Black Site

The Book in 1 Sentence

A CIA history of the requirements to house, interrogate, and move prisoners from Al-Qaeda in an effort to gather intelligence to prevent the next 9/11.

Brief Review

This was an interesting book that presents what could be the truth about how the CIA saw their role when dealing with "Guests." Its ability to talk about the judicial search for what was legal and required of the CIA when conducting interrogations.

Why I Read this book

As a contractor, I worked with CIA folks and know they can be a bunch of Harvard Bros and arrogant. I also have heard about black sites for my entire adult life. I was curious about what they "actually" were.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

So this book is very interesting, but as it is the CIA, and we all know that lying is really the game they play. Also with 90+% of the sources in this book being "a senior agent active during the time," it is hard to give an honest assessment of honesty when reading this book.

So let us pretend that is all truthful and continue with the review. Overall, it was very informative about the predictive thought process of the CIA officers that were involved in the planning of this system. They knew that the political protection they had during the inception of the program could not last. Hearing all the work they did with foreign nations, Department of Justice, and the bureau of prisons is very intriguing and surprising for such a secretive agency.

Where this book frustrates me is that it becomes very repetitive in its information providing which in turn brings the pacing down. I can't tell you how many times I heard the same information about them being concerned about the housing detainees, also the psychologist wanting to ensure they were not going to get blamed for the EIT.

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

My wife asked me what my opinions were on torture while I was reading the book and there is something that is sitting with me that was said at the end of the book. There were 11 different techniques that were approved by the Justice Department about what they could do for Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT).

A lot of their EIT were based on SERE training in the US Military. During the end of the program, there was a requirement for the Detainees to have 8 hours of sleep each night. When I was in the boot camp, I didn't get 8 hours of sleep. In fact the first couple days they push you to not sleep, so everyone gets on the same sleep cycle, and you are broken down. Are we torturing EVERY single member of the military? No. In fact, when this requirement was pushed down, the officers made the comment, "I don't have 8 hours each night to sleep, why should they?" While I think that sleep deprivation is a great technique to make individuals more pliant either from a mental break-down or just an unwillingness to care, I do not think it is torture. I guess it can be added to the list of EIT (It was on the list originally, but typically they are talking days at a time), but most of my military career I wasn't afforded 8 hours of sleep when I was working 12-hour days 6–7 days a week.

So, to answer my wife's question for you all to know, I am not sure that I agree with some items on the list of 11 being "torture." Most, sure. I think some of them were unnecessary like waterboarding, and so do most of the officers who stopped using it (according to the book). What we see in movies where they are pulling fingernails off or using drills, that is what I would consider torture, and it was not something that the US ever allowed or did.

Rating

This book was very interesting. However, the lack of named sources, while understandable and expected, forces you to take this book with a grain of sand. The other issue is just the repetition of the conversation and bullet points that I felt I had already heard. It was well written, just the longer you read, the more you are ready for the pace to push on. It is a 6.

As a side note, if you want to have/watch and Unintended Trilogy about this, you could watch Zero Dark Thirty (Why the program was built) -> The Mauritanian (Someone who was wrapped up in the program) -> The Report (The report that came out about the program). If you want to see something completely fake and based on a similar program, you can watch The Gambler which is about a guard from Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was an Army run program and had nothing to do with the CIA program. *NOTE: Reviews for The Mauritanian, The Report, and The Gabler will release at a later date.

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