Thursday, August 27, 2009
CIA interrogation report, Bush version
Monday’s publication of the CIA inspector general report on detainee interrogations was not the first time an edited version of the document had been released. In 2008, the Bush administration declassified a heavily redacted version of “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities” by IG John Helgerson. But this week’s publication of the same report reveals more information about the use of torture and other illegal practices by CIA interrogators
After conducting a side-by-side comparison, The National Security Archives at George Washington University noticed the 2009 version contains considerably more information on torture practices, including the use of guns, drills, threats, smoke, extreme cold, stress positions, “stiff brush and shackles,” mock executions and “hard takedown.” The Bush administration had blacked out almost all portions of the report pertaining to specific torture techniques, except for a few references to waterboarding.
The new version also provides insight into the legal reasoning behind the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and provides a brief history of CIA interrogation, including the “resurgence of interest in teaching interrogation techniques” in the early 1980s “as one of several methods to foster foreign liaison relationships.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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