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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/05/17/gina-haspel-cia-director-torture/">https://theintercept.com/2018/05/17/gina-haspel-cia-director-torture/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel
Torture Victim: “One of the Most Severely Traumatized
Individuals I Have Ever Seen”</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Jeremy Scahill - <span
class="PostByline-date"><span>May 17 2018</span></span></div>
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<p><u>An American doctor</u> and Naval reserve officer who
has done extensive medical evaluation of a high-profile
prisoner who was tortured under the supervision of Gina
Haspel privately urged Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chair
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to oppose Haspel’s
confirmation as CIA director, according to an email
obtained by The Intercept.</p>
<p>“I have evaluated Mr. Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, as well
as close to 20 other men who were tortured as part of
the CIA’s RDI [Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation]
program. I am one of the only health professionals he
has ever talked to about his torture, its effects, and
his ongoing suffering,” Dr. Sondra Crosby, a professor
of public health at Boston University, wrote to Warner’s
legislative director on Monday. “He is irreversibly
damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed
to break him. In my over 20 years of experience treating
torture victims from around the world, including Syria,
Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr.
al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely
traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”</p>
<p>Nashiri was snatched in Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates in 2002 and “rendered” to Afghanistan by the
CIA and eventually taken to the Cat’s Eye prison in
Thailand that was run by Haspel from October to December
2002. He was <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/05/guantanamo-trials-abd-al-rahim-al-nashiri/">suspected
of involvement</a> in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole
off the coast of Yemen. He is currently being held at
Guantánamo Bay prison.</p>
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<p>Despite Crosby’s pleas, Warner and five other
Democratic senators have announced their support for
Haspel. Warner backed Haspel after she sent him a
carefully crafted letter designed to give the impression
that she had changed her position on torture while
simultaneously continuing to defend its efficacy. “While
I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I
have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the
program ultimately did damage to our officers and our
standing in the world,” Haspel wrote. “With the benefit
of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency
leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one
the CIA should have undertaken.”</p>
<p>Haspel stated that she “would refuse to undertake any
proposed activity that was contrary to my moral and
ethical values.” But Haspel has refused to renounce
torture, her role in its use or to condemn the practice
of waterboarding. In fact, under questioning from Sen.
Kamala Harris during her confirmation hearing, Haspel
explicitly refused to say that the “enhanced
interrogation techniques” she oversaw at a secret CIA
prison in Thailand were immoral. That fact renders her
pledge to Warner meaningless.</p>
<p>“It took her 16 years and the eve of a vote on her
confirmation to get even this modest statement, and
again, she didn’t say she had any regrets other than it
offended some people,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a
member of the Intelligence Committee.</p>
<p><em>Listen to Jeremy Scahill’s interview with Sen.
Wyden on the latest episode of Intercepted:</em><br>
</p>
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<p>“I urge Senator Warner to oppose Ms. Haspel, who did
not have the courage or leadership to oppose the RDI
program,” wrote Crosby. She stated that some of the
techniques used against Nashiri are still classified. In
her letter to Warner, Crosby stated that among the known
acts of torture committed against Nashiri at the site
that Haspel ran and other U.S. facilities included:</p>
<ul>
<li>suffocated with water (waterboarding)</li>
<li>subjected to mock execution with a drill and gun
while standing naked and hooded</li>
<li>anal rape through rectal feeding</li>
<li>threatened that his mother would be sexually
assaulted</li>
<li>lifted off ground by arms while they were bound
behind his back (after which a medical officer opined
that shoulders might be dislocated)</li>
</ul>
<p>On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
informed senators that he was fast-tracking the vote in
an executive session. “If confirmed, the motion to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table;
the President be immediately notified of the Senate’s
action, that no further motions be in order, and that
any statements relating to the nomination be printed in
the Record,” read an internal email obtained by The
Intercept sent to Democratic staffers.</p>
<p>“Today we’re seeing what amounts to a secret
confirmation,” Wyden said. He <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/05/16/war-crimes-and-collective-punishment-senator-ron-wyden-on-gina-haspel-and-the-cia-and-norman-finkelstein-on-gaza/">told
Intercepted</a>: “I’m worried that if you have a
proceeding like this, a nominee confirmed this way with
zero meaningful declassification, this is not going to
be the last secret confirmation. You will see other
nominees coming up, and their record will be covered up
as well.”</p>
<p>Wyden blasted the CIA and Haspel for refusing to grant
the Senate full access to Haspel’s record and choosing
instead to provide carefully declassified information
intended to burnish Haspel’s image. “I want the American
people to know that the agency is covering up her
background. They’re covering it up because they’re
trying to prevent what I think is the threshold issue of
accountability … because if the American people knew
what I know, I believe the Senate would have no choice
but to reject her confirmation,” he said, pointing out
that as acting director, Haspel is in charge of what the
senators see and don’t see about her record. “She
started with an enormous institutional advantage — I
don’t know of a similar instance where the nominee gets
to decide what is declassified about her and what
isn’t.”</p>
<p>In a statement provided to The Intercept, Yasmine Taeb,
senior policy counsel at the Center for Victims of
Torture, said, “It’s outrageous that Republican
leadership is fast tracking this vote. The Senate cannot
fulfill its constitutional ‘advice and consent’
responsibilities when the Senate lacks meaningful access
to all the documents relevant to this nomination, and
when the public — whose job it is to hold their elected
representatives accountable — remains largely in the
dark.” Senators have also asked for more detailed
information on Haspel’s role in the destruction of 92
video recordings of “enhanced interrogations” conducted
in Thailand.</p>
<p><u>In a May 7 briefing</u> to Senate Intelligence
Committee staffers, also obtained by The Intercept,
Crosby asserted that during Nashiri’s torture
“unauthorized techniques were always used with
authorized techniques.” Crosby stated that she could not
discuss these “unauthorized techniques” because they
remain classified. She cited a public statement from one
of the CIA contractors who developed the enhanced
interrogation program, psychologist James Mitchell, who
said he witnessed an interrogator “dousing Nashiri with
cold water while using a stiff, bristled brush to scrub
his ass and balls and then his mouth and then blowing
cigar smoke in his face until he became nauseous.” She
offered to brief senators with appropriate security
clearances on other classified unauthorized techniques.</p>
<p>“The bottom line on the Haspel nomination,” said Wyden,
“is that the vast amount of information about her
background could be declassified without compromising
sources and methods, and that really does a disservice
to the American people.”</p>
<p>Crosby told Senate staffers that the CIA’s “methodology
consisted of strategic assaults — multiple traumas
inflicted simultaneously, as well as consecutively, in a
manner designed to instill terror and maximize harm in
the prisoners.” The interrogation program, she stated,
showed that “torture is not just a crime of physical
violence, but a way of destroying someone’s humanity.”
Crosby added: “It is important to note that the
barbarity of the torture methods used were shrouded and
concealed in sterile euphemisms.”</p>
<p>In the briefing, Crosby described the torture in
graphic, albeit unclassified, terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The terror of being kept naked in pitch-black,
shackled to the ceiling while music blared, covered in
urine and feces while insects crawled on their bodies,
in dank cells that were freezing cold or unbearably
hot. The horrific conditions in between interrogations
were in some cases as bad as the interrogations. These
torture methods were inflicted for hours and days, for
weeks at a time, over the course of years. The men
became disoriented with no sense of when the abuse
would stop. Some of the men wished for death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She concluded her briefing: “The devastating human cost
to this torture program cannot be overstated.
Unfortunately, this toll is largely hidden due to
ongoing secrecy and control that the CIA exercises. This
is what I can say due to security restrictions.”</p>
<p>Crosby, who is currently at the Guantánamo prison
examining Nashiri, told The Intercept that she could not
offer further details because they are classified and,
for the same reason, cannot speak about Haspel’s
specific role in Nashiri’s torture. However, a brief
prepared by Crosby’s organization, Physicians for Human
Rights, asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The CIA site in Thailand formed the <a
href="https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2015-10-14/revealed-the-boom-and-bust-of-the-cias-secret-torture-sites">blueprint</a>
for the rest of the CIA torture program. After her
assignment there, Haspel continued to hold senior
operational roles in the program, where presumably she
would have been in a position to know about <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/khalid-shaikh-mohammed-gina-haspel.html">other
abuses at other sites</a>. Moreover, she was an <a
href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence-torture-archive/2018-04-26/gina-haspels-cia-torture-file">enthusiastic
supporter</a> of the program and worked to protect
it from criticism. This included drafting a cable
ordering the shredding of videotapes depicting torture
sessions, despite a court order staying their
destruction. This act of cover-up should have led to
Haspel’s dismissal – and should most certainly
disqualify her from the role of leading the CIA.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On Monday, The Intercept <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/05/14/haspel-memo-ahead-of-vote-on-gina-haspel-senate-pulls-access-to-damning-classified-memo/">reported</a>
that a senior Warner adviser wrote an email to Democrats
on the Intelligence Committee informing them that a
classified memo compiled by the committee’s minority
staff and aimed at examining Haspel’s full involvement
with torture and destruction of evidence was removed
from the Senate. It was supposed to be housed in a
secure facility inside Congress, so senators and their
staff could read it before voting on Haspel’s
nomination.</p>
<p>That memo, according to Democratic sources, provided
classified details on Haspel’s role in torture, the
destruction of evidence, and her tenure more broadly.
The memo was based in part on the investigation
conducted by U.S. attorney and special prosecutor John
Durham into CIA activities following the September 11
attacks. On the eve of the committee vote on her
confirmation, that memo was moved out of the U.S.
Congress and Warner’s office said senators needed to ask
his office in order to arrange to see it. Democratic
sources have told The Intercept that few senators have
read the classified memo.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary
Committee wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions
requesting that he provide the “Durham report” to the
committee, saying that it falls under its jurisdiction
over “compliance with laws against torture, as well as
potential violations of the Freedom of Information Act.”</p>
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