Military Takes Precautions as Senate Interrogation Report Nears

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By Nick Simeone


DoD News, Defense Media Activity


WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 2014 – U.S. military leaders are taking appropriate force-protection measures in case there is unrest caused by the release of a controversial Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques used in the days after the 9/11 attacks, a Pentagon spokesman said today.


In light of that, Army Col. Steve Warren said, the Defense Department has directed U.S. combatant commands worldwide to brace for the possibility of violence directed at U.S personnel and facilities.


“There is certainly the possibility that the release of this report could cause unrest,” he said, “and therefore, [DoD] has directed the combatant commands to take appropriate force-protection measures.”


Warren spoke ahead of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s expected release of a declassified report several-thousand pages long that is reported to be sharply critical of interrogation techniques used by the CIA against captured terrorism suspects in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks.


House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said yesterday that foreign leaders have told the United States that the release of the report is likely to spark violence, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry has issued a similar warning.

 

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Security has been stepped up at US facilities around the world ahead of the release of a report expected to reveal details of harsh CIA interrogations, the White House says.
Embassies and other sites were taking precautions amid "some indications" of "greater risk", a spokesman said.
A 480-page summary of the Senate report is due to be released on Tuesday.
It is expected to detail the CIA's campaign against al-Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11.
As well as detailing the controversial methods used by CIA operatives in an effort to extract information from high-value suspects, the report is expected to say harsh interrogations failed to deliver appropriate results.
Publication of the report has been delayed amid disagreements in Washington over what should be made public.




The full 6,000-page report, produced by the Senate Intelligence Committee, remains classified.
The 480-page summary is being released by Democrats on the panel.
President Barack Obama halted the CIA interrogation programme when he took office in 2009, and has acknowledged that the methods used to question al-Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.
During the presidency of George W Bush, the CIA operation against al-Qaeda - known internally as the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation - saw as many as 100 suspected terrorists held in "black sites" outside the US.

 

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Analysis: Jon Sopel, BBC North America editor
What more can we learn about the CIA's interrogation programme from this heavily redacted report? Based on leaks, Tuesday's release seems to answer three major questions:
First. Were the interrogation methods - torture if you like - more extensive and more brutal than previously admitted? It looks like the conclusion is yes.
Second. Did these interrogation techniques deliver life-saving intelligence to the US? That answer appears to be no.
Third. Were CIA officials at the time honest with the White House on what the programme was getting up to? Again, no.
We can also expect the beginning of a counterblast of speeches, editorials and comments from those in charge of the CIA at the time attacking the Congressional report. But White House officials - while supportive of the release in principle - nervously dispatched John Kerry to encourage the committee to think twice about releasing this report into a volatile world. That didn't work.



They were interrogated using methods such as waterboarding, slapping, humiliation, exposure to cold, and sleep deprivation.
Leaks about the Senate report first emerged in August this year, prompting Mr Obama to declare: "We did some things that were contrary to our values."
The US president added that he believed officials at the time had used harsh methods because of the "enormous pressure" to prevent another attack on the US in the wake of 9/11.
A previous investigation into the programme, by the US justice department, ended with no criminal charges in 2012 - a result that angered civil rights organisations.

 

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Bush pushes back




White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday that the Obama administration welcomed the impending release, but said there were "some indications" it could increase the risk to US facilities across the world.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the intelligence committee, has allowed the report to be published
"The administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place." Mr Earnest said.
Secretary of State John Kerry had earlier asked Senate Intelligence chair Dianne Feinstein to "consider" changing the timing of the report.
But Mr Earnest told reporters it would be "difficult to imagine" an ideal time to make the summary public.
Despite reports that CIA operatives went beyond legal interrogation limits imposed by the Bush administration, the former president has led the charge against the report's release, defending the CIA on US TV.
"We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf," he told CNN on Sunday.
"These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off-base."
Others have joined Mr Bush to dismiss the as-yet unreleased report, including reports it will say the CIA misled key members of the Bush administration about the programme.
"We're not here to defend torture," former CIA Director Michael Hayden told the New York Times ahead of the release. "We're here to defend history."
The full report is the outcome of years of research by the Senate intelligence panel, currently controlled by Democrats. Republicans on the committee are expected to release their own report.
The panel first voted to make the executive summary public in April.

 

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Dianne Feinstein: Profile of Senate Intelligence Committee chair

Senator Dianne Feinstein was elected to the US Senate in 1992




Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has spearheaded the report on US interrogation tactics.
Ms Feinstein, elected to the Senate in 1992, is the first woman to hold the vaunted position overseeing 16 intelligence agencies.
The California native, born in 1933, attended Stanford University and began her career in politics in 1969 when she was elected to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors.
Less than a decade later, she became mayor of San Francisco following the assassination of then-Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
In 1990, Ms Feinstein ran for California governor but lost the race. Just two years later, she was elected the first female senator of California and subsequently became the first woman member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
During her career, Ms Feinstein has championed legislation banning the manufacture, sale and possession of military-style assault weapons as well as bolstering security measures at more than 300 US seaports.

Dianne Feinstein served as mayor of San Francisco, California, for two terms






She has also been a staunch critic of US intelligence overreach, publicly criticising the National Security Agency's monitoring of the national leaders of American allies.
But her most high-profile fight of late was the committee's six-year review of thousands of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents, which concluded the rendition, detention and interrogation practices of the George W Bush administration were ineffective.
The CIA and White House have reportedly contested the public release of the report since April, arguing the contents threaten the security of US personnel abroad.
The partly-redacted reports will be released just weeks before Ms Feinstein cedes chairmanship of the Senate intelligence committee to Republican Senator Richard Burr.
Democrats lost control over the upper chamber of Congress in November's mid-term elections. It remains unclear if Ms Feinstein will run for re-election for another term.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

WASHINGTON — A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and that its methods were more brutal than the C.I.A. acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public.

The long-delayed report, which took five years to produce and is based on more than six million internal agency documents, is a sweeping indictment of the C.I.A.'s operation and oversight of a program carried out by agency officials and contractors in secret prisons around the world in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also provides a macabre accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the C.I.A. used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects.

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the water boarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.”

More…

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/w...html?emc=edit_na_20141209&nlid=23627335&_r=0#

All righty then, there you have it.

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week.

They were told that they would be killed while in American custody.

They were given enemas.

And last but not least, water boarded.

Damn, no broken bones. No tooth extractions. No eye gouging. No finger nails pulled off.

Kind of makes beheading look like a booger.

 

[Seymour]

What exactly is "rectal hydration"? one dude froze to death - big deal

 

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[h=3]Pear of Anguish: This instrument was inserted into a victim’s orifice. Then, a screw would be turned and the four “leaves” of the pear open up and mutilate the victim.[/h]

 

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[h=3]Head Crusher: This was widely used . A person’s chin would be placed on the bottom bar and the head under the cap. As the handle was turned, the cap would slowly be pressed to the bar, until the head was crushed.[/h]

 

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[h=3]Saws: Saws were widely used as torture devices, as these tools were found in almost any house. Hanging a person upside down and sawing through them, lest they confess, was gory but affective.[/h]

 

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[h=3]Garrotte Torture: This device would slowly crush a victim’s neck, causing death from asphyxia.[/h]

 

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[h=3]) Knee Splitter: This could be used on any limb or joint, and the spikes would slowly crush whatever was put inside the splitter.[/h]

 

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[h=3]Crocodile Shears: This was a tube that contained numerous spikes on each end. A victim’s penis would be placed inside and then mutilated.[/h]

 

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[h=2]‘Rectal feeding’[/h]CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”.
One CIA cable released in the report reveals that detainee Majid Khan was administered by enema his “‘lunch tray’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was ‘pureed and rectally infused’”. One CIA officer’s email was in the report quoted as saying “we used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
Rectal feeding is of limited application in actually keeping a person alive or administering nutrients, since the colon and rectum cannot absorb much besides salt, glucose and a few minerals and vitamins. The CIA administered rectal rehydration to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “without a determination of medical need” and justified “rectal fluid resuscitation” of Abu Zubaydah because he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. Al-Nashiri was given an enema after a brief hunger strike.
Risks of rectal feeding and rehydration include damage to the rectum and colon, triggering bowels to empty, food rotting inside the recipient’s digestive tract, and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from carless insertion of the feeding tube. The report found that CIA leadership was notified that rectal exams may have been conducted with “Excessive force”, and that one of the detainees, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse.
The CIA’s chief of interrogations characterized rectal rehydration as a method of “total control” over detainees, and an unnamed person said the procedure helped to “clear a person’s head”.






They had to get their 5 a day somehow.

 

[Seymour]

This is what really separates us from the terrorists - they starve our prisoners and we make sure theyre never hungry

 

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Majid Khan, pictured in 1999, was 'rectally fed' a pureed lunch of pasta, sauce and hummus as a method of behavior control, according to the report on CIA torture released on Tuesday





Hummus is good for you.

 

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Khalid Shaykh Mohammad (pictured left), who the U.S. believe to be the principal architect of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times and to the point of drowning, according to internal CIA reports. Abu Zubaydah (right) was left 'completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth' after waterboarding







































183 TIMES

He was a record breaker.

 

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SLEEP DEPRIVATION AND STRESS POSITIONS FOR DETAINEES WITH BROKEN FEET AND LEGS
The torture technique was used alongside other brutal methods of interrogation.
Detainees were often kept awake for 180 hours at a time often in stress positions, naked and with hands shackled.
One detainee had been chained to the wall in a standing position for 17 days. According to the CIA interrogator, some of the prisoners looked like 'dogs that had been kenneled'.
Another had his hands shackled to an overhead bar for 22 hours each days for more than two consecutive days, in order to 'break resistance'.
At one facility, known as the 'Cobalt' facility or the 'dungeon', the CIA made certain detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions.
One detainee with a prosthetic leg was shackled in the standing position for a bout of sleep deprivation until medical personnel assessed that he could not maintain the position.
Redha al-Najar, a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard and one of the first prisoners, was hooded and subjected to round-the-clock music or interrogations to prevent him from sleeping - though there was no indication he was resisting interrogators.
A month later, CIA questioners found al-Najjar a 'broken man' and on the verge of a 'complete breakdown'.
But the treatment got worse, with officials lowering his food ration, keeping him shackled in the cold and giving him a diaper instead of toilet access, the report said.

Graphic charting global attitudes to torture and details from former prisoners on stress positions, according to an Amnesty International survey published in May

 

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Comfortable chairs, good for the back.

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A 'feeding chair' on the U.S. military bae at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for the forced feeding for detainees on hunger strike