Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has been asked by lawyers of one Guantánamo Bay detainee not to dismantle the secret prisons used to interrogate suspected terrorists. The counsel for Abd al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri argued in a letter to Panetta dated April 13 that the secret facilities should be preserved “until such time as we have an adequate opportunity to document” the undisclosed locations where al-Nashiri was confined and tortured. The CIA has admitted that al-Nashiri, who is accused of plotting the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, was subjected to waterboarding while in CIA custody. But because videotapes depicting his torture have already been destroyed by the agency, al-Nashiri’s attorneys believe the only remaining relevant evidence may exist at the three secret sites where he was held until being transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. Panetta announced on April 9, 2009, that the CIA would “decommission” the CIA secret facilities, but he did not explain the details of what that means.