CIA terror suspects 'kept awake for 11 days'

[G_j]

Source: Times Online


May 10, 2009

CIA terror suspects 'kept awake for 11 days'
Anne Barrowclough

More than 25 of the CIA's war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days at a time during the administration of former president George Bush, according to The Los Angeles Times.

At one stage during the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days, the Times reported, citing memoranda made public by the Justice department last month.

The limit was later reduced to just over a week, the report stated.

Sleep deprivation was one of the most important elements in the CIA's interrogation programme, seen as more effective than more violent techniques used to help break the will of suspects.

<snip>

According to the memos, medical personnel were present to make sure prisoners weren't injured. But a 2007 Red Cross report on the CIA program said detainees' wrists and ankles bore scars from their shackles, the newspaper reported..

When detainees could no longer stand, they could be laid on the prison floor with their limbs "anchored to a far point on the floor in such a manner that the arms cannot be bent or used for balance or comfort," a memo dated May 10, 2005, said.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6258404.ece

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

2. I can't even comment on this stuff any more.

:(

[Aethertek]

3. Federal Prison

Hell they do the same damn things in federal prisons if you piss them off bad enough.
They'll force medication in your throat or arms as well.
Damn 11 days is harsh, a week will make you forget who you are,& cause the damnedest hallucinations.
Worse than a bad acid trip it is.
I'm surprised they could get any useful intelligence out of anyone after that, hell anything intelligible at all.
Well I'm sure it was fun sport for your "countries finest" though.

K~

[leveymg]

8. Sleep deprivation for "a week will make you forget who you are . . ." Exactly the point.

A lot of these techniques were used by the Chilean and Argentine juntas
including the crouch boxes, beatings and being shackled in contorted positions for long periods.

This was part of the CIA-sponsored Operation Condor that targeted leftists throughout Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s.

This part isn’t exactly new.

What was novel about the torture of Abu Zubaydah and the three other principal Al Qaeda detainess was not the methods but the apparent purpose: repeated waterboarding and “psychic driving” (Google “Dr. Ewen Cameron”) results in erosion of memory, not accurate recall of details. The techniques applied to this select group of 9/11 planners were not used to extract information or even to punish the detainees. The purpose was the same as the results - to erase and rearrange memory. See,

Democratic Underground - Binyam Mohamed was one of five men linked …WHAT THE CIA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT ABU ZUBAYDAH Posted by leveymg in General Discussion Mon Dec 10th 2007, 12:32 PM . …
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2439700 - - 39k - Cached - Similar pages

CIA Detainee Torture, Memory Loss, and the Bush Administration’s …ABU ZUBAYDAH: WATERBOARDING AND MEMORY ERASURE Abu Zubaydah was the first “high …. That is the worst form of memory erasure, of the electorate. leveymg …
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/13/134311/17/385/421664 - 101k - Cached - Similar pages
More results from www.democraticunderground.com »

leveymg’s Journal - THE CIA OFFICER WHO OVERSAW TORTURE: Cofer BlackAdvertise on more than 70 progressive blogs! leveymg’s Journal …. Abu Zubaydah is said to have been driven mad by waterboarding and sensory driving …
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/337 - 58k - Cached - Similar pages

TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Today’s Must ReadDec 18, 2007 … Coleman said reports of Abu Zubaida’s statements during his early, … In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded … I have to agree with leveymg’s hypothesis in this case. …
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TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Today’s Must ReadIn addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and … I highly recommend DKos user leveymg’s recent series of diaries regarding …
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Daily Kos: Torturers To Binyam: “We’re going to change your brain”Mar 10, 2009 … When we first learned the details of the repeated waterboarding torture of KSM, … Abt al-Nashiri, and Abu Zubaydah, my initial conclusion was that the … Recommended by: leveymg. The suppression of the report about …
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....164/706653 - 81k - Cached - Similar pages

[Wizard777]

14. After a week without sleep. You're getting to the point where it can become fatal.

I'm a chronic insomniac. I went 5 days without being able to get to sleep. It was horrible. I ended up in the hospital. They were giving me sleeping pills and they weren't even phasing me. Then one of the doctors decided to try something. He gave me a stimulant and I was out like a light and I slept for two days.

[Aethertek]

17. Perhaps I'm unclear

I was in no way attempting to mitigate the abuses that were carried out by the government, merely pointing out the fact that these same techniques are used by the federal prison system.

Having been chained to a slab of concrete for weeks & denied sleep or rest I can personally attest to the rigors of this treatment.

As I said after a week you barely know who you are any more & will hallucinate the damnedest things.
These abuses are used for the intension of "Breaking" prisoners that they consider trouble makers.

Kevin~

[No Elephants]

10. Who here said that the CIA is our country's finest?

[Aethertek]

18. Sarcasm

Do I need the sarcasm thingy?
Where can I find it?
Is this it.
:sarcasm:

[PSPS]

4. Not to worry. Obama says prosecution is off the table.

Change you can believe in!

[No Elephants]

6. He has stopped the practice. THAT is change I can applaud. If prosecution is truly your concern

in this matter, please consider signing the ACLU online petition asking for appointment of a special prosecutor.

https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=Nat_Petition_SpecialProsecutor&s_src=UNW090001ACT&s_subsrc=flyer&JServSessionIdr010=5rs8lpxp61.app23a


That is the issue that prompted your post, right?

[ima_sinnic]

11. yes, all those impeachment petitions really got something done, didn't they?

I lost track of how many of those I signed over the years.
Petitions don't do jack.

[No Elephants]

12. It's not an impeachment petition. It's for appointment of a special prosecutor. Different

considerations apply.

Impeachment was not good for Republicans, so the Democrats had no stomach for hurting themselves. The ACLU and other organizations that are doing this can publicize how many signatures they got and lobby a lot more erfectively than I can. It's better than nothing. And, even if it isn't, why discourage people from trying to do whatever they can. Signing an online petition is not exactly a big sacrifice. (And I doubt wanting to see a prosecution was the motivation for PSPS's post anyway. JMO.)

I've also written my Senators and representative and hope everyone does the same.

BTW, posting at DU does not seem to do much either, in terms of effecting social or political change, yet you didn't stop. We all do what we can.

[Xipe Totec]

5. I've been awake (working) for 24 hours at a stretch

By the end of the third shift, I could not tell my ass from a hole in the ground.

If you asked me if 1 + 1 = broccoli, I'd say, "yeah, that sounds right..."

There is no fucking way you can get useful information from someone who's been awake for 11 days.

[No Elephants]

7. I was once worked from Friday morning to Tuesday morning after having worked all week. I

honestly have no idea why I was still alive Tuesday morning. It was Memorial Day weekend. I will never forget it as long as I live. By then, I might have killed for a bed, let alone lied.

[tocqueville]

9. the idea is to break down the person

the person won't be interrogated in that state. But afterwards, when back to a "normal" consciousness. The person might talk to avoid being subjected to the torture again and/or because his mental state is such that he/she thinks it's not worth resisting anymore, even if unconsciously he doesn't want to.

[No Elephants]

13. And that elicits unreliable info too. Doesn't matter whether your goal is to

end the torture or to avoid a recurrence. If you are hurt enough or afraid enough, the info is just as unreliable.

[TriplD]

15. I don't think the the idea was to get accurate intelligence

Regimes that use torture use it to produce propaganda. It's likely that they were torturing people into producing the "intelligence" needed to to do things like repeatedly raise the terror threat level.

If there's one thing the last 8 years has taught me it's that Republicans have no interest in uncovering facts, but would rather construct their own alternative reality. Torture was their tool.

[Ohio Joe]

16. Agreed

I've been awake for as long as three days working, doing disaster recovery/continuity management exercises. People deprived of sleep become... unstable and cannot be relied upon for anything really.

[Wednesdays]

19. K&R

:kick:

[Solly Mack]

20. K&R

[WriteDown]

21. Is that even possible?

http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/071114-llm-no-sleep.html

[yasmina27]

22. Not to excuse any of the tortuous methods, but

any mother of a sleepless infant and uninvolved father (because he's the one who has to go to work in the morning - feel free to switch the genders, if appropriate. Certainly this isn't limited only to mothers).

Our older daughter was a terrible sleeper. When I went back to work after 4 months off, she would sleep at most 2-3 hours per night. It got to the point where I was literally slurring my words and staggering like I was drunk. I actually walked right into a poll. When she was 8 months old, I decided finally that I had to "sleep-train" her. It was the worst night of my life, but it worked. She started staying asleep for up to 6 hours at a stretch. Heaven to me, even though I need at least 8 hours each night to feel human.

My point is that, if sleep deprivation was all they were doing, imo, not a big deal, unpleasant and awful though it may be.

As I said at first though, it in NO WAY excuses the other methods they used.

[applegrove]

23. 11 days without sleep could kill anyone. This is just sick. They must have allowed some sleep.

[WriteDown]

24. Actually, it WOULD kill anyone since that is the world

record. Story sounds a little embellished.

[Blandocyte]

25. Hell, the Stones stayed awake longer than that!

But seriously, that's just inhuman. There was no reason to do that kind of stuff to them. Maybe it was meant to be a deterrent to anyone the prisoner would tell back home, but it still stinks.