Stephen Soldz: Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective
[Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Institute for the Study of Violence of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is a member of Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice and founder of Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice. He maintains the Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report web page and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. He can be reached at: ssoldz@bgsp.edu.]
The abuses being perpetrated on America's detainees in the War of Terror, and psychologists' roles in those abuses have a long history.
About 60 years ago, as the Cold War shifted into high gear, people in the American government, most notably the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), became concerned that the Communist enemies had developed specialized techniques for mind control. They observed senior Soviet officials and others confessing to crimes they likely had not committed. They were shocked by the number of American Korean War soldiers who collaborated with their captors and denounced the United States . At first defensively, and then as an offensive tool, the CIA undertook what became a 25-year program of research into mind control techniques under a variety of names, including, most notoriously MKULTRA. While time precludes an extensive review of this program, [the December 1977 APA Monitor contains an account of some of these activities] two components are of special relevance to today's topic. 1) For years the Agency, as the CIA is known, searched for a magic "truth serum" that would allow them to get captives to reveal their secrets; and 2) the CIA and the military funded extensive research into potentially effective interrogation techniques, including the possible use of hypnosis, of drugs, of isolation and extreme sensory deprivation, of brain stimulation, etc..
Some of the knowledge developed during MKULTRA and related programs were incorporated into the CIA's KUBARK interrogation Manual in 1963. Similar techniques were contained in CIA training manuals distributed throughout Latin America in the 1970's and 80's. The only one of these manuals which became public is one used to train in Honduras in 1983, as was revealed in a January 1997 Baltimore Sun article entitled: “Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted.”
The manual advises an interrogator to "manipulate the subject's environment, to create unpleasant or intolerable situations."
From this Baltimore Sun article:
"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 manual's introduction states. The manual says such methods are justified when subjects have been trained to resist noncoercive measures."...
Those who have examined practices at US detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo have identified, as a 2005 126-page report from Physicians for Human Rights entitled Break Them Down describes in its subtitle: "Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces."
The practice of Psychological Torture in US facilities includes:
Prolonged Isolation for months, even years.
Sleep Deprivation, sometimes allowing as little as two hours a night, for prolonged periods
Sensory Distortion including sensory deprivation (masks, goggles, etc.), very loud music; and hypothermia (turning air conditioning on high)
Sexual and Cultural Humiliation -- forced urination on self; forced nakedness; sexual humiliation; religious humiliation (Koran’s being thrown around); being led naked on a leash. Being forced to bark like a dog. [As regards religious humiliation, former Guantanamo Chaplain James Yee was quoted as stating in a recent lecture: "Guantanamo Bay's secret weapon,' . . . is 'the use of Islam against prisoners to break them.' He said prisoners were forced to prostrate in the center of a circle inscribed with a pentagram by a guard who yelled, 'Satan is your God now, not Allah.' He said female interrogators 'exploit(ed) conservative Islamic etiquette" by undressing before interrogating detainees and "giving lap dances" to unnerve them.
Yee said the Quran, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God, was 'desecrated in many different ways,' such as being urinated upon and 'tossed on the floor.'"]
These purely psychological techniques are often combined with another component:
Self-inflicted pain -- the infamous “stress positions,” including chaining in positions for hours on end and the infamous Abu Ghraib picture of a detainee balancing on a box with arms outstretched and electrodes attached (this technique is referred to in the torture literature as the "Vietnam") [Remember, from the Honduras interrogation manual: 'On the other hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance.']
Additionally, there have been repeated claims by detainees that they were subjected to drugging. [Remember that developing drugs for use in interrogations was a key element of the CIA's MKULTRA research.] Thus, as one example out of many, on March 2, 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald contained an account of Australian detainee David Hicks in US custody. In addition to the beatings, the isolation, the cultural assaults, the self-inflicted pain, there was this line: "He was also injected with a substance that 'made my head feel strange.'"
Many of these techniques, in reduced form, were used in the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program to teach American officers counter-resistance training. According to several journalists, these methods were "reverse-engineered" and exported to Guantanamo and elsewhere through training in SERE techniques. ...
Read entire article at Dissident Voice
The abuses being perpetrated on America's detainees in the War of Terror, and psychologists' roles in those abuses have a long history.
About 60 years ago, as the Cold War shifted into high gear, people in the American government, most notably the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), became concerned that the Communist enemies had developed specialized techniques for mind control. They observed senior Soviet officials and others confessing to crimes they likely had not committed. They were shocked by the number of American Korean War soldiers who collaborated with their captors and denounced the United States . At first defensively, and then as an offensive tool, the CIA undertook what became a 25-year program of research into mind control techniques under a variety of names, including, most notoriously MKULTRA. While time precludes an extensive review of this program, [the December 1977 APA Monitor contains an account of some of these activities] two components are of special relevance to today's topic. 1) For years the Agency, as the CIA is known, searched for a magic "truth serum" that would allow them to get captives to reveal their secrets; and 2) the CIA and the military funded extensive research into potentially effective interrogation techniques, including the possible use of hypnosis, of drugs, of isolation and extreme sensory deprivation, of brain stimulation, etc..
Some of the knowledge developed during MKULTRA and related programs were incorporated into the CIA's KUBARK interrogation Manual in 1963. Similar techniques were contained in CIA training manuals distributed throughout Latin America in the 1970's and 80's. The only one of these manuals which became public is one used to train in Honduras in 1983, as was revealed in a January 1997 Baltimore Sun article entitled: “Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted.”
The manual advises an interrogator to "manipulate the subject's environment, to create unpleasant or intolerable situations."
From this Baltimore Sun article:
"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 manual's introduction states. The manual says such methods are justified when subjects have been trained to resist noncoercive measures."...
Those who have examined practices at US detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo have identified, as a 2005 126-page report from Physicians for Human Rights entitled Break Them Down describes in its subtitle: "Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces."
The practice of Psychological Torture in US facilities includes:
Prolonged Isolation for months, even years.
Sleep Deprivation, sometimes allowing as little as two hours a night, for prolonged periods
Sensory Distortion including sensory deprivation (masks, goggles, etc.), very loud music; and hypothermia (turning air conditioning on high)
Sexual and Cultural Humiliation -- forced urination on self; forced nakedness; sexual humiliation; religious humiliation (Koran’s being thrown around); being led naked on a leash. Being forced to bark like a dog. [As regards religious humiliation, former Guantanamo Chaplain James Yee was quoted as stating in a recent lecture: "Guantanamo Bay's secret weapon,' . . . is 'the use of Islam against prisoners to break them.' He said prisoners were forced to prostrate in the center of a circle inscribed with a pentagram by a guard who yelled, 'Satan is your God now, not Allah.' He said female interrogators 'exploit(ed) conservative Islamic etiquette" by undressing before interrogating detainees and "giving lap dances" to unnerve them.
Yee said the Quran, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God, was 'desecrated in many different ways,' such as being urinated upon and 'tossed on the floor.'"]
These purely psychological techniques are often combined with another component:
Self-inflicted pain -- the infamous “stress positions,” including chaining in positions for hours on end and the infamous Abu Ghraib picture of a detainee balancing on a box with arms outstretched and electrodes attached (this technique is referred to in the torture literature as the "Vietnam") [Remember, from the Honduras interrogation manual: 'On the other hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance.']
Additionally, there have been repeated claims by detainees that they were subjected to drugging. [Remember that developing drugs for use in interrogations was a key element of the CIA's MKULTRA research.] Thus, as one example out of many, on March 2, 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald contained an account of Australian detainee David Hicks in US custody. In addition to the beatings, the isolation, the cultural assaults, the self-inflicted pain, there was this line: "He was also injected with a substance that 'made my head feel strange.'"
Many of these techniques, in reduced form, were used in the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program to teach American officers counter-resistance training. According to several journalists, these methods were "reverse-engineered" and exported to Guantanamo and elsewhere through training in SERE techniques. ...