As a researcher it strikes me how often I encounter references to
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations such as MKULTRA and The
Phoenix Program. They are mentioned so much that I believe the magnitude
of the crimes committed under their banners are lost on us. Given that,
it perplexes me how ignorant people are of these programs. The programs
are a reality. The details surrounding their development, execution,
and in some cases, demise, raise serious concerns about lack of
oversight and accountability. Torture is a crime condemned internationally as well as nationally. Considered a crime against humanity by all nations. While very clear laws, rules, treaties, as well as social morality all forbid the use of torture in both war and peace, military and intelligence communities disregard the law of the world for purposes known only to themselves.
In the featured article (sourced from the NSA Archives), we find an U.S. Army training manual, Project X, used at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, formerly the School of the America's) to train Latin American armed forces. Project X collects the torture techniques from sources such as MKULTRA and the Phoenix Project. WHINSEC's stated goal was to provide anti-communist counterinsurgency training. During the 1980's it taught torture, and did so up until 1992 when the DoD ordered all copies destroyed.
As an American, the act of training our military in the practice of torture techniques, as well as that of foreign military, is counter to international law and portrays America as a people who condone the use of torture for political goals. As we travel the globe and encounter people from nations the CIA and military interrogators have tortured, we should understand the less than enthusiastic welcome we receive is due to the complete disregard for human rights law our military intelligence agencies demonstrate.
My reasons for sharing this information is to draw attention to practices by military and intelligence agencies that contradict their mission, law, and our own ethical and moral codes. However, the CIA is a government unto itself. When created, it was given power that precluded it from oversight and accountability. It not only conducts operations overseas but here as well. In the case of MKULTRA, when discovered they were operating on American soil, they destroyed all documents pertaining to their crimes and covered up the rest. Although the Church Committee found wrongdoing, no one was prosecuted for it. If we ever learn the full truth about what the CIA has done and is doing in our name, it will be a black day for our nation.
The featured link contains five documents:
CIA, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, July 1963 (released February 25, 2014)
CIA, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, July 1963 (released January 1997)
"This 128-page report, classified Secret, was drafted in July 1963 as a comprehensive guide for training interrogators in the art of obtaining intelligence from "resistant sources." (As indicated above, two versions of the document — declassified 17 years apart — are presented in this posting.) KUBARK — a CIA codename for itself — describes the qualifications of a successful interrogator, and reviews the theory of non-coercive and coercive techniques for breaking a prisoner. Some recommendations are very specific. The report recommends, for example, that in choosing an interrogation site "the electric current should be known in advance, so that transformers and other modifying devices will be on hand if needed." Of specific relevance to the current scandal in Iraq is section nine, "The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources," (pp 82-104). Under the subheading, "Threats and Fears," the CIA authors note that "the threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain, for example, can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." Under the subheading "Pain," the guidelines discuss the theories behind various thresholds of pain, and recommend that a subject's "resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself" such rather than by direct torture. The report suggests forcing the detainee to stand at attention for long periods of time. A section on sensory deprivations suggests imprisoning detainees in rooms without sensory stimuli of any kind, "in a cell which has no light," for example. "An environment still more subject to control, such as water-tank or iron lung, is even more effective," the KUBARK manual concludes."CIA, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983
"This secret manual was compiled from sections of the KUBARK guidelines
and from U.S. Military Intelligence field manuals written in the mid
1960s as part of the Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program
codenamed "Project X." The manual was used in numerous Latin American
countries as an instructional tool by CIA and Green Beret trainers
between 1983 and 1987 and became the subject of executive session Senate
Intelligence Committee hearings in 1988 because of human rights abuses
committed by CIA-trained Honduran military units. The manual allocates
considerable space to the subject of "coercive questioning" and
psychological and physical techniques. The original text stated that "we
will be discussing two types of techniques, coercive and non-coercive.
While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to
make you aware of them." After Congress began investigating human rights
violations by U.S.-trained Honduran intelligence officers, that passage
was hand edited to read "while we deplore the use of coercive
techniques, we do want to make you aware of them so that you may avoid
them." Although the manual advised methods of coercion similar to those
used in the Abu Ghraib prison by U.S. forces, it also carried a
prescient observation: "The routine use of torture lowers the moral
caliber of the organization that uses it and corrupts those that rely on
it….""
DOD, Improper Material in Spanish-Language Intelligence Manuals, SECRET, 10 March 1992
"This "report of investigation" was sent to then Secretary of Defense
Richard Cheney in March 1992, nine months after the Defense Department
began an internal investigation into how seven counterintelligence and
interrogation manuals used for years by the Southern Command throughout
Latin America had come to contain "objectionable" and prohibited
material. Army investigators traced the origins of the instructions on
use of beatings, false imprisonment, executions and truth serums back to
"Project X"-a program run by the Army Foreign Intelligence unit in the
1960s. The report to Cheney found that the "offensive and objectionable
material in the manuals" contradicted the Southern Command's priority of
teaching respect for human rights, and therefore "undermines U.S.
credibility, and could result in significant embarrassment." Cheney
concurred with the recommendations for "corrective action" and recall
and destruction of as many of the offending manuals as possible."
DOD, USSOUTHCOM CI Training-Supplemental Information, CONFIDENTIAL, 31 July, 1991
"This document records a phone conversation with Major Victor Tise, who served in 1982 as a counterintelligence instructor at the School of the Americas. Tise relates the history of the "objectionable material" in the manuals and the training courses at SOA. A decade of training between 1966 and 1976 was suspended after a Congressional panel witnessed the teaching program. The Carter administration then halted the counterintelligence training courses "for fear training would contribute to Human Rights violations in other countries," Tise said, but the program was restored by the Reagan administration in 1982. He then obtained training materials from the archives of the Army's "Project X" program which he described as a "training package to provide counterinsurgency techniques learned in Vietnam to Latin American countries." The course materials he put together, including the manuals that became the subject of the investigations, were sent to Defense Department headquarters "for clearance" in 1982 and "came back approved but UNCHANGED." Although Tise stated he removed parts he believed to be objectionable, hundreds of unaltered manuals were used throughout Latin America over the next nine years."https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/
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