The CIA Torture Program: How The Bush Administration Became Monsters

On June 21st 1993, then US President, Bill Clinton, signed Presidential Directive 39. This order would allow the United States to forcibly extract anyone suspected of "terrorism" towards the U.S, by any means necessary and without approval of the host country they lived in. Under the direction of the CIA's director, George Tenet, the counter-terrorism unit was formed, and over the years preceding 2001, the rendition program would expand. After the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, US President George W. Bush, would allow John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, two senior officials in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, to legalize the use of torture as a means of extracting information from suspects labeled as "terrorists" by the CIA. The rendition and torture program would continue under US President Obama, by using more discreet methods of using commercial airplanes and having CIA "black sites" operating in over 54 countries until a senate committee report uncovered the systematic abuses by the CIA, which forced Obama to finally end the rendition-torture program in 2009 under Executive Order 13491.