National Security Archive Update, October 17, 2008 – Washington Broadcast Set for “Torturing Democracy”
Reviewers rate new documentary “compelling,” “impressive,” “top-shelf”
Guantanamo interrogation draft picked by Slate.com as “Hot Document”
For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton/Ilyse Veron – 202/994-7000
Washington, DC, October 17, 2008 – The new documentary film on the Bush administration’s interrogation and detention policies, “Torturing Democracy,” will air on Washington D.C.’s WETA-TV tonight at 10 p.m.
Produced and written by eight-time Emmy winner and National Security Archive fellow Sherry Jones, the documentary has drawn major online buzz as well as New York Times coverage of PBS’s failure to find a national scheduling spot for the film before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.
Reviewers have described the film as a “compelling example of video story-telling” that “delivers impressively on a promise to connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody.”
Slate.com selected a key revelation in the film as the Slate “Hot Document” this week – a previously unpublished December 2002 draft of “standard operating procedure” at Guantanamo which shows that interrogators there adopted their techniques directly from the survival training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape or SERE) given to American troops so they could resist the worst of Communist gulag treatment.
The companion Web site for the film, www.torturingdemocracy.org , features key documents, a detailed timeline, the full annotated transcript of the show, and lengthy transcripts of major interviews carried out for the film. Hosted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Web site will ultimately include a complete “Torture Archive” of primary sources.
Stream the entire film and read related documents online at:
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THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.