China inspired interrogations at Guantanamo

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantaacute;namo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantaacute;namo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The CIA is still authorised by President Bush to use a number of secret 8220;alternative8221; interrogation methods.

Several Guantaacute;namo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart8217;s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled 8220;Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War8221; and written by Alfred D Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been 8220;brainwashed8221;, and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies8217; harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the CIA and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE programme appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that 8220;every American would be shocked8221; by the origin of the training document.

8220;What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,8221; Levin said. 8220;People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don8217;t need false intelligence.8221;

A Defence Department spokesman, Lt Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantaacute;namo training chart. 8220;I can8217;t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current DOD policy on interrogations,8221; Colonel Ryder said. 8220;I can tell you that current DOD policy is clear8212; we treat all detainees humanely.8221;

Biderman8217;s 1957 article described 8220;one form of torture8221; used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand 8220;for exceedingly long periods8221;, sometimes in conditions of 8220;extreme cold8221;. Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and CIA interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including 8220;Semi-Starvation8221;, 8220;Exploitation of Wounds8221;, and 8220;Filthy, Infested Surroundings8221;, and with their effects: 8220;Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator8221;, 8220;Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist8221;, and 8220;Reduces Prisoner to 8216;Animal Level8217; Concerns8221;. .