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Ear to the Ground

Report: CIA Wielded Gun, Power Drill in Interrogation

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Posted on Aug 21, 2009
U.S.S. Cole
Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Navy

This image from the Navy shows the damage caused to the USS Cole by an attack in Yemen in 2000.

Another account describing the CIA’s alleged use of harsh interrogation techniques has come to light, according to a Newsweek magazine report about the intelligence agency’s treatment of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a suspect in the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen.  —KA

Newsweek:

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.”

The report also says, according to the sources, 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. The inspector general’s report alludes to more than one mock execution.

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By BenHan, August 24, 2009 at 8:41 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Perhaps we need to sit down and have a nice cup of
tea with these suspects. As history has taught us,
they truly play by the rules and are truly civilized.
They have the greatest respect for life and the rule
of law. They would never think about beheading men
for entertainment purposes and sending the footage
into cyberspace for all to see. They would never
consider using innocent women and children as shields
or a means to hide from their enemies. They would
never consider convincing less than intelligent
individuals to blow themselves up in the name of God.
It is always the same song and dance with people in
general, protect me from the bad guys but use a
feather boa when you do it.

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By wakers3, August 24, 2009 at 6:24 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

The terrorists all pretty much play fair, so should we.

If they happened to take me or my family into their lair, I would imagine some pretty interesting things would happen to us and we aren’t even people of consequence.  Their book says to kill and destroy, our book says love and forgive.  We just need to hire people to detain them that read their book and then there wouldn’t be any controversy.

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By Brian, August 24, 2009 at 5:55 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

The ACLU thinks that is better for a planeload of
people to die than to threaten a terrorist.

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By John, August 24, 2009 at 5:50 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I think I can speak for most Americans when I say “Hey, whatever works”.

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By L.C. Angier, August 24, 2009 at 5:37 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

So if we know where they are, and the happen to be with the families, it is ok to blow them up using a missile fired from a drone… killing them and their families.  But if we capture them we cannot treat them badly?  Give me a break.  Trials for the interrogators and for the current and past administration for the murder of civilians…  Wield the stick evenly if you are going to let it swing!

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By AntiPolitic, August 24, 2009 at 3:17 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Why are we broadcasting to the rest of the world what our CIA does?  I don’t
understand the benefit of this.  Honestly, I don’t want to know what they do to
prisoners of war, cause its never going to be worse than that country would do to
our prisoners of war.  They would interrogate, physically brutally torture, and then
kill when they get what they need.

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By Ivan, August 24, 2009 at 1:24 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

If there were no checks and balances, no conscience, no value for human rights and no restraints on our intelligence and military agencies, torture and mutilation would be ok in America, just as it is in other backward countries.
Oh wait, we have those constraints, but we did it anyway, and are still doing it, right?
Hypocrisy or rigorous honesty, which will it be? If the latter, bush/cheny and their criminal cohorts must pay for their incredible crimes committed in the name of patriotism. If the former, this will fizzle out, and we won’t know or care what goes on in our own country’s actions.

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By glenn h, August 23, 2009 at 5:49 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I bet if you ask McCain how he was treated when he captive he would say worse than that.

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By coloradokarl, August 22, 2009 at 8:00 am Link to this comment

Give me a couple of Detainees, a roll of duct tape and an arm chair and a large phone book and when one detainee starts to drool and lose his bowel function the other who has just watched his future fate in technocolor will calmly tell me everything I want to hear. Maybe not the truth but everything I want to hear. Torture will never gain truth only twisted satisfaction for the torturer and animosity from the tortured. The reptiles are starting to lose the battle, expect something big…....

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By Jim Yell, August 22, 2009 at 6:24 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

For those prisoners who were really thought to have done the terror crimes, they should have been tried in court and if found guilty punished to the full extent of the law.

It has been clear to anyone that holding people captured in their own countries, defending themselves were not the criminals, but were held because Bush/Cheney wished to create the illusion that there were masses of terroists just waiting to destroy us.

Well there are some nasty people out there and they should be restrained, but torture when allowed becomes an easy and reprehensible action to do to anyone for any reason. That is why we have laws against torture. And, as far as nasty people go, who could be more nasty than Bush/Cheney, Rumsfield and all who lied us into an un-necessary war and then squandered our tax money doing it, not out of necessity but thru corruption and greed for their personal supporters? How about the 100,000s of dead Americans and Iraqi’s killed, many women and children all because George Bush thought he had been elected Dictator of America, or was that Cheney?

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By oldhip, August 22, 2009 at 4:19 am Link to this comment

This “Says It All…” about us “allowing” good Americans.

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By Scipio Africanus, August 22, 2009 at 4:07 am Link to this comment

And from today’s Washington Post:

“The IG’s report is the most comprehensive, contemporaneous review of the secret CIA interrogation program, which ran from early 2002 until September 2006. Controversial within the spy agency, it criticized the CIA’s use of coercive interrogation methods, warning that several likely violated international bans on cruel and inhumane treatment.”

Did this prompt Mr. Tenet to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department? No. Why? Because Mr. Tenet knew he was complicit by allowing these criminal acts to be perpetrated in the first place.

Prediction for next week: House and Senate intelligence committee Democrats will beat their chests, profess outrage, call for investigations…and that will be about it. What you won’t see is Silver Reyes or “DiFi” issuing subpoenas to Bush, Cheney,
Ashcroft, Gonzales, Bybee, and every other miscreant who was responsible for authoring or implementing these crimes in our name.

The moment of truth for Eric Holder is fast approaching. If he appoints a special counsel and limits his or her charge to just looking at what the CIA’s underlings did, it will be confirmation that the Washington political class remains united in its desire to protect its own, whether they have (D) or (R) after their names. An attorney general who believes in the rule of law and upholding the Constitution would appoint Pat Fitzgerald to investigate all the crimes of the previous regime and the principal players as well, starting with Bush and Cheney.

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By ChaoticGood, August 21, 2009 at 9:52 pm Link to this comment

The blood of the victim is mopped up with the American Flag.  We disgrace our country when we allow neanderthals to represent us.  Torture in our name perpetrated by hired “Hessians” is beyond contempt.  We continue to do it today behind the doors with our private Blackwater armies.
And we wonder why Americans are not respected in the world.  We really must be dumb.

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