It wasn't up to individual interrogators to decide, 'Well, I'm gonna slap him,' or, 'I'm going to shake him,' or, 'I'm gonna make him stay up for 48 hours'," one retired CIA interrogator named John Kiriakou told ABC News. "Each one of these steps, even though they're minor steps - like the intention shake, or the open-handed belly slap--each one of these had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations."
Not to make light of a serious subject (therefore giving myself license to do just that), but when I heard that the CIA was employing the "open-handed belly slap" as a method to get Al Qaeda operatives to start talking, I had to smile. The best open-handed belly slap that I've ever seen administered was from my well-spent days of youth.
A couple of brothers lived one street over from us and we ended up spending a lot of our time playing with them. The older one had a year on me and the younger was born just a couple of weeks after I was--even though he was in a grade lower. They were separated by two grades in school just like we were. So when we played sports, the older brother Eric would team up with JB while I would "get" to have Kirk on my side. I say "get" because unlike his older sibling, he wasn't exactly a great athlete, carrying a few extra pounds pretty much from the day he was born. He wasn't what you describe as "svelte."
We played two-on-two football, street hockey, baseball, war, you name it, we played it, usually with the same team set-up. Not only did I have to put up with being stuck with the less athletically gifted of the two neighborhood brothers, I also had to deal with JB's constant cheap-shots, rule
Anyway, one hot summer day we were playing basketball at their house. I believe we were operating under what was known to us at the time as "jungle rules" which meant that pretty much anything went. You had to observe the rules of the game on scoring, dribbling, travelling, etc. but there was no such thing as a foul.
That day, Kirk was wearing some sort of mesh tank-top. Not very flattering for a full-figured fellow as I'm sure you can imagine. As he went in for a lay-up, he left the ground (barely) and raised both hands above his head to direct the ball. His tank top lifted with his hands, revealing his bulging white belly to the world.
This target was too tempting for his brother to resist and he laid out an open-handed belly slap unlike any I've seen before or since. The sound of the slap echoed throughout the neighborhood, followed immediately by an anguished howl of pain from Kirk. JB and I watched awestruck at the extent of fraternal cruelty that we had just witnessed. And then we laughed.
After Kirk stopped crying and vowing to kill his brother, he settled down enough to lift up his tank-top and show us the extent of the damage. Among the pale white folds you could see an almost perfect scarlet red imprint of Eric's hand. Now that was an open-handed belly slap.
No word on what Eric is up to these days.
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