- "The sessions accelerated rapidly progressing quickly to the water board after large box, walling, and small box periods. [Abu Zubaydali] seems very resistant to the water board. Longest time with the cloth over his face so far has been 17 seconds. This is sure to increase shortly. NO useful informationso far.. ..He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It's been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed Ensure for a while now. I'm head[ing] back for another water board session."
- "Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-a-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic). Such language is not helpful."
- August 5, 2002: "want to caution [medical officer] that this is almost certainly not a place he's ever been beforein his medical career...It is visually and psychologically very uncomfortable."
• August 8, 2002: "Today's first session.. .had a profound effect on all staff members present.. .it seems the collective opinion that we should not go much further.. .everyone seems strong for now but if the group has to continue.. .we cannot guarantee how much longer."
• August 8, 2002: "Several on the team profoundly affected.. .some to the point of tears and chokingup."
• August 9, 2002: "two, perhaps three [personnel] likely to elect transfer" away from the detention site if the decision is made to continue with the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
• August 11, 2002: Viewing the pressures on Abu Zubaydah on video "has produced strong feelings of futility (and legality) of escalating or even maintaining the pressure." Per viewing the tapes, "prepare for something not seen previously."
top thread at HN pulls quotes > The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah, for example, became "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth." Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as evolving into a "series of near drownings. > Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation and, in at least two of those cases, the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation. > Contrary to CIA representations to the Department of Justice, the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take "precedence" over his medical care, resulting in the deterioration of a bullet wound Abu Zubaydah incurred during his capture. > CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families— to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to "cut [a detainee's] mother's throat." > At DETENTION SITE COBALT, detainees were often held down, naked, on a tarp on the floor, with the tarp pulled up around them to form a makeshift tub, while cold or refrigerated water was poured on them. Others were hosed down repeatedly while they were shackled naked, in the standing sleep deprivation position. These same detainees were subsequently placed in rooms with temperatures ranging from 59 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. > two detainees that each had a broken foot were also subjected to walling, stress positions, and cramped confinement, despite the note in their interrogation plans that these specific enhanced interrogation techniques were not requested because of the medical condition of the detainees. > CIA records indicate that Majid Khan cooperated with the feedings and was permitted to infuse the fluids and nutrients himself. After approximately three weeks, the CIA developed a more aggressive treatment regimen "without unnecessary conversation." Majid Khan was then subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day, Majid Khan's "lunch tray," consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins, was "pureed" and rectally infused. Additional sessions of rectal feeding and hydration followed.> Interrogation techniques such as slaps and "wallings" (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an "an open, non-threatening approach," or that interrogations began with the "least coercive technique possible" and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2orly7/senate_report_cia_misled_public_on_torture/cmpuy89 - committee's findings, summarized
He also said he hadn't actually read the report. Its full 6,000 pages haven't been released, but a lengthy summary was issued Tuesday. Cheney said he'd "seen parts of it. I read summaries of it." Contrary to the report's conclusion that Bush didn't know the extent of the CIA's efforts, Cheney said the President was involved in discussions about the interrogation techniques, and that Bush even pointed out some of those conversations in a book he wrote after leaving office. He said he has no regrets about the tactics used after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. "I think what needed to be done was done," Cheney said. "I think we were perfectly justified in doing it. And I'd do it again in a minute." Cheney is a dangerous sort of man. I know that Bush isn't an idiot, but I bet he would have been a different President with a different Vice President. It became clear near the end of his administration that Cheney was losing influence.Asked specifically about the rectal rehydration instance detailed in the report, Cheney said: "I don't know anything about that specific instance -- I can't speak to that."
what the fuck. what in the fuck. why? what the fuck is wrong with a lot of humans?
I think you may be taking the easy way out: "These people somehow rationalized doing evil." There is compelling evidence that any one of us would have done the very same thing. Milgram's subjects, apparently typical people, voluntarily agreed to take part in a one-time experiment. They must have known that they were free to walk out at any time, and the worst consequence they would face would be the loss of four dollars. They had no relationship to the experimenter. A camera recorded the scene, and one would expect that the results would be shared and published publicly. The subjects had good reason to believe that their actions were leading to the death of another human being, a regular person just like them who had also walked in off the street. Yet most were induced to continue merely by a man in a uniform intoning the words "the experiment requires that you continue." The subjects experienced considerable anguish, not unlike the CIA workers who were "profoundly affected" in August 2002. They had orders. Refusing to comply would likely affect their careers. They may have had reason to believe that they were saving lives by torturing a person. Torturing, yet not killing, a person who may have intended to harm and kill others. They were in hidden locations far from home, working for an organization known for keeping secrets, which discouraged them from talking about even their routine work with friends or family. I don't believe we have evolved enough in a half-century to imagine that any of us would have behaved more decently. We might ask "what the fuck is wrong with [most] humans," and we might also reflect on the consequences of appointing a subset of these same humans as institutionalized authority figures over others.
I imagine the Milgram subjects rationalized their button-pushing. But regardless I've always been pretty much stumped by the results he got. I admit to not having a good counterargument except, run the study fifty more times and see what happens. Has that study ever been replicated, or is it too famous to do so without bias? Those are "good" rationalizations [at least somewhat rational things to think, unlike "Arabs aren't people"], but are just that nonetheless. Maybe they make the CIA officers somehow "better" than the Milgramites, because the officers' reasons were better, but it doesn't make either of them right. It's hard to argue against the old "you aren't any better than they are" rebuttal. Human nature is murky and I don't have the time to devote to a real reply tonight (your email lies fallow as well -- I'll need a day or two more). Closing thought: a lot of people read summaries of this study today, or became aware it exists. Presumably, at least a few of them are in the CIA or thinking about joining the CIA. Most of them aren't going to quit, or stop pursuing their goal, or else the agency won't have any people in it in 2017. On the other hand, I and plenty of others wouldn't touch a career in the CIA with a ten-foot pole no matter what, not after this (and other things). What does that say about Milgram, and Guantanamo, and human nature? There have to be some people who wouldn't turn the voltage up (there were). They are allowed to be judgmental, I think.The subjects experienced considerable anguish, not unlike the CIA workers who were "profoundly affected" in August 2002. They had orders. Refusing to comply would likely affect their careers. They may have had reason to believe that they were saving lives by torturing a person. Torturing, yet not killing, a person who may have intended to harm and kill others. They were in hidden locations far from home, working for an organization known for keeping secrets, which discouraged them from talking about even their routine work with friends or family.
He left the lab to “check” on the learner, returning to reassure the teacher that the learner was OK. Instead of sticking to the standard four verbal commands described in accounts of the experimental protocol, Williams often abandoned the script and commanded some subjects 25 times and more to keep going. Teachers were blocked in their efforts to swap places with the learner or to check on him themselves. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/ I've always been troubled by Milgram. I've never really dug into it, though. Dunno. An n of 40 involving two actors probably wouldn't be considered serious research today. There's something there, but I'm not sure how much... it's like the Kitty Genovese thing: something horrible about human nature is in there somewhere, but it's never quite what they say it is.In listening to the original recordings of the experiments, it’s clear that Milgram’s experimenter John Williams deviated significantly from the script in his interactions with subjects. Williams – with Milgram’s approval – improvised in all manner of ways to exert pressure on subjects to keep administering shocks.
The slavish obedience to authority we have come to associate with Milgram’s experiments comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you listen to these recordings.
Thank you for this important corrective. In my haste to make my point, I did not stop to ask if Professor Milgram may have had a reason — perhaps immortality in Psych 101 textbooks — for telling a vivid story. I am sympathetic to your oft-expressed belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature. My arguments on this site in favor of freedom and market solutions depend on people generally wanting to work together and get along. The idea that some Teachers wanted to trade places with the Learner is especially comforting and gives me hope that I might have performed better than Fred Prozi is said to. Nevertheless, as you have acknowledged, people are not always good. Atrocities happen. It seems to me that whenever someone does shock their neighbor, choke out a suspect, waterboard a stranger, disappear students, or annihilate a genotype, and these things happen in an organized, methodical way, there is a common element in the scene: a bully in a uniform. This is a generality, of course, and there are exceptions. But I think we should recognize that the greatest harms have occurred under the auspices of people exercising legal authority.
I voted for your mention of Milgram. We ignore his findings at our peril. There's no doubt that humans are much worse to each other when they can displace their responsibility for atrocities. I wonder what it's cost us to have this truly important aspect of human behavior canonized by someone whose methods were as sensationalist as Milgram's. I'm not entirely sure we've learned.
Yes, and the famous Stanford experiments support this, too. But the caveat is that oversight and leadership can mitigate this effect. I think people have a strong tendency to follow the leader, and if the leader sets a good example, and there are consequences for not following the good example, then everyone can stay on the straight and narrow. Interestingly, according to the NYT, the CIA initially asked for prisons that could be run by the military or by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but they were rebuffed by Rumsfeld, who was apparently wary of having to report detention of prisoners to the ICRC, which is required under international law. Thus the saga of secrecy began: '“Rumsfeld took military bases off the table, so we started looking around at what became the black sites,” Mr. Rizzo recalled in an interview. “We brainstormed. Do we put them on ships? We considered a deserted island. It was born out of necessity. It wasn’t some diabolical plot.”'There is compelling evidence that any one of us would have done the very same thing.
So simple, it just might work.But the caveat is that oversight and leadership can mitigate this effect.... if the leader sets a good example, and there are consequences for not following the good example, then everyone can stay on the straight and narrow.
Authority figures can cause people below them to do evil. And the mitigation is to have authority figures over the authority figures.