National Security

CIA Uncensors Agent’s Brutal First-Person Account of Terrorist Torture

DECLASSIFIED

The agency has finally unredacted parts of a nearly 10-year-old memoir dealing with its highly controversial and horrifying torture program.

2013-03-11T120000Z_1811626401_GM1E93B0OA901_RTRMADP_3_CUBA_iflxwi
Bob Strong/Reuters

The CIA has unredacted parts of a memoir by a former high-profile counterterrorism official about the CIA’s torture program following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. According to The New York Times, the intelligence agency has relented almost 10 years after blocking the release of much of the sensitive information in former FBI official Ali Soufan’s 2011 book The Black Banners: How Torture Derailed the War on Terror After 9/11. The book’s publisher, W.W. Norton, plans to next month print the original uncensored version, which paints a raw and highly skeptical first-person picture of the CIA’s torture program. According to the Times, the newly declassified bits include detailed information about the agency’s brutal interrogation techniques of now infamous detainees including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Read it at The New York Times