And an inspiration to NSA Kwiz Kidz everywhere. First-rate propaganda by our DoD, manufactured parts in the Czech Republic, or some such offshore CIA slush media factory. Custom job. You know we’ve known for months. Right, Keith? Siriously.

Cheers

March 14, 2011

That’s how you’ll know we’re in.

Norelli, N.
3.01.11

Photo by Trevor Paglen

The CIA asked that the [Salt Pit black site] officers not be identified at all, saying doing so would benefit terrorists and hostile nations. Spokesman George Little called the AP’s decision “nothing short of reckless” but did not provide any specific information about threats. The CIA has previously provided detailed arguments in efforts to persuade senior executives at the AP and other U.S. news organizations to withhold or delay publishing information it said would endanger lives or national security, but that did not happen in this case.

The AP determined that even the most sophisticated commercial information services could not be used to derive the officers’ full names or, for example, find their home addresses knowing only their first names and the fact of their CIA employment. The AP has withheld further details that could help identify them.

Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press, February 9, 2011.

Matthew Zirbel’s last name was released in a brief submitted on behalf of Jay Bybee, to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility. The brief was posted online at the House Judiciary Committee’s website. Zirbel ’s name was subsequently redacted, but not before internet historians took note:

Matthew Zirbel, who is in charge of the Salt Pit, orders Gul Rahman to be stripped semi-naked, chained to the concrete floor, and left overnight without blankets. The incident is confirmed by four government officials. Afghan guards, paid by the CIA and working under agency supervision, take Rahman to an abandoned warehouse and drag him around on the concrete floor, causing bruising and lacerations, before chaining him in his cell. When night falls, the temperature plummets. Rahman is found in the morning, frozen to death. Hypothermia” is the cause of death. Guards bury the body in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces. The man’s family is not notified, and his remains are never returned for a proper burial. The man is not listed on any registry of captives, not even as a so-called “ghost detainee.” One government official says simply, “He just disappeared from the face of the earth.”

Yes. All that’s left are the cold, hard facts.