www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html?nav=rss_email/components
More CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11 By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 2, 2005; The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA n early four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight c ountries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eas tern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in C uba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomat s from three continents.
In Afghanistan, the largest CIA covert prison was code-named the Salt Pit, at center left above. In Afghanistan, the largest CIA covert prison was code-named the Salt Pit , at center left above. The Post has compiled a list of names made public thus far, encompa ssing 434 men whose identities have appeared in media reports, on Arabic Web sites...
National Security and Intelligence Washington Post staff writer Dana Priest discusses the latest development s in national security and intelligence. The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's un conventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the s ystem secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members o f Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions. The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black si tes" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressiona l documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United St ates and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence offi cers in each host country. The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the va lue of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agen cy answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which c aptives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the fa cilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how deci sions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long. While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and t estimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandal s at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not eve n acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the US government to legal chal lenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of politic al condemnation at home and abroad. But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the US military -- which operates under published rules and transpa rent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, fo reign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. T hose concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA D irector Porter J Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legis lation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degradin g treatment of any prisoner in US custody. Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful def ense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and in terrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without rest rictions imposed by the US legal system or even by the military tribun als established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European c ountries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior US o fficials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation. The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious firs t months after the Sept. Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and pra cticality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and s ecrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CI A officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission. "We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the pr ogram but not the location of the prisons.
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