CIA black sites
Following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent war on terror, the United States Central Intelligence Agency established a "Detention and Interrogation Program" that included a network of clandestine extrajudicial detention centres, officially known as "black sites", to detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants, usually with the acquiescence, if not direct collaboration, of the host government.
CIA black sites systematically employed torture of civilians in the form of "enhanced interrogation techniques" of detainees, most of whom had been illegally abducted and forcibly transferred. Known locations included Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand. Black sites were part of a broader American-led global program that included facilities operated by foreign governments—most commonly Syria, Egypt, and Jordan—as well as the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which housed those deemed "illegal enemy combatants" under a presidential military order.
The existence and specific locations of black sites were known to only a handful of U.S. officials—in some cases limited to just the U.S. president and senior intelligence officers in the host countries. As early as 2002, various human rights organizations and news media reported on secret detention facilities. In November 2005, the American daily newspaper The Washington Post was the first major publication to reveal a "hidden global internment network" operated by the CIA in cooperation with several foreign governments. The following year, U.S. president George W. Bush acknowledged that there had been CIA programs that utilized secret prisons but claimed that detainees were not mistreated or tortured. Though the black sites had effectively ended in 2006, the Bush Administration never disclosed specific details regarding their location, conditions, and activities.
On February 14, 2007, the European Parliament adopted a report finding that several EU member states had cooperated with the CIA's extraordinary rendition program and implicating Poland and Romania in hosting secret CIA-run detention centers. In January 2009, amid growing domestic and international criticism, U.S. president Barack Obama formally ended the use of black sites and the detention and torture of terrorism suspects, albeit without repudiating nor ending extraordinary renditions. A 2010 study by the United Nations found that since 2001, there had been a "progressive and determined elaboration of a comprehensive and coordinated system of secret detention" involving the U.S. and other governments "in almost all regions of the world". The Open Society Justice Initiative documented as many as 54 foreign governments reportedly participating in CIA secret detention and/or extraordinary rendition operations, with an estimated 136 individuals subjected to these operations following September 11, 2001.
Following a five-year investigation, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee published a summary report in 2014 concluding that the CIA had routinely conducted "brutal" and ineffective interrogations of detainees at its black sites and repeatedly misled federal officials and the public about their existence and activities; the CIA responded acknowledging "failings" in the program but denying any intentional misrepresentations.
In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights was the first judicial body in the world to confirm the existence of CIA black sites, finding that Poland had allowed the CIA to detain and torture two suspects on domestic soil. Later that year, the Polish government admitted that it had hosted black sites, and subsequent reports determined that the country was arguably the most important component of the CIA's global detention network. A 2018 ruling by the ECHR likewise found Romania and Lithuania responsible for the torture and abuse of prisoners that occurred in CIA black sites on their territories. The European Court of Human Rights ordered Romania and Lithuania to each pay €100,000 in damages for violating detainees' rights through their participation in CIA black site operations.
Official recognition
President George W. Bush officially acknowledged the existence of black sites in the fall of 2006, and said that many of the detainees were being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.The International Committee of the Red Cross prepared a report based on interviews with black site detainees, conducted October 6–11 and December 4–14, 2006, after their transfer to Guantanamo Bay. The report was submitted to Bush administration officials in early 2007. On March 15, 2009, New York Review of Books reported the contents of the ICRC report, which included interviews with detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, Walid bin Attash and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Greystone
Greystone or GREYSTONE is the former secret codeword of a Sensitive Compartmented Information compartment containing information about rendition, interrogation and counter-terrorism programs of the CIA, operations that began shortly after the September 11 Attacks. It covers covert actions in the Middle East that include pre-military operations in Afghanistan and drone attacks.The abbreviation GST was first revealed in December 2005, in a Washington Post-article by Dana Priest, which says that GST includes programs for capturing suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists, transporting them with aircraft, maintaining secret prisons in various foreign countries, and for the use of special interrogation methods which are held illegal by many lawyers. In 2009, the GST abbreviation was accidentally confirmed in a declassified document written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2004.
The full codeword was revealed in the 2013 book Deep State, Inside the Government Secrecy Industry by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady. It says that the GREYSTONE compartment contains more than a dozen sub-compartments, which are identified by numbers. This makes sure that these sub-programs are only known to those people who are directly involved.
Controversy over the legality and secrecy
Legal authority for operation
There is little or no stated legal authority for the operation of black sites by the United States or the other countries believed to be involved. In fact, the specifics of the network of black sites remains controversial. The United Nations has begun to intervene in this aspect of black sites. A 2010 United Nations joint study concluded that secret detention violates international human rights and humanitarian law by placing detainees beyond the legal framework and rendering safeguards like habeas corpus ineffective.British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the report "added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have". Poland and Romania received the most direct accusals, as the report claims the evidence for these sites is "strong". The report cites airports in Timișoara, Romania, and Szymany, Poland, as "detainee transfer/drop-off point". Eight airports outside Europe are also cited.
On May 19, 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture recommended that the United States cease holding detainees in secret prisons and stop the practice of rendering prisoners to countries where they are likely to be tortured. The decision was made in Geneva following two days of hearings at which a 26-member U.S. delegation defended the practices.
Representations by the Bush administration
Responding to the allegations about black sites, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated on December 5, 2005, that the U.S. had not violated any country's sovereignty in the rendition of suspects, and that individuals were never rendered to countries where it was believed that they might be tortured. Some media sources have noted her comments do not exclude the possibility of covert prison sites operated with the knowledge of the "host" nation, or the possibility that promises by such "host" nations that they will refrain from torture may not be genuine. On September 6, 2006, Bush publicly admitted the existence of the secret prisons and that many of the detainees held there were being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.In December 2002, The Washington Post reported that "the capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations." The Post cited "U.S. intelligence and national security officials" in reporting this.
On April 21, 2006, Mary O. McCarthy, a longtime CIA analyst, was fired for allegedly leaking classified information to a Washington Post reporter, Dana Priest, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her revelations concerning the CIA's black sites. Some have speculated that the information allegedly leaked may have included information about the camps. McCarthy's lawyer, however, claimed that McCarthy "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking". The Washington Post posited that McCarthy "had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan", and became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in a meeting with US Senate staff in June 2005.
In a September 29, 2006, speech, Bush stated: "Once captured, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were taken into custody of the Central Intelligence Agency. The questioning of these and other suspected terrorists provided information that helped us protect the American people. They helped us break up a cell of Southeast Asian terrorist operatives that had been groomed for attacks inside the United States. They helped us disrupt an al Qaeda operation to develop anthrax for terrorist attacks. They helped us stop a planned strike on a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, and to prevent a planned attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and to foil a plot to hijack passenger planes and to fly them into Heathrow Airport and London's Canary Wharf."
On July 20, 2007, Bush made an executive order banning torture of captives by intelligence officials.