Torture

TPM's Timeline of the CIA's Torture Tapes

sspaul | December 11, 2007, 4:18PM

For years, the CIA denied recording any interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees. For years, the Bush administration denied issuing any legal authorization for torture. And for years, members of Congress claimed ignorance of what the CIA and the Bush administration had in store for detained members of al-Qaeda. All of these denials have proven false.

There's a tremendous amount that remains unknown about CIA interrogations of al-Qaeda, the recording of those interrogations, and the destruction of those recordings. Determining just what is known is confusing, as is sorting out when crucial developments occurred. To provide a measure of clarity, TPMmuckraker has compiled a timeline of relevant events over the past five years. Since the core of the current controversy isn't about the destruction of the tapes but the interrogation methods those tapes captured -- which is of course unknown -- we included milestones on the administration's road to developing interrogation policy.

Invaluable research assistance was provided by Adrianne Jeffries, Peter Sheehy, and Andrew Berger. Mistakes in compiling this information are entirely our own, and we hope you'll alert us in comments to any errors we've made.

February 7, 2002: President Bush signs an executive order that says Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions does not apply to al-Qaeda detainees.

2002: Al-Qaeda members Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri are captured and interrogated in secret CIA prisons. At least some of the interrogations are videotaped.

The precise date of the interrogations that were taped is not known. However, there are some clues. As early as the spring of 2002, the CIA began using "harsh interrogation methods" on Zubaydah, including waterboarding. As for Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, he was not captured until the fall, as late as November. He told a military tribunal in March of this year that "from the time I was arrested... they have been torturing me," and that he'd made up stories in order to get interrogators to stop.

August 1, 2002: Jay Bybee, the chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, issues a memo that restricts the definition of torture to physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." A still-classified memo from roughly the same time period, known as the Second Bybee Memo, reportedly gets specific about the legality of certain prospective CIA interrogation techniques.

September, 2002: The leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees receive a CIA briefing on interrogation techniques considered for al-Qaeda detainees. The content of that briefing is highly disputed. Both Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and ex-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) say they were not briefed on actual interrogation techniques in use by the CIA. Ex-Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) says otherwise. The briefing or briefings do not mention any interrogations being recorded. There is no known protest from any member of Congress present.

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