I'm tortured with not knowing of my family's involvement with CIA torture when I was young...

How is that you ask?

Well, I just became aware from watching a documentary on Stan Sheinbaum ("Citizen Stan") that my dad might have been working with others while we lived in Thailand that might have been involved with the CIA training the South Vietnamese to torture the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War in the 60's...

I wish I could know if this were true or not...

However, my father now has alzheimer's and probably doesn't have much longer to live, and is in no condition to provide me any useful answers on this now.

If you read this article from Ramparts back in 1966. it will describe what Stan Sheinbaum was involved with when he was in charge of the "Vietnam Project" when heading up that MSU project overseas that had CIA agents infiltrating the professors involved in that project to work under cover to train South Vietnamese government officials how to torture the Viet Cong when he was there in 1958.

Sheinbaum left MSU when finding out about this, but from the sounds of it, some of those involved with this "stealth" project still stayed on and I recognize at least one of the names here as people working with my dad when we were on a later MSU project he started on in Bangkok in the late 60's when the war was still going on.

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/msu.edu/msu.html



From the Citizen Stan web site:

http://www.citizenstan.com/

http://www.citizenstan.com/clips/citizen_stan_promo_cia.wmv

This has bugged me ever since, and I will never know how much my dad knew what was going on, or didn't know, but is tainted with having worked in that environment for others familiar with what went on then. Some members of my Mom's family (probably more in tune with publications like Ramparts in those days) had on many occassion asked my Mom if my dad worked for the CIA then...

I had a call from Sheinbaum on this, and hope some day I follow up on an invitation to meet with him and talk about this when I get into L.A. again.

I wish in hindsight that these incidents were made more public, so that we could all know what really happened then and perhaps reassure me that my family wasn't involved in any of those horrific incidents then. I have to believe that there may be some even in families of those who worked in these prisons, etc. that have similar feelings that I do about wanting to get out in the open what went on, so that the air can be cleared if their family's members had nothing to feel bad about (but can't talk about it).

Obama, you and Holder need to release these photos now, or we will regret it later!

i hope you find closure on your personal story