0:00
In January 2004, investigators from
0:02
Amnesty International documented a
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windowless cell in Thran, painted creamy
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white, where a journalist ate white rice
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off white paper plates and slid a white
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scrap under the door just to use the
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toilet. The prisoner was Amir Abbas
0:18
Fakraar. The site was a revolutionary
0:20
guard's detention center numbered 125.
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Guards wore shoes built to swallow
0:26
sound. He was forbidden to speak.
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Amnesty called it the first documented
0:31
case of white torture in Iran. They
0:34
wrote that the silence was deafening.
0:36
The number that runs this story is 48
0:39
hours. That is how long it took paid
0:41
college students lying on a cot in
0:43
Montreal to start hallucinating. They
0:46
were not in a dungeon. They were
0:48
volunteers. $20 a day. The people who
0:51
later filled the white rooms had already
0:53
read the lab notes. They called it
0:55
research. Four of the students out loud
0:58
called it torture. What investigators
1:02
found? Investigators did not find a
1:04
beating first. They found a design. No
1:07
windows, no color except white. Meals on
1:10
white plates. Clothes the same shade as
1:13
the walls. A paper slip for the toilet.
1:15
Footwear that erased footsteps. A rule
1:18
against speech. The point was not pain
1:21
you could photograph. The point was to
1:23
starve a brain of anything it could hold
1:25
on to. In file after file, the same
1:28
architecture shows up. White torture,
1:30
sensory deprivation, extreme isolation,
1:33
supermax. On October 18th, 2011, United
1:37
Nations special rapur Juan Mendes stood
1:40
in New York and named the aliases.
1:43
Whatever the label, he said prolonged
1:45
use should be banned. What they were
1:47
looking at was not a mood. It was a
1:49
procedure. Cut daylight. Cut other
1:51
voices. Cut time. Leave a person in a
1:54
box that does not change. And the mind
1:56
starts manufacturing the missing world.
1:59
You sit in that box and the hours stop
2:05
On June 1st, 1951, psychologists and
2:08
defense officials met at the Ritz
2:10
Carlton in Montreal. The Korean War had
2:13
produced American prisoners who signed
2:15
confessions. The question on the table
2:17
was how a person breaks without a mark
2:19
on the body. Three months later, Donald
2:22
Heb at McGill University had a secret
2:24
grant from Canada's Defense Research
2:26
Board, contract X38. He paid students
2:30
$20 a day, about twice a working wage,
2:33
then to lie on a bed in an air
2:35
conditioned cubicle. Translucent goggles
2:38
so the eyes got light but no pattern.
2:41
Cardboard tubes on the arms so the hands
2:43
could not feel, a fan or earphones so
2:46
the ears had nothing to map. Most lasted
2:49
a few days, none lasted a week. Woodburn
2:52
Harren, one of Heb's collaborators,
2:54
wrote that the vision started simple,
2:57
then turned into wallpaper, then into
2:59
scenes the subjects could not shut off.
3:02
One man saw only dogs, another heard a
3:04
choir. After two to three days, Heb
3:07
reported the subject's identity had
3:09
begun to disintegrate. 48 hours, a
3:12
comfortable cot paid, and the brain
3:14
still came apart. The manual. In July
3:18
1963, the CIA issued a classified
3:21
handbook, now public, as the Kubark
3:24
Counter Intelligence Interrogation
3:26
Manual. It cited the McGill experiments
3:29
by name. The line investigators later
3:31
underlined was not poetry. The more
3:34
completely the place of confinement
3:36
eliminates sensory stimuli, the more
3:38
rapidly and deeply the subject is
3:40
affected. Results that take weeks or
3:43
months in an ordinary cell, the manual
3:45
said, can be duplicated in hours or days
3:48
in a cell with no light, soundproofed,
3:50
odors gone. That is the mechanism in
3:53
order. Arrest, isolation, strip the room
3:56
of pattern. Wait, the interrogator
3:59
becomes the only moving object in a dead
4:01
environment. The subject starts to need
4:04
him. Kubar called that regression. Later
4:07
programs called it learned helplessness.
4:10
This was not a rogue basement. It was
4:12
written down, numbered, and taught.
4:15
White rice, white plates. In January
4:18
2004, Amnesty's file on Fakraar put a
4:22
local name on the same design
4:25
sephid. White torture, creamy white
4:27
cell, white clothes, white rice, white
4:30
plates, white paper under the door,
4:33
muffled shoes, no speech. He was later
4:36
reported to have spent months in
4:38
conditions like that. across Iranian
4:40
detention after Evan prison people told
4:42
investigators they could not sleep
4:44
without pills. One writer speaking of
4:46
section 240 said the loneliness does not
4:49
leave you after the door opens. Every
4:51
closed door after that still hits.
4:53
Investigators were told the method gets
4:55
results without a beating. In December
4:57
2022, Nargus Muhamd published White
5:00
Torture: Interviews with Women Held in
5:02
Evans Ward 209, where lights stay on
5:06
around the clock and night and day stop
5:08
meaning anything. Interrogations in
5:10
those accounts ran about 17 hours a day
5:13
for weeks. In October 2023, while she
5:17
was still a prisoner, she was awarded
5:20
the Nobel Peace Prize. The white room is
5:23
not a metaphor those women used for a
5:25
hard month. It is a cell with the color
5:28
scraped off so the person inside has
5:30
nothing left to count.
5:34
On October 18th, 2011, Mendes said it in
5:38
public. Solitary confinement means 22 to
5:41
24 hours a day alone. Prolonged means
5:44
more than 15 days. After that line, he
5:47
said, the science shows harm that can
5:49
last and in some cases does not reverse.
5:52
He called for an absolute prohibition on
5:54
indefinite and prolonged isolation. 15
5:58
days is not a slogan. It is a
6:00
conservative medical line. EEG studies
6:03
going back to the 1960s showed slowing
6:06
of brain waves after about a week in
6:08
solitary. In 1992, 57 prisoners of war
6:12
from the former Yugoslavia were tested
6:14
months after release. The worst brain
6:17
abnormalities showed up in men who had
6:19
taken a head injury hard enough to knock
6:22
them out or who had been held in
6:24
isolation. No blow required for the
6:27
second group. You do not need a white
6:28
paint job for this. You need a door that
6:31
does not open. The paint is a
6:32
refinement. The clock is the weapon. And
6:35
it gets worse and it gets worse because
6:37
the white room is only half the machine.
6:40
The other half is the person who finally
6:42
walks in. After days or weeks of
6:44
nothing, an interrogator is not an
6:46
enemy. He is a voice. He is color. He is
6:49
time. He controls visits, food, light, a
6:53
letter, a minute of sleep. After the
6:55
sensory cutoff, even the interrogator
6:58
can feel like relief. January 11th,
7:00
2002. Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay. The
7:04
first 20 detainees arrived. Public
7:07
photographs showed men in goggles,
7:09
masks, gloves, and earmuffs moved into
7:12
chainlink cages about 8 ft by 8 under
7:15
lights that did not go off. Internal
7:18
United States documents listed
7:20
isolation, white noise, continuous
7:23
light, and sleep deprivation as standard
7:25
techniques with sleep loss in one
7:27
version not to exceed 72 hours. CIA
7:31
black site memos described walkways
7:33
filled with white noise so detainees
7:36
could not hear each other being moved.
7:38
Cells lit 24 hours by two 17watt
7:42
fluorescent tubes about the brightness
7:44
of an office. A 2016 New York Times
7:46
review of medical records found that at
7:48
least half of the 39 people in the CIA's
7:51
enhanced interrogation program later
7:54
showed psychiatric problems. About 119
7:58
men moved through the CIA jails. On
8:00
December 9th, 2014, the Senate
8:03
Intelligence Committee released its
8:04
study of that program. Isolation was not
8:07
a side effect. It was the first setting.
8:10
The part that actually matters is this.
8:12
The beating leaves a bruise in a file.
8:14
The white room leaves a person who will
8:17
sign the file. The supermax file.
8:20
This is not only a wartime annex. ADX
8:23
Florence, the federal administrative
8:25
maximum in Colorado, holds men in cells
8:28
about 7 by 12 feet, concrete bunk,
8:31
concrete desk, a sink that is also a
8:33
toilet, a window roughly 42 in x4 that
8:37
shows sky and nothing else, meals
8:39
through a slot about 22 to 23 hours a
8:42
day alone. Rated capacity about 490.
8:46
Amnesty International's 2014 report,
8:49
Enttomb, mapped the same isolation as
8:52
policy, not accident. Special
8:54
administrative measures add gag rules on
8:57
the prisoner, the family, and even the
8:59
lawyer. Investigators still found the
9:02
same brain on the same clock. 22 hours.
9:05
What does not happen? Your apartment
9:07
does not turn into detention center 125
9:10
tomorrow morning. Ordinary quiet is not
9:12
white torture. A weekend alone is not
9:14
this. a hospital isolation ward with a
9:17
window and a nurse is not this. Most
9:19
people who serve time never see a creamy
9:22
white cell with muffled shoes. Supermax
9:24
is a small slice of a large system.
9:27
Heb's students walked out and in his own
9:29
writeup, most of the acute changes faded
9:31
in a day or so. The world does not end
9:34
because a technique exists. The
9:37
technique exists because it works on a
9:39
clock and the clock is short. File rooms
9:42
stay full of paper because someone still
9:44
has to write the confession down after
9:46
the door opens. The door opens and the
9:50
room is still with you. Fakravar's file,
9:52
the Evan interviews, the CIA medical
9:55
records and the Yugoslavia EEG's rhyme.
9:58
Sleep that will not come without a pill.
10:00
A closed door that still hits. Paranoia,
10:04
depression, in some cases psychosis.
10:07
Hename Shahiti, one of Mohammad's
10:10
witnesses, said after release she
10:12
remained under medical treatment and
10:14
could not return to ordinary life. What
10:17
isolation actually does is not a mystery
10:19
locked in a classified annex. It is a
10:22
sequence. Cut pattern cut people wait 2
10:26
days or 15 or 8 months. The brain fills
10:30
the blank with hallucinations, then with
10:32
compliance, then with damage that
10:35
outlives the paint. The white room is
10:37
efficient because it does not have to
10:40
look like a crime scene.
