The CIA has stopped using contractors to interrogate prisoners and fired private security guards at the CIA’s now-shuttered secret overseas prisons, CIA Director Leon Panetta said on Thursday.
Panetta told agency employees in an e-mail message that the guards would be replaced with CIA officers at the sites, which US President Barack Obama ordered closed on his second day in office.
Terminating the private security guards who watched over the secret sites would save the agency US$4 million, Panetta said. The CIA refused to provide details about the contract, including its total value and the company or companies that were fired.
The secret prisons are now empty, Panetta said, and the agency has not taken any new prisoners since he became director in February.
The CIA is now preparing plans for the prisons to be permanently shut down. An intelligence official said the facilities have to be cleaned of any potentially sensitive materials before they can be closed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the process of shutting down the secret sites.
The CIA, however, still has the authority to hold and interrogate prisoners for short periods. Panetta said they would be interrogated by agency employees, not private contractors, and then quickly handed over to the US military, or to their home countries or countries that have legal claims on them.
Between 2002 and 2006, the CIA held and interrogated fewer than 100 prisoners, former CIA director Michael Hayden told Congress last year. It used harsh interrogation methods on about a third of them.
Three prisoners were subjected to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.
Hayden also confirmed to Congress that private contractors had been used to conduct interrogations, especially in the months immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when the CIA did not have interrogators of its own.
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January that the CIA would only use its own cadre of trained interrogators to conduct interrogations.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Senator Dianne Feinstein has been pushing for the formal abandonment of using contractors in interrogations.
An investigator for the Council of Europe, a human rights group, has alleged that 14 European nations colluded with US intelligence to aid in the movement of 17 detainees who said they had been abducted by US agents and secretly transferred to detention centers around the world. Some said they were sent to alleged secret facilities in countries including Poland, Romania, Egypt and Jordan, said the investigator, Swiss senator Dick Marty.
Poland and Romania have vehemently denied the allegations and most of the other EU countries mentioned by Marty have denied any wrongdoing.
Both the White House and Congress have launched reviews of the Bush-era CIA detention program to determine their its authority and exactly what occurred. The reviews are ongoing.
Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday disrupted flights, trains and ferries, forcing the closure of roads across large parts of New Zealand’s North Island, while snapping power links to tens of thousands. Domestic media reported a few flights had resumed operating by afternoon from the airport in Wellington, the capital, although cancelations were still widespread after airport authorities said most morning flights were disrupted. Air New Zealand said it hoped to resume services when conditions ease later yesterday, after it paused operations at Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North airports. Online images showed flooded semi-rural neighborhoods, inundated homes, trees fallen on vehicles and collapsed
FRAYED: Strains between the US-European ties have ruptured allies’ trust in Washington, but with time, that could be rebuilt, the Michigan governor said China is providing crucial support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and could end the war with a phone call, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said. “China could call [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow and cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling,” Whitaker said during a Friday panel at the Munich Security Conference. “China could stop buying Russian oil and gas.” “You know, this war is being completely enabled by China,” the US envoy added. Beijing and Moscow have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war, and Russia relies on China for critical parts
In a softly lit Shanghai bar, graduate student Helen Zhao stretched out both wrists to have her pulse taken — the first step to ordering the house special, a bespoke “health” cocktail based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). “TCM bars” have popped up in several cities across China, epitomizing what the country’s stressed-out, time-poor youth refer to as “punk wellness,” or “wrecking yourself while saving yourself.” At Shanghai’s Niang Qing, a TCM doctor in a white coat diagnoses customers’ physical conditions based on the pulse readings, before a mixologist crafts custom drinks incorporating the herbs and roots prescribed for their ailments.
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
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