US torture techniques listed on Gestapo handbook: Ex-CIA analyst

Press TV has interviewed Ray McGovern, a Washington-based former CIA analyst, to discuss the calls by some Republican presidential candidates to revive torture, drawing criticism from the UN Special Rapporteur on torture.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. McGovern how concerned should we be about these Republican candidates and their views on torture?

McGovern: Well, it is a very unfortunate set of circumstances. The reason that they can get away with this kind of talk is because most Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that torture works; now torture does not work. Quite aside from the moral aspects of torture, the fact that it is wrong, it does not work. Now you do not have to believe Ray McGovern on that.

When George W. Bush on the 6th of September 2006 announced that “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be used against detainees and prisoners, to his great credit, not Bush, but General John Kimmons who was head of US Army intelligence got up on the same afternoon and this is what he said; he was asked whether torture works and if you ban torture, would you be deprived of intelligence that could be gotten from torture? General Kimmons said this: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.” Now, this was September 6th, 2006, minus 5, you got 2001 when our government under Cheney and Bush started to torture folks.

Now, this is very important because it is true and all intelligence people know that it is true you cannot get reliable information from torture. However, there is a situation where torture can work like a charm and that is if you want unreliable information. What do I refer to? Well, sadly if you wish to connect Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda, you can torture a prisoner into confessing that. I am not making this up; that is precisely what was done.

So that is the only connection in which torture works to that very deceitful end of getting a false confession and then proving because he said it that there are ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which of course there were not.

Now let me also say because it needs to be said, that there are a whole series of international conventions and laws against torture and those laws clearly define what constitutes torture. Now, those laws will make it illegal, but they do not make it wrong. It is wrong because it is intrinsically evil; it is jus cogens; it is like slavery; it is like rape, always wrong. So it is not wrong because of the laws; the laws are there because it is just plain wrong and it is very, very sad to see presidential candidates bragging about the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" when they probably do need to realize that "enhanced interrogation techniques" is a direct translation of what is found in the Gestapo handbook... which means Verschärfte Vernehmung; that was the rubric. I have the Gestapo handbook and what techniques were listed under that? The same ones that were used in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere with a few enhancements.

So that is how bad it is; that is how wrong it is; that is how illegal it is and that is how ineffective it is.

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