U.S. Army and CIA Interrogation Manuals - CIA Manuals - The 1983 Manual and Battalion 3-16

The 1983 Manual and Battalion 3-16

In 1983, the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983 methods were used by the U.S.-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16.

On January 24, 1997, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983 were declassified in response to a FOIA request filed by the Baltimore Sun in 1994. The Baltimore Sun was investigating the "kidnapping, torture and murder" of the Honduran Battalion 3-16 death squad. The documents were released only after the Baltimore Sun had threatened to sue the CIA.

In the June 11 to 18, 1995 four-part series, the Baltimore Sun printed excerpts of an interview with Florencio Caballero, a former member of Battalion 3-16. Caballero said CIA instructors taught him to discover what his prisoners loved and what they hated, "If a person did not like cockroaches, then that person might be more cooperative if there were cockroaches running around the room" The methods taught in the 1983 manual and those used by Battalion 3-16 in the early 1980s show unmistakable similarities. In 1983, Caballero attended a CIA "human resources exploitation or interrogation course," according to declassified testimony by Richard Stolz, who was the deputy director for operations at the time, before the June 1988 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The manual advises an interrogator to "manipulate the subject's environment, to create unpleasant or intolerable situations."

The manual gives the suggestion that prisoners be deprived of sleep and food, and made to maintain rigid positions, such as standing at attention for long periods. Ines Consuelo Murillo, who spent 78 days in Battalion 3-16's secret jails in 1983, said she was given no food or water for days, and one of her captors entered her room every 10 minutes and poured water over her head to keep her from sleeping.

The "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -- 1983" gives the suggestion that interrogators show the prisoner letters from home to give the prisoner the impression that the prisoner's relatives are in danger or suffering.

The Baltimore Sun reported that, former Battalion 3-16 member Jose Barrera said he was taught interrogation methods by U.S. instructors in 1983, used this technique: "The first thing we would say is that we know your mother, your younger brother. And better you cooperate, because if you don't, we're going to bring them in and rape them and torture them and kill them."