A 2003 CIA cable details stunning torture methods against a detainee at a black site, carried out without permission and removed from reports to headquarters. The cable recounts how an interrogator put a cordless drill close to Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s body and pressed the “on switch” and “let the drill run.” The incident reportedly took place weeks after al-Nashiri was waterboarded at the CIA black site. A handgun was also held to al-Nashiri’s head after he had been forced to stay awake for two-and-a-half days in a stress position, which involved chaining his arms above his head while he was naked or wearing only a diaper. Al-Nashiri was later charged in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. A military judge, Colonel Lanny J. Acosta Jr., rejected al-Nashiri’s statements in detention, writing, “Any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him years before.” Al-Nashiri’s trial is set to start in June 2026 at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.