Every secret CIA prison, mapped

Intro (0s)

• A map of 54 countries involved in a secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program is presented, which aimed to kidnap and hide people from around the world for secret interrogation using violent means, both physically and psychologically (0s).
• The story begins six days after the 9/11 event, when George W. Bush signed a memo authorizing the CIA to secretly capture and detain terrorist suspects (17s).
• The issue arose of how to handle these suspects after capture, as putting them in US prisons would pose problems, including the need to follow the rules of war, declare them prisoners of war, allow them access to lawyers and trials, and prohibit the use of torture (28s).
• The CIA did not want to follow these rules, which are agreed upon by most countries in the world (51s).
• The entire nation was filled with anger and a desire for revenge against those responsible, and the CIA felt that these rules would only slow down their search for intelligence, which included not only finding terrorists but also preventing future attacks (54s).
• As a result, the CIA looked abroad and began establishing a global network of secret prisons, allowing them to kidnap and detain people outside of public, media, and legal scrutiny (1m9s).

The First Black Site (1m34s)

• The first target of the CIA was Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian citizen who was hiding in Pakistan and was believed to be a high-ranking leader of al-Qaeda (1m35s).
• In March 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured in a raid by CIA and FBI forces in Pakistan, and he was severely injured during the operation (1m44s).
• The CIA flew in a doctor from a top US hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah's wounds, as they needed him to survive in order to extract intelligence from him (1m54s).
• The CIA decided to take Abu Zubaydah to Thailand, where they had an agreement with the Thai government to use an old US military base for their operations (2m7s).
• The facility was later known as the Green Detention Site, and the plan was to use "novel interrogation methods" on Abu Zubaydah, which meant they planned to use torture (2m17s).
• However, there was a legal issue, as capturing someone in one country, taking them to a third country without planning to put them on trial or apply local law, and then using torture was illegal under international and US law (2m38s).
• To address this issue, the CIA asked government lawyers in Washington to provide a legal justification for their actions, and the lawyers drafted a series of memos that argued al-Qaeda members were not typical soldiers but rather "unlawful enemy combatants" (2m56s).
• The CIA obtained a guarantee from Washington that Abu Zubaydah would be kept isolated and incommunicado for the rest of his life (3m33s).
• Abu Zubaydah was secretly held in Thailand for nine months, during which time the CIA used enhanced interrogation techniques, including torture, to extract information from him (4m26s).
• However, the Thai government began to learn more about the secret program, and the CIA became concerned that the media would discover their activities (4m43s).
• The CIA decided to move Abu Zubaydah to another location, and they used a private plane to transport him from Thailand to Poland, where they had set up a new secret prison (5m31s).
• The CIA paid the Polish intelligence agency $15 million in cash to use the facility, which was known as the Blue Detention Site (6m41s).
• The CIA continued to use the Blue Detention Site to interrogate terrorist suspects, often using violent and coercive methods, and they also set up other secret prisons in Romania and Morocco (7m2s).
• However, the CIA eventually closed the Blue Detention Site and moved their operations to other locations, including Guantanamo Bay, where they set up two new secret prisons, known as the Cactus and Cobalt Detention Sites (8m11s).

See The Network (8m37s)

• A visual representation of the global network created by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shown on a map, which includes known flight routes used by the CIA to transfer prisoners around their black sites (8m38s).
• By 2004, the CIA had captured around 100 prisoners and constantly transferred them to stay away from the public, media, and often the local governments of the countries where they were being transferred (8m52s).
• The data, flight routes, and information were obtained through an investigation and a later-published Senate report, as well as some remarkable investigative journalism by the Rendition Project, which pieced together a lot of information to make it easier to understand (9m11s).
• The CIA utilized secret flights in 54 countries to transport prisoners, covering their tracks to avoid detection by law and media (9m34s).
• The network included a secret prison in Lithuania, called the Violet site, which was purchased by the CIA through a shell company, and was previously an unassuming barn that was once an elite riding club (9m55s).
• The CIA operated four secret prisons in Afghanistan, one of which was nicknamed the "Dark Prison" because prisoners were held in complete darkness and isolation in metal containers, sometimes with loud music played to keep them awake, and subjected to other terrible treatment (10m9s).
• The CIA also collaborated with countries like Jordan and Egypt, whose intelligence officials used torture, while CIA agents guided the process (10m26s).
• There is evidence that the CIA also turned ships into black sites, floating prisons where they could interrogate prisoners in international waters (10m36s).
• The process of reporting on such stories requires weeks or months of research and reporting, and tools like Ground News, which aggregates over 50,000 news sources into one place, can be helpful in understanding the story (10m54s).
• Ground News allows users to compare different news media outlets from around the world reporting on the same story, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the issue (11m27s).

The Victims (12m53s)

• The CIA ultimately utilized its black site network to interrogate 119 prisoners, releasing 94 of them, with some being sent to foreign detention, some released, some identities remaining unknown, and some proven to be innocent (12m58s).
• One example of an innocent prisoner is Maher Arar, a Canadian-Syrian dual citizen who was taken by the CIA in New York and transferred to Syria, where he was tortured for a year before being cleared of any wrongdoing (13m15s).
• Another example is Gul Rahman, a man who died of hypothermia in a CIA black site in Afghanistan after being left naked on a concrete floor (13m35s).
• A German citizen was detained and interrogated in a hotel room in Macedonia for 23 days, then flown to Afghanistan and imprisoned for four months before being released after the CIA realized he was the wrong person (13m46s).
• Some prisoners, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who planned the bombing of the USS Cole, were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques (14m3s).
• The idea behind using these techniques was that they would provide information that could prevent another attack and save thousands of lives (16m21s).
• However, research has shown that torture is ineffective and often produces false information, with the CIA's own program producing many examples of this (16m39s).
• The Senate investigated the CIA's program and found that there was no correlation between the information obtained through torture and the prevention of terrorist plots (17m34s).
• The CIA claimed that they had obtained useful intelligence from the program, but the Senate found that this information was often obtained from other sources or was already known to the government (17m43s).
• The CIA was also found to have never properly evaluated the effectiveness of these techniques and had avoided any form of accountability and oversight (18m5s).
• The report concluded that the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees (18m27s).

Conclusion (18m41s)

• The CIA's secret prison program was shut down, but 21 out of 119 men who went through the black sites are still being held by the US government at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba (18m54s).
• Only three of these men have received any form of judicial trial, with evidence presented and a verdict given (19m0s).
• The CIA's actions in the secret prison program have been seen as a huge success for terrorists, as it provoked the US into violating its own principles and values, exposing American hypocrisy (19m18s).
• Many parts of the world view the US as a hypocritical empire that preaches human rights and the rule of law but quickly violates these values when they become inconvenient (19m41s).
• The CIA did not gain any useful intelligence from the program and instead turned the detainees into victims, including a man who may have planned the USS Cole bombing that killed dozens of American sailors (19m56s).
• This individual should have been given a fair trial, but due to the CIA's use of torture, the case against him has been ruined, and evidence obtained through interrogation is now inadmissible in court (20m21s).
• The man has even been recognized as a victim by the European Court of Human Rights due to the torture he suffered in Poland and has been awarded 100,000 euros in compensation (20m33s).
• The families of those killed in the USS Cole bombing may never see justice, and the same is true for many of those who planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks (20m49s).
• The CIA's actions have turned the detainees into symbols of American hypocrisy rather than symbols of terror, which is a trap that has set back the US (21m8s).
• By giving in to revenge, the US has undermined the foundations of its institutions and will take years or decades to clean up the mess and ensure accountability (21m29s).