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Washington Post Tiptoes Into a Black Hole

The Washington Post today reveals something that has been long rumored: the CIA is maintaining secret facilities outside the U.S. where it is holding suspected terrorists. The point of these extra-territorial holding pens, as the article puts it, is “to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by […]

November 2, 2005

The Washington Post today reveals something that has been long rumored: the CIA is maintaining secret facilities outside the U.S. where it is holding suspected terrorists. The point of these extra-territorial holding pens, as the article puts it, is “to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.”

The existence of these “black sites” in Afghanistan and Thailand has been the subject of speculation for a few years now, but what the article tells us is that these hidden prisons now also exist in “several democracies in Eastern Europe.” This is problematic. If the methods of interrogation and detention that the CIA is employing are thought to be too illegal to house suspects in America, then how could they possibly be legal in the countries of the “New Europe”?

The answer is that they are probably not. The Post won’t even name what those countries are. High up in the article it discloses that, “The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.”

This makes sense. But why does it also keep the Post from taking the next logical step and saying that these “black sites” are not just virtually illegal, they are literally illegal?

A few days after September 11th, 2001, the piece reports, President Bush signed “a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.” It’s not clear if Bush signed a separate finding setting up the “black sites” but the piece refers to a “consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials” that he would not have needed to.

The Post article does take note of “legal experts and intelligence officials” who said that “the CIA’s internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.”

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This is a well-reported piece that begins to uncover a highly secret story. But its conclusion can be stated in a stronger and more straightforward manner.

How about, “The president may have broken the law by allowing the CIA to interrogate and detain suspects in countries where their methods are clearly illegal.” Now isn’t that more direct?

Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.