Salt Pit

Salt Pit and Cobalt were the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It was located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the war in Afghanistan. The CIA adapted it for extrajudicial detention.

In the winter of 2005, the Salt Pit became known to the general public because of two incidents. In 2011, the Miami Herald indicated that the Salt Pit was the same facility that Guantanamo Bay detainees referred to as the dark prison—a fact subsequently confirmed in the CIA torture report.

Beginning in April 2021, until the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, large sections of the Salt Pit were demolished by the departing personnel before the Taliban gained control of the site.

Description

Although the initial plan called for the Afghan government to operate the site, it actually was overseen by the CIA from the start. The CIA authorized more than $200,000 for the construction of the prison in June 2002; the site became operational with the incarceration of Redha al-Najar in September 2002, although the first formal guidelines for interrogation and confinement at the site were signed by the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet only in late January 2003. Ultimately, the prison housed, at one point or another, nearly half of the 119 detainees identified by the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

The CIA used many different techniques and tactics to break down the detainees' minds, making them more willing to comply with interrogation.