On December 9, 2008, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden met with President-elect Barack Obama to discuss the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. After questioning from Obama, Hayden mentioned there had been 13 techniques used by the CIA. “The 13 former interrogation techniques, some of which are still current, are:
1. Dietary manipulation. Reduce food intake to as little as 1,000 kcal/day, limiting detainees to a bottle of the diet drink Ensure.
2. Nudity in rooms at least 68 degrees F. It was permissible to exploit a detainee’s fear of being seen naked, including when women interrogators are used.
3. Attention grasp. The grabbing of a shirt collar in a quick and controlled motion to pull the detainee forward.
4. Walling. Ramming a detainee into a flexible, false wall up to 20 or 30 times.
5. Facial hold. The interrogator using both palms to hold the detainee’s face.
6. Facial slap or insult slap. A slap to the lower part of the face between the chin and earlobe.
7. Abdominal slap. A slap with the back of an open hand, not a fist, to the area between the navel and sternum.
8. Cramped confinement. Usually dark. For no more than eight hours at a time, or 18 hours a day. In very small spaces, no more than two hours. Harmless insects could be placed in the space to frighten the detainee, but this technique had not been used.
9. Wall standing. Have the detainee stand several feet away from the wall, arms out with fingers touching the wall. The detainee is not permitted to move, inducing temporary muscle fatigue.
10. Three stress positions: 1. Sitting on the floor with legs extended straight and arms raised; 2. Kneeling on the floor while at a 45-degree angle; and 3. With wrists handcuffed in the front or back, the detainee is placed three feet from the wall and only able to lean his head against the wall. As with wall standing, these postures induce temporary muscle fatigue.
11. Water dousing. Cold water is poured or sprayed on a detainee. The maximum time a detainee can be soaked in water is two thirds of the time at which hypothermia could set in.
12. Sleep deprivation for more than 48 hours. The detainee is standing, his hands are handcuffed and chained to the ceiling, his feet shackled to the floor. The hands are kept between heart and chin. He can only raise his hands above his head for two hours. The detainee cannot support his weight by hanging from the ceiling, though he can also be shackled to a small stool. The detainee may be naked and wearing a diaper. The diaper is for sanitary purposes and ‘not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee.’ Maximum permissible period is 180 hours, or more than one week. Then eight hours of uninterrupted sleep are required.
13. Waterboarding. The detainee is strapped to a board and his feet elevated. A cloth is placed over the detainee’s face, and water is poured over the cloth for no more than 40 seconds. This is not physically painful, but ‘it usually does cause fear and panic,’ creating the sensation of drowning. Waterboarding can only be used if there is credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent and the detainee might possess actionable intelligence that could stop the attack. A detainee could only be subjected to two distinct two-hour waterboarding sessions a day for no more than five days, with a maximum of 12 minutes of waterboarding in a 24-hour period. (Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was waterboarded 183 times.)”
– Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Pages 395-397