Pentagon Reports Confirm EIR's Assessment of "Spoon-Bender" Role in Prisoner and Torture and Abuse

June 1, 2007 (LPAC)--Two reports just declassified by the Defense Department, confirm key elements of a, on the role of the "Spoon-Benders," i.e., New Age Mind-War and psychological operations personnel and practices, in the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

* A review of previous DOD investigations of detainee abuse, conducted by the DOD's Inspector General, documents the role of psychologists and psychiatrists, and personnel from the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) program, in developing practices for interrogation and detainee handling at the Guantanamo prison camp, and then how these methods were taken to Iraq by the then-Commander at Guantanamo, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. SERE training is designed to teach U.S. military personnel who might be captured by the enemy how to resist interrogation and torture; their training methods -- including stress positions, sensory deprivation, and religious and sexual humiliation -- were "reverse-engineered" to be used on prisoners at Guantanamo and other locations in the "war on terror," to attempt to overcome their "resistance" to interrogation.

EIR's coverage had identified Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the center of special warfare/special operations training, as the center of these New Age "spoon-bender" operations. The Inspector General's report documents that a "SERE psychologist conference" was held at Fort Bragg in September 2002 for Guantanamo interrogators, including personnel from the Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team at Guantanamo. Shortly after this, the Guantanamo commander sought authorization to use such techniques as: "scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family; exposure to cold weather or water...; use of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation...."

* The DOD report, by the Intelligence Science Board on "Interrogation: Science and Art," a critical review of heavy-handed, "amateurish," and "ineffective" interrogation methods used in the "war on terror," contains a short section on what it calls "New Age Technologies" used in some interrogation training, such as "neurolinguistic programming" and "subliminal persuasion." Overall, this report concludes that there is no evidence showing that torture or physical coercion produce useful intelligence -- contrary to the claims of the Bush-Cheney Administration about such "enhanced" interrogation methods.

These reports were made public just as it is reported that the Administration is nearing completion of a new executive order which will set guidelines for "enhanced" interrogations by CIA personnel.