ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a taxonomy of assistance offered by foreign partners to the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) detention programme. It utilizes data relating to the categories of assistance to offer an overview of how and where the covert detention network operated, what its principal and subsidiary nodes were, how they interacted, what pressures were brought to bear on it and how, as a result, it evolved and adapted. Most prisoners spent a few days in local custody before transfer to the CIA, but in some cases the pre-CIA detention stretched into long durations. The CIA's internal discussions about running its own detention facilities overseas began as early as 14 September 2001. The first prisoner to enter CIA detention, he was initially held in Thailand in a site hastily set up for that purpose, and he remained the CIA's sole prisoner for six months. By mid-2002 the CIA was constructing a detention facility in Afghanistan.
