Psyche, Science, and Society

Gilbert makes Gutemala-CIA link, via US prisoner and other research horrors

Alan Gilbert, at Democratic Individuality, discusses the Guatemalan research abuses and places them in the context of decades of horrific research conducted against unwitting prisoners, depressed housewives, and other “undesireables.” He concludes by relating it to the recent CIA research:

Experimentation on prisoners in America has abated, though, according to Reverby’s interview today, it is still being debated. Nonetheless, psychologists, anthropologists and other professionals have participated in “medicalizing” torture. As opposed to the American Medical and Psychiatric Associations which stood against war crimes, the leadership of the American Psychological Association has participated in certifying “walling” – so that a torturer who throws a prisoner against a wall without maiming her is just doing “kind and usual punishment” – and the like. The CIA has long corrupted medical research, working on sensory deprivation – covering the body in an orange suit, wearing goggles, distorting the senses, getting the prisoner in a diaper on the way to be tortured on Jeppeson airlines in Egypt or Uzbekistan or Guantanamo – to break down the person’s psyche (see Albert W. McCoy, A Question of Torture). Charles Graner, who went to jail for Abu Ghraib, “taking the fall” for the crimes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice inter alia, was a prison guard in America. He learned to put women’s underwear on the heads of naked men long before he got to Abu Ghraib.

Still, the medical experimentation practiced by government-instigated or sponsored physicians on prisoners in the US and Guatemala, and developed largely on a racist and sexist basis, has been stopped or, to some extent, abated. Now, however, similar procedures are engaged in by officials and doctor/psychologists torturing Arab and Muslim captives. The seemingly consolidated gains of one era have been undercut, in a sharply authoritarian direction, by the Bush-Cheney administation. They have been limited by Obama (as in the case of Hilary Clinton’s apology to the Guatemalan government), but the criminals have also been protected by the Obama administration. Jessica Mitford once quipped, “You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.” But sometimes, real victories can be won after long and difficult struggle. They are always, however, in danger of erosion. This is perhaps the most devastating argument against “reformism.” At the least, the will to fight must be constantly renewed. The American doctors knew they were “not Nazis”; in the absence of movements from below against racism, however, they distinguished – and today distinguish – themselves in the annals of crime.

The whole article, while long, is well worth reading. For long-time activists it will bring back many memories of struggles long past that are, alas, still all too contemporary.

October 5th, 2010

Hornberger: The government hid the Guatemalan abuses like they hide so many other abuses

Jacob Hornberger, at Media With Conscience,  reflects on “state secrets” in light of the new revelations regarding the horrific research the US Public Health Service conducted in Guatemala:

Syphilis Experiments and the State-Secrets Doctrine

By Jacob G. Hornberger

If I had suggested that the U.S. government had probably done syphilis experimentation on people other than the Tuskegee experiments on unsuspecting American black men, American statists would undoubtedly respond, “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory! It is inconceivable that our government would do such a thing.”

What’s interesting about statists, however, is that when it turns out that government officials really did conspire to do horrific things to people, the statists are never surprised.

Sure enough, it turns out that federal officials did conspire to commit syphilis experiments, not just at Tuskegee but also on unsuspecting prisoners in Guatemalan jails.

The experiments took place in 1948 and just came to light, thanks to a researcher who discovered the experiments in notes kept by one of the federal officials involved in the Tuskegee experiment. The Guatemalan experiments have been kept secret until now — some 64 years later, which confirms that federal officials can be very adept at keeping nefarious federal conspiracies secret.

What U.S. officials did was bring prostitutes that they knew were infected by syphilis into Guatemalan jails to infect prisoners, so that U.S. officials would be able to study the effect that antibiotics had on the syphilis.

Some of the prisoners, however, failed to contract syphilis from the prostitutes. No problem. U.S. officials simply used other ways to infect the men, methods that are too gruesome to describe here.

Keep in mind that these medical experiments took place in 1948, about the time that U.S. officials were prosecuting Nazi officials for subjecting human beings to gruesome medical experimentation.

Keep in mind also that this was the period of time when the U.S. welfare state, which had been adopted in the Franklin Roosevelt administration, was being justified under the rubric of loving the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.

Statists would argue that that’s a long time ago and that the malefactors are now dead. Time to move on, they always say.

Of course, if any of the descendants of those Guatemalan men were to retaliate with a terrorist attack against the United States, federal officials would immediately exclaim, “They just hate us for our freedom and values! The fact that we intentionally infected their father or grandfather with syphilis as an experiment has nothing to do with it.”

Meanwhile, today’s statists argue in favor of the “state-secrets doctrine,” claiming that federal officials should have the power to keep all their nefarious deeds in the so-called war on terrorism secret.

Never mind that 64 years from now, when Americans living at that time discover the horrific and gruesome things that CIA and U.S. military officials were doing in the “war on terrorism,” statists at that time will say the same thing: that that’s ancient history and that it’s time to move on.

The state-secrets doctrine needs to be ditched, completely. Nowhere does it appear in the Constitution. Instead, it was created as a judicial doctrine by the Supreme Court several decades ago, in response to a request by federal officials in a civil suit that reached the Court. The nasty little irony is that the case in which the doctrine was created involved, as it was discovered decades later, lies, wrongdoing, and cover-ups by federal officials. In other words, federal officials defrauded the Supreme Court into adopting the state-secrets doctrine.

We can’t do anything for those Guatemalan men and we can’t do anything to the federal officials who conducted those horrific experiments. But we can do our best to ensure that federal officials cease and desist from committing horrific acts against both foreigners and Americans, including torture and abuse of prisoners and detainees.

The best way to do that — indeed, the best way to restore a sense of honor and decency to our nation, not to mention peace, prosperity, security, and harmony — is to dismantle the CIA’s and Pentagon’s overseas military empire, bring all the troops home and discharge them, dismantle the enormous standing army and military-industrial complex, abolish the CIA, and open up all the files on all the nefarious things that the CIA and the military have done to people, from 1948 all the way through the present.

**********

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

October 5th, 2010

Israeli torturer in charge of relations with arab community in Jerusalem

The state of Israeli relations with Israeli Arabs can be seen by the fact that the official liason between the Jerusalem police and the city’s Arab community is the notorious alleged Israeli torturer known as “Captain George,” as Richard Silverstein reported last summer:

In 1994, the IDF kidnapped the alleged chief of security for Amal because he was believed to have held captured IDF Capt. Ran Arad for two years.  They spirited Dirani to Israel for questioning.   He was held for eight years.  Mustafa Dirani afterward alleged that he was continuously tortured for one month by soldiers under the command of a “Captain George.”  (For the life of me I can’t understand why Haaretz can’t fully identify a man who is now nothing but a police officer.  Does his former status as a military intelligence officer confer lifetime anonymity?  Or would revealing his identity reopen the embarrassing story of torture at Camp 1391?)

Here is how the victim described his treatment:

In 2004, he testified in court about being raped with a baton by soldiers under “George’s” command.  Dirani said he was threatened not to reveal what had happened to him, had suffered continuous torture for a month and throughout that period was not allowed any clothes, only adult diapers.

“George” denied Dirani’s claims, except to confirm that one soldier had been sent into the prisoner’s cell wearing only underwear to threaten him with a sexual act. The Military Police investigation did not result in an indictment.

George was a senior office in Unit 504 of IDF military intelligence.  He served at the notorious top-secret military torture facility (Abu Graibh anyone?) called Camp 1391 located near Kibbutz Barkai.  The prison became so notorious that Israel closed it down.  But not before the damage it did to Dirani and countless others.  If you read Hebrew, you can regale yourself with the full panoply of torture techniques used by George and his boys there

Dirani sued Israel for $1.5-million, but subsequently was released and left Israel.   And poor Captain George was sacked.  Unfortunately, the case is now dormant.

But here’s the kicker.  Capt. George left military service and transferred to the Israeli police, where he was just promoted to be the official liaison between the Jerusalem police force and the city’s Arab community.  So get this, an intelligence agent accused of conducting the brutal torture interrogation of an Arab is now performing a job described thus:

“The adviser must be an accepted and welcome figure in the Arab community, with excellent interpersonal skills – someone they feel they can trust, otherwise he cannot succeed in the job,” a senior police officer said.

Given his reputation as a butcher, the police appear highly satisfied with his work so far:

The police said: “There is no link between the previous role held by Major D. ["George"] and his current position. The officer is carrying out his duties to Franco’s satisfaction, and is contributing a great deal to the good relationship between Jerusalem police and the Arabs of East Jerusalem.”

You bet there’s a link.  He was a torturer before and he’ll be a torturer again.

A few days later Silverstein revealed the identity of “Captain George”:

Yesterday, I reported here on a Haaretz story about the notorious “Captain George,” an IDF military intelligence interrogator accused in 2004 of sodomizing a Lebanese kidnap victim in order to secure information about the location of IDF officer, Ron Arad.  Among the things I wrote was my complaint that Haaretz was protecting the real identity of George even though he no longer served in military intelligence.

With the help of a diligent Israeli researcher, I can now expose George’s real identity.  He is Doron Zahavi, currently the Arab affairs liaison for the Jerusalem police. [bold added]

In his current job, “Captain George”/Zahavi is having great success at building relations with the Arab community by reportedly abusing and threatening them, as Haaretz reported:

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said yesterday it complained in February that the adviser, who is known as “Captain George,” threatened and swore at an Arab resident of the city while serving on the police force.

[...]

The alleged incident was said to have arisen at the Wadi Hilweh information center in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The center was established in an effort to block the expansion of the Jewish presence on the eastern side of the city.

In recounting the incident, one of those involved with the center, Jawad Siam, told Haaretz that after the center was established, he was summoned by “Captain George,” who identified himself by his real name.

“He told me that we were causing problems,” Siam said, “and that we have to shut the place down.”

Siam said he responded: “I thought we were in a democracy,” but “Captain George” allegedly said he would issue a demolition order if the center was not closed.

Siam said “George” shouted at him and sent him home with the admonition: “I hope you behave better.” Siam said he was then summoned for two additional conversations with “George.”

Russia Today discusses the appointment of this alleged torturer:

October 5th, 2010