Psyche, Science, and Society

Greenwald: Anti-investigation pundits protecting themselves

Glenn Greenwald explains why so many of the mainstream pundits are dead set against any torture investigation: they know their own culpability will be revealed:

That’s why so many media figures want to Look Forward and Not Backwards — not only because they want to protect high-level political officials who committed felonies and thus preserve America’s two-tiered justice system, but more so, because they know that “looking backwards” would reveal who and what they really are.

Greenwald’s explanation:

Who are Broderian anti-investigation journalists really protecting?

By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)

In one of the most drearily predictable media developments ever, David Broder today — yet again — joins in with an endless string of establishment pundits to demand that there be no investigations by the DOJ of war crimes and other felonies committed by the Bush administration.  The one silver lining from all of this is that it has clarified a crucial political fact:  most establishment “journalists” don’t believe in the rule of law for political elites — period.  They believe high political officials should be able to break the law — commit felonies — and be immunized from legal consequences.  To any reasonable observer, that is simply no longer in doubt.  Opposition to investigations — especially for the real culprits as opposed to low-level interrogators — is as close to a unanimous media view as something can be (though the NYT Editorial Board today, standing virtually alone, calls for full criminal investigations, including of high-level Bush officials).

Broder claims he “agree[s] on the importance of accountability for illegal acts and for serious breaches of trust by government officials — even at the highest levels.”  As examples of this “agreement,” he cites this:  ”I had no problem with the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, and I called for Bill Clinton to resign when he lied to his Cabinet colleagues and to the country during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.”  But he then goes on to boast that he supported Ford’s pardon of Nixon.  He thought the prosecution of Lewis Libby was “silliness.”  He simply believes that “the rule of law” is only for ordinary Americans, not for powerful political officials who commit felonies — and in that, he’s completely typical of the Beltway mindset.  It’s not an accident that he’s the Dean of Washington Journalism; he is a perfect embodiment of that culture.

That media elites — ostensibly devoted to accountability for the powerful — fulfill the exact opposite role by demanding immunity for their lawbreaking is why elite lawlessness is so rampant.  But that’s well-established by now,  so I want to focus on another point raised by this Broderian opposition:   a completely self-serving falsehood that lies at the core of the debate over investigations.  The standard claim made by investigation opponents in the media is that we all know that torture is abhorrent and that what was done is terribly wrong, but that prosecutions would just be too disruptive.  Broder asks:  ”Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock? . . . The cost to the country would simply be too great.”

But it’s simply not true that these journalists vehemently objected to torture as abhorrent but now merely believe prosecutions are an over-reaction.  The reality is that they did not object to the torture regime as it was implemented.  They did the opposite:  they mocked those who objected to it and who tried to stop it as overheated, hysterical, fringe leftists — as Broder did in a November, 2004 Op-Ed, deriding as ”unhinged” those who were arguing “that ‘the forces of darkness’ are taking over the country.”  Identically, here’s what Broder said in an October, 2006 chat when a reader asked him about a New York Times Editorial sounding the alarm about the radicalism of the Bush administration:

Kingston, Ontario: I’m rather surprised by your and your correspondents’ calm tone of voice this morning. Unless the New York Times editorial page is wildly off-track, the U.S. is in the grip of a major constitutional crisis, with the government trying to set aside long established guarantees of legal behavior, both internally and in relation to international law. Where’s the sense of urgency?

David S. Broder: Far be it from me to question the New York Times, but I’d like to assure you that Washington is calm and quiet this morning, and democracy still lives here. Editorial writers sometimes get carried away by their own rhetoric.

That was typical of Beltway media behavior even as revelations of war crimes and high-level lawlesness proliferated:  oh, calm down with your extremist, unhinged rhetoric.  Broder boasts that he called for Clinton’s resignation over a sex scandal and “had no problem with” Nixon’s impeachment over what was, by comparsion to Bush scandals, a relatively minor infraction.  As revelations of torture mounted, did he call for Bush’s impeachment or even resignation?  No.  Like most of his colleagues in the media, he did the opposite:  he dismissed objections to what was happening as hysterical and fringe and insisted that Serious and Good People were in charge.

This is a vital reason — I’d say the central reason — why people like David Broder and his media colleagues don’t want investigations and prosecutions:  because they were complicit in most of it, and such proceedings would implicate them as much as the criminals themselves.   Think about it:  what would happen if Dick Cheney were “in the dock,” if high-level American officials were adjudicated in formal proceedings as war criminals and felons?  The question would naturally arise:  how was that allowed to happen?  What did the American media do about it while it happened?  What was the Dean of the Washington Press Corps saying and doing to stop it and to alert the citizenry as to what was going on?  And the answer, of course, is:  nothing. They supported the war criminals and mocked and demonized those who objected.

That’s why so many media figures want to Look Forward and Not Backwards — not only because they want to protect high-level political officials who committed felonies and thus preserve America’s two-tiered justice system, but more so, because they know that “looking backwards” would reveal who and what they really are.  People who engage in heinous acts always want everyone to look forward and not backwards, for reasons that are as obvious as they are ignoble.  Tom Tomorrow captured this mentality perfectly in a cartoon this weekYesterday, Physicians for Human Rights issued a new report which finds that CIA doctors “came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation” on detainees in U.S. custody, as “doctors actively monitored the CIA’s interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent.”  Human experimentation on helpless detainees. Is it any wonder that the people who are responsible for that and helped to enable it — critically including media stars who waved it all away — don’t want any light shined on what was done?  If you were them, would you?

While all this was occurring, David Broder and most of his media colleagues not only failed to object, but were insisting that nothing extremist, radical or lawless was taking place.  They demonized those who raised the alarm bells and tried to stop it.  Their opposition to investigations is absolutely grounded in their rejection of the rule of law for political elites, but at least as much, it’s a desperate effort to protect themselves and shield themselves from the accountability and shame they so intensely deserve.

UPDATE: Brad DeLong makes the case that David Broder is — how shall we say?  — not telling the truth in today’s column when he claims he “had no problem” with the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

September 3rd, 2009

NYT: Investigate, investigate, investigate

The New York Times editors explain why we need a thorough investigation of US torture. Of course Richard Cheney knows as well what an investigation will turn up; that’s why he’s so opposed:

Dick Cheney’s Version

New York Times Editorial

After the C.I.A. inspector general’s report on prisoner interrogation was released last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney settled into his usual seat on Fox News to express his outrage — not at the illegal and immoral behavior laid out in the report, of course, but at the idea that anyone would object to torturing prisoners. He was especially vexed that the Obama administration was beginning an investigation.

In Mr. Cheney’s view, it is not just those who followed orders and stuck to the interrogation rules set down by President George Bush’s Justice Department who should be sheltered from accountability. He said he also had no problem with those who disobeyed their orders and exceeded the guidelines.

It’s easy to understand Mr. Cheney’s aversion to the investigation that Attorney General Eric Holder ordered last week. On Fox, Mr. Cheney said it was hard to imagine it stopping with the interrogators. He’s right.

The government owes Americans a full investigation into the orders to approve torture, abuse and illegal, secret detention, as well as the twisted legal briefs that justified those policies. Congress and the White House also need to look into illegal wiretapping and the practice of sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured.

Mr. Cheney was at the center of each of these insults to this country’s Constitution, its judicial system and its bedrock democratic values. To defend himself, he offers a twisted version of history:

•

He says Mr. Bush’s Justice Department determined that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” ordered by the president were legal under American law and international treaties like the Geneva Conventions.

In reality, those opinions were based on a corrupt and widely discredited legal analysis cooked up after the White House had already decided to use long-banned practices like waterboarding. Mr. Cheney was an architect of the decision to “get tough” with prisoners, as the bureaucrats often say to soften the outrage of this policy.

•

He insists the inspector general’s findings were “completely reviewed” by the Justice Department and that any follow-up investigation would be improper and unnecessary.

In reality, Mr. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, did not appoint an independent investigator after receiving the inspector general’s report, which was completed in 2004. The Justice Department decided there was only one narrow case worth pursuing, involving a civilian contractor — hardly a surprise from a thoroughly politicized department whose top officials set the very rules they were supposed to be judging. Mr. Gonzales’s team did not look into allegations that some interrogators broke those rules. Mr. Cheney may not care about that, but Mr. Holder rightly does.

•

Mr. Cheney claims that waterboarding and other practices widely considered to be torture or abuse “were absolutely essential” in stopping another terrorist attack on the United States after Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Cheney is right when he says detainees who were subject to torture and abuse gave up valuable information. But the men who did the questioning flatly dispute that it was duress that moved them to do so.

Deuce Martinez, the C.I.A. officer who interrogated Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, engineer of the 9/11 mass murders, said he used traditional interrogation methods, and not the infliction of pain and panic. And, in an article on the Times Op-Ed page, Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who oversaw the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, another high-ranking terrorist, denounced “the false claims” about harsh interrogations. Mr. Soufan said Mr. Zubaydah talked before he was subjected to waterboarding and other abuse. He also said that “using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions.”

Every week, it seems, new disclosures about this sordid history dribble out. This week, Physicians for Human Rights analyzed what the inspector general’s report said about the involvement of C.I.A. physicians and psychiatrists in the abuse of prisoners. It said they not only monitored torture, like waterboarding, but also kept data on the prisoners’ reaction in ways that “may amount to human experimentation.”

Getting at the truth is not going to be easy. The C.I.A. destroyed evidence — videotapes of interrogations — and is now refusing to release its records of the questioning of its prisoners. It also is asking the courts to keep secret the orders Mr. Bush gave authorizing the interrogations, and the original Justice Department memos concluding that they were legal.

Americans need much more than glimpses of the truth. They should not have to decide whether to believe former interrogators, whom they do not know, or Mr. Cheney, who did not hesitate while in office to mislead them when it suited his political aims.

September 3rd, 2009

Democracy Now! on health professionals’ complicity in CIA torture

Democracy Now! had on Steven Reisner today discussing the new Physicians for Human Rights report on health professionals’ involvement in CIA torture. You can watch or listen here [Transcript below]:

Physicians for Human Rights: Doctors’ Role in CIA Waterboarding “May Amount to Human Experimentation”

A new report by Physicians for Human Rights has found that physicians and psychologists played a greater role than previously known in designing, implementing and legitimizing the Bush administration’s torture program. The recently declassified CIA Inspector General’s report detailed how medical professionals collected data on the reaction of prisoners to interrogation methods in order to help the CIA assess and refine the use of waterboarding and other techniques. The group says this “may amount to human experimentation.” [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Dr. Steven Reisner, co-author of the report “Aiding Torture.” He is the adviser on psychological ethics for Physicians for Human Rights. He is an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a clinical assistant professor at NYU.

AMY GOODMAN: A new report by Physicians for Human Rights has found that physicians and psychologists played a greater role than previously known in designing, implementing and legitimizing the Bush administration’s torture program.

A team of doctors analyzed the details of the CIA’s Inspector General report on prisoner interrogation that the Justice Department released last week. Among other revelations, the report detailed how medical professionals collected data on the reaction of prisoners to interrogation methods in order to help the CIA assess and refine the use of waterboarding and other techniques. Physicians for Human Rights found this data collection and analysis, quote, “may amount to human experimentation” and calls for further investigation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The group is calling for health professionals who have violated ethical standards or the law to be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and loss of professional society membership.

Dr. Steven Reisner is the co-author of the report, titled “Aiding Torture.” Dr. Reisner is the adviser on psychological ethics for Physicians for Human Rights. He’s also an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a clinical assistant professor at NYU.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Thank you for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Summarize your findings of that report.

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, what we found is clear evidence of the role of health professionals in every aspect of the Bush administration’s torture program, from devising the program to implementing the program and to monitoring the program in a way attempting to justify it according to the Bush administration Justice Department’s narrow reading of the laws against torture. The Bush administration argued that if it doesn’t cause organ failure or death or prolonged psychological harm, it’s not torture, and therefore health professionals were present at every moment during these torture sessions to ostensibly validate that the prisoner wasn’t about to die or have organ failure.

AMY GOODMAN: Human experimentation?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, what happened is that the Office of Medical Services of the CIA didn’t have any data to go on to assess how dangerous to the life of the prisoner waterboarding actually was. So what they decided to do, according to the report, is to gather data through each session of the waterboarding in order to better assess how you implement waterboarding in the future. So they asked for data on the amount of water that was issued, how frequently the sessions were, whether there was a seal, you know, a nasal seal, making sure the water entered the cavity or didn’t enter the cavity, how many sessions per day, etc., etc. So, gathering of data in order to improve the functioning of a technique seems to us to come very close to, if not crossing the line, of experimentation on prisoners.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And presumably that data was then collected into scientific reports, right, that exist somewhere?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, presumably. We don’t have any documentation of that at this point, but that’s why Physicians for Human Rights is calling for a thorough investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: The eleven techniques, Dr. Reisner?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: The eleven techniques—well, the main thing about that is that we’ve discovered that there were techniques that we didn’t know about before: diapering—

AMY GOODMAN: What’s diapering for?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Diapering is for humiliation. You put a diaper on the detainee, and especially with—they combine that with a purely liquid diet, so that the detainee was likely to lose control of his bowels and experience this terrible regressive humiliation. The aim of all of these techniques primarily was psychological regression.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Reisner, can you put this in the context of what’s happening at the American Psychological Association? I mean, we’ve had you on a number of times. You ran for president of the APA. You didn’t win, though you got the most nominating votes for your candidacy. And you’ve led this movement, along with a few other psychologists, supported by thousands within the APA, to challenge its allowing psychologists to participate in coercive interrogations. You just came out of a meeting in Canada, the APA’s annual meeting. What has come of this movement?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, the protest against the APA’s position has been pretty widespread. And the APA has been claiming that they’re against torture, just like the Bush administration claims that it’s against torture. But when it comes to actually putting teeth into their proposals, into their policy, they have yet to implement their own policy.

We got the—we forwarded a referendum. The APA membership voted overwhelmingly to keep psychologists out of environments that violate Geneva Conventions or the UN Convention Against Torture. That’s APA policy.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, has stated, and wrote a letter to the president of the APA, that Guantanamo still violates the Geneva Conventions and violates the UN Convention Against Torture, but the APA continues to refuse to implement its own referendum policy and ask for the withdrawal of psychologists from that site—at that site and other similar sites.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And have any of the—I assume that the report did not identify any of the medical professionals who participated, but have any of the medical professionals who participated in these programs been identified or come forward at all?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, a number of them have been identified. The two psychologists that created the CIA’s torture program, oversaw it, implemented the waterboarding with a number of high-value detainees, Mitchell and Jessen, these were private contractors who had their own corporation. On the board of that corporation was a former president of the American Psychological Association. The Obama administration has terminated their contract, but so far there have been no ethical investigations. There have been no conclusions drawn for any of the psychologists or health professionals that were involved.

AMY GOODMAN: In your report with Physicians for Human Rights, the group is calling for health professionals who have violated ethical standards or the law to be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and loss of professional society membership. Do you see that happening right now?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: I don’t see it actually yet happening. And we’ve been pushing state licensing boards. We’ve been pushing the professional associations. And the way to really hold the professional associations to their own standards is to see whether they successfully investigate the ethical violations of their members. And so far, they have not.

AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Dr. Steven Reisner, co-author of the report “Aiding Torture,” adviser on psychological ethics for Physicians for Human Rights, an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a clinical assistant professor at New York University.

September 3rd, 2009