Soup of the Day: Gulag
Keep it Secret, Keep It Safe

I like the War Room's take on today's revelation in the WaPo that terror suspects are being held covertly by the CIA in a Soviet-era compound in Europe:

When Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said in June that the abuse handed out to some detainees at Guantánamo Bay might sound like the sort of things done by "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings," Republicans all but ran him out of town on charges of being un-American.

We were reminded of the flap as we read this morning's Washington Post. According to the Post, the United States is currently hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. The compound -- the location of which the Post is withholding at the request of U.S. government officials -- is part of a "covert prison system set up by the CIA" in the wake of 9/11, current and former intelligence officials and diplomats tell the Post. The paper says that specific information about these so-called "black sites" is known by only a "handful" of officials in the United States and in the host countries. The CIA has dissuaded Congress from asking questions, the Post says. As a result, the Post says, "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."