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News and Views you don't have to lose:

Iraq Body Count: 11/15/05
Americans Killed: 2069
Americans Wounded: 15,477
Iraqi Dead: Est.:30,380
http://icasualties.org/oif/

US national security murders - really harsh interrogations

Comment: The following is my analysis of evidence of US national security murders.

Nov. 11, 2005 -- The House Government Operations Committee, under the chairmanship of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), held several days of hearings, beginning July 22, 1975, at which CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston was grilled about a Memorandum of Understanding, dated March 1, 1954, between the Justice Department and the CIA, exempting all CIA personnel from criminal prosecution for actions they undertook in the national security interest of the United States.

Early in 1962, Robert Kennedy was trying to prosecute a top Mafia boss, Sam Giancana, when he found the CIA interceding on Giancana's behalf. [2]

On Nov 1, 1975 after writing the letter to President Ford, Bill Colby was fired as CIA Director in what came to be known as the "Halloween Massacre." Colby was replaced by George H.W. Bush as CIA Director. As for Dick Cheney, when his mentor and boss, Don Rumsfeld was named as Secretary of Defense, he was promoted to White House Chief of Staff, where he would continue to preside over the coverup of the death of Frank Olson, a U.S. Army chemist.

Dr. Olson had died under mysterious circumstances in November 1953. He had plunged from a 13th-floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York City, at 2:30 in the morning of Nov. 28, while in the company of a CIA officer, Dr. Robert V. Lashbrook.

Dr. William Sargant, a noted British psychiatrist who had worked on secret MI5/MI6 and CIA mind control experiments from the 1940s through the 1970s

Sargant had learned that Frank Olson was acting deputy head of SO (Special Operations)....Sargant told me (Jeffrey Steinberg) he believed Frank Olson had witnessed murder being committed with the various drugs he had prepared.

Steve Saracco, during the course of his investigation, independently corroborated through sources in Israel, that the Mossad did study Frank Olson's death as a picture-perfect, deniable assassination.

In early May 2001, Eric Olson (Frank Olson's son) received an unexpected telephone call from one of his father's oldest friends and closest collaborators at Fort Detrick. Norman Cournoyer had served with Frank Olson during World War II, when the two men "had designed the protective gear worn by U.S. troops in the Normandy invasion in case they were met by biological weapons" (this quote is from Eric Olson's contemporaneous memo on his three-day meeting with Cournoyer).

Cournoyer had recently seen an April 1, 2000 New York Times Magazine story on the Olson case by Michael Ignatieff, and had decided, after much soul-searching, to provide Eric Olson with the missing pieces of the story behind the U.S. Government's murder of his father.

Among the things that Cournoyer revealed to Eric: First, sometime in 1946 or 1947, Frank Olson's career turned onto a "new path." He went to work for the CIA, and was drawn into a program euphemistically called "information retrieval." Under such exotic code-names as BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA, Olson, an expert in chemical and biological weaponry, was drawn into work on interrogation methods, designed to draw information from even the most tight-lipped targets. The drugs and other chemical techniques used in these programs were tied to the most extreme forms of interrogation techniques, often incorporating torture.

But beginning in 1950, according to Cournoyer, Olson began travelling abroad, taking part in live interrogations of "expendables," wartime Nazi criminals, suspected Soviet spies, and double-agents.

Cournoyer told Eric Olson that, following a trip to Europe in July and August of 1953, Frank Olson had come to him in confidence. Cournoyer still maintained his top secret security clearances, so Olson had no qualms about telling his friend that he had been eyewitness to more than one murder-by-interrogation. Cournoyer later told two German documentary filmmakers: "Frank told me, 'Norm, they went to extremes. Did you ever see a man die? I did. People being interrogated died.' He told me he was going to leave. He was getting out of the CIA."

Cournoyer also told Eric Olson that his father had said that he suspected that the United States had used biological weapons against North Korea, a charge later explored by two Canadian researchers in a book-length exposé.

Koch and Wech exposed secret CIA Cold War interrogation centers in West Germany, including a facility in Oberursel, north of Frankfurt, dubbed "Camp King." Here the CIA conducted torture/interrogation experiments on Nazi convicts and Soviet spies. Among the "advisors" working at "Camp King" was Professor Kurt Blome. Blome had been the Deputy Surgeon General of the Third Reich, responsible for all of the biological experiments conducted at concentration camps like Dachau. Blome had been arrested at the end of World War II and put on trial at Nuremberg, but under a secret U.S. Government program, "Operation Dust-Bin," had been recruited to teach the Americans how to conduct innovative interrogations.

According to Frank Olson's passport (he had been issued a diplomatic passport in 1950, another indication of his new CIA employment), he had made several trips to West Germany—to Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Berlin—between 1950-53. A careful review by Eric Olson of his fathers slides and home movies confirmed he had been at the CIA's clandestine headquarters for West Germany, at the old I.G. Farben headquarters in Frankfurt. In August 1953, he had been at the U.S. Army's headquarters in Berlin, where several top Soviet spies were being interrogated by the "rough boys."

Every bit of evidence compiled over the last 30 years now convinces Eric Olson that his father was murdered to prevent him from blowing the whistle on the torture, the drug experimentation, the employment of Nazi war criminals, and the possible use of biological weapons in the Korean War.

What is clear is that Dick Cheney played a pivotal role in the coverup of what has all the earmarks of a Government execution, aimed at protecting some of the darkest secrets of the Cold War. And if the past does illuminate the future, then the Frank Olson case sheds some important light on "the Vice President of torture," whose crimes did not begin with Abu Ghraib or even on Sept. 11, 2001.

1. http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3244cheney_olson_case.html

2. Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy, by Jim Marrs, p. 142

In a May 15, 1959 document written by Gen. Richard Stillwell as a member of a special presidential committee, US foreign policy outlined a new vision of the role of the US military in the world. This document, "Training Under the Matual Training Program" offered nothing less than a plan to provide nations ruled by a military elite with training an ideology supplied by Americans to protect the noncommunist world. [3]

3. Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy, by Jim Marrs., p. 302.

Yuri Nosenko

During 1964, Soviet Col. Nosenko defected to the CIA after working as a spy for the CIA for two years. When Nosenko defected he said he had important information for the Warren Commission, but he was never allowed to speak to them.

The CIA imprisoned Yuri Nosenko for three years to keep him from talking to the Warren Commission. CIA provided false evidence to the Warren Commission that indicated Oswald had contacted the Cuban and Soviet embassy's in Mexico prior to the Kennedy's assassination. Nosenko said -- based on two mental examinations made of Oswald -- the KGB found (Oswald)... "mentally unstable" ... and never considered recruiting him as a (KGB) asset/spy. [1]

Nosenko told the CIA that Oswald was never associated with Soviet Intelligence and they suspected he was associated with American Intelligence. He provided the CIA with the names of KGB spies as proof of he was a real defector. Nosenko's story was corroborated by one of the FBI's deepest secrets -- their own Soviet KGB defector, code named, Fedora. 1.

Nosenko was imprisoned in solitary confinement in an 8 X 8 foot cell for 1,277 days, had his teeth knocked out, and was subject to hostile interrogation and drugged, all violation civil rights granted to anyone on US soil. No one in the CIA has been tried for this crime. (Source: Plausible Denial by Mark Lane)

Nosenko underwent "hostile interrogation". He was put on a diet of weak tea, macaroni, and porridge, given nothing to read, a light was burning in his unheated cell twenty-four hours a day, and his guards were forbidden to speak with him or even smile. His isolation was so complete that Nosenko eventually began to hallucinate, according to CIA testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassination.[1]

1. Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy, by Jim Marrs, p. 131-132.

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Background:

Torture was taught by CIA

*Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras* *Agency denials refuted*

1/27/97 -- The CIA also declassified a Vietnam-era training manual called "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation -- July 1963," which also taught torture and is believed by intelligence sources to have been a basis for the 1983 manual.

Torture methods taught in the 1983 manual include stripping suspects naked and keeping them blindfolded. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, dark and soundproof, with no toilet.

The manual discourages physical torture, advising interrogators to use more subtle methods to threaten and frighten the suspect.

"While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use them," the manual's introduction states. The manual says such methods are justified when subjects have been trained to resist noncoercive measures.

Forms of coercion explained in the interrogation manual include: Inflicting pain or the threat of pain: "The threat to inflict pain may trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain."

A later section states: "The pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance.

"For example, if he is required to maintain rigid positions such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods of time, the immediate source of pain is not the `questioner' but the subject himself."

"After a period of time the subject is likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength."

Inducing dread: The manual says a breakdown in the prisoner's will can be induced by strong fear, but cautions that if this dread is unduly prolonged, "the subject may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to arouse him."

It adds: "It is advisable to have a psychologist available whenever regression is induced."

Getting a confession: Once a confession is obtained, "the pressures are lifted enough so that the subject can provide information as accurately as possible." The subject should be told that "friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates."

Solitary confinement and other types of sensory deprivation: Depriving a subject of sensory stimulation induces stress and anxiety, the manual says. "The more complete the deprivation, the more rapidly and deeply the subject is affected."

It cites the results of experiments conducted on volunteers who allowed themselves to be suspended in water while wearing blackout masks. They were allowed to hear only their own breathing and faint sounds from the pipes. "The stress and anxiety become almost unbearable for most subjects," the manual says.

In The Sun's series, Jose Barrera, a former member of Battalion 316 who said he was taught interrogation methods by U.S. instructors in 1983, recalled using the technique:

"The first thing we would say is that we know your mother, your younger brother. And better you cooperate, because if you don't, we're going to bring them in and rape them and torture them and kill them," Barrera said.

The manual suggests that prisoners be deprived of food and sleep, and made to maintain rigid positions, such as standing at attention for long periods.

Ines Consuelo Murillo, who spent 78 days in Battalion 316's secret jails in 1983, told The Sun that she was given no food or water for days, and that to keep her from sleeping, one of her captors entered her room every 10 minutes and poured water over her head.

Source: - Originally Published on 1/27/97.
The Baltimore Sun http://www.sunspot.net

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/usa/cia_torture_97.html

Former US Army Interrogator Describes the Harsh Techniques He Used in Iraq

15 November 2005 -- Tony Lagouranis is a former US Army interrogator in Iraq, at Mosul, and Abu Ghraib, in north Babel at FOB Calsu, at Al Asad Airforce base which is in the western desert in the north, and in Fallujah during the last offensive.

Amy Goodman: And the month you arrived at Abu Ghraib?

Tony Lagouranis: It was January of 2004. I arrived at Abu Ghraib, and as soon as we arrived there, the events that caused the scandal had already happened, in November of 2003.....

... in January of 2004, using a little bit harsher techniques. Like, they - if a prisoner wasn't cooperating, they could adjust his diet. People were in deep, deep isolation for months there, which I believe is illegal, according to Army doctrine. They would also take their clothes and their mattress so they would be cold in their cells if they weren't cooperating.

....According to this interrogation (written) rules of engagement, that was legal.

Amy Goodman: Naked?

Tony Lagouranis: I don't know if naked, but they would take blankets and take extra clothes that they would need to stay warm.

Amy Goodman: Tony, can you talk about the use of dogs?

Tony Lagouranis: We were using dogs in the Mosul detention facility which was at the Mosul airport. We would put the prisoner in a shipping container. We would keep him up all night with music and strobe lights, stress positions, and then we would bring in dogs. The prisoner was blindfolded, so he didn't really understand what was going on, but we had the dog controlled. He was being held by a military police dog handler on a leash, and the dog was muzzled, so he couldn't hurt the prisoner. That was the only time I ever saw dogs used in Iraq.

Amy Goodman: Did the prisoner know that there was a muzzle on the dog?

Tony Lagouranis: No, because he was blindfolded. So, the dog would be barking and jumping on the prisoner, and the prisoner wouldn't really understand what was going on.
Amy Goodman: What do you mean by really harsh methods?

Tony Lagouranis: Well, we were an army detention facility, and we would get prisoners from other units that were arresting people up there. For instance, the Navy SEALS.

When the Navy SEALS would interrogate people, they were using ice water to lower the body temperature of the prisoner and they would take his rectal temperature in order to make sure that he didn't die. I didn't see this, but that's what many, many prisoners told me who came out of the SEAL Compound, and I also heard that from a guard who was working in our detention facility, who was present during an interrogation that the SEALs had done.

Amy Goodman: Where is the SEAL Compound.

Tony Lagouranis: It was in the same place. It was at the Mosul airport, but I never actually went inside the compound myself.

Amy Goodman: Did you use hypothermia as a means of interrogating?

Tony Lagouranis: We did. Yeah, we used hypothermia a lot. It was very cold up in Mosul at that time, so we - it was also raining a lot, so we would keep the prisoner outside, and they would have a polyester jumpsuit on and they would be wet and cold, and freezing. But we weren't inducing hypothermia with ice water like the SEALS were. But, you know, maybe the SEALS were doing it better than we were, because they were actually even controlling it with the thermometer, but we weren't doing that.

...Amy Goodman: Did you ever deal with ghost detainees?

Tony Lagouranis: Sure. Yeah. That happened pretty often. ... the SEALS. Or the FBI would put somebody in the prison, and there were no records of what physical damage had been done to him, just nothing. There were no records of it, so it probably made abuse - you know, a lot more easy to do.

Tony Lagouranis: North Babel was probably the place where I saw the worst evidence of abuse. This was from August to October of 2004, so, it was well after the Abu Ghraib scandal. And we were no longer using any harsh tactics within the prison, but I was working with a marine unit, and they would go out and do a raid and stay in the detainee's homes, and torture them there. They were far worse than anything that I ever saw in a prison. They were breaking bones. They were smashing people's feet with the back of an axe head. They burned people. Yeah, they were doing some pretty harsh stuff.

Tony Lagouranis: Well, I was interrogating at the detention facility at Forward Operating Base, CALSU. I was getting prisoners that were arrested by Force Recon marines, and they - every time Force Recon went on a raid, they would bring back prisoners who were bruised with broken bones, sometimes with burns. They were pretty brutal to these guys, and I would ask the prisoners what happened, you know, how they received these wounds, and they would tell me that it was after their capture, while they were subdued, while they were handcuffed and they were being questioned by the force recon marines.

Tony Lagouranis: They were being punched, kicked, you know, hit with - as I said the back of an axe head. One guy was forced to sit on an exhaust pipe of a humvee. He had a giant blister, third degree burn on the back of his leg I would check out that story with other people that they had been arrested with, and they were consistent. So, I tended to believe what they were telling me.

----Amy Goodman: Time Magazine this week is reporting that CIA Interrogators apparently tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi ghost detainee who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib. Autopsy reports showed that the detainee, his name is Manadel al-Jamadi died of blunt force injuries and asphyxiation, believed to have suffocated after an empty sandbag was placed over his head while his arms were secured up and behind his back in a crucifixion-like pose.

To cover up the killing, blood was mopped up with chlorine before the scene could be investigated. A blood stained hood that covered his head disappeared. The CIA ruled the killing a homicide, the CIA Interrogator involved in his death remains free and continues to work at the agency.

Jamadi was being held in a secret part of the Abu Ghraib prison that's off-limits to international observer, including the Red Cross.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111605N.shtml

Bush Administration Thinks Abuse Sounds Better than Torture
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111605P.shtml
Robert Fisk writes that American journalists now refer to "abuse laws" rather than torture laws.... "Abuse sounds so much better, doesn't it? No screaming, no cries of agony when you're abused. No shrieks of pain. No discussion of the state of mind of the animals perpetrating this abuse on our behalf."

God's anger

During the 2004 campaign, God reminded Americans that Bush had stolen the 2000 Florida election by causing four hurricanes to smash into Florida. (Remember: Pat Robertson once prayed for hurricanes to smite Florida.)

To further drive home his anger at the stolen election, God took the leader (Rehnquist) of the cabal of Republican activist justices who had selected Bush. (Remember: Pat Robertson recently prayed for God to take a Supreme Court justice.)

God is clearly angry at America. After George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, God removed his protection from America (as several in-the-know televangelists loudly proclaimed at the time). This allowed the forces of Allah to successfully attack the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

To further punish Bush, God clouded Bush's mind so he retaliated against the wrong country.

Still America did not listen. So God recently caused more hurricanes to smash into Bush's base: the Confederate South.

If Americans want to get right with God, they will fall down on their knees and pray for forgiveness for their error in supporting Bush — and they will promise never to vote Republican again.


Comments by Gary Bennett, Emmett

http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051115/NEWS0502/511150346/1054

Iraqi Shiite police torture Iraqi Sunnis
16 November 2005 -- Baghdad - Iraq's government said Tuesday that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of the 173 Sunni Arabs detainees that were discovered by American troops over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in a Baghdad suburb A senior Iraqi official who visited the detainees said they had been tortured by Shiite police officers and jailers/captors. Two detainees appeared paralyzed and others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers.

Interior Ministry officials reported that the abused detainees appeared to have been mostly Sunni Arabs, and their abusers Shiite police officers loyal to the notorious Badr Organization, a militia with close links to Iran.

Comment: I wonder if they got any lessens from the CIA or US Army on how to torture?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111605K.shtml

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

Kenneth R. Brown, professor of biology at Brown University said, "Scientific theories are not hunches. When we say 'theory,' we mean a strong, overarching explanation that ties together many facts and enables us to make testable predictions."