The roots of torture in the War on Terror

[formercia]

The link is an excerpt and does not contain the complete manual.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/02-01.htm

The CIA used two secret manuals during Terry Ward’s career to train Latin American militaries and security services in interrogating suspects, one titled “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation - July 1963,” and a updated version titled “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -1983.” These two documents were declassified in January 1997 in response to a 1994 Freedom of Information Act request by the Baltimore Sun, and the Sun’s threat of a lawsuit under FOIA. The Sun headlined its report on the documents (27 January 1997, by Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson, and Mark Matthews) as “Torture was taught by CIA.” The Sun’s story noted the admonition on page 46 of the 1963 manual that when planning an interrogation room, “the electric current should be known in advance, so that transformers or other modifying devices will be on hand if needed.” The Sun reported that “...this referred to the application of electric shocks to interrogation suspects.”

The 1963 manual included a 22-page section titled “The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources,” which on page 100 admonishes that “drugs (and the other aids discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.”

The 1983 manual as declassified included numerous revisions made by CIA apparently in July 1984 in the wake of public revelations about a CIA “assassination” manual used by the Nicaraguan contras. The revisions added a full page following the table of contents labeled “Prohibition against use of force,” and overwrote in hand-printed letters most of the manual’s references to “coercive techniques.” For example, the 1983 sentence on the second page of the introduction read “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.” The 1984 revisions overwrote “do not stress” with the word “deplore” and replaced the phrase “the proper way to use them” with the phrase “so that you may avoid them.”





The 1963 KUBARK manual can be found here:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/01-01.htm


More good information here:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/index.html

[ixion]

1. here's a great irony: we're having a 'war' on 'terror' by torturing. Torturing produces terror...

therefore, the 'war' will never end because we're constantly producing that which we claim to want to eliminate.

[formercia]

5. The knuckledraggers haven't figured that out yet.

The boys, on the other hand, find it a useful tool to continue the conflict in order to make obscene piles of money.

[formercia]

2. The School of the Americas connection

http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/manuals.htm

--snip--
# Torture Manuals in use at School of Americas, 1982-1991

On Sept. 20, 1996, Pentagon officials announced that U.S. Army training manuals used to instruct Latin American military officers and soldiers at the SOA from 1982 until 1991, advocated torture, blackmail, and executions as counter insurgency measures. Father Roy Bourgeois Gets Peace Award. LINK NO LONGER WORKS. The Pentagon snuck out an admission that the students at the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, once used manuals advocating torture, assassination, and kidnapping as tactics to be used against dissidents in Latin America. While the Army minimized the importance of the manuals, saying they "contained passages that did not represent U.S. Government policy," others, such as Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), believed the manuals confirmed that the school's congressional supporters have blood on their hands. The New York Times editorialized that an "institution so clearly out of tune with American values should be shut down without further delay." Aaron Galegos and Jim Rice, Manual for Horror, Between the Lines, Sojourners, November-December 1996, Vol. 25, No. 6.

7 U. S. Army intelligence training manuals used by School of the Americas from 1982-1991 which advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion, inclding the kidnapping of a target's family members. The Pentagon began a review of these in 1991. Robert Parry, "Lost History: 'Project X' and School of Assassins. The Consortium for Independent Journalism
# 1983 CIA Interrogation Manual -- "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual", was "put together with material from notes from the Honduran training course, lesson plans used inthe course, and the 1963 KUBARK manual. Its existence surfaced at a Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on June 16, 1988, prompted by allegations by James Le Moyne in his 1988 New York Times Article, "Testifying to Torture," that the U. S. had taught Honduran military officers who used torture. ... "The most graphic part of the Interrogation Manual is the section discussing "coercive techniques." This section recommends arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommuicado and deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundprrof, dark and without toilets. Joseph P. Kennedy, Report on the School of the Americas, March 6, 1997, p. 3. LINK NO LONGER WORKS.
# 1983 Contra Training Manual -- compiled by John Kirkpatrick a CIA advisor to the Contra rebels; recommends the hiring of professional criminals to carry out 'selective jobs', creating a 'martyr' by arranging a violent demonstartion that leads to the death of a rebel supporter, and coercing Nicaraguans into carrying out assignments against their will The document also states that unpopular government officials can be 'neutralized' with the 'selective use of violence.' Joseph P. Kennedy, Report on the School of the Americas, March 6, 1997, p. 4. LINK NO LONGER WORKS.
# In 1982 the U. S. Army Intelligence Center and School was tasked to provide unclassified lesson plans to the School of the Americas... The working group decided to use Project X materials because they previosuly had been cleared for foreign disclosure.
# In March 1991 the Defense Intelligence Agency discovered the objectionable materials and alerted Secretary of Defense Cheney. Joseph P. Kennedy, Report on the School of the Americas, March 6, 1997, p. 8. LINK NO LONGER WORKS
# June 28, 1996 Intelligence Oversight Board Report: The School of the Americas and the U. S. Army's Southern Command used instruction materials in training Latin American officers, including Guatemalans, that "appeared to condone practices...such as executions of guerrilas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment" (p. 32 of the 67 page IOB Report on human rights cases and the CIA's role in Guatemala, released June 28, 1996. Linda Haugaard, "Admissions and omissions--the CIA in Guatemala,"July22, 1996, In These Times Magazine.

In September 1996, the Department of Defense finally admitted that the SOA also actively taught torture techniques using training manuals that advocated executions, extortion, physical abuse, and paying of bounties for enemy dead. One SOA graduate, I revealed, testified that when he was at the school while it was based in Panama, homeless people were used as guinea pigs for the torture training. Carol Richardson, " What Does God Require? Working to close the 'School of Assassins.', Sojourners, January, 1997. CAROL RICHARDSON, who has pastored United Methodist churches in Ohio and Maryland, directs the SOA Watch Washington, D.C. office. For information, contact SOA Watch, P.O. Box 3330, Columbus, GA 31903; [phone].

--snip--

[SpiralHawk]

3. "It's a family thing. Smirk, smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL

"I'd tell you more, but the occult cabal my family has been associated with for generations insists that we never, ever let anyone know what we are really up to. For the same reason, I cannot say a damn thing about my Grandpoppy Bush having served as banker to Hitler and the Nazis. Smirk, smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL

[formercia]

4. We don't torture

It is beneath us. We train little brown people to torture each other.