Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions, Harrowing New Details

By GottaLaff

The CIA's inspector general's report on post-9/11 interrogation tactics is due out Monday. Today I had lunch with Jason Leopold, who told me that in that report, it is made clear that torture does not work. Okay? Clear now? Torture. Does. Not. Work.

All those people--yes, living, breathing people-- like Fayiz al-Kandari (see end of post) who were abused and tortured? It was for nothing. It was ineffective. Even bad people, even the Not-Fayizes, shouldn't be tortured. It yields information that is useless, because the torturees will do anything to make it stop. Wouldn't you?

A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general to be released next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency's post-9/11 program to detain and question terror suspects, NEWSWEEK has learned.

According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death."

According to the sources, the report also says that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed.

Of course, video tapes of waterboarding were destroyed; so much for that evidence.

The purpose of the report was to examine how the CIA program had been conducted, and whether Justice Department guidelines governing the use of harsh "enhanced" interrogation techniques had been followed. According to the sources, the inspector general criticizes some agency interrogators for exceeding official guidelines in the use of extreme tactics on detainees.

Mock executions were not authorized in Justice Department memoranda that outlined the legal parameters that Bush administration lawyers believed should govern the use of "enhanced" interrogations. [...]

The inspector general's report is expected to fuel political debates over whether the tough interrogation methods used during the Bush administration actually worked. According to another source who has seen the document, the report says that the agency's interrogation program did produce usable intelligence.

More here.

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All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.