Extreme interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists were harsher than the CIA previously disclosed to Congress, the Bush White House and the Department of Justice, a newly released Senate report says.
To make its case, the report highlights conditions at a secret CIA detention site referred to as “Cobalt.”
The facility, which began operations in September 2002, kept few formal records of detainees housed there, and CIA officers conducted frequent, unauthorized and unsupervised interrogations that were more extreme than those that became part of the program known as “enhanced interrogation,” according to the report.
In November 2002, an otherwise healthy detainee — who was being held mostly nude and chained to a concrete floor — died at the facility from what the report termed hypothermia.
Others were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste. At times, the report said, detainees at Cobalt were walked around naked or shackled with their hands above their heads for extended periods of time.
Other times, the detainees were subjected to what was described as a “rough takedown.”
“Approximately five CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape,” the report states. “The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.”
The CIA Office of Inspector General in 2003 interviewed agency leaders about the site and found that they had little or no awareness of the operations there, and some CIA senior officials erroneously believed that extreme interrogation techniques were not used there, the report found.
Conditions of confinement at Cobalt eventually improved with the construction of new facilities, but detainees were still held in total isolation there except for periods when CIA personnel interrogated or debriefed them.
The continuous isolation led to various psychological and behavioral issues, including “hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation,” the report states.
The CIA also subjected at least five detainees to “rectal rehydration” or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity and as a means of “behavior control.” Instead of using a saline drip delivered from an IV, the CIA determined that the use of rectal rehydration was more effective in convincing detainees to end resistance or hunger strikes.
“As one officer wrote, ‘[while] IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal infusion on ending the water refusal in a similar case,” the report states.
The rectal-rehydration methods were used with detainees who were carrying out hunger strikes and refusing water. The report specifically chronicles the use of the technique on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM, the self-declared mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Citing CIA records, interrogators at the Cobalt site began using extreme interrogation techniques on KSM a “few minutes” after his questioning began.
“KSM was subjected to facial and abdominal slaps, the facial grab, stress positions, standing sleep deprivation (with his hands at or above the head level), nudity and water dousing,” the report states.
The chief of interrogations at the facility also ordered the rectal rehydration of KSM “without a determination of medical need, a procedure that [the official] would later characterize as illustrative of the interrogator’s ‘total control over the detainee.’ ”
KSM was also waterboarded at least 183 times in 15 separate waterboarding sessions. Then-CIA Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt called the detention site the first day of KSM’s arrival at the site to “convey his views” on his interrogation.
Pavitt later told the CIA inspector general that he “did not recall specifically ordering that the detainee be waterboarded right away” but he “did not discount that possibility.”
He did, however, remember saying, “I want to know what he knows, and I want to know it fast.”
The Senate report says an on-site medical officer later wrote in an email that the CIA interrogators “felt that the [waterboard] was the big stick and that HQ was more or less demanding that it be used early and often.”
The CIA disclosed none of these details to Congress before Senate began its investigation into the extreme interrogation practices, according to the report.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, which conducted the five-and-a-half year study, said she “clearly” recalls Director Michael Hayden briefing the panel for the first time on the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” during a September 2006 meeting.
“He referred specifically to a ‘tummy slap’ among other techniques, and presented the entire set of techniques as minimally harmful and applied in a highly clinical and professional manner,” she said during an hour-long speech on the Senate floor. “They were not.”
She also said the CIA provided inaccurate memoranda and explanations to the Justice Department while the Office of Legal Counsel was weighing the legality of the coercive techniques.
In communications to the Department of Justice, the report says the CIA claimed the following: The coercive techniques would not be used with excessive repetition; detainees would always have an opportunity to provide information prior to the use of the techniques; and the techniques were to be used in progression, starting with the least aggressive and proceeding only if needed.
In addition, the CIA said that medical personnel would make sure that interrogations wouldn’t cause serious harm, and they could intervene at any time to stop interrogations; interrogators were carefully vetted and highly trained; and each technique was to be used in a specific way, without deviation, and only with specific approval for the interrogator and detainee involved.
“None of these assurances, which the Department of Justice relied on to form its legal opinions, were consistently or even routinely carried out,” Feinstein concluded.
