Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/us/01justice.html?hpw

Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails

By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: October 31, 2009


F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw,’ ” according to hundreds of pages of partly declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department.

The documents include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says department officials declined to prosecute the case.

The documents were released in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington advocacy group. Some are new versions of documents previously released.

Newly disclosed passages from a 2008 report by the Justice Department inspector general describe what agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw at the C.I.A. jail where Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was being questioned.

The F.B.I. agents helped C.I.A. officers prepare questions for Mr. Binalshibh but “were denied direct access to him for four or five days,” the report said. Then an F.B.I. agent, identified as “Thomas,” was allowed to see him and found him “naked and chained to the floor.”

The agent told the inspector general that “he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the C.I.A. quickly shut down the interview,” the report said.

The September 2002 visit was the last F.B.I. involvement in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas interrogations, which senior F.B.I. officials questioned on grounds of both legality and effectiveness.

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Yikes....Sorry I press the wrong button and wanted to recommend

But did the unrec. instead...

Forgive me, but at least I kicked your story.

[47of74]

2. The government should take the CIA apart

Throw the bad parts in jail for the rest of their lives, and take the good parts and build a new intelligence agency. Make it clear from the beginning that the days of rogue agencies is over.

[peacetalksforall]

3. Hanging by your arms with steel around the wrists(?), blaring music, naked... does

it get better than this? Oh yes! When they lay you down tip you, and 'pretend' to drown you. Or when you are naked in a cell corner trying to warm your body with your arms.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney and willing partners.

IS IT STILL GOING ON?

[annabanana]

4. Until we can be certain that this is finished... Until we can prosecute

the perpetrators, we cannot turn our attention to a "better day" and the future.