Under Biden, the U.S. Stonewalls UN Charges That U.S. Uses Torture
In 2015, US Congress mandated the Army's Field Manual on interrogations as the only guide for questioning prisoners. The UN maintains the manual allows ill-treatment of detainees. Press remains silent
The Biden administration joins its predecessors in refusing to address authoritative charges that the U.S. uses forms of “ill-treatment” in its military and CIA interrogations.
“Ill-treatment” is a broad term used in human rights protocols to be inclusive of both torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (CIDT) or punishment. It is not precisely defined, but is a term often used to describe use of torture and CIDT in human rights documents.
In September 2021, the U.S. sent its “Sixth Periodic Report to the United Nations Committee against Torture (‘Committee’) concerning the implementation of the United States’ obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (hereinafter referred to as ‘Convention’ or ‘CAT’).” The CAT is a UN treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory, as are most nations in the world.
In a response that was totally ignored by the press and human rights groups, the Biden administration’s report pointedly refused to respond in a substantive fashion to the Committee’s criticism of the U.S. government’s use of certain interrogation policies, namely use of sleep and sensory deprivation on prisoners it deemed not covered by Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war.
Back in November 2014, I published an article at Firedoglake’s The Dissenter website reporting how the United Nations (UN) had condemned “the presence of ill-treatment and torture within the [U.S.] Army Field Manual’s Appendix M, which purports to describe a ‘restricted interrogation technique’ called ‘Separation.’”
The “Separation” technique is not really a singular “technique,” but a constellation of varying instructions that together, and with inclusion of other techniques listed in the Army Field Manual (AFM), such as “Fear Up” and “Futility,” constitute a well-founded torture program that relies on psychological torture. This program includes the isolation of the prisoner for a period of 30 days, subject to an unspecified number of renewed solitary confinement; a modified form of sleep deprivation, whereby a prisoner could be restricted to only four hours of sleep a night, theoretically for months on end; and something called “field expedient separation,” a form of sensory deprivation known to cause psychotic reactions in some people.
More specifically, UNCAT identified the “minimal” sleep regulations in the manual as actually a form of sleep deprivation — “a form of ill-treatment” — and called for adherence to humane norms. In addition, the committee called for the elimination of sensory deprivation in the “field expedient” section of Appendix M, as such sensory deprivation can “create a state of psychosis with the detainee.”
According to the the AFM’s Appendix M, as a matter of supposed “last resort… when physical separation of detainees is not feasible, goggles or blindfolds and earmuffs may be utilized as a field expedient method to generate a perception of separation.”
As I noted almost ten years ago now:
“… shorn of all the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, an Appendix M interrogation means keeping a detainee isolated for up to 30 days, or even months longer, exposed to noise (as long as it is not “excessive”) or other environmental changes (again, so long as they are not “excessive”), and allowed no more than 4 hours sleep per day for weeks and perhaps months on end. The detainee is meant to feel both hopeless and helpless about their condition. Psychological and sociological weaknesses are exploited to increase the sense of despair. Incentives are offered to entice the prisoner to cooperate and end the solitary confinement and sleep deprivation or sensory deprivation. If the prisoner should still refuse to divulge information or otherwise cooperate (such as to turn informant), then the level of fear a prisoner feels is to be increased, playing off fears the prisoner may feel, including phobias.”
Appendix M requires higher levels of command approval, in addition to the presence of medical providers at the site of its use. Its use is said to be “restricted,” and each instance of its application requires a legal review. All these purported safeguards only point to the profound potential for abuse by using such methods.
As DoD admitted in an internal set of “talking points” on the matter, released to me via FOIA, the “Separation” techniques were “not an authorized interrogation technique for lawful enemy combatants,” i.e., for prisoners of war covered by Geneva. The full set of “talking points” is linked below:
The DoD “talking points” conclude with the assurance that the use of the “Separation” technique (really a combination of various techniques under one name) is “an essential tool for interrogation, particularly in the first few weeks of internment.” The reason for this is the prolongation of the “shock of capture,” as the AFM refers to it.
I wrote about the use of abusive interrogation techniques in the 2006 update of the Army’s Field Manual on interrogations on multiple occasions over the years, back at a time when human and legal rights organizations also tried to stop the use of such interrogation abuses. The U.S. government began hiding its use of its non-”enhanced interrogation” set of torture/interrogation techniques from the moment they were memorialized into the current Army instructions on interrogation.
Indeed, there had been an initial intent to publish the Appendix M protocol as only a classified annex to the Army Field Manual proper. In the end, it was decided that a public, controlled release concerning the techniques would arouse less protest and suspicion than a secret appendix would. Sadly, the officials were correct, as the entire subject of the existence of torture techniques in the military’s primary set of interrogation instructions has been near totally ignored by the press.
A Lesson in How to Hide Torture
As a matter of background: In 2006, the U.S. Army reissued a new version of its Army Field Manual on interrogation, which is formally known as FM 2-22.3, “Human Intelligence Collector Operations”). In 2009, in Executive Order 13491, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations,” President Obama declared that US officials could not use “any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2-22.3.”
Ultimately, the mandatory use of the Army Field Manual was written into U.S. law in 2015. The use of AFM 2-22.3 and its Appendix M was binding for CIA and Department of Defense prisoners or detainees, though the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies were exempt from the manual’s instructions. As a matter of deep betrayal, human rights groups lauded the placement of AFM interrogation techniques into statutory law!
While “waterboarding” was outlawed in the September 2006 version of the AFM, along with other torture practices, such as use of electric shock, beatings, forced nudity, etc. — hence the plaudits of the human rights groups — the use of “waterboarding” was the only such technique that was placed in quotes, rather than simply listed. There was a reason for that.
Waterboarding is one type of water torture. There are a number of such techniques, which include water dousing, water dunking (head forced into a pail or toilet), dripping water constantly over a prisoners head, etc. So we can see that water torture per se is not actually banned in the Army Field Manual, only a specific kind of such torture, and only as described by CIA procedures. Modified forms of waterboarding, if not fitting the CIA’s version of “waterboarding,” or called by another name, are not in fact banned. My own research has shown that water torture was extensively used by the U.S. military at Guantanamo.
The presence of water torture at Guantanamo helps us understand how the use of Appendix M’s “Separation” technique was used in conjunction with both approved and non-approved forms of interrogation to produce a complete torture program.
Appendix M itself relies on a paradigm known within the CIA as “DDD.” The three D’s stand for debility, dependency and dread. The three D’s were discussed in a classic 1957 article by I. E. Farber, Harry F. Harlow and Louis Jolyon West, “Brainwashing, Conditioning, and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread),” in Sociometry, a journal of the American Sociological Association.
Harry Harlow was a high-ranking member of the U.S. psychological establishment. Harlow was most famous for his experiments on maternal deprivation and isolation, utilizing monkeys. Experiments using his famous wire/cloth "mother" monkeys, nicknamed "iron maidens" by him, demonstrated the profound need for affection and attachment in all primates. In later years, he was demonized by animal rights activists for his unethical experiments on animals.
The Wikipedia article on Harlow mentions the maternal-deprivation and isolation experiments on infant macaque monkeys, noting:
The monkeys were left alone for up to 24 months, and emerged severely disturbed....
The experiments were controversial, with some researchers citing them as factors in the rise of the animal liberation movement.
The standard biographical references on Harlow fail to mention the DDD article. A year after the DDD article came out, Harlow became president of the American Psychological Association. Harlow’s work on the negative effects of maternal deprivation was an important element in the government’s secret research into how isolation worked so profoundly to break down people subjected to such solitary confinement. Harlow was, in one way of putting it, an expert on the subject of human dependency.
I.E. Farber was a psychologist at the University of Iowa. Around the time of the DDD article, he was researching the "Effects of Anxiety, Stress, and Task Variables on Reaction Time", and had already co-authored, six years prior to the DDD essay, an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, "Conditioned fear as revealed by magnitude of startle response to an auditory stimulus.” In other words, Farber was an expert on the workings of dread (fear).
My readership probably needs no introduction to the work of Louis J. West. I have an entire section on West in my recently posted article, “CIA, MKULTRA and the Cover-Up of Germ Warfare in the Korean War.” Some of that section was based upon research by author Tom O’Neill, and I refer readers also to an excerpt from his work highlighting West’s career that was published online at The Intercept.
My own emphasis on West involved his research on military subjects that touched on interrogations and torture, and the debility, or state of physical and psychological weakness, that results from the POW experience.
West and his associates wrote the “DDD” paper based on studies of military survival school subjects who had undergone mock torture camp experiences. The essay impressed the CIA so much, they made special mention of it in the their infamous KUBARK manual on interrogation. (p. 112-113), which included chapters on use of sensory deprivation, drugs, hypnosis, debility (or induced physical weakness, as through hunger), as well as use of threats and fear [Dread] in interrogation. The DDD paper was “well worth reading,” the CIA gushed.
The CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” proper had involved a subset of the military’s survival school experiential trials West worked on, including waterboarding. (Waterboarding had actually been banned at most military survival schools by the time the CIA was putting together its experimental “enhanced interrogation” program, except for the Navy’s school.) The Army Field Manual rewrite may have removed “waterboarding,” but the core of the program, its DDD kernel, remained.
Under the current U.S. Army field manual instructions, “war on terror” prisoners are segregated out from Geneva POW protections. They are subjected to 30 days of isolation, which can be renewed indefinitely with command permission. The government is also allowed to restrict the sleep of a prisoner to a minimum of four hours daily. This, too, can continue for up to 30 days, and can be renewed indefinitely with command permission.
The Appendix M protocol also includes a special category called “field expedient separation.” As I noted in a 2007 article at AlterNet (since scrubbed from the site):
Those prisoners who cannot be secured in sufficient isolation, presumably at a forward interrogation site, will be secured via "Field Expedient Separation," during which a both blindfold and earmuffs are put on a detainee for up to 12 hours. Again this is expandable upon official approval. The AFM warns that care must be taken to protect the blindfolded, earmuffed prisoner from self-injury, and the prisoner must be medically monitored. The AFM doesn't explain why this is necessary, but the reason is that such sensory deprivation is intolerable for some people and can lead to hallucinations and self-injurious behavior. The inclusion of a procedure that so obviously needs medical monitoring should be a red flag that it violates basic humane treatment.
A hint: If you have to have medical monitors present for an interrogation, it is not an interrogation but a torture session!
The current version of the field manual also allows for the production of novel phobias, or new fears, which can then be manipulated to make a prisoner talk (or to break him or her down). Additionally, the 2006 manual removed previous Army prohibitions against sleep deprivation and stress positions. It also changed the language regarding the drugging of prisoners.
In the 2006 rewrite of the Army Field Manual (which, I stress, is still in effect), the writing of which was supervised by Donald Rumsfeld right-hand man, Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon changed the wording around the use of drugs in interrogations to prohibit only "drugs that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage." The earlier version of the field manual, FM 34-52, authored in the early 1990s, had prohibited use of any drug that caused "chemically induced psychosis." So, unless any psychosis from a drug administered to a prisoner causes "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage" — something that is not typical with the use of psychotropic, hallucinogenic, or so-called "truth" drugs, like sodium amytal — it's presumably allowed by the current AFM.
I’m not the only one who has blown the whistle on the government’s continuing use of torture. Nor is the UN Committee on Torture the only group that has also called out the government on this. Back in 2013, the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP), funded in part by the establishment Open Society Foundations, issued a report that was, among other things, a condemnation of current U.S. policy on torture. It noted:
The president [Obama] has issued an executive order prohibiting the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and has repudiated Justice Department legal memoranda authorizing its use. However, the Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations, which binds both military and CIA interrogators, permits methods of interrogation that are recognized under international law as forms of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Such methods include sleep deprivation, isolation, and exploitation of fear.
In a 2013 article of my own, I commented on the IMAP report:
Obama was a man of his word, and he eliminated the CIA “enhanced interrogation” program, and withdrew the torture memos that had justified it. Or at least that was the impression. In fact, as I revealed in an article… on May 1 this year [2013], Obama never rescinded all the Yoo/Bybee/Bradbury Office of Legal Council memos on interrogation, but had passed them on to his Attorney General for final disposition. Bradbury’s April 16, 2006 memo on the Army Field Manual and Appendix M was never rescinded, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Defense. (DoJ has refused substantive comment on the issue.)
Bradbury’s memo was deeply dishonest. It made assertions about the legality of techniques that were never documented (though they were presented in a verbal report to Congress). He approved the constitutionality of the bulk of the AFM (everything except Appendix M) in one sentence, hiding the fact that the manual had changed in substantive ways from earlier versions, besides the addition of Appendix M. This included an expansion of the “Fear Up” technique to include the exploitation of “new” phobias in prisoners, the elimination of the prohibition against stress positions and sleep deprivation, and a widening of the latitude in using drugs on prisoners.
The truth about how the Army Field Manual has been used to hide abuse of prisoners has been largely hidden from the public. Although both the IMAP/OSF and Constitution Project reports have gotten a lot of press coverage, very little of the coverage has noted the calls for a revision of the Army Field Manual, or the fact the AFM even has techniques that amount to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
To the calls for an executive order and rewriting the field manual must be added the revocation of the Bradbury Army Field Manual/Appendix M memo.
To date, there is no indication that Bradbury’s memo approving the use of Appendix M “separation” has ever been rescinded. It remains a living artifact of the Bush administration’s harsh move to institutionalize torture. The memo itself can be still be viewed at the Justice Department’s website.
In 2016, there was a last hurrah on the issue, of sorts, at Buzzfeed News. In a major article by Ali Watkins and Adam Roston, “Documents Raise Disturbing Questions About Detainee Abuse Under Obama,” the now-defunct news division at Buzzfeed was able to secure some examples of Appendix M requests (see here and here). Watkins and Roston noted that the 60 or so examples they were able to gather were the tip of the iceberg when it came to such abusive interrogations. Sadly, the article did not set off more revelations or changes resulting from the press’s exposure. Instead, the issue sank into the muck of societal forgetfulness.
“After me, the drought”
In this election year, the U.S. use of torture doesn't even appear on anyone’s radar screen. (Torture by the Israeli government, thankfully, is a topic of much interest.) But facts are facts. After the GWB administration tried to add on grotesque and inhumane torture techniques to U.S. interrogation protocols, the Obama administration, with the full support of the Democrats, some Republicans, and most of the press and human rights establishment, outlawed some of these techniques, while embedding others, based upon the CIA’s old psychological torture DDD paradigm, into U.S. law.
And most recently, when the UN Committee on Torture, as part of a treaty ratified by the United States, called out the U.S. for continuing to use abusive techniques of interrogation, amounting in some cases to the level of torture, the Biden/Harris administration dismissed their claims, and the torture continues.
I may be the last man standing on this issue. I don’t think you’ll read about it anywhere else at this point. When you’ve reached old age, as I have, you wonder who will carry on the fight once I am gone. I continue to hammer away on the issue of forgotten or hidden U.S. war crimes, including the historical use of biological weapons, and ongoing use of torture. I thank my readers for their interest in these subjects.
Yet I recall how King Louis IV of France once famously said, Après moi, le déluge (After me, the flood). In my much more modest circumstances, I think, Après moi, la sécheresse (After me, the drought).
An excellent article on an awful practice which must be thoroughly deleted, if we want Mankind to survive this terrible century in which it is Human Conscience what is at stake. Thank you very much.
Thank you for writing about these disgusting practices. Researching them must be emotionally difficult. We should support no administrations or political parties which condone torture (which is to say all administrations and both major political parties).