Torture manuals

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The Torture manuals was a nickname for seven training manuals which had excerpts declassified to the public on September 20, 1996 by the Pentagon.

These manuals were prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). The manuals were also distributed by Special Forces Mobile Training teams to military personnel and intelligence schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. ^[1]

1 Contents
2 CIA manuals declassified
- 2.1 Editing of 1983 CIA manual
3 Declassification
- 3.1 Notes
4 See also
5 External links
- 5.1 Government Files
- 5.2 Other links

[edit] Contents

Techniques advocated in SOA training manuals, 1982-1991^[2]

• Motivation by fear
• Payment of bounties for enemy dead
• False imprisonment
• Use of truth serum
• Torture
• Execution
• Extortion
• Kidnapping and arresting a target’s family members

[edit] CIA manuals declassified

On January 24, 1997, two new manuals were declassified in response to a FOIA request filed by the Baltimore Sun in 1994.

The first manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation," dated July 1963, is the source of much of the material in the second manual.

The second manual, "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983," was used in at least seven U.S. training courses conducted in Latin American countries, including Honduras, between 1982 and 1987.

Both manuals deal exclusively with interrogation.[1] [2]

Both manuals have an entire chapter devoted to "coercive techniques." These manuals recommend arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets.

The manuals advise that torture techniques can backfire and that the threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself. The manuals describe coercive techniques to be used "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. [3] [4]

The second manual, "Human Resource Exploitation" states the importance of knowing local laws regarding detention but then notes, "Illegal detention always requires prior HQS [headquarters] approval." (p. B-2) [5]

[edit] Editing of 1983 CIA manual

In 1985 a page advising against using coercive techniques was inserted at the front of KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. Handwritten changes were also introduced haphazardly into the text. For example, "While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use them," has been altered to, "While we deplore the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them so that you may avoid them." (p. A-2) But the entire chapter on coercive techniques is still provided with some items crossed out.[6]