John Kiriakou's Dead Drop - S1E19 Torture

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

THE BLURB: If this story has a heart of darkness, this is it. How did American policy find its way to legitimizing torture? In this episode, we'll take you down that terrible road. America became a torturer because certain people - including then Vice President Dick Cheney - wanted us to be that thing. We'll also describe how the Bush Administration's wordplay, dancing around the word "torture", made torture inevitable. SHOW NOTESFor more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast, it's a Costa and Touchstone production. When I got to Pakistan in late January 2002 and we started to interrogate people, our marching orders were pretty straightforward, where the handling of prisoners was concerned. We understood that regardless of anything else, we were operating within a context of rules established by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. This meant that we were not allowed to hit anyone. We weren't allowed to threaten them, and we certainly weren't allowed to torture them. But 9-11 changed everything.

The rules of war were written by warring governments to keep each other's worst impulses at bay. Unfortunately for America, the combatant facing us this time wasn't part of any recognized or uniformed army at war. These were true believers in a radical cause who considered death as a religious martyr a career move. It got them paradise. and respect. This made dealing with them extraordinarily challenging, both in terms of getting useful information from them and in just dealing with them. There were constant temptations to get overly physical with their belligerence, and some of us did come close on various occasions. But as far as I knew, out in the battlefield, at least, we followed the law. Back in Washington, D.C., however,

various players in the George W. Bush administration were beginning to think differently about the battlefield, about the law, and about torture. Their deeply cynical thinking and cavalier attitude toward words and their meanings, as captured in a series of communications called the torture memos, was pure Alice in Wonderland right through the looking glass. And I don't mean that in a good way. The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master. That is all. Hi, I'm John Curiwiyaki. Welcome to Dead Dron, What Makes a Spy Tick.

This is another episode in the series, What Makes This Spy Tick? Before we get back to Wonderland, some thank you for your continuing kindness and enthusiasm. It thrills us that our podcast thrills you. And so we'll keep making them as long as you're still enjoying them. To that end, thank you for your likes, ratings, reviews, and shares. It's turned our little podcast into a real player. not something that we ever expected, but something that we're delighted to be. So again, thank you.

According to a narrative put together by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and declassified in April 2009 by then Attorney General Eric Holder, the CIA believed in 2002, believed from the moment that we had captured him that Abu Zabeda withheld, quote, imminent threat information, unquote, during his initial interrogation. The agency made it its mission to get at that imminent threat information, regardless of whether or not it actually existed. The problem is, once you begin chasing shadows, you can't ever trust that everything isn't ultimately a shadow. Facing an unconventional foe, conventions like the Geneva can suddenly feel quaint and disconnected from the present. That's how the agency's lawyers felt in the middle of May. 2002 as they met with their counterparts at the National Security Council, the NSC, and the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, the OLC, to discuss a new approach

to interrogations and the potential legal obstacles to its implementation. Among the legal obstacles was our being as signatory to the UNCAT, CAT, the Convention Against Torture. In Article 1.1, the CAT prohibits, quote, any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information, or a confession, unquote. Title 18, Section 2340A of the U.S. Code, prohibits, quote, torture committed by public

officials, unquote. Section 2340 sub 1 defines torture as, quote, and act committed by a person acting under the color of law, specifically intended to inflict severe physical pain or mental pain or suffering upon another person within his custody of physical control." That seemed pretty clear to me. The first torture memo dated August 1, 2002, was signed by J.S. Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and the head of the OLC,

and infamously drafted in large part by OLC lawyer John U. In the memo, U and Bybee basically argue that ducks don't quack, apples or oranges, and words like severe pain, suffering, and specific intent mean whatever the government says they mean. The memo also laid out ten techniques that progressed up a ladder of intensity. The first, lowest rung, was called the attention grasp. This one's been a standby in local police stations and movies forever. The interrogator suddenly grabs the prisoner by the lapels or the collar with both hands and pulls him in close enough for the prisoner to smell his breath.

It's controlled and it's quick and it's surprising, but it's harmless and it's legal. Most of us could live with it if that was as far as the enhanced techniques went. But they didn't. Next came walling. Think of walling as a logical extension of the... attention grasp. If I'm the interrogator, I'd take my prisoner and slam them hard against the wall built for the express purpose of slamming prisoners against it. So the wall would be made of plywood, for example, not out of concrete block. The

sound is what's important. You really want them to hear the thud, not just feel it in their bones. Lest you think that lawyers, Bibi and you are heartless bastards, Bibi wrote that during walling, a prisoner's, quote, head and neck must be supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a collar to help prevent whiplash." Next rungs up the ladder are the facial hold and the insult slap. The insult slap, while physical, is meant to induce shock, surprise, even humiliation, not to inflict any kind of long-lasting physical pain. It's essentially just a smack across the face.

Cramped confinement does what it says it does. The detainee is kept in a dark, cramped container for up to 18 hours at a time, depending on the size of the container. Wall standing is a stress fatigue tactic that stands detainees four, maybe five feet from a wall with their feet spread to shoulder width and arms extended so that the fingers rest on the wall, supporting the detainee's entire weight. It's all about exploiting muscle fatigue. Sleep deprivation has been around for a long. long time, and it's incredibly effective. We know, thanks to the American Psychological Association, for example, that detainees subject to sleep deprivation begin to lose their minds around day seven with no sleep. They begin to die of organ failure around day nine, but the CIA was

authorized to keep detainees awake for as long as 12 days. Rung number nine involved exploiting a prisoners fear. Abusa Beda had a terrible case of entomophobia. That's a fear of insects. So Zane's interrogators stuck him in a cramped confinement box, akin to a coffin, and they poured a box of insects on top of them. While the insects were, in fact, harmless, to the best of my recollection, they were cockroaches. Zane's interrogators told him that they were poisonous and that they stung. He almost lost his mind. The topmost rung, rung number 10, was waterboarding, meant to be the harshest of all the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques. We all know by now what waterboarding is.

It's brutal and it's terrifying and violent. But in that first torture memo, lawyer Bybee took a kinder, gentler view of its brutality, terror, and violence. In that first torture memo, Bybee pointed out that if done correctly, the individual being waterboarded doesn't breathe any water into his lungs. They aren't actually drowning. They just perceive that they're drowning. Pull away the cloth, covering the nose and mouth, the one preventing them from breathing, by the way, and the whole sensation of drowning just goes away.

See? No harm, no foul, no torture. The first documented waterboarding was in the 14th century. It was known alternatively as water torture, the water cure, or tormenta de toca, a phrase that refers to the thin piece of cloth that's placed over the victim's mouth. Then, as now, the goal in torturing someone was to inflict significant, focused pain,

but without causing death. That's why waterboarding always appealed to torturers. It checked off all the pain and terror boxes, but not the death box. During the Spanish Inquisition, a kind of golden age for waterboarding, they measured the severity of its infliction by the number of water jars used. Sometimes, writes Henry T. Charles Leia in his book, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, they might use as many as six to eight jars of water on a victim. But here's the curious thing. During the inquisition, the water

torture was considered a normal part of normal legal practice, not unlike the way we view, let's say, across examination today. Also curious, during the Inquisition, doctors took part in the waterboarding. According to Ed Peters, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, a doctor's presence was required during interrogations. American soldiers encountered waterboarding during the Korean War. In fact, that experience in Korea led to a program in the U.S. Air Force called Sear, which stands for survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. We subject Air Force pilots to the waterboarding experience to prepare them for its possible use should they ever be captured by the enemy. The difference between waterboarding as a training exercise,

and waterboarding as an enhanced interrogation technique is massive. The intention when we waterboarded detainee is to convince him that his feeling of imminent demise is very, very real. It's physical and mental anguish without a finite end. The whole point is to induce a sense of hopelessness that can only be cut short by their full and unwavering cooperation. Bybee and you actually called it learned helplessness. But make no mistake, it's torture.

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what it felt like, in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the photographer will put you right there on the ground right next to David. Inside his head, in fact, it's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costard and touchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone. Like the donor, a DNA horror story,

the hall closet, sage wellness within, and the how not to make a movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to Dead Drop. In the torture memo written by you and Pivey,

and in another memo from May 2005, signed by OLC lawyer Stephen Bradbury, the agency argued that none of the enhanced interrogation techniques, whether used separately or in combination with one another, amounted to torture. Instead of a legal argument, though, they used cynical wordplay. Throughout the memos and their antiseptic descriptions of what was being proposed for recalcitrant detainees, great weight was given to the fact that, like during the Spanish Inquisition,

medical and psychological personnel would be on hand to monitor how exactly the interrogation was being enhanced. Memo insisted that actual doctors and psychiatrists would safeguard the process. The assumption being, I guess, that somewhere beyond their Hippocratic oaths, these medical professionals would spot the precise moment when mere physical or mental pain morphed into full-blown torture that violated the law. Of course, they couldn't. In the halls of the CIA, we began referring to all of them collectively as Dr. Mengela. But even then, even past that point where it could be torture and could be violating the law, so long as the enhanced interrogator did not specifically intend torturous harm,

then the interrogator might not be guilty of it because, well, wordplay. By the time lawyer Bradbury signed the last torture memo on May 30, 2005, the hierarchy of enhanced interrogation techniques had grown to 14, with waterboarding still the last best option. Then having argued that none of the enhanced interrogation techniques amounted to torture so long as the interrogator was careful and well intended, the lawyers all began to focus on what I think was the ultimate loophole. That's jurisdiction.

Abu Zabeda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abdrahim Anashti, the third detainee whom we waterboarded, were all captured outside the United States in foreign countries. countries. Article 16 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture places no obligation on a signatory state, like the United States, quote, for acts committed outside territory under its jurisdiction. Unquote. So, presto, no jurisdiction and no obligation under the cat. Vice President Dick Cheney took up waterboarding as a kind of personal mission. He said publicly that it was all right with him, even as the Bush administration officially insisted that America did not torture people.

I wonder if the departed vice president would have regarded waterboarding as torture if Al-Qaeda or Taliban terrorists had applied it to our brave men and women in uniform, or if some combination of waterboarding and sleep deprivation was used against a relative or a close friend of his. Does the identity of the victim change whether or not it's torture? that's the problem. Once we make it okay to do it to others, it becomes okay to do it to us. This is what we made okay to do to us. It's what specifically we did to Abu Zabedah, to Zane. It's based on reporting by the Rendition Project, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and on Zane's own testimony to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Zane's cell was painted white. There was neither natural lighting nor windows.

four halogen lights shined into the cell. There was an air conditioner which was always kept on, keeping the cell uncomfortably cold. Zane was most often kept completely naked. A white curtain separated the interrogation room from the cell. Zane was allowed to have a chair, one of two that were rotated based on his level of cooperation, because apparently one chair was even less comfortable than the other chair.

Security officers wore all black uniforms, including black boots, gloves, balaclava's, and goggles. Zane couldn't identify the officers or see them as individuals with whom he might establish a relationship or a dialogue. Noise was pumped into Zane's cell constantly, either loud, rock music, or noise generated by a machine. For the first six to eight weeks, Zane was shackled and let free only to use the toilet,

which actually wasn't a toilet, it was a bucket. His food was reduced to just wash, and cans of ensure. Every time he'd start to doze off, they would spray water in his face. After three weeks, Zane was given rice once a day and allowed to lie on the floor, although still naked and still shackled and without a mattress. Two months after his detention, he was finally given clothes. Then he was given a mattress and a blanket.

Then he was finally given toilet paper. But whenever his interrogator spelt, he was not cooperating, he would start to lose those privileges. From June 18th, 2002, until August 4th, 2002, 47 days, the CIA isolated Zane. The FBI team left Sight Green and did not return. They knew what was going to happen there. The CIA, knowing full well what they were about to do, sent a cable back to headquarters dated July 15th, 2002, wherein they noted that, quote, in light of the planned psychological pressure techniques to be implemented, we need to get reasonable assurances that Abu Zubeda will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life, unquote. On August 1, 2002, J. Bybee sent a classified legal opinion called Interrogation of Al-Qaeda Operative to John Rizzo, the chief legal officer, General Counsel at the CIA.

The very next day, we began to torture Zane on a near 24-hour-per-day basis using the full range of approved enhanced interrogation techniques. This is from the CIA zone records. Quote, after Abu Zubeda had been in complete isolation for 47 days, the most aggressive interrogation phase began at approximately 11.50 a.m. on August 4th, 2002. security personnel entered the cell, shackled and hooded Abu Zabeda, and removed his towel. Abu Zubeda was then naked. Without asking any questions, the interrogators placed a rolled towel around his neck as a collar and used the collar to slam Abu Zabeda against a concrete wall. The interrogators then removed the hood, performed an attention grab, and had Abu Zubata watch

while a large confinement box was brought into the cell and laid. laid on the floor. Abuzubeda was unhuded and the large confinement box was carried into the interrogation room and placed on the floor so as to appear as a coffin." Zane's interrogators demanded detailed and verifiable information on terrorist operations planned against the United States, including the names, phone numbers, email addresses, weapons caches, and safe houses of anyone and everyone involved. Each time Zane denied having additional information, his interrogators would perform a facial slap or a face grab. At approximately 6.20 p.m. Zane was waterboarded for the first time.

Over a two and a half hour period, Zane coughed, vomited, and spasmed repeatedly while they continued to waterboard him. A medical officer wrote this, quote, The sessions accelerated rapidly, progressing quickly to the waterboard, after large box, wall, and small box periods. Abizu Beda seems very resistant to the waterboard. Longest time with a cloth over his face so far has been 17 seconds. This is sure to increase shortly. No, in capital letters, no useful information so far. He did vomit a couple of times during the waterboard with some rice and beans. It's been 10 hours since he ate, so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed and shore for a while now. I'm heading back for another waterboard.

board session, unquote. During nearly three weeks of constant torture, Zane spent more than 11 days in the coffin-sized box and 29 hours in the smaller confinement box akin to a dog cage. Throughout, Zane, quote, cried, begged, pleaded, and whimpered, unquote. At times he became, quote, hysterical and distressed to the level that he was unable to effectively communicate, unquote. During at least one waterboarding session, Zane, quote, became completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth, unquote. In the end, over the course of August 2002, the CIA waterboarded Zane at least 83 separate times. What's more? The CIA videotaped what it did DeZane, ultimately producing 92 tapes, including 12, which showed the use of enhanced interrogation

techniques. At the very same time, in August 2002, on August 1st, to be precise, I went to work back at Langley as the executive assistant to Bob Grenier, the newly appointed associate deputy director of operations. That was for policy support. I was genuinely flattered that Bob wanted me for the job. The problem was neither Bob nor I was absolutely certain what the job would actually be as aside from the words policy support. There was no actual job description. In fact, the job was created specifically for him. On that very first day, Bob told me that I had to go upstairs to be read into several compartments. That is, an area of CIA business or an agency decision or policy that is so secret that knowledge of it was limited to just a tiny subset of people.

What compartments, I asked. Bob said, I can't say. It's so sensitive that they won't even discuss it over the phone. They won't tell you anything until you go upstairs and sign the secrecy agreements. This was unusual, but not unprecedented. I had been read into a couple of compartments earlier in my career. Ironically, waterboarding had been a compartmented decision that only a bare few people knew about it first. I went upstairs to the office of the director of Near East Operations, but my host still refused to tell me anything until I'd signed the secrecy documents, six of them altogether, page after page of secrecy agreements. The agency had been known to go overboard on that sort of thing. For all I knew, I had just agreed to never reveal the identity of the CIA

cafeteria's new bottled water vendor. What did I know? After pursuing the documents, though, my host finally let me in on the secret. Okay, he said, here's the deal. We're going to invade Iraq next February. It's a done deal. The decision's already been made. I was so dumbfounded, so flabbergasted that I could only stammer out, but we haven't captured bin Laden yet. It doesn't matter, he said. Everything's in place. The decisions are. been made. This was nuts. Here was someone at the CIA obviously plugged into the plans of the White House telling us that the public debate in Congress about this, and there was an active public debate in Congress, was total bullshit. America was going to war in and with Iraq, regardless of what the

legislative branch of the federal government chose to do. I just sat there wondering what in the world they were thinking over at the White House. And in fact, my counterpart in the Office of Near Eastern operations said that battle lines had already been drawn. He said that the pro-war faction was made up of the office of the vice president, the office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council. The anti-war faction, ironically, was the CIA, the joint chiefs of staff, and the state department. Later that day, Bob was formally named the Iraq mission manager. On the one hand, as Bob put it, quote, this is crazy. I'm not even sure how to proceed from here, unquote. On the other hand, Bob would become the agency's face to the rest of Washington on everything

having to do with Iraq. Even better, Bob would have direct access to the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. We might be detoured in Iraq, but at least we were going to be in the middle of the action. In the next episode of Dead Drop, you'll meet George Tenet, and you'll hear how the Iraq war changed things, including the ways that the White House would begin using intelligence. And meanwhile, our Abu Zabeda problem began to settle in. If you're enjoying this podcast, and we sure hope that you are, please check out my other podcasts. I have deep program every day Monday through Friday from 9 to 10 a.m. on YouTube and Rumble, and deep focus, which drops twice a week on YouTube.

Until next time, I'm John Kirooku. Dead Drop is written by John Kirooku and Alan Katz. Costard and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast, and John Kriaku, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a Costa and Touchstone production.