Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- 1 Torture and political morality in historical perspective
- 2 Political morality and the Bush Administration
- 3 Bush lawyers: the politics of legal interpretation
- 4 The military: Afghanistan, Guantánamo, Iraq
- 5 The CIA: kidnapping, Black Sites, extraordinary rendition
- 6 Due process: detention classification, Military Commissions
- 7 Prisoner abuse and the politics of transitional justice
- Annex A Cast of principal characters
- Annex B Reports on US policy toward enemy prisoners
- Annex C Some relevant legal norms: selected provisions
- Annex D Timeline, selected events, Bush Administration
- Index
- References
5 - The CIA: kidnapping, Black Sites, extraordinary rendition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- 1 Torture and political morality in historical perspective
- 2 Political morality and the Bush Administration
- 3 Bush lawyers: the politics of legal interpretation
- 4 The military: Afghanistan, Guantánamo, Iraq
- 5 The CIA: kidnapping, Black Sites, extraordinary rendition
- 6 Due process: detention classification, Military Commissions
- 7 Prisoner abuse and the politics of transitional justice
- Annex A Cast of principal characters
- Annex B Reports on US policy toward enemy prisoners
- Annex C Some relevant legal norms: selected provisions
- Annex D Timeline, selected events, Bush Administration
- Index
- References
Summary
The ICRC … has been informed … that the objective of the CIA detention program was … directed by President Bush. Currently … both the interrogation plan and specific use of techniques must be approved by the Director or Deputy Director of the CIA.
(ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody, February 2007, p. 38)In parallel to the US military and sometimes intersecting with it, the CIA ran operations to seize persons who were suspected of hostile actions against the United States (or arranged for local authorities to seize them). Here we are talking first of all about state kidnapping in that persons are seized rather than arrested: they are held without due process of law and in denial of the internationally recognized right to be recognized as a person under law. Held incommunicado (and without ICRC visits), they are either detained in Agency secret places (including parts of US military prisons and US military vessels), or they are transferred to states known for forced disappearances and torture. There would be no point to such a policy of forced disappearances except for abusive interrogation. Key to CIA doctrine on interrogation, as we noted in Chapter 1, is isolation and humiliation, total control, and abuse, as recorded in the Kubark manual and other documents.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Prisoner AbuseThe United States and Enemy Prisoners after 9/11, pp. 136 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011