Soviet-Style ‘Torture’ Becomes ‘Interrogation’ (NY Times)

[Up2Late]

(Below is part of the article that was discussed today on the NPR/WHYY radio show "Fresh Air" today. Links to "Fresh Air" are below this article)

Soviet-Style ‘Torture’ Becomes ‘Interrogation’

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: June 3, 2007

HOW did the United States, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, come to adopt interrogation techniques copied from the Soviet Union and other cold war adversaries?

Investigators for the Senate Armed Services Committee are examining how the methods, long used to train Americans for what they may face as prisoners of war, became the basis for American interrogations.

In 2002, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon became concerned that standard questioning was inadequate for suspected terrorists and turned to a military training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE. For decades, SERE trainers had exposed aviators and others at high risk for capture to Soviet-style tactics, including disrupted sleep, exposure to extreme heat and cold, and hours in uncomfortable stress positions. Sometimes the ordeal included waterboarding, in which a prisoner’s face is covered with cloth and water is poured from above to create a feeling of suffocation....

(edit)

...How did something used as an example of what an unethical government would do become something we do?” he asked.

His question is only underscored by a 1956 article, “Communist Interrogation,” in The Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, recently turned up by the Intelligence Science Board, which advises the spy agencies. Written by doctors working as Defense Department consultants, Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr. and Harold G. Wolff, the article shows that methods embraced after 2001 were once considered torture that would produce false information.

The article describes basic Soviet N.K.V.D. (later K.G.B.) methods: isolation in a small cell; constant light; sleep deprivation; cold or heat; reduced food rations. Soviets denied such treatment was torture, just as American officials have in recent years:

The effects of isolation, anxiety, fatigue, lack of sleep, uncomfortable temperatures, and chronic hunger produce disturbances of mood, attitudes and behavior in nearly all prisoners. The living organism cannot entirely withstand such assaults. The Communists do not look upon these assaults as “torture.” But all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture.

Interrogators looked for ways to increase the pressure, including “stress positions”:

(more at link) <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/weekinreview/03shane.html?ex=1338523200&en=6959a25f746dcadd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>

Scott Shane on U.S. Interrogation Techniques

Listen to this story...

Fresh Air from WHYY, June 6, 2007 · Journalist Scott Shane
writes for The New York Times about terrorism and the
CIA's interrogation techniques. His article "Soviet-Style 'Torture'
Becomes 'Interrogation'" describes how the United States has adopted
interrogation techniques that it decried when they were used by the Soviet Union.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10763378>

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