Yesterday, President Obama released the rest of the Bush administration torture memos that authorized “enhanced interrogation” techniques (torture) for CIA officers in the field, meaning at various black sites around the world and at Guantanamo Bay prison. The memos would be comical if what they permitted wasn’t so egregious, the torture of prisoners in American custody performed by American citizens with consent from the highest levels of the U.S. government. We have this information thanks to the persistent efforts of the ACLU.
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Information about specific torture techniques is well known to the CIA. What few people know is that the CIA developed a torture manual in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s based on various research projects done at universities and mental hospitals around the world (outside the U.S. because of possible legal problems). It is entitled the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual (1) and it was first published in 1963, during the height of the Cold War. It was revised for classroom use and republished in 1983. All of the techniques discussed in the above video are contained in the Kubark Manual. Both manuals were declassified through the Freedom of Information Act in the late 1990’s.
You can buy a copy of both editions on Amazon.com. A few parts of the manuals were redacted, but for the most part, they are complete.
1963 Edition
1983 Edition
They are also available at gwu.edu.
These programs were funded secretly by the CIA out of fear of a “Manchurian Candidate” scenario, the brainwashing and total control of U.S. citizens by Communists. Since at the time the American Intelligence establishment believed the Soviets were successfully brainwashing people, they sought ways to counter the brainwashing and to do some brainwashing for their own purposes.
These programs researched psychological, physical, drug, and electroshock techniques (2) of breaking not only a person’s resolve and courage, but his or her personality to gain control of him or her and get out of them whatever you want to know. They discovered the most powerful combination of techniques was sensory deprivation combined with fear, using the fears of an interrogatee against him to gain control over him. These were combined with physical, drug and electroshock techniques (duress methods) as seen fit by interrogators.
Unfortunately, these techniques don’t and didn’t end up providing usable information. Prisoners talk, but they say anything they think will make the fear and horror stop. None of the information extracted from prisoners tortured at Guantanamo led to any real actionable intelligence or evidence for prosecutions. It cost millions of dollars and led intelligence officers and the military on a long series of wild goose chases. (3)
The research experiments were conducted by doctors and mental health professionals on innocent people. The medical professionals and doctors believed they were researching novel treatments for extremely ill mental patients on which the usual treatments of the day had little or no positive results. From what they were doing during experiments, it was clear that the patient’s well being was not their first priority. What the doctors found is they could break people rather easily, but they could not reprogram them or even rebuild them back to a more normal version of themselves. All they managed was to erase their memories for the most part and cause significant long-term physical and mental health problems.
Torture interrogations carried out at CIA black sites and at Guantanamo were overseen by doctors and medics, a clear violation of the their professional ethics, let alone the law.
This is a sick state of affairs for the U.S. President Obama doesn’t seem to have the stomach for prosecutions either. But a thorough investigation of everything that went on and who authorized it must be done. President Obama must either himself appoint an independent prosecutor or have the Justice Department do it. Even if no one is convicted or sentenced, a legal investigation must be done. Otherwise, our current government is violating U.S. law and at least 4 treaties we’ve signed with other countries by obstructing justice.
After World War II, the world and the prosecutors of all the German and Japanese war criminals did not accept the “I was only following orders” defense. I believe the President is stepping into dangerous territory by putting that forward as an acceptable defense. It hasn’t been in the past. What makes what was done in the name of our country any different than what the Nazis did in Germany? There is nothing different, other than it is 60 years later and the U.S. is responsible this time. Just because it was us doesn’t make it okay.
Contact the White House and demand an investigation by an independent prosecutor. If enough of us demand justice, we will get it.
References:
(1) Central Intelligence Agency, Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation, July 1963.
(2) Naomi Klein, “The Torture Lab: Ewen Cameron, the CIA and the Maniacal Quest to Erase and Remake the Human Mind”, The Shock Doctrine (New York: Metropolatin Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2007), 25-48.
(3) MSNBC News, Various Reports over several months from the end of 2008 and well into 2009.
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