The administration apparently contracted with SERE torture resistance trainers to devise an interrogation prograqm based on the SERE methods in late 2001 or early 2002. By Dec. of 2002 they arrived at Guantanamo Bay with the results of the nearly year of careful planning. They took a chart copied verbatim from a 1957 USAF study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain false confessions from American prisoners. The article was "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War" by Alfred D. Biderman. The only change was to change the original title, "Communist Coercive Methods for Extracting Individual Compliance."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Albert D. Biderman was a sociologist working for the Air Force, Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.the original 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.
Other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”
There is an email from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”
The chart was then referred to as "Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.
I don't quite know where to begin. I guess the psychological principle "You become what you hate," is true at least for the Republicans who used to hate the Communists but now loudly proclaim the value to national security of these wonderful techniques good only to get the victim to say what you want him to say.