Date

Nov 26, 2002

Description

CIA redacted the date of this cable, but the declassified CIA Inspector General report described the waterboarding of Nashiri as beginning on the 12^th day of his detention, which would make the date November 26, 2002. This cable from the Thailand black site commanded by Gina Haspel back to CIA ALEC Station reported, "Interrogation escalated rapidly from subject being aggressively debriefed by interrogators while standing at the walling wall, to multiple applications of the walling technique, and ultimately, multiple applications of the watering technique." At one point, Nashiri "was left strapped to the waterboard to contemplate his fate" for 20 minutes; afterwards, Mitchell and Jessen told him "no matter what subject thought might happen to him, interrogators were not going to let subject come to grave harm; indeed, they were going to ensure that he would be able to answer the questions they would pose to him again and again." "The water treatment was applied at 1214 hours," after which "Interrogators covered subject's head with the hood and left him on the water board, moaning, shaking and asking God to help him repeatedly...." Mitchell and Jessen applied another "water treatment" at 1340 hours (likely a typo for 1240) saying "they wanted to know of operations against the U.S. Subject was not being honest with them, and they were willing to continue to give subject the same treatment, day in and day out, for months if need be, until subject decided to cooperate." But "Subject again said that there were no operations, they weren't talking operations, and begged interrogators to tell him more so that he would be able to remember what they wanted." The cable included some confusing reports on timing: paragraph 12 gave 1340 as the time for the second waterboarding, while paragraph 13 listed 1252 as the time when Nashiri was locked, naked, in the small box, and the second paragraph reported the whole torture session as lasting from 1107 to 1252, so 1240 was likely the actual time of the waterboarding.

Document published in following posting(s):

Gina Haspel CIA Torture Cables Declassified

Aug 10, 2018