American Taliban John Walker Lindh was captured, and subsequently nearly killed, by the Northern Alliance on November 25, 2001. “Lindh managed to survive…and eventually fell into the hands of the CIA and Special Forces, who proceeded to interrogate him. According to documents later unearthed by Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times, a Special Forces intelligence officer was informed by a navy admiral monitoring events in Mazar-e-Sharif [Afghanistan] that ‘the secretary of defense’s [Donald Rumsfeld’s] counsel has authorized him to *take the gloves off* and ask whatever he wanted.’ In the course of questioning, Lindh, who had a bullet in his leg, was stripped naked and blindfolded, handcuffed, and bound to a stretcher with duct tape. In a practice that would become more familiar at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq eighteen months later, smiling soldiers posed for pictures next to the naked prisoner. A navy medic later testified that he had been told by the lead military interrogator that ‘sleep deprivation, cold, and hunger might be employed’ during Lindh’s interrogations.”
– Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, Page 129