Bright Light is the codename of one of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

's network of black sites—clandestine interrogation centers. The location of the site, in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, was confirmed in an exclusive report from the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

on December 8, 2011. Some of the most important captives in the high value detainee program, including

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes also spelled Shaykh; also known by at least 50 pseudonyms; born 14 April 1965), often known by his initials KSM, is a terrorist, and the former head of propaganda for the pan-Islamist militant group al-Qaeda. He ...

, the mastermind of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, were held there. Other sites in the CIA's network were in isolated locations. The Bucharest site was housed within the campus of the Romanian National Registry Office for Classified Information, explaining the need for high security. The cells the captive were held in were mounted on springs, to keep the captives off balance. According to

ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to: * ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation * ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company ABC News may a ...

captives were subjected to "

enhanced interrogation techniques "Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at ...

" in the Bucharest site, but were not subjected to the controversial technique of

waterboarding Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboard ...

Authorization from the Romanian government

Romanian President The president of Romania () is the head of state of Romania. The president is directly elected by a two-round system, and, following a modification to the Romanian Constitution in 2003, serves for five years. An individual may serve two ter ...

Ion Iliescu Ion Iliescu (; born 3 March 1930) is a Romanian politician and engineer who served as the second president of Romania from 1989 until 1996 and from 2000 until 2004. Between 1996 and 2000 and also from 2004 to 2008, the year in which he retired, ...

claimed in a

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

interview that he approved just the use of the location, without knowing the details about the secret prison. The U.S. government requested at the end of 2002/beginning of 2003 a building for the CIA and Iliescu approved it, appointing presidential adviser

Ioan Talpeș Ioan Talpeș (born 24 August 1944) is a Romanian senator, who previously served as a Romanian Army general, military historian and politician. He served as head of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) from 1992 to 1997. In 1997–8, Tal ...

in charge of the details. Talpeș said that he understood that the situation could "become dangerous", so he told the CIA that the Romanian government did not want to know anything regarding how the building was being used. These statements contradict the result of a 2008 investigation by the Romanian Parliament, which concluded that no CIA prisons existed in Romania.

References

{{coord, 44.467955, N, 26.046033, E, display=title Black sites Buildings and structures in Bucharest Counterterrorism in the United States Detention centers for extrajudicial prisoners of the United States Government buildings in Romania Prisons in Romania Romania–United States relations Military history of Bucharest 21st century in Bucharest Political controversies in Romania