Also interesting is how government will use "torture lite" to extract confessions.
"On November 23, 2018, Butina went to sleep on a blue mat atop the gray cement bed in her cell, her 81st day in solitary confinement. Hours later, in the middle of the night, she was awakened and marched to a new cell, 2E05, this one with a solid steel door and no food slot, preventing even the slightest communication. No reason was given, but her case had reached a critical point. Prosecutors were hoping to get her to plead guilty rather than go to trial, and had even agreed to drop the major charge against her: acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia. Born and raised in Siberia, she is terrified of solitary confinement. Fifteen days later, still in solitary, she signed the agreement, pleading guilty to the lesser charge, one count of conspiracy."
Some context....
"A senior CIA official who held one of the highest jobs in the agency’s Clandestine Service, and who worked closely with the FBI on many spy cases, offered a cynical view of the bureau’s counterintelligence work. “They want to generate headlines. They don’t care if the information is credible or not,” he said, asking to remain anonymous because of his past clandestine work. “I feel sorry for Butina; she got caught up in this whole vortex. They’re just interested in putting another notch in their belt, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”"
