From
Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum:
The CIA has co-existed with torture for decades. Sleeping with friendly torturers has been a closely guarded secret at the Agency, and for that reason the actual painful details have been difficult to come by over the years. But here is some of the record that has made its way to the light of day:
Greece
During the late 1940s, the CIA was instrumental in the creation of a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture. It was most active during the military junta, 1967-74, a period of routine horrific torture. Amnesty International later reported that “American policy on the torture question as expressed in official statements and official testimony has been to deny it where possible and minimize it where denial was not possible. This policy flowed naturally from general support for the military regime.”
James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty, wrote in 1969 that some torturers told prisoners that some of their equipment had come as US military aid. One item was a special “thick white double cable” whip that was “scientific, making their work easier”; another was the head screw, known as an “iron wreath”, which was progressively tightened around the head or ears.
American support, reported Becket, was vital to the torturers:
Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance:
“You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can’t fight us, we are Americans.”
Iran
The notorious Iranian security service, SAVAK, which employed torture routinely, was created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel in the 1950s. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, Jesse J. Leaf, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency.
After the 1979 revolution, the Iranians found a CIA film made for SAVAK on how to torture women.
Germany
In the 1950s, in Munich, the CIA tortured suspected infiltrators of Soviet emigre organizations in Western Europe, which the Agency was using in anti-Soviet operations. Amongst the techniques employed by the CIA were such esoteric torture methods as applying turpentine to a man’s testicles or sealing someone in a room and playing Indonesian music at deafening levels until he cracked. This information probably surfaced because it’s weird-sounding to the point of being amusing; there was likely more of regular torture methods not fit for conversation.
Vietnam
The Green Berets taught its members who were slated for duty in Vietnam in the 1960s how to use torture as part of an interrogation.
The notorious Operation Phoenix, set up by the CIA to wipe out the Vietcong infrastructure, subjected suspects to torture such as:
-
electric shock to the genitals of both men and women
-
insertion into the ear of a six-inch dowel, which was tapped through the brain until the victim died
-
suspects were also thrown out of airborne helicopters to persuade the more important suspects to talk, although this should probably be categorized as murder of the ones thrown out, and a form of torture for those not.
In violation of the Geneva Convention, the US turned prisoners over to their South Vietnamese allies in full knowledge that they would be tortured, American military personnel often being present during the torture.
Bolivia
In 1967, anti-Castro Cubans, working with the CIA to find Che Guevara, set up houses of interrogation where Bolivians suspected of aiding Che’s guerrilla army were brought for questioning and sometimes tortured. When the Bolivian interior minister learned of the torture, he was furious and demanded that the CIA put a stop to it.
$$ Torture For Sale $$
From
Derailing Democracy:
the America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan:
“The U.S.A. has supplied arms, security equipment and training to governments and armed groups that have committed torture, political killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world.”
— Amnesty International
“United States of America — Rights for All”
October 1998
“[F]rom September 1991 to December 1993 the U.S. Commerce Department had issued over 350 export licenses worth more than $27 million for:
- saps (bludgeons)
- thumb-cuffs
- thumb-screws
- leg-irons
- shackles and handcuffs
- specially designed implements of torture
- straight jackets
- plastic handcuffs
- police helmets and shields
— Amnesty International
“United States of America — Rights for All”
October 1998
“[T]he U.S. Commerce Department had licensed the export of thousands of stun guns to Indonesia in 1993, in the face of persistent reports of electro-shock torture by Indonesian government agents...
“Another State Department report on the use of U.S. military equipment was issued in July 1997. This admitted that Turkey’s special units of paramilitary gendarmes and police — two of the forces most frequently accused of political killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture — were using M-16 and AR-15S assault rifles, M-203 grenade launchers and helicopters obtained from the U.S.A.... In April 1998 a U.S. company was negotiating to sell 10,000 electro-shock weapons to the Turkish police, despite its long-standing and documented record of practising electro-shock torture.”
— Amnesty International
“United States of America — Rights for All”
October 1998
Related sites
School of the Americas Watch
http://www.soaw.org/index.html
The United States Army “School of the Americas”, in Fort Benning, Georgia, teaches its students how to torture human beings.
Graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.
Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.
Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the torture of countless people throughout Central and South America and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 human beings.
The US Army School of Assassins
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/
Exposes the dirty deeds of the U.S. Army School of “the Americas” (Assassins) throughout Latin America. Special sections on Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Grenada, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
“Disguise and deny”
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Disguise_deny.html
“US officials spent years denying that their School of the Americas trained torturers. Faced with their own training manuals, they found it ‘incredible’, a result of ‘bureaucratic oversight’, that such material existed.”
— Tom Morris
Public Awareness Co-ordinator
Amnesty International Canada
Bibliography
The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
“One of the best books ever written on the secret history of the Vietnam war. Valentine presents an unsparing account of the Phoenix Program, the CIA/US Army ‘pacification’ program in Vietnam that practiced plunder, torture and widespread assassination.”
Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum
Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan
Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum
Body of Secrets:
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
by James Bamford
In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a top-secret plan for committing terrorist attacks on Americans in Miami and Washington D.C., while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular support for an invasion of Cuba.
Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others
Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving
Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Deadly Deceits:
My 25 years in the CIA
by Ralph W. McGehee
Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti
The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee
I Was Never Alone:
A Prison Diary from El Salvador
by Nidia Diaz
Colombia:
The Genocidal Democracy
by Javier Giraldo
Against Empire
by Michael Parenti
War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick
The Weapons of American State Terrorism
Torture