'WE WILL bury you," Nikita Khrushchev told U.S. diplomats in 1956. The conventional wisdom is that Khrushchev got it wrong: The repressive Soviet state collapsed under the weight of its own cruelties and lies while democratic America went from strength to strength, buoyed by its national commitment to liberty and justice for all.
But with this week's blockbuster report of secret CIA detention facilities in Eastern Europe, cynics may be pardoned for wondering who really won the Cold War.
According to Dana Priest, the Washington Post investigative reporter who broke the story Wednesday, it all started on Sept. 17, 2001, when President Bush signed a secret executive order authorizing the CIA to kill, capture or detain Al Qaeda operatives.
There was only one problem: The CIA didn't know where to put the people it detained. Those detainees thought to be of "high value" needed to be kept somewhere ... special. Somewhere impregnable, like Alcatraz. And somewhere secret, far from the prying eyes of reporters or Red Cross officials. Because these high-value prisoners -- so-called ghost detainees -- were going to be subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques."
That's Orwell-speak for what's known in English as torture. The list of enhanced techniques is classified but reportedly includes such old favorites as "waterboarding" (feigned drowning) and feigned suffocation. Authorized techniques also may have included the "Palestinian hanging," a "stress position" in which a detainee is suspended from the ceiling or wall by his wrists, which are handcuffed behind his back.
It was this enhancement that preceded the death of Manadel Jamadi, an Iraqi who died in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib in November 2003, according to government investigative reports. When Jamadi was lowered to the ground, blood gushed from his mouth as if "a faucet had turned on," said Tony Diaz, an MP who witnessed his torture. Later, other guards posed with Jamadi's battered corpse, and the leaked photos shocked the world.
That's not the kind of publicity a freedom-loving democracy needs, so the CIA reportedly opted for secret "black sites." It's not as easy as you might think to find a spot where you can torture people in peace. Abu Ghraib is full of camera-clicking reservists, and the Marquis de Sade's castle lies in ruins. The Tower of London's dungeons still boast an excellent range of enhanced interrogation equipment, but they attract too many giggling children.
