Following the Torture Trail
As another report details abusive interrogations, the government faces tough choices on possible prosecutions.
"AN OLD STORY," CIA Director Leon Panetta said yesterday upon the release of a report by the agency's inspector general on the interrogation of terrorist suspects. Old, perhaps -- the report was completed in 2004 -- but nonetheless revolting.
Most tellingly, the report shows how clearly those involved in the interrogations foresaw the moment when, having been pressured by higher-ups to elicit information that high-value detainees were thought to be withholding, they would find themselves called to account for their actions.
The real culprits in this sordid story are those higher-ups, starting with former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney, who led America down the degrading path of state-sanctioned torture and left the next administration to cope with the fallout.
Washington Post, August, 25, 2009
PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122. May 12, 2004.
[/quote]The CIA in Latin America
By Tom Blanton
Posted March 14, 2000
Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed on page A17 titled “Hardly a Distinguished Career,” written by National Security Archive director Tom Blanton and commenting on the CIA’s decision to award the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal to the highest-ranking CIA official fired in a 1995 scandal for failing to inform Congress about the CIA’s ties to human rights abuses in Guatemala.
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 27
PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122. May 12, 2004.
Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual 1983