How Not to Interrogate: What Bush-Era CIA Torture Tactics Teach Us

Susanne.Posel-Headline.News.Official- george.bush.cia.torture.enhanced.interrogation.waterboarding_occupycorporatismSusanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Media Spokesperson, HEALTH MAX Group

 

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified documents pertaining to the “enhanced interrogation” tactics used by the George W. Bush administration detailing how brutal and ineffective these practices were.

A 2003 report contained in this dump chronicled the death of Gul Rahman, a detainee that was subjected to the enhanced interrogation at an undisclosed site in Afghanistan.

While Rahman was killed by CIA agents after having been chained overnight in an uninsulated cell, left half-naked and in freezing temperatures, his story was not unusual.

The report reads in part: “Often, prisoners who possess significant or imminent threat information are stripped to their diapers during interrogation and placed back into their cells wearing only diapers. This is done solely to humiliate the prisoner for interrogation purposes. When the prisoner soils a diaper, they’re changed by the guards. Sometimes the guards run out of diapers and the prisoners are placed back in their cells in a handcrafted diaper secured by duct tape. If the guards don’t have any available diapers, the prisoners are rendered to their cell nude.”

In addition, there was a redacted copy of the CIA Office of Medical Service (OMS), which left only the account of the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah (a suspected al-Qaeda operative) and first detainee to experience the enhanced interrogation tactics. It is interesting to note that this assessment contradicts the CIA’s pervious claims that this brutal form of torture is effective when retrieving information.

Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times while being held in a black facility in Thailand. During his stay, Zubaydah was prevented from using the bathroom for up to 36 hours then forced to use a bucket to relieve himself.

Of his torture, Zubaydah said at a Combatant Status Review Tribunal: “They didn’t care that I almost died from these injuries. Doctors told me that I nearly died four times.”

To make the torture stop, Zabaydah admitted to falsifying “knowledge about terrorist plots”.

The OMS report reads: “In practice, however, AZ’s cooperation did not correlate that well with his waterboard sessions. Only when questioning changed to subjects on which he had information (toward the end of waterboarding) was he forthcoming. A psychologist/interrogator later said that waterboard use had established that AS had no further information on imminent threats – a creative but circular justification. In retrospect OMS thought AZ probably reached the point of cooperation even prior to the August institution of “enhanced” measures – a development missed because of the narrow focus of the questioning. In any event, there was no evidence that the waterboard produced time-perishable information which otherwise would have been unobtainable.”

It came to light two years ago that the CIA had lied about the harsh interrogation tactics used by our government to force detainees to confess.

More than 6.2 million pages of records were analyzed by the SIC officials and showed how the CIA was able to get “the most valuable intelligence information, including tips that led to the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, had little, if anything, to do with enhanced interrogation techniques.”

It has been uncovered that that US government has “black sites” that are secret detention centers where horrific questioning practices are enacted undercover of shadows. These black sites were where detainees were taken to be terrorized; even if they did not have information to give in confession.

Senate Intelligence Committee described previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan. The method bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques.”

The internal review of the CIA was ordered by former secretary of defense, Leon Panetta and focused on “Bush-era torture program”.

The CIA report is said to contain “factual errors” and troubling “discrepancies between the statements of senior CIA officials in Washington and the details revealed in the written communications of lower-level employees directly involved.”

In November of 2013, the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMP) hosted a meeting of a 19 expert panel to discuss how healthcare professionals were used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) to design and be involved in the administration of “harsh treatment and torture” of detained “suspected terrorists” in detention centers owned by the US government.

The report produced by the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers (TPMP-NSDC) stated that after 9/11, doctors working with military and intelligence agencies were integral in the design and “participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees.”

Both the IMP and the Open Society Foundation (OSF) analyzed public records from doctors who were “improperly demanded” for service to the US Armed Forces to torture suspected terrorists.

In detainee prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, use torture as a standard to extract confessions and information from prisoners:

• Hypothermia
• Stress positions
• Waterboarding
• “Enhanced” torture techniques

Doctors and psychologists were on-hand to assist the US Armed Forces to rewrite ethical codes so that the practice of torture and degrading treatment were common place.

Those healthcare professionals at the detention centers were called “safety officers” who would:

• Assist in force feeding of prisoners during hunger strikes
• Breach doctor/patient confidentiality
• Kept abuse of detainees secret from the Army Surgeon General (AGS)

Those working with the CIA and DoD were told not to view the detainees as patients; the doctors were told to “put aside any scruples in the interests of intelligence gathering and security practices that caused severe harm to detainees, from waterboarding to sleep deprivation and force-feeding.”

Indeed, the TPMP-NSDC will seek a full investigation into the full extent of involvement of the medical profession in detention centers.

The group is also admonishing the Senate intelligence Committee (SIC) review their report and make a formal inquiry into CIA practices.

In addition, the IMAP maintains that rules need to be clear as to ensure doctors and psychiatrists working for the military are mandated to abide by the ethical obligations of their profession.

Doctors, nurses and psychiatrists should be strictly prohibited from participating in interrogation techniques and practices, “sharing information from detainees’ medical records with interrogators, or participating in force-feeding, and they should be required to report abuse of detainees.”

Another report issued earlier this year outlines the most “comprehensive record of detainee treatment” which found that the US was guilty of using torturous methods to extract information from suspects.

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