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/
"This report examines the existence of a CIA black budget and an extensive network of deep black projects that it funds. The report identifies the legal framework established by the US Congress for the creation of a CIA black budget from the appropriations earmarked for other federal agencies that are siphoned through the CIA as the sole conduit of black budget funds. The report investigates the legal challenges to the constitutionality of the CIA's black budget; how the CIA uses its legal authority to extract appropriations from government agencies such as HUD; how the CIA launders non-appropriated money through other federal agencies; and the efforts the CIA goes to prevent these financial transfers from being exposed. 
