One of the problems with black ops prisons - aside from enhanced interrogation techniques - has been the ability of the U.S. to keep prisoners detained for long periods of time, without charging them with crimes. In effect, it created a human library, a way for our intelligence agency to be able to reference and cross reference facts.
This topic came up recently during a forum at the American Enterprise Institute when three CIA veterans watched the film Zero Dark Thirty and tried to separate fact from fiction. William Saletan at Slate Magazine gives a great overview of this discussion in his article The Case for Torture, The U.S. has continued this policy even as it its own intelligence members have commented that it has dubious impact on the mission in the war on terror. Libraries are for books...not people.
