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2. The CIA Holds at Least 21 More Detainees Than It Has Represented; At Least 26 CIA Detainees Wrongly Detained
While the CIA has represented in public and classified settings that it detained "fewer than one hundred" individuals,[1] the Committee's review of CIA records indicates that the total number of CIA detainees was at least 119.[2] Internal CIA documents indicate that inadequate record keeping made it impossible for the CIA to determine how many individuals it had detained. In December 2003, a CIA Station overseeing CIA detention operations in Country informed CIA Headquarters that it had made the "unsettling discovery" that the CIA was "holding a number of detainees about whom" it knew "very little,"[3] Nearly five years later, in late 2008, the CIA attempted to determine how many individuals the CIA had detained. At the completion of the review, CIA leaders, including CIA Director Michael Hayden, were informed that the review found that the CIA had detained at least 112 individuals, and possibly more.[4] According to an email summarizing the meeting, CIA Director Hayden
- ↑ CIA Director Hayden typically described the program as holding "fewer than a hundred" detainees. For example, in testimony before the Committee on February 4, 2008, in response to a question from Chairman Rockefeller during an open hearing, Hayden stated, "[i]n the life of the CIA detention program we have held fewer than a hundred people." (See DTS #2008-1140.) Specific references to "98" detainees were included in a May 5, 2006, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI)report on Renditions, Detentions and Interrogations. See also Memorandum for John A. Rizzo, Acting General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency, from Steven G. Bradbury, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, July 20, 2007, Re: Application of the War Crimes Act, the Detainee Treatment Act, and Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to Certain Techniques that May Be Used by the CIA in the Interrogation of High Value al Qaeda Detainees. Other examples of this CIA representation include a a statement by CTC officer to the HPSCI on February 15, 2006, and a statement by CTC Legal to the SSCI June 10, 2008. See DTS #2008-2698.
- ↑ The Committee's accounting of the number of CIA detainees is conservative and only includes individuals for whom there is clear evidence of detention in CIA custody. The Committee thus did not count, among the 119 detainee six of the 31 individuals listed in a memo entitled "Updated List of Detainees In attached to a March 2003 email sent by DETENTION SITE COBALT sitemanager [CIA OFFICER 1], because they were not explicitly described as CIA detainees and because they did not otherwise appear in CIA records. (See mail from: ; to: , and subject: DETAINEES; date: March 13, 2003.) An additional individual is the subject of CIA cables describing a planned transfer from U.S. military to CIA custody at DETENTION SITE COBALT. He was likewise not included among the 119 CIA detainees because of a lack of CIA records confirming either his transfer to, or his presence at, DETENTION SITE COBALT. As detailed in this summary, in December 2008, the CIA attempted to identify the total number of CIA detainees. In a graph prepared for CIA leadership, the CIA represnted the number of CIA detainees as "112+ ?" See 12417 (101719Z OCT 02); ALEC (232056Z OCT 02); 190159 (240508Z OCT 02); and ALEC (301226ZOCT 02).
- ↑ 1528
- ↑ As of June 27, 2013, when the CIA provided its Response to the Committee Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program (hereinafter, the "CIA's June 2013 Response"), the CIA had not yet made an independent determination of the number of individuals it had detained. The CIA's June 2013 Response does not address the number of detainees determined by the Committee to be held by the CIA, other than to assert that the discrepancy between past CIA representations, that there were fewer than 100 detainees, and the Committee's determination of there being at least 119 CIA detainees, was not "substantively meaningful." The CIA's June 2013 Response states that the discrepancy "does not impact the previously known scale of the program," and that "[i]t remains true that approximately 100 detainees were part of the program; not 10 and not 200." The CIA's June 2013 Response also states that, "[t]he Study leaves unarticulated what impact the relatively small discrepancy might have had on policymakers or Congressional overseers." The CIA's June 2013 Response further asserts that, at the time Director Hayden was representing there had been fewer than 100 detainees (2007-2009), the CIA's internal research
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