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).
Geoffrey D. Miller is a retired United States Army major general who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay,Cuba,and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison,Camp Cropper,and Camp Bucca. He is noted for having trained soldiers in using torture,or "enhanced interrogation techniques" in US euphemism,and for carrying out the "First Special Interrogation Plan," signed by the Secretary of Defense,against a Guantanamo detainee.
Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi is a Saudi Arabian citizen. He is alleged to have acted as a key financial facilitator for the September 11 attacks in the United States.
David Spears Addington is an American lawyer who was legal counsel (2001–2005) and chief of staff (2005–2009) to Vice President Dick Cheney. He was the vice president of domestic and economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation from 2010 to 2016.
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.
William James "Jim" Haynes II is an American lawyer and was General Counsel of the Department of Defense during much of 43rd President George W. Bush's administration and his war on terror. Haynes resigned as general counsel effective March 2008.
"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.
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.
Steven Gill Bradbury is an American lawyer and government official who served as the General Counsel of the United States Department of Transportation. He previously served as Acting Assistant Attorney General (AAG) from 2005 to 2007 and Principal Deputy AAG from 2004 to 2009,heading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the U.S. Department of Justice during President George W. Bush's second term.
Jack Landman Goldsmith III is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School,where he has written extensively in the fields of international law,civil procedure,federal courts,conflict of laws,and national security law. Writing in The New York Times,Jeffrey Rosen described him as being "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament".
Torturing Democracy is a 2008 documentary film produced by Washington Media Associates. The film details the use of torture by the Bush administration in the "War on Terror."
Muhammad Rahim is an Afghan national who is held in captivity by the United States Government at Guantanamo Bay. He was born in eastern Afghanistan. Muhammad Rahim worked for an Afghan government committee that worked to eliminate opium poppies from the nation. He was forced to leave his job by the Taliban. In 1979,Rahim fled Afghanistan with his brother over the border of Pakistan. Their departure was triggered by the Soviet Union invasion into Afghanistan.
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.
The Office of Inspector General of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the independent overseer of the organisation. Since 2021,the office has been held by Robin Ashton. The first inspector general was appointed in 1952.
A set of legal memoranda known as the "Torture Memos" were drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States and signed in August 2002 by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee,head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice. They advised the Central Intelligence Agency,the United States Department of Defense,and the President on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques—mental and physical torment and coercion such as prolonged sleep deprivation,binding in stress positions,and waterboarding—and stated that such acts,widely regarded as torture,might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of presidential authority during the "War on Terror".
John Anthony Rizzo was an American attorney who worked as a lawyer in the Central Intelligence Agency for 34 years. He was the deputy counsel or acting general counsel of the CIA for the first nine years of the War on Terror,during which the CIA held dozens of detainees in black site prisons around the globe.
The Panetta Review was a secret internal review conducted by Leon Panetta,then the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency,of the CIA's torture of detainees during the administration of George W. Bush. The review led to a series of memoranda that,as of March 2014,remained classified. According to The New York Times,the memoranda "cast a particularly harsh light" on the Bush-era interrogation program,and people who have read them have said parts of the memos are "particularly scorching" of techniques such as waterboarding,which the memos describe as providing little valuable intelligence.
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.
The Report is a 2019 American historical political drama film written and directed by Scott Z. Burns that stars Adam Driver,Annette Bening,Jon Hamm,Ted Levine,Michael C. Hall,Tim Blake Nelson,Corey Stoll,and Maura Tierney. It depicts the efforts of staffer Daniel Jones as he led the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture following the September 11th attacks,covering more than a decade's worth of real-life political intrigue related to the contents,creation,and release of the 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent War on Terror,the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established a "Detention and Interrogation Program" that included a network of clandestine extrajudicial detention centers,officially known as "black sites",to detain,interrogate,and often torture suspected enemy combatants,usually with the acquiescence,if not direct collaboration,of the host government.
