old and new CIA tactics

The CIA has a long history of these types of abuses.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042104055.html
Harsh Tactics Readied Before Their Approval
Senate Report Describes Secret Memos
By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods -- and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded.

Previously secret memos and interviews show CIA and Pentagon officials exploring ways to break Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, up to eight months before Justice Department lawyers approved the use of waterboarding and nine other harsh methods, investigators found.


The findings are contained in a Senate Armed Services Committee report scheduled for release today that also documents multiple warnings -- from legal and trained interrogation experts -- that the techniques could backfire and might violate U.S. and international law.

One Army lieutenant colonel who reviewed the program warned in 2002 that coercion "usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain," according to the Senate report. A second official, briefed on plans to use aggressive techniques on detainees, was quoted the same year as asking: "Wouldn't that be illegal?"

Once they were accepted, the methods became the basis for harsh interrogations not only in CIA secret prisons, but also in Defense Department internment camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, the report said....

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Psychiatry and the CIA - Victims of Mind Control (Hardcover) by Harvey Weinstein “Dr Weinstein chronicles how he spent eight years fighting to help obtain justice for his father, who, along with eight other Canadians, was suing the CIA for negligence in its sponsorship of Dr Ewen Cameron's mind control experiments. That programme included lengthy periods of multiple electroshocks, hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, prolonged sensory deprivation, forced sleep, induced insulin comas, and psychic driving - an attempt to alter behaviour by forcing patients to listen to taped messages over and over again. In his book, Dr Weinstein describes his feelings of horror and helplessness while watching his father's health and personality be destroyed as he underwent Cameron's experimental protocol. "Psychiatry and the CIA: Victims of Mind Control" is Harvey Weinstein's personal account of the events at the Allan Memorial Institute. A chronicle of a medical scandal of horrific proportions, this book is also a story of government misconduct, deceit, and cover-ups. Dr Weinstein further raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary medicine to the abuse of patients in the context of repeated episodes of ethical transgressions during this century. (American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.; Revised edition (October 1990) ISBN-10: 0880483636) http://www.amazon.com/Psychiatry-CIA-Victims-Mind-Control/dp/0880483636