Ft. Huachuca involvement in torture training

Ft. Huachuca, located 70 miles southeast of Tucson, Arizona, houses the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School (USAICS). Ft. Huachuca has a long history of complicity in U.S. crimes of torture. Here is a brief summary. For a more thorough examination, please read the articles linked below.


Torture Manuals
Project X was part of the Army's Foreign Intelligence Unit that developed intelligence publications and training manuals in the 1960s drawn from counterinsurgency experience in Vietnam. Project X manuals were the source of training materials taught to and used by the most egregious violators of human rights in Latin America.

Project X materials were housed at Ft. Huachuca.

In the mid-1970s, the Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca began distributing "Project X" manuals to U.S. military trainers working in "friendly" countries.

In 1982, Ft. Huachuca was ordered to develop lesson plans and manuals for the curriculum at the School of the Americas. The USAICS working group used Project X materials as the basis of the manuals. The manuals were sent to the Department of Defense for approval, and were approved without changes.

Throughout the 1980s, they were a source for several more intelligence instruction manuals which included training on techniques such as the use of abduction of family members to gain information, physical beatings, electrical shock, and execution.

The manuals were used in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries in Latin America.


Guantanamo
In the summer of 2002, Brig. Gen. John Custer, then second in command of Ft. Huachuca, went to Guantanamo on special assignment. Details are secret, but upon his return he integrated the techniques he learned about at Guantamano into standard practices of Department of Defense interrogation schools.

Soon thereafter, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved new rules expanding the use of torture allowed on detainees, including the use of light and sound deprivation, removal of clothing, and using military dogs.


Abu Ghraib
In 2004, an Army investigation said that several graduates of Ft. Huachuca's intelligence school played a role in the torture at Abu Ghraib. One sergeant specifically "contributed to the abusive environment" by describing to Army and contract interrogators how dogs can be used as "an inducement." He also taught how prisoners are most vulnerable soon after capture when they are "taken from their familiar surroundings, blindfolded-- brought to this place--pushed down a hall with guards barking orders and thrown into a cell, naked."

The investigation also found that some members of the Ft. Huachuca team had worked on missions at Guantanamo Bay "where more aggressive interrogation techniques had been used on prisoners" and had passed these techniques on to Abu Ghraib interrogators.

The head of the military intelligence battalion at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, had been stationed at Ft. Huachuca until 2002.

Major General Barbara Fast was Pappas' superior and the chief of military intelligence in Iraq.

Major General Fast was the commander of Ft. Huachuca from March 2005 to June 2007.

Brig. General Custer took over her command on June 29, 2007.


Additional Resources

Report on the School of Americas
By Rep. Joseph Kennedy, March 6, 1997

Arizona Daily Star: Huachuca sergeant blamed in abuse of prisoners

Roots of Abu Ghraib in CIA techniques
50 years of refining, teaching torture found in interrogation manuals

PR charades notwithstanding, Fort Huachuca wrote the book on prisoner abuse

Revealed: U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

Gitmo interrogations spark battle over tactics

Military Interrogation Training Gets Privatized

Democracy Now: Former U.S. Army Interrogator Describes the Harsh Techniques He Used in Iraq, Detainee Abuse by Marines and Navy Seals and Why Torture is the Worst Possible Thing We Could Do