InTERRORgation:
The CIA's Secret Manual on Coercive Questioning

with an introduction by Jon Elliston

The Baltimore Sun forced the CIA to release its KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual in January 1997 with the threat of a FOIPA lawsuit. The 1963 manual reads like a backdrop to the Costa Gravas film State of Siege and other well-known tales of CIA torture-training, and should also be seen in the context of the CIA memo on "openness" recently surfaced by Greg Bishop's Excluded Middle zine. The good people at the Parascope web site have reprinted this as a magazine with its text-heavy form alleviated only by the original redactions. It's subject matter is absorbing, however, and revelatory in ways that exceed its look at the brutality of the intelligence world. It's reference to MKULTRA and mind control, for instance, should put it in the footnotes of most future books on the subject. For instance, the bibliography shows plainly that the CIA regarded the "confessions" of downed pilots in Korea as brainwash victims, and studied only the Communist brainwash techniques. No consideration that the pilots were telling the truth about US use of biowarfare. Such blind- sided logic provided the basis for MKULTRA. The bibliography also has reference to John Lilly, famed iso-tanker and ketaminonaut, who left MKULTRA when it began exploring electronic brain implants. "After presenting a short summary of a few autobiographical accounts written about relative isolation at sea (in small boats) or polar regions, the author describes two experiments designed to mask or drastically reduce most sensory stimulation. The effect was to speed up the results of the more usual sort of isolation (for example, solitary confinement). Delusions and hallucinations, preceded by other symptoms, appeared after short periods. The author does not discuss the possible relevance of his findings to interrogation." Fascinating, fascinating stuff, and just the smallest portion of what is available in InTERRORgation.

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