Psyche, Science, and Society

PHR on Vanity Fair revelations on psychologists and CIA torture

Last night Vanity Fair published a new article detailing the role of two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, in the development of the CIA’s torture program at the secret “black sites.” [Rorschach and Awe] In response, Physicians for Human Rights issued a press release. [I will post another press release from Coalition for an Ethical APA, a group of psychologists soon.]:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2007

CONTACT: Nathaniel A. Raymond, Senior Communications Strategist

nraymond@phrusa.org

www.physiciansforhumanrights.org

Following Groundbreaking Report by Vanity Fair:

PHR Condemns Illegal, Ineffective and Unethical CIA and US Military Torture Practices;

Calls on Bush Administration to End Use of Abusive SERE Tactics and

Prohibit Psychologists from Involvement in Interrogations

“The indisputable evidence disclosed today that the US government, with the assistance of psychologists, was engaged in psychological torture tactics for the CIA is as morally reprehensible as Tuskegee and the MK-Ultra program of the 1950’s and 60’s.”

-Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights-

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urgently reiterated its call today for the White House and Congress to prohibit the use of all SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) techniques in interrogations by US agencies, especially those conducted by the CIA at the agency’s “Black Sites” and other secret facilities. SERE techniques include water-boarding, the use of stress positions, isolation, exploitation of phobias, and cultural and sexual humiliation, among other tactics. The group’s statement follows Vanity Fair’s shocking revelations about the alleged involvement of CIA and US military psychologists in torturing detainees in US custody, as well as its disclosure of a standard operating procedure for use of the SERE tactics that appears to have been employed at Guantanamo. PHR has been calling for the Administration to prohibit tactics used in these and other interrogations for nearly three years.

The report in Vanity Fair details the key role in detainee abuse played by psychologists, particularly CIA contractors Drs. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, from US military SERE schools—training programs designed to instruct service personnel in physical and psychological torture resistance. These psychologists were contracted by the CIA to use these SERE techniques on high value detainees—a practice that is unethical, ineffective and illegal. This new information about the alleged involvement of psychologists in the development and implementation of psychological torture techniques for the CIA was preceded on May 18th by similar revelations about Department of Defense (DoD) psychologists using these tactics at DoD sites, according to a recently declassified DoD Inspector General’s report.

“The indisputable evidence disclosed today that the US government, with the assistance of psychologists, was engaged in psychological torture tactics for the CIA is as morally reprehensible as Tuskegee and the MK-Ultra program of the 1950’s and 60’s,” stated Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR. “It is imperative that both White House and Congress explicitly prohibit the use of these specific tactics once and for all. They have no place in lawful and honorable military and intelligence communities.”

Senator Carl Levin, Chair of Senate Armed Services Committee, has announced publicly that he intends to call hearings on the use of the SERE tactics by the US. PHR called today for immediate Congressional investigative hearings to learn how these methods came to be used and who was responsible for approving them. “Extensive and exhaustive hearings are required to conclusively and fully understand whether the regime of psychological torture documented at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, CIA Black Sites and elsewhere was authorized at the highest levels of the government, as it appears, and if so, to hold those civilian officials accountable for these gross violations of human rights,” stated Rubenstein.

Following its statement released last week, PHR again called for the Senate Select Intelligence Committee to reject the pending nomination of John A. Rizzo for CIA General Counsel, who providing legal advice to the agency while these tactics were developed and used. On a related issue, this week a bill seeking to restore the writ of habeas corpus for those detained at Guantanamo and other detention facilities is being brought to the Senate floor for debate and a vote. PHR believes that restoring habeas corpus will help ensure that terror suspects cannot be held indefinitely, as well as be subject to abusive treatment, without being able to challenge their incarceration.

The organization also urged action by the American Psychological Association (APA). “In the face of strong allegations that psychologists and the practice of psychology has been at the epicenter of US abuses against detainees, the APA has a responsibility to condemn such tactics, call for an investigation and prohibit its members from participating in any activities that employ these tactics, which constitute psychological and physical torture,” stated Rubenstein. “Additionally, the APA must immediately prohibit their members from participating in national security interrogations. The APA has long asserted that psychologists should act as ‘safety officers’ in these interrogations. Today’s report shows that the real role played by psychologists ran counter to claims of helping make interrogations safe, legal and effective –in fact, these psychologists were inflicting grievous harm.”

“The use of psychologists by the military and the intelligence community to inflict psychological harm on detainees in our custody is the most severe affront to health professional ethics imaginable,” stated Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD (USA-Ret.), former Commander of Southeast Medical Command and a Senior Advisor to PHR. “This scandal has stained the core ethical and legal foundations of two professions—the soldier and the healer. Those uniformed and civilian officials who authorized this perversion of the military medical corps’ mission should be ashamed of their actions and be held to account.”

Beyond the disclosures about the alleged actions of psychologists at CIA Black Sites, today’s report in Vanity Fair contains disturbing new information about high-level authorizations in late 2001 of broad parameters for CIA interrogations involving personnel, including psychologists, seconded from the DoD. These authorizations strongly suggest the involvement of senior-level Bush Administration officials in the events that led to the regime of psychological torture that migrated to all three theaters of operation in the “War on Terror,” including Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA Black Sites.

“The long-standing distinctions between the roles of the military and intelligence communities appear to have been ripped asunder in the rush to employ abusive interrogation tactics after the tragedy of 9/11,” stated Xenakis. “Harnessing the medical knowledge of health professionals to break bodies and minds is, sadly, but one of many egregious consequences when over two centuries of military tradition and ethical discipline is tossed aside.”

Since 2005, PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological torture by the US during its interrogations of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere in its groundbreaking report Break Them Down (link: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-2005-may.html). The organization has repeatedly called for an end to the use of the SERE tactics by US personnel, the dismantling of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) teams, and a full Congressional investigation of the use of psychological torture by the US Government, among other recommendations. Additionally, PHR has worked to mobilize the health professional community, particularly the professional associations, such as the American Medical Association, to adopt strong ethical prohibitions against direct participation in interrogations. Both the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association prohibited their members from directly participating in interrogations last summer.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

1 comment July 17th, 2007

Michael Moore Open Letter in response to CNN/Sanjay Gupta hatchet job

Micheal Moore replies to the CNN/Sanjay Gupta attack on his movie Sicko. Make sure to read the detailed line-by-line rebuttals cited in the letter:

An Open Letter to CNN from Michael Moore

7/14/07

Dear CNN,

Well, the week is over — and still no apology, no retraction, no correction of your glaring mistakes.

I bet you thought my dust-up with Wolf Blitzer was just a cool ratings coup, that you really wouldn’t have to correct the false statements you made about “Sicko.” I bet you thought I was just going to go quietly away.

Think again. I’m about to become your worst nightmare. ‘Cause I ain’t ever going away. Not until you set the record straight, and apologize to your viewers. “The Most Trusted Name in News?” I think it’s safe to say you can retire that slogan.

You have an occasional segment called “Keeping Them Honest.” But who keeps you honest? After what the public saw with your report on “Sicko,” and how many inaccuracies that report contained, how can anyone believe anything you say on your network? In the old days, before the Internet, you could get away with it. Your victims had no way to set the record straight, to show the viewers how you had misrepresented the truth. But now, we can post the truth — and back it up with evidence and facts — on the web, for all to see. And boy, judging from the mail both you and I have been receiving, the evidence I have posted on my site about your “Sicko” piece has led millions now to question your honesty.

I won’t waste your time rehashing your errors. You know what they are. What I want to do is help you come clean. Admit you were wrong. What is the shame in that? We all make mistakes. I know it’s hard to admit it when you’ve screwed up, but it’s also liberating and cathartic. It not only makes you a better person, it helps prevent you from screwing up again. Imagine how many people will be drawn to a network that says, “We made a mistake. We’re human. We’re sorry. We will make mistakes in the future — but we will always correct them so that you know you can trust us.” Now, how hard would that really be?

As you know, I hold no personal animosity against you or any of your staff. You and your parent company have been very good to me over the years. You distributed my first film, “Roger & Me” and you published “Dude, Where’s My Country?” Larry King has had me on twice in the last two weeks. I couldn’t ask for better treatment.

That’s why I was so stunned when you let a doctor who knows a lot about brain surgery — but apparently very little about public policy — do a “fact check” story, not on the medical issues in “Sicko,” but rather on the economic and political information in the film. Is this why there has been a delay in your apology, because you are trying to get a DOCTOR to say he was wrong? Please tell him not to worry, no one is filing a malpractice claim against him. Dr. Gupta does excellent and compassionate stories on CNN about people’s health and how we can take better care of ourselves. But when it came time to discuss universal health care, he rushed together a bunch of sloppy — and old — research. When his producer called us about his report the day before it aired, we sent to her, in an email, all the evidence so that he wouldn’t make any mistakes on air. He chose to ignore ALL the evidence, and ran with all his falsehoods — even though he had been given the facts a full day before! How could that happen? And now, for 5 days, I have posted on my website, for all to see, every mistake and error he made.

You, on the other hand, in the face of this overwhelming evidence and a huge public backlash, have chosen to remain silent, probably praying and hoping this will all go away.

Well it isn’t. We are now going to start looking into the veracity of other reports you have aired on other topics. Nothing you say now can be believed. In 2002, the New York Times busted you for bringing celebrities on your shows and not telling your viewers they were paid spokespeople for the pharmaceutical companies. You promised never to do it again. But there you were, in 2005, talking to Joe Theismann, on air, as he pushed some drug company-sponsored website on prostate health. You said nothing about about his affiliation with GlaxoSmithKline.

Clearly, no one is keeping you honest, so I guess I’m going to have to do that job, too. $1.5 billion is spent each year by the drug companies on ads on CNN and the other four networks. I’m sure that has nothing to do with any of this. After all, if someone gave me $1.5 billion, I have to admit, I might say a kind word or two about them. Who wouldn’t?!

I expect CNN to put this matter to rest. Say you’re sorry and correct your story — like any good journalist would.

Then we can get back to more important things. Like a REAL discussion about our broken health care system. Everything else is a distraction from what really matters.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. If you also want to apologize for not doing your job at the start of the Iraq War, I’m sure most Americans would be very happy to accept your apology. You and the other networks were willing partners with Bush, flying flags all over the TV screens and never asking the hard questions that you should have asked. You might have prevented a war. You might have saved the lives of those 3,610 soldiers who are no longer with us. Instead, you blew air kisses at a commander in chief who clearly was making it all up. Millions of us knew that — why didn’t you? I think you did. And, in my opinion, that makes you responsible for this war. Instead of doing the job the founding fathers wanted you to do — keeping those in power honest (that’s why they made it the FIRST amendment) — you and much of the media went on the attack against the few public figures like myself who dared to question the nightmare we were about to enter. You’ve never thanked me or the Dixie Chicks or Al Gore for doing your job for you. That’s OK. Just tell the truth from this point on.

2 comments July 14th, 2007

Nazi use of prostitution in concentration camps

In response to last night’s posting of an article by Debra McNutt [Is the Iraq Occupation Enabling Prostitution?] a colleague sent this disturbing Reuters article on the Nazi’s use of forced prostitution in the concentration camps in order to control and divide the inmate population. It’s a reminder that the ways of human cruelty are manifold, and that manipulation of sexuality often plays a role in this cruelty. It also reminds us of the shame that victims often feel regarding their self-perceived perceived participation in their abuse, and of the personal and social pressures to maintain silence. We Americans should remember that one of the reasons believed to have been behind the Abu Ghraib photographs was as material to blackmail those prisoners forced into the humiliating “sexual” scenes:

Secrets of Nazi camp brothels emerge decades on

By Alexandra Hudson

For decades no one wanted to remember the concentration camp “special blocks” where the Nazis forced female inmates to entertain their male peers.

Nazi commander Heinrich Himmler had ordered the creation of camp brothels in 1941. His logic was chilling — male prisoners would work harder if offered the incentive of sex, and if only a few had this privilege it would crush solidarity.

As the horrors of Hitler’s death camps emerged, the brothels swiftly became taboo. The mainly German women who had staffed them were too scarred by the experience to speak of it, whereas the male inmates who used them remained silent in shame.

Now an exhibition in Ravensbrueck women’s concentration camp north of Berlin aims to shed light on the brothels and expose the Nazis’ sinister attempt to manipulate prisoners’ sexuality.

One man who tried to break this enduring silence is former Buchenwald prisoner Albert van Dijk, a Dutchman from the town of Kampen, close to the German border.

“Often I raised the subject of the ’special block’ at meetings of former inmates of Buchenwald, but nobody ever wanted to discuss it or they said I was mistaken,” said Van Dijk.

The 83-year-old still vividly recalls how at the age of 18, among the despair and degradation of the camp, he fell for a blonde prostitute called Frieda and lost his virginity to her in the “special block.”

Although prostitution was officially forbidden by the Nazis, the elite SS guards had set up a network of brothels catering to German soldiers, forced laborers and prisoners, which they intended in part to stamp out homosexuality.

From 1942 onwards, 200-300 gentile prisoners from the camp were forced to work in 10 camp brothels across Germany, Austria and Poland. Almost all had been imprisoned as “anti-social.”

At first some women volunteered for service as prostitutes, falsely informed they would be released after 6 months. Later they were forcibly recruited during roll call or even from the camp sick bay.

Although the women got slightly better rations and could wear civilian clothes, the work reduced most to physical wrecks. Many caught sexually transmitted diseases, were subject to medical experiments or were forced to have abortions.

Each woman used a small room where male prisoners, after a brief examination, were allowed 15 minutes. Guards looked through peep holes to check sex only took place lying down, as stated in the rules.

After a full day of work in the camp, women spent two hours each night entertaining male prisoners, who paid two Reichsmark. Those who came to them held the most privileged positions among the hierarchy of prisoners, and had the best rations. The vast majority of the male prisoners were much too weak for sex.

FRIEDA

Frieda was the first woman Van Dijk had seen in 6 months. He was a teenager, sent to Buchenwald for fleeing a forced labor troop and smuggling rations to Kampen’s Jews and was in awe of her. She appreciated his youthful coyness.

“One day I was sent to clean in the block and I found myself alone with her… She gave me some Schnaps, blew cigarette smoke in my mouth and we landed in bed. It was my first time and you never forget.”

Later he had to pay like the others to see Frieda, a privilege allowed him as he was imprisoned neither on racial nor political grounds.

“You could let your relatives send you money which was written on an account to spend in the camp,” recalls Van Dijk.

With grotesque efficiency, the SS camp administrators sometimes billed prisoners’ families for services rendered in the brothel.

Other prisoners told him he should be ashamed for spending his mother’s money in the brothel, but in an environment where sexual exploitation was rife and young men sometimes bartered with sexual favors, Van Dijk saw nothing wrong.

“Some young guys slept with older prisoners for an extra morsel of bread … I was young and naive and thought Frieda was interested in me,” he recalled.

After liberation, forced laborers began their fight for compensation. But women who had worked in the brothels found they were unable to claim damages, because of the supposed “voluntary” nature of their work.

Others, fearing stigmatization and the scorn they had already attracted from other prisoners, simply fell silent.

The exhibition in Ravensbrueck, where tens of thousands of women were murdered or died of hunger or disease, has video extracts of former prisoners remembering the brothels and their victims, as well as vouchers which were handed in for sex.

“The theme invites voyeurism,” said Insa Eschebach, head of the Ravensbrueck memorial site, which is why the exhibition relies mainly on the written word.

Concentration camps have featured as a backdrop in some erotic films and a realm of sexual fantasy, exploiting the extreme power gulf between SS guards and prisoners, she said.

Also on display are the few remaining photographs of the special blocks, where the rustic German furniture, vases of flowers and tablecloths belie the horror of what took place.

10 comments July 12th, 2007

Is the Iraq Occupation Enabling Prostitution?

A while ago I wrote an essay pointing out how little we knew about the sex lives of the American troops in Iraq. [The Sex Lives and Sexual Frustrations of US troops in Iraq: An Ocean of Ignorance]. Since then, only a tiny amount of information has filtered out. Now, in this submission, Debra McNutt adds to our knowledge of this sordid and hidden aspect of the US occupation. She points out the connection between two aspects of the US invasion of Iraq: the traditional military creation of a class of prostitutes, and the inmcreasing reliance on private “contractors,” subject to no laws.

Privatizing Women: Is the Iraq Occupation Enabling Prostitution?

By Debra McNutt

debimcnutt@gmail.com

Military prostitution has long been seen around U.S. bases in the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other countries. But since the U.S. has begun to deploy forces to many Muslim countries, it cannot be as open about enabling prostitution for its personnel. U.S. military deployments in the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War have reinvigorated prostitution and the trafficking of women in the Middle East.

Another major change has been the reliance of the U.S. military on private contractors, who have now surpassed the number of soldiers in Iraq. Public attention has begun to focus on the role of these contractors in U.S. war zones. Less attention has been paid to how private contractors are changing the nature of military prostitution. In the best known example, DynCorp employees were caught trafficking women in Bosnia, and some indications suggest that similar acts may be taking place in Iraq.

I am researching whether civilian contractors are enabling military sexual exploitation in Iraq, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Muslim countries. My research is investigating new patterns of sexual exploitation of women by the U.S. for military purposes, and how institutionalized prostitution has changed as U.S. forces have been stationed in Muslim countries. I am especially interested in the possible role of civilian contractors in promoting prostitution of local women, or in importing foreign women into U.S. war zones under the guise of employment as cooks, maids or office workers.

I have come to this research as a feminist activist who has long worked on issues of women and militarism, influenced by women such as Cynthia Enloe, Katherine Moon, and Saralee Hamilton. I have organized against the sexual exploitation of Filipinas near U.S. military bases. More recently, I have worked on the related issues of sexual harassment and assault of women GIs within the U.S. military. I have also been actively opposed to the U.S. attacks on Iraq since the Gulf War.

During the brief Gulf War, the U.S. military prevented prostitution for its troops in Saudi Arabia, to avoid a backlash from its hosts. But on their return home, the troop ships stopped in Thailand for “R & R.” After the Gulf War, harsh economic sanctions forced many desperate Iraqi women into prostitution. The sex trade grew to such an extent that in 1999 Saddam ordered his paramilitary forces to crack down on it in Baghdad, resulting in the executions of many women.

The U.S. invasion of March 2003 brought prostitution back to Iraq within a matter of weeks. The Iraq War has now lasted eight times longer than the Gulf War deployments, and is marked by a huge reliance on private security contractors. A U.S. ban on human trafficking, signed by President Bush in January 2006, has not been applied to these contractors.

The rebirth of prostitution has generated fear that permeates all of Iraqi society. Families keep their girls inside, not only to keep them from being assaulted or killed, but to prevent them from being kidnapped by organized prostitution rings. Gangs are also forcing some families to sell their children into sex slavery. The war has created an enormous number of homeless girls and boys who are most vulnerable to the sex trade. It has also created thousands of refugee women who try to escape danger but end up (out of economic desperation) being prostituted in Jordan, Syria, Yemen or the UAE. Our occupation not only attacks women on the outside, but attacks them on the inside, until there is nothing left to destroy.

If foreign women are imported into Iraq for prostitution, they would almost certainly follow the already established channels of illegal labor trafficking, as documented in the Chicago Tribune series “Pipeline to Peril.” For example, independent journalist David Phinney has documented how a Kuwaiti contract company that imported workers to build the new U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone also smuggled women into the construction site.

Within the Green Zone, a few brothels have been opened (disguised as a women’s shelter, hairdresser, or Chinese restaurant) but are usually closed by authorities after reports about their existence reach the media. The U.S. military claims that it officially forbids its troops to be involved in prostitution. But private contractors brag on sex websites that they have sometimes been able to find Iraqi or foreign women in Baghdad or around U.S. military bases. These highly paid security contractors have much disposable income, and are not held accountable to anyone but their companies.

One contractor employee living in the Green Zone reported in February 2007 that “it took me 4 months to get my connections. We have a PSD [Personal Security Detail] contact who brings us these Iraqi cuties.” Western contractors’ e-mails also suggest that some Chinese, Filipina, Iranian and Eastern European women may also be prostituted to Americans and other Westerners within Iraq. (Other reports indicate that Chinese women might also be prostituted in Afghanistan, Qatar, and other Muslim countries where it may be difficult for rings to find local women.)

On leave from Iraq in 2005, Army Reservist Patrick Lackatt said that “For one dollar you can get a prostitute for one hour.” But as the war has escalated in Baghdad and the other Arab regions of Iraq, it has become too dangerous for Westerners to move around outside of the military bases and the Green Zone. Contractors are now advising each other to do their “R & R” in the safer northern Kurdish region, or in the bars and hotels of Dubai, the UAE emirate that has become the most open center of prostitution in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, any prostitution rings in Iraq have to go deeper underground to hide from Iraqi militias.

As observed by Sarah Mendelson in her 2005 Balkans report Barracks and Brothels, many U.S. government protocols and programs have been implemented to slow human trafficking, but without enforcement they end up merely as public relations exercises. Military officials often turn a blind eye to the exploitation of women by military and contract personnel, because they want to boost their men’s “morale.” The most effective way for the military to prevent a public backlash is to make sure that the embarrassing information is not revealed. It is not necessary to cover up information if it does not come out in the first place.

It has been difficult for me (and other researchers and journalists) to get to the bottom of this crisis. In his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran observed, “There were prostitutes in Baghdad, but you couldn’t drive into a town to get laid like in Saigon.” The question of who is behind the trafficking of people is as hard to crack as the trafficking of drugs (if not more so). It is difficult enough to track the widespread illegal trafficking of workers to Iraq. But the trafficking of Iraqi or foreign women for prostitution is even better concealed. The prostitution rings keep their tracks well hidden, and it is not in the interest of the military or its private contractors to reveal any information that may damage the war effort.

The fact that information is difficult to find, however, is a reason to intensify the search, and to make military prostitution a major issues of the women’s and antiwar movements. It is our tax dollars that fuel the war in Iraq, and if any women are exploited as a result of the occupation, we owe it to them to take responsibility for these crimes.

I am currently writing a larger report on my findings, and am seeking any input from researchers and journalists, military veterans, private contract employees, exiles and refugees, or former prostituted women who may shed light on military prostitution in the Middle East, and the role of the military and its private contractors.

My ultimate purpose is doing this research is not only to help expose these crimes against women, but to help build a movement to stop them. Missing from the discussions about Iraqi women’s rights is how the U.S. occupation is creating new oppressions that destroy women’s self-worth. It is our responsibility as Americans to stop our military’s abuses of women, by ending the occupation.

Debra McNutt is a feminist and antiwar activist and researcher living in Olympia, Washington. She can be contacted at debimcnutt@gmail.com

5 comments July 11th, 2007

Michael Moore takes on Wolf Blitzer

Add comment July 10th, 2007

Lead poinsoning and crime rates: The case for public health as public safety

This is a topic about which I have no special competence. But, like other social researchers and citizens, I have been puzzled by the dropping crime rate. Many theories have been proposed, but none has seemed to really explain the phenomenon. Now the Washington Post brings news of a little-know theory with, evidently, strong empirical support: crime rate reflects the lead poisoning rate 20 years earlier:

Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity
Data May Undermine Giuliani’s Claims

By Shankar Vedantam
Sunday, July 8, 2007

Rudy Giuliani never misses an opportunity to remind people about his track record in fighting crime as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001.

“I began with the city that was the crime capital of America,” Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent.”

Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani’s tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the “New York miracle” was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children’s exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin’s work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

“It is stunning how strong the association is,” Nevin said in an interview. “Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead.”

Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor.

Giuliani’s presidential campaign declined to address Nevin’s contention that the mayor merely was at the right place at the right time. But William Bratton, who served as Giuliani’s police commissioner and who initiated many of the policing techniques credited with reducing the crime rate, dismissed Nevin’s theory as absurd. Bratton and Giuliani instituted harsh measures against quality-of-life offenses, based on the “broken windows” theory of addressing minor offenses to head off more serious crimes.

Many other theories have emerged to try to explain the crime decline. In the 2005 book “Freakonomics,” Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner said the legalization of abortion in 1973 had eliminated “unwanted babies” who would have become violent criminals. Other experts credited lengthy prison terms for violent offenders, or demographic changes, socioeconomic factors, and the fall of drug epidemics. New theories have emerged as crime rates have inched up in recent years.

Most of the theories have been long on intuition and short on evidence. Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends.

Because the countries phased out lead at different points, they provide a rigorous test: In each instance, the violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier.

“It is startling how much mileage has been given to the theory that abortion in the early 1970s was responsible for the decline in crime” in the 1990s, Nevin said. “But they legalized abortion in Britain, and the violent crime in Britain soared in the 1990s. The difference is our gasoline lead levels peaked in the early ’70s and started falling in the late ’70s, and fell very sharply through the early 1980s and was virtually eliminated by 1986 or ‘87.

“In Britain and most of Europe, they did not have meaningful constraints [on leaded gasoline] until the mid-1980s and even early 1990s,” he said. “This is the reason you are seeing the crime rate soar in Mexico and Latin America, but [it] has fallen in the United States.”

Lead levels plummeted in New York in the early 1970s, driven by federal policies to eliminate lead from gasoline and local policies to reduce lead emissions from municipal incinerators. Between 1970 and 1974, the number of New York children heavily poisoned by lead fell by more than 80 percent, according to data from the New York City Department of Health.

Lead levels in New York have continued to fall. One analysis in the late 1990s found that children in New York had lower lead exposure than children in many other big U.S. cities, possibly because of a 1960 policy to replace old windows. That policy, meant to reduce deaths from falls, had an unforeseen benefit — old windows are a source of lead poisoning, said Dave Jacobs of the National Center for Healthy Housing, an advocacy group that is publicizing Nevin’s work. Nevin’s research was not funded by the group.

The later drop in violent crime was dramatic. In 1990, 31 New Yorkers out of every 100,000 were murdered. In 2004, the rate was 7 per 100,000 — lower than in most big cities. The lead theory also may explain why crime fell broadly across the United States in the 1990s, not just in New York.

The centerpiece of Nevin’s research is an analysis of crime rates and lead poisoning levels across a century. The United States has had two spikes of lead poisoning: one at the turn of the 20th century, linked to lead in household paint, and one after World War II, when the use of leaded gasoline increased sharply. Both times, the violent crime rate went up and down in concert, with the violent crime peaks coming two decades after the lead poisoning peaks.

Other evidence has accumulated in recent years that lead is a neurotoxin that causes impulsivity and aggression, but these studies have also drawn little attention. In 2001, sociologist Paul B. Stretesky and criminologist Michael Lynch showed that U.S. counties with high lead levels had four times the murder rate of counties with low lead levels, after controlling for multiple environmental and socioeconomic factors.

In 2002, Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, compared lead levels of 194 adolescents arrested in Pittsburgh with lead levels of 146 high school adolescents: The arrested youths had lead levels that were four times higher.

“Impulsivity means you ignore the consequences of what you do,” said Needleman, one of the country’s foremost experts on lead poisoning, explaining why Nevin’s theory is plausible. Lead decreases the ability to tell yourself, “If I do this, I will go to jail.”

Nevin’s work has been published mainly in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research. Within the field of neurotoxicology, Nevin’s findings are unsurprising, said Ellen Silbergeld, professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and the editor of Environmental Research.

“There is a strong literature on lead and sociopathic behavior among adolescents and young adults with a previous history of lead exposure,” she said.

Two new studies by criminologists Richard Rosenfeld and Steven F. Messner have looked at Giuliani’s policing policies. They found that the mayor’s zero-tolerance approach to crime was responsible for 10 percent, maybe 20 percent, at most, of the decline in violent crime in New York City.

Nevin acknowledges that crime rates are rising in some parts of the United States after years of decline, but he points out that crime is falling in other places and is still low overall by historical measures. Also, the biggest reductions in lead poisoning took place by the mid-1980s, which may explain why reductions in crime might have tapered off by 2005. Lastly, he argues that older, recidivist offenders — who were exposed to lead as toddlers three or four decades ago — are increasingly accounting for much of the violent crime.

Nevin’s finding may even account for phenomena he did not set out to address. His theory addresses why rates of violent crime among black adolescents from inner-city neighborhoods have declined faster than the overall crime rate — lead amelioration programs had the biggest impact on the urban poor. Children in inner-city neighborhoods were the ones most likely to be poisoned by lead, because they were more likely to live in substandard housing that had lead paint and because public housing projects were often situated near highways.

Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, for example, were built over the Dan Ryan Expressway, with 150,000 cars going by each day. Eighteen years after the project opened in 1962, one study found that its residents were 22 times more likely to be murderers than people living elsewhere in Chicago.

Nevin’s finding implies a double tragedy for America’s inner cities: Thousands of children in these neighborhoods were poisoned by lead in the first three quarters of the last century. Large numbers of them then became the targets, in the last quarter, of Giuliani-style law enforcement policies.

Add comment July 9th, 2007

Charleston Gazette on APA, psychologists, and torture

The story of the role of psychologists and the American Psychological Association in the development and maintenance of the US torture regime is beginning to break through to the mainstream. Yesterday the Charleston [WV] Gazette editorialized on the issue:

The Charleston Gazette: Torture.
Psychologists involved

Shamefully, some American psychologists participated in interrogating and abusing Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq.This disturbing news is contained in a newly declassified report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General. Titled “Review of DOD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse,” the report — requested by 110 members of Congress — documents the central role U.S. psychologists played in developing “the abusive interrogation paradigm” at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other prisons.

Many current interrogation techniques were developed through the military’s “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape” program, or SERE, which was created to help U.S. soldiers resist interrogation if they are captured in combat situations. Then SERE techniques were also used to break down Muslim detainees, after former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the plan in late 2002.

During certain types of SERE questioning — such as “waterboarding,” in which water is continuously poured over the face of a detainee strapped to a board — a psychologist must be present, military rules say. SERE interrogation techniques also include extreme isolation, prolonged sleep deprivation, “noise stress,” abuse by dogs, as well as sexual and cultural humiliation.

Washington-based Physicians for Human Rights wants Congress to investigate prisoner abuse and the roles played by psychologists and other health professionals.

Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of the physicians’ group, asked the American Psychological Association in June to condemn SERE interrogations and the “collaboration” and “complicity” of psychologists in those practices.

Two years ago, then-APA President Gerald Koocher created a nine-member Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security. That group defended SERE and found that psychologists are in “unique position to assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants.” But when names of task force members became public, six turned out to have direct ties to military or intelligence agencies.

Last month, after the OIG report was released, two of the three civilian members said the former APA report “should be annulled” because its investigative process was flawed.

Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo, one of those members, called for a moratorium in the involvement of psychologists in any military interrogations. Dr. Koocher himself condemned SERE practices as “torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

APA’s current leaders, however, have taken no public position about collaboration by some psychologists with inhumane questioning of prisoners.

Many political leaders and newspapers are calling for the closure of Guantanamo and for humane treatment of prisoners.

The American Psychological Association should condemn torture and censure any of its members who participate in it.

Now that the mainstream media is starting to understand the psychology-SERE-torture-APA connections, how many days, weeks, months, or years will it be until the leadership of the APA begins to get it? If the Charleston Gazette understands the meaning of the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General’s report, maybe, just, maybe, our distinguished President and Ethics Director might take a read. They might even try paying attention to what it says and not just to the latest spin needed to distract the their fellow leadership and some of the membership from the horrors that were perpetrated by their psychologist colleagues. Perhaps the Charleston Gazette editorial board could provide reading lessons to the APA leadership. My colleagues and I have attempted to provide such lessons, but it appears that APA’s leaders are even less able to read and understand anything we say than they are the mainstream media.

Of course, the APA membership might decide, rather, to replace a leadership that is completely deaf to the numerous reports that psychology and psychologists are central players in America’s torture regime. Perhaps the membership could choose a leadership that has a sense of right and wrong rather than one steeped in arcane “ethics” rules cleverly designed to let the abusive status quo continue indefinitely.

2 comments July 8th, 2007

The Chieftains & Alison Krauss - Molly Ban

Add comment July 7th, 2007

Military spokesman in Iraq straight from White House

It turns out that the current US military spokesman in Iraq came to that position straight from the White House.

Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner made his on-camera debut today as the new spokesman of the US-led coalition in Iraq, which is officially known as Multi-National Force-Iraq.

He succeeds Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, who after 13 months as coalition spokesman is moving on to command the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Here is Bergner’s bio from his previous job in which he served at the White House as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq:

Brigadier General Kevin Bergner currently serves with the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq.Prior to this assignment, he served as the Deputy Commanding General for Multi-National Forces in Mosul, Iraq. He also served as the Director for Political-Military Affairs (Middle East) on the The Joint Staff in the Department of Defense.

He graduated from Trinity University, in San Antonio, Texas where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and a commission in the Regular Army as a Field Artillery officer.

His assignments over the past 26 years include service with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in both Germany and Iraq; the United States Military Academy at West Point; the 24th Infantry Division Artillery in Operations Desert Shield / Storm; the 1st Infantry Division in Bosnia; the 3rd Infantry Division Artillery; The Joint Staff; U.S. Central Command in Operation Iraqi Freedom; and Multi-National Force Northwest in Mosul, Iraq.

He is a graduate of the Field Artillery Officer Basic and Advanced courses, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College. He earned a Masters Degree in Public Administration from City University of New York.

No wonder he never utters an honest word:

The U.S. command in Baghdad this week ballyhooed the killing of a key al Qaeda leader but later admitted that the military had declared him dead a year ago.

A military spokesman acknowledged the mistake after it was called to his attention by The Examiner. He said public affairs officers will be more careful in announcing significant kills….

Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner began his Monday news conference with a list of top insurgents either killed or captured in recent operations. He said they had been eliminated “in the past few weeks” and were “recent results.”

“In the north, Iraqi army and coalition forces continue successful operations in Mosul,” he told reporters. “Kamal Jalil Uthman, also known as Said Hamza, was the al Qaeda in Iraq military emir of Mosul. He planned, coordinated and facilitated suicide bombings, and he facilitated the movement of more than a hundred foreign fighters through safe houses in the area.” All told, Bergner devoted 68 words to Uthman’s demise.

Uthman was indeed a big kill, and the military featured his death last year in a report titled “Tearing Down al Qaeda.”

[h/t Iraq Slogger.]

2 comments July 7th, 2007

Madison on the Dangers of War

Thanks to Scott Horton, here is James Madison on the dangers of war:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

–James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)

Add comment July 7th, 2007