Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, on the southeastern coast of Cuba, was a principal locus of the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation operations during the post-September 11 program. The base contains a secret CIA black-site annex known as Strawberry Fields, first publicly disclosed in the December 2014 Senate Torture Report.[1]
Kiriakou’s interim posting
John Kiriakou served at Guantanamo Bay during the summer of 2002 as the CIA station’s interim Chief, between permanent Chiefs of station. The assignment came shortly after the capture of Abu Zubaydah in March 2002 in Pakistan, an operation Kiriakou led; he had become “a big star after Abu Zubaydah” and was approached by a senior agency official with the offer.[2]
Kiriakou had never previously been to Cuba and accepted on that basis. The summer was “hot.”[2]
Inter-agency culture on the base
A distinctive feature of Guantanamo culture, in contrast with overseas U.S. embassies where agency personnel routinely greet and socialize with FBI, DEA, and ATF colleagues, is that personnel from different agencies avoid one another. “You’re walking past somebody, you put your head down — like, ‘Who’s he?’ ‘I don’t know. And I’m not telling him who I am.’”[3]
The CIA’s presence on the base is referred to even by other U.S. government personnel using the euphemism OGA — “Other Government Agency” — “they don’t even like to say the letters CIA, they just say OGA.” All other personnel on the base know which buildings are CIA and are told only that they are not to enter.[4]
CIA interrogations on the base were audible to personnel of other agencies: “You can hear people screaming over there.”[4]