New reports suggest that the White House pressured interrogators to elicit evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, leading to more and harsher "enhanced interrogations." No such link ever existed.
November: In the "Salt Pit," a secret, CIA-run prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, guards strip a detainee, chain him outdoors, and leave him there. He dies of hypothermia.
December 2: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approves coercive interrogation techniques, including "inducing stress by use of detainee's fears (e.g. dogs)," for Guantánamo. He jots on a memo, "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?"
2003
February 5: Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the United Nations. Unwittingly citing false information coerced from a detainee, he makes the case for war against Iraq.
March 1: U.S. and Pakistani forces capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top al Qaeda operative.
March: U.S. interrogators waterboard Mohammed 183 times over the course of the month.
March 14: Yoo sends William Haynes, counsel to the Department of Defense, a memo working through the applicability of international and national law to detainee treatment. It cites the prerogative of national "self-defense" and the executive power of the president as paramount.
March 20: The United States invades Iraq.
June 6: The 9/11 Commission requests interrogation documents and logs from the Department of Defense, FBI, and CIA, including all material relating to Zubayda. The CIA supplies written summaries, rather than original documents.
October 7: Under the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union requests all information about detainees held overseas by the United States.
October 9: The Red Cross -- the only independent organization afforded access to the Guantánamo detainees -- issues a public statement about the "deterioration in the psychological health of a large number of detainees" there.
2004
March: The United States repatriates the "Tipton Three," Britons held in Guantánamo, to Britain, which releases them without charge. They provide a public statement alleging abuse, including severe beatings.
April 28 - May 10: The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh and CBS News break the story of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
June 8: The Washington Post's Dana Priest and Jeffrey Smith break the story of the OLC torture memos.
June 15-16: OLC head Jack Goldsmith withdraws the August 2002 Bybee torture memo to Gonzales, and subsequently resigns.
June 28: In Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rules that Guantánamo Bay detainees have the legal right to challenge their detention.
December 30: Daniel Levin, the new acting head of the OLC, issues a new memo declaring torture illegal and broadening its definition.
2005
May 10: Steven Bradbury of the OLC authors a detailed, 46-page memo to John Rizzo, the CIA counsel, authorizing a variety of coercive interrogation techniques and arguing that even the harshest techniques are not torture. He writes, "As you have informed us, the CIA has previously used the waterboard repeatedly on two detainees, and, as far as can be determined, these detainees did not experience physical pain or, in the professional judgment of doctors, is there any medical reason to believe they would have done so." A second, shorter memo describes the detention process and again stresses that nothing being done is torture, and therefore is legal.
May 20: The New York Times publishes an exposé by Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden of the death of Dilawar, an Afghani farmer, at Bagram Air Base two years earlier. The story later becomes the basis of Taxi to the Dark Side, an Oscar-winning documentary by Alex Gibney.
May 30: Bradbury sends a third memo to John Rizzo, again working through the legality of enhanced techniques. It says 28 detainees have been subject to them. It also mentions terrorist plots that might have been stopped due to the enhanced interrogation of detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and claims that half the Counter Terrorism Center's reporting on al Qaeda stemmed from information from CIA detainees. On page 37, it notes the number of times Zubayda and Mohammed were waterboarded.
As first reported on ForeignPolicy.com, Philip Zelikow, then an advisor to the secretary of state, circulates an opinion repudiating the new memos. The White House attempts to collect and destroy all copies, Zelikow says.
November 2: In the Washington Post, investigative reporter Dana Priest describes the black site prisons. Sometime this month, the CIA destroys videotapes of the interrogations of high-value detainees.
December: Congress passes the Detainee Treatment Act, which outlaws "cruel, inhumane, or degrading" treatment of U.S.-held prisoners anywhere in the world. Members of Congress are unaware of OLC memos categorizing harsh techniques, including waterboarding, as legal.
2006
June 12: Dick Marty, a Swiss prosecutor, releases a report created for the Council of Europe. It describes the involvement of European countries in aiding the extraordinary rendition and secret imprisonment of detainees by the United States. A second, more-detailed report comes out one year later.
