The CIA Didn’t Just Torture, It Experimented on Human Beings

[grahamhgreen]

Maybe Bush was right. We did create human-animal hybrids..... Those who perpetrated these atrocities.

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators.

At the helm of this human experimentation project were two psychologists hired by the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. They designed interrogation and detention protocols that they and others applied to people imprisoned in the agency’s secret “black sites.”

In its response to the Senate report, the CIA justified its decision to hire the duo: “We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program.” Mitchell and Jessen’s qualifications did not include interrogation experience, specialized knowledge about Al Qaeda or relevant cultural or linguistic knowledge. What they had was Air Force experience in studying the effects of torture on American prisoners of war, as well as a curiosity about whether theories of “learned helplessness” derived from experiments on dogs might work on human enemies.

To implement those theories, Mitchell and Jessen oversaw or personally engaged in techniques intended to produce “debility, disorientation and dread.” Their “theory” had a particular means-ends relationship that is not well understood, as Mitchell testily explained in an interview on Vice News: “The point of the bad cop is to get the bad guy to talk to the good cop.” In other words, “enhanced interrogation techniques” (the Bush administration’s euphemism for torture) do not themselves produce useful information; rather, they produce the condition of total submission that will facilitate extraction of actionable intelligence.

http://m.thenation.com/article/193185-cia-didnt-just-torture-it-experimented-human-beings

[Mnemosyne]

1. K&R nt

[Scuba]

2. Another dark stain on American history.

[sabrina 1]

3. Disgusting, despicable and no matter how much anyone objects to the comparison

the fact is, they are no better than the nazis.

Not only should the torturers be charged with war crimes, no doctor who participated in this horror should be allowed to practice, their licenses should be removed.

[KingCharlemagne]

5. The names and identities of all medical personnel who participated have mostly

been redacted from the officially-released reports (save for the two modern Mengeles, Jessen and Mitchell).

What is needed is a modern-day Ellsberg who will sacrifice his or her future, his freedom and possibly his life to expose the whole CIA mess. All 6,000 unredacted pages of it. And a second one to expose the entire military torture network. Unredacted.

[sabrina 1]

7. With that many pages redacted, this whole report is a sham. And why

protect these war criminals if they did nothing wrong?

I remember back during the Bush years when it was revealed that these criminals WERE engaging in this horror and demands were made to strip them of their licenses.

I know that right here on DU there was OUTRAGE. Not so much anymore for some reason.

If someone searches the site they will find lots of information on these practices. I believe there were statements issued at the time by the Medical Associations, but don't recall if anyone lost their license.

Until we see all of it, this is nothing we didn't already know, the whole world probably knows more than we do.

[KingCharlemagne]

12. I'm a layperson and follow these matters somewhat sporadically. IIRC, the issue

came up before the American Psychological Association (not sure I've got the name exactly right) and was hotly debated but resulted in a no-decision (meaning, IIRC, that psychologists did not face loss of their professional licensures for participating in torture). Again, IIRC, the psychiatric field (MDs with a speciality in psychiatry) took an unequivocal stance against torture and absolutely forbade any of its membes from particiapting in torture (meaning any psychiatrist who did would face loss of their professional licensures).

That may explain why so many of the medical personnel's names remain redacted. Were they revealed, doctors working in the CIA's employ would face professional censure as would presumably nurses and so on. Since the CIA and its defenders have openly bragged that the torture took place 'under medical supervision,' methinks one or more doctors stand implicated.

Again, the need for a new Ellsberg is more pressing than ever.

[dixiegrrrrl]

35. Sadly, there is this: Why the Torture Report Won’t Change Anything

Tim Weiner has been doing exposes of the Gov't for some time now, written several books, and now says this.
there is some good history in this article:

The report on the brutalities of the CIA’s secret prisons is the most important work by the Senate Intelligence Committee since congressional oversight of the CIA began in the 1970s. Its descriptions of torture and deception are as compelling as the newsreels of the Nuremberg trials.

But will it have any impact on the CIA or the future of congressional oversight? Not likely. Can Americans run a secret intelligence service under law in an open democracy? Not yet. We’ve been at it since 1947, but we’ve rarely gotten it right—and we’ve rarely gotten it more wrong than we did after 9/11.

http://www.thenation.com/article/193161/why-torture-report-wont-change-anything

[ReRe]

26. I totally agree...

... and I've been saying it since the minimized redacted report hit the press. As a matter of fact, I think the NYTimes is sitting on it, or the WashPo, if not both. If this isn't a Constitutional crisis, I don't know what you call it. When the government has been Corporatized and is above the law. Has the Senate recessed for Christmas? I had hoped that Mark Udall would gather up the courage to do it on his way out the door.

[KingCharlemagne]

29. Because of congressional immunity, Udall may be the only one who can do it and

escape criminal sanction for so doing. (Nixon sought to prosecute Ellsberg, but the charges were eventually dismissed upon disclosure of massive governmental misconduct.) Other congress people could also do it without criminal sanction, but they would have to have access to the materials.

Washington Post now a subsidiary of Amazon (and Jeff Bezos). Amazon has contracts with the CIA, so I wouldn't hold out much hope for them blowing the whistle (assuming they have the goods). NY Times also has problems with its staff serving as flunkies for the CIA -- see Judith Miller, et. al. -- so again, our hopes may now reside in alternatie press like The Intercept or TruthDig\TruthOut.

[jwirr]

31. I agree. The first thing I thought was that is a Nazi action. It is too bad they do not understand

how ashamed they make us of our own country. It is as if we do not matter as long as it benefits some rich part of our society.

[n2doc]

4. Our own personal Mengeles

We have become what we fear and hate the most.

[joeybee12]

14. Yup...people should be outraged...nt

[adirondacker]

18. First thought as well.

Putrifyingly disturbing.

[bullwinkle428]

6. Meanwhile, John Kiriakou remains in prison while these pieces of shit

are free to spend their $81 million.

[C Moon]

8. Bush and Cheney are looking more and more like dictators.

[MindPilot]

9. Wait, what? "experiments on dogs"?!

If these mad doctors would do unthinkably cruel things to people, I shudder to think what they would do to dogs.

[PatrynXX]

11. Yeah hello Mitt

hows that dog on the roof of your car.. Scared stiff..

if Hitler came from the USA. he'd still be alive..

[grahamhgreen]

15. Torturing puppies. Imagine the poor things being reduced to complete bundles of fear while these

"Doctors" chuckle about it over a martini.

Chilling.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Well, there goes the thin veneer of moral civility we thought we had.

Orwell called it exactly.

I am pleased to see this story is all over the web now.

[WinkyDink]

17. I'm pretty sure dropping the atomic bomb on civilians, never mind slavery, put paid to that quaint

notion.

[Octafish]

16. Human experimentation also is a war crime.

Last edited Thu Dec 18, 2014, 01:53 PM - Edit history (1)

The Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele

The Abominable Dr. Ishii

By CHRISTOPHER REED
Counterpunch Weekend Edition May 27-29, 2006

Editors' note: Under the overall codename Project Paperclip US intelligence agencies made similarly diligent efforts to acquire the research records of Nazi doctors working in the death camps. They also brought over several of the Nazi medical experimenters and set them to work in US military research centers such as Ft. Detrick. The Nazi research was quickly put into play in the field. In 1950, the CIA's Office of Security, headed at the time by Sheffield Edwards, opened a project called Bluebird whose object was to get an individual "to do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation." The first Bluebird operations were conducted in Japan in October 1950 and were reportedly witnessed by Richard Helms, who would later run the Agency. Twenty-five North Korean POWs were given alternating doses of depressants and stimulants. The POWs were shot up with barbitutes, putting them to sleep, then abruptly awoken with injections of amphetamines, put under hypnosis, then interrogated. The operation was, of course, in total contravention of international protocols. The Bluebird interrogations continued through the duration of the Korean War. This history is laid out in detail in our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, Verso, available from our office. AC/JSC.

Everyone has heard of Auschwitz, but what about Pingfan? This Japanese germ warfare headquarters and laboratory in Manchuria, northern China, did not hold as many victims, but atrocities committed there were physically worse than in the Nazi concentration camp, and lasted much longer.

Many people know of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi SS "Angel of Death" and a physician (though not chief medical officer) at Auschwitz from 1943-45. There, he deliberately infected prisoners with deadly diseases and conducted fatal surgeries, often without anesthetic. He escaped and lived in South America undiscovered until after his death at 68 in 1979 in Brazil.

But who has heard of Dr. Shiro Ishii? He was the chief of Japan's well financed, scientifically coordinated and government approved biological warfare program from 1932-45. Ishii rose to general and supervised deliberate infection of thousands of captives with deadly diseases. He also conducted grotesque surgeries, but the unique medical specialty of Ishii and his surgical team were dissections, without anesthetic, on an estimated 3,000 live, conscious humans. In 1959, Ishii, a wealthy man, died peacefully at home in Japan at the age of 67.

SNIP...

General Willoughby and officials of MacArthur's Supreme Command for the Allied Powers in Tokyo had succeeded in suppressing evidence from Ishii and colleagues, but separate inquiries were made by the International Prosecution Section (IPS). Its lawyers gathered evidence including detailed statements from defecting Japanese bio-scientists from Pingfan. The latter testified to human live vivisection, the dumping of lethal germs in Chinese water supplies and food stores, as well as aerial spraying. Yet all was silenced even though the information went to the top.

IPS documents stamped "to be read by the Commander-in-Chief U.S. forces" were sent to President Harry Truman in 1947. No word has ever emerged on what Truman thought or said about this evidence. It is one of many still unknown facts about the Japanese-American conspiracy to conceal the complete account of the Japanese bio-warfare horror.

At Fort Detrick, Maryland, the main U.S. installation for BW, records remain on file of the thousands of tissue slides, preserved organs (some labeled "American&quot removed from living bodies, with medical schedules and reports on perverse surgical procedures on screaming and writhing human specimens.

General Willoughby listed the five most important items providing "the greatest value in future development of the United States BW program." These included the Japanese scientists' "complete report" of "BW against man" that Willoughby described as "the only information available in world"; "field trials against Chinese" such as Powell described; using animals as deadly bacteria conveyors" ("U.S. has done little work in this field&quot ; and a "summary of the human experiments." The G-2 heard it all.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/reed05272006.html

Part of a great thread on DU2: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2523565&mesg_id=2523626

[dixiegrrrrl]

25. You are treasure trove of non-prime time info..wow.

I hope you have all that info. safely tucked away, far from danger of puter meltdowns or anything like that.

[Octafish]

41. What I told my lawyer...

...should I get struck by light-en-ing...

The Family That Preys Together

And the Gen. Willoughby fellah connects to Dealey Plaza.

[Jesus Malverde]

19. It's likely the program is actually a continuation of the MK-ULTRA program.

At some point repeated torture is less about intelligence and more about programming.

Project MKUltra — sometimes referred to as the CIA's mind control program — MKULTRA was the code name given to an illegal and clandestine program of experiments on human beings, made by the CIA - the Intelligence Service of the United States of America. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps. The program began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967 and officially halted in 1973.. The program engaged in many illegal activities; In particular it used unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people's mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.

The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated through these institutions using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

SICK PEOPLE IN CHARGE

Canadian citizens as its test subjects



JESUS

[polly7]

42. Yes.

Last edited Thu Dec 18, 2014, 04:00 PM - Edit history (1)

A mental hospital not far from me in Weyburn, Saskatchewan has a very long, ugly, terrifying history of these experiments. Lobotomies on women admitted as being 'insane' by husbands looking for greener pastures, children chained up, shock treatments ........... sick, evil shit happened there. I'm going to find the history of it I had kept but lost when an older computer died. My family knew some of these people and families, my grandfather lived in Weyburn at the time.

Just a bit of it:

Sorry, those links were not the ones I had, and contain some (crazy) things I've never been able to verify, but all my life I've heard of the 'experiments' and have fully known how horrible a place it was.

Will try to find the info I lost.

Please believe me they were doing MKULTRA MC programming in the 1950s/1960s at Weyburn Mental Hospital, Weyburn, SK (1920 to 1970) but it wasn’t just mental patients the resident psychiatrists tapped for behavioural modification but they tapped the town’s children who are my baby boomer age peers today.

The sad truth was that post-WWII, they were placing normal people in Weyburn Mental Hospital, like orphans & unwed mothers.
One has to worry what these MKULTRA MC psychiatrists did with these fatherless babies.

http://istihbaratdunyasi.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/my-mkultra-story-saskatchewan-canada.pdf

Main article: Project MKUltra
Cameron is best known for his MKUltra-related and other behavior modification research for the CIA.[16] Cameron was President of the American Psychiatric Association in 1952–1953. He lived and worked in Albany, New York, and was involved in experiments in Canada for Project MKUltra, a CIA-directed mind control program which eventually led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual.

Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. He commuted from Albany to Montreal every week to work at McGill's Allan Memorial Institute and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKUltra experiments there. In addition to LSD, he experimented with various paralytic drugs and electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power.[citation needed] His "driving" experiments consisted of putting a subject into a drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple statements. These experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression; many suffered permanent debilitation after these treatments.[17] Such consequences included incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents.[18] His work was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist William Sargant, who was also involved in the Intelligence Services and experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.[19]

It was during this era that Cameron became known worldwide as the first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. He had also been a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 1946–1947.[20]

Naomi Klein states in her book The Shock Doctrine that Cameron's research and his contribution to MKUltra were not about mind control and brainwashing, but "to design a scientifically based system for extracting information from 'resistant sources.' In other words, torture."[21] She then cites Alfred W. McCoy: "Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method."[22]

MKULTRA Subproject 68 was one of Cameron's ongoing "attempts to establish lasting effects in a patient's behaviour" using a combination of particularly intensive electroshock, intensive repetition of prearranged verbal signals, partial sensory isolation, and repression of the driving period carried out by inducing continuous sleep for seven to ten days at the end of the treatment period. During research on sensory deprivation, Cameron used curare to immobilise his patients. After one test he noted: "Although the patient was prepared by both prolonged sensory isolation (35 days) and by repeated depatterning, and although she received 101 days of positive driving, no favourable results were obtained." Patients were regularly treated with hallucinogenic drugs, long periods in the "sleep room", and testing in the Radio Telemetry Laboratory, which was built under Cameron's direction. Here, patients were exposed to a range of RF and electromagnetic signals and monitored for changes in behaviour. It was later stated by staff members who had worked at the Institute during this time that not one patient sent to the Radio Telemetry Lab showed any signs of improvement afterwards. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions. His treatments resulted in victims' incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents. His work was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist William Sargant at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and Belmont Hospital, Surrey, who was also involved in the Intelligence Services and who experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron

Dr. Cameron's research and experiments were a big part of the treatment administered to pt's. in Weyburn's hospital.

[grahamhgreen]

48. "More about programming". The head of ISIS came out of our torture program, makes you wonder...

[MisterP]

49. it's actually all folded into SERE (ditto with the Men Who Stare at Goats)

that's where bones get broken and they have to urinate on the US Flag: it's basically NICE's Objectivity Rooms from "That Hideous Strength"

[Major Nikon]

20. So the CIA paid two quacks $81 million to practice their sadism on people

There's little doubt many of these people will have permanent mental injuries from this and obviously some have died. Ethically it's no different than Nazi medical experimentation.

[sabrina 1]

22. That money came from the American people. These monsters should be arrested

tried and convicted and all their assets given to their victims, those who survived if any.

[Major Nikon]

30. I agree, but I think the window for the US to prosecute and retain credibility has passed

This should be turned over to the UN and the International Court for prosecution from the lowest to highest levels. That's the only way I really see out of this. Otherwise anyone who imprisons Americans or anyone else is free to torture with impunity because we simply can't legitimately hold anyone else accountable for things we can't even hold ourselves accountable.

[dixiegrrrrl]

27. and now we understand even more why they can never let these prisoners go.

and why Gitmo has not been closed.

[HereSince1628]

56. Yes, but the CIA also bought 'plausible deniability'

The US/Bush/CIA/Cheney didn't torture ... their hired agents do that.

Romney revealed the truth--executives like the capacity to fire people. When you hire people, you can FIRE people. When you hire 'contractors' all the violations become their fault.

It seems that when you recruit torturers, you can dispose of torturers, and disavow their actions.

The mission has always been covered with smoke and the current objective remains obfuscation. All parties have some claim that others than themselves are guilty and each argument resonates with some critics. The idea that America followed some moral certainty that prevented torture is blown apart, but holding the guilty accountable becomes mired in arguments about where the guilt must be lain.

The truth is somewhat Rumsfeldian...we 'must sweep them all up' and then dump the collected into the same dust bin.

[radhika]

21. The American public likely approves of these 'Neo-Mengelians' too

I used to think revealing the truth could change history. That may still be true - but not always in the direction I had expected. The moral compass of the American public is pointing to the Dark Side, just like its/my government.

[RufusTFirefly]

57. Thank Dog that Godwin's Law is frowned upon

Otherwise, this might be a really good time to make that connection. It is a tragic mistake to think that there was something inherently monstrous about the German people. They were normal people who gradually began behaving more and more monstrously. How could such a thing happen? Pay attention. And take notes.

[ybbor]

23. Sounds like "The Shock Doctrine"

It eerily makes me recall the "experiments" described by Naomi Klein

[Solly Mack]

24. K&R

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

28. Am I the only one who would pay $99.99 pay per view to watch someone do this

to them and to W and Cheney and Woo and so on?


I know it would be un-liberal of me, it would be wrong of me, but it might make god damn sure NOBODY ever tortured ever again, at least not on behalf of the United States of America.

[Major Nikon]

37. The answer to government sponsored torture is not more government sponsored torture

The answer to government sponsored torture is less of it. What I'd rather see is those responsible held appropriately accountable and an end to all government sponsored torture. We currently are rotting away the minds of thousands of prisoners in this country by unnecessarily subjecting them to 23+ hours per day in complete isolation for years at a time. The only counter to inhumane treatment to other humans is by the conscience of the people. If we don't demand these things stop, they will simply continue just as they have since the dawn of civilization. There will always be more Cheneys that will seek to push and exceed whatever limits are imposed.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

44. I agree, but if you dont give justice to the people, they will desire their own

[Major Nikon]

45. True, but that's another excellent reason why justice needs to be served

The fabric of society never breaks down over one thing. It's many little things failing which leads to collapse.

[libodem]

32. Can't help but wonder

Who, Bulldog Gannon, signed overnight, scores of times, into the Whitehouse, to tie up and spank?

Seems the Bush Whitehouse was full of Sadists and Masochistic perverts.

[gordianot]

36. My bet is the guy with the bald fetish.

[libodem]

43. Yep

Me thinks he likes a little Skull and Bone.

[blackspade]

33. What couple of sick fucks.

War criminals is what they are.
We hung Germans and Japanese for less.

[grasswire]

34. the Bush family has engaged in eugenics before

In fact, George 41's nickname in Congress was "Rubbers" because of his fascination with depopulation of "lesser" peoples. It's true. And he hated the nickname, reportedly. The family was interested in eugenics.

[gordianot]

38. As a distant relative, if so considering my political views, it did not take.

Back in the day when George H.W. Bush became head of the CIA my Grandfather announced he was Prescott's boy (I did not remember the name from that time) a cousin. Oh the shame being related to a German American Fascist and something I will never confirm by genealogical research.

[Iggo]

39. Well, yeah.

How do you think you get better at torturing folks?

Duh!

[951-Riverside]

40. It also raped kids in front of their parents n/t

[The2ndWheel]

46. Any and all information is valuable

I think anyone in an important position knows torture doesn't get them the kind of information they're looking for. Seeing how human beings react to it though, is clearly lucrative. That kind of information is valuable.

It's a science experiment. Morals don't matter. It's what you can get away with doing. Might makes right, it always has. There is no external governing body that can do anything to the US government. Nobody is going to bomb us because of human rights abuses, because the US military is the one that does that kind of bombing. The UN isn't going to economically sanction us, because nobody really listens to the UN without the US military backing it up. The US government isn't going to put its own institutions on trial and put its own high level people in prison.

Nothing legal will happen out of any of this, and it doesn't matter if you like it or not.

[99Forever]

47. Keep in mind. ..

... that not only have these monstrous acts been committed in our name, but also those now empowered to seek the justice for these Crimes Against Humanity, have CHOSEN not to.

[grahamhgreen]

50. That is the most disturbing thing to me. I thought the good guys were in charge now.

[99Forever]

51. The actual good guys have no power and haven't for many years.

It's a Big Club and we aren't invited. Kabuki Theater to placate the prols is all we rate.

[JEB]

52. Somebody needs to enforce the laws

against these horrendous crimes. Disgusting and there is no way forward from this shame is through prosecution.

[RufusTFirefly]

53. Sorry, but this is yesterday's news

Haven't you heard?
It's all North Korea, all the time!
They're even attacking movies now.
Forget about torture. This is hugh! I'm series!

[Octafish]

54. Yeah. And NSA spying on Americans?

You can forget complaining about that, too. It's legal now, see!



And no more calling me, "Dim" no more. It's "Officer Denby," now.

[RufusTFirefly]

55. It's 'the new way', brother.

Viddy well... Viddy well.