Former CIA director personally observed waterboarding of prisoner: Court testimony

A former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, who had overseen a secret prison in Thailand, personally observed interrogation sessions in which inmates were being tortured. 

Gina Haspel personally observed interrogation sessions of a prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in 2000.

Seventeen American sailors were killed in the attack.

Citing testimony from James Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop the agency’s interrogation program, the New York Times said Haspel watched while he and a teammate subjected Nashiri to “enhanced interrogation” that included waterboarding.

Haspel has previously written memos to Washington about what was done to Nashiri.

Mitchell’s testimony, however, offered a more detailed peek at her work on the black site in Thailand.

Mitchell testified that he held a cloth over the man’s face and adjusted it to direct the water as another CIA contract psychologist, John Bruce Jessen, poured.

During the process of waterboarding, a cloth is placed over a detainee’s face and water is poured over it as a form of controlled drowning.

Mitchell said he had a “general memory of what was done” to the detainee.

Interrogators used other coercive techniques, such as confining him in a small box, slapping him, or slamming his head into a burlap-covered wall, Mitchell said.

Haspel had been asked if she had overseen the interrogations of Nashiri, during a confirmation hearing to become director of the intelligence agency in 2018, but she declined to answer, saying it was part of her classified career.

According to the Times, the military judge in the criminal case against al-Nashiri allowed Mitchell’s testimony only because the CIA destroyed videotapes that defense lawyers claimed would show interrogators torturing the alleged terrorist and another prisoner at the site.

Haspel formerly admitted her role in destroying 92 interrogation tapes of interrogations in the Thai black site.

“I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes," Haspel said during the 2018 Senate hearings when asked if she had overseen interrogations of al-Nashiri.

CIA releases memo clearing Gina Haspel in torture tape destruction

The CIA releases a memo saying Gina Haspel “acted appropriately” in carrying out orders to destroy videotapes of torture at a black site in Thailand.

The disclosure that the CIA had destroyed the tapes prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the black site program.

"The more we review the classified facts, the more disturbed we are – both by the actions she has taken during her career and by the CIA’s failure to allow the public the opportunity to consider them,” a group of senators opposing Haspel’s nomination as CIA director wrote back then.

An internal review by the CIA, however, “found no fault” with Haspel’s role in ordering the destruction of the tapes.

She finally got the job and served as CIA director under then-President Donald Trump from April 2018 to January 2021.

CIA black site detainee used as torture prop in Kabul

Declassified documents show that a Kuwaiti national detained by the CIA was used as a prop to teach the agency’s training interrogators about torture.

The aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York led to widespread abuses in US black sites, including the Guantanamo military base and detention center in Cuba.

Over 100,000 people were held captive at the infamous sites, including Muslims, women and children.

There are still 39 prisoners left in the detention center, which became the focus of international outrage because of the mistreatment and torture of prisoners.

Advocates for closing the detention center were optimistic when President Joe Biden took office.

He had promised to close the facility, but months into his term, one detainee who was already cleared during the Barack Obama administration, was released to his home country of Morocco in July last year.

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