In New York Assemblymember Richard N. Gottfried is sponsoring a bill to prohibit state licensed health providers from aiding torture or participating in interrogations. As Gottfried explains:
“Under the bill, health care professionals would be required to provide proper care and treatment to prisoners as best they can under the circumstances. Any evaluation or treatment they provide must be in the interest of the prisoner. Military or other governmental orders would not shield a person from the loss of their professional license in New York.” [emphasis added.]
The passage of this bill would constitute an enormous step toward restoring the health professions to their proper role of promoting human welfare.
Here is a Press Release from Assemblymember Gottfried about the bill:News from
Assemblymember
Richard N. Gottfried
75th Assembly District
Anti-Torture Bill Moves in Albany
June 10, 2008
Physicians and other health care professionals licensed by New York would be prohibited from participating in torture or improper treatment of a prisoner under a bill approved unanimously by the Assembly Higher Education Committee today.
“It is shocking that our government engages in torture and improper treatment of prisoners,” said the bill’s author, Assembly Health Committee chair Richard N. Gottfried. “It is even more shocking to see reports that physicians and other health care professionals are cooperating in it.”
In February 2008, the Washington Post reported on U.S. Attorney General Robert Mukasey’s argument that waterboarding was not torture because it was monitored and limited by someone with medical training. In 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine reported on violations of medical ethics against medical personnel at Guantanamo Bay for sharing prisoner’s health information with interrogators.
The bill has 27 co-sponsors in both parties and is the first of its kind in the nation, Gottfried said.
“It is never justifiable to torture another human being. It is wrong for a health care professional to use his or her education and training to participate in or facilitate torture or improper treatment of a prisoner,” said Gottfried. “I don’t think any New York patient would want to be treated by a health care professional who would do that to another human being.”
The bill would apply to conduct by any New York-licensed health care professional wherever it happens, and regardless of whether it is committed in connection with any government. The bill would follow international treaties and standards and professional standards by establishing the proper conduct of health care professionals in relation to the treatment of prisoners, Gottfried said.
“New York law ordinarily cannot reach beyond our borders, but the state can limit the professional behavior of a person to whom it grants a license,” Gottfried said. “We often revoke a license for out-of-state misconduct.”
Under the bill, health care professionals would be required to provide proper care and treatment to prisoners as best they can under the circumstances. Any evaluation or treatment they provide must be in the interest of the prisoner. Military or other governmental orders would not shield a person from the loss of their professional license in New York.
The bill is based on the UN Convention Against Torture, adopted in 1982, and the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo, adopted in 1975.
If the bill (A.9891) is approved by the Higher Education Committee, which has jurisdiction over professional licensure, it will go to the Assembly Codes Committee, which will review the penalty provisions of the bill.
Prohibiting health professionals from cooperating with torture is advocated by the UN General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Social Workers, among others. The bill was developed with the assistance of Physicians for Human Rights, and the New York Campaign Against Torture.
New York readers, please lobby your Assembly members to support this bill!
June 20th, 2008
Yesterday the Senate Armed Services Committee [SASC] conducted its hearings on the origins of torture practices at Guantanamo. the hearings revealed an organized campaign to apply the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape [SERE] tactics to GTMO detainees. Perhaps the best account of the hearings is by Spencer Ackerman in the Washington Independent.
In addition to the hearings SASC released a 63 page set of documents. While some of these had been publicly available for years, others were new. Yesterday’s testimony, and these documents, confirm once ad for all that the US torture policies were modeled on SERE tactics, as many of us have been arguing for years. And at the core of SERE are psychologists. The testimony and documents also established once and for all the centrality of psychologists in the development of the US torture regime. In fact, one of yesterday’s witnesses was a SERE psychologist.
The charade of the American Psychological Association [APA], pretending that psychologists were preventing abuse, not designing and promoting it, is collapsing. Any APA official who continues that line is an apologist for US torture plain and simple. The evidence that psychologists were central participants in designing, implementing, standardizing, and training US torture is now clear and incontrovertible.
As Gen. Taguba wrote in his preface to the new Physicians for Human Rights report — Broken Laws: Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact:
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The General also says, apropos psychologists and other health providers:
[T]he healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
It is now time for APA leaders to acknowledge that their members have been complicit in the “willful infliction of harm” and to put a stop to it.
This morning, Phillip Carter blogs at the Washington Post on some of the contents of these documents:
The Genesis of Torture
By Phillip Carter
Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a 63-page set of documents that illuminates how the Pentagon developed, selected and approved its list of coercive interrogation techniques for Guantanamo Bay.
As Joby Warrick reports in today’s Post, the documents clarify the role that the CIA (and senior government officials such as DoD General Counsel William “Jim” Haynes) played. “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong,” CIA lawyer Jonathan Friedman proclaimed in a working group meeting that led to the development of this DoD memo on approved interrogation techniques.
Even more significant, the documents show how the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (”JPRA”) helped develop interrogation techniques, borrowing extensively from the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (”SERE”) courses. (Mark Benjamin provides a detailed timeline in Salon for precisely how this unfolded.) These techniques — which include waterboarding, confinement to small boxes, and stress positions, among others — were developed to mimic the interrogation practices of our worst enemies, such as the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese. It speaks volumes that they were adopted by the U.S. at Gitmo.
Some of the things that struck me while reading the documents last night:
Tabs 2 and 3 confirm Jane Mayer’s reporting on the use of SERE practices as an interrogation template — both at Gitmo and elsewhere by the CIA. There wasn’t a lot of hard evidence to support this narrative though, and many chalked up the similarities between the Gitmo and SERE techniques to coincidence or chance. For instance, in Philippe Sands’s new book, retired JAG officer Diane Beaver and retired Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey recount a somewhat hazy process by which tactics made their way into memo form. Both hint that personnel from the CIA and other agencies were placed at Gitmo to seed ideas. The memos released yesterday, however, indicate that there was a much more deliberate effort to share the SERE/JPRA community’s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs in military parlance) with the interrogation community at Gitmo. (Tab 16 shows this link too.)
Tab 4 discusses the military’s psychological assessment of personnel during SERE training. Taken by itself, this is a sign that the military cares about its personnel and wants to avoid “crushing the spirit of the students.” But in the interrogation context, this memo reads uncomfortably like Mengele or Cold War-era research on torture.
In the October 2002 meeting described in Tab 7, FBI agents report talk of “wet towel” treatment during interrogations, despite the fact that waterboarding was explicitly not authorized by Haynes and Rumsfeld at that point. So it appears that DoD personnel at Gitmo took the initiative to use SERE techniques before they were approved by higher HQ. These meeting notes also confirm the presence and role of CIA personnel. And they strongly suggest that the Justice Department memoranda authored in Washington — but previously thought to have not reached Gitmo — were probably shared with Gitmo lawyers and intelligence personnel in some manner. This connects those memoranda with the one that then-Lt. Col. Beaver authored, which ultimately made its way to Rumsfeld’s desk in December 2002.
Tab 19 further documents the relationship between SERE training and the interrogation practices at Gitmo. But at some point, probably around the time of Abu Ghraib and the post-scandal investigations of all Defense Department detention and interrogation operations, there comes a break. Tab 24 contains a memo by the head of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency that comes pretty darn close to refusing any future orders to participate in interrogations. The uniformed military seems to be trying to correct its course. But by that point, three years had passed and it may have been too late to undo the damage wrought by the Pentagon’s torture policies.
McClatchy Newspapers published extracts of these documents:
‘If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong’
Following are excerpts from some of the documents released today by the Senate Armed Services Committee:
“The CIA is not held to the same rules as the military. In the past when the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD has ‘moved’ them away from the attention of the ICRC. Upon questioning from the ICRC about their whereabouts, the DOD’s response has repeatedly been that the detainee merited no status under the Geneva Convention. The CIA has employed aggressive techniques on less than a handful of suspects since 9/11.
“Under the Torture Convention, torture has been prohibited by international law, but the language of the statutes is written vaguely. Severe mental and physical pain is prohibited. The mental part if explained as poorly as the physical. Severe physical pain described as anything causing permanent damage to major organs or body parts. Mental torture described as anything leading to permanent, profound damage to the senses or personality. It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong.
” . . . Any of these techniques that lie on the harshest end of the spectrum must be performed by a highly trained individual. Medical personnel should be present to treat any possible accidents. . . . When the CIA has wanted to use more aggressive techniques in the past, the FBI has pulled their personnel from the theatre.
” . . . if someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental. Everything must be approved and documented.”
_ Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel, CIA Counter-terrorism Center, according to the minutes of an Oct. 2, 2002, Counter Resistance Strategy Meeting.
“This looks like the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of. Quotes from LTC (lieutenant colonel) Beaver regarding things that are not being reported gives the appearance of impropriety. Other comments like ‘It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong’ and ‘Any of the techniques that lie on the harshest end of the spectrum must be performed by a highly trained individual. Medical personnel should be present to treat any possible accidents’ seem to stretch beyond the bounds of legal propriety. . . . Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this.”
_ e-mail from Mark Fallon, deputy commander, Defense Department Criminal Investigation Task Force to five other DOD officials, Oct. 28, 2002.
“I am forwarding Joint Task Force 170’s proposed counter-resistance technologies. I believe the first two categories of techniques are legal and humane. I am uncertain whether all the techniques in the third category are legal under US law, given the absence of judicial interpretation of the US torture statute. I am particularly troubled by the use of implied or expressed threats of death of the detainee or his family. However, I desire to have as many options as possible at my disposal and therefore request that the Department of Defense and Department of Justice lawyers review the third category of techniques.”
_ Gen. James T. Hill, USA, Commander, U.S. Southern Command, in a memo to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Oct. 25, 2002.
“The Air Force has serious concerns regarding the legality of many of the proposed techniques, particularly under Category III. Some of these techniques could be construed as ‘torture,’ as that crime is defined by 18 U.S.C. 2340.
” . . . Implementation of these techniques could preclude the ability to prosecute the individuals interrogated. Successful prosecutions in military commissions or subsequent use of detainee statements in Federal prosecutions will require that the evidence obtained be admissible.
” . . . The Level III techniques will almost certainly result in any statements being declared as coerced and involuntary, and therefore inadmissible. Such a finding may also exclude any evidence derived from the coerced statement. . . . Additionally, the techniques described may be subject to challenge as failing to meet the requirements outlined in the military order to treat detainees humanely and to provide them with adequate food, water, shelter and medical treatment. Defense counsel will undoubtedly argue that any evidence derived by the prosecution must be excluded because the Government did not abide by its own rules.”
_ Col. Donald E. Richburg, USAF, in a memo to the United Nations and Multilateral Affairs Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nov. 4, 2002
“The suggested Tier III and certain Tier II techniques may subject service members to punitive articles of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice).
” . . . any information derived from the aggressive techniques, although admissible, will be of diminished value during any subsequent proceedings. The taint concerning the diminished weight accorded the statements would apply not only to the detainee making the statements, but also against those individuals about whom the detainee has provided incriminating information.
” . . . One detainee subjected to these techniques could taint the voluntary nature of all other confessions and information derived from detainees not subjected o the aggressive techniques.”
_ Maj. Sam W. McCahon, Chief Legal Advisor, Department of Defense Criminal Investigation Task Force, in a memo to the commander of the CITF, Nov. 4, 2002
“As set forth in the enclosed memoranda, the Army interposes significant legal, policy and practical concerns regarding most of the Category II and all of the Category III techniques proposed.
” . . . From a policy standpoint, employing many of the suggested techniques would create a PA (public affairs) nightmare. The War on Terror is expected to last many years and ultimate success requires strong domestic and international support. Whatever interrogation techniques we adopt will eventually become public knowledge. If we mistreat detainees, we will quickly lose the morale (cq) high ground and public support will erode.”
_ Memo from John Ley to the Office of the Army General Counsel, undated
“Navy staff recommends, however, that more detailed interagency policy review be conducted on proposed techniques. Such policy review should address the possibility, if not the likelihood, that techniques will be inadvertently disclosed through the visits to the detainees in Cuba by the International Red Cross or foreign government delegations, which could lead to international scrutiny. Navy staff also recommends that the classification level of counter-resistance techniques be increased to the Top Secret level.”
_ Memo from Capt. D.D. Thompson, USN, special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations for Joint Chiefs of Staff matters, to the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate of the Joint Staff.
“I have discussed this with the Deputy (Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz), (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy) Doug Feith and (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Gen. (Richard) Myers. I believe that all concur in my recommendation that, as a matter of policy, you authorize the Commander of USSOUTHCOM to employ, at his discretion, only Categories I and II and the fourth technique listed in Category III (’Use of mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing’).
” . . . While all Category III techniques may be legally available, we believe that, as a matter of policy, a blanket approval of Category III techniques is not warranted at this time. Our Armed Forces are trained to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.”
_ Memo to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld from William J. Haynes II, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Nov. 27, 2002. Rumsfeld, who used a stand-up desk in this Pentagon office, approved the recommendation, but wrote at the bottom:
“However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”
“LEA (law enforcement agency) does not believe that coercive interrogation techniques are effective. However, on those rare occasions when these techniques have yielded results, the reliability of the information gathered has proven to be highly questionable. Detainees who are coerced into making admissions often develop strong feelings of anger and resentment toward their interrogators. Instead of creating an environment conducive to fostering continued cooperation, the interrogation process ends up fueling hostility and strengthening a detainee’s will to resist.
“A recovered Al Qaeda training manual instructs its members to expect Americans to use coercive interrogation tactics, even torture, to elicit information. The manual draws attention to these techniques and characterizes them as further proof of the evil and unjust acts which Americans commit against Muslims. Thus, the use of coercive techniques only serves to reinforce these erroneous perceptions. In essence, we end up proving ourselves worthy of the detainees’ righteous resolve and inspiring continued resistance.
“Despite the advice of LEA behavioral experts who have consistently advocated the use of a rapport-based approach, there seems to be a tendency to revert to a shortsighted coercive model of interrogation.”
_ Memo from Timothy C. James, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Investigation Task Force, Guantanamo, to Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, Dec. 17, 2002.
June 18th, 2008
Physicians for Human Rights has just released an extremely important new report — Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact — involving extensive medical and psychological examinations of 11 detainees released from US detention facilities in Iraq and at Guantanamo. The report provides a detailed account of the brutality involved throughout the US detention system in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at Guantanamo.
These detainees were all brutally beaten and humiliated. All subjected to isolation. Several were sodomized while others were subjected to electric shocks. All the other “techniques” from the panoply of US torture techniques are represented here, including sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; being subjected to loud noise; and “stress positions,” including being suspended from the ceiling.
The report provides both medical evidence supporting torture claims, and evidence of the severe long-term effects of the abuse. The medical and psychological examinations in most cases substantiated detainees’ claims of abuse. Where the medical evidence was equivocal, it was largely due to types of injuries, e.g., soft tissue injuries, that would have healed in the meantime.
The report also provides abundant documentation of the extent of medical and psychological complicity with the torture. In no case did medical personnel report abuse. In many cases they patched up detainees to facilitate additional torture:
“[W]hen the doctor had finished treating him, “I heard the doctor say ‘continue’ (to the interrogators)”, p. 21.
The cases where medical personnel were “helpful” are just as disturbing:
““[The doctor] helped me … he told the soldiers, ‘If you go on torturing him in this way, he will die’,” p. 85.
Not surprisingly, detainees did not report psychologists consulting in interrogations (SOP called for these psychologists to not identify themselves, an interesting ethical issue in itself). But treatment psychologists were perceived to be collaborating with interrogators:
“Haydar indicated, however, that he suspected the psychologists shared information with the soldiers,” p. 48.
And:
“While in Camp Delta, Youssef asked to speak with a psychologist because he was distressed, and the two spoke about him missing his family and his feelings of sadness. Although Youssef believed the meeting was confidential, he stated that shortly after the psychologist left, he was brought to an interrogator who immediately brought up information connected to his disclosures, such as telling him that he was going to stay at Guantánamo for the rest of his life and discussing his family (“Don’t you want to leave this place and get back together with your family?”…If you do as we tell you, you can get back to your family.”). He stated, “I figured out the reason they had called me for the interrogation was because the psychologist had told them about the meeting.” He stated, “They were stressing these fears very much.” Following this interrogation, Youssef reported that he was moved to the “worst” section in Camp Delta, where he was not allowed to have a blanket or a mattress,” p. 58
After the publication of this report, any claim that psychologists helped keep detentions or interrogations “safe or ethical” are completely unsupportable. Psychologists, and indeed, all medical personnel, regardless of their personal characteristics, were simply part of the apparatus of abuse. As Maj. Gen. Taguba — who was driven out of the military because of his Abu Ghraib investigation– states in his preface:
“And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.”
If we do not stop this complicity, we thereby ourselves become complicit. After this report, we can no longer say “We didn’t know. We thought they were helping.”
Below are two PHR Press Releases and the Preface by Gen. Taguba.
Medical Evidence Supports Detainees’ Accounts of Torture in US Custody
Cambridge, Mass. (PRWEB) June 18, 2008 — Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has published a landmark report documenting medical evidence of torture and ill-treatment inflicted on 11 men detained at US facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, who were never charged with any crime. The physical and psychological evaluation of the detainees and documentation of the crimes are based on internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims. The report also details the severe physical and psychological pain and long-term disability that has resulted from abusive and unlawful US interrogation practices.
“Rigorous clinical evaluations confirm the enormous and enduring toll of agony and anguish inflicted for months by US personnel on eleven men who were detained without any charge or explanation,” stated PHR President Leonard Rubenstein. “Their first-hand accounts, now confirmed by medical and psychological examinations, take us behind the photographs to write a missing chapter of America’s descent into the shameful practice and official policy of systematic torture.”
Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact documents practices used to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end. These practices included, but were not limited to:
- Suspensions and other stress positions;
- Routine isolation;
- Sleep deprivation combined with sensory bombardment and temperature extremes;
- Sexual humiliation and forced nakedness;
- Sodomy;
- Beatings;
- Denial of medical care;
- Electric shock;
- Involuntary medication; and
- Threats to their lives and families.
In the foreword to the report, Maj. General Antonio Taguba (USA-Ret.), who led the U.S. Army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal, wrote: “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
“Ending the use of torture, while essential, is not enough. The United States government must make this right. Those responsible for these abuses must help heal the grievous harm inflicted in our name,” said PHR CEO Frank Donaghue. “PHR is calling for full investigation, accountability, an official apology, and reparations, including medical and psychological treatment for the survivors.”
And:
US Torture of Detainees Caused Severe Pain, Long-Term Suffering
Cambridge, Mass. (PRWEB) June 18, 2008 - A team of doctors and psychologists convened by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) to conduct intensive clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees held in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay has found that these men suffered torture and ill-treatment by US personnel, which resulted in severe pain and long-term disability. The men were ultimately released from US custody without charge or explanation.
“The horrific consequences of US detention and interrogation policy are indelibly written on the bodies and minds of the former detainees in scars, debilitating injuries, humiliating memories and haunting nightmares,” states Dr. Allen Keller, Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture and a contributor to PHR’s report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact. “Physical and psychological evidence clearly supports the detainees’ first-hand accounts of cruelty, inhuman treatment, degradation, and torture.”
“The poignant case studies focus on the profound and lasting consequences of cruelty at the hands of US personnel,” said Farnoosh Hashemian, MPH, PHR Research Associate and lead author of the report. “The detainees suffer permanent hearing loss, persistent and debilitating pain in limbs and joints, major depressive disorder, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks.”
One Iraqi detainee, Laith, recounted that during his initial detention in an unknown prison, he was brutally beaten and kicked until he lost consciousness. In Abu Ghraib, he was kept naked for almost a month in a variety of stress positions in isolation in a small, dark cell wearing soiled underwear and was subjected to lengthy interrogations.
On one occasion he was brought to see his brother who was bleeding, naked, and humiliated. The most painful experience for Laith was the threat of rape of his mother and sisters: “They were saying, ‘you will hear your mothers and sisters when we are raping them [here].’”
These men also continue to endure profound disruptions in their social and family lives. Many live with an abiding sense of shame caused by the loss of their ability to protect and provide for their families. And several men told medical evaluators of their desire to relocate, stemming from their loss of a sense of safety, since they had been arrested without charge or to avoid the frequent reminders of their harrowing detention experiences.
The report calls for full investigation and remedies, including accountability for war crimes, and reparation, such as compensation, medical care and psycho-social services.
Here is the preface :
Preface
by General AntonioTaguba [Ret]
This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.
The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full-scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted —both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.
But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.
And so do the American people.
Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.)
Maj. General Taguba led the US Army’s official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in May, 2004.
Go download and read the report here.
June 18th, 2008
Bryant Welch, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who played pivotal roles in the history of American psychology, has a new book — State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind – trying to explain the psychological origins of our country’s current predicament. Some of you may recall that Bryant Welch was the founder of the American Psychological Association’s Practice Directorate and its director for 10 years. He also played a pivotal role in the lawsuit in which psychologists sued and defeated the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations over their restrictive practices keeping psychologists and social workers out from training and membership in their institutes.
Bryant send me this book announcement. I haven’t had time to read the book yet, but am looking forward to the opportunity. I’m sure it will be more than worthwhile.
Book Description: State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind
Finally, the answer to the many questions that have been preying on the minds of millions of Americans has arrived. Why are Americans so vulnerable to divisive political tactics? Why did Americans get dragged into such an unwise war in Iraq? Why do fundamentalist religious groups, Fox News, and right- wing radio still play such influential roles in America’s political landscape? And why are long-accepted rational scientific ideas like evolution under siege?
These questions hold America’s future in the balance. Ultimately, they are questions about the American mind. Psychologist-attorney Dr. Bryant Welch has the answers.
If America is going to change the mind-set that led us to war in Iraq and left us unable to confront our serious national problems, this book is vitally important. Drawing on his unique experience both as a clinical psychologist and a Washington, D.C., political figure with the American Psychological Association, Dr. Welch shows how the long-term effects of sophisticated new forms of political manipulation have not only led to our debacle in Iraq but are also currently undercutting America’s ability to address its very serious problems.
In the 1944 movie Gaslight, a husband drives his wife to the brink of insanity by playing games with her sense of reality. Just as in the movie, America’s most recent political “gaslighters,” such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and many religious leaders, have generated and exploited confusion in the minds of countless Americans.
Gaslighters prey on their victim’s vulnerability to paranoia, sexual perplexity, and envy to undermine the mind’s ability to function rationally. Welch examines why millions of Americans, in response to such assaults, subconsciously and dangerously create their own simplistic reality, even if it is completely different from the more complex reality of the world.
Most important, State of Confusion explains how and why Americans must act now to fight back against this harmful manipulation before it’s too late. Dr. Welch’s exploration of the American mind is both fascinating and frightening, and State of Confusion is a must- read for everyone who cares about the future of this great country.
Advance Praise for State of Confusion
“Bryant Welch makes a fascinating and compelling case that right-wing politics has subverted our democracy by infecting us with a form of national political neurosis. This book unmasks the politics of fear—the deeper chords touched by campaigns that appeal to the dark side.”—Robert Shrum, senior strategist of the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns and author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner
“Bryant Welch was born to write this vitally important and highly readable investigation of how a cadre of ethically challenged political operatives and their religious and journalistic allies have gradually distorted and disabled the minds of ordinary Americans-and have all but crippled the once- extraordinary mind of America. It is not too late for us to reclaim our identity, but we will succeed only if we take to heart the lessons so lucidly laid bare by the remarkable work of this insightful psychologist and experienced political activist.”—Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School
“State of Confusion is intense, clear, logical, and striking in its message. It will grab you emotionally and intellectually, the message cannot be missed, Bryant Welch sees through the smoke and mirrors and offers the only remedy that will place democracy firmly in the grip of the people from whom it is being stolen: the truth.” —Dr. Harold I. Eist, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry, George Washington University, and former president of the American Psychiatric Association
“Dr. Welch is a master of making complex psychological concepts understandable and using them to explain the disturbing political climate of our time. This beautifully written, urgently relevant work should be on the bookshelf of everyone who cares about the survival of American democracy.”—Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., president of the Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, and professor, Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
“[State of Confusion] is a unique and successful effort to understand the machinations of politicians and others who have significant influence on others. With professional credentials in both law and psychology, Dr. Bryant Welch is ideally suited to raise the issues - fascinating reading.” —-Lewis P. Lipsitt, Ph.D., professor of psychology, emeritus, Brown University
June 16th, 2008
Are we to have accountability for torture at last? two new developments give hope that an accountability moment may yet occur.
Rendition Investigation Reopened
In the first development, the Homeland Security Inspector General told Congress he is reopening an investigation into the “extraordinary rendition” of Canadian Maher Arar. Arar, as you may recall, was arrested as he was switching planes en route home from vacation in Switzerland and sent to be tortured in Syria. For the first time a US official admitted that there is evidence that Arar was sent to Syria because it was expected that he would be tortured there.
Skinner’s testimony said officials “concluded that Arar was entitled to protection from torture and that returning him to Syria would more likely than not result in his torture.”
The Canadian government acknowledged error, apologized to Arar, and issued reparations. The US government refused to allow him to enter the country to give Congressional testimony.
More information on the Arar case and the IG investigation can be obtained from Scott Horton’s posting, which includes his testimony to Congress this week. As Horton summed up his view of the hearings:
The hearing revealed some remarkable facts. First, that Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson made a key finding that facilitated Arar’s shipment to Syria (a determination that it was against U.S. interests for him to be returned to Canada). Second, that the INS had determined that Arar would more likely than not be tortured if he was returned to Syria. Third, that his shipment to Syria, overriding normal procedures, occurred after tremendous pressure had been brought to bear from the office of the Deputy Attorney General.
The hearing was remarkable in that, although pretty harsh criticism was doled out by Committee members and myself, IGs Skinner and Ervin largely agreed that the criticism was well-founded, that the conduct involved was inexplicable or inexcusable, and that a further investigation was necessary.
Even more amazingly, the entire panel of speakers (including the two IGs) agreed that it would be appropriate for a criminal investigation to be commenced looking into violations of the anti-torture statute by those involved in the case, particularly figures in the Deputy Attorney General’s office.
Congress Members Urge Special Counsel
In the other development, nearly 60 members of Congress have written the Attorney General (aka, Director of Torture Cover-up), requesting that a Special Counsel be appointed to investigate Bush administration involvement in torture. [The letter to Mukasey can be read here.]
In a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, the lawmakers cited what they said is “mounting evidence” that senior officials personally sanctioned the use of waterboarding and other aggressive tactics against detainees in U.S.-run prisons overseas. An independent investigation is needed to determine whether such actions violated U.S or international law, the letter stated.
Apparently referring to a recent ABC News report that US torture was micromanaged out of the White House by the so-called Principals Committee — which included Vice President Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Attorney General John Ashcroft – with President Bush’s knowledge and approval:
[W]ithin the last month additional information has surfaced that suggests the fact that not only did top Administration officials meet in the White House and approve the use of enhanced techniques including waterboarding against detainees, but that President Bush was aware of, and approved of the meetings taking place.
They go on to summarize the implications of the revelations of White house micromanaging of torture:
“This information indicates that the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law,” it said. The letter was signed by 56 House Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and House Intelligence Committee members Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y).
As Rep. John Conyers explained:
“We need an impartial criminal investigation,” said Conyers, who called the detainee controversy “a truly shameful episode” in U.S. history. “Because these apparent ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were used under cover of Justice Department legal opinions, the need for an outside special prosecutor is obvious.”
Fiven the determination of Attorney general Mukasey to carry out his primary duty of protecting the torturers, there is little chance the recommendation in this letter will be acted upon during this administration. When a new administration takes power on January 20, there will be great pressure to forget the wrongs committed by the Bush administration. We are likely to be told by the opinion makers to “let bygones be bygones” and to look ahead. It is up to us concerned citizens to keep the pressure on for accountability for Bush administration crimes, among the foremost of which is the open legalized use of torture. Only truth and accountability can inhibit a recurrence when the next crisis hits our country.
Health Professions’ Accountability
While the lawyers and others who made possible the Bush regime abuses are starting to receive the scrutiny they deserve, we should not forget the need for psychologists and other health professions to establish accountability for our professions’ aiding and abetting Bush’s torture regime. It is well known that the American Psychological Association worked hard to provide cover for Bush administration actions. But the other health professions, while taking stronger positions regarding their members’ participation in detainee interrogations, have not acted to discipline or condemn the actions of their members aiding the torture regime.
It is openly acknowledged by both the Defense Department and the CIA that their “harsh interrogations” (aka “torture”) are conducted under medical supervision. Yet neither the AMA nor ANA have acted to investigate nor discipline members performing these functions. And official and unofficial reports have consistently pointed to the failure of medical professionals, in most cases, to stop or report abuse of detainees, even as they stitched up the wounds and medicated the damaged souls.
None of the health professions should be proud of how it responded to this crisis of human rights and of human decency. We need a Health Professionals Truth Commission to investigate and produce a definitive account of the collaboration of members of our professions in detainee abuses. We further need an analysis of the policy errors and institutional pressures that inhibited our professions from doing the right thing and putting “do no harm” at the top of our agenda.
June 8th, 2008
Thanks to Dori Smith of Talk Nation Radio, our May 3 forum — Torture and the American Psyche: Blurring the Boundaries Between Healers and Interrogators — was audio-recorded. Dori has edited the material for two hald hour shows on Talk Nation Radio. That material is now available. [NOTE: The forum was also video recorded. These videos should be available soon, on YouTube or a similar site. Stay tuned.]
For those who don’t read this blof regularly, here’s the description of the speakers:
SPEAKERS:
Eric Fair currently a divinity student at Princeton will speak from his experience as a civilian contract interrogator in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib in early 2004. He will lend his first person account to our conversation.
Leonard Rubenstein, J.D. President of Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Prize winning organization, is an attorney and veteran of many human rights struggles. He will speak of the role of torture in our contemporary political culture.
David Sloan-Rossiter, Ph.D. will bring his long standing interest in using a psych oana¬lytic perspective to aid communities to the role of moderator of the program. He is co-chair of the Curriculum Committee at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Stephen Soldz, Ph.D. a local psychoanalyst, social activist and Professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, is one of the nation’s leaders in opposing psycholo¬gist participation in torture and abuse. He will speak to the history of that struggle in the context of the broader struggle for human rights.
Talk Nation Radio
TNR Show I contains material from the Introduction by David Sloan-Rossiter and an interspersing of material from the talks by Leonard Rubenstein (President of Physicians for Human Rights) and myself. [See Dori's description here and download mp3 here.]
TNR Show II contains the conclusion from my talk, the talk by former Iraq interrogator Eric Fair, and some discussion, including comments by Stephen Behnke, the Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association. [See Dori's description here and download mp3 here.]
Complete Talks, unedited
The Talk Nation Radio versions are selected and cleaned up. For those who would like to listen to the complete talks, Dori has kindly made available the raw recordings.
David Sloan-Rossiter Introduction and Stephen Soldz talk here.
Leonard Rubenstein talk here.
Eric Fair talk here.
The Question & Answer session is available here.
June 2nd, 2008
Since 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) has steadfastly asserted that psychologists participating in detainee interrogations protects detainees by helping to keep these interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.” Last week, the APA’s Ethics Director Stephen Behnke seized upon newly released portions of an official investigation of US detainee abuse, called the Church Report, as an opportunity to reinvigorate support for the APA policy of psychologist participation in interrogations.
In a letter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the APA’s Dr. Behnke stated:
“In carefully reviewing the documents, we note that according to the information obtained by the ACLU, psychologists supporting interrogations ‘emphasized their separation from detainee medical care’, and that a psychologist who suspected abuse ‘recommended the interrogation not proceed and brought in medical personnel to evaluate the detainee.’ According to these documents, APA’s policy of engagement served the intended purpose: to stop interrogations that cross the bounds of ethical propriety.”
To give Dr. Behnke credit, he did acknowledge the abuses described in the newly released material as “abhorrent.” However, any unbiased “careful review” of the documents falls far short of supporting Dr. Behnke’s conclusion. Quite the contrary, the report raises new concerns about the roles of psychologists in US interrogations.
Dr. Behnke’s letter to the ACLU was widely distributed within the APA as a defense of the association’s long-contested policy. It therefore is important to carefully examine his claims in the context of what is known about interrogation abuses in Iraq. In a separate article, Trudy Bond responded to Dr. Behnke’s claims in the same letter, questioning his assertions that the APA is willing to adjudicate reports of psychologists participating in detainee abuse. I will focus instead here on examining Dr. Behnke’s claim that the Church Report supports the APA’s policy of participation in detainee interrogations. In this process I briefly revisit previous justifications for APA policy.
Newly Released Church Report Materials
On April 30, 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced the release, under the Freedom of Information Act, of previously redacted portions of the Church Report on US military detainee abuses. This material contains numerous reports of physical and mental abuse, including several detainee deaths. The report makes clear that:
“[M]edical personnel often have exposure to the circumstances of detainee treatment.”
In discussing a number of these deaths the report states:
“We do not know if medical personnel reported suspicions of detainee abuse in this case, but the circumstances probably should have led them to consider detainee abuse.”
Although the language is sanitized, this statement nevertheless strongly points to the failure of medical personnel to take appropriate action in the face of likely interrogation abuse. Yet, in only one of eight deaths judged “suspicious for abuse” is there evidence that an Army physician reported the abuse. Thus, even in the face of potential homicide, medical personnel, for the most part, appear to have remained silent.
With regard to psychologists, the report stated:
“In Iraq, we interviewed two military personnel and one civilian serving in this capacity. All three emphasized their separation from detainee medical care. Only one believed he had observed or suspected detainee abuse. No details were offered, except that, when this occurred, he recommended the interrogation not proceed and brought in medical personnel to evaluate the detainee.”
The newly released material also reports that interrogation techniques [authorized by a September 2003 memorandum from commanding General Ricardo Sanchez] continued to be widely used until at least July 2004, well after some techniques were retracted in October 2003. Other techniques were banned in May 2004 [in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal]. These included:
” Isolation.”
” Environmental Manipulation: Altering the environment to create moderate discomfort (e.g. adjusting temperature or introducing an unpleasant smell)…. [Caution: Based on court cases in other countries, some nations may view application of this technique in certain circumstances to be inhumane. Consideration of these views should be given prior to use of this technique.]”
” Presence of Military Working Dog: Exploits Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations.”
” Yelling, Loud Music, and Light Control: Used to create fear, disorient detainee and prolong capture shock.”
” Sleep Management: Detainee provided minimum 4 hours of sleep per 24 hour period, not to exceed 72 continuous hours.”
” Stress Positions: Use of physical postures (sitting, standing, kneeling, prone, ect.) for no more than 1 hour per use. Use of technique(s) will not exceed 4 hours and adequate rest between use of each position will be provided.”
As was confirmed by the just released Justice Department Inspector General report on FBI involvement in abusive interrogations, these techniques were derived from the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program to train US military personnel how to resist breaking under torture. As the Defense Department Inspector General reported, these techniques were “reverse engineered” by military and intelligence psychologists into US interrogation techniques. Authorization to use these techniques was hidden as, even after the Abu Ghraib scandal, the administration refused to release the Sanchez memo for nearly a year. These techniques, according to the Church Report, continued in widespread use long after their use had been retracted.
Special Forces
According to accounts by individuals like former Iraq Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis, these SERE techniques were regularly used by Special Forces in Iraq. Other interrogators learned of them, directly or indirectly, from Special Forces and attempted to imitate the techniques used by these revered units. Abuses by the Navy SEALS, a Special Forces unit, were reported by Lagouranis:
“They would actually have the detainee stripped nude, laying on the floor, pouring ice water over his body. They were taking his temperature with a rectal thermometer. We had one guy who had been burned by the navy SEALs. He looked like he had a lighter held up to his legs. One guy’s feet were like huge and black and blue, his toes were obviously all broken, he couldn’t walk.”
Further reports of abuse by Special Forces include the New York Times’s March 19, 2006 article chillingly entitled “In Secret Unit’s ‘Black Room,’ a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse“:
“American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government’s torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball….
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, “NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.” The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: ‘If you don’t make them bleed, they can’t prosecute for it.’ “
This unit combined elements from throughout the Special Forces:
“The task force was a melting pot of military and civilian units. It drew on elite troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force, Navy’s Seal Team 6 and the 75th Ranger Regiment.”
There are numerous other reports of pervasive abuse by troops across Iraq. Thus Capt. Ian Fishback and two other members of the 82nd Airborne Division told Human Rights Watch in 2005 that the abuse in their unit was routine. As reported in the New York Times:
“In separate statements to the human rights organization, Captain Fishback and two sergeants described systematic abuses of Iraqi prisoners, including beatings, exposure to extremes of hot and cold, stacking in human pyramids and sleep deprivation at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja.”
Capt. Fishback also quoted an Army Ranger, a Special Forces unit, as saying (after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004):
“I talked to an officer in the Ranger regiment and his response was, he wouldn’t tell me exactly what he witnessed but he said “I witnessed things that were more intense than what you witnessed,” but it wasn’t anything that exceeded what I had heard about at SERE school”
Military Intelligence
Military Intelligence units in Iraq were also involved in much of the detainee abuse. Thus, the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] inspected detention facilities across the country and, in a leaked February 2004 report, described systematic abuse by military intelligence throughout Iraq. It states:
“persons deprived of their liberty under supervision of the Military Intelligence were at high risk of being subjected to a variety of harsh treatments ranging from insults, threats and humiliations to both physical and psychological coercion, which in some cases was tantamount to torture, in order to force cooperation with their interrogators” (p. 3-4).
The ICRC further reported:
“In certain cases such as in Abu Ghraib military intelligence section, methods of physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel to obtain confessions and extract information. Several military intelligence officers confirmed to the ICRC that it was part of the military intelligence process to hold a person deprived of his liberty naked in a completely dark and empty cell for a prolonged period to use inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and psychological coercion” (p. 11).
It is important to note that no one was prosecuted or convicted at Abu Ghraib for isolating or humiliating prisoners, or for putting prisoners in ‘stress positions.’ These were considered standard operating procedures by the prosecution. The convictions were handed down for taking the infamous photographs or when there was evidence of physical abuse that went beyond these techniques.
The Church Report
It is relevant to understand that the Church Report is widely viewed as an attempt to whitewash detainee abuse through sidestepping the extent to which abuse was standard operating procedure and thus reducing command responsibility for that abuse. Thus Human Rights Watch characterizes the Church Report as a partial cover-up containing patent falsehoods:
“The Church report was supposed to be the definitive report on the development of interrogation techniques and detainee abuse in the “global war on terror” but the unclassified summary suggests a careful attempt - months after the Schlesinger and Fay/Jones report put the Pentagon on the defensive - to present a version of the facts that would not cause any trouble for the hierarchy. Time and again, the summary goes out of its way to rebut any inference that government policy was to blame, to the point of straining credibility and flatly contradicting the earlier reports. The report concluded that there was ‘no single, overarching explanation’ for the ‘few’ cases in which detainees had not been treated humanely.
Although Secretary Rumsfeld and General Sanchez both approved the use of guard dogs to strike fear in detainees, and although guard dogs were featured prominently in the Abu Ghraib photos, the Church executive summary states that ‘it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater.’ Indeed, the only mention of dogs in the entire summary is the patently false statement that in Afghanistan and Iraq ‘interrogators clearly understood that abusive practices and techniques - such as … terrorizing detainees with unmuzzled dogs … - were at all times prohibited.’ “
Given the nature of this report, it should be taken as a statement of what cannot be denied, and not as a definitive account of the nature or the extent of detainee abuse.
Previous APA Policy Justifications
The APA has utilized many questionable arguments and deceptive tactics to justify psychologists’ participation in interrogations. In 2005, the APA appointed a Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). This Task Force was given the mandate to determine APA policy on psychologists’ participation in detainee interrogations. The majority of the Task Force membership, it turns out, consisted of military and intelligence psychologists who played roles in post 9/11 interrogations at Guantánamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the CIA’s “black site” torture centers. Not surprisingly, this task force emphasized psychologists important role is aiding national security by participating in these interrogations.
In support of its policy the APA has highlighted every available report of psychologists resisting interrogation abuses. While finding small pockets of resistance would hardly defend the policy, the APA has been able to offer only three incidents of psychologists ostensibly opposing the abusive interrogation policy. This despite the central role of psychologists in interrogations at Guantánamo and the CIA black sites and their participation in interrogations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The most noteworthy example offered thus far has been that of Michael Gelles, a Navy Criminal Investigative Service psychologist. Gelles forcefully opposed opposed some of the worst abuses committed at Guantánamo and reported them to his commander, leading to policy changes. While Dr. Gelles acted honorably and may have helped change policies, one should remember that, long after these interventions the ICRC found conditions at Guantánamo continued to be abusive. As the New York Times described the ICRC findings during their June 2004 visit:
“[I]nvestigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through ‘humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions.’ Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly ‘more refined and repressive’ than learned about on previous visits.
”The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture,’ the report said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to ’some beatings.’ The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected to such treatment.”
Thus, whatever successes Dr. Gelles’ achieved, they did little to dismantle the abusive system, described in the ICRC report as “tantamount to torture.” Even Dr. Gelles’ valiant attempt to oppose these interrogation techniques did little, in the end, to keep interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.”
The APA has also at times pointed to Col. Larry James as an example of a psychologist successfully opposing torture. But there is simply no evidence to support this claim. Col. James was the Chief Psychologist on the Joint Intelligence Task Force in charge of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at Guantánamo in early 2003. As the Red Cross noted when they returned to Guantánamo a year after col. James’ departure, conditions had only become increasingly “more refined and repressive” since Col. James was stationed there. Additionally, during Col. James’ tour at Guantánamo, the Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures were adopted mandating a minimum of four weeks isolation for all new detainees:
“to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.”
The Joint Intelligence Task Force, of which Col. James was the Chief Psychologist, was in fact assigned the role of deciding when a detainee had been sufficiently disoriented, disorganized, and dependent on his interrogator enough to be released from this isolation. When this policy was described in Harpers online, Dr. Behnke, the APA’s Ethics wrote a letter agreeing that this use of isolation was unethical for psychologists:
“With the recent posting on the Internet of what has been identified as the U.S. military’s 2003 operating manual for the Guantánamo detention center, attention has been directed to the use of isolation and sensory deprivation as interrogation procedures. APA policy specifically prohibits using any such technique, alone or in combination with other techniques for the purpose of breaking down a detainee.”
Nonetheless, even after this information became public, APA officials have continued to cite Col. James to audiences as an anti-torture hero.
APA and the Newly-Released Materials
Contained in the newly released sections of the Church Report is an official acknowledgement that psychologists in so-called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) functioned in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But what had not been clear before is that these BSCTs are “mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations.” That is, the BSCT psychologists were, as described above, within the units especially known for using brutal means for dealing with detainees (Arrigo & Bennett, 2007).
Given this context, it is especially misleading that the APA’s Ethics Director points to two vague sentences in the report to argue that this material supports the APA’s policy of “engagement” with the Bush administration’s interrogation regime. Here are the relevant sentences from the Church report:
“In Iraq, we interviewed two military personnel and one civilian serving in this capacity. All three emphasized their separation from detainee medical care. Only one believed he had observed or suspected detainee abuse. No details were offered, except that, when this occurred, he recommended the interrogation not proceed and brought in medical personnel to evaluate the detainee.”
Given that these BSCT psychologists are “mostly within Special Operations” and are assigned to military intelligence, a curious reader might wonder about the routine nature of interrogations witnessed or participated in by the BSCT psychologists. These routine interrogations likely included techniques approved by the September 2003 memorandum from Gen. Sanchez which the very same Church Report materials document were still in widespread use through at least July 2004. Given this background, there is a more plausible reading of these sentences. It is most likely that what was “abuse” to a BSCT psychologist were interrogation tactics that went beyond those authorized by the September 2003 memo as ‘standard operating procedure.’ That is, given the “No Blood, No Foul” attitude of many Special Forces units, “abuse” would very likely be tactics that led to serious and visible physical harm. The fact that the BSCT “brought in medical personnel to evaluate the detainee” also supports such an interpretation. In years of reading and writing about detainee abuse in Iraq and elsewhere, I have never seen accounts of medical personnel being brought in to examine victims exposed “merely” to psychological abuse such as isolation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, or exposure to loud noises or freezing temperatures. It is unlikely that this sole report of a psychologist reporting abuse was referring to these widespread, but standard, abuses.
Can I prove my interpretation of this passage is the correct one? No. The wording is ambiguous and “no details were offered.” But Dr. Behnke’s claim that these newly released materials provide evidence that “APA’s policy of engagement served the intended purpose - to stop interrogations that cross the bounds of ethical propriety” - is totally unsupported. In contrast, my interpretation is grounded in knowledge about detainee abuse in Iraq and about the Church report. Dr. Behnke’s “careful” review of these documents does not attempt to understand the role of psychologists in abuse of detainees but, like U.S. “intelligence” about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, fixes the data around established APA policy.
Reference
Arrigo, Jean Maria, & Bennett, Ray. (2007). Organizational Supports for Abusive Interrogations in “The War on Terror.” In Torture Is for Amateurs, special issue of Peace and Conflict, 13 (4): 411-421.
May 26th, 2008