WASHINGTON – There is increasing controversy over whether or not the enhanced interrogation techniques employed on al-Qaida detainees in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States constituted "torture."
Many who defend the enhanced interrogation techniques, known as EIT, point out they are used to train U.S. personnel, including in the U.S. Air Force's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, or SERE.
"Our techniques (prior to 9/11) didn't work against hard-core jihadists," a source familiar with EIT told WND. "In reality, we realized nearly instantaneously that the jihadis were breaking our interrogators, not the other way around."
The source, who asked that his name not be used, said that following 9/11, it became apparent that there weren't enough trained interrogators, especially those with Arabic language skills.
Consequently, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized SERE techniques, "and we were hugely successful; we wrapped up most of the Taliban head honchos nearly instantaneously, and we had wrapped up quite a bit of the Iraqi 'deck of card' guys."
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"Deck of cards" refers to the most-wanted members in the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Their photos were placed on playing cards to help U.S. troops identify them. For example, the Ace of Spades was Saddam Hussein.
The use of EIT has come under fire with the recent release of a Senate Democrat report that cost $40 million to produce, was released two years late, failed to include a Republican minority report and didn't interview those who administered the EIT program.
When the techniques were employed to obtain time-sensitive information from al-Qaida captives that could stop another attack, they were considered legal and weren't regarded as "torture."
The Senate report was issued by the outgoing Democrat majority on the eve of the Senate turnover to Republicans in January. The report cast the impression CIA officers who employed EIT should be held accountable for "torture," a move even the Obama administration's Justice Department has refused to pursue.
Almost uniformly, Senate Republicans condemned the report as having "factual and analytical errors."
"The study essentially refuses to admit that CIA detainees, especially CIA detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, provided intelligence information which helped the United States government and its allies to neutralize numerous terrorist threats," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. "On its face, this refusal doesn't make sense."
However, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, who was physically tortured during his captivity in Vietnam, condemned the CIA officers and called EIT "torture," contending the methods didn't adhere to American values.
McCain said he knew from "personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence."
"Our enemies act without conscience," he said. "We must not."
The Senate report was based on CIA documents but never included testimony from the CIA officers involved in administering the EIT program.
CIA Director John Brennan, in a rare departure from the White House's support for the release of the report, held an unusual news conference recently to defend the work of his officers.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, a psychologist, James Mitchell, who was instrumental in developing the EIT program for CIA, expressed outrage that he never was interviewed and now finds his life in danger as a result of the release of the report, which he considers incomplete.
Mitchell is a former Air Force explosives expert and trainer. He, along with his partner, Bruce Jessen, another psychologist, designed and carried out many of the interrogations to acquire vital information on follow-up attacks.
Mitchell said the enhanced interrogation techniques were effective in thwarting future terrorist attacks. He disagreed with the conclusions of the Senate report and said it unfairly demonized him.
Mitchell and Jessen were also SERE trainers and had proposed a number of SERE tactics that could be employed in the EIT program conducted under CIA auspices.
They included waterboarding, which simulated drowning; locking people in cramped boxes; shackling detainees in painful positions; keeping them awake for a week at a time; and covering detainees with insects.
Mitchell told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that he personally had interrogated the self-professed planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, or KSM, and determined that waterboarding didn't work. However, he said other techniques did work, although he would not elaborate.
The EIT expert who spoke to WND said a combination of techniques would be the most effective, such as sleep deprivation for five days, stress positions and white noise.
"Different things worked on different people," he said. "Dogs were effective in some cases. Getting slapped and pushed around by a woman blew a lot of their minds," he said. "One SERE (course) I went through, we went with some MI (military intelligence) officers. At the end, we – interrogators – thought the physical part of the ordeal sucked, cuz we were wimpy MI guys, but the officer who broke said the physical didn't bother him at all, but the interrogation methodologies were awful. Officers don't go through interrogation training."
The source said the fallout from the release of the Senate Democrat report condemning EIT has left "interrogators holding the bag," an outcome for which Mitchell similarly expressed concern.
The source said that there is a SERE course now conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, and U.S. Special Operations Forces. It's called the International Long-range Reconnaissance and Patrol School, or ILRPS.
He pointed out it's a school that has been in existence for more than 20 years in which interrogators from the 165th MI Battalion in Darmstadt, Germany, practice as interrogators using SERE techniques.
"You'd have British, Dutch, German and other interrogators there practicing the same stuff," he said.
"I always roll my eyes when I see some kind of faux outrage from our 'allies' about our interrogation techniques, when their guys were still doing the same thing we were," he said.
"The Russian outrage is particularly amusing, considering their use of aggressive techniques, that is, real torture, is legendary," he said. "Two of their favorites are to have two prisoners sitting side by side; the interrogator uses a rasp to rasp out one prisoner's teeth. The other is to use a power drill and drill into one prisoner's brain."
Following the 2003 Abu Ghraib scandal in which U.S. Army and CIA were accused of human rights violations, attitudes toward EIT began to change, he said.
"All mention of SERE tactics was forbidden," he said. "And doctrine writers were commanded to redraft the interrogation manual, which had been FM34-52. The new field manual was FM 2-22.3 in which every third page is an admonishment that torture is illegal, because, apparently, now interrogators are stupid. They dumbed down the techniques … we couldn't demean anybody too badly."
Eventually, the source told WND, it took approval from a general to use EIT.
"So effectively, the technique was gone."
The source said the interrogators were blamed for Abu Ghraib, "essentially eliminated interrogation as an effective method of gathering intelligence."
"They … hired every Islamophile and jihadi sympathizer to teach cultural awareness to units, mostly teaching America is bad, and killing the enemy is bad, and there's something wrong with you for wanting to kill the enemy."