Date

Nov 29, 2002

Description

This cable from the Thailand black site to CIA ALEC Station reported on two interrogation sessions with Nashiri, and included several new elements different from the previous cables in this series. First was Nashiri's name, previously rendered as 'Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, and now as 'Abd Al-Rahim Husayn Muhammad 'Abdu Nashir. Second was the mention that Nashiri would soon be "moved to another facility (described as a much worse place)" - the Thailand site would be closed on December 4, 2002 because of tensions with the Thai government and CIA's discovery that a major U.S. newspaper was on to the location, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report. Third was the "base note" included in paragraph 3 about Nashiri's small gesture towards privacy, that the "small box had been moved by subject overnight to the far corner of the cell, to block the view of subject's waste bucket from direct view through the cell bars" - to which "interrogators informed subject that this was not his space at all - it was their space, and he was not to do anything with it without their permission." Fourth was the actual admission of failure by the interrogators Mitchell and Jessen: "Interrogators then told subject that his non-compliance with their requests for accurate, meaningful information was really all their fault, for not conditioning subject properly. Likening the conditioning process to tenderizing a fine steak, interrogators told subject that perhaps he similarly just needed conditioning and 'tenderizing' to be ready for what interrogators were asking of him." This was after extended sessions of physical violence, wall slamming, box confinement, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, shackling, stress positions, and waterboarding. The marked differences between the prior cables and the cables after this date from the Thailand black site suggest the possibility that someone other than Gina Haspel may have authored or authorized them. Haspel may have finished her temporary duty assignment as chief of base (the end of November would have been 30 days since she arrived), and been succeeded by a new base chief. The U.S. Senate process that confirmed Haspel as CIA director in 2018 failed to establish any actual dates for her responsibilities at the Thailand black site and other CIA posts, leaving her as the first undercover CIA director in U.S. history.

Document published in following posting(s):

Gina Haspel CIA Torture Cables Declassified

Aug 10, 2018