ARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual (1963)

[Disturbed]

Central Intelligence Agency,
KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual (1963)
Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual--1983.


In response to the threat of a lawsuit by The Baltimore Sun,the CIA declassified the above manuals in January 1997 (the second is based on the first). The texts present a chilling array of torture methods used against "suspected subversives" in Central America during the 1980s. The manuals refute the Agency's contention that no such methods were used. The techniques range from "non-coercive interrogation of resistant sources" to those literally too horrendous to mention as this passage shows:

"Prior headquarters approval...must be obtained for the interrogation of any source against his will and under any of the following circumstances:

1. If bodily harm is to be inflicted.

2. If medical, chemical or electrical methods or materials are to be used to induce acquiescence.

3. ."

Daniel Schorr, U.S. National Public Radio commentator, remarked about this deletion: "Can you imagine what kind of horror that was, to have the CIA excise it even now?"

The coercive methods that the manuals detail are arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, and the use of drugs. These measures are designed to "destroy capacity for resistance" by inducing regression. "The interrogatee's mature defenses crumble as he becomes more childlike." The manuals emphasize isolation, disorientation and the creation of "unpleasant or intolerable situations." Interrogatees should be arrested early in the morning, blindfolded and stripped naked. They should be held incommunicado, deprived of food or sleep and normal routines and subjected to "extremes of heat, cold and moisture." Interrogation rooms should be dark, soundproof and without windows and toilets.

According to The Baltimore Sun, the methods taught in the manuals and those used by the CIA-trained Honduran death squad, Battalion 316, in the early 1980s "show unmistakable similarities." Battalion 316 kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of civilians. The paper presents the case of Ines Murillo, a Honduran, who "was brutalized with shock torture" by this death squad. Murillo claims that she was imprisoned in secret jails in 1983, denied food and water for days and prevented from sleeping by having water poured on her head every ten minutes.

The manuals also refer to one or two weeks of "practical work" with prisoners which suggests that U.S. trainers may have taken part in interrogations with Latin American militaries. This supports claims by Latin American prisoners and U.S. nun Diana Ortiz, tortured by the Guatemalan army in 1989, that "U.S. personnel were present in interrogation and torture rooms."Sister Ortiz was kidnapped, taken to a secret prison and repeatedly raped and tortured by troops commanded by General Hector Gramajo (a CIA asset and graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas). She stated that "the chief of her tormentors was a American who seemed to be linked to the U.S. embasssy." The Guatemalan soldiers called him "Alejandro".

Ortiz's back and chest were burned more than 111 times with cigarettes. She described being "lowered into an open pit packed with...bodies of children, women and men, some decapitated, some lying face up and caked with blood, some dead, some alive and all swarming with rats." She was also forced to kill another prisoner and Alejandro threatened to blackmail her with evidence of this act.

More here:

http://www.ckln.fm/~asadismi/ciatorture.html

We don't know or will we ever know what methods are being used in those Secret Prisons.