CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

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CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

Newspaper article

By: Dana Priest

Date: November 2, 2005

Source: Priest, Dana. "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons." Washington Post (November 2, 2005), A01.

About the Author: Dana Priest reports on national security for the Washington Post. She previously served as an investigative reporter, writing about the military, and as the correspondent to the Pentagon. She is the author of the book, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2003.

INTRODUCTION

The United States government's war on terrorism began following the attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York, and on the Pentagon in Virginia. As part of the government's efforts to put an end to this global threat, the CIA implemented a number of classified programs to uncover information regarding potential future terrorist acts, including holding individuals perceived to be a threat within a network of secret prisons around the world. These prisoners were hidden away and interrogated without the knowledge of the public or of the majority of government officials, including the United States Congress, which is in charge of monitoring the CIA's covert activities. The existence of these hidden prisons came to light only when it was revealed that interrogations of the prisoners held in some U.S. prison facilities abroad included mistreatment and torture, and that the conditions in the prisons themselves were far below those considered to be humane.

PRIMARY SOURCE

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities—referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents—are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country….

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military—which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress—have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay….

The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent….

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices….

DEALS WITH 2 COUNTRIES

Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons….

The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al Qaeda leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al Qaeda network. But as the volumes of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.

Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach….

SIGNIFICANCE

The abuse of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, raised the question of what type of actions the U.S. government was prepared to implement and/or condone in the name of uncovering information regarding terrorist activity. Even as the conditions at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were publicized, the U.S. government refused to discuss their special "black sites," the top secret prisons that have been established in a number of foreign countries with the cooperation of those nations' senior leaders. The CIA's initial goal was to interrogate approximately two dozen Al Qaeda leaders that were suspected of direct involvement with the September 11 attacks, but the numbers grew as the CIA continued to detain individuals suspected of having even the smallest connection to terrorist factions. Because these prison facilities were kept hidden, personnel were at liberty to use whatever methods they deemed appropriate, and were not held accountable for their actions. Individuals were held for months at a time on no more than the vaguest suspicion of terrorist activities, without access to legal counsel or even to basic human comforts. After their release, some claimed to have been tortured, and it was unclear whether United States personnel were at fault.

Congress, foreign governments, and various human rights organizations around the world have been forced to question the actions of the CIA—the body ultimately responsible for establishing these secret prison camps—as a result of the treatment of the prisoners. The CIA's response, however, was that the war on terrorism gave them the right to implement special tactics when dealing with potential terrorists. These tactics included holding prisoners for indefinite periods of time, despite lack of definitive evidence against them, and ignoring certain strictures set down for the treatment of prisoners, both during war time and in peace. Yet, imprisoning suspects in this manner would be illegal in the United States, which is why the CIA went to the effort of establishing prisons abroad. Both the White House and the CIA encouraged Congress to assist them in maintaining their silence regarding their techniques in the war on terrorism, citing national security as their reason for refusing to divulge further information. They even went so far as to request that CIA employees not be held to the guidelines regarding the decent treatment of prisoners.

The governments of most civilized nations, in accordance with United Nations Convention Against Torture, have an agreed upon set of rules that govern the manner in which prisoners of war must be treated, regardless of any crimes committed by those prisoners. These rules ensure that prisoners are held in humane conditions and that they are not tortured as part of any questioning they might undergo. Pain is not considered an acceptable tool in gaining information or a confession from a prisoner of war. The premise is that, even during a war, people cannot be allowed to use any means at their disposal to achieve their goals, because if they do, they risk becoming as lawless as the evils against which they are fighting. It is not just a question of the legality of the system, but the morality of it. Do extreme instances of violence, such as terrorist attacks that kill innocent civilians, excuse the use of radical methods in order to obtain information about similar potential events? Or does use of extreme force against possible enemy threats simply reduce everyone concerned to the same level of behavior? Should an alleged terrorist be stripped of his human rights based on his own actions?

Regardless of the legitimacy of the CIA's actions in keeping these foreign prisons a secret, investigations into U.S. personnel and their behavior in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib uncovered inhumane conditions and treatment of prisoners. As a result, U.S. government officials have been forced to reassess the efficacy and morality of this particular aspect of the war on terrorism.