CIA reveals rules on harsh tactics

WASHINGTON - As the session begins, the detainee stands naked, except for a hood covering his head. Guards shackle his arms and legs, then slip a small collar around his neck.

The collar will be used later; according to CIA guidelines for interrogations, it will serve as a handle for slamming the detainee's head against a wall.

After removing the hood, the interrogator opens with a slap across the face - to get the detainee's attention - followed by other slaps, the guidelines state. Next comes the head-slamming, or "walling," which can be tried once "to make a point," or repeated again and again.

"Twenty or thirty times consecutively" is permissible, the guidelines note, "if the interrogator requires a more significant response to a question." And if that fails, there are far harsher techniques to be tried.

Five years after the CIA's secret detention program came to light, much is known about the spy agency's decision to use harsh techniques, including waterboarding, to pry information from suspected al-Qaeda leaders. Now, with the release Monday of guidelines for interrogating high-value detainees, the agency has provided - in its own words - the first detailed description of the step-by-step procedures used to systematically crush a detainee's will to resist by eliciting stress, exhaustion, and fear.

The guidelines, along with thousands of pages from other newly released documents, also show how the CIA gradually imposed limits on the program and eliminated some of the most controversial practices after the agency's medical advisers protested.

Still, by Dec. 30, 2004, the date of the CIA memo that outlines the guidelines to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, agency interrogators had grown adept at using sleep deprivation, stress positions, and sometimes multiple methods to create a "state of learned helplessness and dependence."

"Certain interrogation techniques place the detainee in more physical and psychological stress and, therefore, are considered more effective tools," according to the memo, released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Amnesty International USA and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The CIA yesterday declined to comment on the memo, written by an agency lawyer whose name was redacted. But agency spokesman George Little noted that the interrogation program operated under guidelines approved by top legal officials of the Bush administration's Justice Department.

"This program, which always constituted a fraction of the CIA's counterterrorism efforts, is over," Little said. "The agency is, as always, focused on protecting the nation today and into the future."

CIA officials also have noted that harsh techniques were reserved for a small group of top-level suspects believed to be knowledgeable about the 9/11 attacks. Agency officials believe the methods prevented attacks.

As outlined in the memo, the agency's psychological assault on the detainee would begin immediately after his arrest. With blindfolds and earmuffs, he would be "deprived of sight and sound" during the flight to the CIA's secret prison. He would have no human interaction, except during a medical checkup.

In the initial days of detention, an assessment interview would determine whether the captive would cooperate willingly by providing "information on actionable threats." If no such leads were volunteered, a coercive phase would begin.

The detainee would be ushered into a world of constant bright lights and high-volume "white noise" at levels up to 79 decibels, comparable to a passing freight train. He would be shorn, shaved, stripped of his clothes, fed a mostly liquid diet, and forced to stay awake for up to 180 hours.

"Establishing this baseline state is important to demonstrate to the [detainee] that he has no control," the memo states.

Interrogations at CIA prisons occurred in special cells outfitted on one side with a plywood wall, to prevent severe head injuries. According to the agency's interrogation plan, the nude, hooded detainee would be placed against the wall and shackled. Then the questioning would begin.

"The interrogators remove the [detainee's] hood and explain the situation to him, tell him that the interrogators will do what it takes to get important information," the document states.

If there is no response, the interrogator would use an "insult slap" to immediately "correct the detainee or provide a consequence to a detainee's response." If there is still no response, the interrogator could use an "abdominal slap," or grab the captive by his face, the memo states.

Each failure would be met with increasingly harsher tactics. After slamming a detainee's head against the plywood barrier multiple times, the interrogator could douse him with water; or deprive him of toilet facilities and force him to wear a soiled diaper; or make him stand or kneel for long periods while shackled in a painful position. The captive could also be forced into a wooden box for up to 18 hours at a stretch.

The agency's medical office appears to have been deeply skeptical of waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique that was suspended by 2004.

The menu of enhanced-interrogation techniques was reduced from about a dozen to six, according to a Justice Department memo.

The CIA said those techniques were "the minimum necessary to maintain an effective program."