Word: cia
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Opponents of last week's release of memos detailing CIA interrogation techniques argue that they will provide enemies of the United States with a training manual to prepare their operatives for capture. The irony is that the U.S. military appears to have done the exact opposite, taking a training program that had been designed to prepare American soldiers to withstand torture by communist regimes seeking to extract false confessions and twisting it into a highly controversial interrogation manual...
...Although an executive summary of the report was released in December; the full version - which appears to have survived the Pentagon's declassification review with only mild redaction - will likely have much greater impact, coming on the heels of the CIA "torture memos" released last week...
...While much of the controversy over interrogation and detention practices at Guantánamo has centered on the CIA, the SASC report puts the spotlight firmly on the Pentagon - specifically on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his DOD lawyer Jim Haynes, his policy chief Douglas Feith, Guantánamo commanders Major General Michael Dunleavy and Major General Geoffrey Miller, and a raft of other DOD officials. It offers a detailed account purporting to show how these officials - some of them knowingly, others unwittingly - allowed SERE techniques to be used for interrogation. It suggests, too, that many SERE experts and military...
...December 2001, when the DOD's office of general counsel asked the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which oversees the SERE program, about detainee "exploitation." Within a few months, SERE trainers were training military interrogators bound for Gitmo. (The JPRA would also pass on its expertise to the CIA...
...meantime, the White House's public comments on these issues have remained noticeably vague. Last week, before announcing the release of once classified interrogation-technique memos and reaffirming his opposition to prosecuting CIA agents for any harsh methods, Obama issued a statement saying he was determined to "protect information that is classified for purposes of national security." During an appearance at the CIA on Monday, Obama declared, "I have fought to protect the integrity of classified information in the past and I will do so in the future...