Waterboarding

RIO RANCHO, N.M. -- One night last month, Jean-Pierre Larroque drove into the desert here, lay down in the road and waited for one of his best friends to waterboard him.

Just a few hours earlier, the 26-year-old Peace Corps volunteer had been debating with two close friends whether waterboarding is torture. Finishing up a pizza dinner, Mr. Larroque casually suggested that the three settle the matter by trying it out for themselves.

On Dec. 11, the three friends got together for pizza and beer at Mr. Gaspar's house. They were watching cable-news reports about congressional efforts to ban waterboarding when Mr. Larroque and Mr. Toulouse began to joke about trying it out for themselves.

The conversations turned serious as they discovered that waterboarding required no training or equipment. Mr. Larroque found a "How To Do It" guide at Waterboarding.org, which opposes the practice. It said the only things needed were an inclined surface, a container of water and a damp towel or piece of plastic wrap. The plastic wrap is put over the mouth, leaving the nose and eyes uncovered. The water is then poured into the person's nose, filling his sinuses. The plastic, meanwhile, prevents the person from expelling the water. With a towel, the cloth is used to cover the person's whole face before the water is poured.

With Mr. Gaspar filming, Mr. Larroque lay down on the frozen ground with his arms at his sides and his head leaning back. Mr. Toulouse poured.

On the videotape, the water hits Mr. Larroque for about 10 seconds before he jerks upright, sending the towel flying.

In a posting on his blog, Mr. Larroque said he was surprised by how fast his air supply ran out. In other circumstances, he says he can hold his breath long enough to swim the length of a pool.

"Waterboarding is like a one-way valve," he said in an interview. "You've got water pouring in and the cloth keeps you from spitting it out, so you can only exhale once....Even holding my breath, it felt like the air was being sucked out, like a vacuum."

It left no lasting physical damage, making waterboarding arguably "a more humane" way of forcing information out of an otherwise uncooperative prisoner, he said.

On the other hand, Mr. Larroque remembers feeling blind panic as his air supply ran out. Willingly inducing similar feelings in another human being would be torture, he believes.

"This leaves no mark, no trace. It's almost like the ideal way of torturing someone," he said. "This is torture 2.0."