CIA Used Gun, Drill in Interrogation

CIA report to reveal agency conducted mock executions
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/22/cia-report-to-reveal-mock-executions/
By Muriel Kane Published: August 22, 2009

Update (at bottom): Reporter says revelations coming Monday will be ‘pretty explosive’

The long-delayed release of a CIA inspector general’s report has been scooped by Newsweek, which obtained details from one source who has read a draft of the report and another who was briefed on its contents.

A version of the report with newly declassified details is expected to be released on Monday.

According to Newsweek’s sources, the report will reveal that the CIA interrogators of suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri brandished a gun in front of him in an attempt to make him believe he was going to be shot — thus violating a federal law against threatening a detainee with “imminent death” — and also threatened him with a power drill.

In other cases, mock executions were staged, including one case in which a gun was fired in an adjoining room to make a suspect believe another prisoner had been shot.

The report was commissioned by then-CIA Director George Tenet in 2004, as CIA officials attempted to determine whether the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques had followed official guidelines. It was shared at the time with the Justice Department and with selected members of the Congressional oversight committees and was shown to the committees as a whole in 2006, but has been kept secret from the public.

The government is now required to turn the report over on Monday as a result of an ACLU Freedom of Information lawsuit. Related documents are to be revealed a week later.