Psyche, Science, and Society

PHR letter to Defense Secretary Gates

Physicians for Human Rights, in the wake of the OIG report,  has sent a letter to Defense Secretary Gates drawing out the implications of the report and asking for major changes in DoD policies regarding interrogations. As they describe it on their web site:

In a letter sent on May 31, 2007, to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, PHR responds to the recently declassified Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report, “Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse.” In the report, the OIG details how interrogation techniques used in recent years by the military were developed using techniques from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program, a module designed to train military personnel in how to resist torture when captured by a ruthless enemy. The PHR letter calls on Secretary Gates to specifically ban techniques developed from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program, to establish ethical guidelines for all health professionals involved in interrogations, and to declassify and release all additional materials pertaining to these matters.

The letter is a nice summary of the implications of the OIG report. They go on to discuss some positive changes in DoD policy since the OIG report was initially released in classified form:

However, these guidelines continue to call on military psychologists to play a central role in interrogations by BSCTs, fail to bind health professionals to their ethical obligations to “first do no harm,” and place clinicians in the Military Intelligence chain of command rather than within the Medical Department. This is a dangerous role to impose on mental health experts, one that led to the misappropriation of SERE psychological expertise in the first place, as documented by the OIG and others.

They go on to request additional changes in DoD policy:

PHR, therefore, respectfully urges you to take the following actions:

1. Fully implement the OIG’s recommendation to “preclude the use of Survival, Evasion, esistance, and Escape physical and psychological coercion techniques” in all interrogations. (Id, p. 29-30.) This includes rescission of Appendix M of the new Army Field Manual and specific rohibition, by name, of each of the known SERE-based methods and their equivalents.

2. Abolish the BSCTs and rescind the June 6, 2006 Department of Defense Instruction(Medical program Support for Detainee Operations), which established guidelines for the BSCTs and other health personnel. Establish new unambigious guidelines holding all health care professionals, regardless of their designated role or assignment, to the well-established health professional principle to prevent, avoid and minimize harm.

3. In the interest of transparency reflected in the declassification of the OIG Report, declassify and release all other documents shedding light on US interrogation policy and practices, including but not limited to SERE-based methods.

Add comment June 4th, 2007

Democracy Now! on the APA and torture

Friday on Democracy Now!, one segment — “The Task Force Report Should Be Annulled” - Member of 2005 APA Task Force on Psychologist Participation in Military Interrogations Speaks Out –was devoted to the American Psychological Association in light of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) report documenting psychologists at the center of US torture. On the show were Jean Maria Arrigo and Nina Thomas; two of the three non-military/intelligence members of the APA’s PENS Task Force. Also on the show was Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights and Eric Anders, a psychoanalyst who experienced SERE first-hand.

Arrigo has called for the PENS report to be rescinded. As she states:

“I came later to realize that the entire report had been orchestrated”

Thomas, while uncomfortable about aspects of PENS, spouts the latest APA spin that the Task Force was created because of the whistle-blowing of Michael Gelles, also Task Force member. This seems to be a new claim, one generated in the post-OIG era, when APA can no longer say the psychologists keep interrogations “safe, legal, and ethical” with a straight face. Now their latest spin is to point to all the military and intelligence psychologists who, allegedly, worked to avoid torture. This despite years of APA telling us how the BSCTs were really “safety officers,” keeping interrogators from going too far. The OIG report document, rather, that the psychologists consulted to interrogators on how to develop especially torturous abusive techniques. But APA and truth got divorced years ago.

Listen, watch, or read the show here.

1 comment June 4th, 2007

British psychiatrists to detain dissidents

There are worrying developments for human rights, and for the mental health professions, in Great Britain. a new article reports that British psychiatrists are going to start emulating their disgraced Soviet-era colleagues who hospitalized and involuntary drugged dissidents under the pretense of treating mental illness. The British psychiatrist will be part of preventive detention teams on the watch for “terrorists” under every bed:

Psychiatrists set to use mental health law to detain terrorist suspects

May 31, 2007
by Angela Hussain

Psychiatrists are set to increasingly use mental health law to detain terrorists suspects, prompting fears that psychiatry will be directly involved in the abuse of civil rights.

The government has set up a VIP “stalker” squad to identify and detain terrorists and other individuals who pose a threat to prominent people, such as the Prime Minister, the cabinet and the Royal Family.

The unit, staffed by psychiatrists as well as police, could have extra powers to detain suspects using mental health law.

Critics say a mental health bill going through parliament includes a wider definition of mental disorder. They fear it will mean people - including terrorist suspects - may be detained on grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.

The new London-based unit, called the fixated threat assessment centre (FTAC) and set up last year, uses the police to identify suspects.

Liberty, the human rights organisation, said the unit represented a threat to civil liberties.

Its policy director, Gareth Crossman, told newspapers: “This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions.

“If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.”

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: “The fixated threat assessment centre is a joint initiative between the Metropolitan Police, Home Office and Department of Health. Its role is to assess, manage and reduce risks and threats from fixated individuals, against people in public life, particularly protected VIPs.”

The Mail on Sunday reported that FTAC’s senior forensic psychiatrist is David James. He has made a study of attacks on British and European politicians by people diagnosed with pathological fixations.

Also on the staff is Robert Halsey, a consultant forensic clinical psychologist who specialises in risk assessment.

At least one terror suspect - allegedly linked to the 7/7 bomb plot and a suicide bombing in Israel - has already been held under the Mental Health Act.

The government has always argued its mental health bill is a suitable balance between patient rights and public safety.

But Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told the Mail that classing someone as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs is “a very worrying scenario”

He said: “The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.

“When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.

“The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.

“Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario.”

There appears to no limit to the evils that people will participate in under the guise of “protecting society from an enemy.”

2 comments June 2nd, 2007

Pink: Dear Mr. President

I know I’ve posted this before, but someone sent it to me today and I can ever get enough of it:

1 comment June 2nd, 2007

Senator Allard on first responders

I can’t resist this from Josh Marshall. It is one of the best illustrations of the essence of modern politics:

Annals of poorly edited press releases.

This is pretty damn funny. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) was putting out a press release praising first responders. In the process of putting the press release together, the press aide composing it wrote in some editorial comments to the effect that first responders don’t really do jack.

Unfortunately those glosses got left in the copy when the thing was released, leaving the senator to say …

“First responders in Colorado have recently provided critical services in the face of blizzards and tornados,” added Allard. “Since I don’t think first responders have really done anything significant in comparison to their counterparts who have dealt with real natural disasters, I have no idea what else to say here…”

Allard isn’t running for reelection. Good idea.

Add comment June 2nd, 2007

Time on OIG report: Psychologists and torture

Time magazine today has an article on the important OIG report documenting psychologists’ central role in US torture:

Detainee Abuse Was Well Planned

Thursday, May. 31, 2007 By Adam Zagorin

Many of the controversial interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo were modeled on techniques the U.S. feared that the Communists themselves might use against captured American troops during the Cold War, according to a little-noticed, highly classified Pentagon report released several days ago. Originally developed as training for elite special forces at Fort Bragg under the “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape” program, otherwise known as SERE, tactics such as sleep deprivation, isolation, sexual humiliation, nudity, exposure to extremes of cold and stress positions were part of a carefully monitored survival training program for personnel at risk of capture by Soviet or Chinese forces, all carried out under the supervision of military psychologists.

This troubling disclosure was made in the blandly titled report, “Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse“, which for the first time sets forth the origins as well as new details of many of the abusive interrogation techniques that led to scandals at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere — techniques that some critics contend the Pentagon still has not gone far enough in explicitly banning. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the findings “deeply troubling,” and signaled his intention to hold hearings later this year on the interrogation methods it describes.

The report, completed last August but only declassified and made public on May 18, suggests that the abusive techniques stemmed from a much more formal process than the Defense Department has previously acknowledged. By 2002 the Pentagon was looking for an interrogation paradigm to use on what it had designated as “unlawful combatants” captured in the “war on terror.” These individuals, many taken prisoner in Afghanistan, were initially brought to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, although others were subsequently hidden away in CIA secret prisons or turned over to U.S.-allied governments known to practice torture. That same year, the commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo began using the abusive “counter resistance” techniques adopted from SERE on prisoners at the base, and according to the Pentagon report SERE military psychologists were on hand to help.

In response to fallout over the well-documented cases of prisoner abuse — which included prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation (visual and auditory), forced removal of clothing, exploiting prisoners phobias (notably fear of dogs), and threats against family members — the Pentagon began scaling back the use of SERE tactics in 2002 and eventually banned them altogether. The Army Field Manual, which serves as a primary guide for U.S. military interrogation, now specifically rules out the use of a variety of SERE-founded techniques including water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, as well as the use of dogs.

But critics remain concerned that the Pentagon’s clean-up has not gone far enough. In the letter to Secretary Gates, dated May 31, 2007, the non-profit Physicians for Human Rights cites an appendix of the current Army Field Manual that “explicitly permits what amounts to isolation, along with sleep and sensory deprivation.” The letter, signed by retired Army General Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and former senior medical commander, and Leonard Rubenstein, the organization’s executive director, also points out that the current Field Manual remains “silent on a number of other SERE-based methods (including sensory overload and deprivation) creating ambiguity and doubt over their place in interrogation doctrine.”

In 2006, the Pentagon issued revised guidelines reducing the role of psychiatrists as members of U.S. military interrogation teams, partly in response to critics who contend that doctors, who take an oath as caregivers, should not be involved in non-therapeutic or abusive treatment. But the Physicians for Human Rights letter says that even the Pentagon’s new and revised guidelines continue to call on military psychologists to play a central part in interrogations, which the group calls “dangerous” and inappropriate. The Pentagon says it has fully investigated all abuses and taken appropriate measures to prevent any kind of recurrence.

Even assuming that Pentagon reforms have succeeded in cleaning up the worst excesses of U.S. interrogations, a number of experts have grave doubts that current policies are either workable or effective. Members of the Intelligence Science Board, many of whom serve as consultants to the Pentagon, have recently argued that U.S. interrogation policy involves a grab-bag of outmoded techniques, many dating from the 1950s, that ignore lessons learned from law enforcement and lack cultural sensitivity to Arab and other foreign prisoners. The kind of insensitivity, critics might now add, that we once assumed only our worst enemies would show their foreign prisoners.

2 comments June 1st, 2007