In the fifth section of The Dark Side, Jane Mayer depicts a chilling image of the treatment of detainees in CIA black sites, off-US soil prisons where "enemy combatants" were detained. Khalid Seikh Mohammed was one of the several hundred "enemy combatants" to make a trip to a CIA black site. While at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Mohammed went through torturous interrogations. While the President once said in a 2005 press meeting, "This country does not believe in torture," what occurred in Gitmo could not be defined otherwise...at least not by any sensible person. Lawyers working for Bush's administration had made "enhanced interrogations" legal where torture was essentially anything, but death. Upon Mohammed's arrival, he requested a lawyer, but was not given one. CIA officials believed that it was imperative that he not be given a lawyer. Mayer writes, "According to Tenet, Mohammed told his captors that he wouldn't talk until he was given a lawyer. 'Had that happened, I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his about imminent threats against the American people" (Mayer 271). Had he been given a lawyer, the "enhanced interrogations" would not have taken place and they would not have obtained the information they sought. During these interrogations, he was coerced into giving up information. He would have to tell them something. In some cases, "He wanted the interrogators to stop, he said, so he told them whatever they seemed to want to hear" (Mayer 277). Mohammed is a prime example of those who went through "enhanced interrogations."
Officials at black sites and detention camps put prisoners through many different forms interrogation all for the sake of obtaining information that may have been helpful to the cause of upholding national security. Among the many things prisoners went through included cavity searches which were used to "absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity...a process not just of getting information, but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation" (Mayer 272). Among other form of interrogation were blasting loud noises into prisoners ears for days on end and having them sit in certain position, shackled to the wall. As long as death or the loss of organs wasn't involved, the detainees could legally go through out. After all, not only were they not on US soil, but they weren't even being 'tortured.' Khaled el-Masri was another detainee that went through the tortures of these black sites. During his first night in a black site, an English-speaking man, while interrogating him said, "You're in a country where no one knows about you. There's no rule of law. If you die, you will be buried here. No one will ever know" (Mayer 284). These must have been freightning words to hear. He could do nothing about it either. Detainees went through hell and they couldn't do anything to stop it.
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