FBI Agent Leaves "Secret Interrogation Manual" in Library of Congress
Operational security, ladies and gentlemen. We have secrets, and we need to keep them! We also need to log them all. Now... where do I register this unredacted treatise on how to interrogate an Arab?
In a lapse that national security experts call baffling, a high-ranking FBI agent filed a sensitive internal manual detailing the bureau's secret interrogation procedures with the Library of Congress, where anyone with a library card can read it...
The 70-plus-page manual ended up in the Library of Congress, thanks to its author, an FBI official who made an unexplainable mistake. This FBI supervisory special agent, who once worked as a unit chief in the FBI's counterterrorism division, registered a copyright for the manual in 2010 and deposited a copy with the US Copyright Office, where members of the public can inspect it upon request. What's particularly strange about this episode is that government documents cannot be copyrighted.
It's still not exactly easy to get a glimpse of the uncut version, and the ACLU has long hosted a redacted copy online, where you can learn critical tidbits to help you squeeze hajjis for info, like: "To Arabs honor is more important than facts."
Still, Mother Jones compared the two versions and found some fun redactions:
Another section, blacked out in the version provided to the ACLU, encourages FBI agents to stage a "date-stamped full-body picture" of a detainee, complete with a bottle of water, for use in refuting abuse allegations at trial.
Can't do nothing wrong to a dude who's holding a bottle of water!
