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Real History and Interrogation Techniques Index to the Traditional Enemies of Free Speech Among the tens of thousands of pages, Maguire opened a Pandora’s Box of vernacular conversation of a kind that has never been heard or read before — or had it? Seattle USA, Veterans of another war recall Nazi interrogations Members of the P.O. Box 1142 program maintained decades of silence.
By Petula Dvorak The Washington Post WASHINGTON — 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, Va.
When about two dozen veterans got together Friday for the first time since the 1940s, many 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 pingpong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with one of Hitler’s commanders, Rudolf Hess [ Website comment: Hess was never held in the US; he was a prisoner of M.I.6 at all times, held in Mytchett Place, near Aldershot, Sjurrey, and in Wales until he was shipped to Nuremberg in October 1945 ].
Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria, Va. 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 procedures that have been used at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and the war in Iraq. “I feel like the military is using us to say, ‘We did spooky stuff then, so it’s OK to do it now,’ ” said Arno Mayer , 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.
[ Website comment: Mayer is the author of Why did the Heavens not Darken , a book which in part challenges modern history versions of the Holocaust ].
When Peter Weiss , 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and stressed his point. “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 that went only by its postal-code name, were brought