Army Report Debunks Brainwashing of American Prisoners of War
In 1956 the U.S Department of the Army published a report entitled Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War which called brainwashing a "popular misconception." The report states "exhaustive research of several government agencies failed to reveal even one conclusively documented case of 'brainwashing' of an American prisoner of war in Korea."
While US POW's captured by North Korea were brutalized with starvation, beatings, forced death marches, exposure to extremes of temperature, binding in stress positions, and withholding of medical care, the abuse had no relation to indoctrination or collecting intelligence information "in which they were not particularly interested." In contrast American POW's in the custody of the Chinese Communists did face a concerted interrogation and indoctrination program--but the Chinese did not employ deliberate physical abuse. "Extensive research has disclosed that systematic, physical torture was not employed in connection with interrogation or indoctrination," the report states.
The Chinese elicited information using tricks such as harmless-seeming written questionnaires, followed by interviews. The "most insidious" and effective Chinese technique according to the US Army Report was a convivial display of false friendship:
"hen an American soldier was captured by the Chinese, he was given a vigorous handshake and a pat on the back. The enemy 'introduced' himself as a friend of the 'workers' of America . . . in many instances the Chinese did not search the American captives, but frequently offered them American cigarettes. This display of friendship caught most Americans totally off-guard and they never recovered from the initial impression made by the Chinese. . . . fter the initial contact with the enemy, some Americans seemed to believe that the enemy was sincere and harmless. They relaxed and permitted themselves to be lulled into a well-disguised trap the cunning enemy."
It was this surprising, disarmingly friendly treatment, that "was successful to some degree," the report concludes, in undermining hatred of the communists among American soldiers, in persuading some to sign anti-American confessions, and even leading a few to reject repatriation and remain in Communist China.
Read more about this topic: Mind Control
Famous quotes containing the words army, report, american, prisoners and/or war:
“The army is the true nobility of our country.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte III (1808–1873)
“Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“During the late war [the American Revolution] I had an infallible rule for deciding what [Great Britain] would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)