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Interrogation techniques

A man's image is blurred as he walks across a giant marble seal in the floor of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

What we know — and what we don’t — about Trump’s controversial pick to lead the CIA

Conflict & Justice

If she can muster enough votes, Haspel, who is 61, would be the first woman to run the intelligence agency. She would replace Mike Pompeo, newly confirmed secretary of state.

trump cia

Trump’s new pick for CIA director has a murky past with torture programs

Conflict
"Secrets, Politics and Torture" screen grab.

How the CIA helped make ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ — and shape the torture debate

Conflict
Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of military police during inprocessing at the temporary detention facility at Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray in this January 11, 2002 file photograph.

He blew the whistle on CIA torture, and now he’s finally home from jail — and talking

Justice
Soldiers from the 35th US Volunteer Infantry subject a Filipino to the ‘water cure,’ a common ‘enhanced interrogation’ technique employed during the war to pacify the Philippines between 1899 and 1902.

America has used water to torture people for more than a century

Justice
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein discusses the Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's anti-terrorism tactics on December 9, 2014.

Here are four key findings from the gruesome Senate report on torture

Conflict

The conclusions reached by the Senate Intelligence Committee in a new report on so-called harsh interrogation techniques are a damning critique of the Central Intelligence Agency. Not only did the agency torture people, but it did so while lying about it and getting no value from the information it gathered.

A guard shuts the gate to the airport in Szymany, Poland, in 2005. Polish media said the airport was identified by Human Rights Watch as a potential site of alleged CIA prisons used to interrogate al-Qaeda captives.

Poles say aiding the CIA’s torture program ‘was simply being a good ally’

Justice

Poland was home to one of the secret CIA “black sites” where detainees were held and tortured. But while a new report detailed the abuses prisoners suffered, some Poles wonder why they seems to be the only country willing to take their leaders to task for their involvement.

The World

Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s Secret Vacuum Cleaner Design

Conflict & Justice

This week we learned something we didn’t know about Khalid Sheik Mohammed. When he was first held a decade ago in secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, his handlers allowed him to design a vacuum cleaner.

Do The Positions of Obama’s FBI Nominee Deserve More Scrutiny?

The legality of waterboarding, the role of state-sponsored surveillance and the importance of whistle-blowers–those were just a few of the major questions thrown at James Comey before a Senate Judiciary Committee. Comey is President Obama’s pick to lead the FBI. From 2003 to 2005, Comey served as deputy attorney general under President Bush, and while […]

CIA’s Clandestine Chief Connected to Destruction of Torture Tapes

Global Politics

The acting head of the CIA’s prestigious clandestine service is connected to the controversial detention and “enhanced” interrogation policies adopted after 9/11.