27 August 2007

Wired for Sound

Fort Hunt was wired for sound. The camp code-named “PO Box 1142” was located on the property, up a dirt road off the Parkway with a sign on the gate that read “No Trespassing.” The camp itself was screened by rows of trees from the manicured highway; it was a nest of complexes, each hidden from one another, a Chinese box of barbed wire compounds.

All the footpaths, all the latrines, all the bunkrooms were wired. Everywhere the prisoners congregated or passed the time there were high-performance microphones, and expert translators transcribing each word.

The formal interrogations were carefully synchronized with the secret transcripts. Every topic except the one of interest might be covered in the room with the clip-board and uniformed questioner. Later, in the latrine or on the exercise path, the prisoners would disclose to one another the key element that the enemy did not ask about.

And thus the next round of probing questions was formulated.

The interrogation officers were hand-selected from a pool of highly educated professionals. In addition to native Germans, many of them Jewish refugees, there were Ivy League professors, prominent attorneys and successful businessmen.

On the other side, some of the prisoners were hard cases. Particularly among the more senior, there were confirmed Nazis, convinced of the rightness of their cause. Many suspected that microphones might be hidden. They spent the long hours of confinement away from the questioning providing the unseen listeners with animal imitations, obscene stories, and songs.

Others considered themselves fortunate to be out of the war, and on a side of the ocean where the bombs were not falling. They spoke freely with on another, and gave up valuable information on the technical workings of U-boats, and the state of enemy morale. Camp staff- the native Germans- were also placed in the general population to probe for specific information.

The games that were played there were much different than the ones that are being played now against the terrorists. The current philosophy is that physical and mental stress can be useful in extracting actionable information. The jury is still out on that; the techniques of the water board and uncomfortable temperatures make us all a bit queasy.

It is curious that these procedures are precisely the ones that were lifted from the American military survival and resistance schools, which responded to the treatment of prisoners in Vietnam.

All of us had to go through the program to get a taste of what we might expect in captivity. We were hosed down, chilled, screamed at and water-boarded in a most realistic manner. We were deprived of sleep and placed in simulated re-education sessions with mock captors. It was quite a remarkable show, but at the root we knew that is what is was.

I noted, almost clinically, the tears of relief that poured down my cheeks when the Stars and Stripes was hoisted up in the “liberation” ceremony that signified the end of training. Regardless of how authentic and miserable the experience was. It was not open-ended and not real.

The very suggestion by our “captors” that the training was not going well and we would be “extended” until we did better was enough to cause despair. I have no pity for those who murder in the name of their faith, but I do have empathy for the hopelessness that must come.

The situation at Fort Hunt was different. The prisoners at the beginning were mostly U-boat sailors who had survived the sinking of their submarines. Remember the context of the time; the Germans had free range along the length of the Eastern seaboard; land-based air could only patrol a few hundred miles from shore. Even flying from Britain east, the convoys filled with war material had to cross a great oval in the Atlantic where the merchant ships were alone against the wolfpacks.

The Germans were sinking the ships faster than they could be constructed and launched.

Everything about the U-boat fleet was of interest; how they were sound-proofed, how they were propelled. How their captains intended to operate them.

The prisoners were in a black system. When their secrets were extracted, they were passed on to other camps and fully disclosed to the Red Cross. Fort Hunt was a place of extraordinary rendition.

There were as many as three hundred and fifty staff in the heyday of the camp. Most are gone now, as is the memory of the full dimension of the specialized programs that were conducted at Fort Hunt. Some were managed by the Army and others by the Navy, depending on the topic.

As the war evolved, so did the mission of PO Box 1142. With the strategic bombing campaign came the unpleasant fact that many American aircrew were going to be shot down and captured. One section on Fort Hunt helped develop the clandestine radios and fabric maps that were smuggled into the POW camps managed by the Luftwaffe, which is to say that the preposterous television show Hogan's Heroes had a faint connection to reality.

After the landings in Normandy, the mission began to change. Real access to the Nazi secrets was starting open up. Not only soldiers and sailors were available to question. The engineers and scientists who produced frightening terror weapons were starting to dribble in to Allied hands.

Brigadier General Leslie Grove, the manager of the Manhattan Project, wanted to know how close the Fuhrer was getting to the secret of the atom. He encouraged the War and Navy Departments to turn up the heat and get the truth.

In late 1944, things began to change behind the barbed war that was cloaked from view by the green trees along the George Washington Parkway.

Tomorrow:
Overcast

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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