Psyche, Science, and Society

Lawyer: Gitmo Interrogators Told to Trash Notes
Defense lawyer: US urged interrogators at Gitmo to destroy notes in case they had to testify

By Micheal Melia, The Associated Press

The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.

The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the U.S. deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial.

Kuebler said the apparent destruction of evidence prevents him from challenging the reliability of any alleged confessions. He said he will use the document to seek a dismissal of charges against Khadr.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said he was reviewing the matter Sunday evening.

The “standard operating procedures” manual that contained the purported instructions was made available to Kuebler last week as part of a pretrial review of potential evidence, the Navy lawyer said.

“The mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify, keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimize certain legal issues,” the document is quoted as saying in an affidavit signed by Kuebler.

The document could support challenges by other detainees to suppress confessions at Guantanamo, where the U.S. military says it plans to prosecute as many as 80 of roughly 270 detainees before the first U.S. war-crimes tribunals since World War II.

The case against Khadr, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15, is on track to be one of the first to trial. He faces war-crimes charges including murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier during a 2002 firefight.

Kuebler said the nature of the interrogations is particularly relevant in Khadr’s case because prosecutors are relying on evidence “extracted” from him at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo.

“If handwritten notes were destroyed in accordance with the SOP, the government intentionally deprived Omar’s lawyers of key evidence with which to challenge the reliability of his statements,” Kuebler said in an e-mail to reporters.

The operations manual, which dates to January 2003, was attached to a 2005 report on an investigation into detainee abuse allegations at Guantanamo, Kuebler said. A summary of the findings was released at the time, but the defense lawyer said the section including the manual has not been made available publicly.

The so-called Schmidt-Furlow report documented degrading treatment, including one instance of a top terror suspect forced to dance with another man and behave like a dog. But investigators stopped short of saying torture occurred.

Feds to review if drugs used in interrogations

By Pamela Hess

The Pentagon’s internal watchdog is investigating whether the military forced terror suspects to take mind-altering drugs to ease interrogation.

The CIA is conducting a similar review, said Pentagon’s Assistant Inspector General John C. Crane in a letter to the Senate that was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. The letter bore a stamp dated May 21.

While some former detainees have alleged they were drugged, the issue was raised anew with the release in April of a five-year old legal memo written by then-Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo.

The March 14, 2003, memo interpreted the long-standing legal prohibition on the use of “mind-altering substances” against prisoners. Yoo wrote it would only be illegal and considered torture if the drugs substantially interfered with prisoners’ cognitive ability or fundamentally altered their personality, and was used with the specific intent to cause such harm.

The Yoo memo caused several senators to insist on a full investigation into whether drugs were used on prisoners in interrogations. The lawmakers included Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, the committee’s top Republican, and Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.

The CIA and Pentagon have both denied using drugs in interrogations.

The CIA studied the use of drugs and chemicals, including LSD, for “unconventional interrogations” nearly 50 years ago, according to a 1975 CIA memorandum for the record that has been declassified.