Symposium on Communist Brainwashing
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At the height of the Cold War in 1957, psychiatrist Dr. Robert J. Lifton joined a panel of experts at the New York Academy of Medicine on the topic of mind control: "Well, I'm not going to talk about a mental douche or about brainwashing tonight, but rather...audiological remolding, audiological reform, or thought reform."
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Brainwashing is not really brainwashing. This is the central point of Dr. Harold G. Wolf makes introduction to this panel discussion of “the methods used by the Russian and Chinese Communists in dealing with their prisoners.” He was the lead author of a study conducted by the U.S. Federal Government on the subject.
The Communists, he says, “are skilled in the extraction of information from prisoners and in making prisoners do their bidding. It does appear that they can force men to confess to crimes which have not been committed and then apparently to believe in the truth of their confessions and to express sympathy and gratitude toward those who have imprisoned them.” He claims that these techniques are not new or unique to the communists, however, and the term “brainwashing” come, not from a place of science, but from the journalist, Ed Hunter.
Instead, the communists “do make an orderly attempt to obtain information from their prisoners and to convert their prisoners to forms of behavior and belief acceptable to their captors.”
His colleague, Dr. Lawrence Hinkle, walks through the methods used by the State Police in communist countries. They don’t use guns or hypnosis, he clarifies, and their techniques are not designed by scientists. Instead, they consider large categories of people as potential criminals. Anyone arrested by the state is considered a criminal ipso facto, he says, and “this is very important to remember because this attitude is not only the attitude of the State Police; it is also shared by the inhabitants of the State in general.”
Prisoners are taken to a detention prison to be interrogated.
Dr. Hinkle describes the supposed psychological state of the prisoner. As a member of a suspect group, he feels a sense of guilt, and, because only the guilty are arrested, he is abandoned by his friends and neighbors. The prisoner is then put into dramatic circumstances: four weeks in a small cell with a cot and a slop jar, no view, and no contact with the outside world. Dr. Hinkle describes the effects of solitary confinement—days of hyperactivity, followed by despondency, and then fatigue and eventually delirium.
He is then interrogated by a young police officer who has no special neurological or psychiatric training, but who has on-the-job experience and a good deal of background material on his prisoner, which can be used strategically.
“If the man is known to be proud […], he may deal with him by calling him by his first name. If the man is known to be fearful, he may threaten him. If he's [inaudible], he may attempt violence and so on.”
The prisoner, after such a long period of solitude, wants to talk, and they discuss his biography. Because of the flexibility of the definition of crime, “he knows fairly well that it is very likely that something that he has done can be interpreted as such a crime.”
The prisoner confesses, and there is the implicit threat that the entire ordeal will be repeated if he retracts that confession. Only a small fraction of these confessions actually go to public trial, however, when the State Police can be sure that nothing will be said that will “upset their own plan.”
This, Hinkle says, is the Russian system. In the Chinese system, there is less solitary confinement. Instead, prisoners are introduced into a hostile prison environment that becomes much less hostile once the prisoner changes his attitudes.
The panel discusses to what degree this is a matter of method. Dr. Hinkle says, for example, that the process of stringing a person along, letting him watch his friends be seized and forcing him to wait his turn, is not a “diabolical method of torture,” but instead “simply just clumsy cops at work.”
Similarly, the interrogators are vulnerable because they are so young. He can become emotionally involved with the prisoner, and if he fails to deliver a confession in time, his career suffers.
Dr. Robert Lifton cuts in with a question. He wonders if the devotion to ideology influences the effectiveness of this “so-called brainwashing.” Dr. Hinkle speaks to the patent idealism and emotional fervor of the communists.
“Even a foreigner,” he says, “when faced with a man who has a set of beliefs to which he adheres very strongly and for which he gives idealistic explanations, is often attracted to this man.”
Dr. Albert Biderman talks about attempts to elicit false confessions from Air Force POWs in Korea, based on Air Force research. He says that his interviews captured the dramatic heorism of the soldiers, but that his objective is “science and not drama.” Instead of focusing on their heroic stories, he emphasizes “that the finding that should be reacted to is the finding, the most new and most spectacular finding, is the finding that there was nothing new or spectacular about these events we studied.” The Chinese methods were the same as those used for centuries by other interrogators—with similarly extreme results. He walks through a chart detailing the eight general measures and techniques used.
“In the simple torture situation, the bamboo splinters thing of popular imagination, the contest is clearly one between the interrogator and the victim,” he explains, “Can the victim endure pain beyond the point to which the interrogator can go in inflicting pain? The answer, from the standpoint of the interrogator, is very frequently yes.”
Instead, victims are made to stand at attention for long periods of time. In this case, “the immediate source of pain is now not the interrogator but the victim himself. The contest becomes in a way one of the victim against himself.”
He goes into more detail about the specific psychological effects of this standing torture, and notes that this form of torture is good from a propaganda perspective—the communists can deny that they ever touched the prisoner.
Confessions, too, are more complicated “than signing a piece of paper which says on such and such a date I committed such and such a crime, signed John Jones.” He walks through a list of techniques used.
The panel asks questions about those who did and did not respond to these techniques. Dr. Biderman explains that their compliance and resistance was probably less related to moral character, and more to situational factors. Also, he notes, “No one complied completely; no one resisted completely.”
The panel then turns to Dr. Robert Lifton. He says he will tackle, not brainwashing, but the Chinese concept of “audiological remolding,” or “thought-reform.” The process, he says, is applied, not just to prisoners of war, but to broad swaths of the Chinese population. It consists of four stages: the emotional assault, followed by leniency, then confession, and finally re-education.
The prisoner is brought in and confronted with his crimes. Then he asked to detail his entire life and experience in China, which, for missionaries, might be a period of 30 or 40 years. After the interrogation, the prisoner endures “the struggle” in his cell: “he sits in the middle of the cell, and the other prisoners, his cellmates, form a circle around him and begin to shot invectives at him denouncing him as an arch criminal, a stubborn imperialist who refuses to recognize his crimes.” These are prisoners working towards their own release.
After months of this treatment, there is leniency. Lifton quotes a priest, who describes the kindness of a judge—a judge who encourages him to confess and get it over with. The theme of confession is then repeated over and over.
When he eventually confesses, he is made to denounce his colleagues… and then undergoes a reeducation process, and the end of which there is “the development of a new identity, the recoding of reality, the conversion, if you will, in which the prisoner begins to look at the world through Communist eyes and if the process is successful, is reborn.”
(Automatic transcript - may present inaccuracies)
>> Several years ago, one of our colleagues was asked by the Federal Government to make a study of the methods used by the Russian and Chinese Communists in dealing with their prisoners. Especially that method that we commonly use -- known as the brainwashing. Now as far as I know this study has been completed and the report has been given to the government. The author of this study, Dr. Wolf, has kindly consented to give you some of his findings tonight. As we talked this over we decided that the best method of presenting this material would by be a panel discussion, which we have arranged. Now in the classical television method I'm going to introduce to you your moderator on this program and he will introduce to you the members of his panel. And the moderator is Dr. Harold G. Wolf, Professor of Neurology at the Cornell Medical Center, New York City. Dr. Wolf.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Mr. Chairman, I would be not dealing with the facts if I would say that we had done the work alone. You see on the panel before you those who have been involved in various aspects of the problem. On the extreme left, Dr. Lifton -- would you stand up, Dr. Lifton, who has been especially interested in interviewing persons in China; Dr. Biderman, who's had an enormous role to play with the Air Force in investigating the effects on the Korean prisoners of war as it involved the Air Force; Dr. Adolf Berle who is known to all of us as one interested in the Communism and its methods and its history and its part in the construction of the state and the effects of this state upon the individual; and Dr. Hinkle who has been associated with me in our special small part of this program. Now our plan is to [inaudible] each of the speakers given a certain amount of time on the program. It will be the privilege of the panelists to interrupt and at the end of the period of the formal presentation the panelists will engage the main speaker of that topic in questions which he will try to deal with. You're all invited to submit questions which will be presented to the speaker by the moderator. Ushers will collect these questions when and if you're ready to write them out. I think that covers the rules of the game. And I think now we'll get on with the work of the evening. Now the Communists are skilled in the extraction of information from prisoners and in making prisoners do their bidding. It does appear that they can force men to confess to crimes which have not been committed and then apparently to believe in the truth of their confessions and to express sympathy and gratitude toward those who have imprisoned them. Many have found it hard to understand that the Communists do not possess new and remarkable techniques of psychological manipulation. Some have compared the confessions of men like Cardinal Vincente and Brigham Otis and the unusual behavior of the old Bolshevik [inaudible] to trials in the '30s. And I've seen an alarming parallel. These men were men of intelligence, ability and strength of character. They had every reason to oppose their captors. Their confessions were palpably untrue. Such behavior is, if anything, more difficult to explain then that of some of our prisoners of war in Korea. The techniques used by the Communists have been the subject of speculation. The number of theories about them have been advanced, most of them suggesting that these techniques have been based upon some modification of the conditioned reflex technique of Professor Pavlov, the Russian Physiologist. The term brainwashing originated by Mr. Ed Hunter, a journalist, who interviewed Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, has caught the public fancy and has gained wide acceptance. Various authors have attempted to provide a scientific definition for this term. This has had the effect of confirming the general impression that brainwashing is an esoteric technique for the manipulation of human behavior designed by scientific investigators on the basis of laboratory experiments and controlled observations and producing highly predictable results. Many of the public speculations about brainwashing are not supported by the available evidence. However, the Communists do make an orderly attempt to obtain information from their prisoners and to convert their prisoners to forms of behavior and belief acceptable to their captors. They have had some success in their efforts, and this success has had a great deal of propaganda value for them. For this reason, if for no other, it is important that we have as clear an understanding as possible how these methods originated, how they are applied, their effectiveness, and their purpose. Now this then is the purpose of the panel. And on the panel are represented men who have quite different interests and [inaudible] presence attests that we were fortunate enough to get one to help us who was clear outside of medicine but who has an orientation which is extremely pertinent to understanding of our question. First speaker then will be Dr. Hinkle who will talk about methods used by Communist State Police in the interrogation and indoctrination of enemies of the State. Dr. Hinkle.
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: I think it's safe to say to you that as a result of the efforts of many people over the past two or three years we have a pretty clear understanding of the methods which are used by the State Police in the Communist countries. This is not to say that we necessarily understand all of the effects produced by these methods, but we do know pretty well what is done and who does it and how. The first thing I would tell you is that it's quite clear that these are police methods that had their origin in Eastern Europe and specifically in Russia, that they do not involve the use of guns or hypnosis. They were not designed by scientists and no scientists participate in them. May I have the first slide please? One can only view these methods in the light of their historical background. It must be recalled that the cultural heritage of Russia is Byzantine in part and that it carries with it an inheritance of unrestricted autocracy, internal intrigue, and espionage. But even at the time of Ivan the Great in the 16th Century, the Russian State had already developed a permanent bureaucracy of an independent and State Police nation which carried out procedures very like the later [inaudible]. Then prior to 19th century Russia had the most highly organized, in fact, even powerful, secret police of any European state, and that this police in its later incarnation known as Il Prada, had developed and used the techniques of [inaudible], the development of the dossier or the views of a great New York, personal information about the prisoner, the techniques of repetitive interrogation, and the use of isolation. All these were known through and used by the Czarist Police and indeed by other Eastern European police systems of the time. The advent of the Communists led to the development of a more organized and more acquired methods. The significant additions here lay in the fact that the Communists, partly because of old ideological commitment to a form of form of reform, gave up a direct new brutality. And partly in the fact that they had by this time discovered that direct brutality was indeed a very poor way of getting information from people. They developed the persuasive technique used by the interrogator. The Communists police in its subsequent incarnations carried through the practice of the public trials and I would like to point out to you that the methods of Prisoner of War inoculation which were later used by the Chinese and by the North Koreans stem originally from methods developed by the NKVD for use in handling German prisoners of war in World War II. The Chinese system is in some respects an outgrowth of the Russian methods and we shall say more about its nature later. Now one cannot view the Russian method and the acts of the State Police without understanding the attitudes pertinent to the Russian State and specifically to the Communist aspect of the State. It is implicit in the Communist State that anyone who threatens the State or the Party or its program is to be considered a criminal. And it is customary to view such criminals as falling into any one of a number of broad categories. Dissonant numbers of the Communist Party, ethnic groups suspected of [inaudible] aspiration, and the like. You can see them there. And when, as for example at the present time, there is a resurgence of nationalism among groups under Russian control, the group of people who may be connected with this nationalist movement may all become potential criminals because they are a potential threat to the State. Broad categories, then, of potential criminals with the State Police now called the KGB charged with the duty of determining who threatens the Party or the State. Interestingly enough, the crimes of which a potential criminal may be charged are -- and it need not be actual. They may include also objective criminality which has to do with destructive acts committed accidentally or there's motives or consequential; that is to say the potential consequences of an attitude or line of behavior or a commitment held by an individual. Furthermore, the State Police are prepared to accept as evidence of criminality membership in such a suspect group as moderate fractions, suspicious acts, or the unverified report of involvement. Now the State Police will not arrest an individual unless he falls into a suspect group and unless they have some such evidence of criminality, and therefore it is said that anyone arrested by the State Police is ipso facto a criminal. This is very important to remember because this attitude is not only the attitude of the State Police; it is also shared by the inhabitants of the State in general. One who is arrested knows in the first place that for some reason or other he is regarded as a criminal. This is also the origin of the State often heard and often made by the Communists that in Communist countries no one who is innocent is ever arrested. Now the arrangement of the State Police apparatus in the Communist country is this. People who have been arrested on the basis of suspicions generated by a membership in a suspect group of which I have described before, with evidence accumulated in the manner that I have described it, are taken to what is called a detention prison. And in this detention -- this is not considered a punishment prison, but the place of detention in which the police interrogate the suspect in order to ascertain the extent and nature of his criminality and to prepare his protocol for presentation for the court at his trial. Now a necessary outgrowth of this is that if a man is arrested his case cannot be settled until his protocol is prepared and this protocol must be signed by both the prisoner and the interrogating officer, and in view of the fact that he would not have been arrested had it not already been decided that he was a criminal. This protocol by its very nature must contain some confession of crime. And this, too, I think is essential to understanding what goes on. Now let us see what happens. First of all, when a man comes under suspicion, he already knows that the group of which he is a member is for some reason suspect, and furthermore as the police begin to investigate his case it becomes apparent to him that he himself is under suspicion. He comes aware of this, of the changing attitudes of his friends and neighbors, perhaps because of the disappearance of his friends, and all of this almost inevitably creates in him not only a feeling of anxiety and suspense but also the same sort of vague feeling of guilt which I'm sure all of us have experienced when stopped by a traffic policeman. One of -- be assured that one hasn't done anything but never quite sure and this vague feeling of guilt certainly acts prominently in the prisoners of the [inaudible]. The seizure is usually under dramatic circumstances after three or four weeks of surveillance. Often at night, the prisoner is taken immediately to a detention prison and there in the rather idealized case, of which I shall speak at the present time, he would typically be isolated, isolated in a small cell where he has no furniture except perhaps a cot and a slop jar, no view outside, and absolutely nothing to do. [Inaudible] quite alone, no contacts with the guards allowed, no outside contact of any sort, in fact, nothing told what will happen to him, but knowing very well that anything can happen to him, and that he has no real recourse from it. Furthermore, his routine is severely limited. He may be advised to sit an unspecified position. He may have a limited or restricted food intake and activity. The whole thing, however, the essence of that whole thing is the total isolation and complete uncertainty. Well, I'd like to point out to you that this in itself is a most potent weapon in the hands of the police. The man who is put in isolation characteristically spends the first two or three days in rather intense anxiety. He may be hyperactive; he may try to talk to the guards; he may try to demand to see someone and try to explain that this is all a mistake; and it only gradually becomes apparent to him that he is there and that nothing much is going to be done. As he becomes aware of this, he usually quiets down, becomes somewhat more despondent. If he doesn't do so, various minor but quite effective methods can be used to quiet him down. He can be deprived of sleep by being forced to sleep in a rigid position, being awakened whenever he goes to sleep. The temperature of his cell can be changed. His food can be cut down. He can be required to stand or sit in a regular position. All this acting over a period of time is extremely uncomfortable and produces gradually increasing states of fatigue [inaudible], loss of discrimination, and indeed, if all of these physiological disturbances are continued [inaudible] with the deprivation of sleep, the unusual position, and the disorganizing in most of the reactions going on steadily, one finds often that in a period of somewhere between three to six weeks the prisoner has approached a point that is very near to a delirious state. That is to say he is dull, he lacks discrimination, he may lose orientation for time and place, his recent memory is impaired. If this goes along far enough he may have hallucinations or delusions. He reaches a stage in which he will confabulate sometimes. All of this in an affect of fear and above all an intense feeling of loneliness and despair, an intense wondering about what will happen to me, and an intense need for someone to talk to. Now, into this steps the interrogator. The interrogator is usually a young police officer. He's had no special training in neurology, psychiatry, or any of the like. But he has had a very good deal of on-the-job training and he knows pretty well what to do. Furthermore, the reaction of a prisoner is so typical and so constant that more or less like a good cook he can get the idea from watching the prisoner when this man should be ready to talk. Furthermore, he has the background material, a dossier. He's prepared for some rule of thumb plans to attack this man. If the man is known to be proud and [inaudible], he may deal with him by calling him by his first name. If the man is known to be fearful, he may threaten him. If he's [inaudible], he may attempt violence and so on. Effective message but not based upon any very erudite psychiatric theory. Now the first thing the interrogator does is exploit the need of the prisoner to talk because here is a man that come near to the end of his rope. And the prisoner, regardless of how he may dread the interrogation, is usually glad to talk to his interrogator and since the first interrogations are usually concerned with gathering further background or biographical material about the prisoner, he usually finds this talk going rather freely. And as the talk continues, and if the interrogation is going on at night and at unusual times, the prisoner further deprived of sleep, the tales, the sharing between these two, and the life experiences of the prisoner, and the needs of the prisoner for someone to relate to, builds up often quite a close relationship between the two. The interrogator usually takes the attitude that we know all about you, you know, what you've done, and it's only up to you to understand your crimes and to describe them, confess to them properly, then we can settle this. He rejects the explanation of the prisoner and scolds him often even though it's discrepancies in the stories is lies. Now the prisoner, very much caught up in this circumstance in relationship to the interrogator and very much in need of the support of this man with whom he's spent so many hours is damaged by this rejection, I think, and often truly tries to please the man. Furthermore the interrogator is not always a vicious individual in the eyes of the prisoner. He often takes the attitude that after all, this is inevitable, as indeed it is, that thousands of prisoners have been through this before. You must sign the protocol sooner or later, as indeed the prisoner must, and let's get this thing over with so we can get you out of here because I'd like to get out of it, too. So often we have a positive relationship builds up between the prisoner and the interrogator. And they do some dickering back and forth. And this, I think, is where the essential development of the protocol comes. Because the prisoner is in, as I have said, a malleable state; he is dull, he is confused, he's intentionally uncomfortable, he has an intense desire to get this thing over with at any cost. In the meantime, the interrogator is reasonable, he's inclined to dicker, and he's inclined to use some rationalizations. Now these rationalizations they're not so absurd as they might appear on the surface. As I have told you, the Communist laws and the Communist attitude allow for a very broad latitude in the definition of crimes against the State. And the prisoner knows that. He knows fairly well that it is very likely that something that he has done can be interpreted as such a crime, that, indeed, in the recounting of his life history the interrogator has probably 20 hours in [inaudible] time doing. So he's -- no one was therefore, that there is a certain degree of guilt. He may, for example, be a factory worker who has talked to let us say with the chauffer of a Western diplomat, and has bought this man a drink. Now he and the interrogator both know that this is all that has actually transpired. The interrogator, however, is also able to point out to this man that he, the factory worker, is consorting with a man who is a national with a foreign power, and that he is, therefore, an imperialist agent, if you please, and that by buying this man drinks he has been aiding and abetting the activities of an imperialist agent. And the prisoner may say, well, but indeed there was no intent in this, and it becomes apparent that intent doesn't matter, and he may say, but I wasn't committing espionage or treason. And the interrogator may say, but, indeed, this is treason by our law. And after some dickering it may -- they said, all right, it's treason by our law but not perhaps by other laws, and then the argument has the effect, well, after all, you're in this country and you're judged by this country's laws. And this indeed is a fact, too. Well, it ultimately, with considerable relief and often with some feeling of agreement with the interrogator, the prisoner signs a protocol with the effect, I am a traitor. Now, this usually takes place over a period of six weeks to three months, classically, usually because it doesn't take much longer than this. And most of these cases, after the initial detention period, which we're talking about now has been completed, are summarily disposed of through trial and a military tribunal, not public at all. And the reason that the prisoner doesn't retract the confession is, in fact, that first of all, he and the interrogator have agreed upon it. Secondly, there is the implied [inaudible] from the actual threat, we'll have to go through the whole thing over again if you do retract it in fact. So this is very -- is unusual. The answer to this business is, therefore, that --
>> One minute.
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: -- given these definitions, and given this situation, given the necessity of a protocol, this type of an answer nearly always comes out. Now I could talk at some length about the Chinese system but I shall differentiate actually this to Dr. Liston and the discussion of the field that is to Dr. Biderman. I would like to show you some of the points where we think the Chinese system differs from the European system. These points, Dr. Lifton, I'm sure will not only know. First of all, I would like to make this one thing clear to you. That the primary work of the interrogator is to convince the prisoner that what he did was a crime. Well, as you see, the Russians faithfully -- it's a primarily interested in producing a satisfactory protocol in preparation for a trial. The Chinese, in addition, the desired goal of so changing the attitudes and behaviors of their prisoners that they will not again constitute a menace to the state. The Russians quite routinely use prolonged isolation; the Chinese only in special cases. The Chinese are much more inclined to make intensive use of group interaction or in group cells in which the rejection and hostility of a group and its willingness later to accept the prisoner after he has prepared a top protocol and after he has exhibited the proper attitudes is the active force in obtaining the prisoner's compliance. The use of a method of public self-criticism in group criticism which is used by the Russians and was developed by the [inaudible] as a play practice, has been extended and with great effectiveness by the Chinese, not only to a civil population but for the prison population. They use micro and dye writing in rewriting and projection of autobiographies which, again, come out of the Chinese nation [background sounds], and they, of course, greatly prolong the [inaudible] period while they carry out the indoctrination methods in which I am sure Dr. Lifton will most ably describe to you.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Hinkle, what is clumsiness and awkwardness in the process? And what is design and method? Have you been able to be sure that the many things we hear about, and the cruelties and brutalities and beatings, are part of a method or is that an aspect of individual frustration or rage or lack of skill? Would you like to comment on what is method and what is happenstance?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Well, Dr. Wolfe, sometimes it's dreadfully difficult to tell these things apart. For example, many Westerners have thought that the subtle business of keeping a prisoner or suspect under surveillance for several months and letting him see his friends and associates be seized, and know he's being followed, that this was really a diabolical method of torture. But there is much to indicate that this is simply just clumsy cops at work, somewhat like our own policemen occasionally. And much of the haphazard brutality that one runs into, likewise, seems to be a result of inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and frustration on the part of police officers. So that many times we're inclined to think that things which seem to us to be devilishly conceived are actually, probably, accidental.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: What are the vulnerabilities of the interrogator? Is he immune in this relationship or is he likely to be involved somehow? Is he in any way vulnerable?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Oh, no. He's not immune at all, Dr. Wolf. This man is a young police officer in a career service. He's more [inaudible] by the efficiency and effectiveness with which he produces these protocols, and he's expected to produce these within about three months. And he has many vulnerabilities. He has a prisoner who drags this thing out too long. If he becomes emotionally involved with the prisoner, I don't -- one hand is striking him and brutalizing him in a manner in which will get him in trouble with the authorities or on the other hand developing sympathy for him. The interrogator may find himself in trouble and in even worse trouble if he can't come up with a satisfactory answer in the due course of time. He'll probably be replaced by another man and his career might suffer on this basis.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Do many persons who participate in these relationships, do many prisoners actually get to the point where they're suitable for public trial and for broadcasting experiences?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Oh, no. Public trials are the extreme exception. Only a very small minority of prisoners ever are ever brought to public trial. And this only where the State Police are pretty well convinced that nothing will be said or will happen at this trial which will upset their own plan.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: What would that be, 10%, 5%?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Oh, I would think it wouldn't be as many as 1% or 2% at the most.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Well [inaudible] question she'd like to put to --
>> I wonder, has Dr. Hinkle noticed any difference in the treatment of prisoners who are coming up before some sort of a court and those that are coming for the courts martial as they're called in [inaudible]. There is a system of courts which we would call courts martial which I believe take care of the Prisoner of War camps. Have you noticed any difference between the two systems?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: [Inaudible] the military procedures in present in the war camps are in the hands of the military and those with which we've had experience have been Chinese or North Koreans.
>> Yeah.
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Not strictly comparable to the Eastern European police methods which we have described. Actually, the fundamental attitude toward the prisoner and the fundamental decision that this man, once he has been adjudged either as a criminal against the state or a war criminal, the irrevocability of this decision in spite of anything the prisoner may say, this is common to both. But the methods of handling these people are different actually.
>> I think, as a matter of fact, in the law they stand in the same position [inaudible].
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: I know.
>> There are different courts, court procedures. The military courts, the so-called courts martial are not military as they are with us. They are a branch of the jurisprudence.
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Most of the people are trying deprived against the State, in which I was [inaudible] speaking in general. Those penalty -- or those who are suspected of political crimes, and are handled by the State Police. These people are handled by the so-called military tribunals.
>> That's right.
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: And these are the group which I am talking about. We have not yet here to do with petty criminals, thieves, or civil actions. This is not the manner.
>> Well, treason is within that group.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: A very important point of differentiation. Dr. Biderman, any questions?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: The question, you raised the question, Doctor Wolf, about just how much was method and, in fact, how much was madness in what took place. And I wonder if what Dr. Hinkle was saying amounted to saying that a lot of it was neither method nor madness, but merely SOP, doing things a certain way because that was the only way that these people knew how to do them. Were you implying an SOP there, Dr. Hinkle?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Well, this wouldn't be a time -- I wouldn't think that this was a written out SOP as --
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: What does SOP mean?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: It's a Standard -- Dr. Wolf obviously wasn't in the last war. SOP is a standard operating procedure, Dr. Wolf. And these things are written out by the military. This is not written out so far as I can tell for the State Police System. On the other hand, this is a customary way that this is pinned on and always has been done. And, in effect, it's an SOP, and sometimes the clumsiness is a result of an attempt to apply -- of rather limited men apply a standardized procedure to special cases where it won't fit.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: But physical violence has no place in this system on the whole, has it Doctor Hinkle?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: No, sir. Physical violence is not officially condoned. Now it does occur. It occurs when the interrogator becomes frustrated or emotionally involved. Occasionally when there's great pressure upon the police apparatus to get an answer quick, sometimes of terror. But in general it is not, either among the Americans or -- among the Russians or the Chinese. It's not condoned.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Mr. Lifton.
>> Dr. Robert J. Lifton: Dr. Hinkle, my impression has been that the attachment, the devotion to a Communist ideology has made a great deal of difference in the power of the so-called brainwashing or thought reform or confession extraction process. And that a group of men thoroughly convinced and religiously attached to a certain set of principles can be rather formidable in putting them forward. And the question I would ask you would be what sort of difference you've noticed between the immediately pre-Communist revolution period and the post-revolutionary period in Russia in terms of the effectiveness of these methods?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Well, I can only add to that by saying that times are [inaudible] are that most in Russia and in China, many of the police officers all have what amounts to an emotional fervor for Communism. They display to the prisoner a patent idealism which I must say is sometimes most attractive to him and has great influence and dedication to their ideals which are the ostensible ideals of Communism and sometimes greatly influential in causing the prisoner to accept some of their rationalizations.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: That would be true, not only of those who are [inaudible] Communists by training but perhaps foreigners, wouldn't it?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Yes, that's right. Even a foreigner, when faced with a man who has a set of beliefs to which he adheres very strongly and for which he gives idealistic explanations, is often attracted to this man.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Are there any questions from Florida that are coming up? If not, we'll go on to the next topic which has to do with the experience of American airmen in the hands of the Chinese and North Koreans.
>> Right.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Biderman.
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Thanks Dr. Wolf. Dr. Wolf asked me to talk specifically about the attempts to elicit false confessions from Air Force prisoners of war who were captured in Korea. And I will talk only about that particular attempt which is only one of many ways in which the Communists attempted to exploit prisoners of war whom they captured. The information I have on this topic is second-hand information. It's derived from interviews or principally from interviews we conducted with these men. The Air Force has conducted a very intensive effort to learn what happened to its people who were captured in Korea. The Air Force believes that there's a good deal that can be learned about its personnel and about men generally from the experiences of people under such extreme circumstances. These studies are being carried out by the Air Force personnel in Training Research Center of the Air Research and Development Command with which I'm associated. Of the 235 Air Force personnel who were captured in Korea, about half had some direct personal experience with attempts to extort confessions. Our people were repatriated about three years ago, shortly after the Korean War, two years after in the case of 15 of these men. We know one airman died during the course of an attempt to extort a false confession. We don't whether or not there were others. The attempts made against these men, the reasons for the attempts, and the reactions of the men themselves comprise a very complicated series of stories. The record of each of the long interviews conducted with them would engross you I'm sure. There's an almost unmatched drama in the efforts of these men to protect personal principles, dignity, and self-respect with only their own inner resources to sustain them. A few of the stories don't have completely happy endings and every one of them reveals something about human imperfection. But our objective here is science and not drama. And I won't attempt to do what many of them I couldn't do well; that is, to attempt to relate in a few minutes the meaning of these stories to those who lived through them. There are a few honest and discerning and eloquent victims of this sort of thing who have accomplished this in a far better manner than the social scientists could. As a social scientist I find of singular interest one result of the studies which we and other have conducted. And that is that the finding that should be reacted to is the finding, the most new and most spectacular finding, is the finding that there was nothing new or spectacular about these events we studied. We found, as did the others, that human behavior could be manipulated within a certain range by like controlled environments. We found that the Chinese Communists used methods of coercing behavior from our men which Communists of other countries had employed for decades in which police and inquisitors of other countries had employed for centuries. The Chinese interrogators succeeded or failed in their attempts roughly to the extent that the skill and persistence of the people whom they used matched those of practitioners at other times and other places. While the initial attempts in China and Korea were generally inept and unsuccessful, we found that their success tripled with experience. The reception of these kinds of findings has frequently been incredulous, and we're asked, isn't there something more to this? Isn't there something that you failed to detect? Can people really be manipulated so easily? Well, briefly, there is our analysis of this problem. We found that we can make a meaningful distinction between those measures that the Communists took to induce compliance, to undermine the resistance of a prisoner, and those measures which they took to shake his compliance for particular purposes. This distinction was suggested by the Chinese Communists' use of more or less identical methods of gaining compliance for a variety of different ends: for eliciting factual intelligence information; for eliciting other forms of propaganda collaboration as well as in this forced confession sort of thing. Now the methods they used for gaining compliance included nothing which had not been common practice to police and intelligence interrogators of other times and other nations where restraints precluding the use of these kinds of tactics were not enforced. There are numerous historical incidents we could find of the same kind of practices producing behavior at least as extreme as any of the behaviors we found among our personnel who were captured during the Korean conflict. Now the methods they used to shape the compliance into the now familiar patterns of forced confessions we believe can be understood as essentially a teaching procedure, of teaching the prisoner how to comply once he has been made compliant. Now this was a very complex teaching procedure however. Its complexities were due to the collaborate and complex behavior which was sought as well as to the fact that this behavior was so alien and offensive to the prisoners. It was further complicated by irrational aspects of the system within which the Communist interrogators had to operate. The system required the Communist interrogator in these attempts to extort false confessions, to teach about this behavior he was seeking without making his lessons explicit. I should point out that this distinction I'm making between inducing compliance and shaping compliance is purely an analytic division. The two kinds of measures were not separate of one another in either time or place. I'd like to first discuss the measures used by the Communists to induce compliance, to undermine the resistance of the prisoner. May I have the first chart? The experiences of American Air Force prisoners who were pressured for false confessions enabled us to compile an outline of methods of eliciting compliance not much different it turned out from those reported by persons held at other places in other times, that is by Communists of East Europe or Southeast Asia. Now I've prepared a chart showing a condensed version of this outline which, because of the rather elaborate nature of this repertoire of course is techniques, has required me three plates to display to you. So I will continue to talk and you can look at some of these illustrations of the methods. This chart shows a condensed version of our outline. We divided the techniques into eight general measures and we've give some illustrations of the specific forms these measures take and our judgments of the effects of each. We've inferred purpose from effect but it is likely that those when four of the measures conceive of the purposes and the effects somewhat differently than we looking at them through the eyes of those who experienced them up in [inaudible]. Now you'll notice on this slide completes the outline. You'll notice that I've not included physical torture as a general category in the outline despite the fact that many of our prisoners of war did encounter physical torture and despite the fact that a few of the measures in this outline do involve physical pain. I've omitted torture from the outline to emphasize that inflicting physical pain is not a necessary nor a particularly effective method of inducing compliance. While many of our people did encounter physical violence, this rarely occurred as part of a systematic effort to elicit a false confession. And where physical violence was encountered during the course of such an attempt, the attempt was particularly likely to be a complete failure. Now I should qualify these remarks on physical violence in two respects. First, the ever-present fear of physical violence in the mind of the prisoner appears to have frequently played an important role in inducing compliance. The Communists fostered such fears through vague threats and explicit threats and the implication that they were prepared to do drastic things. Another qualification is that one form of torture was experienced by a considerable number of Air Force prisoners during efforts to coerce false confessions from them. The prisoners were required to stand or sometimes sit at attention for exceedingly long periods of time. In some extreme cases for a week at a time with only very brief respites. In a few cases the standing was aggravated by extreme cold. Now this form of torture, the constrained posture, has several distinct advantages in inducing compliance, whether for confessions or for any other purpose. In the simple torture situation, the bamboo splinters thing of popular imagination, the contest is clearly one between the interrogator and the victim. Can the victim endure pain beyond the point to which the interrogator can go in inflicting pain? The answer, from the standpoint of the interrogator, is very frequently yes. Now where the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is now not the interrogator but the victim himself. The contest becomes in a way one of the victim against himself. And the motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal kind of encounter. Bringing the subject to act against himself in this manner has additional advantages for the interrogator. It leaves the prisoner to exaggerate the power of the interrogator. As long as the victim remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, something worse than standing for these long periods. But there's actually no showdown of the ability of the captor to do anything worse. Most frequently the extent to which the Communist interrogators in North Korea and China could go was very, very limited insofar as inflicting direct physical violence was concerned. Returnees who underwent long periods of standing or sitting at attention report no other conceivable experience could be more excruciating. For the interrogator, forced standing has still further advantages. It's consistent with formal adherence to the mythical principles of legality and humaneness important to the Communists. These principles are important in the interrogation itself, particularly in that they facilitate the adoption of a positive attitude by the prisoner toward the interrogator and the forces the interrogator represents. Adherence to these mythical principles protects the interrogator from potential punishment at some future time for mistreating prisoners, punishment from his own or from the other opposite side. The Communists are also able to gain considerable propaganda advantage when the victims are released who truthfully state that no one ever laid a hand upon them. The two attributes of constrained postures I've discussed, first the active enlistment of the energies of the victim against himself and secondly, the formal adherence by the interrogators to twisted norms of legality and humaneness, these apply to other measures of the outline of techniques of inducing compliance. Techniques having these attributes are also consistent with the other aspect of confession elicitation, namely the shaping of compliance into the very specific forms of confessor behavior with which we're familiar. Now assuming the measures I've discussed have rendered the prisoner compliant, the problem remains of getting him to comply appropriately, of informing and instructing him as to the forms of compliance. In the case of false confessions, as I have said, this is a very complicated teaching job. The kind of confession we're discussing consists of considerably more than signing a piece of paper which says on such and such a date I committed such and such a crime, signed John Jones. These confession extortion efforts involve the attempt to manipulate the individual so that he behaves over an extended period of time as if the following things were true. First, that he actually committed certain concrete acts which he can describe with meticulous detail. Secondly, that these acts were criminal in the sense of being violations of the most fundamental standards of human decency. Thirdly, that these acts were not isolated transgressions but manifestations of a criminal pattern in his thought and action. Fourth, that his crimes were part and parcel of a larger nefarious political conspiracy. Fifth, that his criminal role is motivated by a self-seeking alignment with this political conspiracy of which he himself was only a pawn. Sixth, that he is now remorseful and repentant. And last, that his changed attitude is due to new-found political conviction for which he is indebted to his patient captors. In this extreme form of confession elicitation as encountered by our people, the objective was not merely having the prisoner confirm that certain acts which weren't committed were committed, but rather to have his behavior confirm the entire worldview of the Communists relevant to these alleged acts. Learning what this behavior was that was being demanded, and even more, learning the elaborate symbols and nuances through which he had to express this in order for his confession to be acceptable, these were very complex learning tasks indeed. For many prisoners, finally being able to learn what their captor demanded of them was an achievement which afforded considerable gratification, one of their rare gratifications in an exceedingly frustrating environment. Unfortunately, this was an instance in which the best, if not the only way of learning, was learning by doing. Perhaps some of the variations in this behavior among our men can be made clear during the course of our discussion.
>> Dr Wolf: I'd like to ask you in that connection by the way was something about your opening remark. You said that of the total of your Air Force personnel in the hands of the enemy, about half of them were exposed one way or another to these processes. There's regular confusion about the durability and toughness and passively withstand this type of treatment and perhaps you'd say a word about just that matter. It seems to me that in many instances the people who come off successfully haven't had as much bad treatment as those who come up less successfully in the sense of having made their positions in the compromising remarks. Could you speak something about the variation of the degree of passion as applied in relation to the effects produced?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Well, the first thing I'd like to say about that is that with the small number of people that we had involved and the tremendous variation and the different kinds of things which happened to them, it is possible to account for each and every one of our cases in terms of situational determinants. There are enough situational determinants so that you can this could have been why this person did so and so while some other did not, because in no cases do you have identical situations. Now another thing that I try to stress is that those techniques used against a man which, from a moral standpoint, would be most mitigating would explain in this moral sense his behavior best. I'm not those which from a scientific point of view are the ones which are most likely to induce the behavior contrary to the moral perspective we take after the fact on the man's behavior. So, in this instance, violence, physical violence, beating up on a man, is that treatment which we are most likely to accept as excusing someone's behavior. But insofar as our Korean cases are concerned, it was also the kind of treatment which was most likely to produce resistance in a man which -- or to be cautious, I should say it was most frequently associated with these [inaudible].
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Would you likex to suggest that there would be, there are some people who could expose, will be exposed to the most extreme measures and yet not be [inaudible] or become a client under these circumstances?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Well had I not been victim of wrong residence in the South and spoken so slowly, I might have gotten to all the parts of this paper which would have [laughter] spelled out some of the difficulties in answering the kind of question you raised. In order to be truthful, we have to say that every person whom we had was involved in an extensive attempt to elicit a false confession, complied. And we have to say that everyone who was involved resisted. For in each and every case the behavior at some point involved a mixture of the two, of compliance and resistance. No one complied completely; no one resisted completely. What some of the -- now there remains a tremendous range of behaviors between the ideal standards of resistance that we would like our people to uphold and the behaviors that the Communists were trying to achieve from them. We found no behavior at either pole. All were distributed through the very vast intermediate range.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Hinkle?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Yes. This is not precisely in the line of the Air Force airmen. But we all have in mind the stories of the 21 American soldiers who stayed behind with the Communists. Have you happened to run across any information that might explain this?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: I have no first-hand information, no, on the topic.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Hinkle, suppose you answer your own question [laughter].
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: All right. I was hoping that I could get Dr. Biderman to say this for me. Well, I think there is information about this and this information would indicate that these men knew little or nothing about Communism and cared less. That out of the great number of thousands of prisoners who were taken, that this group were among those who had some reason to believe that because of their behavior in prison camp it would be safer for them to stay in Communist hands than to return to the United States. And this almost universally explains their behavior so far as we know it. I don't believe that there were more than a very few, if any, Communist convicts in the line.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Do you think that they were exposed through these heavy artillery of the procedures that we've been talking about?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Oh, I think like Dr. Biderman says, that some of them had very little and some of them had a great deal. And the degree of the action was quite variable. It can't be explained on the basis of the amount of attention they got I don't think.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Berle.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: I'd like to as ask [inaudible] this to Biderman, did you get any impression that the Communists devoted more attention to the higher ranking officers than to the lower ranking officers?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Oh, very definitely, sir.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: In other words, what they were looking for here was something that had propaganda value. That would be a special case, would it not?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Yes.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: That if they were really influencing -- Did you get from your studies the idea that exactly the same procedure was used all down the line for everyone captured or were they picking out specific show pieces to bring off?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: No. As I've said, there was a tremendous range and variation among even the small group of prisoners of war, that is, of the small group of prisoners of war who were returned who were Air Force prisoners. There was some selectivity but not a -- but possibly not with the extremes of purposiveness that we might suppose they were before.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: In that case, Doctor Berle, it would be an additional factor that these men, especially the fliers, had a good deal of technical information which would be desirable to have as well as the propaganda aspect.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: Both, yes, they're distinctive. It seems to me that you really have two cases -- the case of the group singled out for specific treatment and the use of a general group of prisoners or captives.
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Yes, I should point out that once the Communists got geared up for handling prisoners, that all Air Force prisoners, regardless of rank or a special [inaudible], anybody who came out of the air was a pretty important guy to them since they had so few air prisoners.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: I would like to make some comment that this was at the time when the plan called for the propaganda of German warfare and that, therefore, was necessary to prove that plan if perfect familiar in Soviet jurisprudence to use a prisoner to assist in the fake plan. At that time, another time they might not have so much attention.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: The meaning of information, propaganda, and a [inaudible] purpose which is claimed by some in the military, is to neutralize a large population of prisoners so that fewer men will be necessary to [inaudible] them. Fewer men will be back from the fighting lines. This is an effective way of neutralizing a large prison population. Lifton, do you have any questions?
>> Dr. Robert J. Lifton: Just one. I'd like to ask Dr. Biderman how the relative emphasis here, as I understand it, upon confession extraction rather than upon reform with this particular small group of Air Force people, how that affected the Communists and what that had to do with perhaps the effectiveness of their extracting of confessions.
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Well, of the -- I said that half of our people had some experience with attempts to elicit false confessions. Now a much smaller number encountered the really all-out attempts of which I've spoken. And this would be in the neighborhood of 65. Now, regardless of what the Communists do, politics and proceliting are never completely absent, so that it's always very difficult to determine from the recollections of a person of his experiences the extent to which his interrogators or his captors had this as a major objective. But it certainly was subordinated as were all other things subordinated in these cases where getting a confession was an extremely important propaganda objective. There was great stress on this and the entire treatment of the man was organized around this objective and that very clearly so.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Lifton, would you carry on with information about the experiences the American and the European civilians in the Chinese Communist prison?
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: I think that one of the perhaps unique features of this particular panel is the infrequency of the mention of the word "brainwashing," something that I greatly appreciate. But I'm going to violate this very laudable practice, mention the term a couple of times, only to dismiss it for our purposes. As Dr. Wolf and others have indicated, the term is relatively useless when it comes to trying to clarify with any precision what the Chinese, or for that matter, the Russians, do in regard to confession extraction and indoctrination. I can say that one friend of mine when I was working in Hong Kong, a British diplomat had a possible solution to this dilemma of terminology when he said, "Really, you Americans get too excited about this brainwashing concept. Why don't you simply call it a mental douche [laughter]?" Well, I'm not going to talk about a mental douche or about brainwashing tonight, but rather about something called [speaking in foreign language] which is the Chinese term for what they translate as audiological remolding, audiological reform, or thought reform. I'd like to emphasize that this thought reform process, as I'll refer to it from now on, is not limited to Western prisoners of war or for that matter to Western civilians, the group which I'm going to talk about, but is applied most widely among the entire Chinese population in special centers, in schools, in labor and peasant groups, among business and government groups, in various modified forms appropriate for the audience. I'm going to limit my discussion tonight to the thought reform experience of 25 Western civilians, most of them missionaries, teachers, physicians, businessmen, advanced students, whom I had an opportunity to interview during 17 months of research into the general thought reform problem in Hong Kong in 1954 and '55. I interviewed these men almost immediately after their release from Chinese prisons. I saw them within a day or two after their arrival in Hong Kong and, therefore, was able to get some fairly fresh material concerning the immediacy of their prison experience. I'd like to try to convey some of this fairly graphically to you by taking you through the various stages of the thought reform process. I've divided the thought reform process into four stages, and these are my divisions, but I'd like to emphasize they're consistent with the way in which the Communists view their own process. These stages are, one, the emotional assaults; second, leniency; three, confession; and fourth, re-education. I'm going to particularly emphasize the fourth stage, re-education, because I think that is the most specifically Chinese contribution to the process and because the other stages have been dealt with in one way or another by the previous two speakers. The Westerner, when arrested, usually encounters his arrest in a very sudden and dramatic fashion. He's taken almost immediately before an interrogator who's likely to greet him either with a question or with a rather vague but damning accusation; either, "Do you know why you are here," or, "You are here because you have committed crimes against the people." The Westerner, the prisoner is usually rather shocked by this and a little bit surprised and tries to protest his innocence. But the interrogator's likely to go to say, "The government knows all about your crimes. This is why we arrested you. It's now up to you to confess everything to us. In this way your case can be quickly solved and you will soon be released." Now, much of the early phase imprisonment goes on in this interrogative fashion, always assuming on the part of the interrogator that the prisoner is guilty, always, in any way, parrying and denying any attempts of the prisoner to assert his innocence. After a period of time which may be hours, which may be an all night procedure, or maybe repeated brief interrogation procedures, repeated resistance on the part of the prisoner brings about the application of handcuffs and chains which can be an extremely uncomfortable way to live in a prison experience. All right. The interrogation at a certain point usually shifts from this direct accusation or this vague accusation to a fairly detailed questioning concerning the prisoner's life in China over a long period of time which makes it anywhere from a few years to 30 or 40 years in the case of some of the older missionaries. Everything he did during this period, his friends, his colleagues, religious or business associates, and focusing usually upon his associations with groups considered particularly reactionary such as the Chinese nationalists, American groups, or the Catholic Church. One of the early effects of this process is the feeling on the part of the prisoner that he wants very badly to satisfy the interrogator to end this discomfort, and let me read to you the words of a Catholic bishop who expressed this I think rather well. "After a while one wants to talk. They press you so you pretty much say something. Once you start you are deceived with the talk of a tree and you go down. If you say the first word, there's always something more. [Speaking in foreign language]. No, no. Be a good boy. Say the truth. [Speaking in foreign language], confess. It's constantly repeated every two minutes. I felt myself wanting to say more to make him shut his mouth. He was so insisting; it was torture. He would say [speaking in foreign language], confession is self-salvation. It made me weak, made me want to give in. After a while I wanted to help them. I thought if I could make the question clear he will know who I am and what I am and be able to judge me. The more you know, the better it is for me. I thought I had done nothing wrong." When the interrogation procedure's temporarily completed for one particular night, and the prisoner is brought back to his cell, he finds that his nightmare's far from over. He's now confronted with what is called "the struggle." This means that he sits in the middle of the cell, and the other prisoners, his cellmates, form a circle around him and begin to shot invectives at him denouncing him as an arch criminal, a stubborn imperialist who refuses to recognize his crimes. And they point to his chains as a symbol of his stubbornness. The assumption is always that you want the chains. If you had been sincere, the government would not have used them. In other words, the prisoner's responsible for his own condition. Now these prisoners are more advanced in their own reform and they're working towards their own release. They're lead by a cell chief who sets the pace in this struggle process, and he's chosen both because of his skill at extracting confession and because of his own great need for merits towards his release. So that the struggle can soon -- are quite immense power when combined with the interrogation. The prisoner is really without relief during these first few months of the emotional assaults, interrogated by night and struggled by day. What is very, very important here is the beginning feeling of guilt. And, again, in the words of one of my subjects, "What they try to impress on you is a complex of guilt. The complex I had was that I was guilty. I was a criminal. This is my feeling day and night." Informal types of help are also offered, and these are usually persuasion, insult, sometimes physical abuse, sometimes various types of abject humiliation. Now on occasion this help is actually genuine, that is really offered sympathetically by another person in the cell such as a religious colleague who may be placed in the cell because the Communists know that even true help will be in the direction of confession and of reform. Over a period of time lasting anywhere from a few weeks to a few months these various methods cannot help but have a very severe effect upon the prisoner. This is the way one prisoner describes it. "There's the destruction of your personality. I say," and this prisoner was a physician, "I say I'm a doctor. I was here 20 years. They say, you are not a doctor. You're just an imperialist spy. They start to question you about everything you did as a doctor to cover up your spy personality." As the prisoner begins to find himself enmeshed in this process he becomes aware that everything he says, everything he does, every motion which he makes is being observed in the cell and reported back by the cell chief to the prison officials in his daily meetings with him. But the prison officials are using this information to apply additional pressures to him, to the new prisoner, in order to bring him to confession and to bring about his re-education. Now, what are the important psychological features then of this early phase of imprisonment, the emotional assaults? Very briefly they are what I've considered, one, the annihilation of identity. The prisoner loses all feelings of who and what he is, of his membership of belonging as to any particular group. He really reaches a rather sub-human level of reactivity which makes him more receptive to the rest of the reform process. Second, the establishment of guilt which I've already mentioned. In a vague general way he begins to feel evil and sinful. He begins to expect punishment and feel that he really deserves punishment. Third, there is the total conflict with the inflexible environment. He's in total conflict with everything he believes, everything he does, and it's made very clear to him that he, rather than the environment, must give way to solve this impasse. At this point, when the prisoner has reached or gone just beyond his breaking point, he's surprised by a sudden change in the behavior of his captors, and this ushers in the second or leniency phase of thought reform. An interrogator will usually come to his room and speak to him in a kind way, promise him much better treatment if he will only cooperate and make a really good confession. And again, let me illustrate this through the words of another priest. He said, "It was Christmas Day. I was brought to see the judge. For the first time I found a room full of sunlight. There was no guard and there were no secretaries, but only the kind faces of a judge who was offering me cigarettes and tea. It was a conversation more than a questioning. My mother could not have been much more good and kind than the judge was. He said to me, 'The treatment you have received here is really too bad. Maybe you're unable to stand it. As a foreigner and a priest you must be used to good food and better hygienic standards. So just make a confession, but make it really good so we can be satisfied. Then we will close your trial and finish your case.'" Well, this shift in tactics invariably has a tremendous effect and it can be a very crucial step in the confession extraction in the reform process. The prisoner usually views it as a potential turning point in his destiny which is the first hope to a solution of this heretofore insoluble morass that he had found himself in. And he feels grateful to the government for this leniency which they're showing him. He's likely going to want to cooperate them in every way, do anything that is expected of him in the way of his own confession and reform, to even anticipate demands which he thinks will be made upon him. Of course, leniency may be, again, interrupted by a return of the emotional assaults if he doesn't continue to satisfy his captors. Now, through it all, and in going to the third stage, the prisoner continues to meet the clamor for confession. And this is the theme of every interrogation, every struggle, every informal help session in the cell: confess, confess all, you must be frank, you must show your face in the government, come clean, be sincere, recognize your crimes, and so on. And these are constantly repeated by the judge, by the so-called instructor, and the fellow students or cellmates. And it's always made clear to him that the confession, the progress of his confession, is the most important task which confronts him. This is the criterion by which he is to be judged. There are many techniques involved. Extraction his confession which I'll mention only briefly. One is he must denounce his own colleagues with whom he's worked in China over a long period of time. He must fill out forms. First these are merely descriptive, to indicate in some detail everything he knows about these men. But gradually, under these pressures, these become denunciations. And this is a source of great guilt and shame to him, particularly later on. When he's begun to talk freely he learns what is known as "the people's standpoint." And this means the ability to reinterpret past events in a guilty light. And it's always emphasized that the people's standpoint makes no distinction between news, information, and intelligence. And you can see the broad implications of this by the following passage from, again, the same physician whom I mentioned before. He said, "I was a family physician and friend of an American correspondent in Peking. We talked about many things including the political situation. The judge questioned me again and again about my relationship with this man. He asked me for details of everything we had talked about. I admitted at the time of the liberation when I saw the horse-drawn artillery of the Communist army I told this to my American friend. The judge shouted that this American was a spy. He was collecting espionage material for his spy organization, and I was guilty of supplying him with military intelligence. At first I did not accept this if it's going to have added to my confession. This is about being the people's standpoint. After that you accept everything. You're annihilated. The judge is the real master of you from that moment. He then says to you, 'How many intelligences did you give to S?' So you think of more intelligences." He goes on to say, "In the cell 12 hours a day you talk and talk. You have to take part. You must discuss yourself, criticize, inspect yourself, denounce your thought. Little by little you start to admit something and look to yourself only using the people's judgment. You have a feeling that you're looked to yourself on the people's side, that you are a criminal. Not all the time but moments you think they are right. I did this. I'm a criminal. If you doubt, you keep it to yourself because if you admit the doubt, you'll be -- struggle and lose the progress you have made. In this way they build up the criminal." I think this description illustrates more graphically than I could possibly describe the gradual acceptance of this criteria, these criteria of guilt and the prisoner's looking into the eyes of his captors in his own case. The confession, most of all, is a reinterpretation of past events along with distortions, exaggerations, and finally the development of pure fantasy. I won't go into this in detail but I can say that some of these people began to really imagine extensive spy organizations which never, in fact, existed, including the house in which the activities were carried out, the radio receiver and sender, and so on. But as the confession progresses the Communists tend to de-emphasize the purely fantastic elements of it and then to emphasize those elements which have a beginning basis in reality, to develop the confession as a very logical document, which can be documented by names, places, actual events. And this makes it much more convincing, both to the prisoner and to the outside world. The overall pattern with Catholic priests, for instance, in this compounding of real events and exaggerations, distortions, and falsehoods, is to develop a theme that the priest came to China under the cloak of religion. That is, in fact, the spy has been a lifelong spy, that his mission is a spy organization under the general direction of the master spy in the Vatican, the Pope. And the same set of criteria are applied to the secular individuals. For instance, that a businessman came to China under the cloak of being a businessman and has really been conducting espionage which is against the interests of the Chinese people. When the prisoner is well along in his confession and has been making some progress in that direction, he usually begins to be faced with the final task of his prison experience, re-education. Now, of course, re-education in actuality began from the moment of imprisonment. But it begins to be slightly formalized in something of a classroom procedure at this point. And the way it's conducted is this. Again, in the cell, one of the prisoners reads from a Communist pamphlet, newspaper, or book. Each must then offer his opinion on what has been said. Everyone must then criticize the opinions of others in order to evolve what is known as the people's standpoint in all aspects of life experience, not just the confession itself, meaning the people's standpoint regarding political, economic, personal, psychological matters. Now everybody must learn to express himself from what is known as the proletarian standpoint and use what is known as materialistic dialectics as his reasoning process. In addition, in great detail, they'll stress the accomplishments of the Communist world and the alleged deficiencies of the non-Communist world. There evolves a pattern of criticism and self-criticism in which the prisoner must analyze his past, his deficiencies, in the light of his past life in order to come to some insight into his deficiencies. He must further confess and analyze his so-called wrong thoughts and solve every problem in the process. Now, I'll just mention the four psychological issues; just list them, which I think are important in the re-education process and perhaps what remains we can handle during the discussion period. This is the broadening of guilt, the adaptational awards -- I mean the status and the togetherness, the catharsis, things which a prisoner actually begins to enjoy in this thought reform process, the working through the analysis, the use of insights of depth interpretations and of seemingly psychological methods, and finally, the development of a new identity, the recoding of reality, the conversion, if you will, in which the prisoner begins to look at the world through Communist eyes and if the process is successful, is reborn.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Lifton, this is sufficiently different, particularly as it guides the use of the group in applying pressures and in causing of change. To raise the question, what is there in the Chinese culture or practice or procedure of which this is a part? Is there any -- again, any understanding of the method from what you know about Chinese practices and education and organization of schools and in teaching?
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: This isn't an easy question to answer, and there's a lot of disagreement in just this area. But I can restate my own impressions. I think that by and large the distinction in the Chinese Communists, that use of thought reform as opposed to all other Communist confession extracture and indoctrination methods, is specifically the re-education emphasis here, as I mentioned before. Now where does this re-education emphasis come from in Chinese culture? Well, from what I've been able to glean, and I've talked about this with many people who know a great deal more about Chinese culture than I do, I think this is a remnant of the confusion element in Chinese culture which has always taught that man can and should be reformed, that self-cultivation, as it is called, is a very important element in the development of the so-called ethical man. And I think that this Communist thought reform process in sometimes cruel and coercive fashion is an attempt upon the Communists to build their own version of the ethical man on this confusion theme. One other thing which I had mentioned in this regard is the cultural skill of the Chinese in regard to the manipulation and the handling of interpersonal relationships. This is a very unscientific theory, perhaps, but it's my impression that the Chinese have unusual skill, have always emphasized very greatly the relationship between people rather than, for instance, the development of machines or the concept of a supernatural world. And then that in here, in thought reform, we see what may be the perversion of a cultural genius.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Hinkle, any questions?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Yes. I'd like to ask Dr. Lifton if he thinks perhaps that the insistence upon the writing and rewriting of confessions in the Chinese, which is somewhat different from the Russian, is also a part of the diagnose of their cultural pattern of teaching.
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: Yes, I think so. I think it has to do with the repetitious quality in all traditional Chinese teaching and learning by models. And, in fact, that one of the Chinese anthropologists whom I worked with felt that these emphasis upon writing and rewriting of confessions reminded him of what used to be known as the eight-legged essay in the traditional Chinese state examinations for the civil service system. So I think it bears relationship to the Chinese cultural patterns here, too.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Larry?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: No questions.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: David?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: No questions.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: I wonder if Dr. Lifton has any ideas as to why the group kind of tactic was so unsuccessful when applied, when it was attempted against military prisoners.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Is that true?
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: Well, it's --
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Yes.
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: It's a good question based upon an assumption.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Yes.
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: I think that by and large the group method as applied to prisoners of war was not completely unsuccessful. I think it was fairly successful in at least breaking down resistance and any motivation or incentive for escaping. It was probably unsuccessful in converting Americans to Communism. I think that the group process I'm describing here is much more powerful. One reason is that the whole process is conducted with much more intensity. But remember here you're taking a Westerner, isolating him from his fellows so to speak, and putting him with a group of Chinese which, in a sense, puts additional pressures upon him. Secondly, you're dealing with Westerners who are much more involved in Chinese culture than with the American prisoners of war. These people had lived in China for a long time. Many of them had grown to love China a great deal. And if they could be convinced that what was happening in China was good for China, if they would have furthered their interests in China by becoming converted, this could, indeed, be a very powerful pressure as applied to them. And I saw many of these people as they crossed the border literally weeping at leaving China despite the pain that they had endured during the prison process.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: It also should be added that some of them were exposed to these pressures for four, four and a half years.
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: Yes.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Well, a question from the floor. Would you comment on the fact that despite the distinct advantage, propaganda-wise, of having public exhibitions of important military people like Colonel Arnold and his crew, and Colonel Schwable, and certain Americans, other Americans, that no American civilian was ever brought to a public trial. I think that the mirroristic tales of his conviction made public.
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: I can answer that and definitively, but, first of all, by and large, there were very few trials. There were either no trials at all or token trials for American civilians during the first few years of this process. Towards the later stages, in the last year or two, there have been trails. And there have been a few public trials, although not nearly as big, perhaps, that was publicized as those of the military. As to why this is so, I really don't know.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Again, we have to remember there are only a very small percent of any population ever as groomed and so well-prepared as to be predictable in a trial situation. That may be another factor, do you not think so?
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: Yes, I think so. There were a few people who might have been considered so prepared who were not thought [inaudible], but there were very few.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: The trial is scarcely worth the trouble and potential hazard unless it has real propaganda value. That's like -- has some reason to do with why the military was selected. Now not to [inaudible], it's obvious that all of this must have grown in a certain kind of soil and we'd very much depend upon you to give us an idea of the background of this kind of situation. Mr. Berle will talk about indoctrination confession as an aspect of international Communism.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: I can only speak of this from the juridical point of view. But after our laws, perhaps the most effectively codified habits people do have, but I say it has to be subject to one reserve. During mid-summer, as part of the de-Stalinization program, announcement was made from the Soviet -- from Moscow, first that hereafter Soviet prosecutors must prove their cases against prisoners. Second, the confessions of prisoners were not to be conclusive as evidence of guilt. And third, that a free defense or its equivalent would be permitted. This would reverse most of the procedure you've been hearing about tonight. I have no means of knowing whether or how or if the announced policies carried into practice. Something like this liberal practice was allowed when the trials were [inaudible] practice was allowed when the trial was opposed, accused in connection with the post [inaudible] demonstrations of last June. But it's impossible to say whether that may not have been merely due to the political exigencies of the moment or indeed whether the announced policy hasn't been reversed by now. I, therefore, make this reservation in advance because it may prove that the observations here I have to make which are mainly of the nature of Soviet law will prove really to have been altered, although I rather doubt it. The Communist handling of individuals accused of any offense as specific as in the case of a crime or more general as in the case of prisoners of war, differ so rapidly from Western concepts that it's difficult for us to catch up at first. There are, I think, two very deep roots on which this whole theory is known. The first is that under Stalin, both Leninist and Stalinist doctrine, the trial of any accused was essentially a political and rather judicial matter. The [inaudible] of the Communist state in any case are first, the enforcement of the socialist policy involved and, second, the conversion or the conscription of the entire culture into a frame of mind, the norms of activity which will be useful to the revolution. From here on we can use the word "state" instead of "revolution" because in their theory the state is the revolution. The revolution properly can be used as synonymously with the state except for your outside the Communist complex in which case it still is a revolution until it wins. Now of all the judicial process from beginning to end is designed bad to strength and reinforce this revolution and to give effect to its policies and plans. And indeed it has no other primary end. In 1937, Brzezinski, we know him in another context, of course, but he was the prosecutor or legal criminal authority of the state, defined the basis of Communist law in a famous essay. He said that "our Communist law is awareness of the necessity to proceed in a manner required by the socialist revolution and the socialist state and the socialist state of workers and peasants." And the Communist jurist [inaudible] quote, say the same thing, only a little bit differently. They say that "The law and judicial process under it must be guided by revolutionary expediency which helps us in our work of reconstructing society along our lines." And as a reason for that they [inaudible] of the 1926 Soviet Criminal Code for the purpose of any kind of criminal proceedings including these we've been discussing tonight. And I'm quoting. "The purpose was, A, to prevent commission of future crimes by the same offender; B, to influence other unstable members of society; and C, to adapt the offenders to the conditions of the community life in the toiler state. The question of retaliation or punishment does not arise." The individual is out of this. It was merely a question of getting those things done which were useful to the state and manipulating the individual to that end. So the accused in one of these proceedings, which is thought to affect the safety of the state, is pretty much any offense that does in greater or less degree, is thus merely part of the [inaudible]. His claims are recognized not depending on whether recognition of them will, in view of the court, contribute to the effectiveness of existing Communist policy, and they are not recognized as a whole. The second route probably long antedates the Communist Revolution. This is probably derived, I think, from the Greek Catholic practice of painting in certain, if not all, the Slavic regions. It was the late Anne O'Hare McCormick who, discussing some of these same trials we've been discussing this evening, observed to the writer that they may have had a religious base. She said that in the Slavic Balkans and in South Russia, the Greek Orthodox Catholic practice of confession, differing somewhat from the accepted Roman Catholic practice, permitted the penitent to make a confession to the Pope or priest, Pope being the Russian word for priest, in a kind of running conversation. And the priest just felt quite justified in questioning the penitent to discover whether he told all the truth and quite frequently broke off and sent him home, telling him to search his conscience and his memory, and to come back and make fuller accounting. And after this had gone on until the priest was satisfied, then the priest imposed penance and gave absolution. It's a little difficult but to believe that this habit influenced the Communist administrative practice leading up to trial, and it ended up to see whether it did. I finally ran across a quotation from one of the famous Communist jurists, Pashukanis, who mentioned exactly the same thing. He said that criminal proceedings included in them the idealogical motive of purification and redemption. And I quote, "Thereby make out of criminal law, originally built on the principles of private vengeance, a more efficient means of maintaining social discipline. That is to say, class dominance." Thus Pashukanis, and in this quotation, he attributed the origin of that idea to the Byzantine priesthood directly. He wound up with a little quotation. "Crime and punishment acquire their juridic nature on the basis of the redemption arrangement. Precisely as this form is preserved, so is the class struggle accomplished through law." Later, it is fair to say, in one of the struggles which are thought perhaps too important to us, Vishinski attacked Pashukanis who had made the observations above as a deviant and in a famous Communist conference in 1938, more or less laid him out. But apparently leaving -- not attacking this part of his doctrine, that is of redemption and purification, even though it did come from a Byzantine priest. It is of some interest to note that a very similar principle, the results are present in the old Mongolian law of Genghis Khan, and in that respect I merely note that the Golden Hordes of Genghis Khan's armies that controlled Russia until up to nearly the end of the 15th century, that is colliding with the Byzantine, and indeed having many other contacts besides that in Russia. If you take the two principles and combine them, I suggest that the handling of prisoners are accused in the Communist system as we've read it here, becomes both logical and clear, however distasteful. So the object, obviously, is not to shield or guard the individual or even to deal with the exact facts leading to his accusation. That's secondary. Rather the object is to take the circumstances and the individual as a part of them, so handle the combination that the Communist state and its policy will be strengthened and forwarded. So, if we turned all purpose, whatever, in the ensuing political process of court trial, the accused have an opportunity to prove that the facts stated by the police and so forth were wrong or that prove that a mistake had been committed and he ought to be discharged. That would be very silly. It would discredit the prosecutor who presented the case and the police and administrative officials who had worked up the facts in the whole proceedings. So it, and, of course, wouldn't help Communist policy a bit. Unless, of course, that that particular moment, a Communist policy called for the disciplining of that procuracy or the police or the Court, perhaps, something of the kind. Once in a while there have been cases of that kind when the prisoner is allowed to clear himself because the high Communist officials are anxious to do something to the police at that particular district. But that doesn't usually happen; once in a great while. Short of that, if it's ascertained that both profit can be had from a trial, then, at least, the prisoner will let it go at that. It was Vladimir Kozlovsky [assumed spelling] who observed that the law was, in this respect, an instrument of rulership, not placed above the government but in the government's hands as its tool in creating a new social order. And that's what it was there for. On the other hand, it was also, and still is recognized, that's the business of a revolutionary government to bring every individual into its operative apparatus, and to eliminate those that can't be made useful to the system. So when the handling of an individual, or for that matter, a group, from the time he is accused or he falls into captivity, to the time that they are ultimately liquidated or released, is dictated by the design to make this man or group of men useful within the system. That may be by using them as examples to make others more useful. And so comes the process of examination until he's [inaudible] useful information and then that the process of making him say anything that is deemed to be useful under the circumstances. And it is interesting to note that a judge can be disciplined if there is a current plan going, like a five-year plan, and he fails to make his court procedure assist that plan. This would mean that if there were a plan to create a propaganda myth, let us say, your report to trial would be used for that purpose, picking the appropriate set of circumstances [inaudible]. When, finally, your confession is ready, after the process described, then your accused is ready for trial and this is merely the drama played to the climax. The Soviet judge may see possibilities in the drama which the prosecutors have missed, and he does play a vital part in the drama in summing up and he has some discretion in pronouncing sentence. And if it is under the courts martial system, which Dr. Hinkle was speaking, which does have jurisdiction not only over Army matters but over cases of espionage, treason, and subversion, of course there the ability to create the high degree of drama is very great as we've seen. Somewhat the same system of courts where it's not part of a courts martial system appears to extend to prison camps of all kinds. That includes prisoners of war and apparently political prison camps as well. And it is of interest that these courts, though they are military courts, are not responsible to the Army. They are a separate branch of the Court System that's responsible directly to the Central Government with special jurisdiction and their instructions commonly reach these courts through the police. The mandate, of course, is the same as the other courts; that is, they are forwarding the revolution in this military system. It's impossible for anyone with a flair for history not to notice there are many points of similarity between this current Communist system, both in China and in the Soviet Union, and the descriptions given of the 15th and 16th century courts of the Inquisition, as, for instance, described by Professor Lee in his famous History of the Spanish Inquisition, some similarities of the courts earlier, courts of the Inquisition. You can almost parallel the conversation, for instance, which was just read with some of the conversations quoted by Professor Lee. Of course, under the Inquisition, the accused has a residual right to -- which finds no counterpart or at best only a caricature in this proceeding. The Inquisition, of course, guarded the individual's right. It was an absolute privilege to seek salvation by abjuring error, confessing his sins, becoming reconciled with the Church, and then throwing himself on the mercy of Almighty God, whereas all of the accused under a Communist system can do is to seek to become useful in some fashion by being condemned, perhaps, or by writing the right kind of confession, or by agreeing to go out and do further work, and so forth, thereby becoming useful to the Revolutionary State. And the whole dealings which you've heard described here are designed for that end. The job of just self-justification that is permitted, for instance, in a Western court would simply seem silly in the fact of that system. Essentially, of course, the Communist legal system approximates the legal systems which [inaudible] in both states where the Church and state are mingled and where the law and procedures are assimilated to and governed by ecclesiastical and religious practice. The difference, I suppose, lies in the fact that the Communists' legal system being materialist describes any external or transcendental criteria. Deduction is made by the Communist Party for which the state's an expression. There can be no principle, let alone law, superior to it. And so the police and the administrative officials and the courts are obliged not to enforce the law, but to, I quote, "Adapt the law," meaning decrees and the regulations and so forth, "to this doctrine and handle the accused accordingly." The same thing happened when the old Byzantine Empire, where the emperor was a dominant figure in church so then not to -- he's not actually the head of it. And it was the practice in the Old Russian Empire where the Czar, of course, was the head of the Church. And it was not unusual in other systems as well. I do not see that these people really have invented anything new. It seems to me that they have merely given it a direct purpose for application. It is interesting to note that some measure of quote, guilt, unquote, applies to anyone who has been outside the sweep of the totalitarian Communist State. So the units of the Soviet Army, when they returned from the conquest of East Germany and Mid-Europe after World War II, were not immobilized for some time. They were sent to special camps for re-indoctrination, and in mild form, [inaudible] this sort of thing went on with them and why. If was quite explicitly stated. They had lived outside the Communist-dominated area. They had had contact with and had acted in the non-Communist West. They were therefore considered to be less reliable as instruments in foreign [inaudible] with the interests and policies of the Soviet State; therefore, they should be insulated and before and re-indoctrinated, reconverted, before resuming a life in the Communist society. That, to warn somewhat more violent manner is applied to prisoners of war in the Western system, of course. And under the prevailing international law, prisoners of war are locked up merely to prevent them from fighting it again. But, under the Communist system, the prisoners of war constitute a body of people criminal by hypothesis because they have fought against the revolution. They have the good Communist law today as it was good law in the days of Genghis Khan and the Golden Hordes. Nevertheless, some of them may be made useful to the State within the Communist countries or to the Revolution if they're to be allowed to go home. Merely to release them, if they're not with you, would be an act of plain stupidity unless, of course, in the bargain you obtain some political and diplomatic advantage. Ideally, of course, the logic is that all of them should be converted into active instruments of the Revolution and then put to work in some fashion. And for that reason they are all put through this various process. It is a part of the Soviet duty, the duty under the Communist law. Last conception, and then, perhaps we've had enough tonight. Opposition to the Revolution, of course, isn't a crime in itself. But the crime is mitigated if the opponent had no real opportunity to understand the Communist ideal. On the other hand, if he's been in a Communist society and if especially he's once been a Communist and has then deviated or defected, he's in the position of a man who has consciously chosen to be a criminal or a [inaudible]; therefore, very much less likely to be made, again, a trustworthy instrument or supporter of the State, or outside the Communist States of the Revolution. And so he had best be liquidated. Well, of course, Christians and Muhammadans also made the distinction between the pig and the unconverted and the heretic, and the heretic generally gets much more for [inaudible]. And so it is under the Communist system. There are a couple of remaining observations. A large area of the Soviet legal system is administered. That is to say it isn't responsible to Courts at all. There, there being no great distinction between public and private interests. Private interests are merely regulated because otherwise the State doesn't work well together. So the administrative authority which also has a limited right to imprison, of course, that also leaves the individual just about the same place you or I would be if in our system the local police chief or the local revenue collector not only invested the case but to decide it as well. Indeed, the administration does bear some analogy to the way a revenue tax collector goes to work except that here the taxpayer can appeal to the court, whereas there, of course, if he cannot, and that difference is enormous. The police aptitude IQ is usually determinative. In the recollected cases of Professor Boris Demkonofski [assumed spelling], he was a soviet lawyer, he notes that one man who appeared quite innocent of a crime alleged was convicted because the word was sent out that a scapegoat was needed to calm popular indignation against the shortage of [inaudible]. He must look like the right scapegoat to have. A confession was duly provided for that purpose. And another quite justified complaint was dismissed because the complainant was the daughter of a White Guard Officer and, therefore, it would be best for the State not to have her be able to make this sort of complaint. It is interesting to note that both cases were later reopened by the Courts, but that was because the advocate persuaded the prosecuting officers that under the changed circumstances the action might not tend to assist the Socialist fabric. Later events were such that the convictions were then not to reopen. This is, in substance, all you can do when you are in the [inaudible] of this particular procedure. And so, as the thing was summarized once in a report to the Soviet Institute of Law and the Soviet Union Academy of Science, the norms of Socialist law must be developed because they are primarily important as, I'm quoting, "powerful means of building Socialism and Communism that proceed during dealings with accused, must be based on that premise." That is the declared theory. In practice, there seem to be from time to time human lapses in the direction of kindness and compassion and personal consideration. I've had them tell me both cases myself and there are others recorded in the books. But, of course, those lapses entail risk. The prosecuting officers and police are subject to check and control. There are special proceedings provided for the disciplining of judges whose official acts fail to fulfill the requirements of Communist policy. And a couple of these cases are told out by Konstantinovsky. Given the premises of the Soviet legal system, now of the Communist system in China, it is really difficult to see how any other result could be expected than the one you have for, as we revert to the place toward the beginning, any opposition to the Revolution or to the State is criminal heresy when found. Dealing with it is first to strike the mistake in its supposedly continuous struggle and second, to make the individual as useful to the State as possible under that struggle. That constitutes purification, redemption, re-education, re-indoctrination, as you two put it. Well, the one [inaudible] with this, law and logic do not always correspond to the way the human mind works. In a system which was not so very dissimilar in the days of the Tsarist Empire, the eventual violations and breeches and refusals to enforce the law became so great that the Empire itself broke up. I note this as a possible observation of the system we've been observing with such detachment tonight.
[ Applause ]
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Well, you've succeeded in giving us exactly the background that we needed to understand our problem. And there are a few questions that have come up. One of them was, could you explain how it -- does this explain why the average Russian is perhaps less disturbed by the fact that he would receive no justice as we understand it? Is he less upset by this kind of feeling?
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: Yes, I think so. I think he never knew very much what it was. So, never having known it, he feels less deprived. I think he is beginning to know increasingly because the mere process of attacking Western concepts and Western justice has brought a singular reverse [inaudible] of consciousness that there is something else, and they fashion a curiosity about it which, if you find whenever you establish then, that's in communication.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Lifton, from [inaudible] do you know how long the effects of brain lasting endure? And particularly in those who are so conspicuously brainwashed as to appear in the public press some year ago?
>> Dr. Dr. Robert J. Lifton: I think the question's probably referring to some of the Americans and Europeans who have come out of Chinese Communist prisons [background talking]. I would say that in answering the question of how long these effects last, I would say that we really don't know just yet because we obviously cannot have full data since they are still going on in many situations. By and large, with all individuals who are released from Chinese Communist prisons and then returned to the Western world, and I'm speaking of Westerners, the new adjustment pressures which they face in the Western world tend to combine with their original identifications from their earlier lives, make them revert to their former beliefs and values. And this is almost inevitably true. I think we can speak of two phases. One is the immediate phase upon release when, within a few days, people who have made extremely pro-Communist and guilty statements begin to dramatically revert and to change after passing through a period of confusion. And second, there's the longer term reversion over a period of months and even years which we're still in the process of trying to evaluate. But I would emphasize that by and large the process is towards a reversion to earlier beliefs and values. In other words, the process can succeed in extracting a false confession but by and large it fails to really convert the Western prisoner.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Biderman, is there anything to indicate that any preventive measures can be taken? Is there some danger that informing individuals concerning the practices will make them even more anxious? Have you anything to say about these matters?
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: Well, we know for -- with --
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: For the certainty of [inaudible] --
>> Dr. Albert D. Biderman: -- informing individuals about these practices made them considerably more anxious. However, if you can accept the statements of the returnees that had they only known what it was that they were to encounter at the start, they would have been more than able to cope with what occurred. Accepting these statements, we feel a considerable confidence that to be forewarned is to be forearmed in this instance.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: I also have it first hand from those who seem to have had a lot of experience with this process, that anyone who's been through a brainwashing procedure once [inaudible] isn't a good subject for it a second time. He's not quite as vulnerable. Mr. Berle, is there any evidence that Communist policymakers believe information obtained by these methods and, therefore, are misled?
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: No. Except in the broad general sense that any group of people that send out and pull back the propaganda screen eventually are deceived by the backwash of it. But to my understanding is that Soviet intelligence people do not take this as being evidence of a fact. They insist on verifying. That is, if it is just one of the pieces of raw intelligence that goes in for their evaluation, but because the thing has been extracted by the processes here described, they do not accept if for true anymore than any other general staff intelligence does.
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: Dr. Hinkle, a question?
>> Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr.: Yes. I would like to ask Mr. Berle about this. It's my recollection that the Communists having abolished the -- oh the Czarist [inaudible], promptly set up the Cheka. They abolished the Cheka because of its excesses in the Red Terror and set up the GPU and abolished this because of its excesses in the collectivization program and set up the NKVD and abolished this because of its excesses in the purges, and set up the NVD and abolished this because the [inaudible] had used this, and so forth. Now, we have the KGB which has been informed, Dr. Berle, as you pointed out earlier. Do you view this as a process like the [inaudible]?
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: I suspect that those probably, those reforms probably depended on the desire of one or another factions within the Communist Government to have power over that singularly vital and crucial machine. I suppose there was a certain amount of change and reform involved in it. But I think the main thing is who had control over this. And I think that is the case still.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: You feel then that the general principles which you elucidated will still hold.
>> Dr. Adolf A. Berle: I think they still hold. As I say it is -- there is some talk of having softened the rigor of the law, the Vishinski Rule. But it's a little bit difficult to see how that could happen unless also they softened very sensibly the entire period of the Soviet Government, which they have not done. So that I should suspect the best would be amelioration of --
>> Dr. Harold G. Wolf: I wish to thank the panelists for their contributions and the offices of the Association Society for the privilege of taking part in this panel.
[ Applause ]