In a report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the Obama administration unequivocally denies the existence of secret detention facilities operated by any part of the U.S. government. The document is a response to “55 questions prepared by the Committee and transmitted to the United States on January 10, 2010,” ranging from CIA rendition to allegations of torture by Chicago police in the 1980s. Among those questions were several regarding the detention of suspected terrorists and combatants. Question 5(a) reads, in part:
(a) Whether the State party has adopted a policy that ensures that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control and that publicly condemns secret detention, pursuant the Committee’s previous concluding observations (para. 17). Please disclose detailed information on the existence of any such facilities, in the past and present, and the authority under which they have been established.
Although the answer provided by the United States is somewhat lengthy, it contains this flat denial [emphasis added]:
As recently as January 2013, the Washington Post reported that some secret arrests and detentions were still taking place, and details in that case are still murky.
The report to the U.N. also makes a flat denial regarding allegations stemming from 2007 reports of a secret detention facility on the island of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean:
