I Can’t Torture You… You Look Like Me
Not quite like the old days.
In this NPR story that was on All Things Considered today (good lord i’m turning into my dad!), elderly former interrogators talk about their now declassified work in a secret POW camp near Washington D.C.. The “P.O. Box 1142″ highly classified interrogation center held top German scientists and other prisoners of war- including scientists who had been working to enrich uranium for the enemy.
Were they ‘enemy combatants’? That’s a new term; but torture is ancient. Were they tortured? Nope! It seems they were a little too white for that. Or Christian. Or both…
Transcripts show that interrogations at Fort Hunt were usually straightforward, almost cordial affairs. Veterans say they often got their best information just by being friendly. Some prisoners were even wined and dined to soften them up.Dean, who later became a top U.S. diplomat, says it was very effective.
“I was a pretty good athlete. … I would do sports with them in order to make them more cooperative. I would take some of the people out for dinner at a restaurant in town in civilian clothes,” he recalls.
One of the interrogators from P.O. Box 1142 actually traveled to Europe to locate one particular prisoner’s wife. That prisoner ended up spending the rest of his life teaching and living in the US.
Contrast this with Guantanamo. Anyone else ever see that social experiment where actors ‘passed out’ on the street in different areas to see if passersby would stop and help? Those passed out people who happened to look like the potential good samaritans were the ones who got the help. Those who looked different, well, got to lay around a while.
