Barry Eisler's New Thriller Tells of U.S. Torture Program

Barry Eisler's new novel, Inside Out, is being released in stores today. An excerpt from the novel was posted at Truthout the other day, under the title, "The New National Security State."

The publication of Inside Out is a big deal, because until now, no one has taken the headlines surrounding the Bush/Cheney/CIA torture scandal and made them the subject of memorable fiction. The book itself has an impressive bibliography, showing the amount of research that went into the tale of black ops special forces officer, Ben Treven, called upon to track down a former colleague who has stolen dozens of CIA torture videotapes and is blackmailing the U.S. government, lest he release them to a shocked world.

Eisler is known for his intelligent thrillers, and especially his John Rain series. With Inside Out he continues his move in a new direction, towards an examination of the oligarchy that runs the United States, and has in the name of national security, engaged in torture and other crimes.

Barry writes:

Inside Out is dedicated to the bloggers—the independent sleuths who are after the truth, not a pat on the head from the White House; who have a passion for change, not "a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are;" who serve the people, not the powerful. Much of the information and insight upon which Inside Out is based was developed by bloggers and other independents; it's fitting, therefore, that the Inside Out book tour thank them for what they do. So I'm proud to announce that my Bay Area, Los Angeles, DC, and New York City events are not just book signings, but also fundraisers for AlterNet, Firedoglake, GRITtv, and Truthout, three superb sources of independent political news and opinion.

The book signing schedule this summer for Inside Out can be accessed here.

Tune in (or what does one say in the era of the Internet) to the Firedoglake Book Salon, this Saturday, July 3, 5pm EDT/2pm PDT, to chat with Barry Eisler and myself about the thin line between fiction and truth on torture, on disappeared prisoners and black-site prisons, and more.

Support your local left-wing writer, and get a hell-of-a-read in the bargain.

CIA Second Taping System Reported in Zubaydah Interrogation

Originally posted at Firedoglake/The Seminal

Jason Leopold has published an important article on Abu Zubaydah and the questions swirling around the destruction of the videotapes of his interrogation by the CIA. The Truthout reporter writes that a number of intelligence sources have described a hitherto unreported second taping system that was used on Zubaydah at the black site CIA prison in Thailand where the interrogations took place in 2002-2003.

Reportedly, this second set of tapes appear to have been used to collect "’data’ about Zubaydah, specifically, how much mental and physical pain he could endure after each torture session he was subjected to that took place prior to the issuance of OLC legal memos in August 2002." This data was then used to shape the parameters of the torture program and the types of legal approval John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury gave in those legal memos.

It is unknown if the purported second taping system was used on other CIA prisoners at the Thailand black site, but Leopold’s article also reports, in another important angle on the scandal, "that a similar taping system was also set up at a secret site at Guantanamo about a year later where interrogations of other high-value prisoners were also recorded." Last January, Scott Horton at Harper’s published a major expose concerning the possible killings of three prisoners in 2006 at a hitherto unrevealed secret site at Guantanamo unofficially known as Camp No. The prisoners had previously been labeled "suicides" by camp officials.

The issue of the tapes disposal has been under criminal investigation for many months by Special Prosecutor John Durham. Last August, Attorney General Holder also picked Mr. Durham to lead an inquiry into the abuse of prisoners subjected to the CIA’s interrogation program.

The investigation into the destruction of the tapes has included grand jury testimony by some CIA principals and a grant of immunity to CIA attorney John McPherson, who, according to the Washington Post, "reviewed the tapes years before they were destroyed to determine whether they diverged from written records about the interrogations."

Leopold is now reporting that the Senate Intelligence Committee has decided to look into the situation surrounding Abu Zubaydah’s CIA interrogation:

The panel will scrutinize thousands of pages of highly classified documents related to Zubaydah’s detention and torture to determine, among other things, whether the techniques he was subjected to [were] accurately reflected in CIA cable traffic sent back to Langley, whether he ever provided actionable intelligence to his torturers, and how the CIA and other government agencies came to rely on flawed intelligence that led the Bush administration to classify him as the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda and its first high-value detainee, Hill sources said.

As was reported in May 2009, FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who was one of the early interrogators of Mr. Zubaydah, in his prepared statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee investigating prisoner abuse, mentioned the experimental nature of the CIA’s interrogation methods no less than four times. Mr. Zubaydah himself told the International Committee of the Red Cross that he heard or he suspected the CIA was experimenting with torture techniques upon him. I reported at the time:

It seems likely that Abu Zubaydah was a primary subject of JPRA/SERE’s reverse-engineering of torture techniques, using the paradigm of psychologist and former American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman’s theory of "learned helplessness."

According to a report last month by Mr. Leopold, a national security official said that Abu Zubaydah was used as an "experiment. A guinea pig." News of a second taping system, used to gather specific kinds of psychological or psychiatric data on the CIA’s interrogation subject(s), appear at the same time as revelations stemming from a release of CIA documents to the ACLU that describe CIA officials asking for "instructions" regarding the "disposition of hard drives and magnetic media" associated with the torture of Abu Zubaydah. Marcy Wheeler has been following a number of issues associated with the release of these documents at her Emptywheel blog.

Revealed: CIA Cable "Granting Permission" to Destroy Torture Videotapes

Originally posted at Firedoglake

A January 8 release of documents in the ACLU FOIA lawsuit seeking materials related to the CIA's destruction of videotapes of interrogators using "enhanced interrogation techniques" has revealed the first evidence of a precise instruction for the destruction of those tapes.

According to Rachel Myers at the ACLU, while there was previous evidence of requests from the "field" that the videotapes be destroyed, this is our first verification of the exact date CIA headquarters gave its approval.

The approval came in the form of "a two-page cable discussing a proposal and granting permission to destroy the videotapes.” (emphasis added) The cable was sent from "HQ" to the "Field" on November 8, 2005, the same day an earlier request was made from the "Field". Confirmation of the destruction of the tapes was already revealed in a cable “from the field to CIA headquarters, confirming the destruction of the videotapes.” (11/20/2009 Vaughn Index 4).

Requests for destruction of interrogation videotapes, and discussions around such an action are documented as far back as September 2002 (11/20/2009 Vaughn Index 55). It's presumed that these requests came from the Thailand CIA black site where Abu Zubaydah had been an experimental victim of the new so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which were based on stress inoculation torture survival schools for the military, known as SERE. Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, formerly of SERE and its parent agency, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), have been identified as being key figures in implementing the program.

The new cable has been withheld, citing numerous FOIA "exemptions," as have hundreds of other such pieces of evidence, including emails and draft memoranda, by the CIA. Its existence is revealed as part of a Vaughn index of withheld documents, wherein some description of the document is given, in addition to the reasons for withholding the document.

The "permission" cable is Document 154 in Part 6 of the latest Vaughn release/dump. It’s on pg. 13 out of 35 (all doc links are PDF). A full timeline on the CIA videotape destruction actions, which has not however been updated for the latest crop of documents, has been put together by the ACLU. All the documents released thus far can be accessed here.

Emptywheel has been covering this issue from the beginning. For instance, see this relevant story, wherein EW reports that "The CIA Asked to Destroy Torture Tapes on Same Day They Claimed They Didn't Torture."

Meanwhile, the investigation into the destruction of the videotapes, with prosecutor John Durham leading, has languished for over two years now. While justice is supposed to be blind and disinterested, the investigation will probably go nowhere unless public pressure is put on the Department of Justice and the Obama administration to hold the torturers accountable.

ACLU's Own Analysis

The ACLU has written up a preliminary review of the outstanding new finds in the latest CIA FOIA release, including a brief discussion of the "permission" cable that was the subject of this article. See the article at the ACLU's Blog of Rights. Among the new details adding to the torture narrative:

The conversation about destroying the tapes began during the torture of Abu Zubaydah. Two cables sent from the black site to CIA headquarters on August 19, 2002 discuss “lessons for the future based on CIA experience” and an August 20, 2002 cable discusses “a proposed policy regarding the use of videotapes in interrogations"....

... after the July 38 [sic], 2003 Principals meeting, the question of the tapes “seemed settled” until the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos in April 2004. In fact, the Vaughn index shows the conversation continuing even during this period, with a sequence of emails around September 22, 2008 [sic - most likely a typo for 2003] “concerning a draft memo on the destruction of the videotapes” and a February 19, 2004 email with attachment “concerning the legalities as to whether the CIA is legally required to retain the videotapes"....

There are numerous emails in the days leading up to destruction of the videotapes on November 8, 2005, just after the Washington Post published Dana Priest’s front-page expos矇 of CIA secret prisons and the day before The New York Times published a story on the CIA inspector general’s damning report. The CIA is clearly bracing for these leaks: on October 31, [2005] there is a 13-page email chain “discussing whether to publically acknowledge the counterterrorism program” and on November 1, [2005] an email with attachment “that discusses the Agency’s detention and interrogation program from a legal standpoint.” There are communications orchestrating how the agency will talk about the destruction of the tapes...

The article also lists the 10 documents withheld due to FOIA exemption (b)(7)(a), which relates to their use in an ongoing criminal investigation (Durham). In addition, there are three documents withheld for Congressional  consultation. ACLU notes "that there is a substantial paper trail surrounding the destruction of the videotapes."

We know Durham has been down that trail. Where is his investigation going?