"a cash award of $2,500 for consistently superior work."

[kpete]

A prosecutor’s Eureka moment: I never got specifics because they didn’t exist

I spent five years prosecuting war crimes cases at Guantánamo Bay. While we could not use evidence in court derived from torture or abusive treatment, I questioned why maltreatment was used in the first place. The answer was always this: “Torture works. Torture saves lives.” As a prosecutor, I was never provided with any specifics. After reading the Senate’s report, I now understand why: they didn’t exist. No terror plot was stopped due to abusive interrogations. This was my Eureka moment after reading the report.

The very first Senate finding I stumbled across was right there on Page 9 – and it completely refutes the official justification for using torture. “[N]o intelligence while in CIA custody”? It is the first finding, and it is a blockbuster. If torture does not lead to actionable intelligence and does not stop terrorist acts, then why use it at all? Shouldn’t we have used traditional, rapport-based interrogation techniques such as the FBI agents who questioned Abu Zubaydah? The suspect was cooperating until the CIA’s contractors started waterboarding Abu Zubaydah in detention for 17 days, until he became “completely unresponsive”.


*****************




This is a particularly despicable and illuminating look into how the CIA treated its officers who were carrying out torture techniques. After a detainee, Gul Rahman, was chained, nearly naked, to a concrete floor for an extended time and then froze to to death, no officer on-site nor at the CIA was disciplined – let alone prosecuted. In fact, the CIA officer in charge of the detention site was recommended to receive a bonus of $2,500 for his “consistently superior work”. Five pages earlier in the report, we are told that this particular CIA officer was already known for dishonesty and lack of judgment when he was sent on his first overseas assignment to head this detention site. Eleven years and one page in the report later, the CIA acknowledged it “erred” in not holding anyone accountable for Rahman’s death.

Eleven years.


from a few days ago, read it in a fresh light:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/09/redactions-cia-torture-report-experts

[KingCharlemagne]

1. Thanks for posting. Since acquiring useful intelligence could never

have been the real reason for the torture regime, one must ask what the real reasons for doing it were. I've come up with two:

1) administering extra-judicial punishments

or

2) enabling government agents with sado-masochistic psychosexual proclivities

or maybe some combination of the two?

[rock]

2. Or if you prefer

Billies gotta bully.

[mercuryblues]

3. nope and nope

It was known that the prisoners were talking prior to the use of torture. It is also known that torture does not work. People will say and do anything to make it stop. They will tell you what you want to hear.

My theory is they did not want the prisoners to talk. Not at all. They wanted the prisoners to STOP talking.

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[countryjake]

5. Okay, I've read it again, and it still makes me want to puke.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5936377

And it looks to me as tho they may have deliberately assigned incompetent CIA goons to carry out their gruesome horrors. A guy "known for dishonesty and lack of judgment" was rewarded for the job he did? Where is he now and what else is he getting away with? That article failed to provide the entire statement from the report which said that other CIA officers recommended he not have access to classified information due to a "lack of honesty, judgment, and maturity". Oh, I get it, he's not considered capable enough to handle important top-secrets, yet he's put in charge of a prison?

He was actually named back in 2010, at the same time that Gul Rahman's name was finally publicly released as a victim of torture. However, within hours after that disclosure, the Salt Pit's boss' identity magically vanished.

Who Killed Gul Rahman? by Jane Mayer ~ March 31, 2010
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/who-killed-gul-rahman





Gul Rahman, the young Afghan man who died and disappeared forever in the CIA "Salt Pit" at Kabul.
A CIA case of "mistaken identity".


Why was he murdered, what became of his body, and what did he really die from? His mother, brother, wife, and four daughters would like to know the answer to that question. Where is the justice for this family?