Psyche, Science, and Society

The Roots - Masters of War

1 comment June 11th, 2007

Iraq and the new vandals

Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, [In Iraq's four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals] reminds us that it is not simply the present and the future that are being destroyed in Iraq, but the past. American troops, Iraqi looters, and Western art collectors are, together, destroying any signs of 2,000 years of civilization. Perhaps this is so future American generations can be taught that civilization began at Disneyland.

Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today’s Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don’t. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.

As in virtually every other aspect of Iraqi life, things have only gotten worse under occupation:

The national museum is not open but shut. Nor is it just shut. Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside. There is no prospect of reopening.

Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the British Museum, on America’s conversion of Nebuchadnezzar’s great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.

Meanwhile the courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin.

Outside the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to the history of western civilisation, barely 20% yet excavated, are being looted as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When George tried to remove vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad, he found gangs of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and AK47s.

These acts and inaction constitute yet another in the long list of war crimes:

It is abundantly clear that the Americans and British are not protecting Iraq’s historic sites. All foreign archaeologists have had to leave. Troops are doing nothing to prevent the “farming” of known antiquities. This is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention that an occupying army should “use all means within its power” to guard the cultural heritage of a defeated state.

Jenkins points out that nothing will be done about the situation, or most other problems in Iraq, because, to admit the problem is to admit the magnitude  of the error made by the invaders:

As long as Britain and America remain in denial over the anarchy they have created in Iraq, they clearly feel they must deny its devastating side-effects. Two million refugees now camping in Jordan and Syria are ignored, since life in Iraq is supposed to be “better than before”. Likewise dozens of Iraqis working for the British and thus facing death threats are denied asylum. To grant it would mean the former defence and now home secretary, the bullish John Reid, admitting he was wrong. They will die before he does that.

Though I opposed the invasion I assumed that its outcome would at least be a more civilised environment. Yet Iraq’s people are being murdered in droves for want of order. Authority has collapsed. That western civilisation should have been born in so benighted a country as Iraq may seem bad luck. But only now is that birth being refused all guardianship, in defiance of international law. If this is Tony Blair’s “values war”, then language has lost all meaning. British collusion in such destruction is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict. And we had the cheek to call the Taliban vandals.

2 comments June 11th, 2007

Life in a CIA torture center

Late last week the Council of Europe released a report on the CIA’s secret prisons in Eastern Europe. The report concluded that, contrary to those government’s claims, that prisons existed in both Poland and Romania. Perhaps most importantly for opponents of torture, the report gives a detailed account inside one of these torture facilities. In this description we can see the results of decades of CIA study, aided by many psychologists and psychiatrists, of how to destroy human beings, the fruits of its MKULTRA program and the detailed implementation of the in the KUBARK and other torture manuals.

One of the problems the CIA faced in conducting their research on soul-destruction was the lack of available research subjects who could be subject to the full panoply of techniques or what they called “terminal experiments.” It is thus likely that the CIA’s psychologists, like Scott Shumate (who, according to his biographical statement “has been with several of the key apprehended terrorists”), were not involved solely in the construction of this hell, but also in studying its effects so as to better refine the techniques.

Since most will not read the entire report, I have extracted key Sections from the Report on life inside these American Torture Centers. Now, for a vision of life in hell:

ii. Reconstructing the conditions in a CIA secret detention cell

38. We must try to visualise the ordeal of secret detention in order to be able to appreciate fully the physical and psychological plight of its victims. For this purpose, I am attempting in this section to reconstruct as many aspects as possible of the conditions in a CIA secret detention cell.

239. A reconstruction of this nature is the first step towards regaining respect for fundamental human rights, because it forces us to ask ourselves the question: “what if the tables were turned?” This is the root of the Geneva Conventions and the military’s traditional reluctance to mistreat prisoners of war.

240. In this context, the policy debate in the United States around detainee treatment has given rise to interesting contributions, many of which rightly assert that “issues of detainee treatment raise profound questions of American values”.212 In the US political sphere, the McCain Amendment213 to he Detainee Treatment Act seems to offer us a threshold for the specific acts that we should and should not allow with regard to the detention, transfer and interrogation of foreign captives. This threshold can be summarised as follows: If even one single American captive were to be held under these conditions or treated in this manner, and the American population would find it abhorrent or unacceptable, then America should not be practising the acts in question against detainees whom it holds from other countries

241. The fact of being detained outside any judicial or ICRC control in an unknown location is already a form of torture, as Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said. All the member states of the Council of Europe have a duty not to tolerate such treatment either on their territory or elsewhere.

242. In the following paragraphs I seek to convey the most intimate, always undeniably human experiences of being held and interrogated in such conditions. I have grouped these conditions under the following five thematic headings: confinement, isolation and insufficient provision; careful physical
conditioning of detainee and cell; permanent surveillance; mondane routine becomes unforgettable memories; and exertion of physical and psychological stress.

243. The descriptive testimonies on which the text is based have been kept strictly anonymous – largely upon the request of those who provided them – in order to protect the sources from which they emanate. These sources are mostly former or current detainees, human rights advocates, or people who have worked in the establishment or operations of CIA secret prisons.

244. The persons who endured these ordeals have also been granted anonymity. The following conditions and characteristics applied to several persons in every case, not specifically to any one individual.

iii. Confinement, isolation and insufficient provision

245. Detainees were taken to their cells by strong people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and dark visors over their eyes. Clothes were cut up and torn off; many detainees were then kept naked for several weeks.

246. Detainees were only a bucket to urinate into, a bowl from which to eat breakfast and dinner (delivered at intervals, in silence) and a blanket.

247. Detainees went through months of solitary confinement and extreme sensory deprivation in cramped cells, shackled and handcuffed at all times.

248. Detainees were given old, black blankets that were too small to lie upon at the same time as attempting to cover oneself.

249. Detainees received unfamiliar food, like canned beef and rice, many only ate in order to give some warmth against cruel cold weather.

250. Food was raw, tasteless and was often tipped out carelessly on a shallow dish so part of it would waste. Apart from a thin foam mattress to lie on or rest against, many cells had a bare floor and blank walls.

251. At one point in 2004, eight persons were being kept together in one CIA facility in Europe, but were administered according to a strict regime of isolation. Contact between them through sight or sound was forbidden… and prevented unless it was expressly decided to create limited conditions where they could see or come into contact with one another because it would serve [the CIA’s] intelligence-gathering objectives to allow it.

252. A common feature for many detainees was the four-month isolation regime. During this period of over 120 days, absolutely no human contact was granted with anyone but masked, silent guards. There’s not meant to be anything to hold onto. No familiarity, no comfort, nobody to talk to, no way out. It’s a long time to be all alone with your thoughts.

a. Careful physical conditioning of detainee and cell

253. In the process of being transferred into secret detention, all detainees are physically screened in order to assess their health and conditioning, identify any injuries or scars they may bear, and get a complete picture to compare them against once they are in detention. These screenings, for which the subject is stripped naked, used a body chart, similar to the inventory diagrams provided by rent-a-car companies upon leasing a vehicle, on which specific marks are noted. In every case, the subject is videotaped or at least photographed naked before transfer.

254. The air in many cells emanated from a ventilation hole in the ceiling, which was often controlled to produce extremes of temperature: sometimes so hot one would gasp for breath,sometimes freezing cold.

255. Many detainees described air conditioning for deliberate discomfort.

256. Detainees were exposed at times to over-heating in the cell; at other times drafts of freezing breeze.

257. Detainees never experienced natural light or natural darkness, although most were blindfolded many times so they could see nothing.

b. Permanent surveillance

258. Detainees speak hatefully about the surveillance cameras, positioned so that in every inch of the cell they would be observed.

259. Detainees were also listened to by interrogators, over hidden microphones in the walls.

260. Notwithstanding the presence of video cameras inside the cells, masked prison guards regularly looked in and knocked on the door of the cell, demanding detainees to raise their hands to show that they are alive.

c. Mundane routines become unforgettable memories

261. Breakfast was delivered in the morning, followed by lunch in the early afternoon. The morning food was typically two or three triangles of cheese with no foil, two slices of tomato, some boiled potatoes, bread and olives. The afternoon food was typically boiled white rice with sliced luncheon meat.

262. On some special occasions, including certain religious holidays, special foods including cooked meat with sauce, nuts and dates, fresh fruit and vegetables, or pieces of chocolate were delivered to the cells. There was even provision for treats like unwrapped candy bars and dessert cakes.

263. Special routines developed around the delivery of food. The light bulb, which was always on, would be briefly turned off; the food would be delivered; and then the light bulb would be turned back on again. There was a hatch in the door of the cell for delivery of food but it was completelyunpredictable whether the guards would use the hatch, or open the doors and bring the food in.

264. Detainees had a bucket for a toilet, which was about a foot deep and ten inches in diameter.

265. At time the electricity supply went dead. The music stopped and the light went out. For a brief period one could heard different voices shouting, some more distant than others but all incoherent.

d. Exertion of physical and psychological stress

266. There was a shackling ring in the wall of the cell, about half a metre up off the floor. Detainees’ hands and feet were clamped in handcuffs and leg irons. Bodies were regularly forced into contorted shapes and chained to this ring for long, painful periods.

267. Most persons in CIA custody attempted sooner or later to resist or protest their treatment and interrogation. Yet their efforts would largely be in vain. According to one source involved in CIA interrogation: “you know they are starting to crack when they come back at you; when they get really vocal or they try to challenge your authority. So you hold out… you push them over the edge”.

268. The sound most commonly heard in cells was a constant, low-level hum of white noise from loudspeakers. Other recollections speak of an external humming noise, like aircraft, engines or a generator. The constant noise was punctuated by blasts of loud Western music – rock music, rap music and thumping beats, or distorted verses from the Koran, or irritating noises – thunder, planes taking off, cackling laughter, the screams of women and children.

269. Detainees were subjected to relentless noise and disturbance were deprived of the chance to sleep.

270. The torture music was turned on, or at least made much louder, as punishment for perceived infractions like raising one’s voice, calling out, or not waving quickly enough when guards demanded a response from you.

271. The gradual escalation of applied physical and psychological exertion, combined in some cases with more concentrated pressure periods for the purposes of interrogation, is said to have caused many of those held by the CIA to develop enduring psychiatric and mental problems.

The report also describes why these details matter, why it is crucial for us, the free, to undrestand the prisoners and the conditions they are subject to:

i. Re-humanising the people held in secret detention

232. The policy of secret detentions and renditions pursued by the current US administration has created a dangerous precedent of dehumanisation. Many of the people caught up in the CIA’s global spider’s web208 are rightly described as “ghost prisoners”209 because they have been made invisible for many years

233. Meanwhile the US Government’s descriptions of its captives in the “war on terror” can only serve to exacerbate this dehumanising effect. The Administration routinely speaks of “aliens”, “deadly enemies” and “faceless terrorists,” with the clear intention of dehumanising its detainees in the eyes of the American population. The NGO community, for its part, calls them “ghost prisoners”.

234. By characterising the people held in secret detention as “different” from us – not as humans, but as ghosts, aliens or terrorists – the US Government tries to lead us into the trap of thinking they are not like us, they are not subjects of the law, therefore their human rights do not deserve protection.

235. President Bush has laid this trap on multiple occasions as a means of diverting attention from the abusive conditions in which certain detainees in US custody are being held.211 Our team heard first-hand how distinctions are drawn in the mind of guards and interrogators: in an interview with one of our CIA sources who has extensive knowledge of detainee treatment, we asked whether a known form of detainee treatment should be considered as abusive. “Here’s my question,” replied our source. “Was the guy a terrorist? ‘Cause if he’s a terrorist then I figure he got what was coming to him. I’ve met a lot of them and one thing I know for sure is that they ain’t human – they ain’t like you and me.”

236. Yet what has struck me most often as I have examined the cases of scores of people held in secret detention – some of whom I have met – is precisely the opposite: these detainees’ ordeals have affected me profoundly as I have always thought of them as fellow human beings. The worst criminals, even those who deserve the harshest punishment, must be given humane treatment and a fair trial. This, moreover, is what makes us a civilised society.

237. It is for these reasons that we must combat their being seen as “ghost prisoners” by repeatedly pointing out that persons detained in the course of counter-terrorist operations are and remain human beings whose human rights must be protected and who are entitled to humane treatment as laid down in the ECHR. In this section of my report I have set out expressly to place the emphasis on the human aspects of these people held in secret detention.

We can be sure that the American Psychological Association, fond of issuing resolutions against torture as it is, will have not one word to utter about the existence of these torture centers or about the systematic use of psychological torture techniques in them. After all, the misuse of psychological knowledge for evil is no concern of the APA, if that evil is done by the United States government, with the aid of United States psychologists. The APA, after all, puts such psychologists on its decision-making panels rather than censure them.

4 comments June 10th, 2007

Eminent friends-of-the-court

Talking Points Memo has a piece on an amusing  footnote in the court order allowing Lewis Libby’s buddy’s to issue friend-of-the-court briefs:

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant.

The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it. (emphasis added)

Remember, Judge Walton was appointed by President Bush.

1 comment June 9th, 2007

Avian flu danger still lurking

I’ve been too busy to mention the avian flu pandemic threat for a while.But that doesn’t mean the danger’s dissappeared. Revere at Effect Measure tells us of some things he’s been reading that have him worried. Take a look.

Add comment June 8th, 2007

CIA and psychological torture

Mark Benjamin, in Salon, writes of the CIA’s decades long practice of psychological torture [The CIA's favorite form of torture]. He focuses upon one major component of that form of torture, sensory deprivation. He points out that, while waterboarding may be banned, sensory deprivation will almost certainly not be. the fact that it violates the War Crimes Act won’t stop them. Here is an excerpt:

If waterboarding goes the way of the Iron Maiden, what “tough” techniques will the CIA use on its high-value detainees?

The answer is most likely a measure long favored by the CIA — sensory deprivation. The benign-sounding form of psychological coercion has been considered effective for most of the life of the agency, and its slippery definition might allow it to squeeze through loopholes in a law that seeks to ban prisoner abuse. Interviews with former CIA officials and experts on interrogation suggest that it is an obvious choice for interrogators newly constrained by law. The technique has already been employed during the “war on terror,” and, Salon has learned, was apparently used on 14 high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay….

Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. “The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline,” explained McCoy. “I mean extreme hallucinations” of sight and sound. It is followed, in some cases within just two days, by what McCoy called a “breakdown akin to psychosis.”

It is therefore as insidious as some forms of obviously abusive coercion that are likely to be forbidden under the new CIA rules, like waterboarding, the technique of strapping a subject to a board with his feet raised and pouring water on his face to produce a sensation of imminent death. Legally, however, sensory deprivation is more nebulous than physical abuse, and that is what worries human rights advocates.

“People finally came to an understanding of what waterboarding really was, and once that happened, it was no longer sustainable,” noted Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First. Just like waterboarding, Massimino said, extreme sensory deprivation techniques “push people beyond the brink of what they can bear, physically and mentally. Once you understand that, the veneer of acceptability — the myth that ‘it’s not torture, it’s just harsh’ — completely falls apart.” But compared to the outcry over physical torture, she described a “deafening silence” about techniques like sensory deprivation.

The issue, said Massimino, is that sensory deprivation is relative — she compared it to a “rheostat.” Former CIA executive director Krongard made the same point about sensory deprivation’s variability, saying that the techniques exist on a spectrum. The term could refer to anything from being left alone in a room to being subjected to complex get-ups combining goggles, earmuffs, mittens and darkened cells that quickly drive subjects into psychotic states.

Benjamin digs into the sordid history of the CIA’s development of these techniques:

But the CIA’s reliance on sensory deprivation goes all the way back to the early days of the Cold War. It is a big part of the CIA’s 1963 “KUBARK” interrogation manual, obtained in 1997 by the Baltimore Sun. That agency manual describes sensory deprivation as a central tenet of coercive interrogations. For particularly rapid results, the manual endorses the use of a “cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc.” Following that plan, the manual says, “induces stress; the stress becomes unbearable for most subjects.” The manual adds, “The subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli; and some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, and produce delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects.”

The dark world of CIA-sponsored sensory deprivation research is plumbed in depth in the book “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror,” written by McCoy. “They’ve been doing this for 50 years,” McCoy explained. His book discusses more CIA-sponsored research at McGill by Dr. Donald O. Hebb, who during the same era placed 22 college students in small, sound-proof cubicles, wearing translucent goggles, thick gloves and a U-shaped pillow around the head. Most subjects quit within two days and all experienced hallucinations and “deterioration in the capacity to think systematically.”
The theory behind the CIA’s fascination with sensory deprivation, McCoy said, is that subjects are so starved for stimulation that they will even crave interaction with their interrogator. “The idea is that they break down and then they cling to the interrogator, because you are hungry for stimulus,” McCoy explained.

What do you want to bet that the American Psychological Association, opposed as it claims to be to torture, will not see fit to state opposition to the CIA’s use of radical sensory deprivation? After all, they have not seen fit, as far as I’ve seen, to once even mention the government systematic program of psychological torture at Guantanamo, at the CIA black sits, or elsewhere. Being against torture is easy. Even Bush and Gonzalez are against “torture.” Condemning its actual use by our government is quite a different matter. The APA with all its pals in the military and the CIA, has never been bothered to do the latter.

Add comment June 8th, 2007

Open Letter to the President of the American Psychological Association

Last night the following Open Letter to Sharon Brehm, President of the American Psychological Association was sent by over 40 psychologists. [It is also available in pdf format at the above link. See also the related briefing paper: Q&A: How the Pentagon’s Inspector General Report Contradicts What the APA Has Said About the Involvement of Psychologists in Abusive Interrogations.]

***********************************************************
June 6, 2007

Sharon Brehm, Ph.D.
President
American Psychological Association

Dear President Brehm:

We write you as psychologists concerned about the participation of our profession in abusive interrogations of national security detainees at Guantánamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at the so-called CIA “black sites.”

Our profession is founded on the fundamental ethical principle, enshrined as Principle A in our Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” Irrefutable evidence now shows that psychologists participating in national security interrogations have systematically violated this principle. A recently declassified August 2006 report by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (OIG) –Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse—describes in detail how psychologists from the military’s Survival, Evasion Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program were instructed to apply their expertise in abusive interrogation techniques to interrogations being conducted by the DoD throughout all three theaters of the War on Terror (Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq).

SERE is the US military’s program designed to train Special Forces and other troops at high risk of capture to resist “breaking” during harsh interrogations conducted by a ruthless enemy. During SERE training, trainees are subjected to extensive abusive treatment, including sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, isolation, cultural and sexual humiliation, and, in some cases, simulated drowning (”waterboarding”). By SERE’s own admission, these techniques are classified as torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

The OIG report details a number of trainings and consultations provided by SERE psychologists to psychologists and other personnel involved in interrogations, including those on the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT), generally composed of and headed by psychologists. The OIG confirms repeated press accounts over the last two years that SERE techniques were “reverse engineered” by SERE psychologists in consultation with the BSCT psychologists and others, to develop and standardize a regime of psychological torture used by interrogators at Guantánamo, and in Iraq and Afghanistan. The OIG report states: “Counterresistance techniques [SERE] were introduced because personnel believed that interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees.”

The OIG report also clearly reveals the central role of psychologists in these processes:

“On September 16, 2002, the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency [the military unit containing SERE] co-hosted a SERE psychologist conference at Fort Bragg for JTF-170 [the military component responsible for interrogations at Guantánamo] interrogation personnel. The Army’s Behavioral Science Consultation Team from Guantánamo Bay also attended the conference. Joint Personnel Recovery Agency briefed JTF-170 representatives on the exploitation techniques and methods used in resistance (to interrogation) training at SERE schools. The JTF-170 personnel understood that they were to become familiar with SERE training and be capable of determining which SERE information and techniques might be useful in interrogations at Guantánamo. Guantánamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team personnel understood that they were to review documentation and standard operating procedures for SERE training in developing the standard operating procedure for the JTF-170, if the command approved those practices. The Army Special Operations Command was examining the role of interrogation support as a ‘SERE Psychologist competency area‘” (p. 25, emphasis added).

It is now indisputable that psychologists and psychology were directly and officially responsible for the development and migration of abusive interrogation techniques, techniques which the International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled “tantamount to torture.” Reports of psychologists’ (along with other health professionals’) participation in abusive interrogations surfaced more than two years ago.

While other health professional associations expressed dismay when it was reported that their members had participated in these abuses and took principled stands against their members’ direct participation in interrogations, the APA undertook a campaign to support such involvement. In 2005, APA President Ron Levant created the PENS Task Force to assess the ethics of such participation. Six of the nine voting psychologist members selected for the task force were uniformed and civilian personnel from military and intelligence agencies, most with direct connections to national security interrogations. Perhaps most problematic, it is clear from the OIG Report that three of the PENS members were directly in the chain of command translating SERE techniques into harsh interrogation tactics. Although we cannot know exactly what each of these individuals did, their presence in the chain of command is troubling.

One such task Force member is Colonel Morgan Banks who, according to his Task Force biography

“is the senior Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) Psychologist, responsible for the training and oversight of all Army SERE Psychologists, who include those involved in SERE training…. He provides technical support and consultation to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support…. His initial duty assignment as a psychologist was to assist in establishing the Army’s first permanent SERE training program involving a simulated captivity experience…. In November 1991 [sic: 2001], he deployed to Afghanistan, where he spent four months over the winter of 2001/2002 at Bagram Airfield, supporting combat operations against Al Qaida and Taliban fighters.”

Thus, according to the OIG report, Colonel Banks had direct command responsibility for the SERE psychologists training, consulting, and participating in interrogations and provided “support and consultation” to other psychologists involved in abusive interrogations. In fact, reading the OIG report renders it difficult to imagine that Colonel Banks was not himself directly involved in developing and/or implementing these abusive activities. The OIG report appears to confirm what has been suspected at least since the publication in July 2005 of Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article “The Experiment”: that Colonel Banks was intimately involved in the teaching and development of the abusive interrogation tactics documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and now by the Department of Defense, as being used at Guantánamo.

Colonel Larry James, a second PENS member, “was the Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba” (PENS Task Force member biographies) starting in January 2003. Col. Larry James has often been cited by Gerald Koocher, Stephen Behnke, and others, as the one who ‘cleaned up’ Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. The OIG report, however, makes it clear that Guantánamo BSCTs played an essential role in transforming SERE techniques into standard operating interrogation procedure; that the Commander of Guantánamo detainee operations requested official approval for the use of these torture techniques in October, 2002; and that permission was granted by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in December 2002. Additionally, as stated in his PENS biography, in 2003 James “was the Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba.” In 2004, James was Director, Behavioral Science Unit, Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib. It should be noted that that in 2004, according to many sources, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, Guantánamo Commander, too, went from Guantánamo to Iraq, and brought the SERE techniques with him. James was the commander of the BSCTs at the time the FBI and other law enforcement agents were reporting that severe abuses were occurring at Guantánamo. The FBI and other Criminal Investigative Task Force agents reporting these abuses referred to them as “SERE” and “counter-resistance” tactics in documents obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act.

Yet another task Force member, Captain Bryce Lefever, had previously been a SERE psychologist where he supervised “personnel undergoing intensive exposure to enemy interrogation, torture, and exploitation techniques.” He “was deployed as the Joint Special Forces Task Force psychologist to Afghanistan in 2002,” presumably replacing Col. Banks who had previously held that role. Capt. Lefever “lectured to interrogators and was consulted on various interrogation techniques” (PENS Task Force member biographies). That is, he had the requisite SERE background and it appears that he was involved in interrogations in Afghanistan at the time that, as the OIG report reveals, the abusive SERE-based techniques were being utilized through Special Forces units.

In addition to these three members who were directly in the military chain of command responsible for employing the SERE techniques as interrogation tactics, another member of the PENS Task Force, Scott Shumate, stated in a conference biographical statement that “From April 2001 until May of 2003 he was the chief operational psychologist for the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center (CTC)…. He has been with several of the key apprehended terrorists.” The CTC, according to press reports, is responsible for managing the CIA’s Black Site facilities where the top 14 Al Qaeda operatives in US custody were initially held and interrogated. The “key apprehended terrorists” that Shumate refers to are very likely those Al Qaeda operatives subjected to the CIA’s brutal “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Thus, the available evidence strongly suggests that the PENS Task Force included a number of individuals who oversaw or directly participated in torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that is allegedly banned by the APA.

Not surprisingly, given its membership, the PENS Task Force report concluded that “[i]t is consistent with the APA Code of Ethics for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national security-related purposes….” The Task Force report further echoed the Department of Defense cover story for employing BSCT psychologists: “While engaging in such consultative and advisory roles entails a delicate balance of ethical considerations, doing so puts psychologists in a unique position to assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants.”

Since the release of the PENS report, numerous articles in the press have documented that psychologists at Guantánamo and elsewhere have utilized abusive SERE techniques on detainees. (Jane Meyer’s New Yorker article appeared one week after the PENS report.) All the while, the APA leadership has ignored the mounting evidence to the contrary and reiterated this flawed PENS premise, as you yourself did in response to such an article in the Washington Monthly: “[t]he Association’s position is rooted in our belief that having psychologists consult with interrogation teams makes an important contribution toward keeping interrogations safe and ethical.”

Every report of horrific abuses occurring at Guantánamo and elsewhere has not only cast doubt upon this basic premise of APA policy, these reports have repeatedly highlighted psychologists’ abuse of psychological knowledge for purposes of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Yet the APA has never made any public attempt to investigate such reports. Even if certain psychologists attempted to “keep interrogations safe and ethical,” the OIG report demonstrates once and for all that BSCT and SERE psychologists, among others, were responsible for the development, migration, and perpetration of abuses.

It is time for the APA to acknowledge that the central premise of its years-long policy of condoning and encouraging psychologist participation in interrogations is wrong. It has now been revealed by the DoD itself that, rather than assuring safety, psychologists were central to the abuse. This remains true even if some psychologists made efforts to reduce such harm during their involvement in these interrogation contexts at some point in time. It is critical that APA take immediate steps to remedy the damage done to the reputation of the organization, to our ethical standards, to the field of psychology, and to human rights in this age where they are under concerted attack. The following steps will begin the process of correcting this egregious error by the organization and its leadership. We urgently recommend that:

1. The President of the APA acknowledge errors and abuses and chart a new direction re-emphasizing human rights. In light of the recent revelations, you, as President of the APA, should issue a clear public statement that acknowledges the errors made by APA, in both policy and public statements, and abuses perpetrated by psychologists; you should call on the association to go in a new direction, giving primary emphasis to human rights concerns in forging policy around ethics and national security.

2. The APA Board of Directors and Ethics Committee endorse the APA Moratorium on psychologist participation in interrogations of foreign detainees. It is critical to immediately disengage psychologists from any direct or supervisory participation in interrogations of individual detainees. Such a step would do much to bring the APA in line with the positions adopted some time ago by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Nurses Association. Thus, the APA leadership should support and the Council of Representatives must, at the August Convention, pass the Moratorium on Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations at US Detention Centers for Foreign Detainees proposed by Dr. Neil Altman and scheduled for a vote at Council.

3. The APA Board of Directors encourage, support, and cooperate with the Senate investigations of detainee treatment. It is essential that the APA support and cooperate fully with the announced investigation of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) into the role of SERE in the creation of abusive interrogation strategies, as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s announced investigation into the CIA’s handling of detainees in their custody. In fact, the APA Board of Directors should do what it can to expedite this and other external, non-partisan investigations of all localities that utilize BSCT psychologists.

4. The APA Board of Directors commence a neutral third-party investigation of its own involvement, and that of APA staff, in APA-military conflicts of interest. It is essential that the APA membership and the concerned public develop an in-depth understanding of how and why the APA accepted a rationale for psychologist involvement in interrogations that has been revealed to have been advanced by involved psychologists, and which permitted their continued participation and supervision of abusive interrogation processes. The concept of “legal, ethical, safe, and effective” has been exposed as a euphemism for psychologist oversight of abuse; these activities can only be considered “ethical” because the APA Ethics Code (Standard 1.02) was rewritten in 2002 to define complying with any law or military regulation as “ethical.”

The membership has a right to know why, in the face of continually emerging sets of tangible evidence suggesting that the its policy was flawed and that psychologists were systematically employing expert psychological knowledge for purposes of abuse, the APA leadership refused to investigate, and continued to give cover for these abuses. (According to APA Ethics Director, Dr. Stephen Behnke, the BSCTs attach a copy of the PENS report to their training manuals.) Therefore, it is critical that an independent investigation be launched – conducted by individuals well-known for their commitment to human rights – into the development of APA policy in this area, and into the broader issues that likely contributed to a series of suspicious procedural activities. Among the issues this investigation must examine are:

a) the numerous procedural irregularities alleged to have occurred during the PENS process;

b) the role of the military and intelligence agencies in the formation and functioning of the PENS Task Force;

c) the reasons the APA and its leadership have systematically ignored the accumulating evidence that psychologists participating in interrogations are contributing to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, rather than helping to prevent it;

d) the overall nexus of close ties between the APA staff/leadership and the military and intelligence agencies, ties that may have contributed to a climate that permits undo influence of military and intelligence agencies in the creation of these policies and that encourages turning a blind eye to abuse;

e) the transformation of the APA Ethics Code, from one that protects psychologists’ ethical conduct when such conduct conflicts with law and military regulations to one that protects psychologists who follow unethical law and military regulations.

Only such an inve stigatory process can restore the faith of the membership and the broader public in the APA and in the profession of psychology. To fail to act now would be to continue an organizational policy that maintains and protects psychologists’ roles as the architects of what can only be interpreted as a torture paradigm; one that has intentionally violated the Geneva Conventions, our nation’s values, and our professional ethics.

We look forward to your affirmation, acceptance, and action in regard to this call for immediate steps to remedy this saddening situation for our organization and our discipline.

Sincerely*,

Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development & Professor, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; University of Massachusetts, Boston

Brad Olson, Assistant Research Professor, Northwestern University

Steven Reisner, Senior Faculty and Supervisor, International Trauma Studies Program, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University; Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School

Mike Wessells, Former Member, PENS Task Force; Columbia University

Rhoda Unger, Brandeis University

Uwe Jacobs, Director, Survivors International, San Francisco

Ed Tejirian, New York

Bernice Lott, University of Rhode Island

Jeffrey Kaye, San Francisco

Elliot Mishler, Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Ghislaine Boulanger, Steering Committee, withholdapadues.com

Morton Deutsch, E.L. Thorndike Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Director Emeritus of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) Teachers College, Columbia University

Faye J Crosby, Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz

Marc Pilisuk, Professor Emeritus, the University of California; Professor, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center

Marybeth Shinn, Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy, New York University

Stephan L. Chorover, Professor of Psychology, MIT

Mary Brydon-Miller, Director, Action Research Center, Associate Professor, Educational Studies and Urban Educational Leadership, College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services, University of Cincinnati

M. Brinton Lykes, Associate Director, Center for Human Rights & International Justice,
Associate Dean, Lynch School of Education, Boston College

Ben Harris, Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire

Barbara Gutek, PrEller Professor of Women and Leadership, Department of Management and Organizations, University of Arizona

Frank Summers, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University Medical School

Kevin Lanning, Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University

Alice Shaw, San Francisco

Lila Braine, Professor Emerita, Barnard College, Columbia University

Stuart Oskamp, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University

Linda M. Woolf, Professor of Psychology and International Human Rights, Webster University

Arlene Lu Steinberg, President, Division 39 Section IX, APA: Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility

Lew Aron, Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Scot D. Evans, Community Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University

Susan Torres-Harding, Roosevelt University

Allen L. Roland, Sonoma, CA

Emily K. Filardo, Director, Women’s Studies, & Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Kean University

Maram Hallak, Borough of Manhattan Community College; the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP)

Anthony J. Marsella, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii

Barbara Eisold, New York Medical College

Kathleen Malley-Morrison, Department of Psychology, Boston University

Chrysoula K.E. Fantaousakis, Kean University

Karen Rosica, Faculty, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; Director of Special Projects, SalusWorld.org

Hal S. Bertilson, University of Wisconsin-Superior

Ibrahim Kira, Access Community Health and Research Center, Dearborn, MI

Lynne Layton, Harvard Medical School

Allen M. Omoto, School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University

Richard V. Wagner, Bates College

* Affiliations listed for identification purposes only.

Note: Additional signatories will continue to be recruited.

Contact:

Stephen Soldz
ssoldz@bgsp.edu

Steven Reisner
SReisner@psychoanalysis.net

Brad Olson
b-olson@northwestern.edu

The Letter was also distributed to the press. We are seeking a wide distribution; please help. We are also developing a mechanism for other psychologists to sign on.

4 comments June 7th, 2007

PHR Letter to New York Times on psychologists and torture

Physicians for Human Rights has a letter in the New York Times today

June 6, 2007

Interrogation Abuses

To the Editor:

Re “Advisers Fault Harsh Methods in Interrogation” (front page, May 30):

The abusive interrogation methods reverse-engineered from the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape torture-resistance program cause enormous psychological harm ranging from psychosis and suicidal ideation to post-traumatic stress disorder. They are not only unreliable and immoral; they constitute torture and violate the United States’ commitment to respect the most basic human rights.

Yet according to the Pentagon’s inspector general, psychologists, under the guise of behavioral science, have used their credentials to develop and carry out these highly abusive techniques at Guantánamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The abuses are a direct result of trying to rely on science and scientists to break down detainees.

The only appropriate response, for the profession and for the government, is to end the direct participation of psychologists, who have an ethical obligation to minimize harm, in interrogations.

Leonard S. Rubenstein
Stephen N. Xenakis, M.D.
Washington, May 30, 2007
The writers are, respectively, executive director, Physicians for Human Rights; and a retired Army brigadier general who is a former commander of the Southeast Medical Command

Add comment June 6th, 2007

Newstudy: Ritalin use doubles after divorce

A very interesting study. Unusually, the reporter accurately conveys the complexity of interpreting non-experimental data. The study suggests that divorce may be an important life stressor leading to increased symptomatology in kids. But there are several other plausible explanations. Yet another explanation not described here is the possibility that custodial parents (usually mothers) are more stressed after divorce and are less able to tolerate certain behaviors in their child:

Ritalin use doubles after divorce, study finds

By Scott Anderson Tue Jun 5, 9:47 AM ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - Children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents stay together, a Canadian researcher said on Monday, and she said the reasons should be investigated.

More than 6 percent of 633 children from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin, compared with 3.3 percent of children whose parents stayed together, University of Alberta professor Lisa Strohschein reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The study of more than 4,700 children started in 1994, while all the families were intact, Strohschein said. They followed the children’s progress to see what happened to their families and to see what drugs were prescribed.

“It shows clearly that divorce is a risk factor for kids to be prescribed Ritalin,” Strohschein said.

Other studies have shown that children of single parents are more likely to get prescribed drugs such as Ritalin. But is the problem caused by being born to a never-married mother, or some other factor?

“So the question was, ‘is it possible that divorce acts a stressful life event that creates adjustment problems for children, which might increase acting out behavior, leading to a prescription for Ritalin?”‘ Strohschein said in a statement.

“On the other hand, there is also the very public perception that divorce is always bad for kids and so when children of divorce come to the attention of the health-care system — possibly because parents anticipate their child must be going through adjustment problems — doctors may be more likely to diagnose a problem and prescribe Ritalin.”

Ritalin, known generically as methylphenidate, is a psychostimulant drug most commonly prescribed for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.

There is a big debate in much of the developed world over whether it may be over-prescribed — given to children who do not really need it. In March, a University of California, Berkeley study found that the use of drugs to treat ADHD has more than tripled worldwide since 1993.

Strohschein said it is possible that some mental health problems pre-date the divorce, so “it is possible that these kids had these problems before, but are only being identified afterward.”

Her study was not designed to find out why the children were prescribed the drug.

“I might be finished with the survey, but I am not necessarily finished with the question,” she said in a telephone interview.

Add comment June 6th, 2007

Amy Goodman on APA, psychologists, and torture

Amy Goodman, in her weekly syndicated column, tells of the APA, psychologists, and torture. Amy gets it! Hopefully the rest of the press will start to.

A Hypocritical Oath: Psychologists and Torture

Posted on Jun 5, 2007

By Amy Goodman

First, do no harm. This tenet of medicine applies equally to psychologists, yet they are increasingly implicated in abusive interrogations, dare we say torture, at U.S. military detention facilities like Guantanamo. While the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association both have passed resolutions prohibiting members from participating in interrogations, the American Psychological Association refuses to, despite the outrage of many of its members.

Now, with the declassification of a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general detailing psychologists’ role in military interrogations, the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services announced it will investigate.

Dr. Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, says such an “investigation into the development of torture techniques by the United States” would be “very significant. … It should get into … the use of psychologists in the development of the techniques, what is happening now, and how this can be avoided in the future.”

Two years ago, after a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross criticizing the role of health professionals in U.S. interrogations, the American Psychological Association formed its Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). There were nine voting members. Six of them were connected to the military. At the time, the identities of the panelists were secret. The PENS panel endorsed the continued participation of psychologists in military interrogations.

Of the three nonmilitary voting members, one, Dr. Michael G. Wessells of Randolph-Macon College, resigned, and another, Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo, recently called for the PENS report to be annulled. “I’m an oral historian, maybe even before a psychologist, and I always take notes. And I was told very sharply by one of the military psychologists not to take notes.” She took notes anyway. She archived the group’s entire e-mail list-serve, including months of e-mails from before and after the sole two-day PENS meeting. She went on: “I came later to realize that the entire report had been orchestrated. I no longer felt bound by that confidentiality agreement.” She recently handed over all her materials to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The third, Dr. Nina Thomas, told me: “I don’t think I was, in fact, critically aware of what Morgan Banks’ role was at the time of the meetings themselves. I knew the outline of his background, but I didn’t know the meaning of his background. So it disturbs me.”

Col. Morgan Banks, as Mark Benjamin of Salon.com first reported, is “the senior Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape psychologist, responsible for the training and oversight of all Army SERE psychologists, who include those involved in SERE training. He provides technical support and consultation to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support.” Another task-force member, Capt. Bryce Lefever, served at the Navy SERE school from 1990 to ‘93, then became the “Special Forces Task Force psychologist to Afghanistan in 2002, where he lectured to interrogators and was consulted on various interrogation techniques.”

Also included was R. Scott Shumate, who was the chief operational psychologist for the CIA’s counterterrorism center until 2003. He then became head of the Pentagon Counterintelligence Field Activity’s Behavioral Sciences directorate, overseeing psychologist participation in the interrogation process at Guantanamo.

SERE (pronounced SEER-ee) includes sensory and sleep deprivation, isolation, cultural and sexual humiliation, “stress” positions (like forced standing), extended subjection to light, loud noise, extremes of heat and cold, and “waterboarding,” wherein subjects have their face covered with a cloth that then has water poured over it, giving the feeling of suffocation. The goal of SERE is to train U.S. military members to resist torture they might experience if captured. As first reported by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, the SERE techniques were “reverse engineered.” In other words, they were used against the prisoners.

The upcoming APA Annual Convention, taking place Aug. 17- 20, promises to be hotly contested. An unknown number of members are withholding dues. Some have quit. Physicians for Human Rights’ Rubenstein summed up:

“Even the army surgeon general’s report … said it was the role of psychologists to tell interrogators when to increase the pressure, how to exploit vulnerabilities. So I think we really do have to end this as a nation, not just as professional associations. … We’re talking about … ending complicity in torture by a profession that has an enormous amount to contribute to the good of humanity and should not be involved in the destruction of people.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

© 2007 Amy Goodman

2 comments June 5th, 2007