Psyche, Science, and Society

FBI threatens torture, attempts cover-up

Valtin at Daily Kos provides additional details on the story of the FBI  threatening to have a suspect’s family tortured in Egypt in order to get a confession. The brief documenting the torture was briefly posted online then removed and replaced with a redacted version. The court claimed the redactions were to protect the suspect. Not surprisingly, they were rather to protect the FBI by hiding the accounts of the torture.

Valtin has excerpts from both briefs, illustrating what officials were trying to hide. Go read it.

Add comment October 31st, 2007

Psychologists participate in CIA kidnapping of young children

Way back in 2003, the British newspaper the Telegraph reported that the CIA had kidnapped and was holding the two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose torture at CIA hands under the direction of psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen was described last summer by Jane Mayer in “The Black Sites.”

As the Telegraph tells it, psychologists are involved in another aspect of the case. The CIA reported that child psychologists were “on hand at all times.” These child psychologists were thus abettors and accomplices to child abduction.

It is now four years later. I have heard of no protests from the American Psychological Association over this reported psychologist participation in kidnapping. Have you?

Here’s the Telegraph story:

CIA holds young sons of captured al-Qa’eda chief

By Olga Craig
09/03/2003

Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.

Yousef al-Khalid, nine, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, seven, were taken into custody in Pakistan last September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.

He fled just hours before the raid but his two young sons, along with another senior al-Qa’eda member, were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.

The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father.

Last night CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father’s activities.

“We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children,” said one official, “but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.”

Their father, Mohammed, 37, is being interrogated at the Bagram US military base in Afghanistan. He is being held in solitary confinement and subjected to “stress and duress”-style interrogation techniques.

He has been told that his sons are being held and he is being encouraged to divulge future attacks against the West and talk about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

“He has said very little so far,” one CIA official said yesterday. “He sits in a trance-like state and recites verses from the Koran. But while he may claim to be a devout Muslim, we know he is fond of the Western-style fast life.

“His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him.”

The Kuwaiti-born Mohammed named his older son after Ramzi Yousef, his nephew, who was convicted of masterminding the 1993 attack on New York’s World Trade Centre. After the attack, Yousef fled to the Philippines with his uncle.

When bomb-making chemicals set fire to their Manila apartment, Yousef fled to Pakistan where he was captured in an Islamabad hotel room in 1995.

Mohammed was in the next room and, audaciously, gave an eye-witness account of the arrest to a reporter. By the time the Pakistani authorities found out his true identity he had fled the country.

He was eventually arrested last weekend in a flat in Rawalpindi, two miles from the home of Pakistan’s President Musharraf. Among the items found was a photograph of a smiling Mohammed with his arms around his two sons.

Known as “The Engineer”, he is suspected of being the mastermind of the Bali bombings and the man who slashed the throat of Daniel Pearl, the American reporter, in Pakistan in January 2002.

Little is known of his sons’ mother, who is thought to be Pakistani. “We have no evidence that suggests she has anything to do with al-Qa’eda,” a Pakistani intelligence source said yesterday.

“All we know is that she is the sister of an al-Qa’eda member that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met at a Pakistan college, the University of Dawa al Jihad, in the late 1980s.”

The college, referred to as the “Islamic Sandhurst”, is said to have been a breeding ground for terrorists where bomb-making was among the subjects on its unofficial curriculum.

1 comment October 31st, 2007

US: Waterboarding torture, when others use it

Waterboarding is torture, when others use it. Earlier this month the Washington Post reported that in 1947 the US sentenced a Japanese officer to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding an American in WW II. Yet, when American troops used it “fairly common[ly]” during Vietnam, an investigation was opened. There is no report of a trial, conviction, or punishment.

Waterboarding Historically Controversial

In 1947, the U.S. Called It a War Crime; in 1968, It Reportedly Caused an Investigation

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, October 5, 2006

Key senators say Congress has outlawed one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques — “waterboarding,” in which a prisoner feels near drowning. But the White House will not go that far, saying it would be wrong to tell terrorists which practices they might face.

Inside the CIA, waterboarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information — though “not all of it reliable,” a former senior intelligence official said.

Waterboarding is variously characterized as a powerful tool and a symbol of excess in the nation’s fight against terrorists. But just what is waterboarding, and where does it fit in the arsenal of coercive interrogation techniques?

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced “a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.”

The article said the practice was “fairly common” in part because “those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury.”

The picture reportedly led to an Army investigation.

Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,” he said.

A CIA interrogation training manual declassified 12 years ago, “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation — July 1963,” outlined a procedure similar to waterboarding. Subjects were suspended in tanks of water wearing blackout masks that allowed for breathing. Within hours, the subjects felt tension and so-called environmental anxiety. “Providing relief for growing discomfort, the questioner assumes a benevolent role,” the manual states.

The KUBARK manual was the product of more than a decade of research and testing, refining lessons learned from the Korean War, where U.S. airmen were subjected to a new type of “touchless torture” until they confessed to a bogus plan to use biological weapons against the North Koreans.

Used to train new interrogators, the handbook presented “basic information about coercive techniques available for use in the interrogation situation.” When it comes to torture, however, the handbook advised that “the threat to inflict pain . . . can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain.”

In the post-Vietnam period, the Navy SEALs and some Army Special Forces used a form of waterboarding with trainees to prepare them to resist interrogation if captured. The waterboarding proved so successful in breaking their will, says one former Navy captain familiar with the practice, “they stopped using it because it hurt morale.”

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the interrogation world changed. Low-level Taliban and Arab fighters captured in Afghanistan provided little information, the former intelligence official said. When higher-level al-Qaeda operatives were captured, CIA interrogators sought authority to use more coercive methods.

These were cleared not only at the White House but also by the Justice Department and briefed to senior congressional officials, according to a statement released last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Waterboarding was one of the approved techniques.

When questions began to be raised last year about the handling of high-level detainees and Congress passed legislation barring torture, the handful of CIA interrogators and senior officials who authorized their actions became concerned that they might lose government support.

Passage last month of military commissions legislation provided retroactive legal protection to those who carried out waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques.

Add comment October 31st, 2007

Australian Psychological Society takes position on torture

At its September Conference, the Australian Psychological Society debated and passed a resolution on torture. Here is the explanation of its background from APA Executive Director Lyn Littlefield:

New APS declaration condemning the use of torture

The APS Board of Directors has recently passed a resolution declaring the APS’ unequivocal condemnation of the use of torture or other inhumane or degrading procedures in all situations. This resolution was developed in the context of the debate surrounding the invitation of Dr Gerald Koocher as a keynote speaker at the APS National Conference which was held in September this year. Dr Koocher was the President of the American Psychological Association (APA) during a period when the APA was under criticism for its stance on psychologists’ involvement in military and CIA interrogation techniques. When the APS learnt of the controversy, Dr Koocher was invited, in addition to giving a keynote address, to participate in a Public Forum at the APS Conference on ‘Lessons from Guantanamo Bay: Ethical Issues for Psychologists Working in the Military, Intelligence and Detention Facilities’. Dr Koocher willingly participated in the Public Forum, which was very well received and enabled APS members to hear first hand the APA’s position on interrogation and to consider these issues in the Australian context.

Here is the APS Board of Directors statement and the resolution:

25 October 2007

APS Declaration on Torture

The APS Board of Directors passed the following resolution on 24 September 2007:

The Australian Psychological Society, as a member of the International Union of Psychological Science, fully endorses the United Nations Declaration and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1997.

The Australian Psychological Society regards all forms of torture, as defined in Article 1 of the United Nations Declaration and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1997, as breaches of the Society’s Code of Ethics (2003) General Principle III Propriety.

DECLARATION

Psychologists shall at all times comply with the Society’s Code of Ethics.

Psychologists shall not countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures, in any situation, including armed conflict and civil strife.

Psychologists shall not provide any premises, instruments, substances or knowledge to facilitate the practice of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or to diminish the ability of the victim to resist such treatment.

Psychologists shall not be present during any procedure in which torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is used or threatened.

Psychologists must have complete professional independence in deciding upon the care of a person for whom they are responsible.

Add comment October 31st, 2007

Hill & Wilson: Dead bodies don’t count

Arthur Veno from Australia sends this review of a new book disscusing the impact of the Iraq invasion and occupation on Iraqi civilians:

Dead bodies don’t count: Civilian casualties and the forgotten costs of the Iraq Conflict written by Richard Hill and Paul Wilson (Zeus Publications, 2007) is an extraordinary book for many reasons.

It is beautifully written for intelligent audiences and, to date is the only explicated and developed critical analysis of the machinations of the remaining world superpower to justify the holocaust occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and (soon) Iran.

This book pulls no punches and is a gritty and realistic portrayal of events which reveals a disturbing practice – state terrorism. The actions of the neo conservative Christian Right who is in the ‘driving seat’ in the US and its vassals comprising the “coalition of the willing” are shown to be what and who they are. Motivated by both greed and fundamentalist religion, the leaders of the coalition of the willing have utilized their vast publicity machines to insure that the axiom “The first casualty of war is truth” characterizes the current situation.

 Of course, exposing the underbelly of the American Empire’s expansion into the mid East is not a pleasant topic. However, this book remains alongside Pilger’s film work as essential reading for a complete understanding of just how far the Empire is willing to go to profit from war. The book left me feeling angry and deeply concerned about our fellow human beings… for both the line soldiers and civilians.

 It will, no doubt be one of those classic works which spawns and galvanizes a coherent resistance to the ‘dogs of war’. I believe it to be a ‘must read’ for all those who are and will become resisters to war.

 Arthur Veno, Ph.D.   

More information about the book here. Biography and fascinating interview on the nature of evil with author criminologist Paul Wilson here.

Here, after the fold, is the book’s Introduction:

Introduction

The Politics of Death

The terror and ‘collateral damage’ inflicted by governments on civilians leave them just as injured or dead as a terrorist attack would.

Silence plays a key role in the exercise of power. It creates spaces that are occupied by those who seek to assert their views of the world and establish their place in it. Some people therefore possess voices that are powerful and noisy, while others are rendered voiceless, bereft of an opportunity to speak out about their experiences, and seemingly unable to assert their grievances. They become what John Pilger recently referred to as ‘unpeople’—a shadowy population whose identities are stripped away and, in effect, consigned to the distant footnotes of history. This book is about a group of unpeople who have suffered extreme harm and yet received precious little attention from the Western media and virtually none from military or political elites.

The people of Iraq —men, women and children—have experienced considerable pain and suffering over the past few decades. In addition to having endured well over twenty years of brutal dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, they have also borne the brunt of a prolonged and bitter war against Iran, the 1991 Gulf War, several years of UN-imposed sanctions, repeated bombings by US and British forces during the 1990s, and the US-led invasion in 2003 followed by a bloody and protracted period of occupation. Perhaps the most tragic phase of Iraq ’s recent history is this period of occupation because it has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, more often than not at the hands of their own people. A virtual state of civil war has led to unprecedented acts of random killings and tit-for-tat murders in a country torn apart by ethnic and religious rivalry and bloody resistance to military occupation.

What started out in March 2003 as a war of ‘liberation and freedom’ has ended in years of bloodletting, with the prospects for peace and stability becoming increasingly remote. For the people of Iraq , the war and subsequent occupation have resulted in extensive death and injury as well as significant damage and destruction to the environment, economy and society. There is of course nothing new about this—wars and conflicts have always resulted in significant harm to innocent people.

Our primary concern in this book is with the bodily harm as well as the many other personal, social, economic, political and environmental costs of the conflict from March 2003 to late 2006. Additionally, we discuss how the question of civilian casualties has, or has not, been addressed by the instigators of the war, namely the US -led ‘coalition of the willing’. This is a political story about how the world’s leading superpower, along with its acolytes, sought to prosecute a war which many legal experts regarded as both illegal and unjust, and how it proceeded to ignore or play down the issue of civilian casualties. In shrouding this issue in silence the leaders of the coalition were intent, consciously or otherwise, on presenting their role as the benign guardians of Iraqi interests. Yet as is now clear, this sanguine picture has been repeatedly shattered as events have unfolded since March 2003. This apparent tension between image and reality, representation and actuality, is in part a function of war since the victors are almost always able to present a certain sanitised, self-serving view of events.

In attempting to break the official silence over civilian casualties, we are contributing to a view of events that is somewhat at odds with many of the official claims and justifications made by politicians and military leaders. Our aim is to develop a reading of events relating to the second Gulf War that focuses on the lived experiences of ordinary Iraqi people. In so doing we are adding to the growing and important body of literature—much of it written by journalists on the ground in Iraq —that documents some of the realities of war from the perspective of everyday citizens caught up in this calamitous conflict. We also draw on more formal studies of the conflict—usually conducted by non-government organisations, research institutes and centres—that have attempted (bravely at times) to amass evidence on the Iraqi dead and injured. Although our focus is on civilian casualties we do not forget about the thousands of Iraqi, US and other troops who have died or been injured, nor the police officers, security personnel and reconstruction workers who have suffered severely as a result of the ongoing insurgency.

Dead Bodies Don’t Count comprises five chapters, beginning with The Culture of Official Silence that examines the way in which the governments of the ‘coalition of the willing’ have consistently refused to undertake a count of the Iraqi dead and injured. This is followed by a discussion of the term ‘civilian casualties’ and what this means when we take into account the full consequences of war on civilian populations. In Chapter 2, Counting the Casualties, we discuss the specific context of Iraq and summarise findings from key international studies on the nature and extent of casualties that have resulted from the invasion and subsequent occupation. Chapter 3, Beyond the Body Bags, builds on this account by arguing for a more comprehensive view of the harm done to the Iraqi people. Specifically, we examine the personal, social, environmental, economic and political implications of the conflict and what this means for the present and future challenges faced by those caught up in a bloody battle. Chapter 4, Media Spin, Media Silence, discusses the ways in which the US-led coalition has responded, or not, to the question of civilian harm and how they have represented their own position in relation to the conflict. We examine the implications of the official refusal to conduct a body count and how this has given rise to competing explanatory narratives. In the final chapter, Breaking the Silence, we discuss the political implications stemming from public knowledge about the harm experienced by the Iraqi people as a result of the ongoing conflict.

We argue that the resounding silence over Iraqi victims is in fact symptomatic of various exclusionary processes that underscore relationships between the powerful and the subjugated, and that this relationship is characterised by narratives that emphasise one account over others, and which ultimately seek to legitimate the actions of the victor. However, in the case of Iraq the attempt by the powerful to sanitise the war, to render it ‘clean’ and ‘swift’, have gradually crumbled in the face of evidence of widespread atrocities. Such accounts have brought into sharp relief the gulf between official claims and the lived realities of the Iraqi people. In acknowledging the pain and suffering of ordinary Iraqis we insist on the necessity of taking seriously the consequences of war and recognising fully the rights of non-combatants under provisions contained in the Geneva Convention and Hague protocols.

If this book achieves anything, it is to draw greater attention to the central role that international law, conventions and protocols should play in determining relations between countries, especially during times of tension. These legislative measures have been put into place to ensure the protection of various legal and civil rights of innocent people and that capricious decision-making on the part of the victors is kept to a minimum. In challenging the official silence about death and injury, harm and destruction, we wish to highlight the consequences of war including the deaths and injuries suffered by coalition troops since the time of the invasion.

Add comment October 31st, 2007