Guantanamo/Detainees
U.S. Interrogation Model: Chinese Korean War Techniques
Posted Jul 2, 2008, 06:53 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Military trainers teaching interrogators about possible techniques to use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay relied on Chinese methods used during the Korean War that often elicited false confessions, the New York Times reports.
An interrogation expert told the Times that a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques,” part of a 2002 Guantanamo training class, was copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of techniques used on American prisoners. The study was called “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.”
The 1957 article described “one form of torture” that included forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in “extreme cold.” Both techniques have been used against terrorist suspects.
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Comments
Posted by Grant - 5 months, 13 hours, 37 minutes ago
It seems to me the writer misses the point . . . . a bit. The tone of the piece suggests that the techniques were ineffective, as they “often elicited false confessions.“ To me, the point is that the techniques are so effective, they can be used to get someone to confess to something they didn’t do, just to bring relief. This has nothing to do with whether the techniques are effective to elicit true information the prisoner actually possesses. If I take someone captive, and I know they have committed no crime, the only way to justify the captivity is to elicit a confession of some crime by whatever means necessary. If, on the other hand, I take someone captive, and I know they are involved in some crime, then the captivity is already justified, and the use of the same means can be used to obtain all of the information the prisoner has about that crime.
Posted by D - 5 months, 12 hours, 9 minutes ago
The basic problem still remains. Oftentimes, the government doesn’t “know” that someone is involved in a crime, they only suspect someone is involved because they had contact with someone (no matter how casual) that is also ‘suspected’ of terrorist activity. Or they are in the wrong place at the wrong time (see Chinese Uighur ruling by 3-judge DC District Court panel). Take for example Mahar Arar (Canadian citizen) or Khaled al-Masri (German citizen), both were caught up in the US’ extraordinary rendition program where they were flown to unknown locateions and tortured in order to elicit info they didn’t have. In the end, they were both released after long periods of captivities because their captors realized that their assumptions that these people were “known” to be involved in some crime was mistaken. If the point of torture is to elicit false confessions (like the Koreans to enable propoganda), then I guess anyone can justify the use of these techniques. But if the purpose is to gather ‘intelligence’ to thwart future terrorist attacks, then false confessions or information is useless.
Posted by Tom in California - 5 months, 7 hours, 12 minutes ago
Obviously, torture will yield little usable intelligence, because persons exposed to this kind of criminal abuse will fabricate anything they can think of to get their torturers to stop. Here’s a clue, folks: the Chinese and Korean soldiers used these techniques to motivate American prisoners to make FALSE confessions. That’s what the process is good at generating: FALSE statements that the captors want to hear. Anybody who thinks that torture yields good information that saves lives is stupid.
In the war crimes trials after the second world war, we sentenced Japanese military officers convicted of waterboarding allied prisoners to lengthy terms of imprisonment. We should do the same with practitioners of torture today. That means not only the soldiers, contractors, and CIA agents who do the deed, but also the criminals at the top of the power structure who authorized and directed the practices. That means Addington and Yoo. Ashcroft and Gonzales. Cheney and Bush. May they rot in prison, as they so richly deserve!