Via the NYT: An Expert Reveals Chinese Origins of Interrogation Techniques at Guantánamo

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

[...]

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

Anyone even passingly familiar with the debate over detainee treatment will be aware that those were amongst the public techniques that were used by the United States on those in its power. Indeed, I specifically recall former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld scoffing at the issue of standing for extending periods of time as being problematic because he himself prefers to work standing up (and even has a special desk that allows him to do so).

However, as I know I have noted before, if a technique would be considered torture if used on one of our soldiers, that should be a perfect test to determine if it is torture when we use it on those we have captured.

Americans should be shocked and outraged that our government adopted interrogation techniques used by the Chinese Communist circa 1950 (not to mention ones used on our own soldiers). Yet, I suppose it will be greeted with a yawn. After all, they are just trying to keep us safe, yes? That little sentence seems to cover a multitude of sins.

And no: the fact that we have apparently stopped using these techniques does not make this a non-story. For one thing, we really don’t know what is and is not being done (especially by the CIA, as many of the limitations that have been written into law of late have been focused on the military, not the intelligence apparatus). Second, the very fact that we were blithely using this article in this way until at least 2005 is not a comfort, as it should be blatantly obvious that the Chinese Communists (or any authoritarian government) ought not be the source of our interrogation techniques.

Surely that is not a radical or off the wall thing to say?

I will be especially interested in what vociferous movement conservatives have to say, as opposition to communism was key element of that coalition for decades. Indeed, communism was anathema, an evil second only to Hitler (maybe even worse). Surely they would abhor the adoption of torture techniques from the ChiComs? We shall see.

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6 Responses to “2002 Interrogation Class Based on Chinese Techniques from the Korean War”

1. Ratoe Says:
   July 2nd, 2008 at 10:24 am

   Good points Steven–Although you miss one that is essential:

   The torture techniques they were teaching were from an article that said that these techniques would give FALSE INFORMATION!!

   So even if you have no qualms about torture, the fact that Bush is implementing a policy known to be ineffective is utterly insane.

   I hope Congress pursues this line once they hold hearings on this. The admin can use the legal parry on some of the points that you brought up, but the willful embrace of ineffectiveness can’t be as easily dismissed.

2. Dr. Steven Taylor Says:
   July 2nd, 2008 at 10:28 am

   I was just contemplating a separate post on that very issue, in fact.

   And, sadly, I am not convinced that Congress will do anything about any of this.

3. Were 'Brainwashing' Techniques Used on US Servicemen in Korea Part of the Training at Guantanamo? Says:
   July 2nd, 2008 at 4:35 pm

   [...] we all knew about the ‘prolonged standing’ technique. As Dr. Steven Taylor remarks at Poliblog: Anyone even passingly familiar with the debate over detainee treatment will be aware that those [...]

4. Hume’s Ghost Says:
   July 4th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

   Rumsfield wrote that flippant remark about standing all day long on the memo authorizing the use of new “coercive” interrogation tactics at GITMO. The one that Phillipe Sands has now compelling argued set off a direct chain of events that led to US torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

   If you write a post about the fale confessions angle: you might want to consider that in the context of this post from Mathew Yglesias (I tried to link to the original post but it’s broken)

   http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2005/11/tell-me-what-i-know.html

   It turns out that when you torture someone until he tells you Iraq was training al-Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological warfare, he’ll tell you want you want to hear even if it isn’t true. Mark Kleiman and Kevin Drum both point to this sort of problem as the “pragmatic case against torture.” It seems to me, however, that this is more like the pragmatic case for torture. The Bush administration, among many other flaws, has embraced confirmation bias with remarkable gusto. It seems to be their main epistemic method.

   And that’s precisely the sort of thing torture is really good for. If you already know what the truth is — perhaps because it can be deduced from regime-type rather than boring intelligence gathering — but just need some more evidence in order to convince others, then torture is a really, really, really good way of getting that kind of evidence. That’s always been the main historical use of torture — you have your prisoner, you want a confession, so you torture him until he confesses. It’s not, after all, as if the administration was genuinely wondering about Iraq/al-Qaeda ties. They knew what they wanted to prove and they needed to make the case. Torture was an excellent way to get the job done.

5. Captain D Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am

   Hey friends, I don’t want to sound like I’m signing up for the torture club, but some (Ratoe) are oversimplifying what torture can and can’t accomplish. There are studies that say it works, and studies that say it doesn’t. Having seen the effects of it on the ground I understand that the truth (as usual) is somewhere in the middle and can’t be reduced to a simple “does or doesn’t” work.

   Torture can be extremely effective under certain conditions. If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be the global epidemic that it is; sadly many nations openly use it for reasons that run the gamut from gathering intelligence to frightening political opposition. If a regime is able to accept torture as a method of gathering information, it is one of several tools for doing so that may or may not work, depending on the individuals involved and the techniques used - and these will be unique to each case. Generally speaking it’s not the best way but to say it doesn’t work as a blanket statement is not accurate.

   The problem here isn’t whether or not torture is effective; the problem is whether or not a nation that calls itself a democracy should even be using the word. My belief is that it shouldn’t. What we’re doing doesn’t make us the moral equivalent of the Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s USSR by any stretch (we have a few tens of millions to torture before we reach that level), but it does present a very ugly double-standard, and is morally wrong. Period. (And Dr. T, I’m not suggesting you think we are the moral equivalent of those regimes - just that there are people out there who do, and I think they’re wrong.)

6. Hume’s Ghost Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 11:52 pm

   I do not believe we are the moral equivalent of those regimes. Indeed, I believe that is absurd. But I do think we have adopted some of the underlying rationales that contributed to the moral atrocities of those regimes.

   For example
   http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/11/return-of-carl-schmitt.html

   http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article2602564.ece