Deuce Martinez

Last updated

Deuce Martinez (born c. 1976 [1] ) is an American intelligence professional. [2] "Deuce" is not his given first name, but a nickname that was used in the first newspaper article naming him. [3] He was involved at the start of the Central Intelligence Agency's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program of "high-value detainees," including Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Contents

CIA career

Martinez worked as an analyst in the CIA Counternarcotics Center. He tracked suspected drug traffickers through electronic communications and documents. After al-Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001, he was transferred to the Counterterrorism Center, where he used those same techniques to find members of al-Qaeda. In early 2002, he went to Pakistan to be part of the team that located and captured Abu Zubaydah. [2]

At a black site in Thailand, Abu Zubaydah was first interrogated by the FBI. Eventually, CIA employees and contractors took over and began the torture of Abu Zubaydah and the FBI agents left. At that point, "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding were used on Abu Zubaydah. Martinez never employed these methods himself, rather he attempted traditional trust-building interrogations after the coercive methods stopped. [2]

He interrogated Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who cooperated without resorting to coercive interrogation methods. He also interrogated Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after they had been tortured. [2]

Martinez eventually left the CIA and went to work for Mitchell Jessen and Associates, a consulting company run by former military psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Mitchell and Jessen created the "enhanced interrogation techniques" program and were present at the black site in Thailand with Martinez when they were used for the first time on Abu Zubaydah. [4]

Identity

The first published information about Martinez came from a June 22, 2008 New York Times article written by Scott Shane. [2] In an concurrent editors' note, the New York Times stated that they were asked, by the CIA and a lawyer representing Martinez, to obfuscate his identity for the article so that Martinez could protect his reputation. The newspaper considered this, but ultimately declined, although they did not use his given first name, but his nickname, "Deuce." The editors stated that Martinez had never operated undercover and the story's credibility required using his real name. [3] [5]

On January 23, 2012 the Department of Justice charged ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou with providing Martinez's name to the New York Times for the story. [6] Scott Shane later wrote that he already knew Martinez' name before he contacted Kiriakou:

I asked [Kiriakou] about an interrogator whose name I had heard: Deuce Martinez. He said that they had worked together to catch Abu Zubaydah, and that he would be a great source on Mr. Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks. He was able to dig up the business card Mr. Martinez had given him with contact information at Mitchell Jessen and Associates, C.I.A. contractor that helped devise the torture program and Mr. Martinez’s new employer. Mr. Martinez, an analyst by training and torturer by trade, was retired and had never served under cover; that is, he had never posed as a diplomat or a businessman while overseas. He had placed his home address, his personal e-mail address, his job as an intelligence officer and other personal details on a public Web site for the use of students at his alma mater. Abu Zubaydah had been captured six years earlier, Mr. Mohammed five years earlier; their stories were far from secret. Mr. Martinez never agreed to talk to me. But a few e-mail exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou as I hunted for his former colleague would eventually turn up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment; he was charged with revealing to me that Mr. Martinez had participated in the operation to catch Abu Zubaydah, a fact that the government said was classified. [7]

These charges were dropped in exchange for Kiriakou's guilty plea to a leak involving a different CIA agent who was undercover. Kiriakou would eventually serve 2 years in prison - thus disproving the editor's of the New York Times and Scott Shane's claims of there being no criminality on the part of Kiriakou - giving them Martinez's name. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abu Zubaydah</span> Saudi Arabian Guantanamo detainee

Abu Zubaydah is a Palestinian citizen and alleged terrorist born in Saudi Arabia currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khalid Sheikh Mohammed</span> Pakistani member of al-Qaeda (born 1965)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often known by his initials KSM, is a Pakistani terrorist and the former Head of Propaganda for al-Qaeda. He is currently held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waterboarding</span> Torture method simulating drowning

Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ammar al-Baluchi</span> Prisoner at Guantanamo Bay detention camp

Ammar al-Baluchi or Amar al-Balochi is a Pakistani citizen who has been in American custody at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp since 2006. He was arrested in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2003 before being transferred; the series of criminal charges against him include: "facilitating the 9/11 attackers, acting as a courier for Osama bin Laden and plotting to crash a plane packed with explosives into the U.S. consulate in Karachi." He is a nephew of the Pakistani terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who served as a senior official of al-Qaeda between the late 1980s and early 2000s; and a cousin of the Pakistani terrorist Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who played a key role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bombing, and the high-profile Bojinka plot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri</span> Alleged al-Qaeda mastermind

Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri is a Saudi Arabian citizen alleged to be the mastermind of the bombing of USS Cole and other maritime attacks. He is alleged to have headed al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf states prior to his capture in November 2002 by the CIA's Special Activities Division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jose Rodriguez (intelligence officer)</span> American spy

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is an American former intelligence officer who served as Director of the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was the final CIA deputy director for operations (DDO) before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004. Rodriguez was a central figure in the 2005 CIA interrogation videotapes destruction, leading to The New York Times Editorial Board and Human Rights Watch to call for his prosecution.

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Kiriakou</span> American counter-terrorism consultant

John Chris Kiriakou is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News and co-host of Political Misfits on Sputnik Radio.

The CIA interrogation videotapes destruction occurred on November 9, 2005. The videotapes were made by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002 at a CIA black site prison in Thailand. Ninety tapes were made of Zubaydah and two of al-Nashiri. Twelve tapes depict interrogations using "enhanced interrogation techniques", a euphemism for torture. The tapes and their destruction became public knowledge in December 2007. A criminal investigation by a Department of Justice special prosecutor, John Durham, decided in 2010 to not file any criminal charges related to destroying the videotapes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ali Soufan</span> Lebanese-American former FBI agent (born 1971)

Ali H. Soufan is a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A 2006 New Yorker article described Soufan as coming closer than anyone to preventing the September 11 attacks and implied that he would have succeeded had the CIA been willing to share information with him. He resigned from the FBI in 2005 after publicly chastising the CIA for not sharing intelligence with him which could have prevented the attacks.

James Elmer Mitchell is an American psychologist and former member of the United States Air Force. From 2002, after his retirement from the military, to 2009, his company Mitchell Jessen and Associates received $81 million on contract from the CIA to carry out the torture of detainees, referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" that resulted in little credible information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah</span> Interrogation of a Saudi Arabian in U.S. custody

Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi citizen who helped manage the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan. Captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, he has since been held by the United States as an enemy combatant. Beginning in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was the first prisoner to undergo "enhanced interrogation techniques." Since the Spanish Inquisition, these practices have been characterized as torture by many familiar with the techniques. There is disagreement among government sources as to how effective these techniques were; some officials contend that Abu Zubaydah gave his most valuable information before they were used; CIA lawyer John Rizzo said he gave more material afterward.

In 2003, a secret compound, known as Strawberry Fields, was constructed near the main Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. In August 2010 reporters found that it had been constructed to hold CIA detainees classified as "high value". These were among the many men known as ghost detainees, as they were ultimately held for years for interrogation by the CIA in its secret prisons known as black sites at various places in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia, including Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Jessen</span> American psychologist

John Bruce Jessen is an American psychologist who, with James Elmer Mitchell, created the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that were used in the interrogation and torture of CIA detainees and outlined in the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on CIA torture. In that report, he was mentioned under the pseudonym "Hammond Dunbar." His company, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, earned US$81 million for its work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Shane</span> American journalist (born 1954)

Scott Shane is an American journalist and author, currently employed by The New York Times, reporting principally about the United States intelligence community. In 2023, his nonfiction book Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland was published by Celadon Books.

Alfreda Frances Bikowsky is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the CIA, but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. In January 2014, the Washington Post named her and tied her to a pre-9/11 intelligence failure and the extraordinary rendition of Khalid El-Masri. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, released in December 2014, showed that Bikowsky was not only a key part of the torture program but also one of its chief apologists, resulting in the media's giving her the moniker "The Unidentified Queen of Torture."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture</span> Report of the United States government

The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program is a report compiled by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detention and Interrogation Program and its use of torture during interrogation in U.S. government communiqués on detainees in CIA custody. The report covers CIA activities before, during, and after the "War on Terror". The initial report was approved on December 13, 2012, by a vote of 9–6, with seven Democrats, one Independent, and one Republican voting in favor of the report and six Republicans voting in opposition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gina Haspel</span> American intelligence officer (born 1956)

Gina Cheri Walker Haspel is an American intelligence officer who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from May 21, 2018, to January 20, 2021. She was the agency's deputy director from 2017 to 2018 under Mike Pompeo, and became acting director on April 26, 2018, after Pompeo became U.S. secretary of state. She was later nominated and confirmed to the role, making her the first woman to become CIA director on a permanent basis.

<i>The Report</i> (2019 film) 2019 film by Scott Z. Burns

The Report is a 2019 American historical political drama film written and directed by Scott Z. Burns that stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney, and Jon Hamm. The plot follows staffer Daniel Jones and the Senate Intelligence Committee as they investigate the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture following the September 11th attacks. It covers more than a decade's worth of real-life political intrigue, exploring and compacting Jones's 6,700-page report.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CIA black sites</span> Secret headquarters used by the CIA

The CIA controls black sites used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain people deemed to be enemy combatants.

References

  1. ↑ Leonard, Tom (June 22, 2008). "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The interrogator who made him talk". Telegraph. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Shane, Scott (June 22, 2008). "Inside a 9/11 Mastermind's Interrogation". New York Times. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Hoyt, Clark (July 6, 2008). "Weighing the Risk". New York Times. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
  4. ↑ Shane, Scott (August 11, 2009). "Interrogation Inc. - 2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake". New York Times. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Editors' Note". New York Times. June 22, 2008. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  6. ↑ Savage, Charlie (January 24, 2012). "Ex-C.I.A. Officer Charged in Information Leak". New York Times. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  7. ↑ Shane, Scott (January 5, 2013). "Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak". New York Times. Retrieved January 7, 2013.
  8. ↑ Savage, Charlie (October 23, 2012). "Former C.I.A. Operative Pleads Guilty in Leak of Colleague's Name". New York Times. Retrieved January 7, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.