It’s been two long, miserable weeks trapped in a coffin-sized box.
He barely knows who he is anymore.
The darkness is driving him crazy.
His muscles are constantly contracting.
Then somehow the torturers learn of his greatest fear.
They pour cockroaches into his coffin, where for the next few days, they crawl all over
him.
And this dear viewers is not a depiction of torture in England circa 1550.
This was the CIA, not long ago.
We’ll come back to his fate later, but first, let’s get a handle on this thing called
the blackout box.
It’s perhaps one of the most frightening things the Americans have ever come up with
as part of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” methods, which just means torture that usually
doesn’t leave many serious injuries.
It sometimes does, but if the victim’s bodies aren’t broken, their minds almost always
are.
That’s the whole point with enhanced interrogation, to break a person down.
Perhaps pulling out someone’s teeth will hurt a fair bit, as will the old Medieval
technique of busting joints or burning feet, but if you can truly break a person’s mind,
then in some ways, you own them.
After all, this is enhanced torture.
Things have moved on since Guy Fawkes was England’s biggest terrorist threat.
As we described, the boxes people were kept in acted like a coffin, but not all coffins
were the same.
Some were big enough so the person could just about kneel in there, but holding that position
for any length of time in an enclosed dark space became extremely painful.
The CIA has called this “cramped confinement.”
So, let’s say numerous trips to the waterboarding bench didn’t get any results, and no amount
of being blindfolded and occasionally receiving a kick or a punch proved to be useless, locking
someone in a confined space would seem like the right direction to go in.
Some people can handle pain, but not many people can endure being forced into a cramped,
dark space.
Some of the victims of enhanced interrogation were completely innocent.
One of them told the New York Times that since his release, he has nightmares where he is
“suffocating at the bottom of a well”.
Another just said, “I am living this kind of depression.
I’m not normal anymore.”
In this respect, you have to say that such interrogation techniques work in terms of
breaking someone.
They break them possibly for the rest of their lives, though, and it doesn’t really benefit
anyone to break someone who has nothing of value to say.
The coffin treatment was part of a technique developed by psychologists who believed that
the best way to interrogate someone was to make them helpless.
This was part of a theory developed by an American psychologist in the 60s called, “learned
helplessness.”
The theory went that once you broke a person’s will and made them realize they were helpless,
they would tell you anything.
That’s not always a good thing.
Take for instance the story of Ahmed Errachidi, a restauranteur who was once accused by US
authorities of working for Al Qaeda.
He was later proved innocent of all charges, but first, this man, who suffered from bipolar
disorder, was interrogated at a CIA black site.
The interrogations worked.
In some ways, they were an outstanding success.
Following a complete psychotic breakdown after being left in cramped confinement, he told
the authorities he wasn’t just a terrorist, but he was the superior officer to Osama Bin
Laden.
He probably believed this, because he also said that the world was about to be destroyed
by a giant snowball.
He’d lost his mind.
A snowball-based apocalypse story wasn’t much good to his interrogators.
To make a person feel helpless takes time.
You can’t just pull out a fingernail.
You need to be relentless, then give the prisoner a break, and then be relentless again.
This will gradually cripple the prisoner’s psyche.
A former resident at Guantánamo Bay said, “I have been suffering from absent-mindedness,
amnesia, inability to memorize, depression, helplessness, apathy, loss of interest in
the future, slow thinking, and anxiety.”
This alone should tell you that while such torture techniques are primarily modern, they
still deserve a place on the worst tortures in history list.
Prolonged exposure to torture may not be as physically painful, but mentally, the scares
are deep.
Let’s now come back to the man whose box was filled with cockroaches.
His name is Abu Zubaydah and he’s still being held at Guantánamo Bay without charge.
He was also the first-ever person to be subjected to the CIA detention program after 9/11.
At some point in that program, he lost an eye, although a medical issue could have been
to blame.
We’re not exactly sure.
This is what former President George W. Bush said after he was detained, “The other day,
we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah.
He’s one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the
United States.
He’s not plotting and planning anymore.
He’s where he belongs.”
It’s since been proved that he had no idea about the 9/11 attacks, and he was never a
member of Al Qaeda, although he was a non-al-Qaeda-related jihadist.
Today we won’t focus on his case, but we will talk about how he was tortured.
He wasn’t just the first to face the new torture program, but he pretty much underwent
the CIA’s whole gamut of techniques – many times over.
Since then, he has sketched the various methods of torture, and through his lawyers, talked
about them.
One of the many methods of torture was the “Large Confinement Box.”
He was shaved all over, and naked was put inside a box where he was chained on top of
a bucket.
The bucket served as his toilet.
In his own words, he said, “I found myself in total darkness.
The only spot I could sit in was on top of the bucket, for the place was very tight.”
He was told before he was placed in the box, what he described as a casket, that this place
was going to be his home for quite some time.
It turned out the large box wasn’t going to be the worst of his problems, though, because
soon he was going to experience what it was like to be in the small confinement box.
He described it like this, “As soon as they locked me up inside the box, I tried my best
to sit up, but in vain, for the box was too short.
I tried to take a curled position but to no vain, for it was too tight.”
He said he was forced to stay in the fetal position because there was no place to move.
That made the entire experience very, very uncomfortable.
He said, “The very strong pain made me scream unconsciously.”
It was at some point in this box that the CIA threw in some company, the aforementioned
cockroaches.
We’ll come back to those soon.
Regarding the dimensions of the boxes, the large one was said to be the size of a coffin.
He stayed in that for 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours).
The small box was 21 inches wide, 2 1/2 feet deep, and 2 1/2 feet high (53 cm × 76 cm
× 76 cm).
He stayed in that for 29 hours.
As for how this would feel, well, you can imagine it would be horrific.
But the BBC went a step further than merely imagining.
One of its reporters tried to experience it for herself after a box was made for her.
She said in a video, “I wanted to see how long I could last.”
It should be mentioned here that she knew this was an experiment and her interrogators
were fake.
Not knowing if you could be killed would be a different experience entirely, especially
after you’ve already suffered weeks or months of beatings and humiliation.
“This is going to be mind over matter.
It’s just a box,” she said in the video.
After two minutes, she was uncomfortable.
After 10 minutes with recorded sounds of a baby crying played into the box, she was in
physical pain and looked as though she’d been made to drink in a “Wetherspoons”
pub with working-class folks, wild and unfamiliar to reporters at the BBC.
She lasted about 12 minutes.
She said, “Panic set in.
I know what they mean now when they say everyone has a breaking point.”
That was a paltry 12 minutes.
Can you imagine how one hour would feel?
The BBC reporter said any longer than 12 minutes “was unthinkable.”
US cables that have now been made public by the media talk about the blackout boxes a
little, but not so much is said.
One of those cables said: “Comments re: Likely Psychological Impact
of the Confinement Box on the [Redacted] Process with AZ.” and “Further Comments on Construction
and Particulars Concerning an Additional Confinement Box for Use During Upcoming Interrogation
of Abu Zubaydah”.
Talking about Zubaydah’s torture, another cable said, “The interrogators pointed to
the small box and said, ‘You know what to do.’…The subject sat on the floor and
scooted himself into the small box at 1000 hours without protest or additional instructions.”
The document explained that he stayed in the large box and then was put inside the small
box.
When he was taken out he was slammed up against a wall, something called “walling.”
At some point, the document states, the waterboard bench was pulled into the room.
Zubaydah was told again, “You know what to do.”
After hours of this, he was asked yet again what he knew about terrorist plots to harm
America.
The report stated, “Subject whimpered that he had nothing.”
From a black site in Thailand, a country very familiar with torture, a US cable said such
interrogation techniques could help them to reach “the stage where we have broken any
will or ability of subject to resist or deny providing us information.”
It was added that such techniques “should be used as a template for future interrogation
of high-value captives”.
It seems the boxes could have been a technique used mostly in those early interrogations
because released prisoners have mentioned many of the other tortures but not the confinement
boxes.
It was written in another document that walling and sleep deprivation were the best enhanced
interrogation techniques, with someone writing, “The others, while occasionally useful,
were not critical.
And some, like nudity, slaps, facial holds, dietary manipulation, and cramped confinement…were
completely unnecessary.”
But there are other reports which include information about how US interrogators used
confinement boxes against a Libyan man, who the CIA later handed over to the enemy, the
now-deceased dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
His name was Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, and when the CIA had hold of him, they would
usually place him in the large coffin box.
His hands were handcuffed to the top of the box, and for hours on end, they’d play loud
music into it.
Another prisoner said he sat there for three days on end, urinating theand defecating inside.
It seems the small box wasn’t pulled out too often.
The first guy said in the two years he was regularly tortured, only once was he subjected
to the small box.
He was only in there for an hour, but all the time the interrogators prodded him with
objects through holes in the sides.
Needless to say, the CIA denied torturing those Libyan folks.
Human Rights Watch responded that these were merely allegations, not solid proof.
Still, according to one of those men, when he was in the tall box, he said, “there
was just enough light to see what he said looked like bloodstains on the walls.”
He even drew a picture of the place and the box.
As for how it feels to be on the other side of such torture, a former CIA agent come whistleblower
filled the world in on that.
His name is John Kiriakou.
He was asked many years by ayears ago by a higher-up if he wanted to take part in the
enhanced interrogations.
When he inquired what that involved, he was told it would mean “getting rough” with
detainees.
He said he had a moral and ethical problem with it, to which he was informed that he
“demonstrated a shocking lack of commitment.”
He was the only person out of 14 CIA officers who turned down the opportunity to “turn
up the heat” on interrogations.
He later said about his brothers in arms, “These officers were friends of mine.
People I socialized with.
My kids played with their kids.
And then, like flipping a switch, these officers could become monsters.
I didn’t understand how they could turn it on and off like that.”
As we all now know, people can commit horrendous crimes when told to follow orders.
“Just following orders” is what Nazi officers said when standing accused of forcing people
into gas chambers.
Still, Kiriakou said the CIA won’t hire sociopaths.
Such people can’t be controlled.
But when the officers are told this is somewhat legal, sketchy but legal, they will usually
comply.
It was Kiriakou that revealed the truth about the cockroaches in Zubaydah’s coffin and
how he had an “irrational fear” of the things.
Kiriakou said in an interview, “They put him in a coffin and poured a box of cockroaches
in the coffin with him and closed it.
They left him in that coffin for two weeks and would open it up long enough to give him
some water and change his diaper.
And then they’d close it back up again.”
After Kiriakou retired from the CIA, a journalist accused him of taking part in this torture.
He strenuously denied it, saying he was the only officer who was kind to the detainee.
He said it was then that he figured he had to blow the whistle and let the world know
that President Bush signed off on torture, and it wasn’t just some rogue officers doing
it.
For exposing torture and various misdeeds, he later went to prison.
He said he’d do it again if somehow he had the chance.
Not all officers follow orders.
We’ll finish this on a lighter note, although we don’t want to undermine what those people
suffered.
Nonetheless, this is interesting.
An Irish vlogger who says he tests boundaries of what humans can endure said he too would
inflict this torture on himself, again in quite a harmless environment, though.
The man, named Dara Tah, said he’d shave off his hair if he couldn’t take an hour
in the box.
He did well but still had to shave his hair off, saying after 13 minutes he felt like
he was losing his marbles.
And again, we can’t state enough how different the experience would be in a friendly environment.
Around 100 people have actually died during the CIA’s torture program, and many more
came close to it.
As for the ones that got away, many have never quite recovered the marbles they lost in those
prisons.
Enduring a pretend enhanced interrogation, while scary, could be compared to playing
soldiers in the woods rather than fighting with real guns in a war zone.
Now you need to watch this terrifying tale “Inside the CIA's Terrifying 'Sleep Room'”
Or, for something lighter watch “The CIA's Secret Time Travel Program: REAL CRAZY RESEARCH?”