Secret prisons

The Washington Post reported on November 2 that the "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons."

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

Guess what? This is bad for transparency:

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country....

Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

We may not know what happens in these prisons, but we have our suspicions, eh?

After all, we've all seen the Pawn Shop scene in Pulp Fiction.

From ABC:

"The one overriding reason for such a facility is to torture those in detention," said Mark Garlasco of Human Rights Watch. "So that they are away from any prying eyes from the public and from the media."

The administration denies that any torture occurs.

Prove it.