CIA torture more enhanced than enhanced: McGovern

A former CIA analyst says the CIA’s torture techniques used during the presidency of George W. Bush were identical to methods used by Nazi Germany’s secret police and were at times more enhanced than enhanced.

In a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday, Ray McGovern said many people around the world do not know that the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks were identical to torture methods used by the Gestapo and even the words ‘enhanced interrogation’ are literal translation of German words verschärfte vernehmung.

‘Enhanced interrogation’ techniques, McGovern said, “is a direct translation from the Gestapo manual ‘Verschärfte Vernehmung’; German words for interrogation, vernehmung, and verschärfte means enhanced or sharpened.”

However, he continued, the CIA even used “enhanced enhanced interrogation techniques” which were introduced when Donald Rumsfeld was the US Secretary of Defense and George Tenet was the director of the CIA.

“Not only do we have the Gestapo manual from which enhanced interrogation techniques were a translation but we have the techniques and, guess what, the techniques are almost identical to what the Gestapo used during World War II and other times. However, there were a few enhanced enhanced interrogation techniques but they were introduced to Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet who was the head of the CIA.”

A 6,300-page report, which took the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence nearly four years to compose, has detailed the CIA’s torture techniques including water-boarding, wall-slamming, and shackling.

The report remains classified and a recent leak of the major findings of the report shows the CIA’s torture methods were “brutal, and far worse than the agency communicated to policymakers.”

Earlier this month, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to make public parts of the report. However, McGovern says CIA director John Brennan is the one who decides what parts of the scathing report can be made public.

“This may sound laughable to the international audience but it’s John Brennan who gets to decide how much detail [and] how much incriminating evidence will be revealed or will be allowed to be revealed,” he stated.