New CIA Docs Detail Brutal "Extraordinary Rendition" Process
Original article at Huffington Post | Aug 28, 2009 | Full Story
By Scott Horton
Deep among the documents released to the ACLU on Monday afternoon was a curious memo dated 30 December 2004 and directed to Dan Levin, then acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The fax cover sheet has a brief note, "Dan, a generic description of the process." The name of the sender, based at the CIA, has been obliterated.
The document provides a step-by-step manual for extraordinary renditions.
The process starts with "capture shock." The detainee is subject to a medical examination prior to his flight. During the flight, the detainee is securely shackled, and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs and hoods.
The detainee is "in the complete control of Americans." The detainee is stripped naked and shaved. A "series of photographs are taken of the HVD while nude." A medical officer and a psychologist play key roles in the process (though their professional ethics rules would prohibit such conduct.)
All of these practices are carefully engineered to facilitate the interrogation process. Nudity, sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation are used as standard preparatory steps. It then details the standard "corrective techniques:" these are a series of physical assaults labeled with innocuous titles like insult slap, abdominal slap, facial hold and attention grasp. "Coercive techniques" used include: walling (slamming a prisoner's head against the wall, with some protective measures to avoid severe injuries), water dousing, the use of the stress position (known to the inquisition as the strapado, to the Germans in World War II as Pfahlbinden), wall standing (referred to by the NKVD and KGB as stoika) and cramped confinement. Because of substantial redactions, it seems unlikely that this list is complete.
None of this information is surprising. In fact it all tallies perfectly with the description of the renditions program that can be derived from the report prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which used the appropriate legal designation for these techniques: "torture." But this is an historical document, right? President Barack Obama shut down the black sites and the extraordinary renditions program immediately after taking office, right? Well, not entirely. Consider the recent rendition of a Lebanese businessman accused of petty contract fraud, Raymond Azar. The first stage of these guidelines was followed with precision. He was seized in Afghanistan by U.S. Justice Department operatives. They claim they had the approval of the Afghan government. The Afghan government disagrees, saying it has no record of ever having permitted the "snatch" of Azar.
According to papers filed by his lawyers, Azar was presented with "capture shock," stripped naked, subjected to a body cavity search for "health reasons," was shackled, subjected to hypothermia and sleep deprivation, and then was transported in a Gulfstream with the requisite hood, blindfold and earmuffs.
