I've spoken to people from Latin America who talked about the torture of people who got involved in political parties that opposed the governments that were in power. It's explained in this article.
www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.htmlI found some articles about an American who taught "Torture" in Latin America. I have no way of varifying it. Who knows something about this? Here are some articles I found.
www.zmag.org/wiseselective.htm(excerpt)
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And last but not least, what should we make of Dan Mitrione? Mitrione was the former head of the U.S. Office of Public Safety in Uruguay. In that capacity, Mitrione’s job appears to have been instructing Uruguayan police and military officials on how to torture their political enemies more effectively. His favorite slogan, according to those with whom he worked, was "the precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." Since torturers need to practice their craft, Mitrione would have his students test out all manner of devices--including electric shock to the genitals--on homeless beggars, kidnapped from the streets. Once Mitrione and his charges were finished with these torture models, they were routinely murdered. (8)
And yet in 1970, when Mitrione was himself kidnapped and killed by an Uruguayan rebel group, Secretary of State William Rogers attended his funeral, as did Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis, who staged a benefit for the family. White House Spokesman Ron Ziegler said of Mitrione, that his "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example to free men everywhere." (9)
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www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Torture_RS.html(excerpt)
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In the late 1960s, Dan Mitrione, an employee of the US Office of Public Safety (part of the Agency for Intemational Development), which trained and armed foreign police forces, was stationed in Montevideo, Uruguay. Torturing political prisoners in Uruguay had existed before Mitrione's arrival. However, in a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper, Jo~nal do Brasil in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and Mitrione in particular, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured.
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www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Uruguay_KH.html(excerpt)
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William Cantrell was a CIA operations officer stationed in Montevideo and ostensibly a member of the OPS team. In the mid-1960s he was instrumental in setting up a Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), and providing it with funds and equipment. Some the equipment, innovated by the CIA's Technical Services Division, was for the purpose torture, for this was one of the functions carried out by the DII.
"One of the pieces of equipment that was found useful," former New York Times correspondent A. J. Langguth learned, "was a wire so very thin that it could be fitted into the mouth between the teeth and by pressing against the gum increase the electrical charge. it was through the diplomatic pouch that Mitrione got some of the equipment he needed in interrogations, including these fine wires.''
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www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/1999-11/22dominick.htmwww.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/sept94bourgeois.htmwww.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/SOA.htmlwww.zmag.org/monbiotbackyard.htmwww.etext.org/Politics/Conspiracy/DiNardo/Misc/contras(excerpt)
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Now, how do you teach torture? Dan Mitrione, I can teach you about
torture, but sooner or later you have to get involved. You have to lay on
your hands and try it yourself. They would pick up guinea pigs off the
streets: beggars, and take them in to use in these torture training classes.
Of course, the horror of that is, these people wouldn't know why they were
being tortured. They couldn't give up. They couldn't say, "I'm sorry. Stop
the pain. I'll tell you the names of everybody involved."
All they could do was lie there and scream.
When they would collapse, they would bring in doctors who would shoot
them up with Vitamin B and rest them up for the next class. And when they
would die, they would mutilate the bodies and throw them out on the streets
to terrify the population, so that everybody would be afraid of the police
and the government. This is what the CIA was teaching them to do.
One of the women who was in this program for two years -- tortured in
Brazil for two years -- testified internationally when she eventually got out.
She said the most horrible thing about it, in fact, was that the people doing
it were not raving psychopaths. She couldn't break mental contact with them
the way you could if they were psychopaths. They were very ordinary people.
She told about being tortured one day. She's on this table, naked in a room
full of six men, and they're doing these incredibly painful degrading things
to her body. And there's an interruption. The American is called to the
telephone, and he's in the next room, and the others take a smoke break. She's
lying on this table, and he's saying: "Oh, hi Honey. Yes, I can wrap it up
here in another hour or so, and meet you and the kids at the Ambassador's
on the way home."
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www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/langguthleaf.html(excerpt)
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LOS ANGELES – A few months ago, I received some clippings of interviews with a former Federal Intelligence agency official. That operative, Jesse Leaf, had been involved with the agency’s activities in Iran, and well into the stories Mr. Leaf made some damning accusations.
He said that the C.I.A. sent an operative to teach interrogation methods to SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, that the training included instructions in torture, and the techniques were copied from the Nazis.
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www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB71/(excerpt)
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Between mid-1970 and early 1971, the Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione and an American agronomist, as well as a Brazilian and a British diplomat, and requested in exchange the liberation of 150 guerrilla prisoners. After negotiations with relatives and foreign governments the majority of the victims were freed unharmed, but the Uruguayan and U.S. governments as a matter of policy refused to negotiate with the kidnappers. The Tupamaros killed Mitrione and his body was found in early August 1970. Violence between the U.S.-supported police and the Tupamaros spiraled upward.
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www.greenleft.org.au/1999/365/18619(excerpt)
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“Mitrione considered it [torture] to be an art. First there should be the softening up period, with the usual beatings and insults. The object is to humiliate the prisoner, to make him realise his helplessness, to cut him off from reality. No questions, only blows and insults. Then, only blows in silence. Only after this, said Mitrione, is the interrogation. Here no pain should be produced, other than that caused by the instrument being used. `The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect,' was his motto.”
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www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Torture/Torture_page.htmlFor more, enter the words "Torture", or "Mitrione", or "Death squads" in these search engines.
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/htdig/search.htmlwww.zmag.org/search/index.cfmHere are a few more.
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6199www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/1999-11/22dominick.htmwww.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/sept94bourgeois.htmwww.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/SOA.htmlwww.zmag.org/monbiotbackyard.htmLet's have a discussion to separate fact from fiction. I know that at least some of it is fact just from talking to non-Americans.