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The science of torture - NSA agent officer experiences experimental water torture.

"The most dangerous thing about torture, its acceptance," from a piece central to human rights activist, Andrei Sakharov.

We hear much about waterboarding, about the abject fear and the dehumanization of prisoners. Our people want to elicit information from the enemy, but there are other reasons for torture - an attempt to establish superiority, the bully in the room or pictures of torture sent to a loved one. Do small minds want to establish their position as just plain sadistic.

There is much controversy over the efficacy of torture…any type of torture - if a person is under severe stress, do they tell the truth. Does torture accomplish anything. No one can be sure - even with their own people, even when it’s an experiment they call research.

The word has been out for some time that our government tried all sorts of drugs on their own people to survey the results - like Frank Olson who was given LSD and jumped to his death from a window. But it is unusual to hear the details of actual personal experiences of experiments of torture - both physical and psychological. We will do that here.

You probably want a date but it’s impossible to state when this took place - it could have been in the 1970’s or 80’s. This was a situation involving water - a tank, not a pool, maybe 12 or more feet across, maybe 12 feet deep - filled with black water. For some people (myself included) there is something mortally terrifying about a confined space of black water. Maybe the water will go down and out and so will you, sucked into a black death. And in an empty room, in a void of a building, ink black, no lights to reflect on the lapping water, no steps or ladder out, no visible doors, no blackened windows.  No odors, no shadows, no hot or cold, only wet. It could have been a vat used for wine-making in the 1400’s, or a scuba training tank - business closed, lights out for the night….but now there is nothing to establish any sense of time, or place…and nothing French, Chinese or American - just bottomless water.
 
That’s just it - if you’re in there, you lose your sense of person, nothing to relate to, nothing to stand on - after a while, even water doesn’t feel like anything. If you are the enemy, you start out angry, but hate dissipates almost immediately…you lose everything; you have nothing. You start out cocky, you think this is going to be easy, until it isn’t…until you know it’s time to go home and you don’t - you’re sure they’ll come back for you but no one does.

You would give anything to see something, hear another human - even if you yell out, swear, shriek, there’s no one to hear you. You are dead.

Sensory deprivation and loss of …

There is one man in the tank, floating, clinging to some kind of buoy. He’s surrounded by silence. He wears a plastic suit; tubes and wires monitor his blood pressure and heart rate. He has to urinate; he wears a catheter. Better not be hungry and no water to drink - plenty of it but all black. This NSA agent told me, “It’s the strangest sensation, (you) feel it in your balls; you know the testicles are just floating around in the scrotum…you lose track of time, maybe hours, maybe days, yes, days I think.” His words from Page 341, “Blue Group,” by Charlotte Wilson, 2004 - a biography, not a novel. “They expect you to hallucinate - I didn’t,” he told me.

“The failings of truth serums have been known for decades. Real interrogation is a much more unpleasant process. Interestingly the common view that physical torture is optimal is incorrect. It is hard to interrogate someone who is unconscious. By far the most successful techniques are altering the victims mental state not by pain but by giving them a distorted view of the world.” Steven Spielberg - damninteresting.com/?p=223  

Alone in the water tank, if he (the NSA agent) called out, he might not be sure he was even speaking - what is sound in a soundless place - freak out, or hold tight, he's not clear if it’s his memory or tricks of the mind. Do they hear someone out there speaking, asking them questions or do they hear the silence, only begging to speak.

The agent’s cover was that of a musician, but he was never a singer. However, in the tank, he passed the time by singing - he was the detainee, but his handlers became his prisoners.

The agent was Frederic DeLis. He joined up as a CIA agent in 1949 when he was not yet 18, changed over when the NSA began, and retired in 1993. He was not an analyst or bureaucrat; he was a problem solver. Even these agents were tested - the usual drug sampling, as well as psychological experiments. All can be rats in a cage.

Richard Helms was Frederic’s good friend, but friendship carried no privileges - he was tested just the same.

“We were told the Russians were using the water tank for torture.” If there was brutality, they were always told some other country did it first. Maybe a lame cover-all for everything but Frederic witnessed a Russian execution - he knew many things first hand. 

And always the elements of surprise, “You never knew if it was a test, or just some of the constant training, only now, maybe the real thing.” This was always a life punctuated by uncertainty. Once “some masked terrorist types broke in, many weapons, a lot of yelling; we didn’t think it was real; then a sergeant with us got a rifle butt in his face. Even afterward, we never did know for sure.”

“Again and again, if we were caught, we were told to tell - not to use the word confess, but tell them what they wanted if we knew. Our people said information could always be changed, even a weapon design could be modified, or a formula altered - don’t give them an opportunity for torture - just tell. They didn’t want to lose us - information wasn’t that important - just tell…and the others (the enemy, other countries) would do the same.”

Frederic frequently commented on the authenticity of movies, “the enemy doesn’t just torture people without reason,” like pulling out George Clooney’s fingernails in "Syriana." "The guy’s walking along the street, next they’re torturing him - that wouldn’t actually happen, no gratuitous torture. If they wanted to get rid of him, they would have killed him - there has to be some point to torture.”

The history of torture is as long as humankind - we are the dysfunctional human family. Technology advances, we know that; so should our abilities to interact. Waterboarding has become common-speak in this current climate. While other countries look at us, do they still maintain those ethics of “yes-tell,” or has torture become so commonplace that even “telling” may not save your life. Death is way too everyday.

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Discussion of "sensory deprivation" in interrogations in Iraq by "The Washington Post." and KUBARK CIA manual. Torture manual for al-Qaida operatives, go to howstuffworks.com. Google MKultra but note the dates. Johnson's Russia List has good stuff. Also, it is rare anywhere to find an interview with a person who has been tortured, but here is one: from CBS and Anderson Cooper talking to Ahmad Batebi about his torture in Iran, note the video and pages of text.