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Vrijdag, 27 Juni, 2008

Door Spencer Ackerman | In Augustus 2004, een Dienst van de Defensie. het paneel riep bijeen om gevangenemisbruik te onderzoeken nadat het schandaal van Abu Ghraib zijn veel-voorzien rapport uitgaf. De technieken van de ondervraging die voor gebruik bij Baai Guantánamo worden ontworpen, die President George W. Bush had buiten het toepassingsgebied van de Overeenkomsten van Genève, „was gemigreerd“ aan Irak verordend, welk erkend Bush onder Genève, besloten Comité voorzitter James Schlesinger, een vroegere defensiesecretaresse was. Paneel van Schlesinger, echter, verklaarde welke niet ambtenaren tot de verkeerde technieken opdracht gaven over continenten over te brengen - of hoe en waarom zij het beleid van het Pentagoon in de eerste plaats werden.

(Op Woensdag) het Comité van de Strijdkrachten van de Senaat beantwoordde die vragen. In een marathon hoorzitting die acht uren en drie afzonderlijke panelen overspant, openbaarde de commissie, in nauwgezet detail, hoe de hogere ambtenaren van het Pentagoon een programma voor de Speciale troepen van Krachten omzetten om zich die als de Vlucht van de Weerstand van de Ontwijking van de Overleving wordt bekend, of SERE tegen marteling - - in een blauwdruk te verzetten voor het martelen van terrorismegevangenen.

De commissie, zat door Sen voor. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), vrijgegeven talrijke geclassificeerde documenten van de essentiële periode van medio-2002 tot begin 2003, toen het beleid van misbruik vorm binnen de Dienst van de Defensie vergde. De „hogere ambtenaren in de verkregen informatie van Verenigde Staten overheid over agressieve technieken, verdraaiden de wet om de verschijning van hun wettigheid tot stand te brengen en machtigden hun gebruik tegen gevangenen,“ bovengenoemde Levin. „In het proces, beschadigden zij onze capaciteit om intelligentie te verzamelen die het leven kon redden.“

Het SERE programma - dat eerst aan velen door een artikel van 2005 door Jane Mayer wordt voorgelegd van de Newyorker - is geen ondervragingsprogramma. Noch is het een intelligentie-inzameling programma. In plaats daarvan, is het een duister programma over vleugels van de verschillende legerdienst de' speciaal-krachten dat troepen onderwijst hoe te om marteling te weerstaan indien gevangen. De onderworpen studenten van instructeurs - onder het strenge horloge van psychologen en artsen - aan diverse martelingstechnieken, met inbegrip van het waterboarding, verlengde spanningsposities, slaapontbering en sensorische manipulatie. Waterboarding „is een overweldigende ervaring die verschrikking, teweegbrengt een gek overlevingsinstinct,“ Malcolm Nance, een vroegere SERE instructeur veroorzaakt van de Marine die zelf waterboarded was, getuigd aan Congres in November. „Als geopende gebeurtenis, was ik volledig bewust van wat gebeurde: Ik werd gemarteld.“

On July 25, 2002, the Defense agency that oversees the SERE program, known as the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, or JPRA, was contacted by a representative of Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes for information about SERE practices for the “exploitation process” — that is, getting detainees to cooperate with their interrogators. The next day, JPRA’s chief of staff, Air Force Lt. Col. Daniel Baumgartner, sent Haynes a lengthy memorandum explaining how the program worked.

Before the Senate panel, Baumgartner said he did not realize that Haynes wanted to use SERE techniques on enemy combatants. “I had no idea how it would be used,” he testified. “When tasked by my higher headquarters … I can’t really turn around and tell the flag officers and the senior executive service people no.”

Haynes, who retired from the Pentagon in April, after his nomination to the federal judiciary foundered, pled ignorance. “No, sir, I don’t remember it at the time,” Haynes said when asked if he had received Baumgartner’s memorandum. “But I saw it a long time ago … it’s possible I saw it at the time.”

Pressed by Levin on how he could not have seen a memorandum concerning terrorism detentions and interrogations, Haynes replied, “the recipient is the Office of the Secretary of Defense General Counsel, which [was] not my precise title.”

Baumgartner’s memorandum was not the last time SERE techniques were introduced into the interrogation bloodstream. On the week of Sept. 16, 2002, JPRA officials invited a contingent of senior Guantánamo-based officers to a briefing session at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Haynes and his legal counterparts at the Central Intelligence Agency, Justice Dept. and the Vice President’s office visited Guantánamo the following week for an update on interrogations. The minutes of that meeting record that the commander of the detention facility “did take Mr. Haynes and a few others aside for private conversations.”

Just the week after that, a senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, instructed Guantánamo officers on various SERE-pedigreed torture methods, including waterboarding. “If the detainee dies,” Fredman said, “you’re doing it wrong.” In response, the chief Guantánamo Bay attorney, Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, said, “We will need documentation to protect us.”

It would be a fateful decision. On Oct. 11, 2002, Beaver’s boss, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunleavy, the commander of Guantánamo’s detention center, sent a request to his boss, Southern Command chief James Hill, for harsher, SERE-derived interrogation techniques. Beaver attached to that request a certification that “the proposed strategies do not violate applicable federal law.”

Beaver testified (Wednesday) for the first time since Haynes declassified her guidance in mid-2004. She said she intended for the techniques to be used under supervised and restricted circumstances. It turned out that not a single other military lawyer submitted written guidance in support of the SERE-derived techniques. “In hindsight,” Beaver told the Senate panel, “I can only conclude that others chose not to write on this issue in order not to be linked to it. For me, that was not an option.”

The result of Haynes’ efforts were to transform “stress positions” — forcing someone into uncomfortable contortions for hours on end — from something U.S. special forces had to withstand to something U.S. interrogators would place on Guantánamo inmates like Mohamed al-Qatani, also known as Guantánamo Detainee 063. Qatani was at one point believed to be the intended 20th 9/11 hijacker, but last month the Pentagon unceremoniously dropped the charges against him.

Nor did the SERE techniques remain only at Guantánamo Bay. In the summer of 2003, the new Guantánamo detentions and interrogations commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, visited Iraq at the behest of Rumsfeld intelligence deputy Steve Cambone to “Gitmo-ize” detention operations there. It was revealed (Wednesday) that Beaver accompanied Miller on the trip.

The wages of this turn to what Vice President Dick Cheney once euphemistically described as “the dark side” were made clear in March. A deputy to Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, briefed reporters on an emerging profile of recruits to the terrorist organization Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) that his command had compiled from interviews with AQI detainees. In many cases, the recruits were convinced to join the terrorist group after being shown images of abuse emerging from Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo Bay.

Near the conclusion of the hearing, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I) glowered at Haynes, frustrated at the former Pentagon official’s faulty memory. Reed said that Haynes, Rumsfeld and Bush had deprived U.S. troops of clear guidance for legal interrogations, exposing them to potential prosecution in the U.S. — and likely torture if captured by enemies who no longer have reason to believe that their own soldiers won’t be tortured in U.S. custody. “You did a disservice to the soldiers of this nation,” Reed told Haynes.

Spencer Ackerman is senior fellow at The Washington Independent. He covers national security and foreign policy.

See More:Torture USA News 

Have Your Say: How the Pentagon Turned an Interrogation Resistance Program into a Blueprint for Torture
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