US Politics Mega-thread - Page 10053

In August of 2002, interrogators at a secret CIA-run prison in Thailand set out to break a Palestinian man they believed was one of al-Qaida’s top leaders.

As the CIA’s video cameras rolled, security guards shackled Abu Zubaydah to a gurney and interrogators poured water over his mouth and nose until he began to suffocate. They slammed him against a wall, confined him for hours in a coffin-like box, and deprived him of sleep.

The 31-year-old Zubaydah begged for mercy, saying that he knew nothing about the terror group’s future plans. The CIA official in charge, known in agency lingo as the “chief of base,” mocked his complaints, accusing Zubaydah of faking symptoms of psychological breakdown. The torture continued.

When questions began to swirl about the Bush administration’s use of the “black sites,” and program of “enhanced interrogation,” the chief of base began pushing to have the tapes destroyed. She accomplished her mission years later when she rose to a senior position at CIA headquarters and drafted an order to destroy the evidence, which was still locked in a CIA safe at the American embassy in Thailand. Her boss, the head of the agency’s counterterrorism center, signed the order to feed the 92 tapes into a giant shredder.

By then, it was clear that CIA analysts were wrong when they had identified Zubaydah as the number three or four in al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden. The waterboarding failed to elicit valuable intelligence not because he was holding back, but because he was not a member of al-Qaida, and had no knowledge of any plots against the United States.

The chief of base’s role in this tale of pointless brutality and evidence destruction was a footnote to history — until earlier this month, when President Trump named her deputy director of the CIA.

On March 14 2018 00:14 Plansix wrote:

My guy, some of us were adults in 2005-2008 we all started to learn just to far the CIA went and when they ran around covering their tracks. None of the people in change of that time should still be at the CIA, let alone be promoted.

On March 14 2018 01:17 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Tuesday morning massacre.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/973592726787756032

On March 14 2018 01:20 IyMoon wrote:


Dude.... not all of us can see twitter on our work comps...

Don't use massacre like that! I was so worried that Muller had been fired for a second

BREAKING: Officials: White House fires top Tillerson aide who contradicted account of secretary of state's dismissal.