However, according to a declassified Justice Department memo attempting to justify torture which references a still-classified report of the CIA Inspector General on the CIA's use of waterboarding, among other " enhanced " interrogation techniques, the CIA applied waterboarding to detainees " in a different manner " than the technique used in SERE training:

* The SERE (" Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ") program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for the " behavioral science consultants " who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy although he has emphatically denied that he had advocated the use of SERE counter-resistance techniques to break down detainees.

The members of this unit, who were volunteers from other banderas of the Legion, received training in: SCUBA / Maritime Warfare, Arctic and Mountain Warfare, Sabotage and Demolitions, Parachute and HALO techniques, Long Range Reconnaissance, Counter-terrorism and CQB, Vehicle insertion, Sniping and SERE ( Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion ).

In July 2005, an article in The New Yorker magazine suggested that the SERE program involved a number of techniques which paralleled those allegedly used at Guantánamo Bay, including the desecration of religious texts.

The SERE program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for " behavioral science consultants " who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy — although Banks has emphatically denied that he advocated the use of SERE counter-resistance techniques to break down detainees.

However, General James T. Hill, chief of the U. S. Southern Command, confirmed that a team from Guantanamo went " up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques " for " high-profile, high-value " detainees.

* The Experiment New Yorker article about SERE techniques at Guantanamo Bay

Colonel Rowe was credited with developing the rigorous Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ( SERE ) training program taught to high-risk military personnel ( such as Special Forces and aircrews ) and the U. S. military doctrine which institutionalizes these techniques and principles to be followed by captured personnel.

Instead, most SERE techniques were modeled after 1950's and early 1960s CIA interrogation and psychological warfare practices.

The other primary source for SERE techniques was 1960's CIA " mind control experiments ," using sleep deprivation, drugs, electric shock, and isolation and extended sensory deprivation.

Certain of the less physically damaging CIA methods derived from what was at the time called ' defensive ' behavioral research " were reduced and refined as training techniques for the SERE program.

In July 2005 an article in The New Yorker magazine alleged that psychologists who help direct the SERE curriculum have been advising the military at Guantanamo Bay detainment camp and other sites on interrogation techniques.

The SERE program's chief psychologist, Colonel Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for the " behavioral science consultants " who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy although he has emphatically denied that he had advocated the use of counter-resistance techniques used by SERE instructors to break down detainees.

Some of these schools include but are not limited to: military free-fall ; combat diver qualification course ; survival, evasion, resistance & escape ( SERE ); jumpmaster ; pathfinder ; Combatives Instructor ; first responder / combat lifesaver ; language training ; Mountain Warfare School ; and many types of shooting, driving, and assault procedures training.

In addition to the twelve months of training in the Clandestine Service Trainee ( CST ) Program to be a clandestine intelligence officer, Paramilitary Operations Officers are trained to a high level of proficiency in the use and tactical employment of an unusually wide degree of modern weaponry, explosive devices and firearms ( foreign and domestic ), hand to hand combat, high performance / tactical driving ( on and off road ), apprehension avoidance ( including picking handcuffs and escaping from confinement ), improvised explosive devices, Cyberwarfare, covert channels, Military Free Fall parachuting, combat and commercial SCUBA and closed circuit diving, proficiency in foreign languages, entry operations and vehicle hot-wiring, Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ( SERE ), extreme survival and wilderness training, combat EMS medical training, tactical communications and tracking.

Most higher level SERE students are military aircrew and special operations personnel considered to be at high risk of capture.

RAF St Mawgan is currently home to Defence Survival Training Organisation ( DSTO ), which is a tri-service unit that teaches ' Survive, Evade, Resist, Extraction ' ( SERE ) methods for the Armed Forces in support of operations and training.

According to the DOJ memo, the IG Report observed that the CIA's Office of Medical Services ( OMS ) stated that " the experience of the SERE psychologist / interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant " and that " onsequently, according to OMS, there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist / interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.

At Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, California, the main gate ( inaugurated on August 30, 2007 ) and the headquarters building for the Pacific Fleet's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ( SERE ) school were both named in his honor.

According to author Jane Mayer, Seligman gave a talk at the Navy SERE school in San Diego in 2002, which he said was a three-hour talk on helping U. S. soldiers to resist torture, based on his understanding of learned helplessness, not on how to break down resistance in detainees.

The depicted SERE patch is said to have the following symbolic significance: the color green represents freedom ; the patch is halved with a yellow strip to signify that survival, evasion, resistance and escape all require caution, with the knife the basic survival tool ; the severed barbed wire represents captivity but freedom regained ; the word tiger in Chinese ( 虎 ) alludes to the Here be dragons / tigers legend found on early maps ; finally, the black surround honors symbolically those who have died on active duty.

Most of SERE training focuses on survival and evasion.

Graphic of Air Force SERE Flash, which is worn on a sage ( light-green ) beret

* DOD directive on SERE training ( DODI 1300. 21 )

According to an op-ed in the November 14, 2005 New York Times by M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks, two lawyers with no first-hand knowledge of SERE, " General Hill had sent this list -- which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees ' phobias -- to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.

SERE is taught at the Colonel James " Nick " Rowe Training compound at Camp Mackall, North Carolina.

The Air Force SERE School is located at Fairchild AFB, Washington, while SERE Training for the US Army is located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

The Navy and Marine Corps SERE School has two locations: the US Navy Remote Training Site at Warner Springs, California and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine.

How to survive in water is taught at a separate Professional Military Education ( PME ) course ; it takes three days and is typically attended after the main SERE course.

SERE training takes place at four levels:

SERE training is included in the flight school curriculum at Fort Rucker, Alabama for all Army Flight crews, both commissioned officers and warrant officers.

The primary Air Force SERE training center is at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington ; training for Level " B " medical aircrew was conducted at Brooks City-Base, Texas until the planned course closure 30 September 2009.

SERE training was also conducted at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs from the late 1960s until 1995, enabling those USAF officers commissioned through USAFA to exempt USAF SERE training at Fairchild AFB following undergraduate pilot or navigator training.

In contrast, those USAF officers commissioned through AFROTC or OTS still had to complete SERE at Fairchild following flight training.

One of the psychiatrist / interrogators acknowledged that the Agency's use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is ' for real ' and is more poignant and convincing.

Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape ( SERE ) is now a requirement for graduation from the U. S. Army Special Forces Qualification Course.

One of the U. S. Air Force's SERE training programs was conducted at the United States Air Force Academy from the late 1960s until 1995.

Because a large number of pilots and other aircrew members graduated from the academy, it was more efficient for the Air Force to send all cadets through SERE training while they were still at the academy.

Dengler had a reputation from his experiences at the Navy survival school, where he had escaped from the mock-POW camp run by SERE instructors and Marine guards three times.

* US Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ( SERE )

Knife slashing through barbed wire in alien territory: the West Coast US Navy SERE insignia

SERE training is intended, above all, to provide students with the skills needed to live up to the US military code of conduct when in uncertain or hostile environments.

* US Navy SERE training ( Brunswick )

* US Navy SERE training ( Coronado )