Salon: Waterboarding out, sensory deprivation in at CIA

Raw Story
Thursday June 7, 2007 

In order to comply with the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which outlaws "tough" interrogation techniques, President Bush is expected "to issue an executive order that will set new ground rules for the CIA's secret program for interrogating captured al-Qaida types," according to Salon.

It is thought that the order will do away with waterboarding as a permissible interrogation technique, which means, reports Mark Benjamin, sensory deprivation is likely to become the preferred choice for CIA interrogators.

"The technique has already been employed during the 'war on terror,' and, Salon has learned, was apparently used on 14 high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay," writes Salon.

If the White House does turn to sensory deprivation, there may be little Congress can do to stop it, says Salon.

Excerpts from the Salon report follow:

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The benign-sounding form of psychological coercion has been considered effective for most of the life of the agency, and its slippery definition might allow it to squeeze through loopholes in a law that seeks to ban prisoner abuse. Interviews with former CIA officials and experts on interrogation suggest that it is an obvious choice for interrogators newly constrained by law.

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"I'd be surprised if [sensory deprivation] came out of the toolbox," said A.B. Krongard, who was the No. 3 official at the CIA until late 2004. Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about the history of CIA interrogation, agrees with Krongard that the CIA will continue to employ sensory deprivation. "Of course they will," predicted McCoy. "It is embedded in the doctrine." For the CIA to stop using sensory deprivation, McCoy says, "The leopard would have to change his spots." And he warned that a practice that may sound innocuous to some was sharpened by the agency over the years into a horrifying torture technique.

Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. "The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline," explained McCoy. "I mean extreme hallucinations" of sight and sound. It is followed, in some cases within just two days, by what McCoy called a "breakdown akin to psychosis."

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