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The Press

This page summarizes key news reports, investigative journalism, and editorials on the topics related to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Items are organized chronologically with key news events highlighted.

  • September 16, 2001. Vice President Cheney interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press. “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”
  • December 26, 2002. U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations; ‘Stress and Duress’ Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities, by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, The Washington Post (alternate source)
  • January 24, 2003. Torture trail to September 11, by Owen Bowcott, guardian.co.uk

March 2003. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed captured

April 2004. 60 Minutes II breaks story of Abu Ghraib

February 2005. CIA program of Extraordinary Rendition uncovered

November 2005. CIA secret prisons or “black sites” uncovered

  • starDecember 19, 2005. The Abolition of Torture: Winning the War on Terrorism Without Sacrificing Freedom, by Andrew Sullivan. The New Republic. (This must-read article doesn’t seem to be available since they redesigned their site — here’s a PDF. It is also available in the book Torture: A Collection, edited by Sanford Levinson.)

December 2005. Congress outlaws torture of detainees; Bush bypasses with signing statement

  • January 4, 2006. Bush could bypass new torture ban: Waiver right is reserved, by Charlie Savage. The Boston Globe
  • February 27, 2006. The Memo: How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted, by Jane Mayer. The New Yorker
  • March 14, 2006. The Abu Ghraib files, by Joan Walsh. Salon. 279 photographs and 19 videos grouped into ten chapters with essays.
  • June 27, 2006. Rules Should Govern Torture, Dershowitz Says. NPR.
  • June 30, 2006. High Court Rejects Detainee Tribunals: 5 to 3 Ruling Curbs President’s Claim Of Wartime Power, by Charles Lane. The Washington Post.
  • September 6, 2006. Q&A: Bush and CIA secret prisons. BBC News
  • October 5, 2006. Waterboarding Historically Controversial: In 1947, the U.S. Called It a War Crime; in 1968, It Reportedly Caused an Investigation, by Walter Pincus. The Washington Post
  • September 6, 2006. DoD News Briefing with Deputy Assistant Secretary Stimson and Lt. Gen. Kimmons from the Pentagon.
    • Revised and reissued DOD Directive 2310.01E, the Department of Defense Detainee Program. This revised directive provides the overarching DOD policy guidance on detention operations conducted by DOD worldwide.

October 2006. Congress establishes military commissions and suspends habeas corpus for aliens

  • October 24, 2006. Vice President Cheney interviewed by Scott Hennen (WDAY). Question: Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives? Cheney: It’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President “for torture.” We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we’re party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.
  • October 28, 2006. Yes, It’s a No-Brainer: Waterboarding Is Torture, by Marty Lederman. Balkinization
  • October 30, 2006. The C.I.A.’s Travel Agent, by Jane Mayer. The New Yorker
  • January 17, 2007. Why I defend “terrorists”: An open letter to Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, from a lawyer representing five men at Guantánamo. By Anant Raut (in Salon)
  • February 19, 2007. Whatever It Takes: The politics of the man behind “24,” by Jane Mayer. The New Yorker
  • March 18, 2007. (UK) The victims of war: 93 injuries, one killing, no justice. The death in British military custody of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi civilian, led to anger - not at the perpetrators, but at the idea of putting soldiers on trial. By Raymond Whitaker, The Independent
  • June 14, 2007. (UK) Captured Iraqi civilians protected by Human Rights Act in landmark ruling, by Robert Verkaik and Kim Sengupta, The Independent
  • June 25, 2007. The General’s Report: How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties, by Seymour M. Hersh. The New Yorker
  • July 17, 2007. Rorschach and Awe, by Katherine Eban. Vanity Fair
  • July 23, 2007. Bush’s torture ban is full of loopholes, by David Cole. Salon
  • August 13, 2007. The Black Sites: A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program, by Jane Mayer. The New Yorker

October 2007. Secret 2005 CIA “combined effects” interrogation memos discovered (but still classified)

December 2007. CIA admits it destroyed interrogation tapes

  • December 7, 2007. C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations, by Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times
  • December 9, 2007. Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002, by Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, The Washington Post
  • December 10, 2007. Coming in From the Cold: CIA Spy Calls Waterboarding Necessary But Torture, by Richard Esposito and Brian Ross, ABC News (who found a way to insert the same ad ten times into the video). Brian Ross interviews retired CIA agent John Kiriakou, who said that waterboarding was used to break Abu Zubaydah in 35 seconds. However, Kiriakou was not an interrogator and did not witness the waterboarding or enhanced techniques. He also said that the disrupted attacks were not planned within the US.
  • December 14, 2007. Inside the CIA’s notorious ‘black sites’: A Yemeni man never charged by the U.S. details 19 months of brutality and psychological torture, by Mark Benjamin. Salon (Read the report from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law)
  • December 16, 2007. Torture, American style. The surprising force behind torture: democracies. By Darius Rejali, The Boston Globe.

February 2008. CIA admits three detainees were waterboarded

Updated frequently. Last update April 2, 2008. Please contact me to report a broken link or if you need access to an article no longer available online.

Additional list of media coverage and articles at National Religious Campaign Against Torture