CIA Begins Systematic Use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on Detainees

Following the authorization provided by the August 2002 Yoo-Bybee torture memos, the CIA begins systematically implementing “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects held at secret black site prisons. The program, developed by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen who had no interrogation experience, subjects detainees to waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, confinement in coffin-sized boxes, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, and “walling” (slamming detainees against walls).

Abu Zubaydah becomes the first victim of the program’s most extreme techniques, waterboarded 83 times in August 2002 at the CIA’s “Cat’s Eye” black site in Thailand. The waterboarding is so severe that it leaves him “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth,” according to CIA cables. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is subjected to similarly brutal treatment at the Thailand site starting in November 2002, including waterboarding and improvised stress positions that nearly dislocate his shoulders, prompting intervention from a concerned medical officer.

The program operates through a network of secret prisons in Thailand, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Afghanistan. CIA Director George Tenet approves ten specific techniques in July 2002: attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, use of diapers, and insects, with waterboarding added days later. The techniques are designed to induce “learned helplessness” through deliberate physical and psychological torture.

The 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report later conclusively documents that these techniques constitute torture under international law, violate the Geneva Conventions, and fail to produce actionable intelligence. Despite the program’s authorization, FBI agents present at black sites document their objections to the CIA’s methods, warning that the techniques are ineffective, illegal, and likely to produce false confessions. The International Committee of the Red Cross will later describe the CIA program as systematic torture and a war crime.

Over the program’s existence from 2002 to 2008, at least 119 detainees pass through CIA custody, with at least 26 later determined to have been wrongfully detained. Multiple detainees suffer permanent psychological damage, hallucinations, and attempted self-mutilation as a result of the torture. No one involved in designing, authorizing, or implementing the torture program is ever prosecuted.