[News] Gina Haspel, Former CIA Director, Personally Observed CIA Waterboarding, Witness Testifies

[Anti-Imperialist News]

nsarchive.gwu.edu
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2022-06-23/haspel-personally-observed-cia-waterboarding?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=f847ed01-f5ae-482e-98e1-6cf9ab4fb289>
Haspel Personally Observed CIA Waterboarding, Witness Testifies
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[image: image.png]

*Washington, D.C., June 23, 2022 –* Gina Haspel, 15 years before President
Trump nominated her and the US Senate confirmed her as CIA director,
personally oversaw the waterboarding of alleged USS Cole bomber Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a black site prison in Thailand in 2002, according
to recent testimony at a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Waterboarding has been recognized as a war crime since World War II, when
the US prosecuted Japanese soldiers for, among other charges, torturing
American POWs with waterboarding. The confirmation by James Mitchell, one
of two CIA contract psychologists who designed the agency’s infamous
torture program, builds on documentation previously obtained by the
National Security Archive that Haspel authored or authorized memos on
al-Nashiri’s torture while she was chief of base at the prison from October
through December of 2002. The latest development was reported
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/us/politics/cia-gina-haspel-black-site.html>
by
Carol Rosenberg and Julian E. Barnes for the *New York Times*.

Mitchell’s testimony includes jarring details about al-Nashiri’s torture.
He testified that al-Nashiri was of such slight build that team members
were concerned he’d slip free of his Velcro restraints. Mitchell also
stated that he only had a “general memory” of the torture inflicted on
al-Nashiri, but that he “was probably slapped and had the back of his head
slammed into a burlap-covered wall.”

The testimony is crucial because the video evidence of torture was
destroyed – by Haspel’s own orders. In 2005 after learning that the *Washington
Post* was running a story on the agency’s black site prisons, Haspel, who
was then the chief of staff to National Clandestine Service head Jose
Rodriguez, drafted a cable authorizing the destruction of 92 videos of
al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah being tortured. Rodriguez approved the memo and
justified the destruction by telling then-CIA Director Porter Goss and
others that “the heat from destoying
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16535-document-8-cia-email-says-videotapes-devastating>
[sic]
is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the
public domain.”

The attempted cover-up helped prompt the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence (SSCI) to launch its investigation into the agency’s torture
program (the investigation is a saga on its own, with the CIA illegally
spying on its Senate overseers). As Rosenberg and Barnes note in their
article, “The Senate Intelligence Committee study of the C.I.A. program,
only a part of which is public, said that interrogators wanted to stop
using ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on Mr. Nashiri because he was
answering direct questions, but they were overruled by headquarters.”

The National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2018-04-27/national-security-archive-sues-cia-gina-haspel-torture-cables>
for
12 of the key Haspel torture memos in April 2018 in anticipation of her
Senate confirmation hearing to lead the agency. During the confirmation
hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked Ms. Haspel if she had
overseen any torture of al-Nashiri, but Haspel declined to answer, saying
the information was classified. The CIA still has not acknowledged Haspel’s
role at the black site prison, despite public knowledge of her tenure
there, asserting a state secrets privilege. During the recent proceedings
Mitchell referred to Haspel only by the code name Z9A, signaling the
court’s acceptance of the agency’s claim.

The ongoing al-Nashiri trial has not been short of fireworks. In a
remarkable turn of events in 2019, the Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit “threw out every single pre-trial order issued over the past
three-and-a-half years in the case of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed
Al-Nashiri
<https://www.justsecurity.org/63663/al-nashiri-iii-a-no-good-very-bad-day-for-u-s-military-commissions/>.”
The unanimous ruling came after the disclosure that the former trial judge
presiding over the al-Nashiri case, Air Force Colonel Vance Spath, was
applying for – and negotiating the terms of – a position with the Justice
Department as an immigration court judge. Steve Vladeck has a superb
write-up
<https://www.justsecurity.org/63663/al-nashiri-iii-a-no-good-very-bad-day-for-u-s-military-commissions/>
of
this development in *Just Security*. Spath kept his job application secret
from all parties, a gamble that could have called into question Spath’s
partiality. Vladeck notes that a FOIA request filed by the *Times’* Carol
Rosenberg “turned up the very documents pertaining to Spath’s candidacy for
a position as an immigration judge that the government had refused to
disclose” and led to the ruling.

The case has also exposed serious problems with government classification
practices.  Later in 2019, Judge Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., the judge
currently presiding over the case, cited a cable released to the National
Security Archive as part of our Haspel lawsuit as evidence that the CIA’s
handling of classified evidence at the detention camp’s national security
trials has created unwarranted impediments for the defense.
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2019-11-11/archive-foia-cable-shows-guantanamo-prosecutors-misleading-defense>
The
current approach allows prosecutors, working with members of the
intelligence community, to determine what portions of evidence the defense
will need for trial. Prosecutors, as Rosenberg reported that year for the
*Times*
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/politics/gitmo-uss-cole-trial.html>,
“then redact portions of reports from the C.I.A. black sites or write
summaries to substitute for the actual evidence.” To reach his
determination, Judge Acosta compared a December 3, 2002, cable
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16881-document-11-thailand-black-site-report-cia>
that
was released to the Archive to a version of the same cable prosecutors
provided al-Nashiri’s defense attorneys. Judge Acosta found “the comparison
undermines any contention the redactions are narrowly tailored to a
legitimate need to protect national security.”

The cable that was released to the Archive,
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16881-document-11-thailand-black-site-report-cia>
which
was authored under Haspel’s command, describes Day 17 of al-Nashiri’s
torture session at a black site prison in Thailand. It states "HVTI
[redacted, CIA contract psychologist James Mitchell] and linguist
[redacted] strode, catlike, into the well-lit confines of the cell at 0902
hrs [redacted], deftly removed the subject's black hood with a swipe,
paused, and in a deep, measured voice said that subject - having 'calmed
down' after his (staged) run-in with his hulking, heavily muscled guards
the previous day - should reveal what subject had done to vex his guards to
the point of rage." The cable provided to the defense was more heavily
redacted, omitting charged words such as “catlike”, prompting Acosta to
rule that some of the deletions “could fairly be characterized as
self-serving and calculated to avoid embarrassment.”
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2019-11-11/archive-foia-cable-shows-guantanamo-prosecutors-misleading-defense>
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