Reader Profile: David Sleigh

David graduated from Macalester College and Vermont Law School. He has been an active trial lawyer for more than 25 years and has tried more than 100 cases to final jury verdict. He has been particularly active in the last 10 years in trying civil rights cases on behalf of prisoners who have been denied adequate medical care by private prison health care companies. At the request of the Center for Constitutional Rights, he has represented several Guantanamo detainees. David will read from a CIA background paper sent to the U.S. Justice Department.

Excerpt from a CIA background paper that was sent to the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel on Dec. 30, 2004.

.…Effective interrogation is based on the concept of using both physical and psychological pressures in a comprehensive, systematic, and cumulative manner to influence HVD behavior, to overcome a detainee’s resistance posture. The goal of interrogation is to create a state of learned helplessness and dependence conducive to the collection of intelligence in a predictable, reliable, and sustainable manner. For the purpose of this paper, the interrogation process can be broken into three separate phases: Initial Conditions; Transition to Interrogation; and Interrogation.