The ‘Hard Takedown’

In a section of the 2004 CIA inspector general report about interrogation techniques that were used on detainees by the CIA but never approved by the Justice Department — including mock executions, blowing cigar smoke into someone’s face until he became ill, squeezing a detainee’s neck “to restrict the detainee’s More…

CIA Documents Provide Little Cover for Cheney Claims

For months, former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that two documents prepared by the CIA, one from 2004 and the other from 2005, would refute critics of the Bush administration’s torture program. He told Fox’s Sean Hannity in April:

“I haven’t talked about it, but I know specifically

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Obtained: The CIA Documents Dick Cheney Says Vindicate Torture

We’ve obtained and scanned in the two CIA documents that former Vice President Dick Cheney claims justify his longstanding arguments that torture was an effective interrogation and counterterrorism tool. As you read them, consider this post as well.

Here they are, after the jump:

What George Tenet Thought Wasn’t an ‘Enhanced Interrogation Technique’

A few months ago I pointed to declassified references in the 2005 Office of Legal Counsel torture opinions to guidelines issued by former CIA Director George Tenet in January 2003 for the application of torture techniques. It turns out, according to the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report, that Tenet More…

Footnote Suggests Broader Probe Is Needed – of CIA and DOJ

Following up on Spencer’s post, I don’t feel too sorry for Jay Bybee or John Yoo, the lead lawyers at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who approved the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” As Spencer writes and Footnote 26 of the newly released Inspector General report More…

CIA Withheld Medical Information From the Justice Department to Obtain Torture Approvals

It’s almost enough to generate sympathy for Jay Bybee and John Yoo, the two heads the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2002 who signed off on the infamous torture memos. According to the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture, Bybee and Yoo didn’t make their decisions More…

CIA Inspector General Report Implicates DOJ Lawyers Again

The more I read the CIA inspector general report released today, the clearer it seems that any real investigation of CIA abuses will have to question the lawyers who approved the interrogation techniques. That’s because the guidelines governing the detention and interrogation of detainees appear to have all More…

CIA Inspector General Report Implicates Justice Department Officials

I know Attorney General Eric Holder just announced that he plans to investigate only the CIA interrogators that went beyond what the law allowed, as it was interpreted by the Justice Department’s torture memos, but what will he do about the fact that the Justice Department itself authorized exceeding those More…

Here’s How the CIA Can Fudge the Question of Whether Torture ‘Worked’

For those, like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who want to argue that CIA torture “worked,” a footnote on page six of the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture provides a blueprint for muddying the waters. Rarely if ever, according to the report, did torture occur by itself. More…

This Isn’t SERE’s Waterboarding, This Is CIA Waterboarding

There has been some confusion for years over what exactly “waterboarding” has meant in practice. Does it induce the sensation of drowning? Or does it actually replicate it? The differences between the two may seem academic, but the CIA inspector general report on torture says that the way the agency More…