{"id":8438,"date":"2017-10-12T09:46:35","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T07:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=8438"},"modified":"2017-10-12T09:47:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T07:47:26","slug":"inside-the-cias-black-site-torture-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2017\/10\/inside-the-cias-black-site-torture-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the CIA’s black site torture room"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Words by Larry Siems<\/p>\n

There were 20 cells inside the prison, each a stand-alone concrete box. In 16, 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

“The atmosphere was very good,\u201d John \u201cBruce\u201d Jessen told a CIA investigator in January 2003, two months after he interrogated a prisoner named Gul Rahman in the facility. \u201cNasty, but safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jessen, one of the two contract psychologists who designed the CIA\u2019s \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d, spent 10 days in the secret prison near Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2002. Five days after he left, Rahman, naked from the waist down and shackled to the cold concrete floor, was discovered dead in his cell from hypothermia.<\/p>\n

In August, Gul Rahman\u2019s family and Mohamed Ben Soud and Suleiman Abdullah Salim, two surviving prisoners of the Afghan black site, reached an out-of-court settlement in their lawsuit against Jessen and James Mitchell seeking restitution for torture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Gul Rahman, photo: Anonymous\/AP<\/p>\n

By settling the suit, Mitchell and Jessen avoided a trial that would have brought into the full light of an American courtroom what happened in the prison codenamed Cobalt, and known simply as \u201cthe Darkness\u201d to its prisoners.<\/p>\n

But much of what the plaintiffs hoped would be aired before a jury can be found in 274 documents the CIA and Pentagon were forced to declassify and release during pre-trial discovery.<\/p>\n

These documents, many of them scheduled to be entered as\u00a0exhibits<\/a>\u00a0at trial, provide the fullest picture yet of what the three men suffered in that secret CIA dungeon \u2013 and of how fatefully their lives intersected with the rise and fall of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the men who designed the torture regime.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The guy with all the tricks<\/strong><\/p>\n

A<\/span><\/span>mong the most illuminating of these documents is the\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0CIA investigators delivered to James Pavitt, the agency\u2019s deputy director for operations, on 28 January 2003 on the death of Gul Rahman. In 32 clear-eyed pages, and in attachments that include a stark \u201cChronology of Significant Events<\/a>\u201d and notes from interviews with Jessen and the young CIA officer assigned to manage the black site, the investigation reconstructs the decisions that killed a prisoner just 69 days after the facility opened.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>camp X-Ray at Guant\u00e1namo Bay on 11 January 2002.<\/span>Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/p>\n

Opened in September 2002 and filled to capacity within a month, the site operated by a combination of careful planning and impulsive improvisations, investigators found.<\/p>\n

The cells were designed for sensory deprivation, but the site manager put his own spin on what this would mean. The blaring stereo was his idea, and his purchase.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs to darkness,\u201d the investigator learned from the site manager, \u201cthat again was his decision.\u201d One light switch controlled all the lights in the cellblock, interview\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0record, and \u201c[f]aced\u00a0<\/strong>with the choice to keep them on all the time or off all the time, he chose the latter\u201d.<\/p>\n

The site manager, whose name is redacted in documents released for the lawsuit but who was first identified as Matthew Zirbel in the\u00a0footnote of a report provided to Congress<\/a>, had no experience in prison operations and did not know until three days after he arrived at Cobalt that he would be running the facility.<\/p>\n

Previous revelations have highlighted his actions during Rahman\u2019s detention, which began when Rahman was renditioned from Pakistan into the prison. But the new documents suggest Rahman might still be alive if Jessen had not arrived at Cobalt around the same time and taken a direct role in Rahman\u2019s interrogation.<\/p>\n

Jessen, who interrogated Rahman six times over a two-week period, and Mitchell, who met with him once, claimed throughout the lawsuit that they tried to mitigate the harsh conditions of Rahman\u2019s confinement. But cables show it was Jessen who debated whether to subject Rahman to enhanced interrogations techniques with CIA headquarters, and it was Jessen whose advice held sway when he and Zirbel\u00a0<\/strong>plotted Rahman\u2019s interrogation. \u201cHe could tell that [the site manager] was running all of his suggestions through his \u2018bullshit filter,\u2019\u201d the investigator notes from his\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with the psychologist, but \u201cJessen said he was the guy with all the tricks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zirbel accepted Jessen\u2019s suggestion that when Rahman complained that he was cold, he was using a sophisticated al-Qaida resistance technique. When Rahman \u201cclaimed inability to think due to conditions (cold),\u201d \u201ccomplained about poor treatment,\u201d and \u201ccomplained about the violation of his human rights\u201d, as a\u00a0cable\u00a0<\/a>recorded after one of Jessen\u2019s interrogations, these were evidence, Jessen said, of a \u201chealth and welfare\u201d resistance strategy.<\/p>\n

But in the uninsulated prison, with winter approaching, Rahman was just cold, dangerously so, for at least two weeks before he died from hypothermia. A CIA supervisor who visited the facility just after Rahman arrived told the CIA\u2019s investigator \u201cit was very cold in [Cobalt] when he was there \u2026 and the issue of hypothermia crossed his mind as he saw Rahman wearing only socks and a diaper.\u201d<\/p>\n

The supervisor discussed Rahman\u2019s situation with a colleague, the CIA\u2019s inspector general reported in a 2005 internal\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0of Rahman\u2019s death, but took no action because \u201che assumed that the officers there would realize it was cold and would not leave a prisoner unclothed for a long period\u201d.<\/p>\n

In fact, guards and interpreters told investigators that Rahman was naked, naked below the waist, or naked but for a diaper almost his entire time in the prison.<\/p>\n

Jessen knew this, and saw it was having a physical effect. He acknowledged to the investigator that \u201cRahman would have lost his clothes at our direction.\u201d He described seeing Rahman \u201cshaking [and] showing the early signs of hypothermia\u201d after he was given \u201ca cold shower as a deprivation technique\u201d.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/a>\u00a0from one of Jessen\u2019s interrogation sessions begin, \u201cRahman spent the days since his last session with station officers in cold conditions with minimal food and sleep. Rahman appeared somewhat incoherent for portions of this session.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, when Jessen left Cobalt on or around 14 November 2002, he told Zirbel that overcoming Rahman\u2019s resistance would require more of the same deprivations that were clearly weakening him. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t going to happen fast,\u201d he told the investigator in the January 2003 interview. \u201c[Rahman] is physically strong, hitting him isn\u2019t going to do any good. You have to wear him down physically and psychologically \u2026 It would take one to several months to get him to a level of cooperation,\u201d he predicted.<\/p>\n

Five days later, at 3pm on 19 November 2002, \u201cRahman was shackled in a sitting position on bare concrete while nude from the waist down,\u201d the 2003 investigation recorded. Guards checked on Rahman four times overnight, at 10 and 11pm, and at 4 and 8am. During the 4am cell check, with the outside temperature now 31F, a guard \u201clooked into his cell and whistled.\u201d At 8am, \u201cRahman was sitting in his cell, alive and shaking\u201d, his \u201ceyes were open and blinking\u201d. \u201cRahman\u2019s shaking did not seem unusual,\u201d the guard told the investigator, \u201cbecause all of the prisoners shake.\u201d Two hours later, a guard looked into the cell and found Rahman lying on his side. When he tapped the door with his nightstick, the prisoner did not move.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A US army helicopter in Afghanistan in March 2002.<\/span>\u00a0Photograph: Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We wrote out a list\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The road to a contract psychologist telling a CIA investigator that he was the one with all the interrogation tricks began just a year before, in early 2002, when Jessen and Mitchell wrote a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cCountermeasures to Al Qaeda Resistance to Interrogation Techniques\u201d.<\/p>\n

The paper, released with redactions for the first time during the lawsuit, promised to deliver methods for recognizing when captives were using sophisticated resistance techniques and \u201cstrategies for developing countermeasures\u201d.<\/p>\n

The paper was based on the pair\u2019s reading of the Manchester Manual, an extremists\u2019 handbook that included a section on the brutal interrogations recruits were likely to experience in the prisons of authoritarian regimes. The manual combines advice like \u201cstay psychologically and mentally calm and maintain alertness and foresight\u201d with practical instructions on how to respond to torture.<\/p>\n

In their Countermeasures paper, Mitchell and Jessen conflate all of these as resistance strategies. Sticking to a story, requesting a lawyer, complaining about prison conditions, asking for medical attention, reporting torture: all of these, the pair wrote, \u201creveal that a sophisticated level of resistance training is available to high-risk al-Qaida operatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that their paper opened with the caveat: \u201cWe are not experts in Arab culture or the organization of al-Qaida\u201d did not dampen enthusiasm for their ideas.<\/p>\n

Through the spring of 2002, the two psychologists marketed their approach for overcoming the resistance of al-Qaida fighters, Jessen to the Pentagon and Mitchell to the CIA. They pitched their product in two\u00a0Powerpoint presentations<\/a>illustrated with what they called \u201cthe Circle Metaphor\u201d, a diagram they peddled as \u201can effective way of thinking about resistance behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his pre-trial\u00a0deposition<\/a>, Jessen insisted that the interrogation methods he and Mitchell first proposed to defeat this resistance included no physical pressures and were consistent with the Geneva Conventions. But by April, Jessen was crafting an \u201cExploitation Draft Plan<\/a>\u201d that included holding captives in soundproof cells in secret facilities that were beyond the reach of the Red Cross, the press, and US and foreign observers. A few months later, \u201cJim and I went into a cubicle,\u201d as Jessen recalled during his deposition. \u201cHe sat down at a typewriter, and together we wrote out a list\u201d that became the CIA\u2019s enhanced interrogation techniques.<\/p>\n

CIA cables produced for the lawsuit chronicle the application of thetechniques during the CIA\u2019s 2002 interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded at least 83 times. Mitchell joined that interrogation a few weeks after Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March, was delivered to the agency\u2019s first black site in Thailand, and many of his team\u2019s communications with CIA headquarters have a test lab feeling.<\/p>\n

A series on the design of \u201cconfinement boxes\u201d has titles like \u201cComments<\/a>\u00a0re Likely Psychological Impact of the Confinement Box on the [Redacted] Process with AZ\u201d and \u201cFurther Comments<\/a>\u00a0on Construction and Particulars Concerning an Additional Confinement Box for Use During Upcoming Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other cables describe in grinding detail how their techniques were combined in actual interrogation sessions, and their crushing, dehumanizing effect. In one passage from a\u00a0six-page cable<\/a>\u00a0describing \u201cday six of the aggressive phase\u201d of Abu Zubaydah\u2019s interrogation, which took place on 9 August 2002, \u201cThe interrogators pointed to the small box and said, \u2018You know what to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe subject sat on the floor and scooted himself into the small box at 1000 hours without protest or additional instructions,\u201d Mitchell\u2019s team recorded. Over the next eight hours, Abu Zubaydah was moved back and forth between the large and small confinement boxes and slammed against a wall in the technique known as \u201cwalling\u201d. The waterboard was rolled in, and the interrogator says again, \u201cYou know what to do.\u201d Told he could end the torments if he told interrogators what they wanted to know, the cable reports, \u201cSubject whimpered that he had nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight days later, a cable from the Thai black site was extolling the success of the three-week \u201caggressive phase\u201d of Abu Zubaydah\u2019s interrogation, the goal of which had been \u201cto induce complete helplessness, compliance, and cooperation from the subject\u201d and \u201cto reach the stage where we have broken any will or ability of subject to resist or deny providing us information\u201d. The process, Mitchell wrote in the cable, \u201cshould be used as a template for future interrogation of high value captives\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Mitchell was writing this, construction of the Cobalt facility near Kabul was nearing completion.<\/p>\n

A month later, as the first prisoners were delivered into its 24-hour darkness, a CIA\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0described the role the two psychologists would now be playing in the agency\u2019s expanding interrogation program. \u201cThe direct assessment, called a mental state exam, can be done shortly after the initial capture by either Jim or Bruce,\u201d it said. This will allow them \u201cto determine the best physical and psychological pressures that would be needed to get this individual to a compliant state as quickly as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

To meet the anticipated demand for the pair\u2019s \u201cEITs\u201d, interrogators in both the CIA and Pentagon were reading their countermeasures paper, seeing their PowerPoint slides, and attending trainings on their techniques.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Jim: I really enjoyed the conference,\u201d begins an\u00a0email<\/a>\u00a0to Mitchell after a gathering of \u201ca nice group of people\u201d that included interrogators, psychologists, and psychiatrists from Guant\u00e1namo.<\/p>\n

The writer complains about Gitmo, where \u201cdetainees run every aspect of the camp and the interrogators have little (if any) control\u201d and where there is \u201cno opportunity to take advantage of capture shock, dislocate anyone\u2019s expectations (except for the interrogators), or develop learned helplessness (except the interrogators).\u201d Pledging to forward copies of their Countermeasures paper to Guant\u00e1namo, the writer adds, \u201cIt\u2019s clear that you and Bruce need to be involved for this to be done right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Mohamed Ben Soud, photograph: ACLU<\/p>\n

\u2018Blatant disregard for ethics\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

S<\/span><\/span>ix months later, in March and April 2003, Mohamed Ben Soud and Suleiman Abdullah Salim became two of 39 men subjected to Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s enhanced interrogation techniques in the CIA\u2019s secret prisons.<\/p>\n

Ten gas heaters were added in the cellblock the month after Gul Rahman\u2019s death, but little had changed in what Jessen called Cobalt\u2019s \u201cnasty\u201d routines. Salim and Ben Soud were still held in darkness and shackled around the clock, often naked, to the ring in the wall or to the overhead bar in the sleep deprivation cells. But during interrogation sessions they also now faced methods including holds and slaps, walling, water dousing (where they were placed nude in the middle of a plastic sheet and forced to lie in pools of ice water) and hours in confinement boxes.<\/p>\n

Throughout the lawsuit, Jessen and Mitchell argued that because they didn\u2019t directly interrogate Ben Soud and Salim, they did not bear responsibility for their treatment.<\/p>\n

But Cobalt had been designed according to their vision of an ideal exploitation facility, and after Rahman\u2019s death all interrogators who administered EITs had to be trained and certified in Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s techniques. Ben Soud\u2019s and Salim\u2019s experience seemed to a herald an era when \u201cenhanced interrogations\u201d were becoming routine.<\/p>\n

In fact, by the time Salim and Ben Soud were being interrogated, Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s star was already in decline. Internal CIA\u00a0memos<\/a>\u00a0from the spring and summer of 2003 are peppered with scathing comments. \u201cAlthough these guys believe that their way is the only way, there should be an effort to define roles and responsibilities before their arrogance and narcissism evolve into unproductive conflict in the field,\u201d a June 2003\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0warned. \u201cWholesale adoption of the Jim and Bruce show just isn\u2019t appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

A proposal that their role expand to include evaluating the effects of their interrogation methods elicits a tart response that \u201cno professional in the field would credit their later judgment as psychologists assessing the subjects of their enhanced measures\u201d.<\/p>\n

A proposal that they would have a hand in helping to draft a code of ethics for CIA interrogations is flatly dismissed because they had \u201cboth shown blatant disregard for the ethics shared by almost all of their colleagues\u201d, the writer declares.<\/p>\n

\u201cPer my discussions with Jim and Bruce last week, their roles in the program are going to change,\u201d a May 2003\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0announces. \u201cFrom now on they will be doing mostly strategic consulting work, research, and program development projects.\u201d They were being removed from interrogations.<\/p>\n

Their new assignments suggested reform. In one, they were to study how the CIA could develop and apply less intrusive techniques. In another, they would draft a paper to help interrogators \u201cgain a practical understanding of how human memory works\u201d and to \u201chelp people understand why [High Value Targets] \u2013 like \u2018normal\u2019 humans \u2013 don\u2019t recall everything the intel \u2018model\u2019 says they should.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third assignment is an almost complete inversion of Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s role in the CIA\u2019s black site program: they are now to develop a transition program that will prepare Abu Zubaydah and other black site prisoners for transfer to Guant\u00e1namo \u2013 a process made \u201cextremely tricky\u201d by their treatment in the black sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cJ & B will recommend a plan, including specific steps\u201d that will \u201cprovide appropriate structure and meaning to the life of the HVTs, all of whom are young and will be confined for the rest of their natural lives.\u201d Their plan is to include recommendations on \u201coccupational, recreational, intellectual, medical, and psychological variables\u201d and answer such questions as, \u201cHow much time outside of isolation is valid, and how much external stimuli is appropriate, and what kinds?\u201d<\/p>\n

Abu Zubaydah and a small group of others tortured in the black sites were quietly transferred to Guant\u00e1namo in September 2003, then transferred back to CIA-controlled facilities overseas six months later, just before the supreme court ruled that Guant\u00e1namo prisoners had the right to file habeas corpus petitions in US courts.<\/p>\n

It would be another two and a half years before Abu Zubaydah and 13 others subjected to the worst of Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s methods were transferred to Guant\u00e1namo to stay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Camp Six at Guant\u00e1namo Bay.<\/span>Photograph: Simon Leigh for the Guardian<\/span><\/p>\n

Between 2003 and 2007, the authority to use Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s techniques was suspended several times and their legality and effectiveness re-examined. Each review further discredited the pair\u2019s description of CIA captives as super-resisters who could be broken only with their cocktail of brutal interrogation methods. Abu Zubaydah\u2019s cooperation \u201cdid not correlate well with his waterboarding sessions\u201d, the CIA\u2019s office of medical services concluded in one internal\u00a0review<\/a>. When Zubaydah was forthcoming, it was not because he had been waterboarded, but because \u201cquestioning had changed to subjects on which he had information\u201d.<\/p>\n

In October 2006, senior CIA interrogators, psychologists and managers reviewed all of the approved EITs and prepared a new list to present to Congress that would comply with the just-enacted Military Commissions Act. An internal CIA\u00a0document<\/a>\u00a0declassified for the lawsuit records that the panel eliminated four of the techniques outright, including three that Salim and Ben Soud had suffered in Cobalt.<\/p>\n

Mitchell recalled this agency review in his book Enhanced Interrogation, which was published in the midst of the pretrial discovery process last year. \u201cAlmost unanimously we all agreed that only two EITs were required for the conditioning process: walling and sleep deprivation,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe others, while occasionally useful, were not critical. And some, like nudity, slaps, facial holds, dietary manipulation, and cramped confinement, Bruce and I now believed were completely unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>George W Bush acknowledges the existence of the CIA black site prisons as he announces the transfer to Guant\u00e1namo Bay of 14 \u2018high value\u2019 detainees on 6 September 2006.<\/span>Photograph: MCT\/MCT via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

None of the senior CIA or Bush administration officials who approved and promoted Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s methods have made anything like this admission and their role in supporting the black site program remains obscured by blacked-out classified sections in the released documents.<\/p>\n

Many CIA officers who participated in the black site torture program were later hired by Mitchell Jessen and Associates, which continued to bill the CIA millions of dollars for interrogation-related services long after the program ended.<\/p>\n

The settlement reached last month in the lawsuit brought the first official acknowledgment that men were harmed by \u201cenhanced interrogations\u201d in the CIA\u2019s black sites, the first gesture of restitution for victims of the agency\u2019s post-9\/11 torture program. In a statement released for the settlement, Mitchell and Jessen said \u201cit is regrettable that Mr Rahman, Mr Salim and Mr Ben Soud suffered the abuses\u201d, while denying responsibility for the men\u2019s mistreatment.<\/p>\n

The statement added: \u201cDrs Mitchell and Jessen assert that the abuses of Mr Salim and Mr Ben Soud occurred without their knowledge or consent and that they were not responsible for those actions. Drs Mitchell and Jessen also assert that they were unaware of the specific abuses that ultimately caused Mr Rahman\u2019s death and are also not responsible for those actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

But 15 years after Gul Rahman froze to death in a darkened cell, the evidence gathered during pre-trial discovery has underscored how brutal and futile Mitchell and Jessen\u2019s tactics were, and how thoroughly they were rejected inside the CIA more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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