This Week:

Quote of the Week

What We Are Talking About At Abu Ghraib

“Outraged by the Outrage”

Who Was Dan Mitrione?
The Mind of a Torturer: “In My Profession, I'm the Best”

Greetings,

It’s a double issue of Nygaard Notes this week, and it’s all about torture. Everyone is talking about “the abuse scandal” – which is really the torture scandal – at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, so I thought I would get in on it, too. When I was young, just out of high school, I did a lot of reading about torture and the treatment of prisoners in the custody of the U.S. and its clients around the world. (Why? I don’t know.) That reading has served me in good stead in the years since.

For one thing, it has allowed to believe, much more readily than many in this country, the evidence that is currently being right before our eyes. It has been said that in order to really know someone, you need to know their secrets. I think that’s true, and one of the biggest “secrets” of the United States is our history of unbelievable cruelty and brutality in the creation and defense of our empire, from the beginning right up until the latest photos from Iraq. This history is not really “secret,” of course, being well-known to many people around the world, and even to those United Statesians who care to look. Still, most of us have chosen a passive ignorance, or an active denial, in the face of painful truths that are often placed right before our eyes.

I don’t want to believe that those U.S. soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison could be my father, my sister...or me. But that’s how war is, and that’s why what I have to say this week may sound, at first read, rather stark – even brutal. I apologize for that, but I think it takes a lot to break through the denial that comes through the media along with these photos and videos. And break through it we must, if we want to change things.

Until next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

A.J. Langguth is the author of a 1978 book called “Hidden Terrors,” about the Central Intelligence Agency in Latin America. Something he published in an opinion piece in the June 11, 1979 New York Times is relevant to today’s headlines, so I will quote it at some length:

“A few months ago, I received some clippings of interviews with a former Federal Intelligence agency official. That operative, Jesse Leaf, had been involved with the agency’s activities in Iran, and well into the stories
Mr. Leaf made some damning accusations.

“He said that the C.I.A. sent an operative to teach interrogation methods to SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, that the training included instructions in torture, and the techniques were copied from the Nazis.

“Reading through the clippings, I could think of several reasons why the accusations had not been featured prominently. Mr. Leaf could not, or did not, supply the name of the instructor, his victims would be hard to locate; and the testimony from opponents of the Shah would be suspect.

“But there is still another reason that I take to be the truest one: We – and I mean we as Americans – don’t believe it. We can read the accusations, even examine the evidence and find it irrefutable. But, in our hearts, we cannot believe that Americans have gone abroad to spread the use of torture.

“We can believe that public officials with reputations for brilliance can be arrogant, blind or stupid. Anything but evil. And when the cumulative proof becomes overwhelming that our representatives in the C.I.A. or the Agency for International Development police program did in fact teach torture, we excuse ourselves by vilifying the individual men.”

With the change of just a few details this 25-year-old opinion piece could run in today’s New York Times. But will it?

What We Are Talking About At Abu Ghraib

1. Here is the Oxford English Dictionary on “torture”: The infliction of severe physical or mental suffering, anguish, agony, torment. To inflict severe mental or physical suffering on; cause anguish in; torment.

2. From the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (1984), Article 1:

“For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

3. Those were official definitions. And here are a few excerpts from a piece that was heard on National Public Radio’s ‘Fresh Air’ this week (and reprinted in adapted form in the May 20th edition of New York Newsday). It was written by Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at Stanford University:

“‘Torture is torture is torture,’ Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week in an interview on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with Chris Wallace.”

“That depends on what papers you read. The media in France, Italy and Germany have been routinely using the word ‘torture’ in the headings of their stories on the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison. And so have the British papers, not just the left-wing Guardian (‘Torture at Abu Ghraib’), but the right-wing Express (‘Outrage at U.S. Torture of Prisoners’) and Rupert Murdoch's Times (‘Inside Baghdad's Torture Jail’).

“But the American press has been more circumspect, sticking with vaguer terms such as ‘abuse’ and ‘mistreatment.’ In that, they may have been taking a cue from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Asked about torture in the prison, he said, ‘What has been charged so far is abuse, which is different from torture. I'm not going to address the “torture” word.’

“...But [what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison] was torture, not just by the definitions of the Geneva Conventions, but by any ordinary standards of decency. Torture is torture is torture, as Secretary Powell put it – it isn't a place to be drawing fine semantic distinctions.”

4. This final bit is from CNN on May 11, in a story headlined “Legal definitions of torture not black and white.” Here are the lead paragraphs: “Defining torture isn't always an easy task. Human rights groups see bright lines that should not be crossed: Torture, humiliation and cruelty, they say, are prohibited under domestic and international laws. But those laws and conventions intentionally don't provide military or intelligence officers with specific direction on the pressure techniques that are allowed, leaving wide gray areas in what is legal. That means key judgment calls are often left up to individuals who may make spot decisions, according to Army documents.”

“Outraged by the Outrage”

“Although abhorrent to many, even to some of its silent, acquiescent partners, lynching was not an aberration in American race relations. Rather, it served as an extreme reminder of the unreasoning power the basest passions, fears, and hatreds of white Americans could exercise over the lives and humanity of black Americans. For ‘the ultimate goal of lynchers,’ as Ralph Ellison reflected in Going to the Territory (1986), ‘is that of achieving ritual purification through destroying the lynchers’ identification with the basic humanity of their victims. Hence their deafness to cries of pain, their stoniness before the sight and stench of burning flesh...’ At issue, then, in historical terms and the imaginative terms of African American literature, is lynching's ritual capacity to define and annihilate the humanity of the black victim and that of every last member of his or her race, symbolically or, if necessary, literally.”

-- John F. Callahan, From The Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

There were many remarkable comments heard during last week’s hearings on “prison abuse” by the U.S. in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (and the word “abuse” is the official spin on the scandal; it was and is more accurately called torture, as defined in many international agreements; see above.) Among the many remarkable comments, the words of one senator, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, stand out. He said, according to a May 12 report in the Washington Post,

“As I watch this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners . . . I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.” Inhofe told fellow Armed Services Committee members investigating the treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, “You know, they're not there for traffic violations.” In the cells where the primary abuse took place, “they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents.” The Post quoted him as saying that “many of [them] have American blood on their hands.”

The Post reported on the following day that “Talk radio hosts hailed Inhofe, as did 10 Republican colleagues (by his count) to his face and a host of big-name conservatives.”

“‘I just felt he put the situation in perspective and that it took a lot of courage to do so,’ says Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation. Weyrich, who hosts a Wednesday morning gathering of conservatives that Inhofe often attends, touted the senator's remarks at the weekly meeting yesterday. The gathering of 65 broke into applause.

“Inhofe's office received 5,500 e-mails Tuesday – up from about 100 on a typical day – and about 70 percent of those were supportive, he says. ‘One of the consistent strains was, it's about time someone said something,’ Inhofe says.”

Were Inhofe and the “big-name conservatives” to face the reality that what we are seeing in Abu Ghraib is torture, then they would have to also face the reality that, on October 21, 1994, the United States became a State Party to (that is, signed and ratified) the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” Article 2, section 2 of that Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

“They’re Not There For Traffic Violations”

Here’s the headline from the Los Angeles Times, May 11, page 11: “Iraq Prison Scandal; Most ‘Arrested by Mistake’; Coalition Intelligence Put Numbers at 70% to 90% of Iraq Prisoners, Says a February Red Cross Report, Which Details Further Abuses.”

And here’s the lead paragraph: “Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year ‘had been arrested by mistake,’ according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year. The ICRC summary report, which was written in February, also said Red Cross officials had complained to senior military officials that families of Iraqi suspects usually were told so little that most arrests resulted ‘in the de facto “disappearance” of the arrestee for weeks or even months.’”

Now, in the May 19th New York Times, we read that the U.S. government tried to keep the Red Cross out of the Abu Ghraib prison. (Headline: “Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits To Prison In Iraq; Action in 2003 Called Response to Abuse Report.”)

The bad news here is, I think, obvious: The U.S. is trying to do, on the international level, what lynching tried to do on the national level after the Civil War. That is, our government and military are trying to destroy the lynchers’ identification with the basic humanity of their victims, in this case the Iraqi people. More bad news is that there are significant parts of the population of this country that seem ready to join the mob. On the good news side, the U.S. government saw the need to attempt to prevent the Red Cross from seeing and potentially reporting on the torture of the Iraqi prisoners, which means that the voices of those of us who do not want to be a part of the mob are being heard in high places. This is good news, not only for the Iraqi people, but also for the soul of our own country, and for anyone in the world who opposes the Bush Doctrine of attacking anyone, anywhere, anytime, without proof.

Who Was Dan Mitrione?

In my informal survey over the years, very few people have ever heard of Dan Mitrione. Or, if they have heard of him, they have long since forgotten what they heard. Too bad, since those who know about Dan Mitrione are likely to have a much easier time understanding the recent headlines from Iraq than those who do not know this history.

One can find a mention of Dan Mitrione in official U.S. government documents. For example, on the website of the United States State Department, in the Office of the Historian’s Bureau of Public Affairs is a page called “Historical Background: Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology.” It’s a truly remarkable document, neglecting as it does to mention a single incident of terrorism perpetrated by the United States. That may seem strange, but it’s entirely understandable once one understands that, according to the laws and attitudes of the United States of America, the United States government cannot, by definition, commit acts of terrorism. Here’s the law, from Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d): “The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”

The key word here is “subnational.” That is, governments. by definition, cannot commit acts of terrorism.

Anyhow, back to the State Department list. If one scrolls down to Item #6 on the list, one reads of the following Significant Terrorist Incident: “U.S. Agency for International Development Adviser Kidnapped, July 31, 1970: In Montevideo, Uruguay, the Tupamaros terrorist group kidnapped AID Police adviser Dan Mitrione; his body was found on August 10.”

It so happens that one of the first books I read after I got out of high school was a book called “The Tupamaro Guerrillas,” by Maria Esther Gilio. Published in 1970 (with a translation to English published in 1972), this book told the story of the urban guerrilla movement in Uruguay, with the Tupamaros being “[p]erhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen...” according to William Blum in his book “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.”

The Tupamaros attempted to put into practice the theories of the Brazilian Carlos Marighela, the so-called “father of urban guerrilla warfare,” and had some degree of success in Uruguay, a former democracy that, by the late 1960s, had come to resemble a police state. Uruguay in 1970 had become a source of worry for the Nixon administration in light of events in nearby Chile, where the socialist Allende had just been elected. The connection to Brazil is important, as that country was the first Latin American stop for Dan Mitrione.

A small-town police chief from Indiana, Dan Mitrione ended up working for the United States Agency for International Development, or AID, in their Office of Public Safety, an office with strong ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. After spending several years in Brazil, Mitrione had become an expert on the techniques of torture. He then moved over to Uruguay. Torturing political prisoners in Uruguay had existed before Mitrione's arrival, to be sure, but Mitrione played a crucial role in institutionalizing it, to the point where he eventually became known as “one of the greatest torturers in the entire history of that country.”

Mitrione became such a symbol of oppression that he was eventually kidnapped by the Tupamaros. In exchange for his release, they demanded that the Uruguayan authorities release some 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, “with the determined backing of the Nixon administration,” refused. On August 10th, 1970, Mitrione’s body was found in the back seat of a stolen car.

Was Mitrione Simply a “Bad Apple”?

After the killing of Dan Mitrione, the Tupamaros released a recording of his interrogation during his ten days in captivity. Large parts of the transcript appear in the 1978 book “Hidden Terrors” by A.J. Langguth. The following is from Chapter Nine.

Asked by a young Tupamaro about the “important” work that Mitrione had done in the U.S. before coming to Latin America, the conversation went like this:

Mitrione: “I think it’s a matter of what—what is important. It was advisory. Advisory—”
Tupamaro: “Yes?”
M: “We used to advise the men who came to the States in the latest techniques. Of course, this has been going on for, oh, gosh, twenty years.”
T: “Twenty years?”
M: “Yeah, at least.”
T: “That must be around—?”
M: “Because I remember some people from Iran and Tunisia and every place, over twenty years ago.”

Over twenty years ago. That would mean that the U.S. was training foreign agents in torture techniques at least as far back as 1950. That surprised me when I read it in 1978, but I was just learning. It would have been no surprise to those who had been paying attention to U.S. foreign policy before that. They already knew about the U.S. sponsoring and teaching torture in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Vietnam in the 1060s, and in many other countries in many other years.

So, who was Dan Mitrione? He was only one – although a highly-accomplished one – in a long line of U.S.-trained and -sponsored terror teachers, one small part of a legacy that is well-known in the countries who have felt the impact of our brutal policies since World War II, and almost unknown here. If it were more well-known here, perhaps it would not be so difficult for United Statesians to put words to the reality that they are seeing right before their eyes.

The Mind of a Torturer: “In My Profession, I'm the Best”

It’s very difficult for most people to understand the mind of a torturer. With that in mind, I want to pass along a brief summary of a conversation between U.S. torture-trainer Dan Mitrione and Cuban double agent Manuel Hevia Cosculluela.

I have Hevia’s book in front of me as I write. It’s called “Pasaporte 11333: Ocho años con la CIA,” (“Passport 11333: Eight years with the CIA.”) and it has an appendix called, simply, “Dan Anthony Mitrione.” In this appendix Hevia tells of a three-hour conversation between he and Mitrione in the winter of 1970. It’s a rare look into the mind of a “regular guy,” a small-town police chief from Indiana, and how he thinks about his job as an instructor in the art of torture.

Mitrione considered “interrogation” an art, he told Hevia. And Hevia’s report continues in the following words, as translated by A.J. Langguth:

“First, there is a time of softening up the prisoner. The object is to humiliate him, to make him understand that he is completely helpless and to isolate him from the reality outside this cell. No questions, just blows and insults. Then blows in total silence.

“After all that, the interrogation begins. Now the only pain should come from the instrument you've chosen to use.

“Mitrione said, ‘The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount to achieve the effect.’

“During the session, you must avoid letting a person lose all hope of life. If you push too far, they become resigned to die. Mitrione: ‘Always leave them some hope, a distant light.’

“Manuel quotes Mitrione as continuing: ‘When you get what you want, and I always get it, it might be good to keep the session going a little longer with more hitting and humiliation. Not to get information now but as a political instrument, to scare him away from any further rebel activity.’

“After that, he told me that, when you receive a subject, the first thing to do is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, through a medical examination. ‘A premature death,’ Mitrone emphasized, ‘means a failure by the technician.’

“Another important thing to know is exactly how far you can go, given the political situation and the personality of the prisoner. Dan was really excited. He needed the kind of audience he had found in me. He continued, ‘It is very important to know beforehand whether we have the luxury of letting the subject die.’ It was the only time in all those months that his plastic eyes sparkled.

“Finally he concluded: ‘Before all else, you must be efficient. You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more. We must control our tempers in any case. You have to act with the efficiency and cleanness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist. This is a war to the death. Those people are my enemy. This is a hard job, and someone has to do it. It's necessary. Since it's my turn, I'm going to do it to perfection.

“'If I were a boxer, I would try to be the world champion. But I'm not. But though I'm not, in this profession, my profession, I'm the best.’”