Trump Administration Aims to Prevent CIA Testimony in Torture Lawsuit

The Trump administration is invoking a little-used legal rule, the “state secret privilege,” to keep Central Intelligence Agency officials from testifying in a federal lawsuit about the CIA’s interrogation methods.

The state secret privilege allows the government to withhold evidence from legal proceedings on the basis that the sensitive evidence would put national security at risk. In this case, the Trump administration is hoping to keep top CIA officials from providing testimony in an ongoing lawsuit regarding interrogation methods at a CIA “black site” detention center.

The New York Times reports:

The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by two former detainees at C.I.A. secret prisons overseas and the representative of a third man who died in custody. If they prevail in the suit against the former military psychologists, James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who helped devise and run the interrogation program, it would be the first time an American civilian court has held anyone accountable for a role in developing counterterrorism policies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The two former prisoners say they suffered lasting harm from their treatment at C.I.A. “black sites,” secret interrogation and detention centers that it operated overseas. Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a Tanzanian who may have been a victim of mistaken identity, was held in a darkened C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan and subjected to beatings, hanging in chains, sleep deprivation, and water dousing, which involves pouring ice water over detainees to create a sensation of drowning, according to a Senate report and interviews with him.

Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, a Libyan also held in Afghanistan, who was likewise mentioned in the Senate report, described being slammed against a wall, shackled to the ceiling, locked in wooden boxes and also subjected to the ice water treatment. The third man, an Afghan named Gul Rahman, died in 2002 in a secret C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan after being left nearly naked and shackled to a wall in the cold.

The Times adds that the Obama administration did not invoke the state secrets privilege rule, but it was not opposed to doing so in the future.

President Trump incited controversy shortly after he took office when reports surfaced that he was considering reopening the CIA “black sites.” However, strong bipartisan opposition seems to have quelled this proposal.

One of the CIA officials involved in the lawsuit is the agency’s new Deputy Director, Gina Haspel. Haspel, who has worked for the CIA for decades, previously oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects and worked to destroy evidence of these interrogations during her time as a CIA officer in 2002.

Haspel was issued a subpoena in December. “After the C.I.A. announced on Feb. 2 that Ms. Haspel was President Trump’s choice as the agency’s deputy director, a lawyer for Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen reminded the government of the subpoenas,” The Times continues. “The defendants said in their filings that Ms. Haspel, who ran one of the C.I.A.’s secret detention sites, was ‘centrally involved in the events alleged’ by the plaintiffs.”

The Federal District Court judge in the case must now decide “whether the state secrets privilege and other privileges claimed by the government were properly invoked to block that testimony and, if so, whether the case can go forward despite those restrictions,” the Times concludes.

Read the full report here.

—Posted by Emma Niles

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