CIA Docs Accused of 'Human Experimentation'

American contractor says defense sec approved his detention, torture in Iraq

(AP) - An Army vet who says he was imprisoned unjustly and tortured by the US military in Iraq can sue former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally for damages, a judge ruled yesterday. The veteran, a private contractor who worked as a Marine translator in the volatile Anbar province, says he was repeatedly abused while detained for nine months at Camp Cropper. Lawyers for the man, who is in his 50s, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the US military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive. 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»

Former VP's defense of torture full of half-truths, falsehoods: Froomkin

(NEWSER) - Since leaving government, Dick Cheney has realized that TV and newspapers will report anything he says, writes Dan Froomkin for the Huffington Post, even though "he is a monstrous liar”—remember Saddam's WMDs? "After years of speaking in whispers, operating by proxy, and leaving as few fingerprints as possible," Cheney can't seem to shut up—and no matter what he's selling, the media "will fail to put it in any context whatsoever." More»

(AP) - In late 2007, a year after the Bush administration abandoned its harshest interrogation methods, CIA operatives used severe sleep deprivation tactics against a terror detainee twice, keeping him awake for 5 and then 6 straight days, with permission from government lawyers to go over the 4-day limit. Interrogators kept the unidentified detainee awake by forcing him to stand with his arms chained above heart level, jerking on the chains if he nodded out, according to an internal CIA report released this week. More»

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»