User:Mrazinger/sandbox/Enhanced interrogation techniques

"Izboljšane tehnike zasliševanja" ali "okrepljeno zaslišanje" je evfemizem za sistemski program mučenja pridržanih s strani Centralna Obveščevalna Služba (CIA), Obrambno Obveščevalna Agencija (DIA) in različne komponente U.S. Armed Forces v "black site" ih po vsem svetu, vključno s Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, in Abu Ghraib, pooblastili uradniki George W. Bush administracija. Uporabljene metode so vključevale pretepanje, vezanje v izkrivljeno Stresni položaji, "hooding", izpostavljenost gluhemu hrupu, motnje spanja, pomanjkanje spanja do točke halucinacij, odvzem hrane, pijače in zadrževanje zdravstvene oskrbe ran, pa tudi "waterboarding", "walling", spolno ponižanje, izpostavljenost močni vročini ali skrajnemu mrazu in zaprtje v majhnih škatlah, podobnih krsti. Risbe zapornikov iz Guantanama nekaterih od teh mučenj, ki jim je bil tudi sam podvržen, so bile objavljene v The New York Times. Nekatere od teh tehnik spadajo v kategorijo, znano kot "belo mučenje". Več pridržanih je bilo zdravstveno nepotrebnih "rehidracija rektuma", "oživljanje rektalne tekočine", in "rektalno hranjenje". Poleg brutalizacije pripornikov so grozile tudi njihovim družinam, kot so grožnje otrokom in grožnje spolni zlorabi ali prerezu grla zapornikov mater.

Število pridržanih, ki so bili podvrženi tem metodam, ni bilo nikoli verodostojno ugotovljeno, niti koliko jih je umrlo zaradi režima zasliševanja, čeprav naj bi bilo to število vsaj 100. CIA priznava, da so na izvajali "waterboarding" na treh osebah, vpletene v September 11 napadi: Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in Mohammed al-Qahtani. Odbor za Obveščevalni Senat je našel fotografije vodne deske, obdane z vedri vode na Salt Pit zapor, kjer je CIA trdila, da "waterboarding" nikoli ni bilo uporabljeno. Nekdanji stražarji in zaporniki v Gvantanamu so povedali, da so bile smrti, ki jih je ameriška vojska takrat imenovala za samomore, v resnici mučenja. Za ta ali za priznana umorjenja, povezana z mučenjem v Abu Ghraibu in Bagramu, ni bila uvedena nobena obtožba.

Pojavile so se razprave o tem, ali je "okrepljeno zasliševanje" kršilo ameriške zakone o mučenju oz mednarodna zakonodaja kot je Konvencija ZN proti mučenju. leta 2005, CIA uniči videoposnetke upodobitev zapornikov, ki jih zaslišujejo pod mučenjem; notranja utemeljitev je bila, da je bilo to, kar so pokazali, tako grozljivo, da bi bilo "uničujoče za CIA" in da "toplota uničevanja ni nič v primerjavi s tem, kar bi bilo, če bi trakovi kdaj prišli v javno last." Združeni narodi posebnega poročevalca o mučenju, Juan Mendez, izjavil, da je "waterboarding" mučenje - "nemoralno in nezakonito", leta 2008 pa šestinpetdeset Demokratska stranka člani Ameriški kongres zaprosila za neodvisno preiskavo.

Ameriški in evropski uradniki, vključno z nekdanjim direktorjem CIA Leon Panetta, nekdanji častniki CIA, tožilec v Guantanamu in sodnik vojaškega sodišča so "okrepljeno zaslišanje" označili za evfemizem mučenja. Leta 2009 oba predsednika Barack Obama in generalni državni tožilec Eric Holder sta dejala, da nekatere tehnike pomenijo mučenje, in zavrnil njihovo uporabo. Niso hoteli preganjati CIA, Ministrstvo za obrambo ZDA, ali uradniki Busheve administracije, ki so odobrili program, medtem ko puščajo odprto možnost sklica preiskave "Komisija za resnico" za tisto, kar je predsednik Obama imenoval "nadaljnje računovodstvo".

Julija 2014 je Evropsko sodišče za človekove pravice ormalno presodil, da je "okrepljeno zasliševanje" enako mučenju, in Poljski odredil, naj plača povračilo moškim, ki so jih mučili na tamkajšnjem "black site" CIA. Decembra 2014 je ameriški senat objavil približno 10% [Poročilo senatnega obveščevalnega odbora o mučenju CIA]], poročilo o uporabi mučenja s strani Cie v času George W. Bush uprave.

History of approval by the Bush administration
Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Bush administration officials conferring by video link from bunkers decided to treat the attacks as acts of war, rather than merely crimes. The question arose: were captured prisoners to be treated as prisoners of war? Officials including Justice Department lawyer John Yoo recommended classifying them as "detainees" outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions or any other domestic or military law, and incarcerating them in special prisons instead of the barracks-like "prisoner-of-war camp you saw in Hogan's Heroes or Stalag 17." On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a still-classified directive giving the CIA the power to secretly imprison and interrogate detainees.

In late 2001, the first detainees including men like Murat Kurnaz and Lakhdar Boumediene, later established to be innocent and arrested on flawed intelligence or sold to the CIA for bounties, were brought to hastily improvised CIA/military bases such as Kandahar, Afghanistan. They were subjected to beatings, electric shocks, exposure to extreme cold, suspension from the ceiling by their arms, and drowning in buckets of water. An unknown number died as a result. In late 2001 and early 2002, interrogation under torture at secret sites was still ad hoc, not yet organized as a bureaucratic program, nor sanctioned under Justice Department legal cover.

As early as November 2001, the CIA general counsel began considering the legality of torture, writing that "the Israeli example" (using physical force against hundreds of detainees) could serve as "a possible basis for arguing ... torture was necessary to prevent imminent, significant, physical harm to persons, where there is no other available means to prevent the harm."

In April 2002 the CIA had captured its first important prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, who was transferred to a CIA black site and at the suggestion of psychologist James Mitchell the CIA embarked on interrogation methods which included sleep deprivation using bright lights and loud music—still prior to any legal authorization from the US Justice Department. Later that April Dr. Mitchell proposed a list of additional tactics, including locking people in cramped boxes, shackling them in painful positions, keeping them awake for a week at a time, covering them with insects, and waterboarding, a practice which the United States had previously characterized in war crimes prosecutions as torture.

Jose Rodriguez, head of the CIA's clandestine service, asked his superiors for authorization for what Rodriguez called an "alternative set of interrogation procedures." The CIA sought immunity from prosecution, sometimes known as a "get out of jail free card."

In May 2002, senior Bush administration officials including CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft met to discuss which techniques the CIA could legally use against Abu Zubaydah. Condoleezza Rice recalled "being told that U.S. military personnel were subjected in training to certain physical and psychological interrogation techniques..." During the discussions, John Ashcroft is reported to have said, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

After the Justice Department completed what are now known as the Torture Memos, Condoleezza Rice told the CIA that the techniques were approved in July 2002. Dick Cheney said "I signed off on it; so did others." In 2010 Cheney said, "I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program." In 2009 Rice said "[w]e never tortured anyone;" she maintained the abuse was "not torture," but was "legal", and "right".

In addition, in 2002 and 2003, the CIA says they briefed several Democratic congressional leaders on the proposed "enhanced interrogation technique" program. These congressional leaders included Nancy Pelosi, the future Speaker of the House, and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Democrat Jane Harman. The response to the briefings was "quiet acquiescence, if not downright support", according to officials present. Ms. Harman was the only congressional leader to object to the tactics being proposed. Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee after the 9/11 attacks, said he was not briefed on waterboarding and that in three instances agency officials said he'd attended briefings on days that his personal journal shows he was elsewhere.

At least one Bush administration official opposed torturing prisoners, Condoleezza Rice's most senior adviser Philip Zelikow. Upon learning details of the program, Zelikow wrote a memo to Rice contesting the Justice Department's Torture Memos, believing them wrong both legally and as a matter of policy. Zelikow's memo warned that the interrogation techniques breached US law, and could lead to prosecutions for war crimes. The Bush Administration attempted to collect all the copies of Zelikow's memo and destroy them. Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, quotes Zelikow as predicting that "America's descent into torture will in time be viewed like the Japanese internments", in that "(f)ear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools."

Development of techniques and training
The authorized "enhanced interrogation" (the originator of this term is unknown, but it appears to be a calque of the German "verschärfte Vernehmung", meaning "intensified interrogation", used in 1937 by Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller ) was based on work done by James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in the Air Force's Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) program. The CIA contracted with the two psychologists to develop alternative, harsh interrogation techniques. However, neither of the two psychologists had any experience in conducting interrogations. Air Force Reserve Colonel Steve Kleinman stated that the CIA "chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation... to do something that had never been proven in the real world." Associates of Mitchell and Jessen were skeptical of their methods and believed they did not possess any data about the impact of SERE training on the human psyche. The CIA came to learn that Mitchell and Jessen's expertise in waterboarding was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was medically safe or effective. Despite these shortcomings of experience and know-how, the two psychologists boasted of being paid $1000 a day plus expenses, tax-free by the CIA for their work.

The SERE program, which Mitchell and Jessen would reverse engineer, was used to train pilots and other soldiers on how to resist "brainwashing" techniques assumed to have been employed by the Chinese to extract false confessions from captured Americans during the Korean War. The program subjected trainees to "waterboarding ... sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to extreme temperatures, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds at extremely damaging decibel levels, and religious and sexual humiliation," including forced enemas and other anal assault. Under CIA supervision, Miller and Jessen adapted SERE into an offensive program designed to train CIA agents on how to use the harsh interrogation techniques to gather information from terrorist detainees. In fact, all of the tactics listed above would later be reported in the International Committee of the Red Cross Report on Fourteen High Value Detainees in CIA Custody as having been used on Abu Zubaydah.

Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson wrote an article describing how the techniques used mimic what was taught in the SERE-program: "the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program that trains US Special Operations Forces, aviators and others at high risk of capture on the battlefield to evade capture and to resist 'breaking' under torture, particularly through giving false confessions or collaborating with their captors".

The psychologists relied heavily on experiments done by American psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1970s on learned helplessness. In these experiments caged dogs were exposed to severe electric shocks in a random way in order to completely break their will to resist. Mitchell and Jessen applied this idea to the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Many of the interrogation techniques used in the SERE program, including waterboarding, cold cell, long-time standing, and sleep deprivation were previously considered illegal under U.S. and international law and treaties at the time of Abu Zubaydah's capture. In fact, the United States had prosecuted Japanese military officials after World War II and American soldiers after the Vietnam War for waterboarding and as recently as 1983. Since 1930, the United States had defined sleep deprivation as an illegal form of torture. Many other techniques developed by the CIA constitute inhuman and degrading treatment and torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to Human Rights First:

"Internal FBI memos and press reports have pointed to SERE training as the basis for some of the harshest techniques authorised for use on detainees by the Pentagon in 2002 and 2003."

And Salon stated:

"A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said instructors from SERE also taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba."

While Jane Mayer reported for The New Yorker:

"According to the SERE affiliate and two other sources familiar with the program, after September 11 several psychologists versed in SERE techniques began advising interrogators at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. Some of these psychologists essentially 'tried to reverse-engineer' the SERE program, as the affiliate put it. 'They took good knowledge and used it in a bad way', another of the sources said. Interrogators and BSCT members at Guantánamo adopted coercive techniques similar to those employed in the SERE program."

and continues to report:

"many of the interrogation methods used in SERE training seem to have been applied at Guantánamo.'"

A bipartisan report released in 2008 stated that:

"a February 2002 memorandum signed by President George W. Bush, stating that the Third Geneva Convention guaranteeing humane treatment to prisoners of war did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees, and a December 2002 memo signed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, approving the use of 'aggressive techniques' against detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, as key factors that lead to the extensive abuses."

However, the Bush administration's February 2002 memorandum had, in fact, stated that only al-Qaeda detainees were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. That same order held that Taliban detainees would be entitled to treatment under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. These standards were ordered for all detainees in 2006, al-Qaeda members included, following the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Donald Rumsfeld rescinded his December 2002 memo after six weeks.

Common Article 3 remains the policy under the Obama administration, and not the balance of the Third Geneva Convention.

Central Intelligence Agency


A Congressional bipartisan report in December 2008 established that:

"harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning."

According to ABC News, former and current CIA officials have come forward to reveal details of interrogation techniques authorized in the CIA. These include:


 * 1) Waterboarding: The prisoner is bound to a declined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Material is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over them, asphyxiating the prisoner.
 * 2) Hypothermia: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 F, while being regularly doused with cold water in order to increase the rate at which heat is lost from the body.
 * 3) Stress positions: Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor (and/or wall), for more than 40 hours, causing the prisoners' weight to be placed on just one or two muscles. This creates an intense amount of pressure on the legs, leading first to pain and then muscle failure.
 * 4) Abdomen strikes: A hard, open-handed slap is dealt to the prisoner's abdomen. Doctors consulted over the matter advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
 * 5) Insult slap: An open-handed slap is delivered to the prisoner's face, aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
 * 6) Shaking: The interrogator forcefully grabs the front of the prisoner's shirt and shakes him or her.

In December 2007, CIA director Michael Hayden stated that "of about 100 prisoners held to date in the CIA program, the enhanced techniques were used on about 30, and waterboarding used on just three.".

The report, "Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program", published by the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights, described personnel in the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS) performing research on the prisoners as the above techniques were used both serially and in combination. This report was based on previously classified documents made available by the Obama administration in 2010.

According to ABC news in 2007, the CIA removed waterboarding from its list of acceptable interrogation techniques in 2006. ABC stated further that the last use of waterboarding was in 2003.

Defense Intelligence Agency
In 2003, the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "Working Group" on interrogations requested that the DIA come up with prisoner interrogation techniques for the group's consideration. According to the 2008 U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, the DIA began drawing up the list of techniques with the help of its civilian employee, a former Guantanamo Interrogation Control Element (ICE) Chief David Becker. Becker claimed that the Working Group members were particularly interested in aggressive methods and that he "was encouraged to talk about techniques that inflict pain."



It is unknown to what extent the agency's recommendations were used or for how long, but according to the same Senate report, the list drawn up by DIA included the use of "drugs such as sodium pentothal and demerol", humiliating treatment using female interrogators and sleep deprivation. Becker claimed that he recommended the use of drugs due to rumors that another intelligence agency, name of which was redacted in the Senate report, had successfully used them in the past. According to the analysis of the Office of Defense Inspector General, the DIA's cited justification for the use of drugs was to "[relax] detainee to cooperative state" and that mind-altering substances were not used.

Some more lurid revelations of DIA's alleged harsh interrogations came from FBI officers, who conducted their own screenings of detainees in Guantanamo along with other agencies. According to one account, the interrogators of what was then DIA's Defense HUMINT Service (currently the Defense Clandestine Service), forced subjects to watch gay porn, draped them with the Israeli Flag and interrogated them in rooms lit by strobe lights for 16–18 hours, all the while telling prisoners that they were from the FBI.

The real FBI operative was concerned that DIA's harsh methods and impersonation of FBI agents would complicate the Bureau's ability to do its job properly, saying "The next time a real Agent tries to talk to that guy, you can imagine the result." A subsequent military inquiry countered FBI's allegations by saying that the prisoner treatment was degrading but not inhuman, without addressing the allegation of DIA staff regularly impersonating FBI officers - usually a felony offense. A year before this investigation was concluded, it was revealed that interrogations by special units of the U.S. military services were much harsher and more physical than any of the above DIA practices, to the point that 2 DIA officials reportedly complained, after which they were threatened by non-DIA interrogators.

Similar activities are thought to have transpired at the hands of DIA operatives in Bagram, where as recently as 2010 the organization ran the so-called "Black jail". According to a report published by The Atlantic, the jail was manned by DIA's DCHC staff, who were accused of beating and sexually humiliating high-value targets held at the site. The detention center outlived the black sites ran by the Central Intelligence Agency, with the DIA allegedly continuing to use "restricted" interrogation methods in the facility under a secret authorization. It is unclear what happened to the secret facility after the 2013 transfer of the base to Afghan authorities following several postponements.

U.S. Armed Forces
The following techniques were authorized by the U.S. military:


 * 1) Yelling
 * 2) Loud music, and light control
 * 3) Environmental manipulation
 * 4) Sleep deprivation/adjustment
 * 5) Stress positions
 * 6) 20-hour interrogations
 * 7) Controlled fear (including use of dogs)

In November 2006, former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, in charge of Abu Ghraib prison until early 2004, told Spain's El País newspaper she had seen a letter signed by United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that allowed contractors employed by the U.S. to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.'" The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques." She said that this was contrary to the Geneva Conventions and quoted the Geneva Convention as saying, "Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." According to Karpinski, the handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written, "Make sure this is accomplished."

On May 1, 2005, The New York Times reported on an ongoing high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo, conducted by Lieutenant General Randall M. Schmidt of the Air Force, and dealing with: "accounts by agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who complained after witnessing detainees subjected to several forms of harsh treatment. The FBI agents wrote in memorandums that were never meant to be disclosed publicly that they had seen female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners' genitals, and that they had witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours."

On July 12, 2005, members of a military panel told the committee that they proposed disciplining prison commander Major General Geoffrey Miller over the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, who was forced to wear a bra, dance with another man, and threatened with dogs. The recommendation was overruled by General Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, who referred the matter to the army's inspector general.

In an interview with AP on February 14, 2008, Paul Rester, chief military interrogator at Guantanamo Bay and director of the Joint Intelligence Group, said most of the information gathered from detainees came from non-coercive questioning and "rapport building", not harsh interrogation methods.

American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA), the primary professional organ of psychologists in the United States, collaborated with the Bush administration in secret to write legal and ethical justifications for the torture.

Initial reports and complaints
In 2006, senior law enforcement agents with the Criminal Investigation Task Force told MSNBC.com that they began to complain in 2002 inside the U.S. Department of Defense that the interrogation tactics used in Guantanamo Bay by a separate team of military intelligence investigators were unproductive, not likely to produce reliable information, and probably illegal. Unable to get satisfaction from the army commanders running the detainee camp, they took their concerns to David Brant, director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), who alerted Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora.

General Counsel Mora and Navy Judge Advocate General Michael Lohr believed the detainee treatment to be unlawful, and campaigned among other top lawyers and officials in the Defense Department to investigate, and to provide clear standards prohibiting coercive interrogation tactics. In response, on January 15, 2003, Rumsfeld suspended the approved interrogation tactics at Guantánamo Bay until a new set of guidelines could be produced by a working group headed by General Counsel of the Air Force Mary Walker.

The working group based its new guidelines on a legal memo from the United States Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel written by John Yoo and signed by Jay S. Bybee in August 2002, which would later become widely known as the "Torture Memo." General Counsel Mora led a faction of the Working Group in arguing against these standards, and argued the issues with Yoo in person. The working group's final report was signed and delivered to Guantánamo without the knowledge of Mora and the others who had opposed its content. Mora has maintained that detainee treatment has been consistent with the law since the January 15, 2003, suspension of previously approved interrogation tactics.

It was not known publicly until 2008 that Yoo wrote another legal opinion, dated March 14, 2003, which he issued to the General Counsel of DOD, five days before the invasion of Iraq started. In it, he concluded that federal laws related to torture and other abuse did not apply to interrogators overseas – which at that time the administration applied to Guantanamo as well as locations such as Iraq.