Doc. 11302 Report 65. The template for the high-value detainee programme was not drawn out of the KCD’s Detain (or “D”) category, since this was said to be a more general responsibility (shared with the military and local counterparts) for those persons picked up in the course of counter-terrorist activities about whose intelligence value the CIA unit on the ground was less certain: “D was like our default option: Detain. Like if we pick up some guy in a raid where we also got one of the HVTs, like [Ramzi] bin Al-Shibh, and maybe we’ve got nothing on this guy, but obviously we’re still gonna hold him.” 66. According to our sources, the tailor-made HVD programme actually grew out of the KCD’s Capture (or “C”) category, which comprised targets whom the CIA set out expressly to capture, sometimes offering multimillion dollar United States Government rewards for decisive tip-offs. The design of a special HVD programme helped to address a key “what next?” question, as one well-placed source explained: “We knew that we would have some successes when we went out to get these guys, with the resources we were throwing at it and the support of our friends in the Pakistani Services.23So the real question was: ‘What are we gonna do with them when we got them?’” 67. The CIA ruled out the prospect of having its HVTs handed over to or shared with the United States military or the FBI, let alone foreign services – “These high-value targets are not moved between agencies or nations” – believing that the security and integrity of the resultant interrogations, in particular, could not be guaranteed. On the same grounds, Guantánamo Bay “offered nothing” akin to the secrecy and isolation that the CIA demanded: “Guántanamo was a real mess. The interrogators there were FBI and military… [who] thought they knew what they were looking for, but they didn’t know who they were talking to. The United States had a laboratory at Guantánamo, for the first time, to understand the insurgent arm of al-Qaeda… [but] we screwed it up!” 68. Hence the concept of “black sites”, a handful of facilities of limited size and capacity in different parts of the world, where the CIA exclusively would be the jailer. 2.4. The evolution of specific “black sites” in the HVD programme 69. A significant breakthrough, which became the trigger for the operations of the HVD programme, was the CIA’s capture of Abu Zubaydah in March 2002. Mr Zubaydah’s peculiar importance from the United States Government’s perspective has been well documented – not least in President Bush’s speech of 6 September 2006 – in which he was mentioned 12 times, including to acknowledge that an “alternative set of procedures”24was introduced specifically for his interrogation. In the ensuing period of approximately two-anda-half years, information garnered from HVD interrogations using these procedures is said to have proved crucial in combating al-Qaeda’s worldwide terrorist operations.25 70. There are two more specific locations to be considered as “black sites” and about which we have received information sufficiently serious to demand further investigation; we are, however, not in a position to carry out adequate analysis in order to reach definitive conclusions in this report. First we have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used the island territory of Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the United Kingdom, in the “processing” of high-value detainees. It is true that the United Kingdom Government has readily accepted “assurances”26from United States authorities 23. The phrase used here is understood to be a reference to the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, or ISI, which is Pakistan’s military intelligence branch and is renowned for its close co-operation with the CIA. 24. This phrase is understood to be a reference to the regime of CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which were subsequently used to interrogate several other HVDs. For a description of these techniques and the (operational and legal) implications of resorting to them, please see Sections V and VIII in this report. 25. As President Bush has presented it, when all the leads yielded from these interrogations are taken together (“corroborated by intelligence … that helped us to connect the dots”), then the cumulative product has “played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior al-Qaeda member or associate detained by the United States and its allies since this programme began”. See also Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), “Summary of the High-Value Terrorist Detainee Program”, 6 September 2006, available at http://www.defenselink.mil/ pdf/ thehighvaluedetaineeprogram2.pdf. 26. See, for example, United Kingdom Parliament, Publications and Records; “Written Answers for 21 June 2004”, in House of Commons Hansard; point 13, column 1222W, Questions to the Rt. Hon. Jack Straw, United Foreign Secretary, available at ment.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo040621/text/40621w13.htm#40621w 13.html_wqn9. Mr Straw said: “The United States authorities have repeatedly assured us that no detainees have at any time passed in transit through Diego Garcia or its territorial waters or have disembarked there and that the allegations to that effect are totally without foundation. The government are satisfied that their assurances are correct.” 15