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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Haspel Personally Observed CIA Waterboarding, Witness Testifies</h1>
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<div><img src="cid:ii_l4r8x5w00" alt="image.png" width="459" height="252"><br><p><strong>Washington, D.C., June 23, 2022 –</strong> 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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/us/politics/cia-gina-haspel-black-site.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> was reported</a> by Carol Rosenberg and Julian E. Barnes for the <em>New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>The testimony is crucial because the video evidence of torture was
destroyed – by Haspel’s own orders. In 2005 after learning that the <em>Washington Post</em> 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 “<a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16535-document-8-cia-email-says-videotapes-devastating">the heat from destoying</a> [sic] is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the public domain.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>The National Security Archive <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2018-04-27/national-security-archive-sues-cia-gina-haspel-torture-cables">filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 “<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/63663/al-nashiri-iii-a-no-good-very-bad-day-for-u-s-military-commissions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">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</a>.” 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 href="https://www.justsecurity.org/63663/al-nashiri-iii-a-no-good-very-bad-day-for-u-s-military-commissions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a superb write-up</a> of this development in <em>Just Security</em>.
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 <em>Times’</em> 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.</p>
<p>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<a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2019-11-11/archive-foia-cable-shows-guantanamo-prosecutors-misleading-defense"> that
the CIA’s handling of classified evidence at the detention camp’s
national security trials has created unwarranted impediments for the
defense.</a> 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 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/politics/gitmo-uss-cole-trial.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reported that year for the <em>Times</em></a>,
“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 <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16881-document-11-thailand-black-site-report-cia">compared a December 3, 2002, cable</a> 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.”</p>
<p>The cable that was <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16881-document-11-thailand-black-site-report-cia">released to the Archive,</a> 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 <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia-intelligence-torture-archive/2019-11-11/archive-foia-cable-shows-guantanamo-prosecutors-misleading-defense">“could fairly be characterized as self-serving and calculated to avoid embarrassment.”</a></p>
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