Alleged plot deputy Ramzi bin al Shibh, 42, made the revelation just moments into the hearing by informing the judge he had a problem with his courtroom translator: The interpreter, he claimed, worked for the CIA during his 2002 through 2006 detention at a so-called "Black Site."

This week's is the first hearing for the five men accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — that killed nearly 3,00 people in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania — since the public release of portions of a sweeping Senate Intelligence Committee study of the agency's secret prisons known as "The Torture Report."

The report gives graphic details that the U.S. government had hidden in these pretrial hearings — sexual humiliation, waterboarding and rectal rehydration. The sickliest looking of the accused conspirators, Mustafa al Hawsawi, 46, once again sat on a pillow at court.