You can’t say the press didn’t warn us. A year before the invasion of Iraq, The Wall Street Journal sent an enterprising reporter to the U.S. Army’s interrogation school in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. His report, published on April 26, 2002, describes an instructor telling his class of freshmen, many under the age of 20, that the job of extracting information from captive foes “is just a hair’s-breadth from being an illegal specialty under the Geneva Convention.”
WSJ’s Jess Bravin, now a senior special writer who covers legal affairs, wrote that “human intelligence collectors” — the Pentagon name for interrogators — “are authorized not just to lie, but to prey on a prisoner’s ethnic stereotypes, sexual urges and religious prejudices, his fear for his family’s safety, or his resentment of his fellows.” Bravin’s visit to the Army interrogation school was prompted by concerns over treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo who were designated as al Qaeda “enemy combatants.” But his report sheds light on the roots of the current prisoner scandal in Iraq.
Soldiers at the interrogation school “study 30 techniques to make prisoners crack.” Some involve incentives, like offering cigarettes. “If you’ve ever talked to a captured Arab who hasn’t smoked for two hours, a pack of smokes can get you a long way,” the instructor is quoted as saying. Other techniques intend to terrify prisoners. The “fear-up” technique consists of “heavy-handed, table-banging violence,” according to an Army field manual, Bravin reports. “The interrogator behaves in a heavy, overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice” and may “throw objects across the room to heighten the source’s implanted feelings of fear.”
The students receive “a day’s training in the Geneva conventions of 1949,” which govern what is allowed during interrogations of wartime prisoners. Because treatment is open to interpretation even according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Bravin writes, interrogators are encouraged to exploit that possibility:
Thus, Sgt. Giersdorf tells students, “You can put a source in any position you want. You can chain his legs to the chair, you can handcuff his hands behind him,” force him to stand at attention or have military police thrust him to the ground. “If [a prisoner] says it hurts, is it torture?”
“Yes,” say several students.
“No, it’s not,” the sergeant corrects. America’s allies, he says, go father, placing prisoners into what he calls “stress positions” until they talk. Those aren’t taught here, he is quick to add, but “if you work with the Brits or the Dutch or the Germans, they can show you all about it.” In an interview, he says, “I’ve known people in the U.S. Army who have used stress positions.”
Bravin reports that “students are starting to get a feel for the job.” And he ends the article with this chilling, wink-wink detail:
“While you’re talking to a source, can you load a gun or sharpen a knife?” one soldier asks eagerly.
“Don’t get caught doing it,” Sgt. Giersdorf replies. “I mean,” he corrects himself, “don’t do it.”
