The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (8 page)

After Abu Zubaydah was placed in isolation, the Abu Zubaydah interrogation team
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[departed Country ██]. Security and medical personnel remained at the detention site. The FBI special agents did not return to DETENTION SITE GREEN.
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7. Proposal by CIA Contract Personnel to Use SERE-Based Interrogation Techniques Leads to the Development of the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques; The CIA Determines that “the Interrogation Process Takes Precedence Over Preventative Medical Procedures”

In early July 2002, CIA officers held several meetings at CIA Headquarters to discuss the possible use of “novel interrogation methods” on Abu Zubaydah.
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During the course of those meetings SWIGERT proposed using techniques derived from the U.S. military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) school.
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SWIGERT provided a list of 12 SERE techniques for possible use by the CIA: (1) the attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap, (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) waterboard, (10) use of diapers, (11) use of insects, and (12) mock burial.
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SWIGERT also recommended that the CIA enter into a contract with Hammond DUNBAR, his co-author of the CIA report on potential al-Qa’ida interrogation resistance training, to aid in the CIA interrogation process.
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Like SWIGERT, DUNBAR had never participated in a real-world interrogation. His interrogation experience was limited to the paper he authored with SWIGERT and his work with U.S. Air Force personnel at the SERE school.
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In May 2003, a senior CIA interrogator would tell personnel from the CIA’s Office of Inspector General that SWIGERT and DUNBAR’s SERE school model was based on resisting North Vietnamese “physical torture” and was designed to extract “confessions for propaganda purposes” from U.S. airmen “who possessed little actionable intelligence.” The CIA, he believed, “need[ed] a different working model for interrogating terrorists where confessions are not the ultimate goal.”
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After the July 2002 meetings, the CIA’s ██████ CTC Legal,
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, drafted a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking the Department of Justice for “a formal declination of prosecution, in advance, for any employees of the United States, as well as any other personnel acting on behalf of the United States, who may employ methods in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that otherwise might subject those individuals to prosecution.”
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The letter further indicated that “the interrogation team had concluded” that “the use of more aggressive methods is required to persuade Abu Zubaydah to provide the critical information we need to safeguard the lives of innumerable innocent men, women and children within the United States and abroad.” The letter added that these “aggressive methods” would otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute, “apart from potential reliance upon the doctrines of necessity or of self-defense.”
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This letter was circulated internally at the CIA, including to SWIGERT; however, there are no records to indicate it was provided to the attorney general.
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On July 13, 2002, ███████ CTC Legal, ████████████, and the CIA’s acting general counsel, John Rizzo, met with attorneys from the National Security Council and the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), as well as with Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Justice Criminal Division, and Daniel Levin, the chief of staff to the FBI director, to provide an overview of the CIA’s proposed interrogation techniques and to ask for a formal, definitive DOJ opinion regarding the lawfulness of employing the specific CIA interrogation techniques against Abu Zubaydah.
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The CIA attorneys described the 12 proposed interrogation techniques and told the Department of Justice and National Security Council attorneys that Abu Zubaydah continued to withhold critical intelligence on the identities of al-Qa’ida personnel in the United States and planned al-Qa’ida attacks. The CIA attorneys also told the group that CIA officers were complemented by:

“expert personnel retained on contract who possess extensive experience, gained within the Department of Defense, on the psychological and physical methods of interrogation and the resistance techniques employed as countermeasures to such interrogation.”
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According to the CIA cable describing the meeting, the representatives from the OLC, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, advised that the criminal prohibition on torture would not prohibit the methods proposed by the interrogation team because of the absence of any specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.
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On July 13, 2002, Yoo sent an unclassified letter to the CIA’s acting general counsel describing his interpretation of the statute.
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Despite the initial view expressed by Yoo that the use of the proposed CIA interrogation techniques would be lawful, on July 17, 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice requested a delay in the approval of the interrogation techniques for Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation until the attorney general issued an opinion.
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The following day. Rice and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley requested that the Department of Justice “delay the approval of the memo detailing the next phase of interrogations” until the CIA provided specific details on its proposed interrogation techniques and “an explanation of why the CIA is confident these techniques will not cause lasting and irreparable harm to Abu Zubaydah.”
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Rice asked the CIA to provide the OLC with a description of each of the planned interrogation techniques, and to “gather and provide any available empirical data on the reactions and likelihood of prolonged mental harm from the use of the ‘water board’ and the staged burial.”
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On July 15, 2002, a cable providing details on the proposed interrogation phase stated that only the DETENTION SITE GREEN chief of Base would be allowed to interrupt or stop an interrogation in process, and that the chief of Base would be the final decision-making authority as to whether the CIA’s interrogation techniques applied to Abu Zubaydah would be discontinued.
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The CIA officers at the detention site added:

“If [Abu Zubaydah] develops a serious medical condition which may involve a host of conditions including a heart attack or another catastrophic type of condition, all efforts will be made to ensure that proper medical care will be provided to [him]. In the event [Abu Zubaydah] dies, we need to be prepared to act accordingly, keeping in mind the liaison equities involving our hosts.”
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To address these issues, the cable stated that if Abu Zubaydah were to die during the interrogation, he would be cremated.
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The interrogation team closed the cable by stating:

“regardless which [disposition] option we follow however, and especially in light of the planned psychological pressure techniques to be implemented, we need to get reasonable assurances that [Abu Zubaydah] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”
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Officers from the CIA’s ALEC Station responded to the interrogation team’s comments several days later. Their cable noted that the interrogation team was correct in its “understanding that the interrogation process takes precedence over preventative medical procedures.”
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ALEC Station further observed:

“There is a fairly unanimous sentiment within HQS that [Abu Zubaydah] will never be placed in a siutation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released. While it is difficult to discuss specifics at this point, all major players are in concurrence that [Abu Zubaydah] should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life. This may preclude [Abu Zubaydah] from being turned over to another country, but a final decision regarding his future incarceration condition has yet to be made.”
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As a result of the request by National Security Advisor Rice for additional research on the CIA’s proposed interrogation techniques, CIA and DOJ personnel contacted individuals at the Department of Defense’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), the agency that administers the SERE school, to gather information about the effects of using the techniques in training exercises.
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According to CIA officer
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, who had
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joined the CIA’s OTS after ██ years at JPRA, an individual with SERE school experience commented that “information gleaned via harsh treatment may not be accurate, as the prisoner may say anything to avoid further pain,” and that “[c]urrent doctrine for interrogations conducted in the permanent phase of capture may lean towards ‘soft’ or ‘indirect’ rounds of questioning.”
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Pursuant to National Security Advisor Rice’s request, CIA Headquarters personnel also requested information from the interrogation team—particularly SWIGERT and DUNBAR—about the psychological effects of the use of the waterboard and mock burial. The chief of Base at DETENTION SITE GREEN responded by cable noting that:

“We are a nation of laws and we do not wish to parse words. A bottom line in considering the new measures proposed is that [Abu Zubaydah] is being held in solitary confinement, against his will, without legal representation, as an enemy of our country, our society and our people. Therefore, while the techniques described in Headquarters meetings and below are administered to student volunteers in the U.S. in a harmless way, with no measurable impact on the psyche of the volunteer, we do not believe we can assure the same here for a man forced through these processes and who will be made to believe this is the future course of the remainder of his life. Station, [DETENTION SITE GREEN chief of Base] and [DETENTION SITE GREEN] personnel will make every effort possible to insure [
sic
] that subject is not permanently physically or mental harmed but we should not say at the outset of this process that there is no risk.”
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As former psychologists for the United States Air Force, SWIGERT and DUNBAR had no direct experience with the waterboard, as it was not used in Air Force SERE training. Nonetheless, they indicated that the waterboard—which they described as an “absolutely convincing technique”—was necessary to overwhelm Abu Zubaydah’s ability to resist.
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They also responded that they were aware that the Navy—which used the waterboard technique in training—had not reported any significant long-term consequences on individuals from its use. Unlike the CIA’s subsequent use of the waterboard, however, the Navy’s use of the technique was a single training exercise and did not extend to multiple sessions. SWIGERT and DUNBAR wrote:

“any physical pressure applied to extremes can cause severe mental pain or suffering. Hooding, the use of loud music, sleep deprivation, controlling darkness and light, slapping, walling, or the use of stress positions taken to extreme can have the same outcome. The safety of any technique lies primarily in how it is applied and monitored.”
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On July 24, 2002, the attorney general verbally approved the use of 10 interrogation techniques, which included: the attention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap (insult slap), cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, use of diapers, and use of insects.
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The interrogation team, however, indicated that they intended to wait for the approval to use the waterboard before proceeding with their interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. On July 26, 2002, the attorney general verbally approved the use of the waterboard.
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The OLC finalized its classified written legal opinion on August 1, 2002. The earlier CIA request to conduct a mock burial was not formally considered by the OLC. The approved interrogation techniques, along with other CIA interrogation techniques that were subsequently identified and used by the CIA, are referred to as the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or more commonly by the CIA as “EITs.”

In the course of seeking approval to use the techniques, CIA Headquarters advised the Depaitment of Justice and the national security advisor that “countless more Americans may die unless we can persuade AZ to tell us what he knows.” CIA Headquarters further represented that the DETENTION SITE GREEN interrogation team believed “Abu Zubaydah continues to withhold critical threat information,” and “that in order to persuade him to provide” that information, “the use of more aggressive techniques is required.”
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The cable to DETENTION SITE GREEN from CIA Headquarters documenting the information CIA Headquarters had provided to the Department of Justice warned that “[t]he legal conclusions are predicated upon the determinations by the interrogation team that Abu Zubaydah continues to withhold critical threat information.”
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According to cables, however, the CIA interrogators at the detention site had not determined that “the use of more aggressive techniques was required” to “persuade” Abu Zubaydah to provide threat information. Rather, the interrogation team believed the objective of the coercive interrogation techniques was to confirm Abu Zubaydah did not have additional information on threats to the United States, writing:

“Our assumption is the objective of this operation is to achieve a high degree of confidence that [Abu Zubaydah] is not holding back actionable information concerning threats to the United States beyond that which [Abu Zubaydah] has already provided.”
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As is described in this summary, and in more detail in the full Committee Study, the interrogation team later deemed the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques a success, not because it resulted in critical threat information, but because it provided further evidence that Abu Zubaydah had not been withholding the aforementioned information from the interrogators.
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