William J. Haynes: What Was Chevron Thinking?

Posted by Chevron Pit
Wednesday, December 31, 2008

John Geluardi - author of The Snitch blog over at SF Weekly - put out a post last week about William Haynes, calling him "Chevron's Prince of Darkness". Apparently Haynes - who was recently hired by Chevron to serve as their chief corporate counsel - was just called out in a Senate Arms Services Committee (SASC) bipartisan investigation that found Haynes' actions while working for the Pentagon reviewing and approving of torture "deeply disturbing". Geluardi describes the hiring:

The Chevron Corporation has exposed its pestilent underbelly by hiring William J. Haynes II, a Department of Defense attorney who compiled lists of violent interrogation techniques for shadowy U.S. detention centers... In 2002 Haynes recommended a menu of 15 dehumanizing interrogation techniques to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that included stress positions, removal of clothing, light deprivation and exploitation of phobias such as the "Arab fear of dogs." Rumsfeld eagerly signed off on Haynes' recommendations and dispatched a memo to Guantanamo  Bay and other detention centers so they could be used on "enemy combatants," according to the senate investigative report.