over the head, tight handcuffs, no light (or constant bright light), no food or bathroom, endless shouting or blaring music or noise, bits of light violence. And, of course, the constant psychological torture of fearing that serious physical pain might start at any moment.

But it wasn’t only this one key informant who got torture lite. According to Newsday: "Weeks ago, U.S. forces decided to identify anyone who might have current knowledge of where Hussein was, including former bodyguards, and then to go after them with a vengeance, rounding up their families and friends -- women, children, grandparents, everyone. Many of the key clues came in involuntary interrogations of informants."

web page

[Moon]

Sorry Tom, gotta lock this one. Too... political/delicate/current/hot... and entirely unrelated to the game in any case.

Martin