UNREDACTED: The National Security Archive Blog
President Kennedy and President Joao Goulart on a state visit to Washington April 2, 1962, a year before the US supported a coup to overthrow him and began spreading the KUBARK manual across Latin America.
Senator Feinstein’s quest to declassify her committee’s report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has increased attention on the agency’s illegal –and decades-old– interrogation techniques. Now, newly-declassified portions of the CIA’s infamous 1963 KUBARK manual, a comprehensive guide for teaching interrogators how to effectively create “a world of fear, terror, anxiety, [and] dread,” helps to further contextualize the agency’s long-standing interrogation practices.
The fear of Communist expansion into the Western Hemisphere after Fidel Castro’s 1959 victory in the Cuban Revolution was the geo-political background for the 1963 KUBARK manual. Castro’s victory not only encouraged the 1964 U.S.-supported overthrow of democratically elected Brazilian President Joao Goulart; it also encouraged the CIA to spread KUBARK across the…
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