TORTURE BY WATER

In the late morning of November 26, 2002, at a secret CIA torture site in Thailand code-named Cat’s Eye, al-Qaeda operative Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri looked past James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the interrogators who had been slamming him into a wall, to see a hospital gurney being wheeled into his cell. Heavily muscled men, covered from head to toe in black, forced him onto the gurney and strapped him to it. Nashiri was so thin that Mitchell and Jessen had difficulty tightening the straps enough to immobilize him. After itemizing the information they were seeking from him (and presumably deemed him to be withholding), Mitchell and Jessen stepped out of the cell, leaving Nashiri strapped to the gurney.

Twenty minutes later, at 11:47 a.m., Mitchell and Jessen returned. Previewing just how bad things were going to get, they promised Nashiri that they wouldn’t let him die because they needed him to answer their questions. When Nashiri insisted that he didn’t know or couldn’t recall anything his captors considered useful, they splashed some water on his chest and expressed their dissatisfaction. This back and forth—with Nashiri desperately attempting through tears to remember something that would satisfy Mitchell and Jessen and the two men accusing Nashiri of lying—continued for 27 minutes.

At 12:14 p.m., the CIA contractors placed a cloth over Nashiri’s face, covering his nose and mouth,