The Way of the Knife

by Mark Mazzetti

IF THERE WAS ONE EVENT that had catalyzed the CIA’s escalation of lethal operations, it was the completion of a devastating internal report in May 2004 by the spy agency’s inspector general. The 106-page report by John Helgerson kicked out the foundation upon which the CIA detention-and-interrogation program had rested, and it raised questions about whether CIA officers might face criminal prosecution for the brutal interrogations carried out inside the agency’s network of secret prisons. It suggested that interrogation methods like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and exploiting the phobias of prisoners—such as confining them in a small box with live bugs—violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which prohibits “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The CIA had subjected several detainees to waterboarding—wherein the prisoner was hooded and immobilized on a wooden plank while water was poured over his face, creating the sensation of drowning—and in one month alone had used the technique on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the September 11 attacks, 183 times.