CIA, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983
Part I (pp. 1-67) -
Part II (pp. 68-124)
This secret manual was compiled from sections of the
KUBARK guidelines, and from U.S.
Military Intelligence field manuals written in the mid 1960s
as part of the Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance
Program codenamed "Project X." The manual was used in
numerous Latin American countries as an instructional tool
by CIA and Green Beret trainers between 1983 and 1987 and
became the subject of executive session Senate Intelligence
Committee hearings in 1988 because of human rights abuses
committed by CIA-trained Honduran military units. The manual
allocates considerable space to the subject of "coercive
questioning" and psychological and physical techniques. The
original text stated that "we will be discussing two types
of techniques, coercive and non-coercive. While we do not
stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make
you aware of them." After Congress began investigating human
rights violations by U.S.-trained Honduran intelligence
officers, that passage was hand edited to read "while we
deplore the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make
you aware of them so that you may avoid them." Although the
manual advised methods of coercion similar to those used in
the Abu Ghraib prison by U.S. forces, it also carried a
prescient observation: "The routine use of torture lowers
the moral caliber of the organization that uses it and
corrupts those that rely on it…."