Psyche, Science, and Society

Horton: Italy looks back

Scott Horton writes of the landmark Italian conviction of 23 CIA agents for kidnapping on the way to torture. Of course, our government is “dissapinted” that there should be any accountability for the CIA’s kidnappers:

Judgment in Milan

By Scott Horton

An Italian court hearing criminal charges against 26 American officials and a smaller group of Italians arising out of a CIA extraordinary rendition has ruled today. The case relates to the CIA’s snatching of a Muslim cleric known as Abu Omar off the streets of Milan in 2003. He was whisked off to Egypt, where he was tortured before being released and ultimately returned to Italy. Italian prosecutors noted that the American action botched a prosecution they had prepared against Abu Omar for participation in a terrorist conspiracy. Here’s a summary of the court’s decision from Reuters:

The heaviest sentence — eight years in prison — was handed down to the former head of the CIA’s Milan station, Robert Seldon Lady, while 21 other former agents got five years each. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Romano was also sentenced to five years, despite a request from the Pentagon that the case should be tried by U.S. courts.

[Judge Oscar] Magi dropped the case against three Americans, including a former CIA Rome station chief, because of diplomatic immunity. Charges were also dropped against five Italians, including the former head of the Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, because evidence against them violated state secrecy rules. However, the judge sentenced two more junior Sismi agents to three years in prison as accomplices, indicating Italian authorities were aware of the abduction.

A more comprehensive discussion of the decision can be read in La Repubblica.

The case was tried in absentia after the Americans fled and the United States refused to extradite them. The judge’s written decision is now due within forty-five days. The prosecutors have announced that they intend to appeal the decisions acquitting senior Italian officials, and possibly other aspects of the case. The American defendants, who were represented by counsel during the trial, are also likely to lodge appeals, and to contest the fact that the case proceeded in absentia.

The decision came despite strenuous efforts by the American and Italian governments to shut the case down. The Italian government argued that prosecutors were using official secrets to make their case and appealed the matter to the Constitutional Court, which upheld the objection. The Milan court concluded that, even striking the official secrets from the trial record, sufficient evidence existed to proceed. In its final verdict, the court also suggested that a number of defendants were guilty but, once official secrets were extracted, the evidence was insufficient to convict. The court also found that three individuals had diplomatic immunity and thus would also escape punishment desite copious evidence establishing their guilt. Among them was the CIA’s former Rome station chief, Jeff Castelli, whom prosecutors saw as the plot’s ringleader.

The convicted Americans face arrest only if they travel outside the United States, since U.S. authorities have made it clear that they will not cooperate with European authorities pursuing CIA kidnapping cases. However, Italian prosecutors can now issue a European Arrest Warrant for the seizure and removal to Italy of any of the 23 Americans, should they set foot in the European Union.

Most observers, however, view the sentence as largely symbolic. When legal proceedings are concluded, it is widely expected that the United States and Italy will work out a resolution of the matter involving an act of clemency. The case serves principally to establish that the CIA extraordinary renditions program, especially when it involves torture or torture-by-proxy, is viewed as a criminal act, subjecting all who support it to potential prosecution.

The Milan decision offers a useful contrast with the decision of an American appeals court in New York dealing with another rendition case on Monday. In both cases, the courts considered claims of immunity, state secrecy, and a torture victim’s claim to compensation for his sufferings. In both cases, the United States applied enormous political pressure to shut down the case. Yet the outcomes could not have been more different. In the New York case, the Court of Appeals bowed to government pressure to refuse to hear the torture victim’s appeal. The decision, rendered by a group of largely Republican judges, is filled with breezy language openly acknowledging that the case turned on an extraordinary rendition, and suggesting that this was simply a policy choice for the government. The Italian court proved zealously independent of government influence from the beginning of the case down to judgment. It viewed extraordinary rendition linked to torture as a particularly grave crime, taking careful note of the historical precedents that supported that perspective. While the court accepted that state secrecy concerns restricted the court’s consideration of certain evidence, it nevertheless proceeded and rested its conclusions on evidence that was not protected. Similarly, the Italian court gave claims of immunity narrow applicability, so that only a handful of defendants could rely upon them. The court took the view that these highly technical defenses would give government actors some comfort, but it rejected the idea that they could escape accountability for a serious crime altogether.

The most telling difference focuses on the rights of the torture victim. The New York court concluded that the victim’s claims were overwhelmed by the government’s interest in protecting political actors against embarrassment. The Italian court insisted not only on the punishment of the perpetrators but also on the compensation of the torture victim. The Milan court sentenced the defendants to pay compensation to Abu Omar and his wife of €1.5 million ($2.3 million).

The American State Department stated that it was “disappointed” by the decision

November 4th, 2009

Justice Through Music & Op-Critical: Torture Me

Justice Through Music has teamed with the band Op-Critical to produce this video “Torture Me”:

See the Press Release on this video initiative:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Justice Through Music (“JTM”), a national non-profit that works with famous bands to get people involved with important social causes, released a new music video this week to focus attention on the horrors of torture by the United States government. JTM collaborated with the band Op-Critical, filming one of the band members getting waterboarded, hooded, hung from bars, dragged and confined in an abandoned prison. In just a few days, the video has been viewed over ten thousand times on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4HGNmfBkc.

“With the release of new torture documents this week and Obama’s recent censorship of Bush torture photos, it is important for people to see what torture looks like,” said Op-Critical’s Storm. “In our video, we show not only how the victim is tortured, but how the torturer goes home, looks in the mirror, and sees a M-O-N-S-T-E-R looking back at him.”

JTM video editors used a sophisticated morphing process to transform the torturer’s face into that of Hannibal Lecter to underscore the diabolical and sadistic nature of torture.

Op-Critical has been pushing the envelope for years to raise awareness of issues most artists are afraid to address. Their music videos about war, Darfur, rigged elections, police profiling, killing of innocents, propaganda, and nuclear devastation have been viewed over a million times on YouTube, MySpace and elsewhere. www.MySpace.com/opcritical.

“We combine good music with a strong message to get the point across in the hope that our noise will wake people up, get them off the couch, and put a stop to these terrible injustices,” continued Storm. “There is a huge appetite around the world for artists to speak out about these issues, yet record labels have by and large ignored this important market out of fear that they will offend someone, somewhere. This is unfortunate because people, especially
youth, look to artists to educate them in the way artists did during the 60’s. Record companies could make a real difference by supporting artists who speak out. Not only would they make money, but such support would give them back the street creds they lost a decade ago,” he noted.

The video, “Torture Me,” can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4HGNmfBkc. JTM has hours of unused torture footage and hundreds of torture photos from the film shoot available for use by media and others who want to bring attention to torture.

www.jtmp.org

November 3rd, 2009

Truthout on Col. Larry James and Guantanamo

William Fisher in Truthout reports on the Louisiana lawsuit to get the LA Psychology Board to properly investigate ethics charges against Dr. Larry James for his role at Guantanamo in 2003:

Lawsuit Accuses Psychologist of Ignoring Guantanamo Torture

By William Fisher

The state board responsible for licensing – and disciplining – psychologists in Louisiana is “fighting awfully hard to turn a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse” brought against one of its members, who is being accused of complicity in beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions during his service as a senior adviser on interrogations for the US military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

That is the view expressed to Truthout by Deborah Popowski, cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), part of the legal team representing Dr. Trudy Bond, an Ohio-based psychologist, who is suing the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists to compel it to investigate the behavior of Louisiana psychologist and retired US Army Col. Dr. Larry C. James, a former high-ranking adviser on interrogations for the US military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

“We wish the Board would devote its resources to investigating unethical conduct instead. Everyone, including the people of Louisiana, would be better served,” she told Truthout.

The chairperson of the Board, Dr. Jillandra Rovaris, who also chairs the complaints committee, did not respond to telephone calls or emails from Truthout, seeking comment and clarification.

Popowski says that, 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. She claims that publicly available information shows that “while Dr. James was at Guantanamo, abuse in interrogations was widespread, and cruel and inhuman treatment was official policy.”

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.

Dr. Bond’s lawyers contend that the Board summarily refused to investigate her complaint, claiming that the statute of limitations had run, despite what they say is 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. Now, in a brief before the First Circuit Court in Baton Rouge, Dr. Bond 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.”

Dr. Bond told Truthout, “I began reading of the role of psychologists at detention sites such as Guantanamo and was horrified when the American Psychological Association, by way of the infamous PENS report in 2005, determined that the actions of the BSCT psychologists were ethical.”

She added, “In his biographical statement for the PENS report, Larry James stated that he was the ‘Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba’ starting in January 2003. When the Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedure Manual (dated February, 2003 and implemented March 27, 2003) was released in November of 2007 and included behavioral management of prisoners that violated our psychological ethics codes, that same ethics code required that I report such violations to the licensing board to be investigated. My complaint to the Louisiana Board of Psychologists was dated 2/29/08.”

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.

Khadr was captured by American forces at the age of 15 following a four-hour firefight with militants in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan. He has spent seven years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, charged with war crimes and providing support to terrorism after allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.

A Canadian citizen born in Toronto, he is the youngest prisoner held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the United States and has been frequently referred to as a child soldier. In April 2009, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms made it obligatory for the government to immediately demand Khadr’s return. After a hearing before the Court of Appeals produced the same result, the government announced they would argue their case before the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case next month.

Dr. 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.

The CCR says that, 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.

It adds that, 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 organization contends.

The so-called “Biscuit Teams” have sparked controversy ever since their existence became public. The actions taken by team members have called into question the appropriate behavior for physicians, psychologists, and other health care professionals who are team members.

The take by the Center for Constitutional Rights is, “Despite their universally recognized duty to do no harm, doctors and psychologists have played a key role in the United States government’s policy of torture in its overseas prisons. Some have crafted and justified torture tactics, inflicted pain, overseen abuse and enabled and covered up cruel treatment.”

The group adds, “Freedom of Information Act litigation and a US Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) inquiry into the treatment of detainees have yielded, shed light on, the specific role of military intelligence psychologists and psychiatrists at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. The names and licensing information of several individuals who may have been involved in prisoner abuse are publicly known. Yet, when presented with credible information that licensees within their jurisdiction may have committed gross breaches of ethics, state licensing boards have refused to take action. To date, not one health professional has been held accountable for their role in torture.”

Dr. Stephen Soldz, a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis is among numerous professionals who have weighed in on the Bond suit.

He has written, “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.”

He continues, “Psychologist Trudy Bond has filed ethics complaints against James with the American Psychological Association and the Louisiana Board of Psychology. Both have declined to investigate, as has every health professional association or state licensing board with which 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.”

November 1st, 2009

Psychiatric Times on health professionals and US torture

A new article in the Psychiatric Times by attorney John Thomas summarizes the involvement of psychologists in the CIA’s and Defense Department’s “enhanced interrogation” torture programs.Thomas  describes four roles that psychologists played in the torture program.

While describing the role of psychologists fairly accurately, Thomas somewhat underplays the roles of psychiatrists. For example, despite what Thomas claims, the military did not totally stop using psychiatrists as members of their Behavioral Science Consultation Teams in 2004, as Marks and Bloche reported in 2008. He also would have helped round out the picture by mentioning that non-psychological health professional also played major roles in monitoring the health and ability to survive torture in the CIA’s black sites.

Further, despite the better policies on involvement of their members in interrogations, neither the medical and psychiatric professions resemble psychology in their failure to  take any action against profession members who aided the torture program. No health profession comes out looking good from our nation’s recent venture into torture.

Here is the Thomas article. [Here is a Commentary by psychologist Ken Pope.]:

Mental Health Professionals in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Room

By John Thomas, JD

On Monday, August 24, 2009, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a “Top Secret,” highly redacted May 7, 2004, report, Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001 – October 2003).¹ The report’s opening pages concede that the activity it divulges “diverges sharply from previous Agency policy and rules that govern interrogation.”

The report outlines “standard interrogation techniques” that “do not incorporate significant physical or psychological pressure,” including “isolation, sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours,” and “loud music or white noise.” It also outlines enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) that “do incorporate physical or psychological pressure,” including attention grasp (slapping), walling (slamming a detainee against a wall), stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours, and simulated drowning through “waterboarding.” The report describes this last technique in detail:

[T]he individual is bound securely to an inclined bench. . . . Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. . . . This effort produces the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic,” ie, the perception of drowning.

In addition, the report documents the use of “Specific Unauthorized” techniques. These include the use of a “handgun and power drill” and “mock execution[s].”

The role of health care professionals

Psychologists participated in every stage of the program’s development and implementation.² First, they assisted in providing its legal justification. The United Nations Convention against Torture and corresponding federal statutes define torture as “an act intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”^3,4 Severe mental pain or suffering is “the prolonged mental harm” caused by the “infliction or the threat of infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.” Psychologists sanctioned all utilized techniques. For example, the report observes that the CIA “informed us that your on-site psychologists, who have extensive experience with the use of waterboard in Navy training, have not encountered any significant long-term mental health consequences from its use.”

Second, those same psychologists sculpted the program’s basic structure. Initially, the CIA retained independent contractor and Air Force psychologist James Mitchell to “research and write a paper on al-Qaeda’s resistance to interrogation techniques.” Then, Mitchell paired with a Department of Defense psychologist and “developed a list of new and more aggressive EITs.”

Third, psychologists crafted individual intake evaluations that assessed mental status and forecast successful techniques. Consider, for example, the psychological profile of al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah. The profile observed that his strengths included “ability to focus, goal-directed discipline, intelligence, [and] emotional resilience.” The report predicted interrogation success because Zubaydah “believes [that] the ultimate destiny of Islam is to dominate this world. . . . Thus, there is the chance that he could rationalize that providing information will harm current efforts but represent only a temporary setback.”

Finally, psychologists attended and supervised interrogation sessions. Consider, again, the case of Zubaydah. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Ali Soufan, who, according to Newsweek, “had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic,” conducted the initial interrogation in Guantánamo Bay. Although Soufan’s interrogation was productive, producing information that led to the arrest of Richard Reid, the would-be “shoe bomber,” the CIA brought in Mitchell. Mitchell ratcheted up the interrogation by stripping Zubaydah and barraging him with loud, rock music. When a coffin, apparently for a mock burial, arrived and Soufan objected, the CIA terminated his employment.⁵

Psychologists were not the only health care professionals involved in the interrogations. An April 13, 2005, Army Surgeon General survey revealed that 17% of Afghan and 10% of Iraqi medical personnel had been present during interrogations and that 73% were personally aware of “actual or sus- pected abuse.”⁶ The survey did not distinguish among physicians, nurses, physician’s assistants, medics, and other medical disciplines. It did, however, observe that in 2002 and 2003, psychiatrists were involved in interrogations: “Behavioral Science Consultation Teams . . . consisted of physicians/psychiatrists and psychologists who directly support detainee interrogation activities.”

Beginning in January 2004, the government ceased including psychiatrists on the teams. Members of interrogation teams had concluded that “physicians in this role only confused the situation.” Although it is not clear how physicians—presumably the psychiatrists who had been participants in interrogations—confused matters, one incident may provide insight:

One physician was asked to feign evaluations and treatment on detainees by (i) doing a DNA test from a hair sample, (ii) doing a DNA test from a buccal swab, or (iii) providing cough syrup but informing the detainee it was truth serum. The physician complied with the first two requests, but refused to comply with the third. He thereafter refused any further involvement by himself or any of his medical personnel.

The chronology

The road to enhanced interrogation began with a September 25, 2001, memorandum from Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel.⁷ Yoo asserted that no law “can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response.”

Bolstered by Yoo’s memorandum, on January 18, 2002, President George W. Bush concluded that Geneva Conventions of 1949 would not be applied to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees. The rationale, provided by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a memorandum a few weeks later, was that the Conventions did not apply to “a new paradigm—ushered in not by us, but by terrorists” of armed conflict with groups not associated with any particular country’s government.⁸

In August 2002, Jay Bybee, also of the Office of Legal Counsel, with Yoo’s assistance, authored another memorandum supporting the President’s unfettered power.⁹ “Any effort to apply” a torture ban “in a manner that interferes with the President’s direction of such core war matters . . . would be unconstitutional.”

In 2003, the White House nominated Bybee to a US Court of Appeals judgeship, and Jack Goldsmith succeeded him as Chief Assistant in the Office of Legal Counsel. Goldsmith immediately withdrew the Yoo/Bybee memos and then resigned. Goldsmith, now on the Harvard Law School faculty, later characterized the memos as “sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious.”

In a 2005 interview with The New Yorker, Yoo, who had returned to the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, remained unbowed. Congress, he said, cannot “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture. . . . It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function.”¹⁰

In June 2006, the Supreme Court held that detainees are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. In response, President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, which precluded detainees from invoking those protections. In June 2008, the Supreme Court struck down the law.

Above all, do no harm

The aphorism Primum non nocere is echoed in the Hippocratic Oath’s admonition “to do good or to do no harm” and, since it was first attributed to English physician Thomas Sydenham in 1860, has “remain[ed] a potent reminder that every medical . . . decision carries the potential for harm.”¹¹ That reminder seems to have escaped nearly every health care professional involved in the “War on Terror.” Moreover, whatever the discipline or specialty, participating health care professionals certainly violated the tenets of their professional oaths.

The most broadly applicable is the World Medical Association’s International Code of Medical Ethics prohibition against using “medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat.” The AMA Code of Medical Ethics states, “A physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights.” The American Psychiatric Association buttressed this mandate in 2006 with the precept that “no psychiatrist should participate directly in the interrogation of persons held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities.”¹² Similarly, the AMA has since mandated that “physicians must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation.”¹³

The American Psychological Association (APA), however, has trod a slightly different path. Although its code mandates that “psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming their patients or clients,” the organization voted in 2002 that when ethical precepts run afoul of legal rules, “psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing authority.¹⁴ That precept allowed what the APA has since termed “the so-called Nuremberg Defense” to support the conduct of psychologists participating in interrogation.¹⁵

In August 2008, the APA membership resolved that psychologists “may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of” international or domestic law. Two months ago the APA Council of Representatives voted to direct the APA Ethics Committee to amend the organization’s Ethical Standard 1.02 to reflect the resolution. The council’s directive has been presented to the APA membership for comment. In February 2010, the ethics committee will vote on the measure. Should the committee approve the amendment by a requisite two-thirds vote, the amended standard will go into its ratification by the APA Board of Directors.

Medical personnel involved in interrogations not only forgot the then-existing ethics codes, but they also seemed to have forgotten about the Geneva Conventions, although 94% reported being familiar with their proscriptions against torture. Or, perhaps, they were mindful that the Commander in Chief had concluded that the Conventions were inapplicable to their conduct. If so, then they might have known that his decision also eliminated the protections of Protocol 1: “Under no circumstances shall any person be punished for carrying out medical activities compatible with medical ethics, regardless of the person benefiting therefrom.”

Perhaps this last point is the crux. Health care professionals were in a position to stop what the Administration and its lawyers had promoted, but the promoted position threatened not only the dignity of the detainees, but also the independent professionalism of health care providers.

As the investigation announced by current Attorney General Eric Holder proceeds, maybe we in the legal and health care professions can find reason to hope that the past 8 years will provide incentive for our professional organizations to work together in support of both medical ethics and international human rights laws.

References

1. Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003) (2003-7123-IG), May 7, 2004. http://www.freedominfo.org/documents/20090824cia.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
2. Dept of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General, Final Report, Assessment of Detainee Medical Operations for OEF, GTMO, and OIF (April 13, 2005). http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2005/ detmedopsrpt_13apr2005.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
3. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100-20, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85. http://untreaty.un.org/english/treatyevent2001/pdf/ 07e.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
4. Dept of Justice. Legal Standard Applicable Under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A, December 30, 2004. http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/18usc23402340a2.htm. Accessed October 9, 2009.
5. Isikoff M. We Could Have Done This the Right Way. Newsweek. May 4, 2009. http://www.newsweek.com/id/195089. Accessed October 9, 2009.
6. Dept of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General. Final Report Assessment of Detainee Medical Operations for OEF, GTMO, and OIF (April 13, 2005). http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2005/ detmedopsrpt_13apr2005.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
7. Memorandum from John Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, to Timothy E. Flannigan, Deputy Counsel to the President (September 25, 2001). Reprinted in: Greenberg KJ, Dratel JL, eds. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.New York: Cambridge University Press; 2005.
8. Memorandum from Alberto R. Gonzales, White House General Counsel to President George W. Bush, Re: Decision Re Application of the Geneva Conven- tion on Prisoners of War to the Conflict With Al Qaeda and the Taliban. January 25, 2002. http://www.humanrightsfirst.com/us_law/etn/gonzales/memos_dir/memo_20020125_Gonz_Bush.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
9. Memorandum from Office of the Assistant Attorney General, to Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President (August 1, 2002). http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/04/16/bybee_ to_rizzo_memo.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
10. Mayer MJ. Outsourcing Torture: The Secret History of America’s “Extraordinary Rendition” Program. New Yorker. February 14, 2005. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6#Replay. Accessed October 9, 2009.
11. Smith CM. Origin and uses of primum non nocere—above all, do no harm! J Clin Pharmacol. 2005; 45:371-377.
12. American Psychiatric Association. Psychiatric Participation in Interrogation of Detainees: Position Statement. Approved by the Board of Trustees, May 2006. http://archive.psych.org/edu/other_res/lib_archives/ archives/200601.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2009.
13. American Medical Association. Opinion 2.068: Physician Participation in Interrogation. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/opinion2068.shtml. Accessed October 9, 2009.
14. American Psychological Association. Ethical Standard 1.02, Conflicts Between Ethics and Law, Regulations, or Other Governing Legal Authority. http://www.APA.org/ethics/standard-102/provisions-codes.html. Accessed October 9, 2009.
15. American Psychological Association. APA Council of Representatives Directs Change in Its Ethics Code to Prevent So-Called Nuremberg Defense. August 5, 2009. http://www.APA.org/releases/ethical-standard.html. Accessed October 9, 2009.

October 31st, 2009

New dosuments shed light on FBI-CIA torture interactions

Yesterday was Friday, so the Obama administration, like all administrations, released embarrassing documents. In addition to the Cheney Plame case interview materials, they released more torture documents to the ACLU in its long-running FOIA case. Among other things, these documents provide additional insights into the FBI’s relations with the CIA torturers: at times they collaborated and at other times they contemplated prosecution.

An ACLU Press Release is here while the have links to the documents here. The New York Times blog has a brief discussion, with links to seven documents [my downloads of several of these were damaged, as were retries]. Here’s what these dead with:

F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “how close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw,”’ according to hundreds of pages of partially declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department.

The documents also include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says Justice officials declined to prosecute the case.

The AP also has an article. Here is the relevant section:

Newly released documents show the FBI interviewed a naked, chained terror suspect back in 2002 as the bureau struggled with the CIA over how to treat high-value prisoners.Details of the interrogation were contained in documents released late Friday as part of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Judicial Watch.

As the CIA began to use harsh interrogation techniques against captured terror suspects, the FBI became wary of the legality of the methods, which ranged from forced nudity to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. As a result, FBI agents were ordered not to participate in such harsh interrogations.

Yet sometime in late 2002, an FBI agent interviewed accused Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh at a CIA site. The agent later said he got valuable information out of Binalshibh before the CIA shut down the questioning.

According to one document, FBI officials told investigators when they arrived at the unidentified CIA site “the detainees were manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock.”

The FBI agents worked with the CIA in developing questions, but were denied direct access to Binalshibh for four or five days, according to a report on detainee interrogations by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine.

The report says eventually one agent was allowed to speak to Binalshibh for about 45 minutes.

“Binalshibh was naked and chained to the floor,” the report said. The FBI agent later said “he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the CIA quickly shut down the interview.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/31/the-bright-line-rule-new-_n_341027.html

The report said FBI officials later had serious misgivings about their participation in the Binalshibh interrogation.

The incident “indicates that a ‘bright line rule’ against FBI participation or assistance to interrogations in which other investigators used non-FBI techniques was not fully established or followed” at the time of the interrogation, the report said.

Even the new release of documents still holds back many details. Still missing is a transcript of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s interview with investigators examining the interrogation issues.

A censored version of the inspector general’s report was released last year, but Friday’s release disclosed a few more details about the Binalshibh case.

Binalshibh is one of five prisoners currently at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility facing a possible death sentence for allegedly taking part in the 2001 terror attack on the U.S.

Military doctors have diagnosed him with a psychiatric disorder and he has been treated with a drug for schizophrenia, according to court papers, but the exact nature of the apparent illness is unknown.

The government papers released Friday also reveal that after Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, FBI officials debated whether he should be read his Miranda warning of legal rights, but they ultimately decided he did not need such a warning because he was unlikely to be brought back to the United States to face criminal trial. He was ultimately tried by Iraq’s new government and executed.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/31/the-bright-line-rule-new-_n_341027.html

October 31st, 2009

John Sifton discusses US torture program

Human rights investigator John Sifton discusses the Bush administration torture program for Russia Today:

[h/t The Public Record.]

They went to psychologists and lawyers and they tried to design a program which was, in their mind, legal.

October 29th, 2009

Jawad struggles to readjust

The LA Times reports on the difficulties Mohammed Jawad is having adjusting to life back in Afghanistan after six plus years in Guantanamo:

Young Afghan struggles to adapt after Guantanamo
Mohammed Jawad, widely considered the prison’s youngest detainee, is back home in Afghanistan after a judge ordered him freed. He is angry and confused. Many U.S. officials are unhappy he’s free.

By Mark Magnier

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan – At family gatherings, the young Afghan with the scraggly beard instinctively sits with the children, before others remind him that he is a man now.

Old friends he last saw when they were flying kites are now in college, married with children, enjoying their careers. He’s happy for them, but he feels like he’s watching life flash by and he’s not a part of it.

These are the shadows of the lost youth of Mohammed Jawad, the Afghan who many believe was Guantanamo’s youngest prisoner.

“There are such huge changes I need to catch up with,” he says. “I’ve missed a lot.”

Six inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than when he left his country nearly seven years ago, Jawad alternately smiles shyly, tenses with anger, then smiles again, the mood swings of someone trying to figure out how he lost a third of his life.

The odyssey that would send Jawad, who says he’s 19, to a forbidding facility half a world away started on a chilly day in mid-December 2002, shortly after he and his mother moved to Kabul from a Pakistani refugee camp.

He was about 12, he says, and had spent the day helping his uncle dig a well before heading out to buy some tea.

He says he was grabbed by police who beat him and threatened to kill his family unless he put his thumbprint to paper and admitted he’d tried to kill two U.S. soldiers. The Pashto speaker, largely illiterate, didn’t understand their Persian and had little idea what he’d agreed to, he says. A U.S. judge would later agree.

That day, a grenade had been thrown at a U.S. Army vehicle, injuring the two soldiers and an interpreter. Jawad was charged with attempted murder based on the confession, held at Kabul’s Bagram air base, then moved to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in early February 2003.

His attorneys and human rights groups maintain he was the youngest to enter the notorious prison. The Pentagon insists he was close to adulthood at the time, citing a bone scan done when he arrived at Guantanamo that suggested he was closer to 17. Jawad says his father died fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which, if true, would make him older than 12 when he was arrested. Like many Afghans, he has no birth certificate.

Many in the Justice and Defense departments still maintain Jawad is guilty.

His relatives initially didn’t tell his mother that her only son had disappeared, pretending for two months that he was with family. After nine months, a letter from Jawad arrived via the Red Cross, blacked out by censors except for one sentence: “I’m in prison.”

Over the years they managed an occasional letter and a few calls, which mostly consisted of Jawad crying.

Eventually, military and civilian judges threw out most of the Pentagon’s evidence against Jawad, with U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle describing the case as an outrage “riddled with holes.” In August, Jawad was set free.

U.S. soldiers kept him shackled during the long flight back. On arrival, Afghan officials removed his handcuffs, whisking him by car and helicopter to meet President Hamid Karzai, who gave Jawad clothes to replace his prison uniform and promised him a house and some money.

Late that night, Jawad finally saw his mother, who didn’t recognize him. She made him show her a special mark on his head, then promptly fainted. He hardly slept his first two days back, his family says, talking nonstop as if making up for the lost years.

In the family’s 30-by-10-foot greeting hall, decorated with an inexpensive red carpet, he welcomes a stream of well-wishers.

These days, the shy young man from the Kuchi nomadic tribe — traditional migrants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — can’t walk down the street without strangers coming up to him, kissing his forehead in a traditional show of respect.

But he suffers from frequent headaches, he says, and often rests during the day. Prison memories haunt him, something doctors warn may never end. He worries about those left behind, his de facto family. He’s out and they’re not, and that’s a source of guilt. Though the Obama administration has said it will close Guantanamo, hundreds of detainees remain there and at Bagram.

He asks a reporter to tell President Obama, the United Nations, someone, to help them. “People there are sick,” he says. “They should be treated. They should be freed.”

As his anger rises, his uncle tells him not to think about the lost years.

But it spills out. He talks about having his hands bound behind his back and being forced to eat like a dog, being kicked, beaten and pepper-sprayed and subjected to excessive heat, loud noise, solitary confinement.

After a year, Guantanamo records show, Jawad tried to commit suicide by banging his head against his cell wall repeatedly.

“I was tortured and faced many problems,” he says. “They also play with your mind.”

His jailers refused to put him with other Afghans, he said, only with Arabs whose language he didn’t understand. He says officials hung heartwarming pictures of families in the interrogation room, then asked about his family. They repeatedly denied his requests for school books or a Pashto dictionary.

Guantanamo military officials did not immediately respond to questions about his alleged mistreatment.

As with many things at Guantanamo, it’s difficult to verify exactly what happened to Jawad there. A Defense Department official, speaking on background given the sensitivity of the issue, says Jawad was older than he claims, that a lot of people still think he threw the grenade, and that it’s always been U.S. policy to treat prisoners humanely.

A Justice Department official who asked not to be identified says the case was dropped when conditions changed.

“He was held so long with evidence based on torture,” the official says. “The president decided, one, that we won’t torture and, two, that we won’t rely on statements based on torture. It’s not really lessons learned. It was the result of a policy choice the president made.”

Jawad says only faith and a Koran prevented him from going insane.

Isolated, he forgot basic words in his own language. He learned a little English, but consciously avoided learning everything. “The guards used many bad words that I didn’t want to pick up,” he says.

Family members say he’s slowly coming out of his shell. In recent weeks, he’s become less angry and irritable, sleeps better and has fewer headaches.

“Afghanistan society’s emphasis on community and family could be very helpful,” says Katherine Porterfield, clinical co-director at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, who examined him. “But honestly, he’s still very frightened.”

After Jawad returned home, one of the first things he did was wolf down a huge plate of mutton and rice after years of tasteless prison food. He’s enjoying his freedom, shopping and trying to make sense of cultural references, TV programs, Kabul society.

He wants to resume his education, he says, even if it means sitting with 13-year-olds at tiny desks. He’s started thinking about longer-term plans — a good sign, says a child care expert working with him who asked not to be identified to protect Jawad and herself. He even is starting to show a sense of humor.

UNICEF, his lawyers and other civic groups are trying to get him psychological care, education and job training, as well as money for some basic living expenses. The financial help promised by Karzai — now embroiled in election controversy — has not yet materialized.

Critics question why the U.S. government has done so little to help him and other longtime Guantanamo and secret-site prisoners adjust after they’re released, much like halfway houses ease the transition for regular prisoners.

“We need to do more than just dump him on the corner with a bus ticket after seven years and say, ‘Have a nice day,’ ” says Jawad’s lawyer, Eric Montalvo, who left the U.S. military in August. “If you’re trying to win the hearts and minds of Afghanis, I can’t think of a better investment.”

The Defense Department official says such a program would be too costly, and given officials’ worries about alleged terrorist links, “we don’t want to give them money to buy equipment that could come back to hurt us.”

Jawad’s family is now mulling a lawsuit, which his lawyer says could be filed within the next month.

Out in the family’s small enclosed courtyard in a modest Kabul neighborhood, two chickens fight and a child plays with a pump handle as Jawad contemplated his future.

He wants to be a doctor, he says, so he can do something good for people.

“That’s my dream,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s possible. But that’s my dream.”

October 28th, 2009

Hell and Dr. James

Another reminder of the case against Larry James, now Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Ohio:

When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home
Hell and Dr. James

By Bill Quigley and Deborah Popowski

The Louisiana Board that licenses psychologists is facing a growing legal fight over torture and medical care at the infamous Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons.

In 2003, Louisiana psychologist and retired colonel Larry James watched behind a one-way mirror in a U.S. prison camp while an interrogator and three prison guards wrestled a screaming near-naked man on the floor.

The prisoner had been forced into pink women’s panties, lipstick and a wig; the men then pinned the prisoner to the floor in an effort “to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown.” As he recounts in his memoir, Fixing Hell, Dr. James initially chose not to respond. He “opened [his] thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason…”

Although he claims to eventually find “good reason” to intervene, the Army colonel never reported the incident or even so much as reprimanded men who had engaged in activities that constituted war crimes.

Sadly, the story of Dr. James’ complicity in prisoner abuse does not end there. The New Orleans native and former LSU psychology professor admits to overseeing the detention, interrogation and health care of three boys, aged twelve to fourteen, who were disappeared to Guantanamo and held without charge or access to counsel or their families. In Fixing Hell and elsewhere, Dr. James proudly proclaims that he was in a position of authority at Guantanamo.

Government records indicate that, as the senior psychologist consulting on interrogations, his decisions affected the policy and operations of interrogations and detention on the base. During his time there, reports of beatings, sexual abuse, religious humiliation and sleep deprivation during interrogations were widespread, and draconian isolation was official policy. Prisoners suffered, and some continue to suffer, devastating physical and psychological harm.

Dr. Trudy Bond, a psychologist under an ethical obligation to report abuse by other psychologists, filed a complaint against Dr. James before the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists in February 2008.

Dr. Bond’s complaint says that Dr. James’ conduct violated Louisiana laws governing his psychology license. As a psychologist and military colonel, he had a duty to avoid harm, to protect confidential information, and to obtain informed consent, as well as to prevent and punish the misconduct of his subordinates.

How did the Louisiana licensing board respond? Rather than investigate, the Board dismissed the complaint, and when asked again, reaffirmed its decision. Dr. Bond has now taken the case to the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal in Baton Rouge. Dr. James played an influential role in both the policy and day-to-day operations of interrogations and detention in the notorious prison camps built to hold men and boys captured during the U.S. “War on Terror.”

According to his own statements, he was a senior member of interrogation consulting teams that, as documented by government records, were central in designing interrogation plans that exploited psychological and physical weaknesses of individual detainees. In one example cited by the New York Times, a military health professional told interrogators that “the detainee’s medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to cooperate.”

Had Dr. James chosen to cast himself as a brave, but ultimately ineffective voice against torture, he may have fooled some people into believing him. Instead, he’s presented an utterly implausible portrait: one of a man “chosen” by “the nation” to “fix the hell” of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, a feat he claims to have accomplished so successfully that ever since he was first deployed in January 2003, “where ever [sic] we have had psychologists no abuses have been reported.”

This is patently untrue. The real “fact of the matter,” as documented by government records, reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and eyewitness accounts, is that serious abuses were widespread both during Dr. James’ tenure as senior psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantánamo, and after he left.

One would imagine that such disregard for a law designed to protect the public welfare would greatly concern the body charged with its enforcement. But the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, which issued James his license, has refused to investigate whether he violated professional misconduct law.

The Board’s conduct should alarm all Louisiana health professionals and their patients. The Board demeans the profession when it fails to seriously address the possibility that a Louisiana licensee was involved in torture. It also strips the Louisiana psychology license of meaning and value.

How can patients rely on a license issued and enforced by a body that arbitrarily refuses to look into allegations of grave misconduct?

As the legal battle wears on, the people of Louisiana need to ask the Board’s members what “good reason” they await in order to act. They should demand that the Board of Examiners conduct a thorough investigation of Larry James and, if what he admits is true, revoke his privilege to practice.

**************

Bill Quigley is a Loyola Law professor working at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Deborah Popowski is a Skirball Fellow at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. Both authors are involved with the campaign When Healers Harm: Hold Health Professionals Accountable for Torture, see http://whenhealersharm.org/

Bill can be contacted at quigley77@gmail.com.

Deborah can be contacted at dpopowski@law.harvard.edu.

October 26th, 2009

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.”

********

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

October 16th, 2009