Newly declassified documents indicate that the CIA
had used a black site detainee in Afghanistan as a prop
to teach trainees how to use torture techniques.
This is a an Inspector General report that was classified and
thanks to a lawsuit, it has been declassified and
much of it really does help to corroborate a Senate investigation into the so
called enhanced interrogation methods, torture methods.
Let's just keep it real that's what they really are.
Now, here's what we know based on the Inspector General report.
The technique of walling was approved by the enhanced
interrogation technique guidelines sent by CIA headquarters.
It involved placing the detainees heels against
a specifically designed plywood wall which had flexibility to it.
And putting a rolled up towel around the detainee's neck.
The interrogators would then grab the ends of the towel in front of and
below the detainees face and shove Baluchi backwards into the wall,
never letting go of the towel.
Now, who is Baluchi?
That's Ammar Al Baluchi, who has been a detainee for over a decade now.
And he has still not received a trial for his allegations.
He is accused of being involved in the plot for September 11.
Now look, it might be true that he's guilty, but
how would we know unless there's a trial?
The fact that there hasn't been a trial is I mean, it's beyond problematic.
So that is bad enough on its own knowing that they used him as a prop.
They tortured him and had trainees for
the CIA torture him as part of their certification process gives
you a sense of how disgusting the CIA's behavior was at this time.
And I mean they claim they're not using these torture techniques anymore.
You decide whether or not you're gonna take what they say at face value.
So just to give you the rest of that graphic, one of the interrogators,
identified only by code said the goal was to bounce the detainee off the wall.
The report noted that Baluchi was naked for the proceedings.
And now there are reports indicating that he has suffered moderate to severe brain
damage as a result, which makes sense.
I mean that much head trauma repeatedly over and
over again is gonna cause damage to one's brain.
By the way, there was also no limit for these so called walling sessions although
they would typically last for just two hours at a time.
One former trainee told investigators all the interrogation students
lined up to wall ammar are so
that the instructor could certify them on their ability to use the technique.
And again I wanna really emphasize the damage that was done to this man.
A neuropsychologist carried out an MRI of Baluchi's head in late 2018 and
found abnormalities indicating moderate to severe brain damage in parts of his brain
affecting memory formation and retrieval.
As well as behavioral regulation.
The specialist found that the abnormalities observed were
consistent with traumatic brain injury.
And guys this is the Inspector General report, but
prior to this back in 2014, the Senate released its own findings on torture.
This is in 2014 and the CIA Director at the time,
John Brennan wanted to make the case that like, look maybe this wasn't so bad.
It was bad I guess, it's not not a good report.
But he also lied to the American people about why these torture techniques
were used.
I wanna go to that quick video and then I'll tell you how he's lying.
>> There was useful intelligence, very useful valuable intelligence that
was obtained from individuals who had been at some point subjected the EITs.
Whether that could have been obtained without the use of those EITs,
is something again that is unnoble.
>> It's actually very noble.
There was no relevant or substantive intel that came
from detainees who were tortured in this way.
Brennan very clearly lied as he was addressing the public on the previous
report on these torture tactics which was done by the Senate.
>> So Brennan, of course, a hero to MSNBC, a hero to the Obama administration.
Same disastrous policies as the republicans.
But as long as the democrats are doing everything is totally fine.
So now we're not even using enhanced interrogation.
We're just calling it EITs, why?
Because when Bush and Cheney were in charge of democrats said no enhanced
interrogation techniques means torture.
I can't believe you're not calling it torture.
They get in charge and all of a sudden what do they do?
They do every single time, they cover for the republican crimes, the democrats do.
So now all of a sudden they don't call it torture anymore.
In fact they made it more benign EITs.
And then they make excuses for them.
They lie about them.
And so in this case look guys, we're supposed to be the good guys when
we capture the bad guys were supposed to bring them to justice.
And that's great.
We have a colorado Supermax.
No one's ever gotten out of it.
It's not a pleasant place to be.
Instead we invented a lawless place where we could do torture down in Guantanamo and
that is not what good guys do.
By the way, it's also illegal, not under not only under international law but
under US law.
And of course there's always Barack Obama said we don't look backwards and
we look forward.
I'd like to protect the ass's of my Republican colleagues who obviously
committed these crimes.
But I am their great protector.
Let's be honest about what happened.
That's exactly what happened.
I don't care how much you're in love with Obama because you work on cable news or
you live in Washington, he covered for
Republican crimes including the crime of torture.
Well, isn't really torture.
Well, during the Bush and Cheney years, we had all these arguments about, well,
is drowning someone to the point where they're almost dead, but
not quite dead and they're really afraid that they actually are about to die.
Is that really torture first of all, yes.
Every single authority on the matter, both international and
national says yes, drowning someone is torture even if you don't kill them.
Now in this case, is there really any question,
you know what walling is as Anna described it to you?
And it's clear in every description of it, they take a guy's head and
they smash it against the wall.
>> Yeah. >> And now they have they trained people
on how to torture and they say, we don't need a dummy for the technique.
We could just do that in a kind of an already kind of
fascist antiseptic way let's take a dummy smashed his head against the wall and
learn torture techniques.
That would already be bad enough.
No, but they took an actual live human being, by the way,
who was never even convicted.
>> Exactly, I mean, he hasn't stood trial at all.
He's he's being detained in a black site.
He does have lawyers who are just trying to get him a fair trial, right?
And he might be found guilty, but you wouldn't know until you try him and
convict him.
He has been sitting there as a detainee for over a decade.
No justice has been served at all.
If anything, I get it, the right wing hates when you make this point and
I don't care because it's the truth.
This is the kind of stuff that helps terrorist groups recruit people, okay?
The drone strikes that kill innocent civilians.
I mean think about it.
It's common sense.
It's human nature.
If you're a family member of someone who was murdered in a US drone strike and
then they refer to your family members as collateral damage.
Wouldn't you be a little upset at the US government?
>> Yeah, and guys, so two last points from me on this one is to Ana's point.
We go around telling the world we're the good guys, we're the good guys.
And then why are we the good guys?
Because we believe in human rights and the rule of law.
And then we say okay, yes, but we capture brown people and
we smashed our heads against the wall and we teach our new CIA officers.
Hey, come in, we've got a brown guy.
Let's all smashed his head against the wall.
Well, did he do it?
I don't know. Who cares?
It's a brown guy.
Who cares?
We're not gonna bring him to justice.
We're just gonna torture the living crap out of him.
But hey everybody, we're the good guys wink.
And you could say,
hey in America everybody believes that cuz the media doesn't tell the truth.
The media just tells whatever the American government wants it to tell, right?
But the rest of the world doesn't live in America and they don't have to believe CNN
and they don't have to believe in The New York Times.
They can actually see the truth and they see the bombs dropping on them.
They see what we're doing.
They see how lawless we are and
they see what a lie it is that we tell the rest of the world.
And this is very important.
That guy has not been brought to justice, not justice for him.
That's also important because of Habeas Corpus,
that is the very center of Western civilization, that is the very core of it.
People pretend that they like Western civilization when it comes to the actual
rights that came with Western civilization they got.
And I don't want to give it to brown people.
I don't want to give it to brown people.
I don't care about them.
Let's just be done with Western civilization.
Although at least these days, Carlson is being honest about that.
He wants to go back to the Middle Ages with Alexander Dugan, the Russian, so
called philosophy.
Anyway, in this case, it's the victims of 911 that has not,
that have not received justice, who actually killed them.
It's probably, I guess this guy, maybe we know Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, right?
But are you ever going to bring them to goddamn justice?
So we can know who did it.
Trust us, we got the right guy who smashes his head against the wall.
You guys are a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats.
No, I do not trust you that you got the right guys.
So it's entirely possible that the people who did 911 are actually walking around
laughing their ass off and
incompetent goons in the CIA smashing the wrong guy's head into the wall.
>> Well, I actually want to get to that because the way in which he was arrested
also had legal problems and that was noted in the Inspector General report.
But before I talk about that, all the torture
techniques that I discussed the walling that was sanctioned by the CIA.
The CIA allowed that to happen.
However, during these trainee programs, there were other torture
techniques that were used that were not even greenlit by the CIA.
So for instance, interrogators at the site known both as Cobalt and
the Salt Pit these are their code names, went beyond the CIA is guidelines and
torturing Baluchi using two techniques without approval.
One of them is using a stick behind his knees in stress positions that involved
leaning back while kneeling and then also dousing him with ice cold water.
And just to give you a sense of some of the issues with how they arrested him.
This is the last graphic, apparently, according to the inspector general report,
the CIA was aware that the 2003 rendition of the detainee Baluchi from Pakistani
custody to the black site north of Kabul was conducted extra legally, okay?
Because at the time he was in Pakistani jurisdiction and
no longer represented a terrorist threat.
That is not an opinion that is in the Inspector General report.
>> So they even admit we didn't think he was a threat, but nonetheless, hey guys,
you want to smash his head against the wall.
It's really fun.
But CIA is the good guys.
Come on, why do you think the the CIA is despised throughout the world?
Because they do crap like this.