The CIA Allegedly Used The Red Hot Chili Peppers To Torture An Inmate At 

Guantanamo Bay

Flea and Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers Coachella 2013


The funk-rock antics of the Red Hot Chili Peppers can now be listed alongside waterboarding as methods of torture the CIA allegedly used against Guantanamo Bay detainees, Al Jazeera reports, citing an anonymous U.S. interrogator.

Songs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers would allegedly be blasted at excessively loud volumes on a constant loop in order to disorientate Abu Zubaida, a detainee at a black site prison being operated out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The alleged use of the Red Hot Chili Peppers for interrogation is just one of the latest revelations of the full extent of CIA’s brutal enhanced interrogation techniques. The revelations come from a still-classified 6,600-page Senate report on the breadth of CIA torture.

Other torture techniques that the CIA allegedly used at its black site prisons included sleep deprivation for up to 11 days and the stuffing of detainees into pet carry crates.

Speaking to TMZ, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith responded angrily to revelations that his music was used for torture, saying “our music’s positive, man. It’s supposed to make people feel good and that’s … It’s very upsetting to me, I don’t like that at all. It’s bullsh—.”

This isn’t the first time musicians were angered that interrogators had equated their songs with torture. In February, Canadian industrial rock band Skinny Puppy sent the Pentagon a $660,000 invoice after discovering Guantanamo Bay interrogators had used its music.