MARK COLVIN: On the campaign trail back in 2007, Barack Obama promised that if he became President, America would once again be the country that stood up against torture. But in the last few weeks more evidence has emerged that some types of torture continue to be used by the US military under President Obama.

In a BBC investigation, nine separate former inmates told of a secret jail at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan. They called it the Black Hole and independently told stories of freezing cells, intensely loud noises throughout the day and night, and long-term sleep deprivation, among other techniques.

Michael Otterman is the author of the book American Torture. Here for the Sydney Writers Festival to promote his new book, Erasing Iraq, he talked to me about the techniques apparently used at Bagram.

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Some people believe these are Bush-era style tortures but it's become quite clear that under the Obama administration torture is still practised. Torture is still authorised if you look at the army field manuals. It spells out quite clearly that sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation are still authorised for use.

MARK COLVIN: Under what circumstances?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Under the circumstance, well according to this Appendix M which is part of the Army Field Manual, it says in, for not every inmate but for inmates of - how do they phrase it - where information must be expedited-ly received, so to speak. And so they allow this almost loophole, which is obviously exploited.

MARK COLVIN: Which you might call the 24 loophole.

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Yeah, it's this ticking time bomb philosophy which, again, it's a television scenario where there's a ticking time bomb and you've got to get the guy that planted it before it goes off and then you've got to torture him to get the information to save the, save the world, so to speak. You know this...

MARK COLVIN: What's wrong with that logic?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Well, this is, this is a Hollywood logic. This is something, again, you see in 24, you see in the movies, you see everywhere except in reality. And in all my research I've never actually seen a true example of this. Yet this is the example that proponents of torture and of even legalising torture, always argue.

MARK COLVIN: You've never seen an example of that?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: No, I've never seen a true example of the quote, unquote ticking time bomb scenario.

MARK COLVIN: Not one case, for instance, where a hostage, their life might be saved?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: When torture was used and it saved a life? You know, I haven't seen it. I'm not saying it's never existed but even if it did exist, or someone presented it to you in that way, it, again it's how could you prove that torture was necessary to get that information?

There's much better ways to get that information and perhaps, you know, again, I haven't seen this example. It was a lucky break in that case if torture ended up to be okay. But in all my research, torture is always the least reliable and the most counterproductive way to get information.

MARK COLVIN: There's another alleged secret torture space which was a second space at Guantanamo. There's a man called Scott Horton in the Harper's magazine who dug this out. There's a huge controversy over that. What do you think about that?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Well, Scott Horton is, I mean he's one of these, the few journalists and he's not a journalist but among the many things he does, he writes very eloquently about human rights abuse and he tackles Guantanamo.

In this Harper's article, he talks about alleged murders that occurred in Guantanamo and he pulls together very convincing evidence that where, a few years ago the US military claimed these guys committed suicide, if you look at the evidence it's quite impossible for them to tie the knots as they did and hang themselves and so on and so forth in the way that the military describes things.

MARK COLVIN: So if these things are right, how much does President Obama bear responsibility for and how much is being covered up?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Well, Obama claims as much responsibility as say Bush or, you know, that the buck stops at the top. There's a number of things the Obama administration has done to continue the worst abuses of the Bush administration.

For example, you have this torture centre operating in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. You also have the administration failing or refusing to prosecute or even investigate Bush era officials using torture, authorising torture, things of that nature.

The Obama administration …

MARK COLVIN: There are two different issues there. With Bagram, for instance...

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Yeah.

MARK COLVIN: ...do you think that the knowledge of that goes all the way to the top?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: I would be surprised if it didn't. And like I said a lot of these things are simply just out there in the army field manuals so, and also in a place like Bagram where human rights' monitors don't have access to, again it, you have to almost, it's not a surprise that these types of abuses take place.

So I'd be very surprised if Obama himself didn't know that his own military was operating a separate prison within the prison itself that handled this quote, unquote "high value" detainees and use these types of methods.

MARK COLVIN: And the question of whether to prosecute the people in the Bush administration who were involved is a huge debate, but is that over now?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Well, sadly it's largely over because, in Obama's words, he "Prefers to look into the future and not look to the past." So what essentially is that, that means is that people like Alberto Gonzales and this gentleman, Bybee, who literally wrote the memo authorising a range of techniques, they're allowed to go off scot free and that's the way it's going to be, certainly under the Bush admin... I mean the Obama administration and future administrations 'cause he's setting this tone right now.

MARK COLVIN: I know a lot of the video of interrogations has been destroyed. How much material will historians eventually be able to get their hands on? How much has been destroyed?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Well, it's difficult to say. You know there's an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into the destruction of about 92 video cassettes depicting torture in secret block site prisons. But, you know, it's impossible to say. When the Abu Ghraib photos were first released there were reports of other photos with similar types of depictions disappearing, getting destroyed.

Anyone who held this type of, these materials, instantly destroyed them knowing what, you know, the outroar that the Abu Ghraib images have caused. So it's difficult to say what's left out there. What we do know is that a judge…

MARK COLVIN: What are you digging for?

MICHAEL OTTERMAN: Well, a few, well there's one thing which I hope will be released. A federal judge ordered that a whole collection of torture images be released. The Obama administration actually stopped that and there's an executive order preventing the release of these torture images.

I think those will see the light of day. There's certainly a lot more memos and things of that nature that describe the Bush administration's decision making surrounding torture, which human rights' groups and myself hope to either be in time declassified or leaked.

MARK COLVIN: Michael Otterman, the author of American Torture and also the co-author of Erasing Iraq.