Psyche, Science, and Society

Democracy Now! on Dasht-e-Leili massacre

Democracy Now! discusses the Dasht-e-Leili massacre with journalist James Risen and Physicians for Human Rights’ Susannah Sirkin. Somewhat surprisingly, Risen emphasizes several times that investigations should focus only upon Bush administration cover-up, ignoring the possible collusion of the hundreds of US troops reported to be present at the massacre by witnesses. It almost makes me wonder if Risen is concerned that others will succeed where he failed, in elucidating the role of US troops.

I think it’s still—it’s very unclear what US personnel knew at the time. And I think the investigation should focus rather on what happened afterwards in the Bush administration.

If “it’s very unclear what US personnel knew at the time,” why shouldn’t an official investigation find out? I don’t get it.

You can watch, listen, or read here.

July 15th, 2009

Maddow & Wilkerson on CIA assassination program

Rachel Maddow wonders about the mysterious secret CIA program that Vice President Cheney order be kept from Congress. Unlike much of the press, she makes clear that a simple assassination of Al Qaeda leaders program would not outrage Congress like this program has.

She talks to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson to discuss:

[H/t Scott Horton.]

Raw Story has a transcript of two paragraphs:

“We, very early on, after 9/11, at the State Department, learned from our ambassadors in the field that there were teams being dispatched to their cities, to their countries, and these teams were clandestine and essentially aimed at capturing al Qaeda leaders or al Qaeda affiliates and interrogating them,” Wilkerson told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday. “So the fact that it might have gravitated over to the CIA or the CIA might have joined in, which is something that happens a lot these days with Delta Force and other special operators is no surprise to me.

“What I suspect has happened is what began to happen while I was still in the government, and that was we’re killing the wrong people,” Wilkerson added. “And we’re killing the wrong people in the wrong countries. And the countries are finding out about it, or at least there was a suspicion that the countries might find out about it, and so it was shut down. That’s my strong suspicion.”

July 15th, 2009

Letter to Senate on health effects of indefinite detention

The Center for Victims of Torture, the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, and Physicians for Human Rights have sent the following letter to Congress regarding the health effects of indefinite detention:

July 14, 2009

Dear Senator:

We write to you on behalf of the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT), and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) to impress upon you the substantial health concerns regarding indefinite detention. As the Administration and Congress weigh the possibility of institutionalizing indefinite detention for some detainees the severity of the mental health consequences of indefinite detention must be considered.

Our concerns are based on over 20 years of experience evaluating and caring for thousands of torture victims from all over the world. The current debate regarding the sanctioning of indefinite detention has focused on the legal and moral consequences — that such a scheme is unconstitutional and antithetical to American values. While we appreciate these arguments, we believe that policy makers must also examine the serious medical repercussions of such detention – repercussions that indisputably render indefinite detention to be “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment.

Medical knowledge and experience clearly demonstrate that indefinite detention without charge or trial results in harmful mental health consequences including severe depression and anxiety. This is above and beyond the inherent and already quite substantial stressors of incarceration. [1] In particular, the pervasive uncertainty of prolonged detention results in profound feelings of despair, hopelessness, anger and frustration. Vegetative symptoms, sleep difficulties, suicidal thoughts are common. Profound depression and vegetative symptoms result from realizing nothing that individuals do matters and that there is no way to end, foreshorten or even know the duration of their suffering.

Psychological studies have demonstrated that periods of temporal uncertainty create severe anxiety and feelings of helplessness. [2] Furthermore, research on other populations subjected to forms of indefinite detention, including detained asylum seekers in the United States [3] Britain [4] and Australia  [5], and Japanese-Americans [6]  who endured internment during the Second World War also show the severe burden of suffering that this open ended detention causes. Uncertainty in and of itself poses an additional burden of suffering in the context of chronic illnesses. [7]

Health professionals, including PSOT clinicians who have conducted clinical evaluations of current and former Guantanamo detainees, found that these individuals articulate tremendous despair and hopelessness from not knowing the parameters of their imprisonment. A 2008 study [8] conducted by Physicians for Human Rights in which former detainees from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo underwent detailed medical and mental health evaluations found that uncertainty was one of the most stressful factors among detainees ultimately released without ever having been charged. This uncertainty resulted in tremendous anxiety, numbing and disconnecting from feelings of hope. Such individuals see no end in sight and no systemic way of understanding their detention. They stop thinking about the future and become highly numb and detached. Attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees have also articulated these concerns.

We are heartened by the new Administration’s and Congress’ support for a complete prohibition of the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment with respect to prisoners detained by the United States, a prohibition robustly supported by Congress. In light of this framework, it would be incongruous for the Administration and Congress to promote a scheme of detention that induces psychiatric trauma which leaves lasting and severe mental health repercussions. A responsible debate of the prospects of indefinite detention in Congress must include open acknowledgement of the serious medical and health consequences of this scheme of detention in the lives of detainees, and the implications of those consequences under the government’s own prohibition against torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under U.S. law and treaty obligations. Simply stated, if we would not want Americans subjected to indefinite detention, we should not subject others to it.

Sincerely,

Allen S. Keller, M.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine
Director, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture
Director, NYU School of Medicine Center for Health and Human Rights
allen.keller@nyumc.org

Douglas A. Johnson
Executive Director, The Center for Victims of Torture
djohnson@cvt.org

John. C. Bradshaw, J.D.
Washington Director, Physicians for Human Rights
jbradshaw@phrusa.org

Footnotes:

[1] Haney, C. Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment. 2005. ISBN: 1-59147-317-6

[2] Monat A et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 24, No. 2,  237. 1972, 248

[3] Keller A et al.  From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Immigration detention for Asylum Seekers in the U.S. Boston: Physicians for Human Rights, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. June 2003. available at: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-persprison.html

[4] Katy R, Robbins I, Senior V.  Psychological distress amongst Immigration detainees.  British Journal of Clinical Psychology. Vol 48, No. 3. Sept. 2009.  275-286.

[5] Sheikh M. MacIntyre C Perera S. Preventive Detention: The ethical Ground Where Politics and Health Meet. Focus on Asylum Seekers in Australia.  Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.2008. 62 (6) 480-483.

[6] Potts M. Long-Term Effects of Trauma: Post-Traumatic Stress Among Civilian internees of the Japanese During World War II. Journal of Clinical Psychology. Sept. 1994. Vol 50, No. 5. 681.

[7] Reich J, et al. Uncertainly of Illness Relationships with Mental Health and Coping Processes in Fibromyalgia Patients. Journal of Behavioral Medicine. Vol. 29, No. 4,August 2006. 307-310

[8] Hashemian F et al. Broken Laws, Broken Lives. Medical Evidence of Torture by the U.S. Boston: Physicians for Human Rights.  Available at www.brokenlives.info

July 15th, 2009

Horton on Dasht-e-Leili

Scott Horton on the Dasht-e-Leili [also spelled Dasht-i-Leili, as Horton does] massacre. He raises the important question of possible US involvement. He also speculates on a connection to the treatment of John Walker Lindh:

The Ghosts of Dasht-i-Leili

By Scott Horton

Is the Obama Administration turning the corner on investigating the torture question? The evidence is still ambiguous. Obama’s two pit bulls, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, stand firmly in the way. Whether Obama and his attorney general will see their way clear to opt for justice over politics remains a critical test for the first years of their administration.

One of the clouds of shame that hangs over the Bush Administration’s conduct of the “war on terror” relates to events that occurred in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. It was December 2001. The American operations in Afghanistan were coming close to a conclusion in the north. Mazar-i-Sharif, the Afghan city closest to Uzbekistan, had fallen, as had Kunduz, the last stronghold of the Taliban forces in the north. Pakistan’s ISI, with the approval of Vice President Cheney, had gotten a ceasefire so they could evacuate Pakistani advisors from Kunduz–but it turns out that they evacuated hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders instead. The less fortunate, thousands of Taliban and groups aligned with them, were taken prisoner. While prisoners were in the process of being transferred in metal containers, a massacre occurred. Over a period of at least three days up to 3,000 of the prisoners were killed or suffocated to death. It is likely the single gravest war crime involving forces under American guidance in the entire “war on terror.”

The Red Cross, Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and other groups have attempted patiently to reconstruct what happened at Dasht-i-Leili. The scope of the massacre is plain, and there is substantial evidence that after its initial discovery some efforts were undertaken to destroy the physical evidence.

While the Bush Administration held sway, there was a firm refusal on the part of U.S. athorities to look into the massacre. In reviewing the course of the demands for an investigation in a superlative article in the New York Times on Friday, James Risen raised some troubling questions. As he presents the matter, there was an intramural struggle, with the State Department asking questions and the Pentagon eager to quash any inquiry:

The Pentagon, however, showed little interest in the matter. In 2002, Physicians for Human Rights asked Defense Department officials to open an investigation and provide security for its forensics team to conduct a more thorough examination of the gravesite. “We met with blanket denials from the Pentagon,” recalls Jennifer Leaning, a board member with the group. “They said nothing happened.” Pentagon spokesmen have said that the United States Central Command conducted an “informal inquiry,” asking Special Forces personnel members who worked with General Dostum if they knew of a mass killing by his forces. When they said they did not, the inquiry went no further.

This follows the patterns of numerous other Rumsfeld-era Pentagon cover-ups. A nominal inquiry is conducted, designed to find nothing and then used to “seal” the matter.

However, the Risen piece doesn’t ask enough questions. As it presents the matter, it’s plain enough that if war crimes were committed, General Dostum—the Uzbek Northern Alliance commander—was the responsible party. The question is therefore cast as relating to the complexities of the political situation in Afghanistan.

But the bigger and more immediate question from the U.S. perspective goes to the role played by U.S. actors in the massacre. There’s little evidence that links them directly to the killing of prisoners. But how did the United States flex its muscle and influence as the massacre was going on, over a period of at least three days? The Rumsfeld Pentagon would have us believe that General Dostum is some rogue figure, unaccountable and out of control, and that they therefore cannot be blamed for what he did at Dasht-i-Leili. Their claims of lack of control, influence, and even information might turn out to be accurate.

But I doubt it. The fact is that General Dostum was funded, armed, and guided by the United States over a period of many years before the events in the late fall of 2001. And as plans for the war effort in Afghanistan came off the shelf and into implementation, U.S. military “coordination” with Dostum made him look suspiciously like an integrated component of the American command. In Jawbreaker, Gary Bernsten’s account of the Afghanistan operations–in which he played a key role as the CIA’s on-the-ground director—the relationship is portrayed very convincingly. Dostum comes off as a scoundrel and doubledealer, but he’s also clearly our rogue, doing our bidding and taking our directions. In Jane Mayer’s Dark Side, she describes a CIA memorandum to Bush that describes Dostum as being on their payroll and operating under CIA direction.

I have my own first-hand observations on this score. In 1996, I witnessed a group of American military and intelligence liaisons not very covertly entertaining some of Dostum’s senior lieutenants in the lobby of Tashkent’s Intercontinental Hotel. It was a jarring experience, and when I remarked about it to a senior staffer at the embassy, he responded that the U.S. relationship with Dostum “wasn’t much of a secret.” At the time the massacre took place at Dasht-i-Leili, there were certainly 30-40 Americans on the ground and involved in dealings with Dostum. Their role was frankly supervisory. They gave directions and Dostum’s fighters followed.

That’s why the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s claims of non-involvement in the massacre are overblown at a minimum. Another troubling aspect of this development concerns an American witness of the massacre: John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban.” Lindh, an American citizen, was with a Taliban unit that bribed Dostum for a safe conduct out of Kunduz. But in a typical move, Dostum had also sold the unit to the Americans, so he seized them and took them to Dasht-i-Leili rather than allowing them to escape. Lindh was tortured on orders that clearly involved Alberto Gonzales and Donald Rumsfeld. Highly political prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia behaved unconscionably in an effort to demonize Lindh, shut him up, and lock him away. I’m convinced that they did this largely because Lindh had a story to tell that would be damaging to two senior Bush Administration figures (Gonzales and Rumsfeld) and that what he witnessed in the massacre at Dasht-i-Leili would also be threatening. They needed Lindh discredited and silenced. Was their conduct part of an orchestrated effort to obstruct an inquiry into the most serious crime of the “war on terror?” It certainly had nothing to do with justice or law enforcement.

It’s time to pry open the door on this massacre and follow the truth, wherever it takes us. President Obama is to be congratulated for overturning the decision of his political underlings and directing a start to the process.

July 15th, 2009

Ken Pope opposes Nuremberg Defense in American Psychological Association ethics code

Psychologist Ken Pope, a former Chair of the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Committee who resigned his APA membership in protest of association policy, has written a comment on the current Ethics Committee’s recommendation to retain the Nuremberg Defense ["just following orders"; ethics code standard 1.02] in the ethics code.After four years of review of the inclusion of this defense in the code the Ethics Committee has decided that they need some time to think about the issue.

For further background, one should also read the paper Pope  wrote with psychiatrist Tom Gutheil: Psychologists Abandon the Nuremberg Ethic: Concerns for Detainee Interrogations.

The take home quote from this statement:

Nuremberg’s message of inescapable ethical responsibility and
accountability came at an unfathomable price.  It should never be set
aside and forgotten, especially in a profession’s formal statement of
its ethical values.

The entire statement:

In 2002, APA changed its ethics code’s enforceable standard regarding
irreconcilable conflicts between psychologists’ “ethical
responsibilities” and “the law, regulations, or other governing legal
authority.”

The new standard 1.02 — “If the conflict is unresolvable via such
means, psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law,
regulations, or other governing legal authority” — opposes the
Nuremberg ethic that one cannot evade ethical responsibilities by “just
following the law,” “just following orders,” “just following
regulations,” etc.

The relation of 1.02 to torture was only one aspect of the controversy
(e.g., why APA believed it necessary to make this exemption from ethical
responsibilities an enforceable standard in its ethic’s code but
declined to allow any of its statements about torture to be made a part
of the code, and how this discrepancy might legally or practically
affect which takes precedence).

However, 1.02 allows psychologists to set aside a much larger range of
“ethical responsibilities” that do not involve torture.

One area of ethical responsibilities that do not involve torture but are
covered by the 1.02 exemption includes the responsibility to avoid the
vast set of behaviors often termed “cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment or punishment,” which human rights documents distinguish from
torture.

A second area of ethical responsibilities distinct from torture but
covered by 1.02 involves what the ethics code identifies as unfair
discrimination and other concepts associated with civil rights or fair
and just treatment

A third area covered by 1.02 but distinct from torture involves such
diverse activities as using the therapy relationship as pretense to
obtain information from or about those held in prisons, jails, holding
cells, detention centers, or other institutions; using soldiers or
civilians as human subjects without their knowledge or informed consent;
and other activities that might be undertaken in service of national
security, intelligence, or defense agencies, or under the auspices of
national, state, or local law enforcement, correctional, judicial, or
other governmental authorities.

These are but three of the areas of ethical responsibilities covered by
1.02 but not involving torture.

Having invited comments from APA members earlier this year and having
received a total of 81 comments, the Ethics Committee has recommended
that the wording of 1.02 not be changed at present and that any
potential change be deferred until the next full revision of the code.

Section 1.02 as currently written has undoubtedly gained increasing
acceptance during the last 7 years under APA’s leadership and
influence.  It became law as APA’s ethics code was adopted in many
states, and continues to be widely promoted and taught.

However, it is worth noting that some medical organizations have
continued their leadership in the opposite direction, reminding their
members and the world of the moral necessity of Nuremberg’s fundamental ethic.

For example, the World Medical Association issued a public statement
emphasizing this inescapable responsibility: “At Nuremberg in 1947,
accused physicians tried to defend themselves with the excuse that they
were only following the law and commands from their superiors…. [T]he
court announced that a physician could not deviate from his ethical
obligations even if legislation demands otherwise.”

Nuremberg’s message of inescapable ethical responsibility and
accountability came at an unfathomable price.  It should never be set
aside and forgotten, especially in a profession’s formal statement of
its ethical values.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE to any lists or individuals who are
interested in these issues.

Ken Pope

July 15th, 2009