15 CIA Torture Conspiracies

Of all of the revelations in the so-called T-Report prepared by Congress, the worst might have been that the CIA can literally make you eat. A prisoner named Majid Khan had a "lunch tray" of hummus, pasta, sauce, and raisins pureed and rectally introduced into his body. 

Other prisoners were forced to stand on broken limbs, shackled naked to walls, given rectal exams, and threatened with the assault and deaths of their loved ones. This is only the information that was publicly released.

The CIA’s infamous MK-ULTRA experiment ran for more than a decade, and involved citizens unknowingly being dosed with mind-altering LSD. While the goal of the study was to advance US intelligence and special operations capabilities in mind control, brainwashing, and resisting systematic harm, it failed miserably, producing no actionable results.

What's worse is that it violated every ethical code in any medical book anywhere. At one point, seven men were given the drug for 77 days straight. Reportedly, several demises are directly attributable to the program.

One of the great scandals of the 1980s was the "interrogation manuals" fiasco, in which the Baltimore Sun uncovered nearly two decades of CIA handbooks specifically used to teach coercive information gathering methods to Latin American paramilitaries, or unofficial organizations that are semi-militarized. Among the tactics taught by these manuals - first called KUBARK, then the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - were electric shocks, truth serum, fear, sleep deprivation, and solitary confinement.

Among the most prolific US-taught recipients of the manual were Honduras's Battalion 316, which the CIA played a major role in establishing, training, equipping, and financing. Close to 200 Honduran students disappeared and were systematically harmed or terminated before this unit was closed down by the US.

The brutal techniques used at Abu Ghraib were so numerous that they spawned a rhyming nickname: "stress and duress." There were 72 different unsanctioned methods in the stress and duress "matrix" used on detainees who may not have done anything wrong. While US officials first claimed that inflicting stress and duress didn't constitute inhuman treatment, and therefore, were not specifically against the Geneva Convention, those subjected to such techniques would probably disagree.

Among the tactics in the stress and duress manual are the use of bright lights or blaring noise, putting blackout hoods on heads for 24 hour periods, exposure to extreme heat and cold, binding in stress positions, stripping, humiliation, and sleep deprivation. All of this was approved at some level by American military personnel.

For the better part of two years in 2003 and 2004, the CIA and US Army conspired to systematically harm prisoners - via penetration, beatings, and the withholding of basic necessities - at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. After an investigation by the ACLU got the ball rolling, photos began to leak of prisoners being beaten, chained, humiliated and forced to pose in human pyramids.

A number of officers and soldiers were court-martialed and taken into custody - and they all, in turn, claimed they were only following orders from military and CIA higher-ups who had approved the tactics.

The CIA needed somewhere to take all those quasi-combatants it was intent on torturing, hence the need for black sites. These are secret prisons with no real legal definition, usually located in far-flung countries and away from prying eyes. For quite some time, the US wouldn't acknowledge black sites were even a thing, only admitting to their existence in a 2006 speech by President Bush - because information on them had leaked to the Washington Post.

At least 50 black sites have been reported in over two dozen countries, along with several dozen more in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some on military and civilian ships. Beatings, waterboarding, and sleep deprivation are all alleged to have taken place at these black sites - and that's only what's publicly known.