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Today's
Stories
November
3, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Democrats in End Time: Who to Blame
Now?
Mickey
Z.
Post Mortem
Chris
Floyd
No Ways Tired: Defeat, Dissent and the Bush Machine
November
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Democratic Elections in Historical
Perspective: The Wrong Side Wins
Lance
Selfa
Selling the War on Terror
Laura
Carlsen
The US Elections and Latin America: Can the US Ever be a Good
Neighbor?
James
Davis
To Control the Event: Attention Bicyclists
Richard
Oxman
Getting Up with Osama
Dr.
Ira Kay
A Mental Map of the Bush Presidency
Jesse
Walker
Frankenstein v. Chucky: the Halloween Election
Thomas
C. Mountain
Election '24, Deja Vu?: LaFollette, Nader, & the "Most
Important Election of Our Lifetimes"
November
1, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and
Blew It
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate Confirmed; Press Yawns
Greg
Bates
Nader Voter Survey Results
Roger
Morris
Novel Politics: Only Fiction Can Do
This Election Justice
Diane
Christian
Death Tolls
Lenni
Brenner
Secularists Be Warned: Christlike Kerry Roams Spiritual Universe
Christopher
C. Conway
Can the Left Sink Any Lower?
Francis
Boyle
Legal Elites and the Iraq War: the Nazis Had Their Law Professors,
Too
Jason
Leopold
Rummy's Failed War Plan
Website
of the Day
Dylan Resurrects "Masters of War"
October
30 / 31, 2004
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The Long March and the Million Worker
March
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Spartacus Tells All
Bruce
Anderson
Notes from the Big Empty: When the Hippies Invaded NoCal
Vicente
Navarro
They Worked for Franco: How Sec. of State Cordell Hull and Nobel
Laureate Camilo Jose Cela Collaborated with the Fascist Regime
Robin
Blackburn
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security
Greg
Bates
A Question of Character: What Makes Nader Tick?
Nancy
Welch
The American Health Care Crisis: an Interview with Dr. David
Himmelstein
William
Lind
Election Day: Which Menendez Brother Will You Vote For?
Brian
Cloughley
Uzbekistan and Bush Hypocrisies
Suzan
Mazur
Oops They Did It Again: the NYTs the Paper of Record and Rip-Offs
Greg
Moses
Standing at the Graves of Iraq
John
Chuckman
Osama's Endorsement
Richard
Oxman
Why Not Accept Osama's Offer?
Ken
Avidor
Landscape of Fear: When Ugly is Suspicious
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Bush, Ba'ath and Beyond
Hope
Bastian
Strangling Cuba's Economy
P.
Sainath
Tower of Gabble: Toward a Sustainable Rhetoric
Dave
Zirin
Bush League: Why MLB Owners Support the Prez
Jon
Swift
The Dry Drunk Thang: Put a Cork in It
Ron
Jacobs
The Joke's on Me: a Review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1
Alexander
Billet
Taking Theatre Back: Are the States Ready for "Stuff Happens"?
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Laymon, Norris, Ford and Albert
Website
of the Weekend
The Origins of Halloween
October
29, 2004
Harry
Browne
No Justice for Peace Activist in County
Clare
October
28, 2004
Forrest Hylton
"The Gas is Ours:" Bolivia's
Ghosts of October
Col. Dan Smith
Rebellion
in the Ranks
Alan Maass
Jon Stewart v. the Pundits
Ron Jacobs
Ecstasy
in Red Sox Nation
Alexander
Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October
27, 2004
Jules
Rabin
Crammed with Distressful Politics
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate: the Lies Continue
Katherine
Van Tassel
On the Home Front: Both Parties
Ignore Working Parents
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil
October 26,
2004
Brian Cloughley
Three
Weddings and Lots of Funerals: Atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan
William Blum
Fear
Factors
Lenni Brenner
The
1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Lessons for 2004
Ben Tripp
The
Chicken Salad Election
Fidel Castro
After the Fall
Greg Bates
The Nation's Flawed Calculus
Walter Brasch
Gag the Public: the War on Dissent
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Open Letter to Pat Buchanan
Mickey Z.
Rumble in the Jungle at 30: Ali, Foreman and the Congo
Amir Taheri
The Boom in Conspiracy Theories
Alexander Billet
Say It Ain't So, Bruce!: the Boss Endorses Kerry
Doug Giebel
The Religion of G.W. Bush
Kathleen Christison
Why
I Liked Thomas Friedman's Latest Column Before I Didn't
October 25,
2004
Ralph Nader
Letter
from a Minnesota Highway
Werther
West
Texas Wahabbism
Dave Zirin
Boston's Killer Cops: Death of a Fan
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Oregon Revokes Dr. Leveque's License
Omar Barghouti
Executing Another Child in Rafah
William J. Nottingham
Lori Berenson's Story
John Chuckman
A Foolish Consistency
Uri Avnery
On
the Road to Civil War
October 22
/ 24, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
You
Can't Blame Nader for This
Rev. William Alberts
On Bended Knee: Faith-Based Deceptions
Willliam A.
Cook
Killing for Christ
Saul Landau
George W. Bush: a Man of His Words?
Bill Quigley
I Held the Bullet in My Palm: Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children
While Arresting Priest
Christopher Brauchli
Seal It With a Frown: What Compassionate Conservativism Really
Means
William S.
Lind
Fallujah and the Moral Level of War
Sharon Smith
Guilt Trippers for Kerry
Greg Bates
Kerrynomics: "Hurt the Ones Who Vote for Us"
Justin E.H. Smith
Is Lesser Evilism a Compromise with Evil?
Rebecca Evans
Tarnished Legacy: Pinochet and the Chilean Military
Mike Whitney
Al Hurra TV: the Second Invasion
M. Junaid Alam
Purchasing Individuality in America
David Krieger
Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and
Kerry
David J. Ledermann
The Emperor's New Crumbs
Lawrence Reichard
Same Old FBI Story
Website of
the Weekend
Lie Girls: the Real Coalition of the Willling
October 21,
2004
Ben Tripp
The
Undecided Voter Examined
Joshua Frank
Kerry
and the Environment:
It's Not Easy Pretending to be Green
Stan Cox
What
the Left Doesn't Get About Small Businesses
Bill Martinez
State
Depart and Cuban Visas: Only Anti-Castro Agitators Need Apply
Mark Engler
The War and Globalization
Lina Britto
and Lucia Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
Website of the Day
Two Pampered Children of Wealth
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
November 3, 2004
The CIA and
Abu Ghraib
50
Years of Teaching and Training Torturers
By
JAMES HODGE and LINDA COOPER
Last April when Americans found themselves
looking at photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing naked and hooded
Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, it's a safe bet that most didn't
realize they were looking at torture techniques refined by the
Central Intelligence Agency over the last half century.
The Bush administration worked
overtime to convince Americans that what they were seeing was
the work of a "few bad apples," whom the president
said exhibited "disgraceful conduct" that "dishonored
our country and disregarded our values."
Even as late as July, the Army's
inspector general, Paul Mikolashek, claimed that "these
abuses should be viewed as what they are: unauthorized actions
taken by a few individuals."
A month later, after human
rights groups pointed to evidence of much wider culpability,
two government reports -- one released by an Army panel chaired
by Major Gen. George Fay, the other by a commission headed by
former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger -- confirmed what
many already sensed: that the abuse went far beyond the seven
arrested MPs.
The 171-page Fay report cites
more than two-dozen military intelligence officers, along with
several military contractors. It details some 44 incidents, including
the stripping, hooding and sodomizing of detainees; subjecting
them to temperature extremes; leading them around naked on leashes;
and attaching electrical wires to their genitals. In one case,
two naked youths were terrorized by snarling, unmuzzled military
dogs held by military personnel who competed to try to make the
teenagers defecate.
The two reports have been presented
as sweeping indictments of U.S. military leadership, but Human
Rights Watch, the largest U.S. human rights group, said the reports
utterly fail to assess the obvious: the role that official government
policies played in bringing about the horrendous abuse.
While the Schlesinger report
notes administration policies -- such as the Aug. 1, 2002, Justice
Department opinion that redefined torture as pain "equivalent
in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury,
such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even
death" -- it fails to evaluate whether the policies played
a role in contributing to the abuses.
The Schlesinger panel, whose
members were handpicked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
"seems to go out of its way not to find any relationship
between Rumsfeld's approval of interrogation techniques  designed to inflict pain and humiliation
and the widespread mistreatment and torture of detainees in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Guantánamo," said Reed Brody, special
counsel with Human Rights Watch.
Not only do they leave the
dots unconnected, but they fail to make critical links to the
past, said Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and author of "Closer Than Brothers,"
a study of the impact of the CIA's torture methods on the Philippine
military.
In an interview with NCR and
in his own writings, McCoy described the photos at Abu Ghraib
as snapshots of "CIA torture techniques that have metastasized
over the last 50 years like an undetected cancer inside the U.S.
intelligence community."
Throughout the 1950s and early
'60s, the CIA -- the lead agency doing interrogations at Abu
Ghraib -- financed and conducted secret research on coercion
and human consciousness, McCoy said. "The scale of that
research should not be minimized. By the late '50s, it reached
a billion dollars a year. The agency was providing the majority
of the funding for a half-dozen leading psychology departments."
The research ranged from using
electric shock, to giving LSD to unsuspecting subjects, to employing
sensory deprivation. It was the latter experiments that bore
fruit, he said, producing a revolutionary new psychological torture
paradigm that was superior to various physical methods that had
been used for 2,000 years, from ancient Rome's hot irons to the
medieval rack and wheel.
"People will say anything
to stop pain," McCoy said. "The information extracted
is inherently unreliable. And that's the problem the CIA solved
with these psychological methods."
The basic techniques -- the
use of stress positions, sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation
-- are aimed at making victims feel responsible for their own
pain and suffering. But McCoy added that while it appears less
abusive than physical torture, the psychological torture paradigm
causes deep psychological damage to both victims and their interrogators,
who can become capable of unspeakable physical cruelties.
The results of the CIA torture
experiments were codified in 1963 in a secret manual known as
"KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation." Four years
later, the CIA was operating some 40 interrogation centers in
Vietnam as part of its Phoenix Program, McCoy said. Eventually
the CIA's psychological methods were spread worldwide through
the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety
program and U.S. Army Mobile Training Teams.
In 1983, the KUBARK manual
provided the model for the CIA's "Human Resource Exploitation
Training Manual," whose methods were used by the brutal,
U.S.-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16 during the tenure of then-U.S.
ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte, now ambassador to Iraq.
About the same time, the CIA
compiled the "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare"
manual for the Nicaraguan contra commandos, then seeking to overthrow
the Sandinista government with the aid of the Reagan administration.
That's not all. Six manuals,
also linked to a CIA program, were used at the U.S. Army's School
of the Americas and distributed across Latin America by Army
Mobile Training Teams in the 1980s. They advocated everything
from executions of guerrillas to extortion, coercion and false
imprisonment.
A 1992 Pentagon investigation,
whose findings were kept a secret of state under then-Secretary
of Defense Dick Cheney, said the six manuals "evolved from
lesson plans used in an intelligence course at [the School of
the Americas]. They were based, in part, on old material dating
back to the 1960s from the Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance
program, titled 'Project X.' This material had been retained
in the files of the Army intelligence school at Fort Huachuca,
Ariz."
Project X documents, which
have been linked to the CIA's Phoenix Program, were destroyed
in 1992 by the Defense Department, but a telling reference to
Fort Huachuca is buried in the Fay report on Abu Ghraib. A five-member
U.S. Army Mobile Training Team from Fort Huachuca was sent to
the Iraq prison, the report says, "to conduct an overall
assessment of interrogation operations, present training and
provide advice and assistance."
One of the mobile team members,
identified as SFC Walters, told the Fay panel that he "may
have contributed to the abuse at Abu Ghraib." When questioned
by a military contract employee for ideas on how to get the prisoners
to talk, the report says, "Walters related several stories
about the use of dogs as an inducement."
Walters also gave advice about
how detainees are most susceptible during the first few hours
after capture: "The prisoners are captured by soldiers,
taken from their familiar surroundings, blindfolded and put into
a truck and brought to this place (Abu Ghraib); and then they
are pushed down a hall with guards barking orders and thrown
into a cell, naked; and that not knowing what was going to happen
or what the guards might do caused them extreme fear."
But the report concludes that
it "is unclear and likely impossible to definitively determine"
the extent to which "word of mouth" techniques were
passed to the interrogators in Abu Ghraib by the Mobile Training
Team from Fort Huachuca.
It also proved impossible for
the Fay and Schlesinger panels to determine the extent of the
CIA's role because neither had sufficient access to the agency.
Both, however, pointed fingers in its direction.
The Fay report notes that the
CIA's detention and interrogation practices "led to a loss
of accountability, abuse, reduced interagency cooperation, and
an unhealthy mystique that further poisoned the atmosphere at
Abu Ghraib." It also states that CIA officers held "Ghost
Detainees" -- including an Iraqi citizen later found dead
in a shower, handcuffed with a sandbag over his head, and "three
Saudi national medical personnel working for the coalition in
Iraq" who were held under false names. The Army allowed
the CIA to imprison unidentified and unaccounted-for detainees,
thereby circumventing the "reporting requirements under
the Geneva Conventions."
Likewise, the Schlesinger panel
found that the "CIA's detention and interrogation practices
contributed to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib,"
but it claims it did not have a mandate or "sufficient access
to CIA information" to pursue the matter.
Fay concludes that techniques
such as "removing clothing, isolating people for long periods
of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs and
implementing sleep and light deprivation" were "new
ideas" that some U.S. interrogators at Abu Ghraib learned
while working in Afghanistan and the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba.
The methods, however, are anything
but "new." An examination of CIA interrogation manuals
shows that they date back before the Vietnam War, supporting
charges by human rights advocates that Abu Ghraib is no aberration.
What is new is that photographic evidence became public.
Interrogation
manual
The authors of the CIA's 1963
KUBARK interrogation manual -- a guide on the art of using fear,
threats and pain to cause debility or psychological regression
-- were fully aware of the illegality of their methods: "KUBARK's
lack of executive authority abroad and its operational need for
facelessness make it particularly vulnerable to attack in the
courts or the press."
The Fay report noted that the
death of the Iraqi found in the shower remained unsolved due
partly to the fact that "CIA officers operating at Abu Ghraib
used alias' [sic] and never revealed their true names."
The KUBARK manual notes that
prior approval "must be obtained for the interrogation of
any source against his will and under any of the following circumstances:
If bodily harm is to be inflicted" or "if medical,
chemical or electrical methods or materials are to be used."
Before using an interrogation
site, "it should be studied carefully. ... The electric
current should be known in advance, so that transformers and
other modifying devices will be on hand if needed."
It notes that psychological
rather than physical debility will break a suspect sooner: "The
threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more
effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain
can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation
of pain." Elsewhere, it notes, "Intense pain is quite
likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of
escaping from distress."
The manual, which cites numerous
psychological studies and says all detainees should be given
a psychological assessment, contains descriptions of different
personality types and which techniques to use to interrogate
them.
"If a coercive technique
is to be used, or if two or more are to be employed jointly,
they should be ... carefully selected to match his personality."
"Persons with intense
guilt feelings," it advises, "may cease resistance
and cooperate if punished in some way because of the gratification
induced by punishment."
All of the basic techniques
used in Iraq are found in the manual's pages: sexual humiliation,
the use of stress positions and sensory deprivation.
The manual first advises that
a suspect's clothes should be taken. It later notes, "In
the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual
and his tormenter. When the individual is told to stand at attention
for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate
source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself."
The manual lists the principal
coercive techniques of interrogation as "deprivation of
sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods,
threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and
hypnosis, narcosis [use of drugs] and induced regression."
The response to coercion, it
says, typically contains "at least three important elements:
debility, dependency and dread."
"Disrupting normal time
patterns like sleep and food" can cause disorientation,
fear, helplessness and regression. "Deprivation of stimuli
induces regression by depriving the subject's mind of contact
with an outer world," noting that inducing regression will
dissolve resistance and create dependence.
"Results produced only
after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can
be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light ...
which is soundproofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc. An
environment still more subject to control, such as water tank
or iron lung, is even more effective."
The manual also suggests threatening
a detainee suspected of feigning mental illness by telling him
that he might need "a series of electric shock treatments
or a frontal lobotomy."
The 1963 KUBARK manual -- and
its descendant, the "Human Resource Exploitation Training
Manual 1983" -- were both released in the 1990s with numerous
deletions after The Baltimore Sun threatened the CIA with a lawsuit.
The newspaper sought the manuals in connection with its 1995
series about the CIA-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16, a secret
army unit whose torture methods mirrored those in the manuals.
Honduras, which shares borders
with Nicaragua and El Salvador, was used by the Reagan-Bush administration
in the 1980s as a base to fight Salvadoran rebels and to topple
the Nicaraguan Sandinista government with the CIA-trained contra
rebels.
Washington's key man in Honduras
was Gen. Gustavo Alvárez, a graduate of the U.S. Army's
School of the Americas, who created 3-16 with the CIA's help
and who worked closely with U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte,
whose reports gave the impression that the Honduran military
respected human rights.
However, Battalion 3-16 atrocities
were detailed in a 1988 New York Times story, headlined "Testifying
to Torture." Florencio Caballero, a 3-16 interrogator who
later fled to Canada, told the Times that the CIA trained him
and two dozen others in psychological methods. They were taught
"to study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Make him
stand up, don't let him sleep, keep him naked and in isolation,
put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve
him dead animals, throw cold water on him, change the temperature."
Caballero said the CIA taught
that psychological coercion was more effective than physical
torture, but that interrogations often degenerated into physical
torture. He told of a 24-year-old woman named Ines Murillo who
was stripped, starved, deprived of sleep, beaten, burned, electrically
shocked and sexually molested.
Fay's Abu Ghraib report makes
the same point about dehumanizing interrogations degenerating:
"What started as nakedness and humiliation, stress and physical
training, carried over into sexual and physical assaults."
Human Rights Watch makes a
similar point, saying that U.S. forces operating in Iraq, Guantánamo
and Afghanistan have "used interrogation techniques including
hooding, stripping detainees naked, subjecting them to extremes
of heat, cold, noise and light, and depriving them of sleep --
in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
This apparently routine infliction of pain, discomfort and humiliation
has expanded in all too many cases into vicious beatings, sexual
degradation, sodomy, near drowning and near asphyxiation. Detainees
have died under questionable circumstances while incarcerated."
The 1983 CIA Human Resource
Exploitation Training Manual states, "While we do not stress
the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware
of them and the proper way to use them." It states that
if they are to be used, they always require "prior HQS approval."
The Schlesinger report says
U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo were required to get
approval from Rumsfeld or the U.S. Southern Command before using
certain methods such as hooding, stripping, 30-day isolations,
stress positions and playing on a detainee's phobias.
The 1983 manual advises that
a subject should be arrested in the early morning when the subject
"least expects it" and when it would cause "intense
feelings of shock, insecurity and psychological stress."
He should be "rudely awakened and immediately blindfolded
and handcuffed" and transported "by circuitous route."
Excessive force should not be used because "if they break
the subject's jaw, he will not be able to answer questions."
Similarly, the Fay report on
Abu Ghraib notes, "It became a common practice for maneuver
elements to round up large quantities of Iraqi personnel in the
general vicinity of a specified target as a cordon and capture
technique. Some operations were conducted at night, resulting
in some detainees being delivered to collection points only wearing
night clothes or under clothes."
The 1983 manual advises that
the subject should be "completely stripped and told to take
a shower. Blindfold remains in place while showering and guard
watches throughout. Subject is given a thorough medical examination,
including all body cavities."
The Fay report noted that nudity
likely "contributed to an escalating 'de-humanization' of
the detainees and set the stage for additional and more severe
abuses to occur." Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, writing
in the July issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, said
that evidence is mounting "that U.S. doctors, nurses and
medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay." Doctors,
he said, have "turned over prisoners' medical records to
interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses
or vulnerabilities."
The "exploitation"
manual goes on to say the interrogation room is the "battleground"
where the interrogator "has total control over the subject"
and can manipulate the environment "to create unpleasant
or intolerable situations to disrupt patterns of time, space
and sensory perception."
The Fay report blames many
of the abuses at Abu Ghraib on misinterpretations of a paragraph
in an "outdated" 1987 Army field manual, which reads
in part: "The interrogator should appear to be the one who
controls all aspects of the interrogation to include the lighting,
heating and configuration of the interrogation room, as well
as the food, shelter and clothing given to the source."
The 1983 interrogation manual
states the subject should be placed in a soundproof cell and
not allowed to relax. Furthermore, "there should be no built-in
toilet facilities," and the subject should "either
be given a bucket or escorted by a guard to the latrine. The
guard stays at his side the entire time."
Cells should have windows that
can be "covered to disrupt the sense of night and day."
"Heat, air and light should
be externally controlled." Interrogators should disrupt
the subject's patterns of eating and sleeping. "Meals and
sleep should be granted irregularly" to disorient the subject
and destroy his capacity to resist. "If successful,"
a handwritten note adds, "it causes serious psychological
damage and therefore is a form of torture."
The handwritten note was added
in the mid-1980s after another CIA manual was made public and
caused a public fury. Other revisions have also been written
in, but the original text is still easily readable.
The manual also states, "Many
psychologists consider the threat of inducing debility to be
more effective than debility itself."
Like KUBARK, the 1983 exploitation
manual lists various personality types and how to deal with them
during questioning. It advises making a psychological assessment
to determine which personality category the subject fits in,
noting "any psychological abnormalities ... what his potential
vulnerabilities are. How he views his potential for surviving
his situation."
The subject must be convinced
that the interrogator "controls his ultimate destiny."
The number of variations in techniques, the manual says, "is
limited only by the experience and imagination" of the interrogator.
"The torture situation
is an external conflict, a contest between the subject and his
tormentor. The pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside
himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other
hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more
likely to sap his resistance." One example given was requiring
the subject "to maintain rigid positions, such as standing
at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods of time."
In a section named "Coercive
Techniques," interrogators are advised not to make empty
threats. "If a subject refuses to comply once a threat has
been made, it must be carried out. If it is not carried out,
then subsequent threats will also prove ineffective."
"The purpose of all coercive
techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject."
However, if "the debility-dependency-dread state is unduly
prolonged, the subject may sink into a defensive apathy from
which it is hard to arouse him." The symptoms most commonly
associated with solitary confinement and sensory deprivation
are "hallucinations and delusions."
In an ambiguous note, interrogators
are advised to ask themselves a cautionary question: If the subject
is released, "will he be able to cause embarrassment by
going to the newspapers or courts?"
The CIA developed the "Psychological
Operations in Guerrilla Warfare" manual to help train Nicaraguan
contras, whom the Reagan administration armed and financed in
an effort to overthrow the Sandinista government in the 1980s.
Unlike the 1963 KUBARK and
1983 interrogation manuals, the CIA contra guide deals not with
counterinsurgency measures, but with creating an insurgent force.
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy in that it sheds light on the
Reagan administration's use of an abusive proxy army, its snubbing
of international law, and again on John Negroponte, who was the
ambassador to Honduras when the contras used Honduras as a staging
ground to attack Nicaragua.
The manual, which The Associated
Press exposed in a 1984 story, advocates that contras assassinate
Nicaraguan officials, seize power through acts of torture and
terrorism, and create "martyrs" by placing their supporters
in "confrontation with the authorities, in order to bring
about uprisings or shootings, which will cause the death of one
or more persons, who would become the martyrs."
The training manual, along
with the CIA's mining of Nicaraguan harbors, played a part in
a ruling by the International Court of Justice that the United
States had broken international law, should pay reparations and
stop its war against Nicaragua. But the Reagan administration
refused to recognize the court's jurisdiction.
The current Bush administration
has adopted the same stance toward the International Criminal
Court, refusing to join the world's first permanent war crimes
tribunal, partly out of fear that the court could prosecute U.S.
military personnel and their superiors. In addition, the Bush
administration has withheld military aid and training to nations
that refuse to sign "Article 98 waivers," agreements
stating that they will not extradite U.S. citizens accused of
war crimes to the Hague for prosecution by the court.
SOA manuals
The six manuals used at the
U.S. Army School of the Americas and distributed across Latin
America by Mobile Training Teams were used from 1982 to 1991,
throughout most of the Reagan and Bush administrations.
They carried the titles "Handling
of Sources," "Revolutionary War and Communist Ideology,"
"Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla," "Interrogation,"
"Combat Intelligence," and "Counterintelligence."
A 1992 Pentagon investigation
of the manuals found that they advocated executions of guerrillas,
extortion, physical abuse and coercion. The findings were kept
secret until September 1996 when the Pentagon disclosed them,
fearing that Congressman Joseph Kennedy had obtained a copy of
the manuals.
Kennedy, who conducted a five-year
campaign to close the school, told the media later that "according
to the Pentagon's own excerpts, School of the Americas students
were advised to imprison those from whom they were seeking information;
to 'involuntarily' obtain information from those sources -- in
other words, torture them; to arrest their parents; to use 'motivation
by fear'; pay bounties for enemy dead; execute opponents; subvert
the press; and use torture, blackmail and even injections of
truth serum to obtain information."
The "Revolutionary War"
manual offers perhaps the most timely tie-in: maintaining that
an insurgent "does not have a legal status as a prisoner
of war under the Geneva Convention." The current Bush administration
has tried to reclassify POWs held at Guantánamo as "unlawful
combatants" to strip them of protections under the Geneva
Conventions.
Another manual advised counter-intelligence
agents to use fear and false imprisonment. Up to 90 percent of
the detainees at Abu Ghraib were falsely detained and had no
connection whatever with terrorism, according to the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
The School of the Americas,
renamed in 2000 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, has produced hundreds of human rights abusers, which
the Pentagon has repeatedly called "a few bad apples."
Its 1992 Pentagon investigation also claimed that the manuals
had been compiled from outdated instructional material, an argument
also made by the Fay panel in its Abu Ghraib report.
The 1992 Pentagon report on
the School of the Americas called it "incredible" that
the use of the manuals "evaded the established system of
doctrinal controls." Nevertheless, the investigators "could
find no evidence that this was a deliberate and orchestrated
attempt to violate Department of Defense or Army policies."
Kennedy, who did his own investigation,
said the manuals were assembled at Fort Huachuca under the supervision
of Maj. Richard L. Montgomery, who had worked in the CIA's Phoenix
program in Vietnam.
Despite the Pentagon's insistence
that the material was not properly reviewed, Kennedy said, the
training material was sent to the Pentagon for review, and it
was returned to the School of the Americas approved and unchanged.
A similar defense has been
mounted for the other interrogation manuals. The Reagan administration,
for example, claimed that the CIA's contra manual had not been
officially approved and was the work of an "overzealous
freelancer" under contract with the CIA.
It's the photographic evidence
that separates the current scandal from those in the past.
"We were caught red-handed,"
said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst for the National Security
Archive. "I think the types of abuses and human rights atrocities
committed by our allies like Augusto Pinochet had a degree of
separation for the American public. But this scandal eliminates
that distance. The abuse was not only committed directly by the
U.S. military but it was captured on digital camera."
James Hodge and Linda Cooper are the authors
of Disturbing
the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement
to Close the School of the Americas, published this fall
by Orbis Books.
This article originally appeared
in the National
Catholic Reporter.
Weekend
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