What was the CIA's secret abduction program and why was it created after 9/11?

The CIA's secret abduction program was a covert network established six days after 9/11, involving 54 countries worldwide. It was created when President George W. Bush authorized the CIA to secretly capture and detain suspected terrorists outside U.S. legal frameworks. The program emerged because the CIA wanted to avoid following international rules of war, which would require treating detainees as prisoners of war with legal rights and no torture. Instead, they constructed a global network of secret prisons where suspects could be abducted, hidden from public view, and interrogated using physical and psychological violence to quickly gather intelligence meant to prevent future attacks.