October 2005

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Truth, Torture, and the American Way

Jennifer Harbury is the coordinator of the UUSC Stop Torture Campaign and will be this year's Pat Farren Lecturer for Peacework on October 20, 2005. Her most recent book, Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of US Involvement in Torture, Beacon Press, © 2005, is excerpted and edited below.

Today, it remains difficult to obtain all of the necessary information underlying the prisoner abuse which took place in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Yet without a full understanding of the problem and its roots and origins, needed reforms will remain elusive. This is precisely the situation we now face. Crucial documentary evidence is still classified under broad claims of "national security" and concealed in government files.

National leaders still insist that no actual torture ever occurred, or that if it did, such "abuses" were merely the acts of individual soldiers. Anonymous official sources, having made startling admissions on the subject to the press, tend to vanish when the time comes for congressional hearings or court testimonies. Meanwhile, access to many of the prisoners themselves remains limited. Taken together, these obstacles seriously hobble efforts to seek justice through the courts or genuine reforms through the legislature.

Many of the key questions raised [in the preceding chapter] can be answered, however, by the human rights documentation slowly emerging from the Dirty Wars of Latin America. Over a period of decades many government files have been declassified, shedding light on the startlingly close relationship between the CIA and the military death squads there. Meanwhile the few survivors of forced disappearances and torture have found the courage and strength to speak out about their experiences. So, too, some of the torturers have experienced a change of heart and have decided to tell the truth about what occurred, including the role played by the United States government.

Taken together, the testimonies and documentary evidence answer the pivotal question raised by the Abu Ghraib scandal. A review of the materials leads relentlessly to just one conclusion: that the CIA and related US intelligence agencies have since their inception engaged in the widespread practice of torture, either directly or through well paid proxies. In short, we are not dealing with any "bad apples" or rogue operators here, but rather something far more dangerous -- a rogue agency. Accordingly, legal responsibility goes all the way to the top.

The Central American Wars

There can be little doubt that the internal conflicts of the 1980s in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras involved some of the worst official human rights violations in recent hemispheric history. As the battle for economic and social justice raged between the landed gentry and the landless poor, local military regimes utilized rampant torture and terror to quell the uprisings. Civilian dissidents were dragged from their beds in the middle of the night and left dead and mutilated in public places as warnings to others. Church leaders were shot in their sacristies after crying out for mercy for their parishioners.

Entire villages vanished, with hundreds of men, women, and children tossed into unmarked mass graves during army raids. Meanwhile, military death squads combed the streets and countryside, carrying out "disappearances" and torture on a massive scale. Even today, the devastating psychological wounds inflicted on the general populations remain unhealed.

What role, precisely, did the United States play in these horrific campaigns? Our intelligence and defense communities provided massive amounts of economic aid, weapons, and military materiel to these regimes, despite their notorious and systematic human rights violations. Our agencies also worked closely with the Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran intelligence branches, giving extensive advice, support, and training in order to "professionalize" them.

US intelligence officials knowingly supported the carnage on two different levels: first, by their intimate partnership in and support for the day-to-day activities of intelligence death squads, and second, by their direct participation in cases of torture itself.

With regard to the first aspect, CIA, Special Ops, and other agents worked hand in glove with the deadly local intelligence services, funding their activities and helping them to plan raids, carry out surveillance, organize interrogations, and infiltrate human rights, religious, and other civilian networks. This was done with full knowledge of the ongoing kidnapping, torture, and murder of all "suspects." Simultaneously, the CIA operated a vast network of paid informants, or "assets," which included numerous local and well-known army torturers. US agents also chose to shield their intelligence contacts instead of reporting their abuses to the US Congress or to local courts or law enforcement agencies. This left the killers free to kill again. In short, when all the facts are mar-shaled, it seems clear that the conduct of our intelligence networks fell within the boundaries of illegal conduct.

With regard to the second aspect, a number of torture survivors have come forward to describe their experiences in Central America and throughout the hemisphere. In the twenty-some individual cases set forth below, an obvious North American was present in their torture cells. In some cases the man simply observed the torture and made recommendations about questions to be asked. In some, he actually supervised. In all of the cases the North Americans clearly had authority over the local military officials, but never used it to assist or rescue the victims. Instead, the agents obtained their desired information and left the prisoners to die. This direct participation, when coupled with the sizeable payments made for such brutally extracted intelligence, was unquestionably illegal. For this very reason, the CIA has long denied any such actions.

The substantial evidence and information about these practices, when taken together, make it disturbingly clear that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies fully intended for torture to be routinely utilized in obtaining intelligence. Various methods of physical and mental torture were carefully "refined" and put to use on a broad scale, from Vietnam to Brazil, to Guatemala, and now to Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the realities of the US legal prohibitions and treaties, however, the agencies also developed an extraordinary protective system of secrecy, deniability, and deception. This has permitted the problem to grow and to fester, all the while evading the curative powers of the courts and legislature.

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