Reconstructing the conditions in a CIA secret detention cell - refining the techniques

the section of the Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe, Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights report entitled, Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report (PDF), is excerpted in full by stephen soldz in his weblog, Psyche, Science, and Society... we - all of us - very much need to know what is being done in our name... please click over there and take the time to read it...

here's some of soldz' thoughts...

In this description we can see the results of decades of CIA study, aided by many psychologists and psychiatrists, of how to destroy human beings, the fruits of its MKULTRA program and the detailed implementation of the in the KUBARK (PDF) and other torture manuals.

One of the problems the CIA faced in conducting their research on soul-destruction was the lack of available research subjects who could be subject to the full panoply of techniques or what they called “terminal experiments.” It is thus likely that the CIA’s psychologists, like Scott Shumate (who, according to his biographical statement “has been with several of the key apprehended terrorists”), were not involved solely in the construction of this hell, but also in studying its effects so as to better refine the techniques.

curious as always, i followed soldz' link and took a look at the KUBARK (PDF) interrogation manual... what i found was a document dated july 1963 that contained 131 pages of very detailed instructions for interrogators... it's all quite interesting and, when you get to page 85, section IX entitled, The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources, it really starts to get interesting...


items... (remember, this material was published in 1963... just imagine how much more "refined" it has become since then...)

• ...it is advisable to keep the subject upset by constant disruptions of patterns

• The more complete the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more rapidly and deeply the interrogatee will be affected. Results produced only after weeks or months in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light (or weak artifical light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc. An environment still more subject to control, such as a water-tank or iron lung, is even more effective.

• The available evidence suggests that resistance is sapped principally by psychological rather than physical pressures. The threat of debility - for example, a brief deprivation of food - may induce much more anxiety than prolonged hunger. ... Meals and sleep granted irregularly, in more than abundance or less than adequacy, the shifts occurring on no discernible time pattern, will normally disorient an interrogatee and sap his will to resist more effectively than a sustained deprivation leading to debility.

• [W]hereas pain inflicted on a person from outside himself may actually focus or intensify his will to resist, his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he inflicts on himself. ... When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself.

• Just as the threat of pain may more effectively induce compliance than its infliction, so an interrogatee's mistaken belief that he has been drugged may make him a more useful interrogation subject than he would be under narcosis.

ok, enough of that... as i said earlier, it's important that we know what's taking place in our name...

(thanks to larisa for giving me the initial links to this expedition to the dark side...)

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Are extraordinary rendition flights continuing, operated by Blackwater?

A CASA-212 Aviocar, registration number N964BW,
owned by Blackwater, lands at the RAF Mildenhall airbase in
Suffolk, United Kingdom, a week ago Saturday

when i was working for united airlines, i discovered that there's an entire sub-culture out there of "plane-spotters," no doubt genetically linked to that other genre, train-spotters... at heart, i suppose i'm one myself, although not nearly passionate enough to devote any serious time to it... anywayz, plane-spotters around the world have been doing a great service to all of us by identifying, tracking, monitoring, and photographing cia flights... this story would not have surfaced had it not been for their diligent efforts...

from the uk daily mail...

The row over CIA 'torture flights' using British airports has deepened following fresh evidence that a plane repeatedly linked to the controversial programme landed in the UK just days ago.

The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.

Its registration number, clearly visible on the fuselage, identifies it as a plane which the European Parliament says has been involved in 'ghost flights' to smuggle terrorist suspects to shadowy interrogation centres abroad.

Records show the plane is owned by Blackwater USA, a CIA contractor described as "the most secretive and powerful mercenary army on the planet". An eyewitness, who previously worked as an RAF electronic warfare expert, said that as the plane - a CASA-212 Aviocar - taxied to a stop on the runway it was met by a US military Humvee.

The vehicle contained four US security policemen armed with M16 assault rifles, who accompanied the camouflaged crew to the airport terminal.

this comes hard on the heels of last week's report confirming cia secret prisons... equally interesting is that a little digging turned up that the plane is listed in a report provided last november for the european parliament...


With a range of 2,000 miles, the flight was tracked
in U.S. airspace, and then likely refueled in Greenland,
the U.K., Malta, and the near Middle East, before heading
to Afghanistan or Iraq.

A report last November by a European Parliament committee placed the plane - registration number N964BW - on a list of "companies and aircraft used by the CIA for extraordinary rendition flights". The plane was previously registered with the Bolivian army, and has been pictured on the ground in the Afghan capital Kabul within the past year.

The American Federal Aviation Authority lists the plane as being operated by two companies, Aviation World Wide Services and a sister company, Presidential Airways.

The European Parliament report describes these as shell companies operating as subsidiaries of Blackwater USA, "an important contractor for the CIA and the US military" which bases the planes in Malta.

Research by a further group, The American Centre for Media and Democracy, claims that flight-tracking internet technology shows the plane landed at least twice in the first six months of 2006 at Camp Peary, the U.S. naval reservation in Virginia known as The Farm and widely alleged to be a CIA training facility.

Tracking technology shows that the plane was en route from Canada to Greenland two days before it was sighted at Mildenhall: the internet software does not extend beyond American airspace, but the expert explained that its route would be consistent with a refuelling stop in the Arctic - it only has a range of about 2,000 miles - followed by a further refuel in East Anglia, before heading to Malta.

From there it could 'leapfrog' from US bases in the former Soviet states bordering Afghanistan on to Kabul.

i can't imagine anyone so naive as to believe both that the cia secret prisons are not still in operation and that extraordinary rendition is not still underway... such naivete - or deliberate blindness - is equivalent to believing that domestic wiretapping is being conducted through fisa or that bush will dump alberto gonzales... as atrios says, na ga happen...

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a-HA! Secret prisons in Poland and Romania CONFIRMED!

yeah, like we ever doubted it...

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude tomorrow.

Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America's most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation methods. These included water-boarding which leads detainees to believe they are drowning, which critics have condemned as severe torture.

i'm going to give myself some kudos here... i've been blogging about this since december 2005 (here, here, and here, among others), and also posted last december on the location of the prison site in poland along with the very airport the cia used when delivering or retrieving the prisoners (here and here)... in fact, here's a photo of the airport in poland where the cia flights landed and took off...



Szymany airport, Poland

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"The Administration never saw an error in their ways" - HAHAHAHAHA...!

when have they EVER seen an error in their ways...? why in god's name would we think otherwise...? thinking otherwise is for fools, and if there is one thing the bush administration is very good at, it's making us all look like fools...

"Last September when the president announced that he was moving detainees from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo, he left the distinct impression that his Administration was discontinuing their secret prison program," Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) said in a statement sent to RAW STORY. "Unfortunately, we learned this past weekend that the Administration never saw an error in their ways and that secret CIA prisons are still operating outside the law and outside the public eye."

yep, they're still there, humming along, 24/7, and i imagine the rendition flights that serve them are still up and running as well...



(click on image to enlarge)

Alleged pick-up points and destinations
of secret prisoner transfer flights

Source: Council of Europe report on alleged US secret prisons inside Europe [PDF]

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