Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
The 500
Year History of Waterboarding—and Why It Doesn't Even Work
January 12, 2016
The
following is an excerpt from the new book Does Torture Work? [3] by John
Schiemann (Oxford University Press, 2015):
It is
torture when an investigation is conducted with torment and force. . . .
Torture is a weak and dangerous thing that may fail the truth.
—Ulpian,
Justinian’s Digest
Marina
Gonzàlez stood before the Toledan inquisitors Fernando de Mazuecos and
Ferndando Rodríguez del Barco on April 29, 1494, and rejected their accusations
of heresy. With this refusal, she was taken immediately to the torture chamber,
stripped of her skirts, and bound tightly to the rack with cords, including her
head. “They put a hood in front of her face, and with a jar that held three
pints, more or less, they started to pour water down her nose and throat.” She
refused to confess after the first pint so they poured the remaining two pints
before removing the hood and cord from her head. She again refused to confess,
was tied down again, and endured another three pints from the jar before the
inquisitors ordered her brought down from the rack.
Juan de Salas
stood before the inquisitor Moriz in Vallalodid on June 21,1527, and once again
denied he had blasphemed the evangelists. As a result, he was taken directly to
the torture chamber, accompanied by the executioner Pedro Porras and the notary
Henry Paz in addition to Moriz. Bound tightly to the escalera, a
kind of grooved table that raises the legs above the head, a “fine wet cloth
was put over his face, and about a pint of water was poured into his mouth and
nostrils . . . nevertheless, Salas still persisted in denying the
accusation” (emphasis in original). After several more rounds of
questioning, denials, and water-pouring, Salas was taken down from the escalera.
John Clarke
passed the “weeping and lamenting” Samuel Colson on his way into the examining
room in the Dutch fort at Amboyna on February 16, 1622. Clarke was pulled two
feet off the ground up onto a large door, his limbs outstretched and bound
tightly with cords. A cloth was tied around his neck and folded up in a cone
toward the top of his head. “That done, they poured water softly upon his head
until the cloth was full, up to the mouth and nostrils, and somewhat higher; so
that he could not draw breath, but he must withall suck-in the water: which
being still continued to be poured in softly, forced all his inward parts, came
out of his nose, ears, and eyes, and often as it were stifling and choking him,
at length took away his breath and brought him to a swoon or fainting. Then
they took him quickly down and made him vomit up the water.” When he had
recovered, his Dutch captors repeated the procedure three more times. Clarke’s
continued resistance, his refusal to confess to a plot to take over the castle
for the English, led the examiners to believe that he was possessed by the
devil for withstanding so much. After adding burning his skin to the water
torture and “leading” him along with the necessary details, he confessed and he
was carried out by four men to the castle dungeon.
Jean
Bourdil walked past a doctor and a priest and into the torture chamber of
Toulouse on May 27, 1726. Surrounded by hooks, pulleys, ropes, weights, and
other means of stretching human joints, he took an oath to tell the truth to
his interrogators. A little while later, after those hooks, pulleys, ropes, and
weights had failed to elicit his confession to the charge of killing two
soldiers— just as they had two days prior—he was subjected to the question
d’eaufive times.
The question
d’eau consisted of fastening the wrists of the accused to an iron ring
bolted into the wall at waist height, and the feet, to another ring embedded in
the floor, thus extending the prisoner’s body to its full length at a slant.
Trestles of varying heights were then wedged under the prisoner’s back, forcing
a further extension of the body. Finally, his face covered by a linen napkin,
water was forced down his throat through a cow’s horn, as much as sixteen
liters at a time.
During each
session, Bourdil was asked to tell the truth, to confess to his guilt in the
crime, or his complicity in the crime, or his knowledge of those who were
guilty. After the fifth session the linen rag was removed from his mouth, and
he was unstrapped from the bench and likely set down by a fire and ministered
to by the doctor before being returned to his cell.
In New Castle,
Alabama, on January 6, 1881, F.H. Gafford, an employee of a coal company, gave
testimony to the Joint Special Committee of the state legislature conducting an
inquiry into the treatment of convicts in Alabama. Mr. Gafford’s company
“rented” convicts from the state as part of its convict leasing program and was
asked about the punishments employed for “wilful neglect of work.” In order to
secure compliance, Mr. Gafford testified that the company generally employed
the “strap” but that on three occasions in the three years of his employ, they
had “punished with water.” “In water punishment the man is strapped to his back
and the water is poured in his face on the upper lip, and effectually stops his
breathing as long as there is a constant stream. It is a very dangerous
punishment."
Ramon
Navarro, a Filipino lawyer, had failed to provide the information sought by his
Japanese interrogator after a morning of interrogation. It was World War II,
and the Japanese occupiers of the Philippines were seeking information on
guerilla activities. At around 2:00 pm, the interrogator, Major Chinsaku Yuki,
ordered Navarro to remove all of his clothes and lie down on his back on a
bench. Navarro complied with both orders. Yuki then tied Navarro’s feet, hands,
and neck to the bench. Once Navarro was secured to the bench, Yuki put a cloth
on Navarro’s face and began pouring water from a nearby faucet on Navarro’s
face. The stream of water continued until Navarro lost consciousness. The
process was then repeated four or five times over the next two hours. At that
point, Navarro told his interrogator a lie in an attempt to stop the
“treatment.” When Yuki discovered the lie, he repeated the procedure on Navarro
another two or three times.
Captain
Chase Nielsen, a B-25 navigator, had provided nothing but his name, rank, and
serial number to his Japanese interrogator on the afternoon of April 24, 1942.
After failing to elicit more information on what would later be called the
Doolittle Raid, the interrogator had four soldiers pin his arms and legs to the
floor. Another soldier wrapped his face with a wet towel and poured water on
the towel.
They poured
water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then
they would let up until I’d get my breath, then they’d start all over again. I
felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death . .
. .
Nielsen was
rescued at the end of the war, but returned to Shanghai to testify against his
captors at a war crimes trial.
Thomas D.
Harrison, a U.S. Air Force pilot, bailed out of his disabled jet on May 21,
1951, near Sinuiju, North Korea, and was captured. He refused to provide his
captors any information, even after being starved for nine days. One day in
November he was beaten with clubs and sticks before being subjected to the
“water treatment”:
They would
bend my head back, put a towel over my face and pour water over the towel. I
could not breathe. This went on hour after hour, day after day. It was freezing
cold. When I would pass out, they would shake me and begin again. They would
leave me tied to the chair with the water freezing on and around me.
Henri Alleg
refused to divulge to his French paratrooper interrogators where he had been
hiding, despite a beating and two sessions of electrical torture shortly
following his arrest on Wednesday, June 12, 1957, in Algiers. Still strapped by
his wrists and ankles to a black plank, one of his interrogators asked him if
he “knew how to swim” and the paratroopers picked up the plank and carried
Alleg into the kitchen of the apartment in the unfinished building that served
as the interrogation center the Algiers suburb of El-Biar. They rested the
plank on the edge of the sink and two paratroopers held up the other end. One
of the troopers near the sink attached a rubber tube to the tap and then
wrapped a rag around Alleg’s head. His mouth wedged open with a small piece of
wood, they told him to move his fingers when he wanted to talk. Then they turned on
the tap. The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in
my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small
gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as
possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I
could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression
of drowning; and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me.
In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save
myself from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of my two hands shook
uncontrollably.
“That’s it! He’s going to talk,” said a voice.
When Alleg
again fell silent after he had caught his breath, the torturers yelled, “He’s
playing games with us! Put his head under again!”
This time I
clenched my fists, forcing the nails into my palm. I had decided I was not
going to move my fingers again. It was better to die of asphyxiation right
away. I feared to undergo again that terrible moment where I felt myself losing
consciousness, while at the same time fighting with all my power not to die. I
did not move my hands, but three times I knew again this insupportable agony.
In extremis, they let me get my breath back while I threw up the water. The
last time I lost consciousness.
Nguyen Cong
arrived at LZ English on the southeastern coast of Vietnam in the fall of 1968.
Suspected of belonging to the Viet Cong, he was interrogated on the morning of
August 21 by Staff Sgt. David Carmon, of the 172nd Military Intelligence detachment.
Carmon later admitted to using the “water rag” in his interrogations: “I held
the suspect down, placed a cloth over his face and then poured water over the
cloth, thus forcing water into his mouth. The suspect, after becoming choked on
the water, confessed that he was a VC and stated he was a propaganda man."
In the Cong case, Carmon “poured water on his face from a five gallon
can." Carmon and other interrogators also slapped, kicked, and beat Cong.
Carmon later said that “our intentions were never to hurt anyone, we simply
wanted the information . . . . This is the reason that we primarily used water.
Water poured over a cloth gave a sensation of drowning that generally scared
the PW into talking." A little before 11:00 am and still under interrogation,
Cong went into convulsions and died from a ruptured spleen, as a result of
either external trauma or malaria.
Kevin
Coffman was arrested in Coldspring, Texas, in the fall of 1979 for drug
possession and put in the old San Jacinto County jail. Having been sentenced to
six months in the jail for a misdemeanor offense, he was made a “trusty” after
a couple of weeks. One morning after about two months in jail, he was taken
along with another inmate, Craig Punch, to the new county jail still under
construction. Each prisoner was placed in his own cell; and Deputy Sheriff
Floyd Baker handcuffed Coffman to a brace in the wall, securing him to the
chair he was sitting in. Coffman was left alone for a time before deputies
Baker, Carl Lee, and John Glover entered his cell.
Deputy
Baker folded a towel along its longer axis twice, wrapped it tightly around
Coffman’s face, and pulled his head back. Deputy Glover “took a bucket of water
and slowly poured it over the towel, asking [Coffman] questions every once in a
while." Coffman was being questioned over a theft of money from the
property room (as a trusty he had access to it). The deputies divided their
labor neatly, with Glover pouring the water, Lee refilling the bucket, and both
Glover and Baker asking questions. Coffman struggled so much that even with the
handcuffs the deputies had difficulty holding him down, so they tied his feet
together with belts and secured his feet to his hands with handcuffs. When
asked at trial about why he was struggling, Coffman said he was frightened. He
was “afraid of drowning; it was hard to breathe. . . . I was just trying to
fight that bucket of water." “It seemed like it lasted forever, but I
guess maybe two hours." Coffman testified that he knew nothing about the
money, but told two lies to stop the torture, and eventually the deputies
stopped.
About one
year later, on a late September evening in 1980, James Hicks was transferred
from the Montgomery County jail to the new San Jacinto County jail.
Accused of
taking San Jacincto County Sheriff James Parker’s tractor, Hicks denied knowing
anything about it. Parker responded that Hicks would be “begging to tell them
where the tractor was” and Hicks was taken to a small holding cell in the back
of the jail. After half an hour, Hicks was made to change into white coveralls
and then, after about another half hour, he was taken by Deputy Baker to a
detox cell. The cell was about ten feet by eight feet with a “little concrete
ledge built on the back part of the cell” six or eight inches off the floor,
which sloped to a drain in the middle. The only piece of furniture in the room
was a wooden armchair.
Baker kept
asking him where “our” tractor was. Other deputies and a trusty came in and
out. At one point, Hicks was blindfolded. His hands were handcuffed behind his
back and he was sat in the chair. Deputy Baker gave leg irons to a trusty and
instructed him to shackle Hicks’s legs to the legs of the chair. Hicks stood up
and kicked the trusty. A struggle ensued with deputies Baker and Lee struggling
to shackle Hicks to the chair. Lee would hit Hicks with a blackjack everytime
Hicks kicked him, at least six times, so that his eyes began to swell nearly
shut very quickly.
Once Hicks
was subdued and shackled to the chair, the deputies tied a rope around his
midsection and Deputy Baker covered Hicks’s nose and mouth with a towel. They
set the chair backside down on the floor with the legs resting on the concrete
ledge and Hicks’s head down on the floor, sloping toward the drain. “Then they
poured water over my face through the towel and drowned me. . . . I was
drowning. . . . I thought I was going to drown." This went on for
“probably” five to ten minutes, though “it seemed like a lot longer."
After
“stomping” on Hicks’s stomach, the deputies set the chair back up, removed the
blindfold, and began questioning him again about the location of the tractor.
Eventually, Hicks gave them a location, though he knew there was no tractor
there. When asked why he told the deputies that, Hicks said, “I didn’t want
them to do it again. I would have took them anywhere, just about."
According
to one of the now infamous “torture memos” from the Justice Department’s Office
of Legal Counsel (OLC), in waterboarding
the
individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four
feet by seven feet. The individual’s feet are generally elevated. A cloth is
placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a
controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both
the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth
and nose, air now is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the
presence of the cloth.
This causes an increase in carbon dioxide level in the
individual’s blood. This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates
increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception
of “suffocation and incipient panic,” i.e., the perception of drowning. The
individual does not breathe any water into his lungs. During those 20 to 40
seconds, water is continuously applied from a height of twelve to twenty-four
inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed
to breathe unimpeded for three or four full breaths. The sensation of drowning
is immediately relieved by the removal of the cloth. The procedure may then be
repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can
with a spout. You have orally informed us that this procedure triggers an
automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot
control even though he may be aware that he is in fact not drowning.
KSM was led
by a guard from his cell into another room in March 2003, in a secret prison in
Stare Kiejkuty, Poland, one of the CIA’s “black sites.” The room, its essential
contents—a tilted gurney or bench with arm and leg restraints, a couple of
cloths, and a pitcher of water—and its purpose were all well known to Mohammed.
Over the course of that month, he had spent a lot of time in this room, though
he probably couldn’t say exactly how much. What happened now was more or less
what had happened over 180 times since the beginning of March.
He was
strapped to the “special bed,” with his head on the downward side of the
incline. With his head held immobile by one of his captors, one of the cloths
was placed over his face, covering his nose and mouth. With a doctor and a
psychologist looking on, water was poured onto the cloth. KSM ingested enough
water to “distend” his abdomen, and water gushed out when his stomach was
pressed. To prevent him from ingesting the water, interrogators cupped their
hands around his mouth in order to maintain a continuous “pool” of water. At
one point, contractors Jessen and Mitchell seized an opportunity to pour water
into his mouth when he attempted to speak.
Now,
suppose I tell you I am writing a history of the Inquisition and its trials and
I write the following sentence about what happened to Marina Gonzàlez in 1494
and to Juan de Salas in 1527: “Upon the refusal of Gonzàlez and Salas to
provide any information, the inquisitors employed enhanced interrogation
techniques.” Or what if I’m writing about imperial competition and I write the
following sentence about the Amboyna case of 1622: “At a time of increasing
tensions with the British and the possibility of a plot to seize the strongest
of the Dutch fortifications, the commander ordered enhanced interrogation
techniques be used upon John Clarke.” Or suppose I’m writing about police
interrogation methods in the United States and I use the following to describe
what happened in San Jacinto County in 1983: “In a departure from usual police
practice, Sheriff Parker used enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Do these
descriptions ring hollow to you? Do they sound anachronistic? Do they sound
euphemistic? Now suppose it is the year 3157. You are writing a history of
interrogations and torture and cover the same cases we just considered above.
Would you use the word “torture” to describe the Gonzàlez, Salas, Bourdil, the
Alabama prisoner, Navarro, Nielsen, Harrison, Alleg, Nguyen, Hicks, and Coffman
cases, but use the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques” to describe the
KSM case? Would you claim that pouring water over a cloth into someone’s mouth
is torture in 1494, 1527, 1622, 1726, 1881, 1942, 1958, 1969, and 1983, but not
in 2003? Probably not. But this is what the Bush administration’s Justice
Department attempted to claim.
The U.S.
Department of Justice has not always held this view. Here’s the phrase used
repeatedly by the U.S. district attorney in the trial of the San Jacinto County
sheriff and his deputies in 1983: “water torture.” Even the lawyers for the
defendants used the term “water torture” to describe the events.
The only
difference between the techniques used on James Hicks and KSM is two decades. A
cloth covers the mouth, water is poured over the cloth to produce a drowning
sensation—the act is the same. If the act itself does not change, then it is
the same thing, whether we use a euphemism or whether or not the laws written
around it have changed. Waterboarding is torture. It was torture when it was
used by the Inquisition in 1494 and it was torture when it was used by the CIA
in 2003. It meets the everyday “interocular trauma” test.
Reprinted
from Does Torture Work? by John W. Schiemann with permission from Oxford
University Press USA. Copyright © John W. Schiemann 2016 and published by
Oxford University Press USA. (www.oup.com/us [4]). All
rights reserved.
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