The report also details torture and secret detention seemingly unconnected to any intelligence purpose at all. The situation at the Salt Pit is emblematic, the prison where Gul Rahman was tortured to death in November 2002.
Prisoners at the Salt Pit were kept in the dark for 24 hours a day, in cells without heat in winter, with buckets for toilets. Senate staff found a photo of a “well-worn waterboard” at the Salt Pit, although the CIA has not admitted to waterboarding anyone there...
CIA officials on the ground and back at headquarters knew shockingly little about who the CIA held in Afghanistan and why. In December 2003, an official would cable CIA Headquarters:
We have made the unsettling discovery that we are holding a number of detainees about whom we know very little. The majority of [CIA] detainees in [Country _] have not been debriefed for months and, in some cases, for over a year . . . . In a few cases, there does not appear to be enough evidence to continue incarceration, and, if this is in fact the case, the detainees should be released.Jameel Jaffer, ACLU - The CIA personnel who objected to the torture policies deserve our respect and gratitude. More than three years ago, Larry Siems and I wrote about Joe Darby, the soldier who exposed the abuses at Abu Ghraib. We wrote:
[Darby] was not alone. Throughout the military, and throughout the government, brave men and women reported abuse, challenged interrogation directives that permitted abuse, and refused to participate in an interrogation and detention program that they believed to be unwise, unlawful and immoral. The Bush administration’s most senior officials expressly approved the torture of prisoners, but there was dissent in every agency, and at every level.But until now, our government and our official history have honored only those who approved torture, not those who rejected it.
A torture victim describes the experience
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