Thread by @ColonelTowner

1/The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), formed in 1947 adopted techniques rooted in Nazi ideology, particularly in psychological torture. The methods used globally under the guise of relief and assistance programs such as the Office of Public Safety and Agency for Development. The most infamous was the Phoenix Program during Vietnam.

2/The Phoenix Program, officially established by the CIA in 1967, was an intelligence network in Vietnam, labeled a counter-insurgency operations when, in fact, it was an insurgency operation against the indigenous citizens of a sovereign country. It included police, military intelligence, and other CIA activities. This allowed the CIA to gather and extort information from people deemed high-value targets.

3/It was adaptable to reflect the flexibility of the indigenous forces. CIA agents and plain-clothes military officers worked together. Part of the Phoenix Program was the Office of Public Safety (OPS), created in 1962 to train police forces around the world. It was a tool for CIA torture techniques. The Office of Public Safety brought terrorist trainees from Latin America, Vietnam, and other countries to a secret training centre in Washington D.C.

4/U.S. officials in DC taught them how to torture their fellow citizens. In 1971, a South Vietnamese trainee stated: “Despite the fact that brutal interrogation is strongly criticized by moralists, its importance must not be denied if we want to have order and security in daily life”.

5/The Phoenix Program set up a network of intelligence capability from rural Vietnam villages to the head intelligence office in Saigon, under the tutelege of Peter DeSilva, the CIA station chief in Saigon. Local thugs, were recruited into “Provincial Reconnaissance Units” or PRUs, conducted systematic torture in the Provincial Interrogation Centers across each province.

6/It was intended to break the enemy’s will and gather critical information through the use of kidnapping and torture. K. Barton Osbourn (military intelligence) with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968, discussed the horrific procedures, including inserting a dowel into a captive’s ear until it was hammered into their brain,

7/and the sexual and electric exploitation of men and women prior to their death. Osbourn testified that these procedures were outlined in the Defense Collection Intelligence Manual, issued during training. His testimony revealed the systematic nature of the brutality and the extent to which these practices were institutionalized within the program.

8/The CIA atrocities in Vietnam, especially at the Bien Hoa Mental Hospital in Saigon, have been documented. In 1966, Dr. Lloyd H. Cutter and two other psychiatrists were sent with an electroshock machine from the Technical Services Division of the Office of Public Safety to test depatterning exercises on the brain. This was replicated in Latin America during Operation Condor.

9/Viet Cong prisoners were subjected to excessive shock treatments, receiving 60 shocks daily for a week, none survived. The CIA doctors conducted these treatments. In 1968, a CIA team and a doctor flew to the hospital and implanted “tiny electrodes” in captives’ brains. This is what they are now talking about doing today, by the way.

10/By changing frequencies, they could induce defecation and vomiting. When attempts to provoke violence among captives failed, Green Berets, following CIA orders, shot the men and burned their bodies in the hospital courtyard. history.wisc.edu/publications/a…

11/In 1970-1971, William Colby, who ran this program in Vietnam, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Phoenix Program had killed 6,187, or over 12% of the 75,000-strong Viet Cong, in 1969 alone. Days later, Colby reaffirmed to the Senate Committee that the Program had killed 20,587 Viet Cong “suspects” since 1968.

12/The South Vietnamese government said it was 40,994 since 1968. Again, no one was held accountable. Colby’s quote: “I believe that the figures in mid-1971 that were testified to at the time were some 28,000 had been captured, some 20,000 had been killed, and some 17,000 had actually rallied by that time. Obviously, the program has been going on since then, and those figures are larger today”.

13/According to the same release as Colby’s statement, the Phoenix Program was fully integrated into the South Vietnamese police forces in 1972, thanks to the Office of Public Safety. In the name of fighting 'communism' despite later declassified documents raising doubt about the claims of communism, 'counter-insurgency' operations around the world were increased.

14/For example, the Latin American version of the Phoenix Program, initially called Project X (later called Operation Condor). It was a mirror image of the techniques and practices used in Vietnam. Project X began sometime in 1965-1966 “to develop an exportable foreign intelligence package to provide 'counterinsurgency' techniques learned in Vietnam to Latin American countries”.

15/Keep in mind, there wasn't an insurgency in any of these countries. There were ppl who didn't want to be exploited by the imperialist west or wanted to be neutral in there foreign policy. That wasn't allowed if they had resources the imperialist wanted to exploit.

16/The first the American public became aware of Project X in Latin America was in 1970 when an Office of Public Safety officer, Dan Mitrione, was executed by Tupamaro rebels in Uruguay. It was revealed that Mitrione, a father of nine, was a mastermind of torture and its dissemination through his role in the Office of Public Safety in Uruguay.

17/ Mitrione's motto “The right pain in the right place at the right time.” He was the retired police chief of Richmond Indiana. Iin 1971, a congressional investigation into the Office of Public Safety revealed claims that its torture manuals, programs, and training was on-going around the world.

18/By 1975, Congress cut funding for all police and prison training abroad, in an attempt to abolish the Office of Public Safety. Congress never investigated the source of this information and training: the CIA. Nor was anyone ever held accountable. The CIA shifted its torture program to the Army’s Military Advisor Program via the School of Americas, which had the span of control...worldwide.

19/The remainder of the program was halted under President Jimmy Carter when he conducted the Halloween massacre, firing the entire directorate of the CIA in charge of these operations. Latin America remained under the radar regarding CIA-taught torture until 1988, when a New York Times exposé highlighted CIA-taught torture in Honduras under the command of Colonel Gustavo Alvarez Martinez.

20/The similarities between the CIA and the Honduran government’s torture practices were revealed in the almost word-for-word Kubark interrogation manual, produced in the 1960s as a result of MKULTRA by the CIA, and the Honduran Human Resource Manual drafted in 1983.

21/In the CIA installed Shah's Iran, in 1959 the CIA was involved in the reorganization of the Iranian secret police. They were instrumental in the formation of the SAVAK, the most brutal of the secret police squads, training the unit and its interrogators using Nazi torture techniques inherited from the CIA.

22/Jessie Leaf, a former CIA analyst, said “Although no Americans particularly participated in the torture, people who were there saw the rooms and were being told of torture. And I know the torture rooms were all toured and paid for by the U.S.A.”.

23/In an interview with Le Monde, the Shah said: “Why should we not employ the same methods as you Europeans? We have learned sophisticated methods of torture from you. You use psychological methods to extract the truth: we do the same."

24/From 1972 to 1986, the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos employed the CIA torture techniques as well. Marcos used torture as a tool to maintain his power. The language used by torturers in the Philippines was key to the psychological manipulation. Phrases like “you leave me no choice,” “because you choose not to cooperate,” and “you are just making it worse for yourself” shifted the blame onto the victim, reinforcing their feelings of helplessness.

25/This psychological manipulation had profound effects, causing victims to view their tormentors as omnipotent forces, breaking their spirits and instilling fear throughout the entire country. Father Edgardo Kangelon, a Catholic priest, was targeted. Over two months, he endured not only minor physical abuse—such as punches and kicks—but also relentless verbal degradation concerning his sexuality, past, and faith.

26/The psychological torment continued until he succumbed to pressure, naming other church officials as subversive. His 25-page memoir exposed the methods of his torturers, revealing the exact same techniques of the CIA’s Kubark manual. In the Philippines they publicly displayed of tortured bodies, a practice known as “salvaging.” This tactic extended trauma to the entire society.

27/CIA involvement traces back to 1978 when a human rights newsletter reported that Lieutenant Colonel Rolando Abadilla, a top torturer for President Marcos, was studying at the Command and General Staff School in Kansas. Another newsletter claimed that Abadilla’s protégé, Rodolfo Aguinaldo, was also set to study under the CIA in the United States. The dictators installed by the CIA came and went but the CIA remains.

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