CIA Withholds Key MKULTRA Document Because It Reveals WMD Concepts

Last summer I made a request for a mandatory declassification review, or MDR, of the CIA's 1957 Inspector General report on the "Operations of TSD." TSD is the acronym for the Technical Services Division of the CIA, which was a component of the Agency that fashioned and produced technological apparatus for the clandestine service -- sort of like "Q" in the James Bond movies. The CIA recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of this division.

A few weeks ago, I received the CIA's official rejection of my request. They would not release any portion of the decades old inspector general report -- even though pages from it had been previously declassified and long posted online -- because, in part, it purportedly contained information about "the identity of a confidential human source or a human intelligence source; or... key design concepts of weapons of mass destruction"!

How we (and I use "we" as I am a member of the public, and my request was made on behalf of the public) got to this place, and the realization that CIA has been involved by their own account in the construction of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), is the subject of this posting.

I was motivated to pursue the declassification of this material due to revelations in government documents that the CIA's torture program under Bush and Cheney was in part created with the help of the Office of Technical Services (OTS), which is the modern incarnation of the old TSD. (For awhile, the name had also been the Technical Services Staff.) This chilled me, as I also knew that OTS/TSD was the component within CIA that fashioned its infamous MKULTRA mind-control research. MKULTRA was only one of the programs that was involved with such research, which also included the creation of assassination and disabling devices, behavioral studies of various sorts, research on the effects of drugs, hypnosis, and more. The program had various names over the years, including MKNAOMI, MKSEARCH, MKDELTA, MKOFTEN, MKCHICKWIT, and Project Artichoke, and had direct applications to interrogations.

There were a lot of dirty operations associated with MKULTRA operations, including experimentation upon unwitting subjects, and even the deaths of some victims. Operations were conducted overseas and domestically at home. The Wikipedia page on the subject is not a bad place to start, if you aren't familiar with this subject.

The mainstream and blogging press, as well as human rights circles, were uninterested in pursuing the OTS/TSD link to the CIA's torture program, content to follow the identification of two CIA contract psychologists from the military's SERE program who were linked to construction, promotion and operations of the post-9/11 CIA torture (or "enhanced interrogation") program. I, however, felt the link worth pursuing, and in an effort to better understand the role of TSD in MKULTRA, I asked for the declassification of CIA's own early inspector general report on the program.

Mandatory declassification requests are not the same as FOIA requests. They are subject to different deadlines and bureaucratic rules. The exemptions to departmental or agency declassifications are derived from Presidential Executive Order (EO). The current such EO governing such exemptions for MDRs is Executive Order 13526, "Classified National Security Information," released by President Obama on December 29, 2009. (No doubt a new President Trump will release his own EO on this in months to come, and that EO will supplant Obama's version, just as Obama's replaced that of earlier presidents.)

The CIA raised two objections to my declassification request. The first had to do with supposed threats to reveal human intelligence sources and/or "key design concepts" of WMD. The second objection was even more problematic, from the standpoint of making an appeal. It was based on EO language that states that even when governmental materials are more than 50 years old, they can be withheld by an agency head for whatever reason that person deems necessary! In other words, at least when it comes to requests for declassification based on EO laws, information can be denied for decades basically upon agency head say so.

The denial based on the presence of supposed "key design concepts of weapons of mass destruction" was startling to say the least. For one thing, it demonstrates how plastic the legal concepts of WMD are, and how they can be stretched to accommodate propaganda or in some cases legal or political actions. On the other hand, when it comes to MKULTRA, it reminds us that the CIA was for decades involved in the construction and deployment of some very dangerous materials and concepts. The fact that the parts of the agency involved in that are still involved in interrogation policy and research should give all of us pause. So should the fact that no persons were ever held accountable for the crimes committed under MKULTRA, nor for the admitted destruction of thousands of government documents related to that program. Despite the program's notoriety, there never were any indictments or, so far as we know, governmental accountability.

The mainstream press, the human rights community, and academia have done a disservice to the public (with some rare exceptions) in not reporting fully, nor evidently even pursuing, stories that would probe deeper into the U.S. torture scandal. I understand part of the problem: the U.S. government is still trying to hide material that is decades old, as this latest CIA declassification denial makes clear. But, especially when it comes to the press, it is their job to pursue such information for the greater good of the society. It was with such a principle in mind that I am still seeking exposure of government misdeeds in this area. See for instance how my MDR of the CIA's KUBARK interrogation manual produced new information about the government's historic use of rendition and torture.

Below is the full text of my appeal letter to CIA. It can also be found, with associated materials, at the Muckrock website.

November 27, 2016

Michael Lavergne
Information and Privacy Coordinator
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505

Re: Reference No. EOM-2016-01415

Dear Mr. Lavergne,

This is a formal request for appeal of the decision made in regards to my mandatory declassification review (MDR) request (number referenced above) for the 1957 CIA Inspector General Report on “Operations of TSD” (hereafter IG REPORT). In a letter dated November 1, 2016, you wrote, “We completed a thorough search of our records and located material responsive to your request. We have determined that the material must remain classified on the basis of sections 3.3(h)(1) and 3.3(h)(2) of the [Executive] Order [13526] and cannot be released in sanitized form.” I thank you for your prompt response.

In my initial request, filed on August 13, 2016, I asked for “the 1957 CIA Inspector General Report on ‘Operations of TSD,’ wherein ‘TSD’ stands for the CIA division, the Technical Services Division.” I believe the decision to withhold the report, concluding it “cannot be released in sanitized form,” to be incorrect for the reasons adumbrated below.

1) Previous declassification of sections of IG REPORT

I noted in my initial request that a portion of IG REPORT had been declassified previously. CIA released a section of this report, specifically 8 pages long (numbered pages 199-206) in Folder 0000146167 of CIA's MKULTRA FOIA release made a number of years ago. This section of IG REPORT was posted online by the website Cryptome.org at URL: https://cryptome.org/mkultra-0001.htm (accessed 13 August 2016). An alternate posting online is available online at http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mkultra/MKULTRA1/DOC_0000146167/DOC_0000146167.pdf (accessed November 25, 2016).

2) A History of Declassifications

Besides the portion of IG REPORT identified above, there have been other declassifications associated with similar material. From the 1970s onwards, many declassified documents associated with both TSD and the MKULTRA program were declassified by CIA. A later IG report on the MKULTRA program, involving TSD operations, and dated July 26, 1963, was subject to declassification review per E.O. 12065, which was conducted on 17 June 17, 1981. This 1963 report is also available online at numerous websites. One such URL is https://cryptome.org/mkultra-0003.htm (accessed November 25, 2016).

In addition to IG reports, many other documents related to MKULTRA’s history and operations have been declassified over the years. This material has been the subject of numerous books, and, even going back some years, Congressional hearings. The website The Black Vault has posted a complete selection of these documents at the URL: http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/cia-mkultra-collection/ (accessed November 25, 2016).

3) Applicable Law

According to EO 13526, Section 3.5(c): “Agencies conducting a mandatory review for declassification shall declassify information that no longer meets the standards for classification under this order. They shall release this information unless withholding is otherwise authorized and warranted under applicable law.”

It is my understanding of your decision that the applicable law precluding the release of IG REPORT, or any portion of that report, is that it “remain classified on the basis of sections 3.3(h)(1) and 3.3(h)(2)” of Executive Order 13526.

The 3.3(h)(1) exemption, which is for documents over 50 years old, states that such exemption is reserved for documents that can “clearly and demonstrably be expected to reveal…. (A) the identity of a confidential human source or a human intelligence source; or (B) key design concepts of weapons of mass destruction.”

Exemption 3.3(h)(2) is reserved for documents that constitute “extraordinary cases.” In such cases, an agency head “may, within 5 years of the onset of automatic declassification, propose to exempt additional specific information from declassification at 50 years.” Such claim of exemption from automatic declassification must be made according to the provisions of section 3.3(j) of the Executive Order, i.e., “[a]t least 1 year before information is subject to automatic declassification under this section…”

The EO continues:
“… an agency head or senior agency official shall notify the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, serving as Executive Secretary of the [Interagency Security Classification Appeals] Panel, of any specific information that the agency proposes to exempt from automatic declassification under paragraphs (b) and (h) of this section.

“(1) The notification shall include:

“(A) a detailed description of the information, either by reference to information in specific records or in the form of a declassification guide;

“(B) an explanation of why the information should be exempt from automatic declassification and must remain classified for a longer period of time; and

“(C) a specific date or a specific and independently verifiable event for automatic declassification of specific records that contain the information proposed for exemption.”

The claim by CIA that IG REPORT cannot be released in toto, i.e., without sanitization, seems highly unlikely in regards to exemption 3.3(h)(1). Sections have already been released, as noted above, with no danger as to whether a “confidential human source or a human intelligence source” were in danger. A 1963 Inspector General report on the same general subject as IG REPORT also was released in more substantive form. Furthermore, it seems unlikely IG REPORT was substantively concerned with identification of human intelligence sources.

Hence, the exemption for released material according to section 3.3(h)(1) of EO 13526 appears to concern “key design concepts of weapons of mass destruction.” Such weapons are defined in U.S. law (18 U.S. Code § 2332a) as any “destructive device” (defined a weapon with a bore diameter of larger than one-half inch propelled by an explosive or propellant, or any “explosive, incendiary, or poison gas [see 18 U.S. Code § 921]); any weapon that “designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors”; “any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector”; or any weapon “designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life.”

According to a July 26, 1963 memorandum to the then-director of the CIA from then-CIA Inspector General J.S. Earman, the MKULTRA program was concerned with, at least in part, “the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.” (See quote of the document at URL: https://cryptome.org/mkultra-0003.htm [accessed November 25, 2016]). Hence, the apparent role of CIA in the development of weapons of mass destruction appears to be the basis of withholding material from declassification and release some 59 years after the fact.

But the EO language states that the exemption must be because the document would reveal “key design concepts” of such weapons of mass destruction. Given the arguments regarding prior declassifications made above, it seems that whatever exemption regarding “key design concepts” of WMD, or even identification of human intelligence sources, is segregable within IG REPORT, and there is no need to withhold that document in its totality.

Exemption 3.3(h)(2) presents a greater difficulty for this appeal, as it does not give any reason for the agency head to claim the exemption. But whatever those reasons are, they must presented to Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (hereafter ISCAP), along with a description of what information is exempted, and a projected date of declassification. I request that such information be released if IG REPORT is not to be released.

Further, I note that the language of Section 3.3(j) does not suggest the exemption of an entire document, and in fact argues against it. Section 3.3.(j)(1)(a) states the agency head must provide ISCAP “a detailed description of the information, either by reference to information in specific records or in the form of a declassification guide” to such information. This strongly suggests that only some portions of the document will be subject to exemption, not an entire document itself, especially one that is as long as an inspector general report, or one that has already had multiple pages previously declassified.

4) Public Interest

Finally, I argue that the material requested by MDR in this case is in the public interest. Much of the information in IG REPORT is already publicly available. Furthermore, it seems likely that the passage of time has reduced any potential harm from such release.

Nearly 40 years since the public revelations concerning the CIA’s MKULTRA and related programs, interest in this story remains high. Books published decades ago, such as John Marks’ “The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’: The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences” (W.W. Norton & Co.), and Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain’s “Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond” (Grove Press), remain in print and therefore in demand.

Newspaper and mainstream magazine articles continue to address the subject. As examples, see, for instance, “April 13, 1953: CIA OKs MK-ULTRA Mind-Control Tests,” by Kim Zetter, Wired Magazine, April 13, 2010 (URL: https://www.wired.com/2010/04/0413mk-ultra-authorized/ [accessed November 25, 2016]); “The CIA Can Do Mind Control: MK Ultra / College campuses, for starters / 1953-1973,” by Mark Jacobson, New York Magazine, November 17, 2013 (URL: http://nymag.com/news/features/conspiracy-theories/cia-mind-control/ [accessed November 25, 2016]); “Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA Dosed S.F. Citizens with LSD,” by Troy Hooper, SF Weekly, March 14, 2012 (URL: http://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/operation-midnight-climax-how-the-cia-dosed-sf-citizens-with-lsd/Content?oid=2184385 [accessed November 25, 2016]); and “What Do You Do When Your Family Was the Victim of CIA Mind-Control Experiments?” by Rea McNamara, VICE News, April 15, 2016 (URL: http://www.vice.com/read/how-do-you-turn-a-family-history-of-cia-mind-control-experiments-into-art [accessed November 25, 2016]).

Finally, in regards to public interest, it cannot be denied that there are a great deal of bogus or wild conspiratorial claims made about the CIA’s MKULTRA and related programs. Release of such documents as IG REPORT helps mitigate wild speculations, and therefore is in the public interest.

It is the contention of this appeal that due to prior releases and government investigations that the material discussed in IG REPORT does not constitute one of an unknown number of “extraordinary cases” that would require exemption from declassification. Even if the appeals panel finds that some material should be in fact exempt from release, I believe that all portions of IG REPORT that do not meet such exemption be released.

Therefore, Mr. Lavergne, in mind of all the arguments made above, I am appealing to the Agency Release Panel, and sending such appeal to your care and attention. If you, or anyone at the Panel, have any questions, or believe discussion of this matter would be beneficial, please contact me directly at jeffkaye@xxxxx.xxx or at (415) xxx-xxxx.

Thank you,
Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D.
jeffkaye@sbcglobal.net

CIA Investigation Minimizes Use of Drugs on Rendition & Black Site Detainees

The CIA has released documents regarding a 2008 Inspector General (IG) investigation into the use of "mind-altering" drugs to enhance or facilitate interrogations undertaken as part of their rendition, "black site" detention, and interrogation-torture (RDI) program. Not surprisingly, a brief investigation found, according to a January 29, 2009 newly declassified letter sent from the CIA IG to Senator Dianne Feinstein, then-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), that CIA had not used any drugs on detainees for the purpose of interrogations.

The documents were released to Jason Leopold at VICE News, who posted a comprehensive article examining them earlier today. Leopold and I have previously written on the subject of drugging prisoners, and examined an earlier Department of Defense IG report on the subject a few years ago, as well as the use of mefloquine at Guantanamo, about which more below.

The CIA Inspector General, John L. Helgerson, referred Feinstein to a statement by the Director of CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS), to the effect that "no 'mind-altering' drugs were administered to facilitate interrogations and debriefings because no medications of any kind were used for that purpose."

But as we shall see, there were many claims by prisoners of drugging during CIA renditions, and later by affiliated "liaison" government officials. Other prisoners claimed they were drugged during the time they were held by CIA itself at their black site prisons. None of those charges were addressed by Helgerson in his investigation, unless they were part of a 5-page section of the new CIA document release that was totally whited out by the CIA FOIA officials.

No CIA detainees were evidently ever interviewed as part of the IG investigation.

Helgerson said that he queried IG investigators working on another investigation of abuse claims by 16 high-value detainees then held at Guantanamo. The alleged abuse concerned treatment by CIA before the detainees were transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. Helgerson said the investigators had no knowledge of "the use of 'mind-altering' drugs as a part of the interrogation regimen." Nothing is known about this IG investigation on detainee complaints.

Helgerson, who is now retired, did refer in his letter to Feinstein to the May 2004 CIA IG report that examined "isolated allegations of mistreatment or abuse of detainees, though he never specifically states that there were no claims of drugging in that "comprehensive review."

Helgerson said that the CIA IG had investigated "a variety of specific unrelated detainee abuse allegations" since the 2004 report.

MKULTRA, KUBARK, and Phoenix

The issue of CIA drugging of prisoners has historical resonance since CIA engaged in a decades-long program of experimentation on the use of "truth serums" and other drugs, including LSD, for use in interrogations. Known under various acronyms, including Bluebird, MKDELTA and MKSEARCH, the program was best known in popular accounts as MKULTRA. The CIA's KUBARK interrogation manual from the early 1960s drew specifically upon MKULTRA research when it advocated use of "narcosis" or the use of drugs for interrogations.

The latest version of the KUBARK manual (PDF), released to me last year after a Mandatory Declassification Request, showed a much heavier emphasis on the use of foreign "liaison" agencies for detention of CIA prisoners than had been previously revealed.

The CIA's 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual also describes such liaison relationships in some depth, in addition to a discussion of using drugs during interrogation. According to National Security Archive, "The manual was used in numerous Latin American countries as an instructional tool by CIA and Green Beret trainers between 1983 and 1987 and became the subject of executive session Senate Intelligence Committee hearings in 1988 because of human rights abuses committed by CIA-trained Honduran military units."

This aspect of the CIA's program both before and after 9/11 has probably had the least amount of emphasis in the press, for partly understandable reasons, as the actions of police or intelligence agencies in foreign countries is least penetrable or open to examination by government or human rights agency, not to mention journalists.

An important exception to this was Douglas Valentine's extensive evaluation of the CIA's Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. In his book on the subject, he described Phoenix as both a counter-terror assassination program and a interrogation-torture program which heavily relied on the use of South Vietnamese liaison personnel. Valentine detailed the use of drugs by both CIA Phoenix personnel and South Vietnamese police to both disorient prisoners and to obtain false confessions.

In a newly revealed section of the 1963 KUBARK manual, the CIA discussed use of foreign services for interrogation. It is worth referencing here as it is expresses issues still relevant to CIA rendition activities, and interactions with foreign intelligence services to whom CIA sends "ghost" or black site prisoners.

The legislation which founded KUBARK [CIA] specifically denied it any law-enforcement or police powers. Yet detention in a controlled environment and perhaps for a period is frequently essential to a successful counterintelligence interrogation of a recalcitrant source. Because the necessary powers are vested in the competent liaison service or services, not in KUBARK, it is frequently necessary to conduct such interrogations with or through liaison. This necessity, obviously, should be determined as early as possible. The legality of detaining and questioning a person, and of the methods employed. is determined by the laws of the country in which the act occurs.

The issue of drugging detainees takes on even more relevance when one considers that the SSCI's report on CIA torture included revelations that James Mitchell worked for the CIA's Office of Technical Services (OTS) when he was referred to help lead the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, and later to construct the EIT program itself. At least one other OTS official was said to have worked on the EIT protocols along with Mitchell, a fact totally ignored by mainstream press accounts.

OTS is notable in CIA history for being the department in charge of the CIA's MKULTRA program.

Narcotic drugs, "sedatives," and antidepressants administered to detainees

Despite the claims no drugs were used for interrogation purposes, like a September 2009 Department of Defense Inspector General report (PDF) on the same issue, released via FOIA in July 2012, CIA admitted other drugs were used on detainees for various health-related purposes.

A full list of such drugs, by name or family of drug, was redacted in the current CIA FOIA release. Hence, the most crucial information that we could obtain from the IG investigation was censored.

But a memo from the Director, OMS to Helgerson (dated May 29, 2008) indicated that drugs given to detainees in the CIA's RDI program included both narcotic and non-narcotic analgesics for "pain relief."

In addition, CIA's OMS administered oral, topical and injectable antibiotics; topical agents for skin conditions; antacids, laxatives and antidiarrheals; as well as non-prescription medications for sleep. The letter drily noted that medications "to assist with sleep on request" were not administered during interrogations. (The CIA's torture program is known for its heavy reliance upon sleep deprivation.)

The CIA's medical services director also indicated that antidepressant medications were given to "several detainees." In addition, "sedatives" were also give in "two instances" to detainees "with their knowledge and consent" for "agitation or anxiety."

CIA documents maintain that what drugs were administered to detainees were done with the informed consent of the prisoners. This contrasts with DoD's admission that drugs were forcibly administered to some detainees for purposes of "chemical restraint."

The only drug actually named by CIA officials in the FOIA release was Ambien, and that was said to have been administered to CIA officers for use in travel to and from CIA black sites.

The Director, OMS, also told Helgerson that he knew of no other use of drugs for purposes of interrogation "in any other program or site." Helgerson himself later told Feinstein and other U.S. senators who had asked for the information, that he was told there no "information that any CIA officer or contractor... has procured and/or administered such drugs to detainees since September 2001."

Helgerson never mentioned the possibility that such drugs were administered by foreign nationals at liaison officials in other countries where CIA had sent detainees via rendition. In fact, there has been a great deal of evidence of such drugging.

"Drugged repeatedly"

The CIA documents focus on claims of drugging by US agents of Adel al-Nusairi, as described in an influential April 2008 Washington Post article by Joby Warrick. Yet, the Post story was the latest in a number of articles accusing the CIA and DoD of drugging detainees. Another such article in 2007 at NBC News included charges that the CIA's interrogation program included use of "psychotropic drugs."

The CIA was dismissive of Warrick's claims, noting in one memo, most likely from CTC to CIA IG, that al-Nusairi was never a CIA prisoner, "not did we render him," and therefore they knew little about him or his treatment.

But certainly a search of open source documentation would have found many other instances of charges of drugging by CIA prisoners.

For one thing, as documented in the recent release by the SSCI of their study on the CIA's interrogation program, high-value detainee Abd al Rahim al Nashiri made repeated charges that we was drugged while in CIA custody. "Over a period of years," the report states, "al-Nashiri accused the CIA staff of drugging or poisoning his food, and complained of bodily pain and insomnia."

In February 2007, a Washington Post article by Dafna Linzer and Julie Tate related the story of Marwan Jabour, "an accused al-Qaeda paymaster," who claimed he was drugged in June 2006 on his very last day in CIA custody.

Jabour "was stripped naked, seated in a chair and videotaped by agency officers. Afterward, he was shackled and blindfolded, headphones were put over his ears, and he was given an injection that made him groggy," Linzer and Tate wrote.

A number of detainees accused the CIA of forcibly administering suppositories, presumably containing some drug. In December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights found that CIA had in fact "forcibly administered" a suppository during the CIA rendition of Khalid el-Masri.

A 2007 ICRC report, based on interviews with high-value prisoners held at one time by the CIA, stated, "A body cavity check (rectal examination) would be carried out and some detainees alleged that a suppository (the type and the effect of such suppositories was unknown by the detainees), was also administered at that moment." (p. 6) One of these detainees was accused 9/11 plotter, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The ICRC report was released in 2010 by the New York Review of Books, over a year after the CIA IG investigation, but certainly Helgerson had access to the report if he so wanted.

In fact, Helgerson and CIA appear to have done very little in the way of investigating the charges. Like DoD, who also did a poor job of investigating the drugging, interviewing only three detainees, CIA construed the charge to investigate drugging as narrowly as possible. Hence charges of being drugged by foreign governments after CIA had rendered prisoners to countries like Egypt and Morocco were ignored by Helgerson, even though CIA and other allied government agents were present at these interrogation sites, if not directing the interrogations themselves.

Charges of drugging by detainees rendered by CIA to "liaison" services have been detailed in open source documents. Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib accused Egyptian jailers of drugging him after CIA rendered him to that country.

As a 2005 article on Habib in the Los Angeles Times reported: "'They outsource torture,' said Stephen Hopper, Habib's Australian lawyer. 'You get your friends and allies to do your dirty work for you.'"

British resident Binyam Mohamed, rendered by CIA to Morocco, and later to Guantanamo, said he was "drugged repeatedly" by Moroccan authorities, subsequent to CIA rendition.

In addition, there is the related issue of withholding of drugs as part of an overall manipulation of medical care. The SSCI report refers to this in the case of high-value detainee Abu Zubaydah. While it quotes CIA director Hayden has denying drugs were withheld from detainees, the report quotes a CIA cable from the time of Zubaydah's interrogation that mentions "the removal of formal obvious medical care to further isolate" AZ, which could refer to withholding of medical drugs. (p. 491)

Another example of deleterious withholding of drugs concerns high-value detainee Ramzi bin al-Shibh. According to CIA documents quoted in the SSCI report, al-Shibh been in "'social isolation" for as long as two and half years and the isolation was having a 'clear and escalating effect on his psychological functioning." By April 2005, his psychological deterioration was considered "alarming." A CIA psychologist is quoted as saying, "significant alterations to RBS'[s] detention environment must occur soon to prevent further and more serious psychological disturbance."

The SSCI report notes that al-Shibh was placed on antipsychotic medication once he was transferred to Guantanamo on September 5, 2006. Evidently, al-Shibh was not placed on such medication prior to that, despite his desperate psychiatric condition.

While the CIA's Director of Medical Services told the Agency Inspector General that there were psychiatric problems and that antidepressants and "sedatives" were administered, nothing in the extant documents mentions antipsychotic medications. Conversely, the DoD IG report on drugging detainees mentions use of the antipsychotic drug haldol, and not just for antipsychotic use, but as a chemical restraint.

Blood Thinners and Antimalarials

The CIA IG investigation is disingenous in the way it approaches the question of drugs and their effects on prisoners, or the way in which drugs were used in the torture program.

The executive summary of the SSCI report released last December tells the story of Abu Ja'far al-Iraqi. According to CIA records, al-Iraqi "was subjected to nudity, dietary manipulation, insult slaps, abdominal slaps, attention grasps, facial holds, walling, stress positions,and water dousing with 44 degree Fahrenheit water for 18 minutes. He was shackled in the standing position for 54 hours as part of sleep deprivation, and experienced swelling in his lower legs requiring blood thinner and spiral ace bandages.... After the swelling subsided, he was provided with more blood thinner and was returned to the standing position" (p. 149, bold emphasis added).

Typical blood thinners that could have been used likely included heparin or warfarin, both drugs that can produce significant side effects, including headache, confusion, nausea, weakness, and fatigue, all conditions that would adversely affect a prisoner undergoing interrogation, not to mention torture.

The Helgerson investigation is also mum on the use of either scopolamine or mefloquine, both drugs that were administered to detainees rendered to Guantanamo. This presumably also included CIA prisoners transferred to Guantanamo from black sites. The use of scopolamine and mefloquine were standard operating procedures for prisoners entering Guantanamo. Nothing in the new documents speaks to whether such drugs were used on CIA prisoners at the DoD facility.

Former Guantanamo guard Joe Hickman has stated in his widely discussed new book, Murder at Camp Delta, that the CIA ran a secret access program at Guantanamo that included a black site at the Cuba-based facility. It is Hickman's contention that three detainees who died at Guantanamo in June 2006, which DoD officials called a case of concurrent suicide, were in fact victims of interrogations or experiments at the camp's CIA black site, known variously as "Camp No" and "Strawberry Fields."

Notably, one of the deceased detainees had needle marks on his arms. The suicides were also tested for the presence of the antimalarial drug chloroquine, and one of the deceased was tested for the presence of mefloquine. This was quite odd as, one, there is no malaria in Cuba, and two, the SOP that called for administration of mefloquine would have only been relevant to newly arrived prisoners. The three dead detainees had been at Guantanamo for approximately four years at that point.

What mefloquine, scopolamine, chloroquine, and blood thinners have in common are disagreeable, even potentially severe side effects, including psychiatric side effects, even as none of these drugs (with the possible exception of scopolamine) are considered psychotropic or "mind-altering" drugs. Their use by CIA or any government agency holding detainees or prisoners should be very carefully examined for their potential for abuse, as the drugs may not be considered primarily psychoactive, and yet affect mood, perception, consciousness or behavior.

It is worth recalling that the MKULTRA experiments on drugs were not solely about drugs like cannabis, mescaline or LSD. MKULTRA experiments included examination of antimalarials, and also drugs like curare and cancer medications. Indeed, according to an SOP for Physician Assistants at Guantanamo, the Detainee Hospital formulary stocked a number of older chemotherapy drugs. It also stocked heparin and the curare-based drug tubocurarine choloride.

In addition, the detainee hospital also had supplies of a very old malaria drug, quinacrine, as well as the fertility drug Clomid. Why detainees would need a drug that affected hormone levels of estrogen or testosterone is unknown. However, while the hospital stocked these drugs, the SOP indicated that physician assistants were prohibited from prescribing them.

Drugs in interrogations okay if no "lasting or permanent alteration or damage"

Leopold's article does a good job at detailing the history of the CIA's investigation, and the strange preoccupation of CIA officials in proving that they had never referred the drug issue to the Office of Legal Counsel for approval in use in the interrogation program. And yet, as Leopold points out, John Yoo, the primary author of the first three torture memos made a special point of giving legal cover to the use of drugs in interrogation.

It it worth noting that the use of drugs in interrogation also became a part of the Army Field Manual, which was revised in September 2006. While previously the military could not use drugs that that could cause a "chemically induced psychosis," the current Army Field Manual prohibits only the use of "drugs that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage."

In other words, any drugs can be used for interrogation that do not cause permanent damage or alteration in a prisoner, a very loose criterion that would allow for the use of many pernicious and harmful, not to say psychoactive or "mind-altering" medications. Today, per executive order by President Obama, the Army Field Manual is the official government guideline for interrogation for both the military and the CIA.

Crossposted from Firedoglake

SSCI Report Reveals CIA Torture Program Originated in Same Department as MKULTRA

The release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) executive summary (PDF) to their report, "Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program," has rightly gotten a wide amount of press coverage.

The sheer brutality of the program's use of torture is overwhelming, from the use of forced enemas on detainees -- the CIA called it "rectal hydration" and "rectal feeding" -- to intense use of solitary confinement, threats to kill prisoners' families, homicide, and more. Revelations from this report will continue to be reported and absorbed into the world's understanding of the criminal extent of the U.S. torture program for months or years to come.

But one revelation has gone notably unreported. The man associated with implementing the most brutal part of the interrogation program was drawn out of the same division of the CIA that some decades ago had been responsible for the notorious MKULTRA program. As a CIA history of OTS explains, MKULTRA "involved Agency funding for the testing and use of chemical and biological agents and other means of controlling or modifying human behavior" (p. 19).

OTS Contractor James Mitchell Comes to Thailand

According to the SSCI report, James Mitchell, one of the two CIA contractor psychologists widely associated with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program, was working for the CIA's Office of Technical Services (OTS). In late 2001, Mitchell and his former psychologist associate at the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), John Bruce Jessen, were "commissioned" by OTS to write a study based on a purported Al Qaeda manual, called the Manchester Manual, after the city in England where the document was discovered.

The paper Mitchell and Jessen produced supposedly addressed countermeasures to interrogation that were discussed in the manual. According to the SSCI investigation, we learn for the first time that Mitchell was working for the CIA's OTS at the time he was ostensibly recruited or volunteered for the CIA's new interrogation program.

The Senate report states that Mitchell and Jessen were central in advocating a set of torture techniques that were gathered from the SERE training program for which they used to work at JPRA. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, and is a long-standing Defense Department program that is meant to prepare military, intelligence, and other certain important government personnel for the rigors of capture and possible torture by a determined and ruthless enemy. But the narrative that Mitchell and Jessen were solely responsible for the program, or that they even originated it, is not totally true.

According to the SSCI report, on or around April 1, 2002, Mitchell was recommended from within OTS for the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, then being touted as a major Al Qaeda figure (he wasn't):

While Abu Zubaydah was still hospitalized, personnel at CIA Headquarters began discussing how CIA officers would interrogate Abu Zubaydah upon his return to DETENTION SITE GREEN [CIA's Thailand black site]. The initial CIA interrogation proposal recommended that the interrogators engage with Abu Zubaydah to get him to provide information, and suggested that a "hard approach," involving foreign government personnel, be taken "only as a last resort." At a meeting about this proposal, [1-2 words redacted] CTC Legal, [2-3 words redacted] recommended that a psychologist working on contract in the CIA's Office of Technical Services (OTS), Grayson SWIGERT [James Mitchell], be used by CTC to "provide real-time recommendations to overcome Abu Zubaydah's "resistance to interrogation." SWIGERT had come to [1-2 words redacted]'s attention through [2-3 words redacation] who worked in OTS. Shortly thereafter, CIA Headquarters formally proposed that Abu Zubaydah be kept in an all-white room that was lit 24 hours a day, that Abu Zubaydah not be provided any amenities, that his sleep be disrupted, that loud noise be constantly fed into his cell, and that only a small number of people interact with him. CIA records indicate that these proposals were based on the idea that such conditions would lead Abu Zubaydah to develop a sense of "learned helplessness." CIA Headquarters then sent an interrogation team to Country [one letter redaction, but represents most likely Thailand], including SWIGERT [Mitchell], whose initial role was to consult on the psychological aspects of the interrogation. [pg. 26 of report; footnote notations have been removed from original]

"Novel interrogation methods"

On April 1, 2002, a cable was sent from OTS at the request of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and ALEC Station, which was the group within CIA supposedly hunting down Osama bin Ladin, discussing the possible use of "novel interrogation methods" on Abu Zubaydah.

The new proposed interrogation strategy proposed "several environmental modifications to create an atmosphere that enhances the strategic interrogation process." The cable continued, "[t]he deliberate manipulation of the environment is intended to cause psychological disorientation, and reduced psychological wherewithal for the interrogation," as well as "the deliberate establishment of psychological dependence upon the interrogator," and "an increased sense of learned helplessness."

"Learned helplessness" (LH) was a theory associated with a famous American psychologist, Martin Seligman. LH was a lab-derived set of propositions which postulated that when an animal (or human being) is faced with inescapable shock or otherwise unescapable or uncontrolled stress, the ability to cope collapses. LH has long been a theoretical model used to explain clinical depression, for instance.

Seligman is believed to have met with James Mitchell on three occasions. Seligman admits having met both Mitchell and Jessen at a SERE event in San Diego in May 2002. He also confirmed to me in an email that press reports were correct and that he met with Mitchell at Seligman's home in December 2001. But he denied an account by Georgetown professor Gregg Bloche that he met Mitchell yet again in late March or very early April 2002, only days before Mitchell flew to Thailand for the interrogation/torture of Abu Zubaydah. Seligman said that account, supposedly given to Bloche by CIA psychologist Kirk Hubbard, was "fiction." Nevertheless, Bloche has never rescinded his story, nor has Hubbard ever disavowed his alleged account, at least publicly.

The meetings with Seligman, in conjunction with the fact Mitchell was brought into the CIA interrogation program as a contractor for OTS, strongly suggests that the implementation of the torture program and use of SERE techniques was not solely the brainchild of James Mitchell, or Mitchell and Jessen together. Instead, it seems more likely, for reasons that will be further explored below, that the program was initiated by OTS itself, and constituted at least in part an experimental program. What exactly the experiment consisted is not totally clear. But it may have involved the use of wireless or other medical devices to measure biological markers of "uncontrollable stress," in an effort to establish a scientific calibration of torture and overall behavioral or mental control of prisoners. That such a "mind control" effort would originate or be carried out by the same institution that spent millions of dollars on the MKULTRA program is not difficult to believe.

It's impossible to know if the SSCI report ever mentions Seligman, as the report redacted or used pseudonyms for CIA agents and other personnel.

Where exactly did the EITs originate?

By July 2012, the report goes on to say that Mitchell and other CIA officers "held several meetings at CIA Headquarters to discuss the possible use of 'novel interrogation methods' on Abu Zubaydah." It is worth noting that up to that point, the CIA had used extreme isolation, sensory deprivation, denial of medical treatment and sleep deprivation on Abu Zubaydah. The "enhanced interrogation" torture had not even begun. Meanwhile, while the FBI agents present had complaints about CIA's approach, they had participated in some of this up to mid-June 2002, when all the interrogators abruptly left, leaving Zubaydah in total isolation for over a month. (One FBI agent, Ali Soufan, had left even earlier, in May, upset over how the CIA was handling the interrogation.)

According to SSCI authors, at these July meetings Mitchell proposed a number of techniques that later became the full "enhanced interrogation program," including at least one, "mock burial," that was ultimately rejected. The techniques were drawn from the SERE program Mitchell had worked in for years. But instead of familiarizing students with what such torture should look like, and helping them practice ways to survive or resist such torture, now the techniques would be applied to break down prisoners.

Oddly, the CIA's 2013 response to the SSCI on these matters, argued the turn towards torture did not originate with Mitchell. This is in contrast to mainstream reports about the origins of the EIT program, but it is consistent with the facts as stated by the SSCI itself in the report's executive summary.

According to the CIA, "Drs. [SWIGERT] and [DUNBAR] [Mitchell and Jessen] had the closest proximate expertise CIA sought at the beginning of the program, specifically in the area of non-standard means of interrogation. Experts on traditional interrogation methods did not meet this requirement. Non-standard interrogation methodologies were not an area of expertise of CIA officers or of the US Government generally. 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" (italics and emphasis in original)."

The SSCI report editorializes: "As noted above, the CIA did not seek out SWIGERT and DUNBAR after a decision was made to use coercive interrogation techniques; rather, SWIGERT and DUNBAR played a role in convincing the CIA to adopt such a policy."

Certainly Mitchell and Jessen "played a role," but that is not the same as originating the program. Indeed, much later in the report, SSCI explains that in the April 1 meeting, the interrogation proposals then under consideration came from Mitchell/SWIGERT "and the CIA OTS Officer who had recommended SWIGERT to [1-2 words redacted]." Mitchell is said to be advocating even then the development of "learned helplessness" in CIA prisoners. (See pp. 463-464).

It is worth repeating: it was CTC and ALEC Station which initiated the request for "novel" techniques from OTS, and later apparently asked for Mitchell to come to Thailand.

I don't think we know the full story yet. For instance, for some reason, the SSCI report does not include the fact that the OTS was the department of the CIA that sent data on the effects from SERE torture techniques to the Office of Legal Council, which under John Yoo was writing an opinion that would allow the CIA to "legally" use the controversial techniques, which the CIA knew could be considered torture.

OTS, MKULTRA, and SERE Research

OTS's role in vetting the EITs was mentioned in the CIA's Inspector General report on the interrogation program. Like other aspects of the torture scandal concerning the OTS division of the CIA, the press has generally ignored this. But this was something I reported on back in 2009, when the IG report was first released.

The fact OTS was involved in vetting the EITs to OLC gains greater significance when you realize that James Mitchell was working with OTS, and that OTS and their contractor Mitchell were intricately involved with both CTC and ALEC Station in creating the torture program.

There's one final aspect to the OTS angle worth mentioning. OTS apparently told OLC that the SERE techniques would not seriously harm CIA prisoners. But that was certainly wrong. Moreover, it's highly unlikely OTS didn't know that.

OTS has been part of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) since the early 1970s. It was transferred from the Directorate of Plans (clandestine operations, renamed around that time, the Directorate of Operations). OTS had earlier gone under other names itself, including Technical Service Staff and Technical Services Division. OTS and its predecessors had been involved in arranging the technical aspect of covert operations, including audio surveillance, forgery, secret writing, spy paraphenalia, sophisticated electronics, and assassination devices.

Then, there was the massive MKULTRA project, which had other names as well, and was coordinated in various ways with similar military programs. MKULTRA had well over a hundred "subprojects," and contracted with many of the U.S.'s top universities and medical and psychological researchers. (For listing of subprojects see here and here.)

MKULTRA research is probably best known for its use of hallucinogens, like LSD, which were sometimes used on unsuspecting civilians, and resulted in damaged lives and even deaths. Sometimes derided as subject matter for conspiracy theorists, MKULTRA and its assorted programs were all-too-real. While the vast majority of its documentation was destroyed by CIA leaders when the program was exposed in the early 1970s, what we do know is terrifying.

Today, within the DS&T is another shadowy CIA entity, the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center (ITIC). One Yale psychiatric researcher associated with ITIC is Charles A. Morgan, III. Morgan has produced a prodigious amount of research on the effects of "uncontrollable stress." Many of his research subjects were SERE students at a mock torture camp.

Morgan's research showed that the debilitating effects of SERE techniques caused stress cortisol levels, according to one Morgan research paper, to soar to “some of the greatest ever documented in humans.” Another study cited “neuroendocrine changes... [that] may have significant implications for subsequent responses to stress,” including massive drops in testosterone levels when exposed to even mock torture. Yet another study showed the effects of dissociation under the stress of even SERE "stress inoculation" mock torture.

Morgan used to deny his CIA links, but lately he has taken to admitting his CIA past. He was interviewed by James Risen for Risen's new book, Pay Any Price, but told Risen he did not have any associations with interrogations. But he did admit he had met James Mitchell.

It is possible that Mitchell knew of Morgan's work. It is even possible that Morgan had more to do with the interrogation program than we know. Morgan told Risen that he left the CIA because of a dispute over torture with his colleagues. Morgan has stated his opposition to torture. But Risen never followed up with that part of the story, or at least reported on it in any detail.

Some of the research under MKULTRA and associated programs, like BLUEBIRD or ARTICHOKE, included emphasis on hypnosis, drugs, and sensory deprivation, all techniques that were later incorporated into an early 1960s CIA torture manual, known as KUBARK. The SSCI report mentions KUBARK, and earlier this year, I obtained via FOIA the most complete version of the KUBARK document we currently have.

Risen also never mentioned Morgan's history of research on SERE. Hence a chance to learn more from Morgan about his own actions and the possible effect or interactions of his work with the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques by the OTS, which is under the same CIA directorate where Morgan worked, was lost, at least for the time being.

"Novel Telemetric Technology"

One possible way OTS could have used Morgan's work concerns a project he worked on, "The Warfighter's Stress Response: Telemetric and Noninvasive Assessment." That study, undertaken in 2001 and 2002, used SERE mock torture students, among others, to develop "novel telemetric technology... for untethered measurements of heart rate variability (HRV)."

Morgan and his co-authors concluded, "The results show that assessment of HRV provides a noninvasive means of evaluating the neural systems intimately involved in the capacity to attend to and respond to a threat. These findings linking HRV to cognitive performance robustly support the utility of HRV in the assessment of human performance." It is not impossible to imagine that such "novel telemetric technology" would be used to assess the response of CIA prisoners to the experience of torture, or that OTS would be interested in providing and perfecting such technology for the CIA's clandestine services.

The SSCI report has helped bring the origins of the CIA post-9/11 interrogation/torture program into even sharper focus. But the failure of the press to even notice, with rare exception, the role of OTS, or its history in clandestine actions, including MKULTRA work, means that a full exploration of CIA's torture program cannot take place.The release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) executive summary (PDF) to their report, "Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program," has rightly gotten a wide amount of press coverage.

The sheer brutality of the program's use of torture is overwhelming, from the use of forced enemas on detainees -- the CIA called it "rectal hydration" and "rectal feeding" -- to intense use of solitary confinement, threats to kill prisoners' families, homicide, and more. Revelations from this report will continue to be reported and absorbed into the world's understanding of the criminal extent of the U.S. torture program for months or years to come.

But one revelation has gone notably unreported. The man associated with implementing the most brutal part of the interrogation program was drawn out of the same division of the CIA that some decades ago had been responsible for the notorious MKULTRA program. As a CIA history of OTS explains, MKULTRA "involved Agency funding for the testing and use of chemical and biological agents and other means of controlling or modifying human behavior" (p. 19).

OTS Contractor James Mitchell Comes to Thailand

According to the SSCI report, James Mitchell, one of the two CIA contractor psychologists widely associated with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program, was working for the CIA's Office of Technical Services (OTS). In late 2001, Mitchell and his former psychologist associate at the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), John Bruce Jessen, were "commissioned" by OTS to write a study based on a purported Al Qaeda manual, called the Manchester Manual, after the city in England where the document was discovered.

The paper Mitchell and Jessen produced supposedly addressed countermeasures to interrogation that were discussed in the manual. According to the SSCI investigation, we learn for the first time that Mitchell was working for the CIA's OTS at the time he was ostensibly recruited or volunteered for the CIA's new interrogation program.

The Senate report states that Mitchell and Jessen were central in advocating a set of torture techniques that were gathered from the SERE training program for which they used to work at JPRA. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, and is a long-standing Defense Department program that is meant to prepare military, intelligence, and other certain important government personnel for the rigors of capture and possible torture by a determined and ruthless enemy. But the narrative that Mitchell and Jessen were solely responsible for the program, or that they even originated it, is not totally true.

According to the SSCI report, on or around April 1, 2002, Mitchell was recommended from within OTS for the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, then being touted as a major Al Qaeda figure (he wasn't):

While Abu Zubaydah was still hospitalized, personnel at CIA Headquarters began discussing how CIA officers would interrogate Abu Zubaydah upon his return to DETENTION SITE GREEN [CIA's Thailand black site]. The initial CIA interrogation proposal recommended that the interrogators engage with Abu Zubaydah to get him to provide information, and suggested that a "hard approach," involving foreign government personnel, be taken "only as a last resort." At a meeting about this proposal, [1-2 words redacted] CTC Legal, [2-3 words redacted] recommended that a psychologist working on contract in the CIA's Office of Technical Services (OTS), Grayson SWIGERT [James Mitchell], be used by CTC to "provide real-time recommendations to overcome Abu Zubaydah's "resistance to interrogation." SWIGERT had come to [1-2 words redacted]'s attention through [2-3 words redacation] who worked in OTS. Shortly thereafter, CIA Headquarters formally proposed that Abu Zubaydah be kept in an all-white room that was lit 24 hours a day, that Abu Zubaydah not be provided any amenities, that his sleep be disrupted, that loud noise be constantly fed into his cell, and that only a small number of people interact with him. CIA records indicate that these proposals were based on the idea that such conditions would lead Abu Zubaydah to develop a sense of "learned helplessness." CIA Headquarters then sent an interrogation team to Country [one letter redaction, but represents most likely Thailand], including SWIGERT [Mitchell], whose initial role was to consult on the psychological aspects of the interrogation. [pg. 26 of report; footnote notations have been removed from original]

"Novel interrogation methods"

On April 1, 2002, a cable was sent from OTS at the request of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and ALEC Station, which was the group within CIA supposedly hunting down Osama bin Ladin, discussing the possible use of "novel interrogation methods" on Abu Zubaydah.

The new proposed interrogation strategy proposed "several environmental modifications to create an atmosphere that enhances the strategic interrogation process." The cable continued, "[t]he deliberate manipulation of the environment is intended to cause psychological disorientation, and reduced psychological wherewithal for the interrogation," as well as "the deliberate establishment of psychological dependence upon the interrogator," and "an increased sense of learned helplessness."

"Learned helplessness" (LH) was a theory associated with a famous American psychologist, Martin Seligman. LH was a lab-derived theory which postulated that when an animal (or human being) is faced with inescapable shock or otherwise unescapable or uncontrolled stress, the ability to cope collapses. LH has long been a theoretical model used to explain clinical depression, for instance.

Seligman is believed to have met with James Mitchell on three occasions. Seligman admits having met both Mitchell at a SERE event in San Diego in May 2002. He also corroborated to me in an email that press reports were correct and he met with Mitchell at Seligman's home in December 2001. But Seligman denied an account by Georgetown professor Gregg Bloche that Seligman met Mitchell yet again in late March or very early April 2002, only days before Mitchell flew to Thailand and the torture of Abu Zubaydah. Seligman said that account, supposedly given to Bloche by CIA psychologist Kirk Hubbard, was "fiction." Bloche has never rescinded his story, nor has Hubbard ever disavowed the story, at least publicly.

The meetings with Seligman, as well as the fact Mitchell was brought into the CIA interrogation program as a contractor for OTS, argues that the implementation of the torture program and use of SERE techniques was not solely the brainchild of James Mitchell, or Mitchell and Jessen together. Instead, it seems more likely, for reasons that will be further explored below, that the program was initiated by OTS itself, and constituted at least in part an experimental program. What exactly the experiment consisted is not totally clear. But it may have involved the use of wireless or other medical devices to measure biological markers of "uncontrollable stress," in an effort to establish a scientific calibration of torture and overall behavioral or mental control of prisoners. That such a "mind control" effort would originate or be carried out by the same institution that spent millions of dollars on the MKULTRA program is not difficult to believe.

It's impossible to know if the SSCI report ever mentions Seligman, as the report redacted or used pseudonyms for CIA agents and personnel.

Where exactly did the EITs originate?

By July 2012, report goes on to say that Mitchell and other CIA officers "held several meetings at CIA Headquarters to discuss the possible use of 'novel interrogation methods' on Abu Zubaydah." It is worth noting that up to that point, the CIA had used extreme isolation, sensory deprivation, denial of medical treatment and sleep deprivation. The "enhanced interrogation" torture had not even begun. Meanwhile, while there were complaints, the FBI had participated in some of this up to mid-June 2002, when all the interrogators abruptly left, leaving Zubaydah in total isolation for over a month. (One FBI agent, Ali Soufan, had left even earlier, in May, upset over how the CIA was handling the interrogation.)

According to SSCI authors, at these July meetings Mitchell proposed a number of techniques that later became the "enhanced interrogation program," including at least one, "mock burial," that was ultimately rejected. The techniques were drawn from the SERE program Mitchell had worked in for years. But instead of familiarizing students with what such torture should look like, and helping them practice ways to survive or resist such torture, now the techniques would be applied to break down prisoners.

Oddly, the CIA's 2013 response to the SSCI on these matters, owned up to fact the turn towards torture did not originate with Mitchell. This is in contrast to mainstream reports about the origins of the EIT program, but is consistent with the facts as stated by the SSCI itself in the report's executive summary.

According to the CIA, "Drs. [SWIGERT] and [DUNBAR] [Mitchell and Jessen] had the closest proximate expertise CIA sought at the beginning of the program, specifically in the area of non-standard means of interrogation. Experts on traditional interrogation methods did not meet this requirement. Non-standard interrogation methodologies were not an area of expertise of CIA officers or of the US Government generally. 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" (italics and emphasis in original)."

The SSCI report editorializes: "As noted above, the CIA did not seek out SWIGERT and DUNBAR after a decision was made to use coercive interrogation techniques; rather, SWIGERT and DUNBAR played a role in convincing the CIA to adopt such a policy."

Certainly Mitchell and Jessen "played a role," but that is not the same as originating the program. Indeed, much later in the report, SSCI explains that in the April 1 meeting, the interrogation proposals then under consideration came from Mitchell and SWIGERT, and the CIA OTS Officer who had recommended SWIGERT to [1-2 words redacted]. Mitchell is said to be advocating even then the development of "learned helplessness" in CIA prisoners. (See pp. 463-464). It was CTC and ALEC Station which initiated the request for "novel" techniques from OTS, and later apparently asked for Mitchell to come to Thailand.

I don't think we know the full story yet. For some reason, the SSCI report does not include the fact that the OTS was the part of the CIA that sent data on the effects from SERE torture techniques to the Office of Legal Council, which under John Yoo was writing an opinion that would allow the CIA to "legally" use the controversial techniques, which the CIA knew could be considered torture.

OTS, MKULTRA, and SERE Research

OTS's role in vetting the EITs was mentioned in the CIA's Inspector General report on the interrogation program. Like other aspects of the torture scandal concerning OTS division, the press has generally ignored this. But this was something I reported on back in 2009, when the IG report was first released.

The fact OTS was involved in vetting the EITs to OLC gains greater significance when you realize that James Mitchell was working with OTS, and that OTS (and their contractor Mitchell) was intricately involved with both CTC and ALEC Station in creating the torture program.

There's one final aspect to the OTS angle worth mentioning. OTS apparently told OLC that the SERE techniques would not seriously harm CIA prisoners. But that was certainly wrong. Moreover, it's highly unlikely OTS didn't know that.

OTS has been part of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) since the early 1970s. It was transferred from the Directorate of Plans (clandestine operations, renamed around that time, the Directorate of Operations). OTS had earlier gone under other names itself, including Technical Service Staff and Technical Services Division. OTS and its predecessors had been involved in arranging the technical aspect of covert operations, including audio surveillance, forgery, secret writing, spy paraphenalia, sophisticated electronics, and assassination devices.

Then, there was the massive MKULTRA project, which had other names as well, and was coordinated in various ways with similar military programs. MKULTRA had well over a hundred "subprojects," and contracted with many of the U.S.'s top universities and medical and psychological researchers. (For listing of subprojects see here and here.)

MKULTRA research is probably best known for its use of hallucinogens, like LSD, which were sometimes used on unsuspecting civilians, and resulted in damaged lives and even deaths. Sometimes derided as subject matter for conspiracy theorists, MKULTRA and assorted programs was all-too-real. While the vast majority of its documentation was destroyed by CIA leaders with the program was exposed in the early 1970s, what we do know it terrifying.

Today, with the DS&T is another shadowy CIA entity, the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center (ITIC). One Yale psychiatric researcher associated with ITIC is Charles A. Morgan, III. Morgan has produced a prodigious amount of research on the effects of "uncontrollable stress." His research subject were SERE students at a mock torture camp.

Morgan's results showed that the debilitating effects of SERE techniques caused stress cortisol levels, according to one Morgan research paper, to soar to “some of the greatest ever documented in humans.” Another study cited “neuroendocrine changes... [that] may have significant implications for subsequent responses to stress,” including massive drops in testosterone levels when exposed to even mock torture.

Morgan used to deny his CIA links, but lately has taken to admitting his CIA past. He was interviewed by James Risen for Risen's new book, Pay Any Price, but told Risen he did not have any associations with interrogations. But he had met James Mitchell.

It is possible that Mitchell knew of Morgan's work. It is even possible that Morgan had more to do with the interrogation program than we know. He told Risen that he left the CIA because of a dispute over torture with his colleagues. But Risen never followed up with that part of the story, or at least reported on it in any detail.

Some of the research under MKULTRA and associated programs, like BLUEBIRD or ARTICHOKE, included emphasis on hypnosis, drugs, and sensory deprivation, all techniques that were later incorporated into the early 1960s CIA torture manual, known as KUBARK. The SSCI report mentions KUBARK, and earlier this year, I obtained via FOIA the most complete version of the KUBARK document we currently have.

Risen also never mentioned Morgan's history of research on SERE, and a chance to learn more from Morgan about his own actions and the possible effect or interactions of his work with the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques by the OTS, which is under the same CIA directorate where Morgan worked, was lost, at least for the time being.

"Novel Telemetric Technology"

One possible way OTS could have used Morgan's work concerns his work on "The Warfighter's Stress Response: Telemetric and Noninvasive Assessment." That study, undertaken in 2001 and 2002, used SERE mock torture students, among others, to develop "novel telemetric technology... for untethered measurements of heart rate variability (HRV)."

Morgan and his co-authors concluded, "The results show that assessment of HRV provides a noninvasive means of evaluating the neural systems intimately involved in the capacity to attend to and respond to a threat. These findings linking HRV to cognitive performance robustly support the utility of HRV in the assessment of human performance." It is not impossible to imagine that such "novel telemetric technology" would be used to assess the response of CIA prisoners to the experience of torture, or that OTS would be interested in providing and perfecting such technology for the CIA's clandestine services.

The SSCI report has helped bring the origins of the CIA post-9/11 interrogation/torture program into even sharper focus. But the failure of the press to even notice, with rare exception, the role of OTS, or its history in clandestine actions, including MKULTRA work, means that a full exploration of CIA's torture program cannot take place.

To watch VICE News' exclusive interview with James Mitchell, go here.

This story is cross posted at The Dissenter/FDL

Newly Revealed Portions of CIA Torture Manual: Doctoring Tapes, Foreign Detentions & Interrogating 'Defectors”

Describing interrogation techniques and approaches used during the Cold War, an old 1960s CIA counterintelligence interrogation manual advised covertly photographing the interrogation subject and also audio taping his interrogations.

A tape player could free an interrogator from note taking, the CIA’s experts wrote, while also providing a live record of an interrogation that could replayed later. The manual’s author noted that for some of those interrogated, "the shock of hearing their own voices unexpectedly is unnerving."

Portions of the manual, originally declassified over 16 years ago, have remained censored until now. In March 2014, the CIA released an updated version [PDF] of the manual, which contains new revelations that extend our knowledge of CIA interrogation activities.

For example, in the case of audio taping interrogations, the newly declassified version of the manual adds that the CIA believed the doctoring of such tapes to be “effective.”

"Tapes can also be edited and spliced, with effective results, if the tampering can be hidden," the CIA manual explained in a section previously redacted. The CIA further elaborated on the effects of having a tape "edited to make it sound like a confession."

While controversy remains pitched over the release of a portion of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” torture program, the CIA’s release of material – including portions that speak to the agency’s years-long use of foreign intelligence services for detention and interrogation – was quietly released with little fanfare. Meanwhile, leaks to news media and analysis by commentators demonstrate that the CIA lied to Congress about aspects of its post-9/11 rendition, detention and interrogation (torture) program.

What has not been emphasized much until now is that the post-9/11 program in regards to torture, rendition and detention, both at "black sites" and by foreign intelligence services working with the CIA, is the continuation of a CIA practice going back decades.

KUBARK as a Model for Interrogation and Torture

The CIA’s 1963 set of instructions on counterintelligence interrogation, known as the KUBARK manual, was first declassified in 1997. (KUBARK was the CIA’s own code name for itself.) Recently, since that initial declassification, I obtained an update of the CIA’s infamous document, obtained on March 12, 2013 via Mandatory Declassification Request. The document was obtained by using the FOIA-activist website Muckrock.com, and the document and all materials regarding its production, including my initial request, is posted at their site. Click here to download the document (or on the thumbnail below).



The updated version of the KUBARK manual still contains numerous redactions, even 51 years after the document’s origination. But it also includes brand-new information about the CIA’s use of torture, including never before revealed discussions of the CIA’s early use of foreign intelligence services for both interrogation and detention, including the use of such foreign services as cover for CIA interrogations. The new unredacted material includes the finding that KUBARK techniques were used at “defector reception” or interrogation centers during the Cold War.

The Baltimore Sun, which originally had gained the manual via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it first made in May 1994, linked the KUBARK manual to later torture and interrogation techniques utilized in a 1983 set of manuals used in Central America to train Honduran and other Central American interrogators.

The product of years of experimentation and field experience, the KUBARK manual written in 1963 utilized a set of torture and other interrogation techniques that included use of solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, fear, stress positions, electric shock, sleep deprivation, drugs, and other methods to induce compliance and the “exploitation” of the prisoner or subject interrogated.

After the Abu Ghraib scandal, when the kinds of abusive interrogation and detention techniques used on U.S. “war on terror” detainees were vividly visualized for U.S. and world audiences, the similarities between what the U.S. was doing and the early instructions in the KUBARK manual became front-page news in the mainstream U.S. press.

The similarity of the KUBARK techniques to certain abusive techniques used by other government agencies, such as the FBI, has been noted. But it is the connection with the CIA’s own Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program that resonates the most in the context of a major government dispute over the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program.

The Intelligence Committee has voted to release the Executive Summary of the report, but most of the 6,000 page report will not be released. Meanwhile, the CIA itself has been asked (or demanded, perhaps) to be centrally involved in classification decisions made in the release of the Executive Summary. The chance we'll see much of that full report is slim. As we can see, it's taken 51 years and we still don't have all the information in the CIA's 1963 interrogation manual.

A recent article by Jason Leopold at Al Jazeera America suggested that the Senate report will show that CIA “enhanced interrogation” techniques “either went beyond what was authorized by the Justice Department or were applied before they had been authorized.” Those techniques included, among other forms of torture, physical slapping, sleep deprivation, isolation, confinement of a prisoner in small box, stress positions, and waterboarding.

Early Evidence of Black Sites and Rendition

Among the most prominent portions of the KUBARK manual that were not originally declassified and held secret until now -- labeled KUBARK II here to forego confusion with the 1997 declassified version -- concern CIA’s interrogations conducted “with or through liaison.” Such liaison included “foreign” or “host” services, including those interrogations that “involved illegality.”

While there is no portion of the document that specifically uses the term "rendition," there is a lot of discussion about having to use foreign intelligence services as liaison on interrogation, and on the limited amount of detention time the CIA had when holding prisoners in other countries. (It is widely known that post-9/11, the CIA held prisoners at secret prisons in Thailand, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania, while rendition to torture sent kidnapped detainees to foreign intelligence prisons in Syria, Morocco, Egypt and other countries.)

CIA ex-Deputy Counsel John Rizzo recently admitted that the CIA rendition program was a practice of long standing. “Renditions were not a product of the post-9/11 era…” Rizzo recently told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, “... renditions, in and of themselves, are actually a fairly well-established fact in American and world, actually, intelligence organizations.”

Until now, most discussions of the U.S. post-9/11 CIA interrogation program have presumed that renditions to foreign interrogation services were something that originated after the Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, or perhaps earlier, during the Clinton administration. But the newly restored sections in KUBARK II suggest that such activities by the CIA were common practice during the Cold War.

One example of this, not referenced in the KUBARK document, but known from other CIA documents, was known in intelligence circles as the “Kelly Case,” and described by H.P. Albarelli and this author in a 2010 article. Kelly, a code name for a Bulgarian operative named Dimitrov, was kidnapped by the CIA in the early 1950s and sent to a secret interrogation center run by the CIA at Fort Clayton, Panama (then Panama Canal Zone) where he was tortured using drugs and hypnosis, part of the Agency's Operation Artichoke.

In another example of early rendition practice, the CIA and the Army Intelligence Corps (CIC) allegedly ran a kidnapping program called "Snatch/Countersnatch" in Europe after World War II. There were notable early examples of CIA kidnapping as well. One of these was the case of Peter Moroz, an employee of the CIA's Institute for the Study of the USSR, who "was seized by CIA operatives posing as German police," and taken to a "safe house" near Munich. Munoz was subjected to loud music and bright lights for almost three months in isolation, all because the CIA wanted to question him after his son purportedly had defected to the East Germans. (See Maris Cakars & Barton Osborn, "Operation Ohio: Mass Murder by US Intelligence Agencies," Win Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 30, 9/18/1975*)

According to KUBARK II, "Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to involve illegality and to entail damaging consequences for KUBARK." The newly declassified material shows approval for such actions, including interrogations involving “physical harm” and “medical, chemical or electrical methods or materials… used to induce acquiescence,” derived from a CIA official labeled “KUDOVE,” a cryptonym which according to a National Archives document describes the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations (DDO).

Such approval by the DDO was also necessary “[i]f the detention is locally illegal and traceable to KUBARK...."

James Pavitt was Deputy Director of Operations from 1999 to June 4, 2004. He was succeeded by Stephen Kappes, whose tenure only lasted until August 2004. Kappes was followed by Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. Rodriquez famously ordered the destruction of video tapes used in the interrogation and torture of Abu Zubaydah and other "high-value detainees" held by the CIA at their Thailand "black site." During Rodriquez's tenure, the CIA's Directorate of Operations, which was once known as the Directorate of Plans, changed its name once again to the National Clandestine Service (NCS). Whether Directorate of Plans, Directorate of Operations, or NCS, this section of CIA is responsible for covert operations.

While it seems likely Rodriquez's destruction of the tapes was meant to destroy evidence of torture, the revelation about doctoring tapes in the new version of the KUBARK document raises the question whether or not the evidence had to be destroyed so that no one would know the tapes had been altered in an effort to produce or manufacture the appearance of confessions.

The Detention Problem

Most of the discussion of working with foreign intelligence agencies is in the manual’s section on “Legal and Policy Considerations.” In 1997, much of that material was redacted, so that it was difficult to know that there was any coordination between the CIA and foreign services. But the newly unredacted material shows that the CIA turned to foreign “liaison” services because the legislation that formed the Agency "denied it any law-enforcement or police powers."

As "the necessary powers are vested in the competent liaison service or services, not in KUBARK, it is frequently necessary to conduct such interrogations with or through liaison,” the CIA wrote. The legality of such an interrogation – whether conducted “unilaterally” by either CIA or the host service – was “"determined by the laws of the country in which the act occurs.”

According to the CIA document, detention of prisoners was the primary legal problem, as the CIA had no legal power to hold prisoners. "Even if the local authorities have exercised powers of detention in our behalf," the CIA wrote, "the legal time-limit may be narrow." Hence, the manual suggests that the determination has to how long a prisoner can be held in detention be determined as quickly as possible. As the reference to “locally illegal” detention cited earlier suggests, sometimes that determination included a decision to hold prisoners unlawfully. A full paragraph on how to determine how much time could be available to CIA for interrogation in such circumstances remains censored in KUBARK II.

The issue of control over a prisoner’s detention is raised more than once in the document. "As a general rule, it is difficult to succeed in the CI [counterintelligence] interrogation of a resistant source unless the interrogating service can control the subject and his environment for as long as proves necessary," the manual states. While most of the ensuing discussion remains classified in the latest manual release, a portion of this section was unredacted.

The CIA expresses concern over what is done to prisoners or detainees held by foreign liaison services. Some "sources may demand immediate release," the CIA document states, or "later bring suit for illegal detention.” There does not appear to be any easy solution to this dilemma, from the CIA’s standpoint, though the manual warns against either pressing “too hard” on a detainee or releasing him too early, before the information desired has been obtained. "Transfer to an interrogation center should not be used as an automatic solution,” the CIA manual noted.

It was not clear what type of "interrogation center" the manual was referring to at this point.

Security Leaks

The newly declassified material shows the CIA as very concerned with possible security leaks. A released prisoner, subjected to KUBARK-style interrogation and torture, is such a possible security leak, according to the manual.

If a "subject is to be turned over to a host service,” KUBARK II states, “it becomes more than usually important to hold to a minimum the amount of information about KUBARK and its methods that he can communicate." It is possible that these are some of the same types of concerns that, unspoken, keep dozens of detainees cleared for transfer or release held indefinitely at Guantanamo.

That the CIA wished to keep its collaboration with “foreign services” secret can be discerned from the numerous times even small references to such services, even in passing, were deleted from the original declassification release.

In an “Interrogator’s Checklist” towards the end of the manual, the CIA asks the interrogator to consider whether an arrest is "contemplated." "By whom?” the manual asks. “Is the arrest fully legal? If difficulties develop, will the arresting liaison service reveal KUBARK's role or interest?" Furthermore, "If the interrogatee is to be confined, can KUBARK control his environment fully?"

In a tantalizing revelation of even further considerations around sharing detention and interrogation with foreign services, one of the newly declassified “checklist” items asks, "If the interrogation is to be conducted jointly with a liaison service, has due regard been paid to the opportunity thus afforded to acquire additional information about that service while minimizing KUBARK's exposure to it?"

To date, none of the discussions about the post-9/11 RDI program have dwelled upon the intelligence activities the CIA and its allies may have conducted upon each other, or the intelligence vulnerabilities or risks the RDI program may have entailed in that regard.

“Defector Reception Center”

One of the topics the KUBARK manual touches upon is the existence of “defector reception centers.” In the original declassification, all references to such centers were censored, even though such centers concerned possible defectors from the Soviet Union or its allies, and the 1997 FOIA release of KUBARK came six years after the fall of the USSR and its East European satellite states.

Very little has been written about these centers. According to declassified CIA and State Department documents and some memoirs by former CIA personnel, we know that the CIA maintained a “defector reception center” near Frankfurt, West Germany. It was housed at the primary Allied post-World War II interrogation center, Camp King, at Oberursel.

According to a memoir by former CIA Deputy Director of Covert Operations, Ted Shackley, “all people defecting in Europe from countries of the Soviet bloc were brought here" (to Camp King). They were held in villas scattered around Frankfurt. CIA documents released a few years ago show the housing and resettlement aspect of this defector program was code-named HARVARD.

In Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks’s classic 1975 exposé, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, detainees at the Defector Reception Center at Camp King were “subjected to extensive debriefing and interrogation by agency officers who are experts at draining from them their full informational potential. Some defectors are subjected to questioning that lasts for months; a few are interrogated for a year or more.”

According to KUBARK II, all defectors, escapees, and refugees were “customarily sent to a defector center for detailed exploitation." "Detection reception centers and some large stations are able to conduct preliminary psychological screening before interrogation starts," the manual states.

While there is no direct evidence of torture of any defectors or East Bloc escapees held at any defector reception center, the fact the KUBARK manual itself describes procedures that amount to “coercion,” even by CIA standards, strongly suggests that some torture was conducted on Soviet and East European detainees held at one or more such reception centers.

Further exploration of the Defector Reception Center and activities at Camp King are a fruitful source of possible future research. Other authors have determined that the former Nazi doctor Kurt Blome, tried but released at Nuremberg, and former head of the Nazi’s biological warfare program, worked as a doctor at Camp King in the early 1950s. In addition, Camp King was known for using drugs and other experimental torture methods on Soviet bloc prisoners.

The CIA, explaining they could neither confirm nor deny any records on Blome, rejected a FOIA I filed with the CIA on Blome’s activities.

Blome was also a top member of Nazi Germany’s biological warfare program. On February 28, 2014, the CIA’s Agency turned down my appeal of their non-confirmation/non-denial, or “Glomar” response, for records on the Camp King physician.

“Squeezed dry”

There is a small amount of other newly unredacted material. Much of it consists of quotations from Albert Biderman's secret 1959 report, "A Study for Development of Improved Interrogation Techniques." It is not clear why these sections were originally withheld. The new declassification still contains a number of redactions of material referenced in the KUBARK manual.

One of the restored Biderman quotes notes, “skilled and determined interrogations are almost invariably successful in eliciting some information from their sources.” Biderman continued, describing those “who abandon the ‘name, rank, [serial] number only’ rule or other injunctions of silence, are between 95 and 100 percent.”

Another new section concerns the interrogation of “penetration agents.” The discussion included the pros and cons of coercive interrogation.

"All good interrogators avoid coercive techniques whenever the necessary information can be gained without them,” the CIA manual stated. “In other words, physical or psychological duress is counter-productive when employed against a source whose voluntary cooperation can be enlisted without pressure."

But if such “coercion must be used and is successful,” the interrogator is cautioned that such action is likely to leave a victim “drained and apathetic.” "A resistant source who has been 'broken' should not be disregarded as a person when squeezed dry," the manual warns. Left to his own devices after "the use of pressure exceeding his resistance (for example, narcosis or hypnosis)... he is likely to revert to the role of antagonist and try to cause us trouble by any means available to him."

Addendum: Click here to see the final response letter from the CIA to me granting the request for new declassified material, and giving their explanation why some of the material was censored.

*Use of materials from Win Magazine comes via Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

Article adapted from original posting at Firedoglake/The Dissenter