AP Exclusive: The CIA and a Secret Vacuum Cleaner
“We didn’t want them to go nuts,” the former senior CIA official said, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the now-shuttered CIA prisons or Mohammed’s interest in vacuums.
So, using schematics from the Internet as his guide, Mohammed began re-engineering one of the most mundane of household appliances.
That the CIA may be in possession of the world’s most highly classified vacuum cleaner blueprints is but one peculiar, lasting byproduct of the controversial U.S. detention and interrogation program.
By the CIA’s own account, the program’s methods were “designed to psychologically ‘dislocate’” people. But once interrogations stopped, the agency had to try to undo the psychological damage inflicted on the detainees.