For decades the U.S. has propped up military dictatorships in Latin America that stifled progressive change and entrenched small cliques of elites which were completely out of touch with the population over which they ruled. The record is replete on the use of torture as an element of foreign policy by the United States. The most comprehensive record came out of the Church Senate Committee hearings which issued a series of searing reports on the use of torture and assassination.
The most notorious of these nefarious regimes were the Argentine junta, Chile's Augusto Pinochet and the Central American military dictatorships. The Mexican government, despite its dressings of democracy, has always operated with torture and disappearance of dissidents. These regimes assured a free hand for U.S. business interests and the iron fist for the impoverished masses. The modus operandi for the military and U.S. intelligence agencies was well established prior to 911. In fact some of the most active agents in promoting torture in Latin America include such well known Iraq war figures as Dick Cheney and John Negroponte.
Although the documentary history of this long and dark history of repression is abundant, most Americans have little knowledge of just how reprehensible their government has been in brutally repressing social change in Latin America. On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon released seven training manuals prepared by the US military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses in Latin America and at the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), where the US trains Latin American militaries.
From start to finish, six of the seven Army manuals are how-to-guides on repressive techniques. Throughout their 1,100 plus pages, there are few mentions of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law. Instead, there are detailed techniques for infiltrating social movements, interrogating suspects, surveillance, maintaining military secrecy, recruiting and retaining spies, and controlling the population. While the excerpts released by the Pentagon to the press are a useful and not misleading selection of the most egregious passages-the ones most clearly advocating torture, execution, and blackmail-they do not reveal the manuals' highly objectionable framework. In the name of defending democracy, the manuals advocate profoundly undemocratic methods. Just as objectionable as the methods they advocate is the fundamental disregard for the differences between armed insurgencies and lawful political and civic opposition-an attitude that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Latin American civilians.
The Counterintelligence manual, for example, defines as potential counterintelligence targets "local or national political party teams, or parties that have goals, beliefs or ideologies contrary or in opposition to the National Government", or "teams of hostile organizations whose objective is to create dissension or cause restlessness among the civilian population in the area of operations." This text recommends that the army create a "blacklist" of "persons whose capture and detention are of foremost importance to the armed forces." It should include not only "enemy agents" but also "subversive persons," "political leaders known or suspected as hostile toward the Armed Forces or the political interests of the National Government," and "collaborators and sympathizers of the enemy," known or suspect.
Throughout, the manuals highlight refugees and displaced persons as possible subversives to be monitored. They describe universities as breeding grounds for terrorists, and identify priests and nuns as terrorists. They advise militaries to infiltrate youth groups, student groups, labor unions, political parties, and community organizations.
Even electoral activity is suspect: The insurgents "can resort to subverting the government by means of elections in which the insurgents cause the replacement of an unfriendly government official to one favorable to their cause"; "insurgent activity" can include funding campaigns and participating in political races as candidates.
One of the most pernicious passages, in "Combat Intelligence", lists ways to identify guerrilla presence. "Indicators of an imminent attack by guerrillas" include demonstrations by minority groups, reluctance by civilians-including children-to associate with US or their local troops, celebrations of national or religious festivals, or the presence of strangers. "Indicators of control by guerrillas" over a certain civilian population include the refusal to provide intelligence to government forces or the construction of new houses. Indications that insurgents are conducting psychological operations include accusations of government corruption, circulating petitions, attempts to discredit the government or armed forces, calling government leaders US puppets, urging youth to avoid the draft, demonstrations or strikes, or accusations of police or army brutality.
And what techniques did the U.S. military and CIA use against this mass of subversive elements. Several training manuals have surfaced which indicate the nature of the activities:
The CIA had written KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation in 1963 for use by US agents against perceived Soviet subversion. (KUBARK was the CIA's code name for itself. ) While it was not intended to train foreign military services, its successor, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual --- 1983, which drew heavily on material in KUBARK, was used in at least seven US training courses conducted in Latin American countries between 1982 and 1987,...
These two CIA textbooks deal exclusively with interrogation and devote an entire chapter each to "coercive techniques." Human Resource Exploitation recommends surprising suspects in the predawn hours, arresting, blindfolding, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommunicado, it advises, and deprived of normal routines in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, sound proof, dark, and without toilets. The manuals do admonish that torture techniques can backfire and that the threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself. However, they then go on to describe coercive techniques ''to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist.'' These techniques include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disrupting routines, solitary confinement, threats of pain, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos.
The second manual, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, is clearly the source of much of the 1983 manual; some passages are lifted verbatim. KUBARK has a similar section on coercive techniques, and includes some even more abhorrent elements, such as two references to the use of electric shock. For example, one passage requires US agents to obtain "prior Headquarters approval ... if bodily harm is to be inflicted," or "if medical, chemical, or electrical methods" are to be used. A third condition for obtaining prior approval is, ominously, whited out.
The Pentagon conducted its own inquiry after revelation of the manuals and the military's role in torturing subjects.
* "Another function of the CI (counterintelligence) agents is recommending CI targets for neutralizing is (eliminating), includ(ing) ... government officials, political leaders and members of the infrastructure." * "Mechanical methods which could be could be used under certain extenuating circumstances: Sodium pentathol compound could be intravenously injected ... another method is hypnotism." * In a section dealing with forcing government employees to join guerrilla organizations to spy for military counterintelligence, the manual states the CI agent could cause the arrest of the employee's parents, imprison the employee or give him a beating as part of the placement plan of said employee in the guerrilla organization ... the employee's value could be increased by means of arrests, executions or pacifications.,
If these methods sound familiar, it is because they echo the methods used by the Bush/Cheney administration. These techniques include:
* beating
* sexual and cultural humiliation
* forced nakedness
* exposure to extreme temperatures
* exploitation of phobias
* sleep deprivation
* sensory deprivation and sensory overload
* prolonged isolation
* threats of imminent harm
Nothing best exemplifies the warning of George Santayana, that those who do not remember the past, are condemned to repeat it, like our history of torture.
(Originally published and cross-posted in Daily Kos on May 3, 2009)
