How the CIA Built Its Secret Prisons

Top-level approval of interrogation techniques could complicate Justice probe

(NEWSER) - As the CIA discloses internal reports concerning “enhanced” interrogation techniques on detainees at secret prisons, the ugliest details—threats of execution and harm with a power drill—have grabbed headlines. But the documents also reveal an intriguing level of control that the CIA and Department of Justice maintained over every detail of interrogations—down to the size of light bulbs in a cell—in a painstaking attempt to keep the abuse within a hair's breath of the law, the New York Times reports. More»

AP investigation uncovers details of black site in Romania

(NEWSER) - The CIA's secret "black site" prison in Romania wasn't in some remote region of the country, but smack dab in the middle of a busy residential neighborhood near the center of Bucharest, the AP has discovered in a joint investigation with German public television. Sources say the prison was located in the basement of the building housing Romania's National Registry Office for Classified Information, aka ORNISS—although a senior ORNISS official denied that, saying, "No, no. Impossible, impossible." More»

Psychologists first known waterboarders in secret prisons

(NEWSER) - The CIA secretly agreed to pay at least $5 million in legal fees for two contractors who designed interrogations and repeatedly waterboarded detainees, say former US officials. Whereas CIA agents generally receive agency-paid insurance for potential legal bills, psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the first individuals to have been confirmed as having carried out waterboarding sessions, wanted extra coverage as public citizens. So the CIA agreed to pay Mitchell and Jessen’s firm’s legal fees directly. More»

Report from ethics groups says docs in interrogation program guilty of war crimes

(NEWSER) - CIA doctors who monitored the agency's "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects may be guilty of war crimes linked to human experimentation, according to a new report from a medical ethics group. The report from Physicians for Human Rights accuses the doctors and psychologists of being involved at every stage of the interrogation, the Guardian reports. It labels their recording of information on the effectiveness of the techniques as human experimentation, outlawed after the prosecution of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg. More»

(NEWSER) - After being waterboarded 183 times and deprived of sleep for a week, self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Kalid Sheikh Mohammed transformed from an avowed enemy of the US into a sort of CIA guest lecturer, the Washington Post reports. Two anonymous sources, looking to build the case that harsh interrogation worked, say that in 2005 and 2006, KSM gave what CIA officers called “terrorism tutorials,” expounding on al-Qaeda’s structure and even reprimanding his “class” for poor note-taking. More»