john helgerson

On page 30 of the 2004 CIA inspector general report, the CIA’s interrogation guidelines provided for “standard techniques” of interrogation that include, among other things, “sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours.” Clearly the CIA must have told John Helgerson, the inspector general, that those were the limits.
Moreover, in Footnote 34, the IG reports that [...]

It’s not just former Vice President Dick Cheney who misrepresented what the CIA inspector general’s report says about the effectiveness of torture. Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard reports on a “GOP memo” he says is being circulated on the Hill that’s a laughable tissue of decontextualized bullet-pointed quotes from the report. For instance, its [...]

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 issued guidelines for both the “enhanced [...]

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 based on complete information, and information [...]

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 practiced waterboarding was different from [...]

CIA Director Leon Panetta has just sent this letter to the CIA in advance of today’s anticipated release of the 2004 CIA inspector general report on torture — and, quite possibly, an investigation from Attorney General Eric Holder into the same. The last time he sent one of these, it was to buck up agency [...]

Daphne’s already blown the kazoo and hung the streamers for today’s release of the 2004 CIA inspector general report on the agency’s use of torture “enhanced interrogation” techniques. We’ll be covering this throughout the day. But pay attention as well to what might not get released today: another long awaited report, this time from the [...]

As I will note in a forthcoming piece, Monday is the deadline set by a federal judge for the Obama administration to release a much-anticipated CIA inspector general report about the agency’s detentions and interrogations practices. Only the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to get the report released, has had to endure four different [...]

So the Justice Department got most of what it wanted here. Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled this morning that the CIA will have until August 24 to release a declassified version of the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture, a report that documents abuse so disturbing it reportedly brought Attorney General Eric Holder to the [...]

When last we left the saga of the CIA’s 2004 inspector general report on torture, Judge Alvin Hellerstein had left the ACLU hanging on its objection to the Justice Department’s request to put off declassification until August 31. But now word comes from Hellerstein — in the form of handwritten notes scribbled on the upper-right-hand [...]