SERE-C Becoming a prisoner of war (POW) is a harsh reality in every war and conflict. Every year, each of the armed services sends those who work in high-risk specialties or will work in combat areas through special schools to prepare them for the possibility of being captured. The common term for this training is Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE). There are various levels to the training, depending upon the school. Some training is offered to high-risk government employees as an orientation course. The goal of the United States Army's training in survival, evasion, resistance and escape, or SERE, is to teach personnel how to survive if they become separated from their unit; to evade a hostile force and make their way back to friendly forces; and to avoid capture. In the event that soldiers are captured, SERE training will have prepared them to resist the enemy's attempts at exploitation, to escape from captivity and to return home with honor. Department of Defense Directive 1300.7, Training and Education Measures Necessary to Support Code of Conduct, establishes three levels of SERE training: A, B and C. Level A. Level-A SERE training is initial-entry training that is included in the program of instruction during basic training and during all entry-level courses of instruction for officers. Level B. Level-B SERE training is designed for officers and enlisted personnel who operate (or who could potentially operate) near enemy lines. Unit-level instruction in Level-B SERE is accomplished using a training support packet, or TSP, that contains 16 standardized lesson plans that support training in 38 tasks. Level C. Level-C SERE training is designed for personnel whose wartime position, military occupational specialty, or assignment entails a high risk of capture, and whose position, rank or seniority would make them targets for stronger-than-average exploitation efforts by a captor. Personnel who operate in enemy-controlled areas, such as Special Forces, Pathfinders, selected aviators, flight-crew members and members of Ranger battalions, should receive Level-C training. Level-C SERE training is conducted by the JFK Special Warfare Center and School's Company A, 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training Group. Company A is one of four advanced-skills companies within the 2nd Battalion. Because nearly 70 percent of Company A's instructor positions are allotted to its two SERE detachments (the Field Training Detachment and the Resistance Training Detachment), the company is commonly referred to as the "SERE Company" or as the "SERE School." Company A is the only Army unit that is authorized to conduct Level-C SERE training. The Army's Level-C SERE training is conducted at Camp Mackall, N.C., approximately 35 miles southwest of Fort Bragg. Camp Mackall is also the training site for Special Forces Assessment and Selection and for the Special Forces Qualification Course. The Camp Mackall SERE training facility is one of only four facilities within the Department of Defense that are authorized to conduct Level-C SERE training. The Navy has facilities at Brunswick, Maine, and at North Island, Calif.; the Air Force has a facility at Fairchild AFB, Wash. The cadre of the Army's SERE Course are among the finest training instructors within DoD. While the majority are SF NCOs, there are also SF retirees (Department of the Army civilians); NCOs from other Army branches such as Military Intelligence (interrogators), Infantry (Rangers), Signal (audiovisual technicians); and NCOs from the U.S. Marine Corps. The Army's 19-day SERE Course is the longest SERE course taught within DoD. All training is conducted in support of DoD Directive 1300.7, Training and Education Measures Necessary to Support the Code of Conduct, 23 December 1998. Students include personnel from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and other government agencies. The course is taught in three phases: academic instruction; a survival-and-evasion field training exercise, or FTX; and a resistance exercise. History The Army's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Course traces its roots to the Vietnam conflict. On Oct. 29, 1963, Captain Rocky Versace, First Lieutenant Nick Rowe and Master Sergeant Dan Pitzer were captured in South Vietnam after an intense fire fight. All three endured hardships as captives of the Viet Cong. Versace was eventually executed for his staunch resistance to communist indoctrination. Pitzer was freed after four years. Rowe remained a prisoner for more than five years. In late December 1968, the Viet Cong, frustrated by Rowe's refusal to accept communist ideology and weary of his continued attempts to escape, scheduled his execution. As Rowe was being transferred for execution, he took advantage of the distraction caused by a sudden overflight of U.S. helicopters and struck down his guard. Still keen to his surroundings after 62 months of captivity, Rowe ran into a clearing, where he was spotted by the helicopters. He was rescued and quickly repatriated. Rowe left the Army in 1974 and wrote a book about his POW experiences, Five Years to Freedom. When the Army Special Forces School recognized the need for a SERE program, Rowe was the first choice as the person to design the course and to establish its operation. He was recalled to active duty in 1981 and was given the mission of developing and running the SERE program.
There are plans to revamp pre-deployment workups, reinvigorate jungle warfare training and develop broader cultural expertise in this vast, diverse and dynamic part of the world. Lessons learned during the past decade will undoubtedly play a role in determining how these programs evolve, said Maj. Gen. Tom Murray, the head of Training and Education Command, but with budgets and people stretched, TECOM must look closely at cost and benefit -- that is, how the Corps will get the best return on investment. Meanwhile, TECOM is looking at shaking up the experience recruits get at boot camp and re-examining its approach to ethics training, the general said. The related efforts are meant to address some troubling cultural issues that have taken root within the Corps. Murray met with Marine Corps Times here in September. Excerpts from the interview, edited for space and clarity: Q. Among the changes TECOM has looked at over the past two years, what's been the most significant to implement? A. The biggest one is the [Marine air-ground task force] training program for the future. It all stems from the fact that the whole environment is changing. We've been here before as a Marine Corps, but we're here again. We're seeing a major evolution with 10 years of combat drawing down. We also have financial restrictions that are going to be put on us and also in manpower. So from a training and education standpoint, we're trying to look at all of that. Q. So what will MAGTF training look like going forward? A. We're doing the last Enhanced Mojave Viper pre-deployment training right now at Twentynine Palms, Calif. We used to have the [combined arms exercises] about 10 years ago before we instituted Mojave Viper, so we're looking at kind of a hybrid of the two going forward. We have it in two pieces: ITX, which is an integrated training exercise, and then LSE, which is a large-scale exercise. The ITXs will be for the battalion, squadron and logistics unit level where they will come out, we'll provide them some time to train as an individual unit, as a squadron and as a battalion. Then we'll also bring that together and integrate all of the pieces of the MAGTF. We're looking to do five of those each year. Then the LSE is for the command elements. That's a large scale exercise, and we'll do two of those per year. That will be focused on the [Marine expeditionary brigade] or the [Marine expeditionary force] staffs. Q. What are the biggest lessons learned over the last decade in regard to pre-deployment training? A. I think one of the biggest things we learned is that there are no more front lines like there used to be. We found that it was very often corporals and sergeants dealing with local populations and governance, making decisions that could have strategic implications. In the past, that would've been a battalion or company commander. That's why we've gone to increase the [professional military education] and change the curriculum. We've changed the way we think about things. Q. Where is cultural training headed next? A. That's a challenge because we don't know where the next environment will be. So how do we give people the basics that they know enough about culture and how to think through problems but not be country-specific? We are focusing toward Asia-Pacific because we've been told to do that, but our culture and language training is going to be balanced ... and basically every Marine is going to participate in it. It's called Regional, Cultural and Language Familiarization, and they will pick or be assigned a region, a culture and a language that they are going to learn throughout the rest of their career, with certain milestones they'll have to pass to be eligible for future promotion. We found over the past 10 years that the cultural piece is probably more important than the language, because even if you can speak the language, if you don't understand the culture, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. Q. Will certain countries have a heavier emphasis than others? A. There are 17 different regions. There will probably be a little bit more of an emphasis on Asia-Pacific, but we do want to maintain a balance. A person whose region is Asia-Pacific, culture is Chinese and language is Mandarin, it won't stop him from deploying on an East Coast [Marine expeditionary unit]. It's about having a balance and a mix. Q. The commandant recently discussed an overhaul of jungle warfare training. What is being considered? A. We've kind of been thinking about this for a while. There's the training center on Okinawa, Japan. But it's not anything like what the Mountain Warfare Training Center is for mountain training or cold-weather training because it's not a service school right now. The commandant wants us to look at a service-level jungle warfare training center on the model of the Mountain Warfare Training Center up at Pickel Meadows in California. So who is it that we'll put through this training? Is it forces that are going out to Asia-Pacific? Or could it be anyone? [At] the Mountain Warfare Training Center we train in mountain climbing, we train in cold weather, but it's not all that school's about. It's about small-unit leader training. In the future, it will be a venue where people will work in those ITXs, so they might be at [different training locations]. So it's really more than just mountain and cold weather. And as we develop the jungle warfare training center, it'll be the same thing. We are also looking at costs because if we were going to take forces from the U.S. that aren't on their way to deploy to the Pacific, it would cost a heck of a lot to get a unit over there to go through jungle warfare training and then come back. So is there somewhere here in the western hemisphere where we can do it as well? Do we want one, do we want the other? But we are going to -- within a reasonable amount of time -- develop a service-level jungle warfare training center if that's what the commandant decides. Q. So there could be multiple training centers? A. Yes, we're looking at all of that. We're looking at the most efficient and cost-effective way to train now -- for using a jungle environment, but to do all the small-unit leader training as well. Q. TECOM also is looking at boot camp. A review board met in September to talk about curriculum changes. What's being considered there? A. There's a lot that we're going to beef up within the curriculum at the depots -- the sexual assault prevention, readiness training, we're getting at the hazing, the Marine total fitness package, resiliency, combat stress, and then a thing called mission command that has become very big in the joint world recently. That's where all up and down the chain of command, people understand the commander's intent. We are nurturing an environment where understanding turns into trust and then empowerment. That way you don't have to ask questions, you understand what the mission is, where you want to end up and how the commander wants to do it. We also want to get at the idea of diversity and what has been done for the Marine Corps by the diverse cultures that have joined it. We're also looking at changing around the instructors some. We only train female Marines at Parris Island, S.C., but what we want to do is put women in positions of leadership. So whether its instructors or sergeants major ... our recruits -- male and female -- see a mix of male and female figureheads, authority figures. Q. What about ethics training? The commandant has toured the Corps discussing this, and there was a servicewide ethics standdown. How will ethics become part of sustained training for Marines? A. It's ethics but also the issues we're having with sexual assault, hazing and mentoring properly. Instead of doing shotgun-blast training for six topics, we're going to take all these kinds of things under an umbrella of training and get this back to being part of our culture. We're going to get to where it's talked about all the time -- in all of our schools, in foot locker discussions, in weekly command leadership training discussions. Q. How does TECOM identify a need for training to be improved or changed? A. It's the operating forces that we want to be responsive to. So we're out there, we discuss with them, we identify gaps. Then we prioritize those gaps. Q. So how do you get more Marines through the training they need when fewer resources are available? A. Getting individuals out of the units is a challenge, especially as we get smaller because they're going to be busier. There's still a lot more distance or online learning. We want to get to where this training is mandatory for promotion. But you have to be really careful about making residential training mandatory for promotion because of the large numbers at certain ranks that were deployed back-to-back. By giving them the distance learning now, if this all works out, then we may go to a mandatory training to be promoted. Q. Aside from distance learning, how else is technology helping to better train Marines? A. Simulators have really advanced. You can stop, restart and work through a problem much easier with simulation. We have the Infantry Immersion Trainer, and at first it started out small with just fire teams, but now you can put very large units through it. It's a mix of live and virtual training. The repetition trains Marines to do some basic things without thinking, which allows more of your brain to focus on the unexpected. We're also getting to the point where we can network this stuff ... a big advancement. The idea is PoWs are not the same as "enemy" fighters or hostis humani generis (enemies of all mankind), hence, the torture doesn't fall under UN's Geneva Convention of 1949. The Soviets employed torture as a systematic part of its counterintelligence doctrine, whether it was resisting the Nazi incursion or pacifying the Baltics and Ukraine. It is possible, though by no means certain, that the information could have been acquired using “typical FBI practices,” but only if “we had all the time in the world … But we did not. You cannot overstate the urgency that we felt about getting answers quickly”, at any price. To minimize the risks of people going too far, the CIA psychologically assessed those charged with implementing the EITs to screen out sadists and other defectives. The CIA did not “blindly accept” what was told by prisoners, even after they became compliant. “Every statement … was checked and double checked” "The message this sends to the CIA workforce is simple: Engage in war crimes, in crimes against humanity, and you’ll get promoted. Don’t worry about the law. Don’t worry about ethics. Don’t worry about morality or the fact that torture doesn’t even work. Go ahead and do it anyway. We’ll cover for you. And you can destroy the evidence, too.” John Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committe. US Army's “Project X” Coercive Counterintelligence Techniques (torture) On Resistant Sources & Human Resource Exploitation Training ("interrogation"). Among the revisions, the sentence was added: "use of most coercive techniques is improper and violates policy." The Bible of “coercive interrogations” CIA's KUBARK 1963 brutal torture manual shows that agents were free to use coercion during interrogation, provided they obtained [headquarters] approval in advance. The original KUBARK manual offered a prophetic warning that would be repeatedly disregarded in the ensuing years: “The routine use of torture lowers the moral caliber of the organization that uses it and corrupts those that rely on it….” Vietnam counter-terror intelligence War: CIA-sponsored Phoenix program used by South Vietnamese paramilitary teams to target undercover VietCong insurgents in villages. Also involved in the Phoenix Program were US special operations forces. They acted as advisers sometimes trainers. The same people involved in the Phoenix program were later sent to advise El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras regarding torture programs. In Iraq they explicitly called it the El Salvador solution and they sent people who had helped El Salvador wage it’s reign of terror to Iraq to train the Shiite Badr brigades. William F. Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut in 1984-5, who was kidnapped by Iran’s agents, acting as part of the nascent Hizballah. Buckley was murdered, but not before he was tortured horrifically into giving up everything he knew, crippling the CIA’s operations in Lebanon for years to come. "physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice" ~ Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers. Using these findings, the CIA designed 'enhanced interrogation' designed to 'induce hopelessness' and also to 'psychologically dislocate' the suspect. U.S military doctors broke oath to design new torture techniques to be used at Guantánamo Bay, under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.
CIA lied to President Bush about the effectiveness of torture, and CIA lied to the American people by manipulating the media. Senate Committee on Intelligence staffers examined 20 cases the CIA has held up as justification for it program, and found all of them flawed and highly misleading. CIA repeatedly raped people in its custody. CIA officers regularly called into question whether the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were effective. It's no wonder some of the CIA officers were so disturbed they requested transfers out of the program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQF7K4_KuQg C.I.A. Computer Engineer Who Leaked Secrets Is Sentenced to 40 Years:
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