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The War Council wasn't concerned if extremist policies were banned. Only security matters and supreme presidential power. A discussion of policy was missing, according to Mayer, "not just (about) what was legal, but what was moral, ethical, right, and smart to do." These were peripheral matters because "fundamentally, the drive for expanded presidential authority was about (unlimited) power" outside of the law.Prior to her book's release, she wrote articles for The New Yorker on torture, and her book is largely based on them. One on November 14, 2005 was titled "A Deadly Interrogation - Can the CIA legally kill a prisoner?" It was about CIA officer Mark Swanner who "performed interrogations and polygraph tests for the Agency...." In 2003, an Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoner in his custody, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head was covered with a plastic bag. It inhibited his breathing, and according to forensic pathologists, he suffocated. Subsequently US authorities "classified Jamadi's death as a 'homocide.' " Yet Swanner wasn't charged and continued to work for the Agency.
Post-9/11, the DOJ "fashioned secret legal guidelines that appear to indemnify CIA officials who perform aggressive, even violent interrogations outside the United States" - to win the "war on terror." In 2001, Dick Cheney condoned it in a Meet the Press interview saying: We may have to go to "the dark side" in handling terrorist suspects. "It's going to be vital....to use any means at our disposal."
Another Mayer article appeared on August 13, 2007 titled: "The Black Sites - A rare look inside the CIA's secret interrogation program." In military terminology, such sites are locations where "black" projects are conducted. Post-9/11, they refer to secret CIA or military prisons outside the country with no oversight, accountability, detainee rights, and where torture and abuse are freely practiced.
Mayer discussed the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an Al Queda leader, supposed lead architect of the 9/11 attacks, and the CIA's claim that he confessed to killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. No evidence supported it, and Mayer called his confession "perplexing." He had no lawyer, was detained at black sites for over two years, and in 2006 was sent to Guantanamo. No one witnessed his confession, and it was certain he was tortured. It was also at the time of the US Attorney scandal when critics called for Gonzales' resignation. Further, in 2002, a Pakistani named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had already been convicted of Pearl's abduction and murder, but that hardly mattered to US authorities.
They continued to interrogate Mohammed. It was part of a secret CIA program in which detainees were held in "black sites" outside the country - out of sight, out of mind, and subject to "unusually harsh treatment." In 2006, the program was supposedly suspended when George Bush said CIA detainees were being sent to Guantanamo. It followed the June 2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court ruling granting habeas rights to Guantanamo prisoners. It also acknowledged that Geneva's Common Article 3 was violated. The October 2006 Military Commissions Act followed. It overrode the High Court to allow "alternative interrogations methods" to continue.
Secrecy and unlimited presidential authority are the hallmarks of this administration so everything in the "war on terror" is classified and permissible. Even few congressional members know much, and those who do won't say, let alone act to uphold the law.
Mayer notes how since the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the ICRC "played a special role in safeguarding" prisoner rights. "For decades, governments allowed (their) officials (access to) detainees, to insure that (proper treatment was) being maintained." However, Red Cross personnel were denied permission to interview US prisoners for five years. When they finally saw Mohammed, a spokesman declined to comment because ICRC's work is confidential.
Nonetheless, information leaked out to confirm what's now known. CIA interrogation methods are "tantamount to torture, and (responsible) American officials....could have committed serious crimes." Other Geneva breaches also along with violations of US law. Mayer characterized ICRC's revelations as having "potentially devastating legal ramifications." She also mentions an unnamed CIA officer, supportive of current policy, but worried that "if the full story of the CIA program ever surfaced, Agency personnel could face criminal prosecution." Within CIA, he said, there's a "high level of anxiety about political retribution" regarding the interrogation program. Some CIA operatives even took out liability insurance to help defray potential legal bills. Others saw the operation as a "can of worms (that might) become an atrocious mess."
Based on Mayer's account, it's far more than that - a systematic scheme to rewrite laws and norms; to make any practice permissible; to break and destroy human beings through intense coercion and psychological stress - without letup; and to avoid all accountability. Regarding torture: "It's one of the most sophisticated, refined programs ever," one expert explained. "At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail....It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. (They) fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling."
Mohammed's case is typical and shows what he was put through when accounts of his ordeal leaked out. Initially he was told: "We're not going to kill you. But we're going to take you to the brink of your death and back." He was first taken to a secret Afghanistan prison near Kabul International Airport - distinctive for its absolute lack of light and known by detainees as the "Dark Prison." Another one north of Kabul was called the "Salt Pit." An infamous 2002 death occurred there when a detainee was stripped naked and left chained to the floor in freezing temperatures until he died.
Mohammed endured some of these abusive practices. He was taken to Afghanistan by a team of "black-masked commandos attached to the CIA's paramilitary Special Activities Division." According to a report titled "Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees," he and others were "taken to their cells by strong people (in) black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces and dark visors over their eyes." It was a carefully choreographed 20 minute routine during which detainees are "hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories (amounting to sodomy), placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location."
Stripping demonstrates the captors' omnipotence and and debilitates detainees. Interrogators were advised to "tear clothing from (them) by firmly pulling downward against buttons and seams....pulling detainees off balance." Techniques also include the "Shoulder Slap, Stomach Slap, Hooding, Manhandling, Walling," and a variety of "Stress Positions."
Mohammed said he was placed in his own cell, kept naked for several days, and questioned by female interrogators for added humiliation. He was also attached to a dog leash and yanked to propel him into walls in his cell. In addition, he was suspended from the ceiling by his arms so that his toes barely touched the ground and he was unable to sleep. It caused intense pain and swelling to his legs. He may have also been beaten with electric cables, commonly used against other detainees. Some also got repeated electric shocks.
Mohammed further described being chained naked to a metal ring in his cell in a painful crouch - for prolonged periods in alternating intense heat and extreme cold when he was doused with ice water, a banned practice that can cause hypothermia. Other detainees were bombarded with deafening sounds round the clock for weeks or even months. This and other practices went on endlessly, and its effect was shattering. Detainees "lost their minds." You could "hear people knocking their heads against walls and doors, screaming their heads off." Attempted suicides were common, and some succeeded.
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