Torture in the US

[Peter]

[Peter]

WASHINGTON (AP)  -- President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House in December and the Senate last month.

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States' ability to collect critical intelligence while also providing a much-needed boost to country's moral standing abroad.

"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "We will not stop until [the ban] becomes law."

The bill would limit CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners. The Army field manual in 2006 banned using methods such as waterboarding or sensory deprivation on uncooperative prisoners.

Bush said the CIA must retain use of "specialized interrogation procedures" that the military doesn't need. The military methods are designed for questioning "lawful combatants captured on the battlefield," while intelligence professionals are dealing with "hardened terrorists" who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.

"We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland," Bush said. "If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives."

The legislation's backers say the military's approved methods are sufficient to any need.

Those 19 interrogation techniques to which the bill would have restricted CIA personnel include the "good cop/bad cop" routine, making prisoners think they are in another country's custody and separating a prisoner from others for up to 30 days.

Among the techniques the field manual prohibits are hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes, stripping them naked, forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts, or beating, electrocuting, burning or otherwise physically hurting them.

They may not be subjected to hypothermia or mock executions. It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.

But waterboarding is the most high-profile and controversial of the interrogation methods in question.

It involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to simulate and create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world and human rights organizations as torture.

Some argue it must be banned because, if torture, it is illegal under international and U.S. law. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 includes a provision barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees in U.S. custody, including CIA prisoners, and many believe that covers waterboarding.

Others say that, even if legal, there are practical arguments against waterboarding: that its use would undermine the U.S. when arguing overseas for human rights and on other moral issues and would place Americans at greater risk of being tortured when captured.

"President Bush's veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement Friday. "Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world."

He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a "poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear."

The U.S. military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The CIA also prohibited the practice in 2006, and says it has not been used since three prisoners encountered it in 2003.

But while some Bush administration officials have questioned the current legality of waterboarding, the administration has refused to rule definitively on whether it is torture. Bush has said many times that his administration does not torture.

The White House says waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA. Its use would have to be approved, on a case-by-case basis, by the president after consultation with the attorney general and the intelligence community. Among the acceptable situations for approving it could be belief of imminent attack, according to the White House.

"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said.

[Peter]

I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.

[Peter]

Americans, especially Catholics, approve of torture

By TOM CARNEY

Is the American public apathetic about charges its government uses and sponsors torture in its fight against terrorism?

Not apathetic, according to surveys. Fact is, a majority of Americans actually approve of the use of torture under some circumstances. What’s more, according to one survey, Catholics approve of its use by a wider margin than the general public.

“This may be a reaction to 9/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of Islam,” says Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., member of the bishops’ Committee on International Policy. “Some people feel the situation is out of control. They feel a vulnerability and a temptation to respond in kind. We have to resist that.”

A survey by the Pew Research Center in October showed that 15 percent of Americans believe torture is “often” justified, and another 31 percent believe it is “sometimes” justified. Add to that another 17 percent who said it is “rarely” justified, and you have two out of three Americans justifying torture under certain circumstances. Only 32 percent said it is “never” justified, while another 5 percent didn’t know or refused to answer.

But the portion of Catholics who justify torture is even higher, according to the survey. Twenty-one percent of Catholics surveyed said it is “often” justified and 35 percent said it is “sometimes” justified. Another 16 percent said it is “rarely” justified, meaning that nearly three of four Catholics justify it under some circumstances. Four percent of Catholics “didn’t know” or refused to answer and only 26 percent said it is “never” justified, which is the official teaching of the church.

Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew center, said these results mirror those of similar surveys.

That could be why Bush administration officials have been emboldened to use terms like “torture lite,” referring to abuse that does not result in organ failure or death, and why international and humanitarian organizations have been outspoken about American and American-sponsored torture.

A United Nations statement last year said that inmates at the four-year-old Guantánamo Bay detention center were deprived of legal assistance and information and living in conditions of detention that “amount to inhuman and degrading treatment.”

In February, five investigators of the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights concluded an 18-month study and recommended that the detention center at Guantánamo Bay be closed immediately.

Torture, according to the International Convention against Torture of 1984, “means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person.”

The United Nations has not been alone in charging the United States with torture. Amnesty International has complained of the “use of torture and ill-treatment against prisoners” at Guantánamo, citing the testimony of former prisoners. And it has detailed American-sponsored torture by Iraqi military brigades.

In February the American-based organization, Human Rights First -- formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -- charged the U.S. government with the deaths of 100 detainees during “the global war on terror.”

A New York Times article, also in February, said the American military’s detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, operates in “rigorous secrecy,” refusing to name, let alone bring charges against, its 500 or so prisoners. The facility may not be photographed, even from a distance. It is believed to be keeping prisoners that normally would have been sent to Guantánamo were it not for the recent critical publicity.

The article said an Army investigation discovered two practices -- since reportedly halted -- that resulted in at least two deaths at Bagram. One was the chaining of prisoners by the arms to the ceilings of their cells. The other was the use of knee strikes to the legs of disobedient prisoners by guards. Other practices, since phased out, included use of barking dogs to frighten new prisoners and handcuffing of prisoners to cell doors to punish them for talking.

“It was like a cage,” one former prisoner told the Times, likening it to the animal cages he had seen at the zoo in Karachi, Pakistan.

Besides conducting torture and sponsoring it, the American government has been accused of using “rendition,” sending suspects to another country without regard for the torture that might await them there.

While some in the Bush administration have appeared to support limited uses of prisoner abuse, Congress has been lukewarm in opposing it, with some exceptions.

“At Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, at Guantánamo, and in Afghanistan, allegations and evidence of detainee abuse have damaged the standing of the United States in the world,” said a statement by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in December.

She was speaking after the House passed the Murtha motion, 303 to 122, supporting the prohibition of torture. The motion, sponsored by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was identical to an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that passed the Senate overwhelmingly in October.

“Our struggle with the forces of international terrorism is as much a battle of ideas as a battle of arms,” Pelosi said. “We weaken ourselves when we compromise our ideals. Standing against torture helps define the differences between the United States and those who offer no message other than hatred and violence.”

On the other hand, the House International Relations Committee rejected in February a resolution introduced by Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., that would have required the Bush administration to provide information on the people who have been subjected to rendition.

Murtha, Pelosi and Markey are Catholic, as is U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has defended America’s treatment of prisoners. This month Gonzales denied the U.S. government engages in torture or ill-treatment of terror suspects as well as the use of rendition.

“The United States has always been and remains a great defender of human rights and rule of law,” he said. “I regret that there has been concern or confusion about our commitment to the rule of law.”

That “concern or confusion” appears to be widespread, extending to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic peace organizations.

Bishop Ricard says Catholics should be concerned about charges of torture because “it’s more about us and our values as Catholics and Americans” than anything else.

Ricard, and Stephen Kolecchi, director of the bishops’ conference Office of International Justice and Peace, said the church is unequivocal in its denunciation of all torture.

“It cannot be contravened under any circumstances,” said Kolecchi, “including the use of detention for the sole purpose of trying to obtain information. It’s so standard in Catholic teaching that we’re opposed to torture.”

Ricard has written several letters to members of Congress stating the opposition of the church to torture and urging laws to ban it. The bishops’ conference has issued statements against torture in the wake of current charges.

The Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi USA, is also making its voice heard on the subject. Its Web site, www.paxchristiusa.org, has many statements on the Christian teaching on torture. It includes a national sign-in statement, “A Christian Call to Stop Torture Now.”

After a quote from John Paul II, the statement says: “As followers of Jesus, we must state clearly and unequivocally that torture violates the basic human dignity afforded all of God’s children, and is never morally acceptable. On this two-year anniversary of the revelations of the cruel, inhumane and humiliating treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison -- the first of numerous revelations regarding institutionalized torture practices in the U.S. war on terrorism -- we reiterate our church’s profound respect for the dignity of all persons and reject as antithetical to Christianity any and all justifications for the use of torture.”

Most disturbing now, says Pax Christi’s executive director, David Robinson, is the “merging of the profit motive with the routine use of torture.” Robinson says the U.S. government is “outsourcing torture to private entities” in Iraq that use abusive interrogation methods. The introduction of profit into the mix, he says, assures that there will be more of it.

During Lent especially, he says, the image of Jesus, who was tortured to death, should be powerful for Catholics, reminding them that “Christ is being crucified today through the practice of torture.”

[Alex179]

I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.

Have you ever been held under water?   My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool.   I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go.   If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game.   You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.

War is not a sport and it is not a game.   Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place.   The Geneva convention is bullshit.  Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).

[Parts]

Tourture is wrong whoever does it.  I believe it is a disrcase to our and any country who uses it info gained is unreliable at best

[Sophgay]

I would torture child abusers and some rapists

[Alex179]

Tourture is wrong whoever does it.  I believe it is a disrcase to our and any country who uses it info gained is unreliable at best

You think feeding them milk and cookies gets you reliable info?   That doesn't work as proven by history.   I think it is only useful in cases of actual warfare, as there are thousands of lives that could be lost depending on strategic advantages gained through interrogation techniques.   

It is best to just kill paedos and rapist or whatever as we do not need information from them (just for them to not eat food and take up resources).

[Peter]

I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.

Have you ever been held under water?   My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool.   I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go.   If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game.   You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.

War is not a sport and it is not a game.   Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place.   The Geneva convention is bullshit.  Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).

When I was a kid, someone jumped on top of me at the swimming pool, driving me under the water.  It only took me a few seconds to reach the surface again, but it made enough of an impact to have stayed with me for all these years, even though I have no problem with swimming underwater of my own volition.

Do you really think most of the people at Guantanimo bay are terrorists?  420 of the 775 detainees at Guantanamo have been released, and only 60-80 of the remaining 355 are to be tried, with the rest released at some undetermined date.  With torture being standard issue for all detainees at Guantanamo, that's a lot of innocent people who've been tortured, and that's just the most famous of the US torture camps.

Given the way anti-terror legislation is being applied indiscriminately to US citizens (and UK citizens), I hope you remain so in favour of torture when they come for you in the middle of the night on some bullshit charge.

[Alex179]

It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure.   I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine.   If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them).   Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with.   I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).

Having been held under many times by people in swimming pool fights, it would take quite a bit to make me say anything if I actually had something to hide.   I am sorry you had such a bad experience in a pool that one time lol.   I have been driven into the ground by a wave that was 11 feet tall while trying to surf during a hurricane once lol.    Went board first into the sand.   That was the closest I ever came to actually drowning.   The board went right into my chest, knocking the air out of me.   Great times.

[Peter]

It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure.   I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine.   If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them).   Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with.   I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).

So you argue that torture is useful in providing 'strategic advantages' while admitting that you'd make up any old bullshit to end your own torture?  Torture is little more than a way to extract bullshit from people, and often that bullshit implicates other innocent people who in turn are tortured and spout bullshit, and so the cycle continues.

[Pyraxis]

I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine. 

You would by the time they were through with you. People are captured and held on a moment of bad luck.

I don't know if the information gained is worth the damage to innocent people, but I would have to investigate the subject a lot further before I thought I could make a valid judgment about it.

[Alex179]

It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure.   I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine.   If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them).   Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with.   I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).

So you argue that torture is useful in providing 'strategic advantages' while admitting that you'd make up any old bullshit to end your own torture?  Torture is little more than a way to extract bullshit from people, and often that bullshit implicates other innocent people who in turn are tortured and spout bullshit, and so the cycle continues.

That is what I would do if I was forced to, as would anyone who was truly innocent and had no way of stopping the torture.   This happens in police interrogation as well, especially without the violence (informants are known to lie even). 

What would be the better method in your opinion for extracting valuable information from an unwilling source?

[Peter]

Here's a first hand account of waterboarding, from a French journalist who was taken prisoner by French paratroopers during the Algerian war:

We now turn to a real-life survivor of torture of the Algerian war. Henri Alleg is a French journalist who was arrested by French paratroopers in Algeria in ’57. Alleg was sympathetic to Algerian independence. He was interrogated for a month. He was questioned. He was waterboarded repeatedly. Alleg described his ordeal in an essay called “The Question,” which was published in 1958 with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book was subsequently banned in France and legalized only after the Algerian war ended in 1962. Henri Alleg is eighty-six years old now, survived torture by French paratroopers, lives now in Paris and joins us on the phone.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Henri Alleg.

HENRI ALLEG: Hello.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us.

HENRI ALLEG: Thank you. Can you make it a little louder?

AMY GOODMAN: Can you hear me now?

HENRI ALLEG: Yes, thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe—as you hear the debate in the United States around whether waterboarding is torture, specifically tell us about your experience of waterboarding. Where were you being held, and what exactly did the French military do to you?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, I have described the waterboarding I was submitted to. And no one can say, having passed through it, that this was not torture, especially when he has endured other types of torture—burning, electricity and beating, and so on. So I am really astonished that this is a big question in the States about this, because the real question is not waterboarding or not waterboarding, it’s the use of torture in such a war, and this use of torture, torture in general.

A man liked General Massu, who was the chief organizer of torture in Algeria and who died about two years ago, asked about three months before his death what he thought of torture and the use of—the general use of torture in Algeria, said that he regretted it and that the war could have been—could have gone on without torture. In fact, torture is not the main thing in such a war. The war was against the Algerian people, and every kind of torture used against an Algerian man or woman would only help the Algerians to fight back, and that when a son knew that his father was tortured, he had only one idea, that is, join the fighters who had tortured his father. So, I don’t think this is the good question.

But to answer precisely your question, it is a terrible way of torturing a man, because you’re bringing—you bring him next to death and then back to life. And sometimes he doesn’t come back to life. So, the use of torture, in my opinion, is a way of making all people fear that if they fight, if they join the fighters against Algeria, they would undergo such a treatment. So it’s the use of terror against the people who fight. It’s not a way of getting whatever information; sometimes they get it, but most of the time it’s useless. So it is not a way of winning a war, even if the people who lead this war say that they have—it’s an obligation for them to use this method if they want victory at the end of the war. That’s my opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: Henri Alleg, I realize it was, what, about a half a century ago that you were held, interrogated and tortured. But I was wondering, since obviously I think most people, most in the civilian population, even soldiers, are not really familiar with what exactly waterboarding is. It has become almost a kind of catchphrase. Can you explain exactly what happened to you?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, I was put on a plank, on a board, fastened to it and taken to a tap. And my face was covered with a rag. Very quickly, the rag was completely full of water. And, of course, you have the impression of being drowned. And—

AMY GOODMAN: The “tap,” meaning you were put under a water faucet?

HENRI ALLEG: A tap, yes, tap water. So, very quickly, the water ran all over my face. I couldn’t, of course, breathe. And after a few minutes, fighting against the impression of getting drowned, you can’t resist. And you feel as if you were drowning yourself. And this is a terrible impression of coming very near death. And so, when the paratroopers, the torturers, see that you’re drowning, they would stop, let you breathe, and try again. So that impression of getting near to death, every time they helped you to come back to life by breathing, it’s a terrible, terrible impression of torture and of death, being near death. So, that was my impression. But it’s difficult to say that this—

AMY GOODMAN: In the context—explain the context for us, Henri Alleg, as they held you under the faucet and the water filled your lungs, what did the French military—what were they demanding of you, and how did you stop it? How did it start again?

HENRI ALLEG: They just wanted me to, first of all, say what I was doing in the moments I was illegal, because I stopped, of course, going to the newspaper, because it was suppressed. So I had to hide, because I knew that I would be taken and sent to a concentration camp. So they wanted to know who were the people I met during that illegal period, what was the people that I had met and what they were doing. That’s what they wanted from me—

AMY GOODMAN: Did you tell them?

HENRI ALLEG:—is to denounce my friends, and I refused to open my mouth to say a word about that. I wouldn’t betray my friends. They didn’t know much more about me. And that is what they wanted. And I didn’t want to help them in any way that would be possible.

AMY GOODMAN: When the water came into your lungs, how did you remain conscious? How did you resist it?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, they said to me, “When you want to talk, you just move your fingers.” Move your fingers. Of course, I was strapped to a board. And the first time I—they started that, I didn’t realize even that I was moving desperately my fingers. So I moved my fingers, and they shouted around me, “So he’s going to talk! He’s going to talk!” So they let me breathe. And as soon as I got a little breath again, I denounced it, and I still refused. So they started again. They said, “He’s making a joke out of us.” So they gave me very heavy blows on my chest and on my belly to make the—get out the water of my lungs and of my body. And they started again afterwards.

And suddenly, as I have explained it—I think it was the third time—I just fainted. And I heard them after a while saying, “Oh, he’s coming back. He’s coming back.” They didn’t want me to die at once, and I knew afterwards, a long time afterwards, that many of the people who went under that waterboarding, as you call it, after having had some moments of fainting, some of them would die, drowned, “asphyxier,” as we say in French. It’s completely—it’s impossible to breathe, so they die, as if they were drowned, and this kind of “accident,” as they call, was very frequent.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you, Henri Alleg, have the sensation of dying?

HENRI ALLEG: Pardon?

AMY GOODMAN: Did you feel the sensation of dying?

HENRI ALLEG: Yes, and that’s a terrible sensation.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you feel?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, You feel that you’re going to die. Of course, you don’t want to die, and in the same time you don’t want to accept the conditions that they make around you to let you live. So, finally, at this third time, before I fainted, I was really decided to die and not to answer at any cost.

But once again, I’m really surprised that this is the big question put before the American opinion now and not another question: Is such a war a war that can be accepted with such—in such conditions and with such tools? Is it a civilized country that can use such things? And is the fact that this way of fighting—as some military say, it can’t be otherwise—is it acceptable? I think it is not acceptable, especially that the way to legalize such a way of fighting, some military say, we cannot do otherwise. It has no meaning at all. The people who lead a fight for freedom and liberty, even if some of them accept the conditions of the people who torture them, they help hundreds and thousands of other people to join the fight, because it appears to them as something that cannot be accepted by any man who thinks that his fight is honorable and justified.

[Peter]

It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure.   I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine.   If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them).   Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with.   I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).

So you argue that torture is useful in providing 'strategic advantages' while admitting that you'd make up any old bullshit to end your own torture?  Torture is little more than a way to extract bullshit from people, and often that bullshit implicates other innocent people who in turn are tortured and spout bullshit, and so the cycle continues.

That is what I would do if I was forced to, as would anyone who was truly innocent and had no way of stopping the torture.   This happens in police interrogation as well, especially without the violence (informants are known to lie even). 

What would be the better method in your opinion for extracting valuable information from an unwilling source?

I suggest a game of chess and possibly a steak dinner or two for the really tough cases:

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.

When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece.

"I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City.

The veterans of P.O. Box 1142, a top-secret installation in Fairfax County that went only by its postal code name, were brought back to Fort Hunt by park rangers who are piecing together a portrait of what happened there during the war.

Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich.

"We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark.

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Exactly what went on behind the barbed-wire fences of Fort Hunt has been a mystery that has lured amateur historians and curious neighbors for decades.

During the war, nearby residents watched buses with darkened windows roar toward the fort day and night. They couldn't have imagined that groundbreaking secrets in rocketry, microwave technology and submarine tactics were being peeled apart right on the grounds that are now a popular picnic area where moonbounces mushroom every weekend.

When Vincent Santucci arrived at the National Park Service's George Washington Memorial Parkway office as chief ranger four years ago, he asked his cultural resource specialist, Brandon Bies, to do some research so they could post signs throughout the park, explaining its history and giving it a bit more dignity.

That assignment changed dramatically when ranger Dana Dierkes was leading a tour of the park one day and someone told her about a rumored Fort Hunt veteran.

It was Fred Michel, who worked in engineering in Alexandria for 65 years, never telling his neighbors that he once faced off with prisoners and pried wartime secrets from them.

Michel directed them to other vets, and they remembered others.

Bies went from being a ranger researching mountains of topics in stacks of papers to flying across the country, camera and klieg lights in tow, to document the fading memories of veterans.

He, Santucci and others have spent hours trying to sharpen the focus of gauzy memories, coaxing complex details from men who swore on their generation's honor to never speak of the work they did at P.O. Box 1142.

"The National Park Service is committed to telling your story, and now it belongs to the nation," said David Vela, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

There is a deadline. Each day, about 1,100 World War II veterans die, said Jean Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army's Freedom Team Salute program, which recognizes veterans and the parents, spouses and employers who provide support for active-duty soldiers.

By gathering at Fort Hunt yesterday, the quiet men could be saluted for the work they did so long ago.