10 ms·

An Illustrated First-Person Guide to the CIA’s Torture Program

144 points by eplanit 7y ago

cf141q5325 7y ago
If you are interested in the topic, i can highly recommend "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" from Alfred McCoy for an analysis how torture changed and how it works today.
Biganon 7y ago
This website is barely usable on mobile. Slow, full of ads, and the entire page becomes dark as if a modal had been opened, yet it's nowhere to be found and closed. Won't read.
- slowenough 7y ago
  I got the same when I opened it using my browser. So I opened it in my "remote browser" (this is not a plug, just a help): https://free.cloudbrowser.xyz https://free.cloudbrowser.xyz and it was much more usable.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Interesting. Is there a self-hosted version someone could deploy for private use?
    - slowenough 7y ago
      Yes, friend: https://github.com/dosycorp/robot-head https://github.com/dosycorp/robot-head If you wanna play audio (yer username, c'mon), see: https://boogeh.com https://boogeh.com (audio works but is like 20 seconds lag as we encode it) There's docker image linked there as well. Hit me up if you have any issues: cris@dosyago.com or @browsergap on twitter. X
Mirioron 7y ago
How is it possible that people weren't held accountable for this? And how come the US government still hasn't tried to remedy the situation? Are those people going to be held in captivity with no charges until their death?
- o10449366 7y ago
  Simply put, in America the military is a cult/religion, and almost anything done in the name of "national security" can be excused. Look no further than the Navy SEALs that had their charges dropped for war crimes - as long as they're on "our" side Americans don't really care what atrocities the military complex commits.
  - grantuna 7y ago
    I can think of one giant threat to national security that apparently they can do nothing about at the moment.
    - turk73 7y ago
      So the very person trying to drain this swamp, is, to you, the giant threat? That's unfortunate. Anyways, it's going to take the people rising up to stop the corruption. If you value freedom over comfort you will have to act. As far as pardoning that Navy SEAL goes, I think he got railroaded by a system that ties people's hands. His act saved lives in a war zone but what they were angry about was that he acted outside of his authority, which to the military is the biggest crime there. It is duplicitous to on the one hand require men to do terrible things and then on the other hand prosecute them for doing those same terrible things.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      SEALs are backing that one.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    The pardoning of Navy SEALs is not being excused at all. Trump has been receiving enormous and extraordinary amounts of backlash not just from both sides of the political spectrum, but also from inside the military itself.
corey_moncure 7y ago
This audio segment from The Intercept is highly relevant and illustrative of how this all came to be. My favorite sound bites are "In one e-mail with the subject 'Torture Update'", and "We will not be briefing the president on this". At one point, the CIA and Senate had mutually filed criminal prosecution referrals against one another over the cover up. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama-and-the-cia-torture-cover-up/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama...
- tehjoker 7y ago
  Somehow that was even more disturbing than the president orchestrating it. It indicates that the CIA is a rogue* agency that is insulated enough from the political system that it can basically do what it wants, and what it wants is rooted in base aggression devoid of even evidence based approaches (their own data showed torture didn't work). If the president doesn't know, doesn't authorize programs that are this controversial, it means they are a decoration and the political system is a sham. * rogue meaning autonomous from political control, not necessarily that it is doing anything to contradict the imperatives of the empire.
  - ouid 7y ago
    rouge meaning the powder you apply over foundation that makes it red.
    - tehjoker 7y ago
      One day I will learn to spell. Thank you.
      - ouid 7y ago
        Rogue is probably the most commonly misspelled 5 letter word, thanks to World of Warcraft.
    - rebuilder 7y ago
      I suppose, when one lacks the integrity to even blush, one fakes it.
currymj 7y ago
this seems to be just a copy-and-pasted article from the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-d...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Diederich 7y ago
This source document was linked in the above article, and I found it pretty interesting. "Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative" It describes in some detail the apparently authorized techniques and levels of torture. There's also a section about how the Navy already has some history with using waterboarding. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/08/05/memo-bybee2002.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/...
annoyingnoob 7y ago
The United States should be better than this, makes me sad to be American.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  You may not believe this, but humans are like that (and have been throughout the entire history). Makes me sad to be a human, but things are probably better than how they were, say, 300 years ago.
  - refurb 7y ago
    This is really true. It may be depressing for some people, but humans doing the wrong thing sometimes is never going to go away.
    - cylon13 7y ago
      We may never be able to get rid of individual psychos that torture people, but it would be nice if we could get rid of large-scale state-sanctioned torture that everyone knows about.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Doubtful, at least anytime soon. The diffusion of responsibility that large organizations bring enables the organization to act however unethically it wants in pursuit of its goals without anyone feeling responsible for it. Clandestine "we have to stop this instance when it becomes known" torture is still better than "everyone winks and nods and the program goes on" torture though.
  - mattigames 7y ago
    yes but we should focus on the ones done recently or still being done, and in that aspect America really takes the crown along China and a few other ones.
- mertnesvat 7y ago
selectodude 7y ago
This is literally cut and paste plagiarized from the New York Times article. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-d...
- bwan 7y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this. I was wondering about the credibility of this website after regretfully reading the comments section. Turns out they just scrape other websites and place a "source" link at the bottom of the article. From their about us page: "ENMNEWS.COM is a company that collects the most important news from around the world and stores them in one place to be easily and quickly available to our readers. All articles that are not ours have a source and was automatically downloaded."
  - tapland 7y ago
    And plaster it with invasive ads.
  - razakel 7y ago
    The site hasn't even existed for a year and appears to be based in Montenegro.
    - 1337biz 7y ago
      There was an amazing documentary on the fake news industry in Montenegro on YouTube. I think it was by AlJazzera. If you have time, give it a look - well worth watching!
      - razakel 7y ago
        You're thinking of Macedonia: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/161227102010693.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/1612271020... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-macedonian-fake-news-writer https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-macedoni... https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/
baybal2 7y ago
In defence of "whataboutism" argument The best phrase I heard about that is: "A sum of two half-wrongs don't make one right" Not as single country that went on torturing people can be a moral high mark. Even if we have hard time finding countries who have not tainted themselves with torture over the last 2 decades, we should never accept torture as a norm. Even if all major powers of the world were tainted by it, it just means that they all miss that high standard now. Will not name countries here, but think yourself.
enriquto 7y ago
The USA is still sadly lacking a "gulag archipelago" book, that will expose to polite society the scale of these practices.
Hitton 7y ago
Now imagine hypothetical scenario. Some innocent victim of the torture program or victim's relative decides to take revenge on USA by committing a mass murder or a terrorist attack. Wouldn't it be kinda justified? With an exception of kids, how many Americans are really blameless for these actions? They elected the leaders who allowed it (both Republicans - Bush and Democrats - Obama), they don't hold people who committed it accountable, they didn't try to make amends to victims or reimburse them. Many people go to BLM protest, but this torture was much worse than that and Americans just ... don't care.
- metabagel 7y ago
  Obama banned the use of torture.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    Yet continued drone strikes, killing who knows how many innocent people. Not a huge improvement.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    ... but completely failed to prosecute anyone.
  - Hitton 7y ago
    But the question is if it was meant to be real ban or just piece of paper to make the voters feel good. There is evidence pointing to the second possibility - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_jail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_jail . Also the failure to prosecute perpetrators or compensate the victims...
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  No need to imagine hypothetical scenarios. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
mellosouls 7y ago
A reminder of Christopher Hitchens' account of waterboarding: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808
- gdubs 7y ago
  Thanks; I hadn’t read that since it came out. Hitchens’ voice is missed. This article cuts through the noise to the heart of the torture conversation.
catacombs 7y ago
Five hours, 140 points later, and the link hasn't been updated to the CORRECT story: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-d...

144 points by eplanit 7y ago

If you are interested in the topic, i can highly recommend "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" from Alfred McCoy for an analysis how torture changed and how it works today.

Biganon 7y ago

This website is barely usable on mobile. Slow, full of ads, and the entire page becomes dark as if a modal had been opened, yet it's nowhere to be found and closed. Won't read.

slowenough 7y ago
I got the same when I opened it using my browser. So I opened it in my "remote browser" (this is not a plug, just a help): https://free.cloudbrowser.xyz https://free.cloudbrowser.xyz and it was much more usable.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Interesting. Is there a self-hosted version someone could deploy for private use?
  - slowenough 7y ago
    Yes, friend: https://github.com/dosycorp/robot-head https://github.com/dosycorp/robot-head If you wanna play audio (yer username, c'mon), see: https://boogeh.com https://boogeh.com (audio works but is like 20 seconds lag as we encode it) There's docker image linked there as well. Hit me up if you have any issues: cris@dosyago.com or @browsergap on twitter. X

Mirioron 7y ago

How is it possible that people weren't held accountable for this? And how come the US government still hasn't tried to remedy the situation? Are those people going to be held in captivity with no charges until their death?

o10449366 7y ago
Simply put, in America the military is a cult/religion, and almost anything done in the name of "national security" can be excused. Look no further than the Navy SEALs that had their charges dropped for war crimes - as long as they're on "our" side Americans don't really care what atrocities the military complex commits.
- grantuna 7y ago
  I can think of one giant threat to national security that apparently they can do nothing about at the moment.
  - turk73 7y ago
    So the very person trying to drain this swamp, is, to you, the giant threat? That's unfortunate. Anyways, it's going to take the people rising up to stop the corruption. If you value freedom over comfort you will have to act. As far as pardoning that Navy SEAL goes, I think he got railroaded by a system that ties people's hands. His act saved lives in a war zone but what they were angry about was that he acted outside of his authority, which to the military is the biggest crime there. It is duplicitous to on the one hand require men to do terrible things and then on the other hand prosecute them for doing those same terrible things.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    SEALs are backing that one.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  The pardoning of Navy SEALs is not being excused at all. Trump has been receiving enormous and extraordinary amounts of backlash not just from both sides of the political spectrum, but also from inside the military itself.

corey_moncure 7y ago

This audio segment from The Intercept is highly relevant and illustrative of how this all came to be. My favorite sound bites are "In one e-mail with the subject 'Torture Update'", and "We will not be briefing the president on this". At one point, the CIA and Senate had mutually filed criminal prosecution referrals against one another over the cover up. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama-and-the-cia-torture-cover-up/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama...

tehjoker 7y ago
Somehow that was even more disturbing than the president orchestrating it. It indicates that the CIA is a rogue* agency that is insulated enough from the political system that it can basically do what it wants, and what it wants is rooted in base aggression devoid of even evidence based approaches (their own data showed torture didn't work). If the president doesn't know, doesn't authorize programs that are this controversial, it means they are a decoration and the political system is a sham. * rogue meaning autonomous from political control, not necessarily that it is doing anything to contradict the imperatives of the empire.
- ouid 7y ago
  rouge meaning the powder you apply over foundation that makes it red.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    One day I will learn to spell. Thank you.
    - ouid 7y ago
      Rogue is probably the most commonly misspelled 5 letter word, thanks to World of Warcraft.
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    I suppose, when one lacks the integrity to even blush, one fakes it.

currymj 7y ago

this seems to be just a copy-and-pasted article from the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-d...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Diederich 7y ago

This source document was linked in the above article, and I found it pretty interesting. "Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative" It describes in some detail the apparently authorized techniques and levels of torture. There's also a section about how the Navy already has some history with using waterboarding. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/08/05/memo-bybee2002.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/...

annoyingnoob 7y ago

The United States should be better than this, makes me sad to be American.

Koshkin 7y ago
You may not believe this, but humans are like that (and have been throughout the entire history). Makes me sad to be a human, but things are probably better than how they were, say, 300 years ago.
- refurb 7y ago
  This is really true. It may be depressing for some people, but humans doing the wrong thing sometimes is never going to go away.
  - cylon13 7y ago
    We may never be able to get rid of individual psychos that torture people, but it would be nice if we could get rid of large-scale state-sanctioned torture that everyone knows about.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Doubtful, at least anytime soon. The diffusion of responsibility that large organizations bring enables the organization to act however unethically it wants in pursuit of its goals without anyone feeling responsible for it. Clandestine "we have to stop this instance when it becomes known" torture is still better than "everyone winks and nods and the program goes on" torture though.
- mattigames 7y ago
  yes but we should focus on the ones done recently or still being done, and in that aspect America really takes the crown along China and a few other ones.
mertnesvat 7y ago

selectodude 7y ago

This is literally cut and paste plagiarized from the New York Times article. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-d...

bwan 7y ago
Thank you for mentioning this. I was wondering about the credibility of this website after regretfully reading the comments section. Turns out they just scrape other websites and place a "source" link at the bottom of the article. From their about us page: "ENMNEWS.COM is a company that collects the most important news from around the world and stores them in one place to be easily and quickly available to our readers. All articles that are not ours have a source and was automatically downloaded."
- tapland 7y ago
  And plaster it with invasive ads.
- razakel 7y ago
  The site hasn't even existed for a year and appears to be based in Montenegro.
  - 1337biz 7y ago
    There was an amazing documentary on the fake news industry in Montenegro on YouTube. I think it was by AlJazzera. If you have time, give it a look - well worth watching!
    - razakel 7y ago
      You're thinking of Macedonia: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/161227102010693.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/1612271020... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-macedonian-fake-news-writer https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-macedoni... https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/

baybal2 7y ago

In defence of "whataboutism" argument The best phrase I heard about that is: "A sum of two half-wrongs don't make one right" Not as single country that went on torturing people can be a moral high mark. Even if we have hard time finding countries who have not tainted themselves with torture over the last 2 decades, we should never accept torture as a norm. Even if all major powers of the world were tainted by it, it just means that they all miss that high standard now. Will not name countries here, but think yourself.

enriquto 7y ago

The USA is still sadly lacking a "gulag archipelago" book, that will expose to polite society the scale of these practices.

Hitton 7y ago

Now imagine hypothetical scenario. Some innocent victim of the torture program or victim's relative decides to take revenge on USA by committing a mass murder or a terrorist attack. Wouldn't it be kinda justified? With an exception of kids, how many Americans are really blameless for these actions? They elected the leaders who allowed it (both Republicans - Bush and Democrats - Obama), they don't hold people who committed it accountable, they didn't try to make amends to victims or reimburse them. Many people go to BLM protest, but this torture was much worse than that and Americans just ... don't care.

metabagel 7y ago
Obama banned the use of torture.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  Yet continued drone strikes, killing who knows how many innocent people. Not a huge improvement.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- ncmncm 7y ago
  ... but completely failed to prosecute anyone.
- Hitton 7y ago
  But the question is if it was meant to be real ban or just piece of paper to make the voters feel good. There is evidence pointing to the second possibility - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_jail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_jail . Also the failure to prosecute perpetrators or compensate the victims...
tepidandroid 7y ago
No need to imagine hypothetical scenarios. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

mellosouls 7y ago

A reminder of Christopher Hitchens' account of waterboarding: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808

gdubs 7y ago
Thanks; I hadn’t read that since it came out. Hitchens’ voice is missed. This article cuts through the noise to the heart of the torture conversation.

catacombs 7y ago

Five hours, 140 points later, and the link hasn't been updated to the CORRECT story: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-d...