Greystone or GREYSTONE (abbreviation: GST) is the former secret codeword of a Sensitive Compartmented Information compartment containing information about rendition, interrogation and counter-terrorism programs of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

, operations that began shortly after the

September 11 Attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

. It covers covert actions in the Middle East that include pre-military operations in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

and drone attacks. The abbreviation GST was first revealed in December 2005, in a Washington Post-article by

Dana Priest Dana Louise Priest (born May 23, 1957) is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the ''The Washington Post, Washington Post'' and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Jo ...

, which says that GST includes programs for capturing suspected

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

terrorists, for transporting them with aircraft, for maintaining secret prisons in various foreign countries and for the use of special interrogation methods which are held illegal by many lawyers. In 2009, the GST-abbreviation was accidentally confirmed in a declassified document written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2004. The full codeword was revealed in the 2013 book ''Deep State, Inside the Government Secrecy Industry'' by

Marc Ambinder Marc Ambinder (; born ) is an American university professor, journalist, and television producer. He is a former politics editor at ''The Atlantic'', a White House Correspondent for ''National Journal'', contributing editor for '' GQ'', and was edi ...

and D.B. Grady. It says that the GREYSTONE compartment contains more than a dozen sub-compartments, which are identified by numbers (shown like GST-001). This makes sure that these sub-programs are only known to those people who are directly involved.Marc Ambinder & D.B. Grady, Deep State, Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, 2013, p. 166-167.

References

{{Reflist Central Intelligence Agency operations Counterterrorism in the United States