Supreme Court Rules the CIA Can Keep Mouths Shut About Its Post-9/11 Torture Black Sites

The Supreme Court ruled today that the United States can continue to withhold information about the CIA torture of prisoners at black sites during the early years of the post-9/11 war on terror from lawsuits trying to hold those involved responsible.

In a complex, technical ruling, six justices ruled in the federal government’s favor (though there were multiple separate opinions from different justices explaining their reasoning). Justice Elena Kagan agreed with part of the ruling and dissented in part. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor were the only full dissenters.

The case, United States v. Zubaydah, revolved around Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and has been held by the U.S. since then under the belief that he was a senior Al Qaeda leader potentially planning further terrorist attacks against the United States. He was tortured extensively by the CIA, waterboarded dozens of times. He’s currently a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay.

Zubaydah was reportedly held at a CIA black site in Poland as part of these interrogations. He has sued to try to hold the people who tortured him accountable. The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that Poland violated the law when it cooperated with the CIA. The CIA and federal government, though, have refused to verify or validate that this black site actually existed. In the United States, the federal government has attempted to quash subpoenas of two former CIA contractors—James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the two psychologists who consulted with the agency to develop the interrogation program—as part of Zubaydah’s legal challenges. Even though there has been extensive press coverage and reports about the extent of the U.S. torture of prisoners, the CIA insists that acknowledging the existence of a black site in Poland falls under “state secrets” and that courts cannot force them to disclose the info.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the federal government, believing (like the rest of us) that the location of the black site was now public knowledge and that confirmation of the site’s existence can no longer harm national security interests. Today the Supreme Court ruled that even though this information has entered the public domain, it can still be classified as a state secret. – READ MORE