Psyche, Science, and Society

NYT: Obama continues Bush cover-up

The New York Times on the Obama-bush cover-up:

The Cover-Up Continues

New York Times Editorial

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

In Britain earlier this month, a two-judge High Court panel rejected arguments made first by the Bush team and now by the Obama team and decided to make public seven redacted paragraphs in American intelligence documents relating to torture allegations by a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British national, says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and at a C.I.A.-run prison outside Kabul before being transferred to Guantánamo. He was freed in February.

To block the release of those paragraphs, the Bush administration threatened to cut its intelligence-sharing with Britain, an inappropriate threat that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated. But the court concluded that the actual risk of harm to intelligence-sharing was minimal, given the close relationship between the two countries. The court also found a “compelling public interest” in disclosure, and said that nothing in the disputed seven paragraphs — a summary of evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in Mr. Mohamed’s ordeal — had anything to do with “secret intelligence.”

The Obama administration has expressed unhappiness with the ruling, and the British government plans to appeal. But the court was clearly right in recognizing the importance of disclosure “for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law.”

In the United States, the Obama administration is in the process of appealing a sound federal appellate court ruling last April in a civil lawsuit by Mr. Mohamed and four others. All were victims of the government’s extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

In that case, the Obama administration has repeated a disreputable Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security. The ruling rejected that argument and noted that the government’s theory would “effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law.”

The Obama administration has aggressively pursued such immunity in numerous other cases beyond the ones involving Mr. Mohamed. We do not take seriously the government’s claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security.

Victims of the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including Mr. Mohamed, have already spoken in harrowing detail about their mistreatment. The objective is to avoid official confirmation of wrongdoing that might be used in lawsuits against government officials and contractors, and might help create a public clamor for prosecuting those responsible. President Obama calls that a distracting exercise in “looking back.” What it really is justice.

In a similar vein, Mr. Obama did a flip-flop last May and decided to resist orders by two federal courts to release photographs of soldiers abusing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, just in time to avoid possible Supreme Court review of the matter, Congress created an exception to the Freedom of Information Act that gave Secretary of Defense Robert Gates authority to withhold the photos.

We share concerns about inflaming anti-American feelings and jeopardizing soldiers, but the best way to truly avoid that is to demonstrate that this nation has turned the page on Mr. Bush’s shameful policies. Withholding the painful truth shows the opposite.

Like the insistence on overly broad claims of secrecy, it also avoids an important step toward accountability, which is the only way to ensure that the abuses of the Bush years are never repeated. We urge Mr. Gates to use his discretion under the new law to release the photos, sparing Americans more cover-up.

October 26th, 2009

Fitrakis: Wright State shouldn’t have hired Larry James

Bob Fitrakis, editor of The Free Press based in Ohio, has written about Col. Larry James, the psychologist who went from Guantanamo interrogation consultant to Dean at Wright State University:

Why Wright State is wrong: The controversial appointment of Dr. Larry James

By Bob Fitrakis

Who is Dr. Larry James? A man who in his biography claims responsibility for “Fixing Hell.” Whose hell did he fix? Or did he look the other way while the Devil’s work was done?

Between 2003 and 2007, Army Colonel Larry James served as Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group and a senior member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT). James’ job was advising on interrogation and “behavior management” for the men and kids at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. In 2004, he functioned as the director of the Behavioral Science Unit at the Abu Ghraib prison.

That’s right. His past includes both the notorious Gitmo and Abu Ghriab, the infamous torture site in Iraq.

Having retired from the U.S. Army, James is currently the Dean of the Professional Psychology Department at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. James is licensed to practice psychology in Louisiana, Ohio, and Guam. Human rights advocates argue that Wright State is absolutely wrong in appointing James as Dean because of his questionable past.

Public records indicate that while James served at Gitmo in the spring of 2003, “…abuse and interrogations was widespread and cruel treatment was official policy,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The Center argued that James’ “conduct” at Gitmo should “warrant immediate investigation.”

“Detainee and government reports of abuse during the period of Dr. James’ first deployment include beatings, rape threats, religious and sexual humiliation and painful body positions,” the Center stated.

Under James’ tenure, Guantanamo developed and implemented the Camp Delta “Behavioral Management Plan.” The Plan called for treating new detainees in a way that would “enhance and exploit [their] disorientation and disorganization.” How was this accomplished? Prolonged periods of solitary confinement that are known to cause hallucinations, extreme anxiety, muscular atrophy, weight loss, and other physical conditions that may be irreversible, according to the Center.

While James has denied responsibility, his critics have charged that he used his access to confidential medical records of detainees to target their “physical and mental vulnerabilities.”

At the recent August American Psychological Association (APA) conference in Toronto, the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) handed out fliers with the headline: “Department of Defense Ensures Psychologists’ Collusion in Torture.” Larry James was singled out as one of the psychologists in question.

Both the CCIJ and the CCR called upon the Minister of Public Safety in Canada, Peter Van Loan, to investigate James’ for possible war crimes. They included an 8-page Appendix extensively foot-noted including numerous references to admissions from James’ book, “Fixing Hell.”

The Appendix points out that while James frequently claimed he was reforming things, his actual accounts show he either turned a blind eye to torture, or may have facilitated it.

On page 50-51 of “Fixing Hell,” James writes the following:

“I saw Luther and three MPs wrestling with a detainee on the floor. It was an awful sight. I wanted to run back to my room and wash my eyes with bleach. The detainee was naked except for the pink panties I had seen hanging on the door earlier. He also had lipstick and a wig on. The four men were holding the prisoner down and trying to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown, but he was fighting hard. My first instinct was to rush in and start barking orders at the men, demanding they stop this ridiculous and abusive wrestling match. But I managed to quell that urge and wait.”

James admitted he went to have a cup of coffee and then intervened to urge the interrogators to build better relations with the man being tortured. James writes: “I never once said anything about the lingerie or interrogation. My purpose was to build a relationship with Luther, rather than to attack him as being wrong or as a human being.”

Hell hath been fixed.

When another prisoner was being abused by large MPs screaming in his face for three hours straight, James once again “fixed” hell by suggesting they might want to offer him a drink or a bathroom break.

While James was at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, court records and affidavits indicate that prisoners were not only isolated, but their sleep cycles were deliberately disturbed, they were exposed to extremely hot and cold temperatures, forced to smell unpleasant odors and subject to “dietary manipulations.”

But what does that mean in practical terms? Allegations by one detainee claim that he went for 3-4 weeks without any solid food, living on Ensure and water. Reports by six other high-value detainees allege they were subject to the same liquid diets.

According to the Red Cross report, there was also the use of “prolonged diapering” to force the detainees to urinate and defecate on themselves. They were deprived of using a toilet. Six high-value detainees reported being repeatedly slammed against walls 20-30 times consecutively as an interrogation technique.

If James had the urge to go in and “bark orders” when confronting torture, he most likely had command authority over the torturers at Gitmo. Remember that the standard definition for torture is the deliberate infliction of physical or mental distress on detainees.

Under Canadian law, it is a war crime if any military personnel are found to be “committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Dr. Trudy Bond, a Toledo psychologist, filed an extensive complaint against James with the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists (LSBEP). Bond’s complaint specifically charged that James violated his ethical duties as a licensed psychologist to keep his patients from harm, to protect confidential information, and to obtain their informed consent.

Bond filed her complaint on February 29, 2008. Within a month, the LSBEP chose not to investigate the matter. On June 19, 2008, Bond asked the Board to reconsider. In less than a week, the LSBEP reaffirmed their decision not to investigate.

Bond next turned to the courts, asking the 19th Judicial District Court for the Parish of East Baton Rouge to review the LSBEP’s decision on June 13, 2009. The Court ruled in favor of the Board. On August 6 of this year, Bond filed an appeal with the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bond has taken similar action in Ohio as well as with the American Psychological Association. On July 8, 2008, she filed a formal complaint against James with the Ohio State Board of Psychology for, among other things, that James’ conduct is an ethical violation because it “…substantially harmed or is likely to substantially harm a person.”

In her complaint to the American Psychological Association (APA), Bond cited the Report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published after their visit to Guantanamo. The Report documented behavior commonly regarded as torture prior to Bush and Cheney. The rest of the world still defines torture in the traditional sense.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has demanded that medical professionals including James be a “specific focus” of an investigation assessing whether the interrogations violated legal or medical ethics. Steven Reisner of PHR said, “The conclusions that these interrogation techniques cause no lasting harm is the equivalent of psychological practice.”

In a report issued by PHR in 2009, they categorically concluded, that “Health professionals played central roles in developing, implementing, and providing justification for torture.”

While the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have come out unequivocally against the interrogation techniques used at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the APA has waffled on the issue.

In 2005, the APA’s Board endorsed the role of psychologists involved in interrogations as consistent with APA ethics, if it was done for the purpose of making the interrogations “safe, legal and effective.” In 2008, the APA passed another resolution against its members being present in any facility where U.S. and international law was being violated unless they were working for the benefit of the detainees.

James is at the center of this ongoing debate, and now so is Wright State University.

Whether James is qualified to be licensed in Ohio or to be a Dean at Wright State is probably best decided after a careful reading of “Fixing Hell.” One of the most telling passages from the book reads as follows: “Sex was a complicated factor in much of our work at Abu Ghraib. I came to know several single women at Abu Ghraib who got pregnant, received adverse legal action, and were sent home. Private Jenni Nelson was a short, fat, seriously ugly young lady. She looked as though she was crying all the time. Nevertheless, she got a boyfriend, got pregnant, and was promptly sent home by her company commander. Did she do it on purpose to get out of Abu Ghraib? Probably. And I’m sure she wasn’t the first.”

One wonders why Wright State University would hire a man as their Professional Psychology Department Dean who has so little sensitivity to Private Nelson, as well as the prisoners he was charged to protect. The reality is Private Nelson took action to get out of Abu Ghrai, and not be charged with war crimes. James stayed and wrote a book insulting Nelson and covering-up crimes against humanity.

Was he fixing hell? Human rights advocates say he helped create it for his patients and they are doing everything to hold him accountable for his admitted actions. Bond is currently re-filing an ethics complaint against James in Ohio. There’s an ongoing campaign by the Center for Constitutional Rights called “When Healers Harm” demanding that we “hold health professionals accountable for torture.”

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Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the freepress.org and is the author of the forthcoming book, Cops, Coverups, and Corruption.

October 16th, 2009

LA Board refusal to investigate Larry James abuse charges appealed

Former Army Col. Larry James, now Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Ohio, was Chief Psychologist with the Joint Intelligence Group and a member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team [BSCT] at Guantanamo from January till May, 2003. Official documents and press and detainee accounts raise serious questions as to whether Dr. James aided, participated in, or looked away from the numerous human rights abuses occurring at Guantanamo during that time.

Psychologist Trudy Bond has filed ethics complaints against James with the American Psychological Association and the Louisiana Board of Psychology. Both have decline to investigate, as has every health professional association or state licensing board with whom complaints of Guantanamo or other detainee abuse have been raised or  filed. The ethics officials of the health professions appear to be taking a “see no evil, hear no evil, investigate no evil” approach, making a mockery of the concept of professional ethics. While the American Psychological Association and other professional associations have issued pious statements against torture and detainee abuse, the clearly do not see pursuing accountability for those health professionals who aided Bush administration abuses as part of their responsibility.

In addition to these ethics complaints, the Center for Constitutional Rights [CCR] and the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) filed a request for an investigation by the Canadian government of potential war crimes possibly committed by James during James’ visit to Canada last August during the American Psychological Association convention. Unfortunately, the Canadian government also failed to investigate. Not surprisingly, after this request, Dr. James came out publicly against official investigations of war crimes.

Today the Center for Constitutional Rights announced an appeal of a Louisiana court refusal to order the LA Board to reconsider its peremptory rejection of Dr. Bond’s complaints against James. CCR realizes, as James and the psychological “ethics experts” do not, that concerns about James’ behavior will not go away until there is a thorough, credible, investigation of James’ actions and of the actions of other health professionals potentially involved in torture and other detainee abuse. Psychologists and other health professionals simply cannot indefinitely “stay in their lane” and avert their eyes from potential major abuses committed by members of the professions.

Here is today’s CCR press release:

Louisiana Court Battle Over Guantanamo Psychologist Continues Today

State Psychology Board Challenged over Refusal to Investigate Alleged Ethical Violations by Dr. Larry James

Contact: press@ccrjustice.org

October 15, 2009, Baton Rouge and New York – Today, attorneys filed an appeal before the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal, in the case Dr. Trudy Bond v. Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. Toledo-based psychologist Dr. Trudy Bond is calling on the Louisiana State Board of Examiners to investigate Louisiana psychologist and retired U.S. Army colonel Dr. Larry C. James, a former high-ranking advisor on interrogations for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

According to his own statements, Dr. James played an influential role in both the policy and day-to-day operations of interrogations and detention at the prison camps.  Publicly-available information shows that while Dr. James was at Guantanamo, abuse in interrogations was widespread, and cruel and inhuman treatment was official policy.

Allegations of abuse during Dr. James’s January to May 2003 deployment include beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who is still imprisoned in Guantanamo, is one of the prisoners who has alleged brutal treatment in the spring of 2003, when he was only 16 years old. James was also stationed in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and returned to Guantanamo in 2007. In 2008, he was named Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

In compliance with her ethical obligation to report abuse by other psychologists, in February 2008 Dr. Bond filed a complaint against Dr. James before the Board, the agency that issued and now regulates his psychology license. Dr. Bond alleged that Dr. James breached professional ethics by violating psychologists’ duties to do no harm, to protect confidential information and to obtain informed consent, and she called on the Board to investigate whether action should be taken against Dr. James.

As Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group and a senior member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at Guantanamo, Dr. James had access to the confidential medical records of people he was charged with exploiting for intelligence. According to former Guantanamo interrogators, BSCTs used information from patients’ records to help interrogators increase the patients’ psychological duress, including by exploiting their fears. The very purpose of these mental health professional teams, the interrogators said, was to help “break” the prisoners. Dr. James denies that claim, but an extensive government paper trail supports the interrogators’ accounts.

The Board summarily refused to investigate Dr. Bond’s complaint, claiming that the statute of limitations had run, despite conclusive information to the contrary. Dr. Bond then filed suit against the Board in Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court, which in July 2009 dismissed her case without looking at the merits. Today’s brief before the First Circuit Court in Baton Rouge argues that the District Court should have reviewed the Board’s clearly wrong legal decision.

Said Dr. Bond, “The five psychologists on the Louisiana Board were given plenty of credible evidence, but they chose not to investigate the head intelligence psychologist of prison camps notorious for their use of psychological torture.  I don’t think Louisiana lawmakers intended to give five fellow professionals total, unchecked power to make arbitrary decisions that deeply affect the public welfare.”

Said CCR Cooperating Attorney Deborah Popowski, “The Louisiana Board is fighting awfully hard to turn a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse.  We wish the Board would devote its resources to investigating unethical conduct instead. Everyone, including the people of Louisiana, would be better served.”

To read today’s brief, click here.

For more information on the involvement of health professionals in torture and abuse visit the Center for Constitutional Rights website http://whenhealersharm.org.

October 15th, 2009

Tortured law: The video

Alliance for Justice has produced this video on the Bush administration torture lawyers:

Sign their petition here:

Call on Attorney General Eric Holder to uphold the Constitution and the law by releasing the OPR report and authorizing a full investigation of those who ordered, designed, and justified torture. Only then can the nation truly move forward.

[H/t Invictus.]

1 comment October 12th, 2009

Mariner: Neutality and the language of torture

Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, in FindLaw, details how the media’s proclaimed neutrality is an implicit acceptance of one’s side’s framing of the issue:

Tortured Language

By Joanne Mariner

George Orwell once said that the natural language of politics was euphemism. In his era, bombing campaigns were termed “pacification”; later decades saw civilian deaths be reduced to “collateral damage,” and kidnappings become “rendition operations.”

With the war on terror, a phrase that is itself worthy of scrutiny, euphemism flourished. Senior US officials were the innovators—speaking of “enhanced” and “alternative” interrogation techniques, when what was going on was torture—but the media followed close behind.

“We do not torture,” said President Bush in 2005, in response to mounting evidence of abuse. It was a straightforward, declaratory statement, the kind that Orwell liked, except it was also a bald lie. The following year, when Bush announced that 14 “high value” detainees were being transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo, he said that the CIA had not tortured them, but had used an “alternative set of procedures.”

The interrogation methods the CIA used were, in his words, “tough,” “safe,” “lawful,” and “necessary.”

“Harsh Interrogation Tactics”

Three years later, and the purported lawfulness of the CIA’s methods is now under review. Having asked a special prosecutor to look into several serious cases of abuse, Attorney General Eric Holder may, at some point in the next year or two, be willing to open a full investigation of the incidents.

Holder also broke with recent practice at his confirmation hearing, when he stated unequivocally that waterboarding—among the most egregious of the past administration’s interrogation techniques—was torture.

Credible legal experts have long characterized the Bush administration’s abusive methods as torture. But the U.S. media, in contrast, has avoided the term. Media outlets such as National Public Radio and the New York Times have preferred to discuss the Bush administration’s “harsh interrogation tactics” or “severe interrogation methods”—or have used the administration’s own favored term, “enhanced” interrogation techniques—in discussing the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects in the years following 9/11. They did not—and largely still do not—directly characterize those techniques as torture.

An extreme example of this journalistic reticence was an article published in the New York Times on May 13, 2004. Titled “Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations,” the article described how the CIA was using “coercive” interrogation methods—including food deprivation, withholding medications, and “a technique known as ‘water boarding’”—against terrorism suspects in its custody.

The main reference to torture in the article came in claims that the techniques were not torture. As the article noted, defenders of the CIA’s approach “said the methods stopped short of torture, did not violate American anti-torture statutes, and were necessary to fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from often uncooperative detainees.” The piece quoted no one saying that the CIA methods did, in fact, constitute torture, even though human rights organizations were already complaining loudly about such methods.

A little bit of background on waterboarding, one of the techniques specifically mentioned in the article. Waterboarding has long been recognized as torture, both in the US and elsewhere. In 1947, the U.S. sentenced a Japanese officer to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding an American civilian. In 1968, a U.S. army officer was court-martialed for helping to waterboard a prisoner in Vietnam.

The technique has been used by some of the cruelest dictatorships in modern times, including Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. When the New York Times covered Khmer Rouge abuses in the 1970s, it had no problem calling the technique torture.

Shaping the Public Debate

Why do these terms matter? The media’s power may have slipped in recent years, but television, radio and the written press still shape the public debate. Some of the terms embraced by the media have been, at best, euphemistic, at worst, deceptive.

Responding to such criticisms in 2007, Los Angeles Times National Editor Scott Kraft said that he was reluctant to call waterboarding torture, “because torture has become a politically charged word.” Interestingly, his interviewer pointed out that on other occasions the paper hasn’t shied away from making politically-freighted choices. It uses the term “Armenian genocide” even though a heated debate exists both domestically and internationally over whether the characterization is warranted.

NPR’s ombudsman addressed the torture issue earlier this year. In an anguished set of blog posts, the ombudsman quoted NPR news editors saying that “the role of a news organization is not to choose sides in this or any debate.” While the ombudsman said that she didn’t agree with the station’s use of “bureaucratic euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’” she too emphasized that it is not the role of journalists to “take sides.”

A key question is whether, by not calling abuses like waterboarding torture, the media has, in fact, avoided taking side in this debate. While it has avoided taking a critical stance, it may also have lent implicit support to the Bush administration’s view that the practices were not clearly illegal, nor clearly barred by international treaties against torture.

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Joanne Mariner is a lawyer with Human Rights Watch. Her columns for FindLaw are available in FindLaw’s archive.

October 10th, 2009

Interview with Law & Order’s Executive Producer on Memo From the Dark Side

Last week the 20th season of Law & Order opened with an episode — Memo From the Dark Side — on US torture. It centered around the trial of a John Yoo type character and used several direct quotes from Yoo. Scott Horton interviewed Law & Order’s Executive Producer and Head Writer:

The People v. The Torture Team: Six Questions for Law & Order’s René Balcer

By Scott Horton

“It is not disloyal to hold our officials to the highest standards of conduct.” That statement comes from a prosecutor near the end of the trial of a group of senior Bush Administration officials. Law & Order, America’s longest running television program, put the Bush Administration’s torture memo writers in the dock in a homicide prosecution. In so doing, the writers made several points that have been almost entirely neglected by the Beltway punditry–for example, that the core of the torture controversy revolves around homicides, and that torture prosecutions by their nature involve conspiracy offenses implicating all those in the decision-making chain. I put six questions to the episode’s author, and Law & Order’s Executive Producer and Head Writer, René Balcer.

1. You launched Law & Order’s twentieth season with an episode focusing on the potential culpability of one of the Bush Administration’s torture lawyers. The episode opens with the plight of Greg Tanner, a U.S. soldier who served at Abu Ghraib, witnessed torture, suffered post-traumatic stress, and was then separated from the military without medical assistance. Your programs are always “torn from the headlines.” Give us a sense of the cases you looked at in constructing Greg Tanner. Alyssa Peterson? Eric Fair?

My co-writer Keith Eisner and I were aware of the Fair and Peterson cases and of many other instances of former participants in enhanced interrogations who had difficulty processing and rationalizing their experience. In 2005, while researching an episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent, I read interviews with medical personnel, psychiatrists in particular, who had served as advisors to such interrogations. Many of them had trouble justifying in their own minds their participation and incremental violation of their Hippocratic oath to “do no harm.” This research indicated that torture permanently scars not only the tortured but also the person ordered to conduct such interrogations. It seems clear to me that torture injures everyone who comes into contact with it and corrodes the country that abides it.

As for the military’s unfair treatment of Tanner’s ptsd, that topic had been widely reported in the media and was the subject of a 2007 episode of Law & Order. In general, I’m sympathetic to the decent and hapless footsoldier into whose lap falls the unenviable duty of carrying out fubar policies.

2. The episode’s torture lawyer is Franklin, a former Justice Department lawyer, now law professor, who shoots Tanner after being accosted in a parking garage. He sounds like John Yoo and looks like Jay Bybee, so you’ve done an interesting montage. Franklin exhibits real sangfroid in this episode—almost to the point of creepiness—and he wields some unusual legal tricks to avoid indictment, including a writ of prohibition and personally appearing before the grand jury to talk them into a “no true bill.” All of this is theoretically possible, of course, but almost unknown in real criminal justice practice. Weren’t you straining the real world feel with these twists?

On my watch, we’ve never done anything on Law & Order that was not legally possible nor sustainable by an actual court decision. We have a number of former prosecutors and defense attorneys on the payroll as advisors who keep us from crossing the line. That said, we have found novel ways of using the legal tools at our lawyers’ disposal. In this case, I wanted to demonstrate that the lawyers who wrote these memos weren’t third-rate hacks. Many were from prestigious schools and had graduated at the top of their class. And yet their memos often seem like the work of first-year law students—Yoo’s memo bizarrely quotes a health care statute’s definition of an “emergency condition” to explain the meaning of “severe pain” in the context of torture. These memos would not have passed our own internal “Law & Order smell-test” of legal verisimilitude. That these bright people could come up with such nonsense perhaps reflects that, faced with the impossible task of legally justifying the President’s use of torture, they had to strain their legal wizardry to absurd limits. Instead, they would have better served their bosses by telling them, “Nope, sorry, can’t be done. No way no how it’s legal.”

3. You rested very heavily on John Yoo’s actual language from memos and debates for Franklin’s justifications of what he did. The horrific torture incident that Tanner describes also sounds like the torture-homicide of Manadel al-Jamadi. Most of the debate has focused on waterboarding or other practices that torture apologists justify as college fraternity pranks. But you come to focus squarely on a homicide. Why?

A murder case is far more compelling than a simple assault case—the stakes are higher, it commands attention. And since there were many actual cases of torture-homicide resulting from the war on terror, we saw no reason to pull our punches.

4. In one of the most dramatic courtroom moments, you have a defense lawyer confront an interrogation expert with the famous “ticking bomb” scenario, who answers it quite simply. Are we hearing Ali Soufan combined with Matthew Alexander?

You heard what I’ve been hearing for years from a variety of professional interrogators—torture, physical abuse, and mental abuse don’t yield reliable information. I’ve been interested in the subject of interrogations for many years, principally because of my friendship with the noted forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, who has used with consistent success an empathic approach to elicit admissions and information from the most depraved and recalcitrant offenders. Putting aside for a moment whether torture is legal or ethical or consistent with our values, if we are interested in a results-based strategy to gain actionable information, the overwhelming evidence—including the recent Trinity College neuroscience study—seems to indicate that torture isn’t the way to go.

5. Torture is a classical conspiracy offense, and your script makes that point by joining the whole chain of command to the list of defendants. This has been the ultimate political argument against a prosecution of the torture conspirators—namely, it would inevitably go to the top of the command. You have a couple of dense scenes, but do you think you were able to unpack this issue fairly enough?

Given we only have 41 minutes of actual running time to tell our story, probably not. But I feel the issue was raised in a credible manner—if perhaps not answered to everyone’s satisfaction by our DA Jack McCoy. After all, it’s not his job to worry about where the political chips might fall; his job is only to prosecute offenders. In writing this episode, I was reacting to the basic unfairness of a real-world investigation that limits itself at the outset to investigating wrongdoing by only the lowest-level operatives and contractors. In many ways, they—along with the guards and minders at the detainee camps—are like mice trying their best to navigate a crazy maze not of their design. Arguably they are the least culpable, while those who articulated, implemented, and enabled a policy of torture should be the particular focus of a special prosecutor’s scrutiny.

6. You got a lot of criticism from the right, with some of it implying that you are carrying water for the Obama Administration—a pretty strange criticism in light of the direct criticism your DA expresses of their “look forward, not backwards” shtick. In view of the criticisms you’ve heard, is there anything you’d change if you were doing it again?

I wouldn’t change anything. What many of these critics fail to realize is that Law & Order has always been an equal-opportunity offender, and if a Democratic administration had implemented this despicable policy, our show would have taken them to task for it. Ultimately the episode was advocating for the public’s right to inquire into what our government did and is doing in our name. All great nations make mistakes. What is unique to the American system is that powerful self-correcting mechanisms are enshrined in our Constitution—checks and balances, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, etc. Some on both sides of the ideological spectrum would deny to others the exercise of those mechanisms while appropriating it to themselves. We by nature mistrust authority no matter who wields it—and I think that’s healthy. Though I disagreed with him on the facts, I fully support Rep. Joe Wilson’s right to call out President Obama—I just wish Democrats had had the balls to call out President Bush when he was peddling his lies to Congress.

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“Memo from the Dark Side” can be viewed here by clicking on “Episode 1″ and then choosing whether you wish to view the episode on Netflix or iTunes.

October 6th, 2009

Government admits al Qahtani’s torture was videotaped

In one of the Guantanamo habeas hearings, the government has admitted that it videotaped the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani in 2002-2003. The case of Mr. al Qahtani is infamous both because of the harshness of the techniques used, techniques which were proclaimed to meet the legal definition of  “torture” by the Bush-appointed military commissions convener Susan Crawford, and because of the known involvement of a psychologist, Maj. John Leso, in that torture.

The case of Maj. Leso is well known to psychologists as the American Psychological Association has failed to sanction him for violating professional ethics despite the existence of ethics complains filed over three years ago.

Here is a press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents al Qahtani:

Government Admits Guantánamo Detainee Mohammed al Qahtani’s Torture Videotaped

CCR Blasts Government for Failing to Disclose Existence of Videotapes for Seven Years

Contact: press@ccrjustice.org

October 5, 2009, New York – The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) learned today of the existence of video and audio tapes of the abusive interrogations of client Mohammed al Qahtani, the victim of the “First Special Interrogation Plan” personally overseen by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

“After the intense scrutiny of the government’s torture and interrogation of Mr. al Qahtani, it is shocking that the government has hidden the existence of these tapes from the public for so many years,” said CCR Attorney Gitanjali S. Gutierrez. “The government’s interrogation of him has been the topic of multiple military, Justice Department and congressional investigations. These tapes should have been acknowledged long ago.”

Until recently, the Government had adamantly denied that any U.S. personnel engaged in acts of torture during Mr. al Qahtani’s interrogation, but on January 14, 2009, Military Commission Convening Authority Susan Crawford conceded that by subjecting Mr. al Qahtani to systematic 20-hour interrogations, prolonged sleep deprivation, 160 days of severe isolation, forced nudity, sexual and religious humiliation, and other aggressive interrogation tactics, the government had engaged in acts of torture. Much of this information appeared in interrogation logs leaked to the press as early as 2006

Said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren, “Mr. al Qahtani’s torture is already well-established, with a clear paper trail that leads all the way up the chain of command to the desk of Donald Rumsfeld. The revelation of these tapes indicates the government carefully documented horrific evidence of torture and abuse at Guantánamo. The only question that remains is whether the people ultimately responsible for it will be held accountable for breaking the law and breaking faith with our system of justice.”

Mr. Al Qahtani has been incarcerated at Guantánamo since February 2002. Throughout his imprisonment, he has consistently maintained that he was repeatedly tortured and threatened with torture by U.S. military and civilian interrogators. And since Mr. al Qahtani filed his habeas petition in October 2006, he has continued to assert that any alleged admissions he made to U.S. personnel were extracted through this torture and threats of torture.

The government never disclosed the existence of these tapes as exculpatory information in Mr. al Qahtani’s habeas case. CCR had filed a motion in February 2009 to compel the government to turn over exculpatory evidence in their client’s case and to hold the government in contempt for it’s “flagrant violation” of a judge’s November 2008 order to do so. Judge Thomas F. Hogan issued an order in November 2008 (amended in December 2008) requiring the government to turn over promptly any exculpatory evidence it had on the men detained at Guantánamo to their attorneys.  The government filed what was essentially a second motion for an extension of time on  January 30, 2009. Since the original filing in June 2008, the government has twice delayed its compliance with the court’s orders, engaging in what CCR attorneys described as “improper self-help by granting itself an indefinite extension of time.”

Finally, CCR and co-counsel, Sandra Babcock, filed a motion for discovery in March 2009 seeking any video tapes of Mr. al Qahtani’s interrogation and numerous other records.  After seven months of discovery disputes, the court issued the publicly-filed order today.

The videotapes the government is required to produce will reveal the time period at the end of three months of intensive solitary confinement and isolation that immediately preceded the implementation of the “First Special Interrogation Plan,” a regime of systematic torture techniques approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use against Mr. al Qahtani.  In a letter to his superiors reporting possible abuse of men in U.S. custody, T.J. Harrington, Deputy Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, FBI described Mr. al Qahtani during this time as “evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reportedly hearing voices, crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end).”

Mr. al Qahtani is represented by CCR and co-counsel Professor Sandra Babcock, Center for International Human Rights, Northwestern University School of Law.

For more information on Mohammed al Qahtani’s case, click here.

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to resettle the approximately 60 men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.

Attached Files

• MAQ Order to Disclose Videotapes.pdf
• TJ Harrington Ltr 7 14 04.pdf

October 5th, 2009

David Ippolito: Resolution (The Torture Song)

From HYouTube:

A brand new, powerful music video from David Ippolito. (That Guitar Man from Central Park) Watch this video. Please leave your own comments. Be heard. Download this song for free at thatguitarman.com But… PASS THIS VIDEO ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW! (You and me… let’s make it “cool to care” again.)

September 27th, 2009

Defense Department torture also needs investigation

Recent discussions of accountability for US torture have focused upon the CIA torture at its black site prisons. Daphne Eviatar at The Washington Independent reminds us that the abuses committed under Defense Department jurisdiction at Guantanamo (and elsewhere) require investigation. She focusses upon the case of now-released Guantanamo detainee young Mohammed Jawad, where a military court has already ruled that he was subjected both to torture and cruel and inhuman treatment.

His chief defense attorney Maj. [soon to be Lt. Col.] David Frakt filed official complaints regarding potential war crimes against responsible officials. Despite repeated follow-up inquiries it appears that a mandatory requirement for a war crimes investigation was never followed. This obstruction is strongly suggestive of systematic collusion in war crimes by the military hierarchy.further, the systematic refusal of the DoD to respond to inquiries regarding this and other matters suggests that the cover-up is till continuing.

Further, in Jawad’s case, court documents show that one participant in his abuse was a psychologist from the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, who recommended that Jawad be subjected to linguistic isolation and other “ratcheting up” of the pressure in order to “break him.” they did succeed in “breaking him,” resulting in a suicide attempt on Christmas eve, 2003.

Only an independent investigation can clarify the extent of war crimes, and of official collusion in those crimes. This investigation must include an examination of the roles of psychologists and other health professionals in torture and detainee abuse.

Eviatar’s article:

Documents Suggest Detainee Abuses by Defense Department
Current Inquiries Do Not Extend Beyond CIA Interrogations

By Daphne Eviatar

New documents obtained by TWI related to the case of Mohammed Jawad, an adolescent tortured by Afghan police and then abused again by U.S. interrogators, suggest that not only certain CIA interrogations, but  of interrogations by the Department of Defense demand a broader investigation as well.

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would investigate only CIA interrogations that appeared to have violated the agency’s rules and guidance from the Department of Justice. The Jawad case, however, reveals that U.S. military interrogations also violated well-established laws and appear to have violated the Justice Department’s legal guidelines as well. The newly-obtained documents also reveal that the Department of Defense repeatedly failed to follow up on complaints by Jawad’s lawyers that its officers were breaking the law.

Jawad, who was about 12 years old when he was captured and accused of throwing a hand grenade at U.S. soldiers, endured “cruel and inhuman” treatment and possibly “torture” while in U.S. custody, a U.S. military commission judge ruled last year, determining that his supposed “confessions” to the crime were therefore unreliable. A federal district court judge later similarly refused to admit the confessions in ruling on Jawad’s habeas corpus petition, and announced that without Jawad’s statements, the government’s case was “riddled with holes.” She eventually granted Jawad’s petition, and Jawad was released on August 24 after nearly seven years in captivity, most at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Despite the court’s rulings that Jawad was mistreated in U.S. custody, however, no one has ever been punished or otherwise held accountable. His lawyers say that despite repeated requests, the Defense Department never investigated whether its officers had violated the law. Jawad’s lead military lawyer, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, has released to TWI some of the details of how and why he asked the Defense Department to investigate, and how his repeated complaints about Jawad’s treatment went ignored.

Jawad now plans to sue the United States for his mistreatment, which included such extreme sleep deprivation that it appears to have violated even the rules governing interrogation tactics issued by the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issued the now-infamous “torture memos.”  A military judge in Jawad’s case excluded his “confessions” in part on the grounds that he endured 14 days straight of sleep deprivation (by means of what came to be known as the “frequent flyer” program), which may well have amounted to torture. Justice Department memos approved up to 96 hours of sleep deprivation, although some make reference to 180 hours, which would be 11 days. But 14 days exceeds the guidelines of all of the legal memos regarding interrogations that have been revealed so far.

According to Judge Stephen Henley, the U.S. Army colonel who ruled on Jawad’s military commission case, Jawad was “moved from cell to cell 112 times from 7 May 2004 to 20 May 2004, on average of about once every three hours.” Jawad was shackled but not interrogated; “the scheme was calculated to profoundly disrupt his mental senses.”

The alleged purpose of the “frequent flyer” program, Judge Henley wrote, was “to create a feeling of hopelessness and despair in the detainee and set the stage for successful interrogations.” But by the time Jawad was subjected to it, he “was of no intelligence value to any government agency,” Judge Henley ruled. “The infliction of the ‘frequent flyer’ technique upon the Accused thus had no legitimate interrogation purpose.” (Significantly, interrogation experts say sleep deprivation doesn’t produce useful information even if the subject does know something.)

When Frakt, Jawad’s appointed military defense lawyer, learned about how the frequent flyer program was used on Jawad, he became so concerned that, as a military officer, he felt obliged to report to his superiors what he believed was evidence of a war crime. So on May 29, 2008, Frakt sent a memo to the chief defense counsel at the Office of Military Commissions.

“I am reporting a suspected LOAC violation that I have uncovered in the course of my duties as a defense counsel assigned to the Office of Military Commissions Defense,” Frakt wrote. Frakt wrote that after an exhaustive review of the facts and relevant law, he believed Jawad had been tortured — in violation of the Geneva Conventions, U.S. and international law, and Defense Department regulations. “Accordingly, I believe I have an affirmative obligation to report the incident to my chain of command,” he wrote. Frakt cited several provisions, all of which require reporting of suspected war crimes to a supervisor.

Records provided by the government in the course of the case before the military commission reveal that from May 7, 2004 to May 20, 2004, Jawad, a teenager at the time, was subjected to the program.

“During this 14 day period, Mr. Jawad was moved from cell to cell 112 times, an average of every 2 hours 50 minutes,” Frankt wrote in the memo. “There were eight extra moves of very short duration between the hours of midnight and 0200 to ensure maximum disruption of sleep.”

After sending that memo, Frakt expected to receive a response. At least, eventually. But he received nothing.

So on October 7, 2008, he followed up with an e-mail to the Commander in charge at the U.S. Southern Command post, Joint Task Force for Guantanamo Bay, or SouthCom-JTFGTMO. He cc’d four lawyers in the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel.

In his e-mail, Frakt wrote:

On 29 May, I filed this LOAC violation memo with the Chief Defense Counsel, COL David. He forwarded the memo to your office on or about 1 June. Presumably your office forwarded it to SOUTHCOM. I have never received any information about the investigation.

The military judge in the Jawad case recently found that Jawad was subjected to the frequent flyer program, and that it constituted “abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment.” (see attached ruling) He found it unnecessary to decide whether the conduct rose to the level of torture but did find that the action was intended to seriously disrupt the mental senses, which is one of the elements of psychological torture. He recommended disciplinary action for this “flagrant misbehavior”. [Confidential testimony from Guantanamo officer indicated] that the program was standard operating procedure, was carried out on many detainees as part of the camp “incentives program” and was personally approved by Col Nelson Cannon (now Maj Gen) and Brig Gen Jay Hood (now Maj Gen). Please provide me with an update on the status of the mandatory LOAC violation investigation or direct me to the appropriate officials who can respond to this inquiry. If you need any further supporting documentation to assist you in the investigation, please let me know. Thank you very much.

Frakt received no response. In January of this year, he sent another e-mail to the same Commander and a Captain at Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, and the same set of lawyers in the Pentagon’s General Counsel office.

It read, in part:

It has now been over seven months since this report was filed. I have never received any update on the status of the mandatory LOAC violation investigation. In the interim, the Military Commission has determined that the violation did, in fact, occur and that “under the circumstances, subjecting [Mr. Jawad] to the ‘frequent flyer’ program from May 7-20, 2004 constitutes abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment.” In other words, Mr. Jawad was abused, in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. The commission has specifically recommended that “those responsible should face appropriate disciplinary action.” (See attached Ruling D-008)

Upon receipt of a LOAC violation report, a formal investigation is mandatory and should be done by the most expeditious means available. However, it does not appear that the DoD Directive was followed because I have never been contacted by anyone regarding my report. Please confirm whether JTF-GTMO or SOUTHCOM investigated this incident, and provide me with an update on the status of this investigation or direct me to the appropriate authority at USSOUTHCOM who can answer this query. If I do not receive a satisfactory explanation, I intend to pursue this matter with the appropriate Inspector General offices. Thank you very much for your prompt attention.

V/R

David J. R. Frakt, Major, USAFR

To this day, says Frakt, he has not hear back from DoD as to whether anyone investigated the abuse and potential war crimes violation.

The Defense Department and US-SOUTHCOM-JTFGTMO did not respond to TWI’s request for comment. TWI has other outstanding requests for comment from the the Defense Department, including an explanation of why the department stopped reporting the deaths of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a statement of the current policy of reporting those deaths. Despite at least half a dozen requests, TWI has never received an answer.

September 25th, 2009

Larry James puzzled by his critics, says Col. Larry James

The Dayton Daily News contains an article on Col. Larry James, who seems to be confused why critics want him investigated for violating professional ethics and for possible war crimes.Evidently, the fact that he claims to have “Fixed Hell” at Guantanamo while simultaneously having no power or influence or abuses there might help him understand. Or perhaps the fact that Guantanamo was Hell before, during, and after the time he was there “Fixing” it might help.  [BTW my latest writing on James is here.]:

Retired colonel puzzled by Guantanamo critics
WSU dean said he was sent to the detention center in Cuba to clean up the abuses there, which he feels he did

By Jim DeBrosse

During an interrogation at Guantanamo Bay in April 2003, an Army psychologist watched while MPs pinned a detainee to his knees and then repeatedly slammed his upper body and face to the floor up to 30 times. A contractor who also witnessed the abuse said “the floor was shaking” from the force of the blows, according to a 2008 investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee released in April.

The psychologist “believed that the technique was appropriate, approved, applied properly and was common practice in the teams.” The interrogator told the Senate investigator he agreed.

Col. Larry C. James, now retired from the Army, was the leader of the team of five psychologists assigned to Gitmo interrogators. James, who didn’t testify, says he never witnessed that incident nor any other abuse involving a health care professional during his deployments at Guantanamo from January to May 2003 and June 2007 to June 2008.

James, 52, a recipient of a Bronze Star Medal for his military service in Iraq and now dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University, has been under fire for several years by psychologists and human rights advocates. They doubt the effectiveness of his reforms at Gitmo and question whether he may have turned a blind eye to abusive practices there or perhaps even helped set abusive policies.

In the colonel’s defense

By his own statements, including those in his book “Fixing Hell,” James said he was sent by the Army “to clean up the abuses” at Gitmo and later the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq.

James said the worst abuses at Guantanamo occurred in 2002, before he arrived, when interrogators terrorized prisoners with guard dogs, resorted to waterboarding and withheld medications. “You have to understand the context” following 9/11, he said. “The nation had been attacked 6 to 8 months before, and the pressure from (the Bush administration) was to get intelligence, get intelligence, get intelligence.”

Kathy Platoni, a Centerville psychologist and Army Reservist who counseled soldiers at Gitmo from 2003 to 2004, has been a defender of James. Although she didn’t meet him until he arrived at Wright State, she said, “I will back him to the hilt.”

To suggest that James or any psychologist was involved in torture or inhumane treatment of detainees is “absurd and offensive,” Platoni said. On the contrary, she said, military personnel at Gitmo were often subject to abuse from prisoners, who frequently hurled bodily fluids, excrement and insults from their cells.

Complaints against James

Trudy Bond, a Toledo psychologist who has taken legal action against James, said documents and media reports show that “torture and abuse of detainees never stopped at Guantanamo.” Bond has filed complaints against James with the state psychological boards in Ohio and Louisiana where James holds licenses. Both boards have declined to investigate, saying there is not enough evidence.

With the backing of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human rights organization in New York, Bond went to court in Louisiana to force the state board to investigate James. The court dismissed the case in August, saying Bond had not exhausted the board’s administrative process. Bond and her attorney have appealed in federal court.

For several years, members of the American Psychological Association have been embroiled in debate over the role James and other military psychologists may have played in detainee interrogations under the Bush administration. Bush critics in the APA charge that the White House used the supervision of psychologists and other health care professionals to legitimize interrogation techniques outlawed by the U.S. Constitution and the international Geneva Conventions. Their presence was supposed to prevent permanent physical or psychological harm.

In June 2007, 350 members of the APA signed an open letter to then-APA President Sharon Brehm asking the association to investigate James and other members of the APA who served at Guantanamo Bay. The letter alleges that “psychologists played an integral role in the development, justification and implementation of abusive interrogation techniques.” Brehm declined, but the association later changed its ethics code to ban involvement in specific forms of torture.

One claim: To support their claims, APA activists point to a July 13, 2003, e-mail from the Gitmo commander to Army superiors, a weekly update that also was forwarded to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at his request. The e-mail said that Lt. Col. Luie “Morgan” Banks, a Ft. Bragg psychologist who trained U.S. soldiers in how to resist torture, had been brought to Gitmo to offer advice to interrogators on how “to fracture… detainee resistance to cooperation.”

The commander’s e-mail, cited by Senate investigators, said Banks provided “very valuable insights.”

James’ response: Having known Banks for more than 20 years, James said his colleague has been unfairly blamed by critics who allege he developed ways to turn around Army torture survival techniques and use them for breaking down detainees. “We were both adamant that torture and abuse were the wrong way to go” for effective interrogations, James said.

James is bringing Banks to Wright State on Oct. 7-8 as a presenter in a workshop, “The Psychology of Terrorism,” on ways to prevent the development of the terrorist mind-set and defend against terrorist psychological tactics.

Another claim: Critics also have noted that James was the chief psychologist at Gitmo when a 16-year-old Canadian detainee, Omar Khadr, alleged he had been abused. In a court affidavit, Khadr said interrogators threatened to send him to Egypt so he would be raped, cuffed him in painful positions for more than an hour, forced him to sit and stand in shackles repeatedly and, when he faltered, lifted and dropped him to the floor.

Finally, when he urinated on himself, they poured pine oil on the floor “and dragged me back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil,” Khadr said. The treatment was repeated two weeks later, he said.

James’ response: James said he was never involved in the interrogation of Khadr and that he spent “95 to 98 percent” of his time at Gitmo tending to three other juvenile detainees at Camp Iguana. The adult detainees — those Khadr’s age and older — were kept in a separate camp called Delta.

Getting to the bottom of it

Deborah Popowski, a research fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said it’s been difficult “to get to the bottom of James’ role” at Guantanamo because the claims in his book often conflict with Army documents. She said a standard operating procedure issued at Gitmo in February 2003 shows James may have had a role in developing abusive behavioral management plans, or BMPs, for detainees.

According to the document, BMPs were designed “to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process” by “concentrat(ing) on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.” That included isolating incoming detainees for 30 days — including youths — and longer at the discretion of the interrogator.

Popowski said the procedure was issued following James’ arrival at Gitmo. Further implicating James, she said, a 2002 draft of procedures for psychologists said developing behavorial plans was one of their “mission essential tasks.”

James said he had nothing to do with the behavioral plan for isolating detainees. “The warden and his staff wrote that,” he said.

While he had the authority to set policy for his small team of psychologists, James said he could not set policy for the entire camp. “I wish I’d had the kind of power (my critics) say I had,” he said. “It would have meant a big raise in pay.”

New York psychologist Steve Reisner, who treats survivors of torture, also said there are still too many unanswered questions about James and the role that all health care professionals played at Gitmo to let it go.

“When the position of health professional is turned away from the welfare of the individual and aligned with the interest of the state to abuse the individual,” Reisner said, “that is such a travesty of ethics that I have to do all I can to oppose it.”

Puzzled by his critics

James says he can’t understand why a handful of critics persist in seeking an investigation of his actions. “No matter what third party, objective review board or person, they’ve all come to the same conclusion — there’s no probable cause,” James said. “There’s no detainee, there’s no guard, there’s no psychologist who’s come forward and said, ‘With my own eyes, I’ve seen Dr. James do X, Y or Z.’ ”

A place at Wright State

James came to Wright State in August 2008 following his retirement from the Army. He was living in Honolulu and looking to enter academia when a friend told him about the position at the school in Fairborn, he said. “It’s been a very good fit,” he said.

Wright State officials issued a statement this week that the search committee had been aware of James’ military service at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. “Dr. Larry James is a respected Board-certified psychologist who was selected as Dean of the School of Professional Psychology (SOPP) after an extensive review that included a careful examination of his academic credentials, professional accomplishments, and character,” the statement said.

1 comment September 20th, 2009