For KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, I'm Scott Horton.
This is anti-war radio All right, y'all welcome to show it is anti-war radio on KPFK 90.7 in LA 98.7 in Santa Barbara 93.7 in San Diego and 99.5 in Ridgecrest China Lake appreciate y'all tuning into the show.
We're here every Friday from 630 to 7 o'clock Full archives are at anti-war.com/radio I forget if I said but I am your host Scott Horton and we got a really great show lined up for you today two guests First of all, Jason Leopold is deputy managing editor of truthout.org and editor-at-large At the public record his investigative work has appeared in the LA Times the Wall Street Journal Alternet common dreams the Huffington Post the raw story counterpunch and political affairs magazine and Our other guest.
Oh and Jason is joining us live here in studio this evening Our guest on the phone is Michael Kearns.
He is a former Air Force captain who served as a special survival training program operations officer and Master instructor at the Joint Services seer Agency, and I think at this point in the interview I ought to ask you Jason Leopold if you could finish introducing Our guest Michael Kearns on the phone for us and let the audience know what it is Who it is we're dealing with before we get to the what I get sure Michael Kearns Retired captain Michael Kearns of the Air Force he is He was involved in what is referred to survival evasion resistance and escape it's a training program That all branches of the military had he served in very high level capacity within that program in the Air Force and teaching thousands of Military personnel Air Force trainees how to survive if they were captured by an enemy regime and he's a decorated veteran and Michael can correct me if I'm wrong, but just one of two or three people Worldwide that was able to teach a specific course of survival To Air Force personnel if they were captured Okay well and with that I will go ahead and welcome Michael to the show Michael.
How are you?
Great Scott.
Thanks for having me well I'm very happy to have you here and the point of all this is that you're the source for a new piece at truthout.org Which is by Jason Leopold here and his co-author Jeffrey K which the exact title escapes me, but it's something to the effect of Notes of a CIA officers shed light new light on the real purpose of the Bush era Torture program at Guantanamo Bay, and I suppose Elsewhere in the war on terrorism is that right Jason.
Yes, that's correct.
It's the CIA psychologists handwritten notes revealed true purpose of Bush's torture program and these are such a are so valuable and Captain Kearns Was the is the one who brought them to us and we spent five months on this story investigating it putting it together and it's a such an important piece to the puzzle the Regarding Bush's torture program that actually reveals what the true purpose was.
It was not just about Gaining intelligence to thwart pending terrorist attacks.
This was as Captain Kearns can Indicate a an X an illegal exploitation program a program to break down detainees psychologically and Physically in order to get them to collaborate with their detainers giving false confessions, etc now Michael if you could please clarify a bit about that term exploitation We're not just talking about Breaking a prisoner so that he'll finally tell you everything he knows about al-qaeda's next plot against us that's exactly right and Jason did a fantastic job with just K on this article, especially because The intent of my program which was different than normal prisoner of war treatment programs that the Department of Defense gave people was exploitation which was mostly propaganda and And so that US military personnel that were held together Somewhere in the world any peacetime situation such as by a terrorist group would actually not harm each other We had that in the situation in Korea I don't know if you have know the history of when the code of conduct or seer training actually started Was back in 1955 Right.
This is from all the the brainwashing and American POWs in North Korea were shown on TV acting like Manchurian candidates, right?
That's where the term comes from.
This is basically Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Torture Book And then the US government reverse engineered this right so that you guys could train high value American Like say pilots flying over the Soviet Union that kind of thing if you're captured This is the kind of thing that could happen to you to train them inoculate them from the stress of being interrogated So that even if put through the waterboard even if put through the ringer They'll still only say name rank serial number and not give up all the secret information in their heads, right?
Exactly Scott and what was really unique about Korea historically was there are over 2,500 Americans that died in prisoner of war camps about 38% Which is really unprecedented unprecedented since the Revolutionary War So for America, especially to see something on television and to read about it in the press that Gosh, there's the Korean War and we have American officers who were Basically forced to lie about Chemical and biological warfare and they fully said it's just as if like you say Manchurian candidate Yeah to get them to lie about chemical biological warfare that sounds familiar We'll get to that in a second everybody.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton I have Jason Leopold from truthout.org in studio with me tonight and we're talking with his source Michael Kearns retired US Air Force captain and one of the instructors at the Sears school and Now he gave you Jason these notes From a name who people who were paying attention in the bush years to the torture regime might know the name Bruce Jessen He features prominently in Jane Mayer's book the dark side for example He was a psychologist on contract for the CIA.
Is that right?he was under contract of the CIA and and he is credited as being one of the architects of the Bush's torture program and These notes which are were written in sometime in I believe 1989 They show exactly what was in fact reverse engineered and used against detainees and he and Captain Kearns worked together on this specific survival training course these notes pertain to a specific module of a survival training course and What what the notes show is what was basically reverse engineered and then used against detainees when he was brought in when he sold the CIA and the Department of Defense Their interrogation program now when you say reverse engineered, I guess yeah Captain Kearns, could you please tell us exactly what that means?
It's not we're not Quite talking about a piece of foreign technology here, right?
Well, I wouldn't use the words of reverse engineered myself, right?
I mean, we all know what torture is Something no one really wants to have happen to themselves And when we were protecting US government personnel the people we trained not only were Air Force They were army that were special operations.
They were doing Covert and special operations around the world and we were one level above the wartime training Your school was provided by each of the services the Army Navy and the Air Force at a basic level for prisoner of war training But the program I was in was a very unique program was kind of a finishing school a graduate school of sorts of resistance to interrogation really resistance to Exploitation because as we know in the world today if let's say someone is in Afghanistan and shoots a couple people they might have to play pay blood money or be held by that country For doing something illegal within their territory So to protect US special forces and special operations around the world.
We provided resistance to exploitation and of course the term Reverse engineer just means take that and put it somewhere else It was flipped upside down on its head and used for torture, right?
Well, even before we get to the flipping it upside down and and using it as an active program from our side I just wanted I was trying to get to there was in looking at the notes It seems like this dr.
Jessen and perhaps yourself rather than just saying, okay Well, for example, we know the North Koreans did this this and that and so we'll train our soldiers to resist this and this this And that it was you guys were really trying to find out exactly the techniques that might be used how effective they are It's not just tie somebody up and beat them up.
It's sort of you know, O'Brien room 101 stuff You you you cause them pain and then you make them love you and then you make them Dependent on you and then you hurt them again, and it's you know, very You know in particular it's broken down very thoroughly and then so the again though But for the purpose of inoculating our soldiers protecting them you guys really did take apart torture all the way down to its smallest pieces in order to Understand it and and and implement the training for our soldiers then so that's what was turned around It wasn't just this is what it's like to be held underground.
This is what it's like to be tied to Iraq This is what it's like to be dunked underwater But this is what it's like to actually have these techniques used against you in a scientific Sort of format to try to get you to break particularly.
This is the the seer school Training that you guys mastered.
This is what was turned on its head and used against detainees in the terror war Exactly, and what was really interesting about the way our program functions.
It was psychologically cognitive program using Socratic style questioning techniques So we will take individuals and groups of people and actually put them in Quota scenario where they really would be flying somewhere in another country and we will play the part of the detainer And so as a person was living out their role at a role play scenario We would actually then test them to see if they could actually Keep true to each other Keep true to their country and not get in any more of a bigger problem than what has been found in history So all of the information that's in these notes Who's Justin and I got from historical materials that are actually in the public domain?all right, so Retired US Air Force captain Michael Kearns you and this dr.
Bruce Jessen and And others I guess perfected these techniques and then at the dawn of the terror war You saw Bruce Jessen I don't know if you knew he went to work for the CIA, but you saw your very same techniques implemented by the Bush administration not for training our soldiers how to resist interrogation if they're captured by I don't know the Afghans or something, but How to make them the torturers to use this against people in Afghanistan, for example Well, it's certainly not rocket science Scott Now you want to have a person not be able to Comprehend their situation you take away their function as far as understanding the hours in a day the days in a week I mean we watched the TV show 24 during that period of time and you know So did the White House and a lot of the people that are making executive decisions?
That's the scary part as I watch things unfold and then the Albuquerque pictures came out Honestly the first thing I thought was oh, that's a big psyop.
It's a psychological operation people Americans couldn't have done that is what I was thinking But then it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you're wrong about that, huh?
Well, that's the word thing I never saw Bruce Jessen's name I never saw any names of anyone else until Senator Levin's report actually came out and Then when I finally you know, I didn't really want to even dwell on Researching any of this because I worked in it.
I know what it's all about And I'm retired.
I Just got everything we did as far as training resistance to interrogation techniques They were very sensitive and classified not certainly won't discuss that because we're still protecting Americans with those resistance to interrogation techniques So at the time I really became aware or awakened to this was when Jeff K Wrote an article that had Bruce Jessen and Roger Aldridge and Jim Mitchell's names and That was a weird day for me to see all of this come crashing down around my head to then to think back that I'd worked from 1987 through 1990 with Bruce Jessen helped hire him and What we put together Really was something that was very very special to special operations people because as you might recall 1989 is when the Berlin Wall came down and the United States didn't have a communist enemy in Europe anymore, right?
So a big spin-up training requirements for special operations personnel and Anyone that has a job wants to keep their job, and I'm sure that the people after I left special survival training in 1990 That the continuation was I guess like a rocket ship They just trained so many people now JPR a they have their own agency.
We were just 12 people that were intelligence personnel who worked all over the globe in a very small project must be huge today and And if I could just interject and say JPR a is a joint personnel recovery agency Which is the executive agency that overseers oversees all the seer?
Programs for the different branches exactly and and you know, Captain Kearns mentioned Senator Levin Carl Levin, he actually did an investigation into the treatment of Detainees in the custody of the of the u.s.
And it focused on seer The survival vision resistance escape program and in the beginning of that report.
There's actually a mention An acronym to this specific class.
This is a class called SV 91 SV for survival which is what Captain Kearns and Bruce Jessen worked on and then throughout the rest of the report If there's no other mention of it and and there are parts of that report that's classified so presumably any further mention of it is is classified within the report and that's what makes this so valuable because the Bush interrogation torture program the it's very much an experimental program and This you know that formed the psychological underpinnings of it, which we really didn't know too much about there I mean we've learned so much about the program, but there's still you know A lot that out there that we don't know and this this helps kind of fill a void Particularly as it relates to you know, the psychological aspects of that program, right?
That's Jason Leopold He's the deputy managing editor of truthout org and tell us again the name of the piece.
I'm sorry It's a CIA psychologists notes revealed true purpose behind Bush's torture program and You know it Like I said, we spent five months in the story and it's it's really technical.
We made very well reported very thoroughly.
Thank you Thank you Scott I appreciate that and we did make these notes available to our readers well because we want them to be able to have the opportunity To download them and and read them for themselves, right and on the line.
We're joined by Michael Kearns he's one of the major sources for the story retired captain in the US Air Force and Helped put together the seer school and run the seer school as he was saying back in the late 80s early 90s there With Bruce Jessen and some of these guys who helped the CIA implement these torture techniques Against the so-called enemy in the terror war and I'd like to ask you captain Kearns if you could I know that you said that you know There are currently classified parts of this that you can't give away because you don't want to You know compromise the training that our guys are getting now in the same kind of way, but I wonder if you could answer How much of the torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and for that matter at the black sites perhaps?
Have you heard about have you read reported, etc?
That seems you know perhaps can you measure like how well they're staying within the guidelines of of the way you guys at least taught it in the seer school because I've read things about just absolute insanity freezing people and siccing German shepherds on them and electrocuting them and strobe lights and house music for weeks on end and you know Cutting people with razor blades and things that seem a lot of the sexual abuse things that seem very ad hoc When it comes to and and by CIA and military when it comes to the abuse of these people whether we're talking Guantanamo You know on the side of the road in Iraq or an Abu Ghraib or in the salt pit torture dungeon in Afghanistan Can you comment on that how much of this?
Seems to really be coloring outside of even the lines that they've perverted your original school and turned it into this madness Well Scott that's the thing is that I'm not an interrogator Right what I what I did at SV 91 and SV 83 that two different classified programs that we worked on with SV 91 being the one that was for special operations people for special mission units and SV 83 was for strategic reconnaissance operations spy planes I'm not an interrogator.
We were just role players.
We would We were amateur psychologists working with Bruce Jessen trying to make sure that people could remember significant ways to resist interrogation and I'm saying interrogation by a hostile organization when I read the events of Americans or some kind of Collaborative country working with Americans to really torture people and the hideous torture that you have just explained It does turn my stomach and I have a hard time reading it Does it is it even reminiscent of some of the techniques that you would role-play or is it?
I mean waterboarding for example.
We know that that's part of the seer training that's been published, right?
Here's what it's like to be waterboarded in case this ever happens to you but what about you know hanging them upside down for weeks keeping them awake for weeks and and The the strobe lights and the freezing temperatures and these kinds of things Well waterboarding actually Scott is not part of standard survival evasion resistance escape training Only the Navy was doing waterboarding and it's only at one of the Navy schools they have two schools one in Brunswick, Maine and one in Coronado, California and the California school did waterboarding and The one up in Maine as I recall they did something called smoking someone they would actually force smoke into a Student's mouth and nose and make them sick or make them ill so they used these really harsh techniques and When I first started coming into survival evasion resistance and escape training back in 1983 that was one of my first questions to some of the people that Actually have testified before the Senate That I read their names.
I talked with them as far back as I got into the program back in 83 Why is it that the Air Force doesn't use the waterboard and the Navy uses it on the west coast?
What does it use it on the east coast?
The army has their school at Fort Bragg and their focus is quite different because they're trying to help special forces personnel resistance irrigation Each of the services did it differently and that was one of the concerns I had when I was working in This year program at special survival training program Because we were really supposed to be over top of all of the services We were the executive agent action office or the Joint Chiefs of Staff Quite honestly, you look at some of the reports like from Steve Kleinman Colonel Steve Kleinman who's an interrogator You don't do that in interrogation You just don't do that It makes a person really hate you when you start doing harsh physical things and even weird Psychological things when you do that to a person they really want to clam up Right.
Well, and this is my question for you Jason you say that It's in the title these notes reveal the true purpose here It was not about tell us about the next al-qaeda plot so we can protect the American people It was about breaking these men and making them completely subservient But to what end what was the point of this turning them into jailhouse snitches or seems like you could do better by letting them Work in the cafeteria Certainly that was part of it false confessions was another, you know One thing that we point out in in the story is that it certainly in the notes it talks about false confessions As well as an accompanying paper a companion paper that Bruce Jessen wrote as well and false confessions was certainly What took place at Guantanamo when they were trying to get information about Iraq?
Torturing them to the point where they would say something and how did that work?
Well, then that justified, you know, whatever In purpose or intelligence at the White House used to justify its invasion part of it You know the the other part was to you know, get them to work as informants and one of the previous stories I had written On on David Hicks that we actually spoke about One of the former Guantanamo guards told me that there were fake detainees, you know planted at Guantanamo That would be used to try and get the other, you know detainees to work for the government So and and propaganda is you know is is an important part of the story Is uh, you know is is another purpose but really to get them to you know to collaborate and uh, Uh, we know that it was not just intelligence.
Uh, perhaps that's you know, that's the line that's been thrown out there But experiment is really something that i've been You know harping on for quite a while because this really was an experimental program and I think that this helps push us further into the area of of proving Uh that these people were used as an experiment these people meaning the you know detainees Uh that that were there many of who are you know are innocent well, you know as uh Captain kearns was saying you torture somebody you turn them against you.
So, um You know, I wonder did they think that they were creating like double agents that they could set free to saudi arabia who would be You know undercover guy working for us and does that seem like the way to go?
To me like you give them a cheeseburger You're much more likely to get that result than beating the hell out of them and then trying to turn them Loose to work for you.
Well, you know, I know we don't have a couple really good examples, don't you in your article?
We actually brought out a couple great examples.
Yes, and thank you.
Kevin kearns.
Yes, we you know, we talk about binya muhammad uh one of the uh, another detainee muhammad, uh al-qahtani Uh, so we talk about all their various libya as well as yes, exactly And he was the one that gave up, uh information on iraq and you know died in lit in a libyan, uh Jail cell supposedly by suicide and back when qaddafi was a good guy working for us Right years ago back when john mccain said he was a uh, you know, uh, not not a bad fellow but you know one thing I do want to point out I know we don't have much time is that the Uh omer katter who was the teenager?
Uh that was in uh, uh, guantanamo Uh, his brother worked for uh, the cia His brother was at first interrogated then worked for the cia This is something that it has been reported but totally went under the radar Uh, and he testified about it how he was interrogated and beaten up and Eventually worked for the cia and went to bosnia and and and and other places And other places so it it very much, uh, you know this we have seen these examples that underscore exactly what uh, Uh, you know what captain kearns had talked about and and certainly, you know, these notes do uh indicate that as well All right.
Uh any closing comments for either of you one last question for captain kearns jason You know, I spent many many months with captain kearns Uh, so I I just want to say that he's one of the very few people out there who have the courage to speak up and to come forward and uh, you know, I think that uh, He should be applauded for that simply because uh, he he provided us with a lot of valuable material Yeah, well, it is an excellent report and uh, tell us again One more time the name of the article truthout.org.
Sure.
It's a cia psychologist notes reveal true purpose behind bush's torture program and uh again, uh, One of the sources in that great piece is michael kearns Oh, and I keep I don't want to neglect your your co-author jeffrey k who works with you on this piece as well It's by jason leopold and jeffrey k again, uh retired air force captain.
Michael kearns is one of the major sources found Uh bruce jesson's notes and turned them over.
You can read it all at truthout.org I want to thank both of you very much for your time on the show tonight.
Thank you scott.
Thank you scott All right, everybody.
So that has been anti-war radio for this week and um I want to uh draw your attention if I can to anti-war.com where we cover all of the bad news from all over the world uh 24 hours a day 365 days a year including thanksgiving and christmas and our birthdays, too Uh, we're covering every revolution in the middle east, uh, including the two that america supports and uh much more the wars Uh the revolutions the occupations Uh the mass murder the torture all the bad news is at anti-war.com if you want the archives of all my interviews Uh going back to I guess 2007.
Anyway, they're at anti-war.com/radio I really appreciate you all tuning in again.
I'm scott horton.
I'm here every 6 30 every friday From 6 30 to 7 on 90.7 fm kpfk in la Me You
