CIA andTorture

The CIA's torture teachers

Psychologists helped the CIA exploit a secret military program to develop brutal interrogation tactics -- likely with the approval of the Bush White House.

WASHINGTON -- There is growing evidence of high-level coordination between the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military in developing abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorist suspects. After the Sept. 11 attacks, both turned to a small cadre of psychologists linked to the military's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program to "reverse-engineer" techniques originally designed to train U.S. soldiers to resist torture if captured, by exposing them to brutal treatment. The military's use of SERE training for interrogations in the war on terror was revealed in detail in a recently declassified report. But the CIA's use of such tactics -- working in close coordination with the military -- until now has remained largely unknown.

'Family Jewels' reveal CIA altered mind of four-year-old girl

EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities".

"Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."

Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest.

"We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects.

The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments.

U.S. Vote Could Close 'School of the Americas'
Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US

SAN FRANCISCO, Jun 21 (OneWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to take what advocates are calling a historic vote this week to close the largest U.S. military training ground for soldiers from Central and South America.

The vote comes on the initiative of Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA), who has offered an amendment to the Foreign Operations and Appropriations Bill that would prevent any U.S. tax dollars from funding the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Torture School

On Thursday night at 11:52 PM, Congress defeated the McGovern/Lewis amendment to cut the funding for the SOA/WHINSEC by a margin of six votes.