The US government used the September 11, 2001 “false flag” attacks in the United States as a justification for subjecting alleged terror suspects to torture, says an American counter-terrorism analyst.
Scott Bennett, an whistleblower and former US Army psychological warfare officer, made the remarks in reaction to reports that descriptions of how CIA and FBI agents tortured their captives caught by the US in its so-called ‘war on terror’ after the 9/11 had been read aloud during trials held at the infamous Guantanamo Bay military prison.
“An alleged plot mastermind was taken nude from interrogation to a medical officer, who put fluids up his rectum then returned him nude to interrogation. Some captives were kept like "cowering dogs," subjected to standing sleep deprivation, abdominal and facial slaps, in what one CIA agent called a "nightmare”,” US-based daily Miami Herald reported Friday, quoting statements made in the military court by 9/11 Prosecutor Jeffrey Groharing.
According to the daily, Groharing read the descriptions from various material his team had provided defense lawyers in a bid to prompt a new 9/11 trial judge, Marine Col. Keith Parrella, to restore the FBI interrogations of the alleged plotters that Parrella's predecessor had excluded from the trial.
Noting that the CIA’s torture record dated as far back as the Second World War, Bennett said the 9/11 attacks, which he described as “the greatest false flag in the history of civilization,” were used to justify the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
“Of course it’s completely unconstitutional,” Bennett said. “It’s certainly stupid with regards to intelligence because it doesn’t gather any intelligence and simply harms and terrifies the person who is being subjugated to these materials,” he told Press TV on Sunday.
He predicted that the recent revelation would lead to an unprecedented “house cleaning” at the CIA, specially now that Democrats had won the House of Representatives and were ready to give Republican President Donald Trump a hard time.
“They would be very wise to forcibly demand the change of the CIA because the party that does that is going to represent to the American people the best hope for changing an institution that is notoriously the equivalent of skullduggery, deceit, torture and unconstitutional practices,” the analyst concluded.
Gina Haspel, the current head of the CIA, used to operate a secret US torture site in Thailand. It was revealed in August that she had talked in detail about torture of a terror suspect by means of waterboarding and other controversial methods while she was running the secret black site.
Trump is a supporter of torture and has made it clear that he would reinstate waterboarding and other methods if necessary.