An abbreviated history of exploitation processes

Congress and the traditional media in the US have a magnificent blindspot where the worst CIA operations are concerned. Regarding George Bush's torture regime, his policy of cruelty, they've given us long periods of silence interspersed with blinkered or faux-naive commentary. So, sure, we've heard from them occasionally about the legal battles regarding Guantanamo prison, the erased videotapes, waterboarding, and somewhat more vaguely about "aggressive" interrogation techniques. But they've scarcely ever remarked about the broader context in which that's going on: Bush's worldwide spiderweb of secret prisons, of which Gitmo is just a small part; the purchase of masses of prisoners; the meagerness of evidence; the 'renditions'; the disregard of human rights; the absence of accountabililty.

Above all, we rarely hear anything from Congress or the media about how the Bush administration has instituted a systematic regimen to degrade the psychological state of terrorist suspects in order to instill pain, fear, emotional suffering, and childlike dependency. The government even has a name for the regimen of abuse, "exploitation", not that the public has been made aware of it however.

It's partly a testament to a network of bloggers, such as DK diarist Valtin, that truly salient information about the development of the Bush administration's policy of cruelty ever gets out beyond a small circle of human rights groups and lawyers for the prisoners. In what follows, I'll discuss some issues already raised in this recommended diary by Valtin.

Last week Scott Shane of the NYT highlighted evidence that the prisoner "management techniques" at Guantanamo were closely modeled on the abusive conditions imposed on American POWs during the Korean War. That could well be news to readers of the Times, which would be a scandal in itself. Certainly the June 17 Senate Armed Services Committee hearings and media coverage might have given the impression that the Bush administration's reverse-engineering of SERE techniques, for application at Gitmo and elsewhere, was uncovered only in 2008. In fact, however, it was clear at least 3 years ago that the abusive techniques were modeled on SERE training.

Neither is it a secret that the SERE program arose in the wake of the Korean War, as the military and CIA studied how North Korean and Chinese captors manipulated the minds of American POWs to extract confessions without leaving physical marks of torture. On the CIA side, that research led to the experimental MK-ULTRA program, the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual of 1963, and much clandestine training in torture (for example at the School of the Americas). On the Pentagon side, it led to the creation of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program to give military personnel some experience in the kind of coercive system of "exploitation" they might face if captured by an authoritarian regime.

The Bush administration turned to the SERE experts on psychological coercion to generate a clean system for the cruel treatment of prisoners. It relies heavily on such things as prolonged isolation, sensory disruption, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, humiliation, degradation, exploiting phobias, and intimidation as well as markless physical tortures to erode the prisoners' mental state and induce a child-like sense of dependency. It's all very unpleasant, and exceedingly clear - for any who wish to see what the Bush administration has been doing.

That's not to say Scott Shane's article doesn't contain important information. He draws attention (without crediting Valtin, who first pointed this out last month) to a Cold-War document used by the SERE instructors when they gave a class on "exploitation" at Guantanamo in 2002. It's a Chart of Coercion released by SASC in June (p. 51 of the PDF). The chart is nearly identical to one first published in Albert Biderman's 1957 Air Force study of communist interrogation techniques (PDF). That information came as a revelation, according to Shane.

[Senate Armed Services Committee] investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity...

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that "every American would be shocked" by the origin of the training document.

So where exactly did SASC investigators suppose SERE got this system of "exploitation" from, the tooth fairy? The chart in question was attached to a description of "'physical pressures' training" done by SERE instructors for Guantanamo personnel in Dec. 2002 (p. 48 of SASC docs):

"Mr. Ross and I initiated training with an in-depth class on Biderman's Principles".

Indeed, the chart has a header: "Biderman's Chart of Coercion". How hard was it to Google that?

So I remain skeptical that the Congress did not know until last week that George Bush's policy of cruelty was modeled on the torture inflicted on American POWs during the Korean War.

Why does it matter? Here is Shane again:

Some [Biderman] methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret "alternative" interrogation methods.

This false reassurance forms the rotten core of the Bush administration's attempt at public rehabilitation. Even while they falsely continue to assert that it was the commanders at Gitmo who asked permission to use abusive techniques, Bush & Co. wants you to believe they've put a stop to them. Yet psychological degradation remains the foundation of the systematic "exploitation" of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere. What is the continued isolation of prisoners about, then, if not the degredation of their mental faculties? Congress has tried to limit the more egregious types of torture, but has done nothing to address the underlying, systematic principles of "exploitation".

And for what it is worth, as Valtin and I and many others have described, the techniques studied by Biderman were inherited rather than invented by totalitarian regimes. Biderman himself says so. 'Clean' torture has a long history in western democracies. It was particularly favored by European colonial forces who didn't wish to leave physical marks of torture on prisoners who might be brought into court.

...the style of torture American forces used in Iraq and Afghanistan derived from two venerable traditions of torture, French modern and Anglo-Saxon modern.

We're supposed to believe that the well-documented history of torture is unknown to members of Congress and their staffs who are investigating allegations of torture? That's a truly magnificent blind spot.

The histories people tell can be revealing. Sen. Levin produced for the SASC hearings a detailed history of how the Bush administration reverse-engineered SERE techniques. It concentrates on the period beginning in July 2002, when the head of the Air Force SERE program, Col. Daniel Baumgartner, was asked (via JPRA) to describe the SERE methods to the head of the DoD Office of General Counsel (OGC), Richard Shiffrin.

Levin's tale contradicts the Bush adminstration on key issues, particularly their ridiculous claim that the "exploitation" techniques were proposed by interrogators at Gitmo, without any prompting from Bush & Co. Not surprising that SASC found otherwise. Philippe Sands' book had already shown that the proposals were the handiwork of Bush's made-men, including Wm. Haynes, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Rizzo, and Michael Chertoff.

But Levin's story coheres to the Bush narrative overall in identifying the summer and fall of 2002 as the period in which "aggressive" techniques were formulated out of frustration with the lack of results from interrogations at Gitmo. By that stage, the Bushies famously had put into place an essential framework of legal advice that advocated for torture.

The problem with that story is that it falls afoul of facts. As Valtin pointed out, Col. Baumgartner let the cat out of the bag in his prepared remarks (PDF) to the SASC hearing.

My recollection of my first communication with OGC relative to techniques was with Mr. Richard Shiffrin in July 2002. However, during my two interviews with Committee staff members last year I was shown documents that indicated I had some communication with Mr. Shiffrin related to this matter in approximately December 2001. Although I do not specifically recall Mr. Shiffrin’s request to the JPRA for information in late 2001, my previous interviews with Committee staff members and review of documents connected with Mr. Shiffrin’s December 2001 request have confirmed to me the JPRA, at that time, provided Mr. Shiffrin information related to this Committee’s inquiry. From what I reviewed last year with Committee staff members, the information involved the exploitation process and historical information on captivity and lessons learned.

That puts matters in another light, doesn't it? The queries about SERE methods actually began in 2001, half a year before the July 2002 contacts that Levin's SASC history concentrates on. Thus, the Bush administration was looking into how to reverse-engineer SERE's "exploitation" techniques before most of the needed legal advice was in place to 'justify' using torture. The documents Baumgartner mentions weren't released by SASC, however, and if memory serves me nobody at the hearing wanted to talk about the 2001 contact(s) he referenced in his opening statement.

It looks to me like Baumgartner had been caught out by SASC staffers in presenting a very selective history of his involvement, and in his public testimony he sought to convince the Senators that his memory was faulty. They, however, very pointedly were not interested in exploring that most critical of issues.

For who knows how far an investigation would proceed if it began by exposing evidence that the Bush administration had violated the laws and conventions on torture and abuse before putting in place legal underpinnings declaring that stuff to be legal? That's the stuff of articles of impeachment.

I'd like to know when the Senate Armed Services Committee will release the documents showing that the top Pentagon lawyer was asking in December, 2001 for information about "exploiting" prisoners.

It's about time we stopped pretending along with Bush & Co. that this torture regimen began no earlier than late 2002 as a result of circumstances at and particular to Guantanamo. We know that is false.

The chief legal counsel at Guantanamo admitted in Oct. 2002 that sleep deprivation was already in use at Bagram air base. That is months before, we're told, the SERE system of coercion was introduced at Gitmo.

And long before they were dragged off to the newly opened prison at Guantanamo, many prisoners were treated to the full "exploitation process" at Bagram and elsewhere. The transport flights from Bagram to Gitmo, with their hoods and sensory deprivation and painful stress positions, were full bore Biderman coercion. In Dec. 2002 John Walker Lindh was abused in some similar ways. Furthermore just a "few weeks" after 9/11, German agents at Tulza air base (Bosnia) documented ongoing abuse of terrorist suspects by the US military. They refused to assist in such illegal interrogations.

As far as we know, none of the US officials who ordered or participated in abusing prisoners in late 2001 and early 2002 have ever been punished. That, too, ought to be a concern to Congress and the US media.

If only it weren't for that magnificent blind spot.