Taxi to the Dark Side Page #7

[Gita Gutierrez, Lawyer for Mohammed al-Qahtani] They've tried to characterize it as individual interrogators

pushing the envelope, or starting to get (quote) "creative."

[Gita Gutierrez, Lawyer for Mohammed al-Qahtani] The combination of his lack of food intake and forcible hydration led him

at one point to actually his heart slowed down to 35 beats a minute, and he was rushed to the hospital to be revived.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] Mohamed al-Kahtani, in many ways, that single interrogation, protected interrogation,

Contains within it, if you will, the entire genealogy, the entire history of CIA torture over the last 50 years.

The CIA launched a mind control project, a veritable Manhattan Project of the Mind, in the 1950s.

In-house, the CIA worked on exotic techniques. Hypnosis.

And then they worked on sodium pentathol. And then they worked on electro-shock. And ultimately, they discovered LSD.

All of that broke stuff, in-house, went nowhere, except to lawsuits.

But what did work, was the CIA outsourced all the dull, behavioral research

to the most brilliant behavioral scientists at the top universities in the United States and Canada.

At McGill, experiments by famed psychologist Donald O. Hebb caught the eye of CIA researchers.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] Dr. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to acute psychosis in 48 hours.

All he did, he had student volunteers sit in a very pleasant air-conditioned cubicle

With goggles, gloves and ear muffs. Actually, you know what they looked just like? The Guantanamo detainees!

If you see those outfits that the Guantanamo detainees have where they have the gloves and the goggles and the ear muffs?

You know, everybody thinks that's security. No, no, no. That's sensory breakdown.

Within a day there would be hallucinations. Within two days, breakdown.

[Dr. Donald O. Hebb, McGill University, Quebec] I began to think while we were doing our experiments

that it is possible that something that involves physical discomfort

or even pain might be more tolerable than simply the deprivation conditions that we studied.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] The CIA was fascinated by this. They jumped on it immediately.

[Dr. Donald O. Hebb, McGill University, Quebec] I had no idea what a potentially vicious weapon this could be.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] They identify two key techniques:

They identified sensory disorientation, and they identified self-inflicted pain: standing.

For days at a time while fluids flowed to the legs.

And they put them together in the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual.

And they propagated it around the world and through the U.S. Intelligence community.

Think about what al-Kahtani was subjected to, okay?

First of all, he's in dark; he's in light. He's in cold; he's in heat.

What they are doing is they are attacking his universal sensory receptors.

They are also scrambling his time. So that's Phase One.

In Guantanamo under the regime of General Miller,

he turned Guantanamo into a veritable behavioral scientific laboratory.

And Donald Rumsfeld gave orders for techniques beyond the Field Manual.

And they percolated. And they percolated in an ambiguous way

that allowed people to kind of do what they thought needed to be done.

And they explore Arab male sensitivity to gender and sexual identity.

So that's the thing about being homosexual. The underwear on the head. All that sort of stuff.

[SPC. Tony Lagouranis, Interrogator, Iraq] People were saying, "Arabs really are very sensitive to sexual humiliation."

Well, who the hell isn't sensitive to sexual humiliation?

You know, nobody wants to be stripped down naked and forced to masturbate with a hood over your head. It's ridiculous!

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] Then they created behavioral science consultation teams

where they had military psychologists integrate into the ongoing interrogation

to discover individual fears and phobias. And all of that was visited on al-Kahtani.

[Senator John McCain] You are aware of communications between General Miller and Secretary Rumsfeld specifically about this one prisoner?

[Lt. General Randall M. Schmidt, Author of "Schmidt Report"] To our knowledge there was a considerable amount of communication up and down the chain.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] As you know, from General Schmidt's report,

he concluded that these techniques individually did not constitute torture.

But he said that the sum of these techniques ...

[Lt. General Randall M. Schmidt, Author of "Schmidt Report"] The cumulative effect of simultaneous applications of numerous,

authorized techniques had abusive and degrading impact on the detainee.

And he recommended that General Miller be disciplined.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] But he said it did not constitute torture.

[Lt. General Randall M. Schmidt, Author of "Schmidt Report"] We made a distinction between what torture and inhumane treatment would be,

given the general guidelines, and then what might be abusive and degrading.

Something might be degrading, but not necessarily torture.

And it may not be inhumane. It may be humiliating, but it may not be torture.

No torture, no physical pain injury. There was a safe, secure environment the entire time.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] And that, of course, is the genius of the CIA's psychological paradigm.

Psychological torture is all a matter of definitions. And it's very slippery indeed.

[Senator] That sounds remarkably similar to what occurred at Abu Ghraib. People being led around in chains.

People being forced to wear lingerie. Perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not.

[Professor Alfred McCoy, Author of "A Question of Torture"] If you look at those Abu Ghraib photographs, again,

it's always the same techniques.

First of all, there's the sexual activity with the woman's garments.

And the masturbation and all the rest. That's the cultural sensitivity.

They are short-shackled; they are long-shackled; they are shackled upside-down.

These are stress positions. The most famous of all Abu Ghraib photographs, of course,

Of that hooded Iraqi standing on a box, arms outstretched.

He's told if he steps off the box, if he moves, he'll be electrocuted. That's the point of the fake electrical wires.

So it's the absolute immobility for protracted periods. And then with arms extended.

As we would say to the viewers, "Don't try this at home." But do try it!

Just stand for ten minutes with your arms stretched out, not moving.

Carolyn Wood was an example of the way new techniques spread and mutated like a virus.

Long before Wood took charge of interrogation at Abu Ghraib, her unit was involved with harsh techniques at Bagram,

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