August 8, 2008 • 7 mins
In May of 2007, the US military found drawings believed to be part of an Al-Qaida torture manual. However, the seminal manuals on torture are believed to be the work of the CIA. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about torture manuals.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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is brought to you by Visa. We all have things
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of them, because with every purchase, Visa prevents to texts
(00:20):
and resolves online fraud safe Secure Visa. Hi, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here
at How Stuff Works dot Com. With me is my
fellow staff writer, Charles W. Bryant. How are you, Chuck.
I'm doing well, Josh. You seem not yourself today and
feeling it may have something to do with our subject
and subject matter exact torture, which is not fun. You know.
(00:43):
At first, torture, before I wrote this article torture, it
seemed like this kind of amorphous blob that happened to
pour SAPs in like other countries. And the more I
started researching UM is their torture manual, I did actually
several articles articles on torture UM. It became very real
and it is a really serious, somber subject that and
(01:03):
it happens to a lot of people actually sadly still
today it is. But you have to do your research.
It's not the kind of thing that you know, it's
not talked about. No, you don't want it all over
the evening news. No, definitely not. It doesn't go well
with dinner at all. Um, but it does happen, and
the things that do happen are are very serious. That
the in the introduction I mentioned May two thousand seven
(01:26):
raid on a Baghdad house and it looked like a
normal house from the outside. Inside they found an Alcada
torture manual and it had these basically how to drawings
of how to remove an eyeball with a drill, how
to how to squeeze a person to death by putting
their head in the vice or using a hot clothes
iron for you know, on the chest right. And they
(01:48):
also found like the instruments of torture, like a house
of horrors, blow torches and drills and all the stuff
you needed to carry out these things. Yeah, that's pretty scary.
So it really kind of raised our our eyebrows around
here when that story broke and kind of got us
looking into this, and um, from some research we found
out that that torture manuals are not all that uncommon
in the world scarily enough. And there's two pretty much
(02:12):
the two um, the two seminal manuals on torture. We're
both written by the American CIA. You know about this, yeah,
a little bit. I mean they did most of this,
in fairness in the nineteen fifties, right, the research, I
think the initial research. Yeah, they basically we're trying to
figure out what worked and what didn't write and I
think what they've found and what's kind of round the
(02:33):
accepted in the torture community is, uh, that it's psychological
torture is really what what gets people talking. Physical torture
doesn't work, right, because if you're physically torturing someone, they'll
say anything just to keep you know, the clamps off
of the nipples exactly. It produces unreliable data. You come
at somebody with the car battery, they're going to tell
you whatever that you want to hear, you know. But yeah,
(02:56):
the first the first edition came out in nineteen sixty three,
after at least the decade of you know, um the
c I A spiking one another's um drinks with LSD
at parties. Might Yeah, and that's they also apparently used
to experiment on UM unsuspecting John's in San Francisco, Brothels.
The good old days, Yeah, pretty much when the CIA
(03:17):
could do absolutely anything at wanted. UM. So they did
all these tests. They they they tested on civilians, they
tested on our a military, they tested on people who
were captured, and took all this experience and actually wrote
it down. And you had the Kubark Manual, right, which
is a torture manual. It is it's it's exactly that's
exactly right. It tells you what to do, what not
(03:38):
to do, why you shouldn't do it, why you should
do it. And Kubark is the code word for UM,
the CIA and Vietnam. Okay, I didn't. I was gonna
ask you if that was someone's name or yeah, it
was the It was the codename used for the CIA
and Vietnam. And that's pretty much when it when it
first came into use. Well, that was the first edition.
The second edition UM was pretty much the the culmination
(03:59):
of twenty years of using Kubark and finding that tweaking,
tweaking the original material based on results from what they
get from the prisoners. The information I would assume, right, yeah,
I mean you can test and test and test, but
when you use something in the field, you're going to
really find out what works and what doesn't. Right, So
that culminated in the Human Resource Exploitation Manual. That's that's
a fun range. That one was from twenty years after
(04:21):
Kubark came out, UM, and it's it's very much based
along the same lines. Basically, you know, the rule of
thumb is, uh, well, you don't turn the screws on thumbs.
You know, physical torture is not good psychological works, UM,
which means like you know, maybe cranking heavy metal music
really loud. Seven blindfolding and the waterboarding was an issue
(04:43):
not too long ago and still is apparently, I know,
UM Congress is uh finds water boarding very distasteful. In
researching this, I found that UM, time and time again,
Congress gets wind of some scandal and UM holds hearings
and outlaws torture and then see he goes, Okay, we're
not We're not gonna do it. Sept for these fourteen
guys who are given special and right now there's fourteen
people who are authorized in the CIA to use water
(05:06):
boarding as an interrogation, so they'll say that we don't
want to torture anymore, but we really want to torture
these guys before we outlaw it, right, And I can
see part of me sees the value in uh in
using torture. I'm I'm a utilitarian in many ways, where
killing one person to save a thousand just makes sense.
But at the same time, there's a real gray area,
like when you start, it's tough to stop it. Where
(05:29):
do you draw the line right? And how do you
separate yourself from the enemy exactly? Yeah, and as the democracy,
we kind of have to set an example for everybody else,
and I believe that's true. Yeah, well, we just barely
scratch the surface. There's several torture articles, but the one
we're talking about is is there a torture manual? And
you can read all of them on how stuff works
dot com and hang tight to find out what article
(05:50):
makes one of our colleagues skin crawl. Right after this
stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa.
We all have things to think about, like, say, what's
the best site to buy a new leather jacket, or
whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera. But
thankfully we don't need to think about online fraud because
for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out
for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making
(06:14):
sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that
for peace of mind, safe, secure Visa. So, Chuck, you
want to tell him what article it is and what colleague. Yes,
the colleague is our fellow staff writer, Jonathan Strickland. And
the article is how entomophagy works. Yes, the eating of
(06:35):
bugs will cuisine. Yes. Mr Strickland, who is, like Chuck said,
one of our fellow writers, is also a fellow podcaster.
You can find his podcast, a Tech Stuff also on iTunes.
Good luck with that. But anytime that that's on the
home page that his skin kind of crawls. He freaked
out a little bit. Maybe hides under his desk more
(06:56):
than usual. Right, Yeah, he's uh when I mean, you
see a spider called cross the floor and Stricklin's up
on his desk. Yeah, it's it's pretty bad. He has
a weak constitution. We have fun with him every April
Fool's Day or you know, every Tuesday whatever. So if
you want to know about the eating of bugs. Read
how intomafage he works. How stuff works dot com for
(07:17):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from How Stuff Works dot Com? Stuff you should know
is brought to you by Visa. We all have things
we like to think about online fraud. Shouldn't do one
of them, because with every purchase, Visa prevents to texts
(00:20):
and resolves online fraud safe Secure Visa. Hi, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here
at How Stuff Works dot Com. With me is my
fellow staff writer, Charles W. Bryant. How are you, Chuck.
I'm doing well, Josh. You seem not yourself today and
feeling it may have something to do with our subject
and subject matter exact torture, which is not fun. You know.
(00:43):
At first, torture, before I wrote this article torture, it
seemed like this kind of amorphous blob that happened to
pour SAPs in like other countries. And the more I
started researching UM is their torture manual, I did actually
several articles articles on torture UM. It became very real
and it is a really serious, somber subject that and
(01:03):
it happens to a lot of people actually sadly still
today it is. But you have to do your research.
It's not the kind of thing that you know, it's
not talked about. No, you don't want it all over
the evening news. No, definitely not. It doesn't go well
with dinner at all. Um, but it does happen, and
the things that do happen are are very serious. That
the in the introduction I mentioned May two thousand seven
(01:26):
raid on a Baghdad house and it looked like a
normal house from the outside. Inside they found an Alcada
torture manual and it had these basically how to drawings
of how to remove an eyeball with a drill, how
to how to squeeze a person to death by putting
their head in the vice or using a hot clothes
iron for you know, on the chest right. And they
(01:48):
also found like the instruments of torture, like a house
of horrors, blow torches and drills and all the stuff
you needed to carry out these things. Yeah, that's pretty scary.
So it really kind of raised our our eyebrows around
here when that story broke and kind of got us
looking into this, and um, from some research we found
out that that torture manuals are not all that uncommon
in the world scarily enough. And there's two pretty much
(02:12):
the two um, the two seminal manuals on torture. We're
both written by the American CIA. You know about this, yeah,
a little bit. I mean they did most of this,
in fairness in the nineteen fifties, right, the research, I
think the initial research. Yeah, they basically we're trying to
figure out what worked and what didn't write and I
think what they've found and what's kind of round the
(02:33):
accepted in the torture community is, uh, that it's psychological
torture is really what what gets people talking. Physical torture
doesn't work, right, because if you're physically torturing someone, they'll
say anything just to keep you know, the clamps off
of the nipples exactly. It produces unreliable data. You come
at somebody with the car battery, they're going to tell
you whatever that you want to hear, you know. But yeah,
(02:56):
the first the first edition came out in nineteen sixty three,
after at least the decade of you know, um the
c I A spiking one another's um drinks with LSD
at parties. Might Yeah, and that's they also apparently used
to experiment on UM unsuspecting John's in San Francisco, Brothels.
The good old days, Yeah, pretty much when the CIA
(03:17):
could do absolutely anything at wanted. UM. So they did
all these tests. They they they tested on civilians, they
tested on our a military, they tested on people who
were captured, and took all this experience and actually wrote
it down. And you had the Kubark Manual, right, which
is a torture manual. It is it's it's exactly that's
exactly right. It tells you what to do, what not
(03:38):
to do, why you shouldn't do it, why you should
do it. And Kubark is the code word for UM,
the CIA and Vietnam. Okay, I didn't. I was gonna
ask you if that was someone's name or yeah, it
was the It was the codename used for the CIA
and Vietnam. And that's pretty much when it when it
first came into use. Well, that was the first edition.
The second edition UM was pretty much the the culmination
(03:59):
of twenty years of using Kubark and finding that tweaking,
tweaking the original material based on results from what they
get from the prisoners. The information I would assume, right, yeah,
I mean you can test and test and test, but
when you use something in the field, you're going to
really find out what works and what doesn't. Right, So
that culminated in the Human Resource Exploitation Manual. That's that's
a fun range. That one was from twenty years after
(04:21):
Kubark came out, UM, and it's it's very much based
along the same lines. Basically, you know, the rule of
thumb is, uh, well, you don't turn the screws on thumbs.
You know, physical torture is not good psychological works, UM,
which means like you know, maybe cranking heavy metal music
really loud. Seven blindfolding and the waterboarding was an issue
(04:43):
not too long ago and still is apparently, I know,
UM Congress is uh finds water boarding very distasteful. In
researching this, I found that UM, time and time again,
Congress gets wind of some scandal and UM holds hearings
and outlaws torture and then see he goes, Okay, we're
not We're not gonna do it. Sept for these fourteen
guys who are given special and right now there's fourteen
people who are authorized in the CIA to use water
(05:06):
boarding as an interrogation, so they'll say that we don't
want to torture anymore, but we really want to torture
these guys before we outlaw it, right, And I can
see part of me sees the value in uh in
using torture. I'm I'm a utilitarian in many ways, where
killing one person to save a thousand just makes sense.
But at the same time, there's a real gray area,
like when you start, it's tough to stop it. Where
(05:29):
do you draw the line right? And how do you
separate yourself from the enemy exactly? Yeah, and as the democracy,
we kind of have to set an example for everybody else,
and I believe that's true. Yeah, well, we just barely
scratch the surface. There's several torture articles, but the one
we're talking about is is there a torture manual? And
you can read all of them on how stuff works
dot com and hang tight to find out what article
(05:50):
makes one of our colleagues skin crawl. Right after this
stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa.
We all have things to think about, like, say, what's
the best site to buy a new leather jacket, or
whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera. But
thankfully we don't need to think about online fraud because
for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out
for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making
(06:14):
sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that
for peace of mind, safe, secure Visa. So, Chuck, you
want to tell him what article it is and what colleague. Yes,
the colleague is our fellow staff writer, Jonathan Strickland. And
the article is how entomophagy works. Yes, the eating of
(06:35):
bugs will cuisine. Yes. Mr Strickland, who is, like Chuck said,
one of our fellow writers, is also a fellow podcaster.
You can find his podcast, a Tech Stuff also on iTunes.
Good luck with that. But anytime that that's on the
home page that his skin kind of crawls. He freaked
out a little bit. Maybe hides under his desk more
(06:56):
than usual. Right, Yeah, he's uh when I mean, you
see a spider called cross the floor and Stricklin's up
on his desk. Yeah, it's it's pretty bad. He has
a weak constitution. We have fun with him every April
Fool's Day or you know, every Tuesday whatever. So if
you want to know about the eating of bugs. Read
how intomafage he works. How stuff works dot com for
(07:17):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
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