When not in his cell, #Gershkovich was called to the #interrogation room of chief investigator Alexei Khizhnyak, the same #FSB interrogator who had once questioned the fmr Marine, Whelan. Khizhnyak faced prisoners across a T-shaped wooden table, in a room watched over by #CheGuevara, Soviet security services’ founder #FelixDzerzhinsky & 2 portraits of Vladimir #Putin. Whelan had said during his pretrial investigation that #Khizhnyak had threatened to kill him….

Interrogation is covered in a brick room off to the side & the International Spy Museum doesn't pull any punches.

Topic #1: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" including & up to waterboarding. They have 5 authoratative testimonies from both 'should we/shouldn't we' camps.

The exhibits go over torture's illegality under Intl law, what waterboarding is & how it's been investigated.

I recommend seeing this thought-provoking exhibit for yourself.

Then-CIA Dir John #Brennan insisted that the #interrogation techniques “did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, & save lives.” He & #Feinstein had earlier faced off in a high-stakes confrontation when Brennan accused cmte investigators of improperly obtaining materials from a #CIA computer network.

The cmte’s 6,700-pg “#torture report,” an executive summary of which was publicly released in 2014, alleged that #CIA #interrogation techniques — incl’g #waterboarding, #SleepDeprivation, physical #abuse, #confinement in a coffin-size box & #threats against suspects’ #families — had been far more #brutal, more #widespread & less effective than the agency previously claimed.