History Brief Page: Torture Excerpts from The Washington Connection

Below are a few excerpts from:

Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. (Boston: South End, 1979).

... the United States has supplied the tools and training for interrogation and torture and is thoroughly implicated in the vast expansion of torture during the past decade. When Dan Mitrione came to Uruguay in a police advisory function, the police were torturing with an obsolete electric needle: 'Mitrione arranged for the police to get newer electric needles of varying thickness. Some needles were so thin they could be slipped between the teeth. Benitez [a Uruguayan police official] understood that this equipment came to Montevideo inside the U.S. embassy's diplomatic pouch.' [quoting A.J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors, Pantheon, 1978, p.251] Within the United States itself, the intelligence services were 'running torture camps,' as were their Brazilian associates, who 'set up a camp modeled after that of the boinas verdes, the Green Berets.' And there is evidence that U.S. advisors took an active part in torture, not contenting themselves with supplying training and material means.
(p. 4)

This role was played by Diem and Thieu in South Vietnam and is currently served by such allies as Mobutu in Zaire, Pinochet in Chile, and Suharto in Indonesia. Under frequent U.S. sponsorship the neo-fascist National Security State has become the dominant mode of government in the Third World. Heavily armed by the West (mainly the United States) and selected for amenability to foreign domination and zealous anti-Communism, counterrevolutionary regimes have been highly torture- and bloodshed-prone.
(p. 8)

Hideous torture has become standard practice in the U.S. client fascist states. ... 'endless whipping ... beating with fists, feet, and rifle butts... Prisoners ... beaten on all parts of the body, including dead and sexual organs ... bodies of prisoners ... found in the Rio Mapocho ... beyond recognition ... died as a result of the torture ... hands broken and his body badly mutilated ... kicked and beaten in front of other prisoners for approximately 40 hours before he was removed to a special interrogation room where he met his death ...' [quoting Amnesty International Report on Torture 206-7; discussion is of Chile after US-backed coup] Such horrendous details could be repeated for many thousands of human beings in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Indonesia, U.S.-occupied South Vietnam up to 1975, Iran, and in quite a few other U.S. client states. They clearly reflect state policy over a wide segment of the U.S. sphere of influence. As already noted, much of the electronic and other torture gear is U.S. supplied, and great numbers of client state police and military interrogators are U.S.-trained.
(p. 9-10)

'...a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.' [quoting Martin Ennals, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, speaking about Iran, from Baraheni, Reza. "Persia Today: No Magic Carpet Rides." Matchbox (Amnesty International), Fall 1976.]
(p. 13)

... Iran, where a brief experiment with democracy and independence was terminated by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1953, leading to the imposition of a regime that became one of the terror centers of the world.
(p. 14)

The Iranian secret police has received generous training and support from the United States, which has deluged its Iranian client with arms, 'priming' it, as a Senate report noted, to serve as the gendarme for U.S. interests throughout the crucial oil-producing regions of the Middle East.
(p. 14-15)

The chief CIA analyst on Iran from 1968-73, Jesse Leaf, states that the practice of torture by the SAVAK was well-known to the CIA and that "A senior C.I.A. official was involved in instructing officials in the Savak on torture techniques... . The C.I.A.'s torture seminars, Mr. Leaf said, 'were based on German torture techniques from World War II'." [quoting Hersh, Seymour M. "Ex-Analyst Says C.I.A. Rejected Warning on Shah," New York Times (January 7 1979)].
(p. 364 note 40)

The military juntas of Latin America and Asia are our juntas. Many of them were directly installed by us or are the beneficiaries of our direct intervention, and most of the others came into existence with our tacit support, using military equipment and training supplied by the United States. Our massive intervention and subversion over the past 25 years has been confined almost exclusively to overthrowing reformers, democrats, and radicals ...
(p. 16)

The Brazilian counterrevolution, as we have noted (cf. note 6), took place with the connivance of the United States and was followed by immediate recognition and consistent support, just as in Guatemala ten years earlier and elsewhere, repeatedly. ...the United States is the power center whose quite calculated and deliberate policy and strategy choices have brought about a system of clients who consistently practice torture and murder on a terrifying scale.
(p. 16)

The released prisoners [in Brazil after the 1964 coup], meanwhile, had a good deal to say about the horrendous torture they had suffered at the hands of the army, navy, and police in torture rooms decorated with the familiar red, white and blue symbol of U.S. AID.
(p. 90)

Electrical and water torture, the ripping out of fingernails, enforced drinking of solutions of powdered lime, the driving of nails into prisoners' bones (kneecaps and ankles), beatings ending in death, became standard operating procedure in the Thieu prisons.
(p. 328)

In another AFSC [American Friends Service Committee] report: 'A 17year old boy, near death, had been unable to urinate for four days and was in extreme pain. After treatment by a Quaker doctor, we were informed that the prisoner had been tortured by electrical charges to his genital organs. A young girl had seizures, stared into space and exhibited symptoms of loss of memory. She said she had been forced to drink a lime solution many times while being interrogated.' [quoting Brown, Holmes and Don Luce, Hostages of War, Saigon's Political Prisoners, 1973, Indochina Mobile Education Project, p. 15]
(p. 328)

His fingernails were blackened as a result of pins and slivers of wood being inserted under them. ... '...beat my knee caps and neck... When I regained consciousness, they beat me again... They put pins under my fingernails. They attached electrodes to my ears, my tongue and my penis. They forced soapy water into my mouth, tramping on my stomach when it became bloated with water. They then hung me from the ceiling and extinguished lighted cigarettes in my nipples and penis.' [quoting Luu Hoang Thao, from Brown, Holmes and Don Luce, Hostages of War, Saigon's Political Prisoners, 1973, Indochina Mobile Education Project, p. 32]
(p. 329)

... typical prisoner in South Vietnam 'undergoes three torture sessions at the arresting agency,'
(p. 329)

AID provided police specialists to train Saigon's police and advise them at all levels, and to work in Thieu's 'Public Safety' programs. ...The Provincial Interrogation Centers, which were reported by Americans on the scene to have uniformly employed torture, were funded directly by the United States.... Another illustration was provided by a former prisoner in the Con Son Tiger Cages, who reported on the ingenuity of U.S. advisers in improving the technique of torture.
(p. 334-335)

a Few more from:

Herman, Edward S. "The United States as Torture Central: U.S. sponsors regimes using torture extensively." Z Magazine 17.5 (Woods Hole, MA: Institute for Social and Cultural Communications. May 2004): 51-55.

[Herman and Chomsky, in The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism] showed that 26 of the 35 states that were using torture on an administrative basis in the 1970s were U.S. clients, who had received military aid and training from this country

...

Electronic methods of torture were used extensively by U.S. and mercenary army forces in Vietnam and, in the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. experts advised client-state torturers from Vietnam to Brazil and Uruguay on the permissible limits of electronic torture to prevent premature death under 'interrogation,' among other advanced techniques