The US government has a long history of refusing to turn over evidence on its torture program, most recently when DOJ refused to cooperate with a Polish inquiry into the black site at which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. So it’s no surprise that they are refusing to turn over the remains of [...]

As I pointed out in an earlier post, when Counterterrorism Center lawyer Jonathan Fredman sent the torturers in Thailand a green light for torture in August 2002, he relied on language about intent from a July 13, 2002 fax from John Yoo to John Rizzo rather than the finalized August 1 Bybee Memo. In a [...]

At Mary’s instigation, I went back to look at Ibn Sheikh al-Libi’s description of how he was shoved into a coffin-like box in Egypt. (Thanks to burnt for the searchable copy.) According to al-Libi, the foreign government service [redacted] “stated that the next topic was al-Qa’ida’s connections with Iraq. … This was a subject about [...]

[Note: this is a working thread, not a finished document. As such, I may not pay as much attention to typos as in finished posts.] OPR Report on torture [for searchable copies, go here) Memorandum for the Attorney General OPR Final Report OPR 1st Draft Report OPR 2nd Draft Report Yoo Response to OPR 2nd [...]

I my last post, I showed that the CIA asked DOJ to approve the use of mock burial, but DOJ refused. I noted that the ICRC report doesn’t appear to show that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to mock burial (though he was subject to confinement in both a small and a larger box). But what [...]

Now that the Office of Professional Responsibilty (OPR) report (Report) on the rather ambiguously defined subject of the “torture memos” has been released, the problems with the report and with the whole process surrounding the report are becoming more and more evident.   Bmaz has provided, here, a wonderful look at one of the many issues that affect [...]

CIA’s torturers asked DOJ to let them use mock burials. But DOJ said no. PDF page 42 of the OPR Report (searchable copy here) includes a list of the torture techniques that Mitchell and Jessen recommended be used with Abu Zubaydah. Whereas the Bybee Two Techniques memo approves ten techniques, Mitchell and Jessen recommended twelve. [...]

Ali Soufan claims he had success interrogating Ramzi bin al-Shibh, too, before CIA cut him off.

As the torture apologists tee up for another attempt at justifying torture by claiming it worked, it’s worth remembering that just after the CIA finished waterboarding KSM, they wrote a report acknowledging that he had been lying to them.

Some tidbits from Jane Mayer’s latest on torture.