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Education Reading

CIA torture of innocent captives

This report has parallels to the Pentagon Papers. The CIA torture of innocent captives is well documented. It reminds me of the book Chain of Command which I read back in 2006. Remember the photographs of detained prisoners that caused a media sensation? Wow by comparison to the forced rectal feedings in the CIA report those photos really were just the tip of the iceberg.

tortureThe report turns out to be a series of blunders one right after another. Questionable evidence that enhanced torture resulted in deeper intelligence vs. ‘normal’ torture. And of course one type of “torture” forcing someone to stand for more than 72 hours. Yet the Senate report indicates less than 72 hours is ‘normal’ torture. Forcing prisoners to stand for three consecutive days is torture especially when normal torture is repeated on a weekly basis.

Beyond the obvious black eye, the report reveals horrifically cruel actions. A short passage on page 110 sums up the ineffectiveness of the program. CIA reveals they were holding prisoners determined to be confined by mistake. Yes innocent civilians were abducted, flown to secret prisons and tortured. As in all wars innocent people were at the wrong place at the wrong time:

A Year After DETENTION SITE COBALT Opens, the CIA Reports “Unsettling Discovery That We Are Holding a Number of Detainees About Whom We Know Very Little”

In the fall of 2003, CIA officers began to take a closer look at the CIA detainees being held in Country raising concerns about both the number and types of detainees being held by the CIA. CIA officers in Country X provided a list of CIA detainees to CIA Headquarters, resulting in the observation by CIA Headquarters that they had not previously had the names of all 44 CIA detainees being held in that country. At the direction of CIA Headquarters, the Station in Country X “completed an exhaustive search of all available records in an attempt to develop a clearer understanding of the [CIA] detainees.” A December 2003 cable from the Station in Country X to CIA Headquarters stated that; “In the process of this research, we have made the unsettling discovery that we are holding a number of detainees about whom we know very little. The majority of [CIA] detainees in [Country X] have not been debriefed for months and, in some cases, for over a year. Many of them appear to us to have no further intelligence value for [the CIAl and should more properly be turned over to the [U.S. military], to [Country X ] authorities or to third countries for further investigation and possibly prosecution. In a few cases, there does not appear to be enough evidence to continue incarceration, and, if this is in fact the case, the detainees should be released.”

The CIA knew they held and tortured innocent people but the band played on:

Records indicate that all of these CIA detainees had been kept in solitary confinement. The vast majority of these detainees were later released, with some receiving CIA payments for having been held in detention.

Cash payments? Were they paid more than college students who volunteer for sleep deprivation studies at local hospitals?

Categories
Education Reading Vietnam War

CIA torture modeled from The Vietnam War

The CIA’s Torture report has quickly left the nightly news and Sunday talk shows.

tortureContinuing my read of the full report I was somewhat intrigued the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques were sourced from the North Vietnamese in a war fought over 40 years ago.

Have our intelligence teams not evaluated more recent torture programs from the former Soviet Union, East Germany or Chile?

With the revelations of the NSA high tech spying from Edward Snowden its somewhat surprising that more efficient forms of intelligence gathering were not deployed against Al Qaeda in order to capture high level leaders.

Abu Zubaydah’s capture and subsequent torture by the CIA is a key focus on the early CIA Torture report. It appears that most of the intelligence gained from Abu Zubaydah was a result of standard interrogation techniques, not the enhanced torture that serves has a source for the Senate’s report:

In May 2003, a senior CIA interrogator would tell personnel from the CIA’s Office of Inspector General that SWIGERT and DUNBAR’s SERE school model was based on resisting North Vietnamese “physical torture” and was designed to extract “confessions for propaganda purposes” from U.S. airmen “who possessed little actionable intelligence.” The CIA, he believed “need[ed] a different working model for interrogating terrorists where confessions are not the ultimate goal” 139

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program
Exec Summary Background and History Part I and II – Page 33

While this page serves as merely a sidenote to history, seemingly forever linking our military actions to Vietnam, there are more concerns regarding the actions taken by the CIA, The White House and the FBI in regards to withholding informaiton on the torture program from our elected leaders.

Categories
Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

CIA torture report: The role of enhanced interrogation methods

Enhanced interrogation is simply today’s political spin to a torture technique used for over 500 years. Waterboarding as a method of torture dates back to Spain in the 1500s. The Senate’s declassified report regarding the role of the CIA’s use of torture in the war on terror after 9/11 has been a most revealing so far. I wonder if the full report will ever be declassified. Maybe to further strengthen our democracy it should take less than the 40 year wait for the Pentagon Papers.

torture

In today’s instant twitter-world of “news” the world has learned of CIA techniques as abhorrent as rectal rehydration and a technique — so innocent at first glance — prolonged standing until you realize how this form of torture, as written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago is hideous to a human under interrogation.

Torture is simply inhumane. I am respectful of US Senator John McCain’s address on the floor of the Senate indicating his view that the CIA’s torture was wrong. The US can be better by not torturing prisoners. Proven, established interrogation methods (not torture) firmly established provide information needed in the war on terror. Senator McCain himself was tortured as an American POW during the Vietnam War. He speaks from a point of view that most Americans cannot fully understand. I applaud his service to our country during the War in Vietnam and more importantly his personal survival as a tortured prisoner of war. As outlined in the Pentagon Papers the US military used waterboarding in Vietnam.

In just reading the Senate’s executive overview the most chilling issue is that the CIA specifically withheld their acknowledgement of torture to the President. The second most important, but seemingly forgotten is the destruction of videotapes by the CIA of prisoners under torture. Clearly the CIA learned from Nixon’s Watergate.

I am beginning to feel again, after reading the Pentagon Papers that our democracy and leader of nations in today’s complex world has taken a temporary step backward.