Detainee 063. This is the interrogation log of Mohammed al-Qahtani. It is being published in real time: each entry will appear exactly seven years after it was first recorded. The interrogation took place at Guantanamo Bay.
posted by chunking express
on Dec 7, 2009 -
28 comments
Five myths about torture In a Washington Post column,
Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Democracy, explains why five beliefs about torture are wrong. In
a Harper's interview, he answers six questions. "Yes, torture does migrate, and there are some good examples of it both in American and French history. The basic idea here is that soldiers who get ahead torturing come back and take jobs as policemen, and private security, and they get ahead doing the same things they did in the army. And so torture comes home. Everyone knows waterboarding, but no one remembers that it was American soldiers coming back from the Philippines that introduced it to police in the early twentieth century."
[more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson
on Feb 20, 2008 -
54 comments
Secret U. S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations. The New York Times has a 4000-word report today on secret Justice Department opinions--never previously disclosed--authorizing severe interrogation methods. Congress has outlawed cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; in response, Justice declared that the CIA's most extreme interrogation methods are not cruel, inhuman, and degrading. These secret opinions, issued in 2005, are still in effect. Most lawmakers did not know they existed.
White House response: "This country does not torture."
posted by russilwvong
on Oct 4, 2007 -
107 comments
Rorschach and Awe. "America's coercive interrogation methods were reverse-engineered by two C.I.A. psychologists who had spent their careers training U.S. soldiers to endure Communist-style torture techniques. The spread of these tactics was fueled by a myth about a critical 'black site' operation."
posted by homunculus
on Jul 31, 2007 -
57 comments
The Reid Technique In
Homicide, David Simon writes of the homicide detective: "He becomes a salesman, a huckster as thieving and silver-tongued as any man who ever moved used cars or aluminum siding---more so, in fact, when you consider that he's selling long prison terms to customers who have no genuine need for the product." But how does that detective do it? How can someone get you to willingly confess to something you did--
or didn't--do?
The Reid Technique.
Developed by
John Reid,
(who kindly shares with us the tricks detectives use) the technique lets an interviewer look at
every aspect of a suspect's
behavior, sometimes giving them
enough rope to hang themselves.
Forewarned, however, is forearmed. Can you beat the rap if you know
what's facing you, once you get in the
box?
(Hint: Watch your eyeballs!)
posted by John of Michigan
on Feb 1, 2007 -
65 comments
An Impartial Interrogation One of the things I miss about my eighteen years in the US Senate are the stories of the old Southern Democrats. I didn't always vote with them, but I loved their technique of responding to an opponent's questions with a humorous story. Once when Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina had to handle a tough question from Mike Mansfield, he said, "You know, Mr. Leader, that question reminds me of the old Baptist preacher who was telling a class of Sunday school boys the creation story. 'God created Adam and Eve and from this union came two sons, Cain and Abel and thus the human race developed.' A boy in the class then asked, 'Reverend, where did Cain and Abel get their wives?' After frowning for a moment, the preacher replied, 'Young man--it's impertinent questions like that that's hurtin' religion.'"
posted by nofundy
on Jan 19, 2007 -
17 comments
Abu Ghraib, continued. A new cache of disturbing images and videos from the original interrogations, with commentary from Salon. [Definitely NSFW, or for Earth, for that matter.]
posted by digaman
on Mar 14, 2006 -
48 comments
The London Cage. Kensington Palace Gardens is
one of the most exclusive addresses in the world. Between July 1940 and September 1948 three magnificent houses there were home to one of Great Britain'smost secret military establishments: the London office of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, known colloquially as the London Cage. It was run by
MI19, the section of the War Office responsible for
gleaning information from enemy prisoners of war, and few outside this organisation knew exactly what went on beyond the single barbed-wire fence that separated the three houses from the busy streets and grand parks of west London.
The London Cage was used partly as a torture centre, inside which large numbers of German officers and soldiers were subjected to systematic ill-treatment. In total 3,573 men passed through the Cage, and more than 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. A number of German civilians joined the servicemen who were interrogated there up to 1948. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Nov 12, 2005 -
12 comments
The administration's latest innovation in its effort to export democracy:
Soviet-style gulags, a network of secret C.I.A. prisons known as "black sites." [From the
Washington Post]. Meanwhile, SecDef Rumsfeld says
no thanks to the idea of U.N. inspectors talking to detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
posted by digaman
on Nov 2, 2005 -
369 comments
The Torture Question tonight on PBS by far, television's most in-depth look at how the controversial interrogation policy evolved after a major power struggle within the Bush administration. (via Rocky Mountain News)
The problem, of course, is that it's often the things we'd rather not think about that we most need to hear, especially when those things are actions taken in all of our names with an eye toward making us safer. Ellen Gray
Watch a preview
here.
posted by tvgurl
on Oct 18, 2005 -
41 comments
Who thinks this stuff up? Further to concerns discussed
here regarding the torture of Guantanamo detainees, some interesting stories are emerging from those released about the creativity of gonzo military interrogation. Eww.
posted by cosmonik
on Jan 26, 2005 -
38 comments
The death of Frank Olson on November 28, 1953 was a murder, not a suicide. 2. This is not an
LSD drug-experiment story, as it was represented in
1975. This is a
biological warfare story.
Frank Olson did not die because he was an experimental guinea pig who experienced a “
bad trip.” He died because of concern that he would divulge information concerning a highly classified CIA interrogation program called “ARTICHOKE” in the early 1950’s, and concerning the use of biological weapons by the United States in the Korean War.
3. The truth concerning the death of Frank Olson was concealed from the
Olson family as well as from the public in 1953. In 1975 a cover story regarding Frank Olson’s death was disseminated. At the same time a renewed coverup of the truth concerning this story was being carried out at the highest levels of government, including the White House. The new coverup involved the participation of persons serving in the
current Administration.
This is his son Eric's search for his father.
posted by hortense
on Jan 2, 2005 -
23 comments
Is this really the best idea the military can think of? Today's NY Times provides details on some methods used to extract the truth from Iraqi prisoners, including (I'm not making this up) audio tapes played loudly with
"songs by Lil' Kim and Rage Against the Machine and rap performances by Eminem played loudly," and
"a mix of babies crying and the television commercial for Meow Mix in which the jingle consists of repetition of the word 'meow'." Wouldn't sodium pentathol or some other chemical persuasion be more effective, while providing less fodder for Leno and Letterman?
posted by centerpunch
on Jan 1, 2005 -
49 comments
The Road To Abu Ghraib A generation from now, historians may look back to April 28, 2004, as the day the United States lost the war in Iraq... It was a direct—and predictable—consequence of a policy, hatched at the highest levels of the administration, by senior White House officials and lawyers, in the weeks and months after 9/11. Yet the administration has largely managed to escape responsibility for those decisions; a month from election day, almost no one in the press or the political class is talking about what is, without question, the worst scandal to emerge from President Bush's nearly four years in office... Given the particular conditions faced by the president and his deputies after 9/11—a war against terrorists, in which the need to extract intelligence via interrogations was intensely pressing, but the limits placed by international law on interrogation techniques were very constricting—did those leaders have better alternatives than the one they chose? The answer is that they did. And we will be living with the consequences of the choices they made for years to come.
posted by y2karl
on Oct 27, 2004 -
33 comments
Torture and Truth and
The Logic of Torture--Mark Danner writes about
Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade (The Taguba Report) and
Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation in the former and concludes thusly in the latter:
Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners. (More Within)
posted by y2karl
on Jun 4, 2004 -
16 comments
U.S. Military Bars Some Iraq Interrogation Methods ...The officials said the decision was made on Thursday by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, on the same day that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with him on a surprise trip to the country and visited the Abu Ghraib facility on the outskirts of Baghdad. ..
Is this a tacit admission that what took place was not simply rogue actions by individuals but rather military folks following orders of some kind? And, then, why do the new ground rules apply just to Iraq and not to other places?
posted by Postroad
on May 14, 2004 -
27 comments
"
Rendition" is the State Department legal term for when they
ship (its a lot like extradition minus due process ) Al Qaida/Taliban POWs to a friendly 3rd country such as Egypt or Jordan for questioning.
"Why not just question them in Guantanamo" you ask? Thats because in some countries, interrogation is less regulated than it is on US soil. Neat, huh?
posted by BentPenguin
on Mar 14, 2002 -
52 comments
according to andy borowitz, the cia is using mariah carey's movie "glitter" in the interrogations of al qaeda operatives. apparently, "
the film usually induces prisoners to talk after 10 or 12 minutes." yow. the US is fighting dirty!
this has got to be one of the most humorous things i've read in a while. (via newsweek)
posted by sixtwenty3dc
on Jan 2, 2002 -
20 comments
Exxon "helped torture in Indonesia." The Aceh uprising brings up the point--how far do we allow multi-nationals to go to "protect their interests"? Would you sanction torture to keep the price of gas and other petroleum products low?
posted by aflakete
on Jun 22, 2001 -
10 comments
