Psyche, Science, and Society

US military brig was ordered to follow Guantanamo SOP, injuring detainee mental health

This week saw the release by the ACLU of documents showing that military officials were afreaid that the brutal, Guantanamo-based, conditions of detenetion under which three Americand were being held in a US brig were causing irremediable mental harm to one of the detainees. These documents show that the brig which held Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri was ordered to follow the Standard Operating Procedures [SOP] for Guantanamo, despite the fact that the brig held US citizens on US soil and Guantanamo, according to tortured administration legal analysis, was outside of US or international law.

The documents also reveal that a military official was concerned about the effects the harsh treatment was having on one mental health of one of the detainees, Yaser Hamdi, after 14 months of isolation. After three years in detention he was released to Saudi Arabia without charges ever having been filed.

An ACLU comment is available here, and the documents here. Here is an Associated Press story:

US Detainee Abuse Drove Prisoner To Brink Of Insanity, New Documents Show

By Pamela Hess

A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as “enemy combatants” for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.

The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.

“I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we’re working with borrowed time,” an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. “I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me.”

Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic received the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by two attorneys Jonathan Freiman and Tahlia Townsend, representing another detainee, Jose Padilla. The Lowenstein group and the American Civil Liberties Union said the papers were evidence that the Bush administration violated the 5th Amendment’s protections against cruel treatment. The U.S. military was ordered to treat the American prisoners the same way prisoners at Guantanamo were treated, according to the documents.

However, the Guantanamo jail was created by the Bush administration specifically to avoid allowing detainees any constitutional rights. Administration lawyers contended the Constitution did not apply outside the country.

“These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we’ve suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States,” Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU’s National Security Project in New York said, using the slang word for the U.S. naval facility in Cuba.

The 91 pages of e-mails and documents produced by U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which runs the military brigs in Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C., detail daily decisions made about the treatment of Hamdi and Padilla, then both American citizens, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal resident. All were designated as by the White House as “illegal enemy combatants.”

The paperwork show uniformed officials at the military brigs growing increasingly uncomfortable and then alarmed that they were being directed to handle their prisoners under the rules that governed Guantanamo.

The authors and recipients of the e-mails are censored from the documents. They appear to be going to either military or Pentagon legal counsel and policy offices.

The documents show that some officials at the Charleston brig were deeply skeptical about the mandate that Guantanamo rules should apply in the United States, a decision made by the defense secretary’s office, according to the documents.

“You have every right to question the ‘lash-up’ between GTMO and Charleston _ it was the first thing I ask (sic) about a year ago when I checked on board,” wrote one official to another in 2006. “In a nutshell, they gave the Charleston detainee mission to (Joint Forces Command) who promptly gave it to (Fleet Forces Command) with a ‘lots of luck’ and nothing else.”

An officer was still raising alarms about Hamdi’s mental state after 14 months of jail with no contact with lawyers, his family or even other prisoners.

“I told him the last thing that I wanted to have happen was to send him anywhere from here as a ‘basket case,’ of use to no one, to include himself,” the officer wrote in an e-mail to undisclosed government officials in June 2003. “I fear the rubber band is nearing its breaking point here and not totally confident I can keep his head in the game much longer.”

The frustrated officer wrote that he had “to have the ability to exercise some discretion when I believe it best for the health and welfare of those assigned to my facility … Know … we are to remain consistent with the procedures that were/are in place at Camp X-Ray” a reference to the Guantanamo jail. He pointed out that imposing those conditions in the brig had a far harsher effect on his prisoners because they had no contact with any other detainees, which was allowed at Guantanamo.

Scores of pages of once-secret legal opinions regarding detainee rights and treatment have been released under the Freedom of Information Act. At least two apparently crucial memos about enemy combatant treatment inside the U.S. have yet to be made public.

Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, shipped to Guantanamo and then moved to the U.S. after his citizenship was discovered. He was held and interrogated for three years without charges. The Supreme Court in 2004 rejected the government’s attempt to hold him indefinitely without charge. He was released to Saudi Arabia on the condition he give up his U.S. citizenship.

Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was a legal resident studying for a master’s degree in Illinois when he was arrested in December 2001 by the FBI as a material witness to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was charged with credit card fraud in 2002. A month before his trial in 2003, President Bush declared him an enemy combatant and al-Marri was transferred to the consolidated naval brig in Charleston. There he was held in isolation for 16 months, denied shoes and socks for two years, and was not allowed any contact with his family for five years. He remains in the military brig but is appealing his detention to the Supreme Court.

Padilla was arrested in 2002 under suspicion he was collaborating with al-Qaida to build a radioactive or “dirty” bomb. He was held as an enemy combatant for more than three years. He was held totally incommunicado for 21 months. His mother was only allowed to see Padilla after she agreed not to alert the media to the visit, according to the documents.

The government dropped the dirty bomb charges and Padilla’s case was moved to civilian court where in 2007 he was convicted of supporting terrorism in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya.

Add comment October 12th, 2008

Guantanamo prosecutor resignation raises specter of yet unrevealed horrors

The Los Angeles Times reports on the Guantanamo prosecutor who resigned last month, citing failures of the prosecution to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. This article only makes us wonder what horrors are still being hidden:

Guantanamo prosecutor who quit had ‘grave misgivings’ about fairness

Convinced that key evidence was being withheld from the defense, Lt. Col. Darrel J. Vandeveld went from being a ‘true believer to someone who felt truly deceived’ by the tribunals.

By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, October 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — Darrel J. Vandeveld was in despair. The hard-nosed lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, a self-described conformist praised by his superiors for his bravery in Iraq, had lost faith in the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunals in which he was a prosecutor.

His work was top secret, making it impossible to talk to family or friends. So the devout Catholic — working away from home — contacted a priest online.

Even if he had no doubt about the guilt of the accused, he wrote in an August e-mail, “I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing, and what we are doing as a country….

“I no longer want to participate in the system, but I lack the courage to quit. I am married, with children, and not only will they suffer, I’ll lose a lot of friends.”

Two days later, he took the unusual step of reaching out for advice from his opposing counsel, a military defense lawyer.

“How do I get myself out of this office?” Vandeveld asked Major David J.R. Frakt of the Air Force Reserve, who represented the young Afghan Vandeveld was prosecuting for an attack on U.S. soldiers — despite Vandeveld’s doubts about whether Mohammed Jawad would get a fair trial. Vandeveld said he was seeking a “practical way of extricating myself from this mess.”

Last month, Vandeveld did just that, resigning from the Jawad case, the military commissions overall and, ultimately, active military duty. In doing so, he has become even more of a central figure in the “mess” he considers Guantanamo to be.

Vandeveld is at least the fourth prosecutor to resign under protest. Questions about the fairness of the tribunals have been raised by the very people charged with conducting them, according to legal experts, human rights observers and current and former military officials.

Vandeveld’s claims are particularly explosive.

In a declaration and subsequent testimony, he said the U.S. government was not providing defense lawyers with the evidence it had against their clients, including exculpatory information — material considered helpful to the defense.

Saying that the accused enemy combatants were more likely to be wrongly convicted without that evidence, Vandeveld testified that he went from being a “true believer to someone who felt truly deceived” by the tribunals. The system in place at the U.S. military facility in Cuba, he wrote in his declaration, was so dysfunctional that it deprived “the accused of basic due process and subject[ed] the well-intentioned prosecutor to claims of ethical misconduct.”

Army Col. Lawrence J. Morris, the chief prosecutor and Vandeveld’s boss, said the Office of Military Commissions provides “every scrap of paper and information” to the defense. Morris said that Vandeveld was disgruntled because his commanding officers disagreed with some of his legal tactics and that he “never once” raised substantive concerns.

Morris said last week that he had no idea why Vandeveld had become so antagonistic toward the tribunal process, adding that the lieutenant colonel’s outspokenness angered him because it was unfair and was a “broad blast at some very ethical and hardworking people whose performances are being smudged groundlessly.”

Vandeveld, who was prosecuting seven tribunal cases — nearly a third of pending cases — has declined to be interviewed about the particulars of the Jawad case. But he did engage in a series of e-mails with The Times about his general concerns, before being “reminded” last week that he could not talk to the press until his release from active duty was final. In the future, he said, he plans to speak out.

“I don’t know how else the creeping rot of the commissions and the politics that fostered and continued to surround them could be exposed to the curative powers of the sunlight,” he said. “I care not for myself; our enemies deserve nothing less than what we would expect from them were the situations reversed. More than anything, I hope we can rediscover some of our American values.”

Some tribunal defense lawyers are preparing to call Vandeveld as a witness, saying that his claims of systemic problems at Guantanamo, if true, could alter the outcome of every pending case there — and force the turnover of long-sought information on coercive interrogation tactics and other controversial measures used against their clients in the war on terrorism.

For years, defense lawyers and human rights organizations have raised similar concerns in individual cases. “But we never had anyone on the inside who could validate those claims,” said Michael J. Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel for the commissions.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Vandeveld led a relatively placid life outside Erie, Pa., with his wife and four children. He worked as a senior deputy state attorney general in charge of consumer protection in the region, and he served on his local school board in Millcreek Township.

Anyone who knows him, Vandeveld, 48, told The Times, “will probably tell you that I’ve been a conformist my entire life, and [that] to speak out against the injustice wrought upon our worst enemies entailed a weather shift in my worldview.”

Mark Tanenbaum, an English teacher whose children are friends with Vandeveld’s, remembers talking to him while sitting around campfires at high school gatherings. “We talked a lot about religion. I’m Jewish. We’d talk about faith, value-based philosophy. We were kindred spirits in this.

“With him, it is all about doing the right thing.”

Vandeveld, called to active duty after 9/11, received glowing evaluations as a Pentagon legal advisor and judge advocate in Bosnia, the Horn of Africa and Iraq. “An absolutely outstanding, first-class performance by an extraordinarily gifted, intelligent, knowledgeable and experienced judge advocate, whose potential is utterly unlimited,” his commanding officer, Gen. Charles J. Barr, wrote in his June 2006 evaluation. “One of the corps’ best and brightest. Save the very toughest jobs in the corps for him.”

From his Iraq assignment, Vandeveld went to Guantanamo, where he began locking horns over the Jawad case with Frakt — a law professor at Western State University in Fullerton and a former active-duty Air Force lawyer who volunteered for the tribunals.

Frakt believed that his Afghan client was, at worst, a confused teen who had been brainwashed and drugged by militant extremists who coerced him into participating in a grenade-throwing incident with other older — and more guilty — men. He insisted that the prosecution was withholding key information or not obtaining it from those at the Pentagon, CIA and other U.S. agencies that had investigated and interrogated Jawad.

Vandeveld believed that Jawad was a war criminal who had been taught by an Al Qaeda-linked group to kill American troops and, if caught, to make up claims he had been tortured and was underage. Vandeveld insisted that he had been providing all evidence to the defense.

But by July, Vandeveld told The Times, he had grown increasingly troubled. He kept finding sources of information and documents that appeared to bolster Frakt’s claims that evidence was being withheld — including some favorable to the defense, such as information suggesting that Jawad was underage, that he had been drugged before the incident and that he had been abused by U.S. forces afterward.

Vandeveld also was having difficulty obtaining authorization to release documents in his possession to the defense.

On Aug. 5, he e-mailed Father John Dear, a well-known Jesuit peace activist. Dear, who boasts of being arrested 75 times in protests, encouraged him to act, saying he might “save lives and change the direction of the entire policy.”

With Frakt pressing for the charges against Jawad to be dismissed due to “outrageous government misconduct,” Vandeveld proposed a plea agreement under which Jawad, now thought to be 22, could return to Afghanistan for rehabilitation. But his superiors rejected it, Vandeveld said.

By late August, he had told Frakt that there were other “disquieting” things about Guantanamo and that his superiors were refusing to address them or to let him quietly transfer out, Frakt said in an interview.

“Now might be a good time to take a courageous stand and expose some of the ‘disquieting’ things that you have alluded to, whatever they may be,” Frakt replied in a Sept. 2 e-mail, noting that there would soon be a change of administrations in Washington.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to distance yourself from a process that has become largely discredited, or at least distinguish yourself as one of the good guys, an ethical prosecutor trying to do the right thing,” Frakt wrote.

On Sept. 9, Vandeveld e-mailed Dear to say he had resigned from the Guantanamo military tribunals: “The reaction was the expected outrage and condemnation. I have and will maintain my equanimity and, while scared for me and for my family, know that Christ will watch over me.”

That, however, was only the beginning. In late September — after the military, according to Frakt, initially tried to block it — Vandeveld testified by video link for the defense, saying he believed that insurmountable problems with the tribunals might make them incapable of meting out justice fairly.

Morris said that Vandeveld is not qualified to speak about systemwide problems at Guantanamo. But Frakt said that he is and that Vandeveld’s testimony and declaration only scratched the surface of his concerns, judging by their extensive conversations and hundreds of e-mail exchanges.

“There is a lot more that he knows,” Frakt said.

Add comment October 12th, 2008

SERE SOP posted for the first time

One of the most important documents of the U.S. torture program has just become publicly available for the first time. This is the JTF GTMO “SERE” Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure, now posted on the website of the new documentary, Torturing Democracy. This document clearly specifies that the abusive interrogation techniques to be used at Guantamo [JTF GTMO] are based upon the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape [SERE] program. The document is notable for its documentation of the extent to which abuse was bureaucratically standardized for routine use.

Both Katherine Eban and Jane Mayer referred to and described the SERE SOP back in the summer of 2007. A bit of it was included in documents released by the Senate Armed Services Committee June 17, 2008. But the bulk of the text remained classified and unavailable until today. An FBI commentary on the SERE SOP has been available since February 2006 at least, in heavily redacted form which obscured the content, but not the existence of the SOP.

Here is the document. It is also available in pdf. [as this was a draft, the formatting was inconsistent. I have corrected some formatting. I have not corrected any typos. Thus, presumably, the word "NOT" is missing after "DO" from the sentence "IT IS CRITICAL THAT INTERROGATORS DO "CROSS THE LINE" WHEN UTILIZING THE TACTICS DESCRIBED BELOW.." Obviously, despite my best efforts at accuracy, this text should be checked against the pdf before citing.]

“FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY”

JTF GTMO SERE SOP

10 DECEMBER 2002

JTF GTMO “SERE” INTERROGATION STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

Subj: GUIDELINES FOR EMPLOYING “SERE” TECHNIQUES DIRING DETAINEE INTERROGATIONS

Ref: (a) FASO DETACHMENT BRUNSWICK INSTRUCTION 3305.3D

1. Purpose. This SOP document promulgates procedures to be followed by I I P-GTMO personnel engaged in interrogation operations on detained persons. The premise behind this is that the interrogation tactics used at U.S. military SERE schools are appropriate for use in real-world interrogations. These tactics and techniques are used at SERE school to “break” SERE detainees. The same tactics and techniques can be used to break real detainees during interrogation operations.

The basis for this document is the SOP used at the U.S. Navy SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school in Brunswick, Maine and is defined by reference (a).

Note that all tactics are strictly non-lethal.

STRICT COMPLIANCE WITH THE GUIDELINES LAID OUT IN THIS DOCUMENT IS MADATORY!

2. Training. All interrogators will undergo training by certified SERE instructors prior to being approved for use of any of the techniques described in this document.

3. Scope. Applicable to military and civilian interrogators assigned to JTF-GTMO, Cuba.

TED K. MOSS
LtCol, USAF

INTERROGATION TACTICS

1. GENERAL STATEMENT

a. This document describes in detail the interrogation tactics authorized for use in detainee interrogation operations at JTF_GTMO and the safety precautions that must be used to prevent injuries. The tactics are the same as those used in U.S. military SERE schools.

b. ANY PHYSICAL CONTACT NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED HEREIN IS
PROHIBIIED.

c. INTERROGATION TACTICS FOLLOWED BY: ******* MAY ONLY BE USED BY THOSE INIERROGATORS DESIGNATED IN WRITING BY THE ICE CHIEF.

2. INTERROGATION SAFETY

a. Approved interrogation tactics are found in Sections 3-6.

b. Additional safeguards are as follows:

1. Detainee behavior and reactions are continuously observed and evaluated by the interrogator.

2. Both the detainee’s and the interrogators behavior are monitored by the Watch Officer.

3. IT IS CRITICAL THAT INTERROGATORS DO “CROSS THE LINE” WHEN UTILIZING THE TACTICS DESCRIBED BELOW. Therefore, verbal coded messages or nonverbal signals will be used by the Watch Officer (or other interrogators) when giving instructions to adjust interrogation procedure. For example, two kicks on the door indicated the interrogator should discontinue the current approach and move on to another approach. The statement, “Stop wasting time with this pig,” means to discontinue the current training tactic and take a break.

3. DEGRADATION TACTICS

a. SHOULDER SLAP. The shoulder slap is a moderate to hard, glancing blow to the back of the shoulder with an open hand. It is used as an irritant.

b. INSULT SLAP. *****

(1) The insult slap is used to shock and intimidate the detainee. The slap is aimed at the detainee’s cheek only. Contact will be made only with the fingers in the open hand position and the fingers will be slightly spread and relaxed. The slap will be initiated no more than 12-14 inches (or one shoulder width) from the detainee’s face.

To ensure this distance is not exceeded and to preclude any tendency to wind up or uppercut, the slap will be initiated with the slap hand contacting the detainee’s body on the top of the shoulder. The target area is slightly below the cheekbone, away from the eyes and ears. Extreme care must be taken not to strike the lower jaw. Slaps aimed at the ears, mouth, nose eyes or throat are prohibited.

(2) Uninterrupted or consecutive slaps are prohibited because the detainee will duck or dodge the slap, creating possibility for an injury. Experience has shown that after a second slap, the effectiveness of the slap tactic is significantly reduced. Interrogators will cease using the slap if detainee begins ducking. At this point, a threatened slap with the hand will achieve the same purpose as a slap. Blows with the back of the hand, fists, elbows, feet and knees are prohibited. Insult slaps are only to be used by those interrogators designated in writing by the ICE CHIEF.

C. STOMACH SLAP. ******

(1) As with the insult slap, the stomach slap is used to shock and intimidate the detainee. The tactic is delivered with the back of the bare hand. The slap will be directed towards the center of the abdomen. The detainee will not be struck in the solar plexus, ribs, sides, and kidneys or below the navel. The slap will not be performed against the bare skin. Slaps will be initiated with the interrogator’s upper arm parallel to his/her body, extending the striking hand in a swinging motion to the target area. Detainees will be either facing or to the side of the interrogator when the slap is administered.

(2) Uninterrupted or consecutive slaps are prohibited. Blows to the stomach with the palm of the hand fist, knees or elbows are prohibited.

D. STRIPPING

(1) Stripping consists of forceful removal of detainees’ clothing. In addition to degradation of the detainee, shipping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee. Interrogator personnel tear clothing from detainees by firmly pulling downward against buttoned buttons and seams. Tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.

4. PHYSICAL DEBILITATION TACTICS

a. STRESS POSITIONS. Stress positions are used to punish detainees. ALL STRESS POSITIONS ARE -RESTRICTED TO A MAXIMUM TIME OF TEN MINUTES AND A LOGBOOK ENTRY IS REQURED. An interrogator/guard will remain with detainees during use of stress positions. The authorized positions are:

(1) Head Rest/Index Finger position - Detainee is placed with forehead or fingers against the wall, then the detainee’s legs are backed out to the point that the detainee’s leaning weight is brought to bear on fingers or head.

(2) Kneeling position - Administered by placing detainee on knees and having him lean backward on heels and hold hands extended to the sides or front, palms upward. Light weights such as small rocks, may be placed in the detainee’ s upturned palms. The detainee will not be placed in a position facing the sun or floodlights.

(3) Worship-the-Gods - The detainee is placed on knees with head and torso arched back, with arms either folded across the chest or extended to the side or front. The detainee will not be placed in a position facing the sun or floodlights.

(4) Sitting Position - the detainee is placed with his back against a wall, tree or post; thighs are horizontal, lower legs are vertical with feet flat on floor or ground as though sitting in a chair. Arms may be extended to sides horizontally, palms up and boots on.

(5) Standing position - While standing, the detainee is required to extend arms either to the sides or front with palms up. Light weights such as small rocks may be placed in upturned palms.

5. ISOLATION AND MONOPOLIZATION OF PERCEPTION TACTICS

a. HOODING

(1) Hoods are lightweight fabric sacks large enough to fit loosely over a detainee’s head and permit unrestricted breathing.

(2) Flooding us used to isolate detainees. Individually hooded detainees may be moved provided an interrogator/guard leads the detainee. Detainees may not be left standing alone with the hood on. They must be placed either on their stomachs, kneeling, or sitting. Detainee medical limitations must be considered.

6. DEMONSTRATED OMNIPOTENCE TACTICS

a. MANHANDLING. Manhandling consists of pulling or pushing a detainee. It is used as an irritant and to direct the detainee to specific locations. Detainees must be handcuffed and must grasp their trousers near mid-thigh with both hands. The interrogator firmly grasps detainee’s clothing and then moves the detainee at a walking pace. The interrogator must maintain positive control of the detainee The detainee is not released until the interrogator is positive the detainee has regained balance.

b. WALLING. ***** Walling consists of placing a detainee forcibly against a specially constructed wall. Walling will only be performed in designated areas where specially constructed walls have been built. Walling is used to physically intimidate a detainee. The interrogator must ensure the wall is smooth, firm, and free of any projections. If conducted outside, footing area must be solid and free of objects that could cause detainee or interrogator to lose their balance. A detainee can be taken to tfio wall a maximum of three,times per.shift. Walling is done by firmly grasping the front of the detainee’s clothing high on each side of the collar„ ensuring the top of the clothing is open. Care should be taken to ensure detainees with long hair do not get their hair tangled into the folds of clothes being grasped by the interrogator. To avoid bruising the detainee, roll hands under folds of clothing material and ensure only the backs of the hands contact detainee’s chest. Maintain this grip throughout, never allowing the detainee to be propelled uncontrollably. Ensure only the broad part of the shoulders contact the surface of the wall. Grip the detainee’s clothing firmly enough so the collar acts as a restrictive constraint to preclude the detainee’s head from contacting the wall does this. If the detainee’s head inadvertently touches the wall, walling will be ceased immediately. Walling is to be used by those interrogators designated in writing by the ICE CHIEF.

Add comment October 11th, 2008

Fabulous new film showing on Public Television: Torturing Democracy

Starting tonight, Public Television will be viewing the new documentary Torturing Democracy, which is a new film relaying the history of U.S. torture in the war on terror. Topics cover the Yoo-Bybee legal memos, the removal of Geneva protections, torture at the CIA black sites, the  development of Guantanamo, and the torture of many of the detainees whose names we have sadly come to know.

Along the way, the film explains the CIA KUBARK interrogation manual and the role of the military’sSERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] program. The reverse-engineering of SERE techniques into U.S. torture techniques is described.

Torturing Democracy was produced by Washington Media Associates in association with the National Security Archive. It was written and produced by Sherry Jones. I was given a pre-release copy of the film and watched it the other night. I was amazed at how they managed to cover so much territory in only 90 minutes. There were one or two points at which I felt they went beyond the extant data in their conclusions, but, in general, I found it excellent. While there is certainly overlap with other films — such as Taxi to the Dark Side, Ghosts of abu Ghraib, or Standard Operating Procedure — Torturing Democracy, perhaps because it was produced later, after more information had become public,  is more comprehensive.

Sometime today, the film’s website is supposed to go live, with a streaming copy of the film and an archive of the documents referred to in it plus other materials.

If the film is not scheduled in your community, call your local public television station and ask them to show it. You can read a press release here.

Add comment October 10th, 2008

Democracy Now! APA passes referendum withdrawing psychologists from detention sites

Democracy Now! today covers passage of the American Psychological Association referendum, interviewing referendum author Dan Aalbers. You can watch or listen here. Here is the transcript:

APA Approves Measure Banning Psychologists from Interrogations

The American Psychological Association has approved a landmark measure banning members from taking part in interrogations of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay. We speak to Dan Aalbers, member of the dissident APA group called the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Dan Aalbers, psychologist and member of the dissident APA group called the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

JUAN GONZALEZ: The American Psychological Association has approved a landmark measure banning members from taking part in interrogations of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and all of the secret CIA black sites. Nearly 60 percent of members voted in favor of the referendum in the largest turnout for an APA vote to date.

APA officials initially suggested they would delay implementing the referendum for up to a year. But in a surprise move, APA president Alan Kazdin recently wrote President Bush to inform him of the decision.

AMY GOODMAN: The letter says: “The effect of this new policy is to prohibit psychologists from any involvement in interrogations or any other operational procedures at detention sites that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law…In such unlawful detention settings, persons are deprived of basic human rights and legal protections, including the right to independent judicial review of their detention…There have been many reports, from credible sources, of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees during your term in office. Therefore, the American Psychological Association strongly calls on you and your administration to safeguard the physical and psychological welfare and human rights of individuals incarcerated by the U.S. government in such detention centers and to investigate their treatment to ensure that the highest ethical standards are being upheld.”

The referendum was spearheaded by a dissident APA group called the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. We’re joined right now by a member of the group who helped draft the referendum text. Dan Aalbers joins us now from Reno, Nevada.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Dan Aalbers, talk about how this referendum was finally passed. There has been this growing dissident movement within the world’s largest association of psychologists, the American Psychological Association. How did you do it?

DAN AALBERS: Well, this is really a community effort. I think that there was a lot of dissatisfaction with APA policy up until this point. And a group of us came together, Psychologists for an Ethical APA, Withhold APA Dues, and looked into the APA bylaws to find a way to bring this issue directly to the membership. And so, I joined with Brad Olson, with Ruth Fallenbaum—two other dissident psychologists—and we just used old-fashioned networking. We spread it around, and I was really amazed to see the way this spread spontaneously. We did not ask a single group to endorse this referendum, but day after day, I would open my email, and another group had come in spontaneously, because people had been working autonomously in their own groups to bring this referendum forward. And it worked.

AMY GOODMAN: Dan Aalbers, I wanted to turn for a minute back a year ago to that town-hall meeting in August of 2007, when hundreds of APA members gathered to discuss the issue of prisoner interrogations. This town-hall meeting came right after the APA’s Council of Representatives voted to reject the kind of ban that APA members have just approved by the referendum. You were among the outraged APA members to speak out.

DAN AALBERS: My name is Dan Aalbers, and I am just another psychologist who thinks that the moral issue of our time has landed at our doorstep. I wanted to say just a few things. One, I think that there has not been today, or in these last number of years, enough discussion about the difference between the culture of science and the culture of an intelligence community. Scientists are committed to openness. Ultimately, what keeps us ethical is not our ethical code, is not our internal review boards, but it is that we publish our research, we present things at conferences, and ultimately, the last test on whether or not we have been ethical or not is public scrutiny. This is very different from an intelligence organization, which tends to want to control information. And there are these basic incompatibilities, I think, we have not addressed.

The second point I want to make is about this moratorium that did not pass. We have made an enormous mistake, and I think it’s—not only did we do the wrong thing morally, we did not act in our best interests. We are now standing against the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the British Psychological Society, numerous human rights organizations, the UN, the Council of Europe, and this detention and interrogation policy is going to go down. And once it does go down, we will find that we have secured the best cabin on the Titanic. Thank you.

NANCY WECKER: Hi, my name is Nancy Wecker. I’m in private practice in San Francisco. I just want to propose a conflict that we have. It’s like we’re embedded in the military, you know, like the journalists who are embedded in the war. That’s our problem. Most of our internships are all in the military, DoD or mostly the VA. So I think we have this problem with ethics are really highfalutin—you know, it’s hard for us to imagine people being tortured, for a lot of us. And then we have our affiliation and our loyalty. So, these are in conflict, and I think people couldn’t imagine, you know, withdrawing from our responsibilities and our teamwork with these people in the military, because of some highfalutin kind of ideals.

AMY GOODMAN: Dissenting psychologists, over a year ago, after the referendum, which wasn’t a referendum then—resolution, was voted down to prohibit psychologists participation in these interrogations. Actually, at that time, the APA leadership tried to throw Democracy Now! out of the open town-hall meeting, saying they didn’t want us to record anymore, but the psychologists fought back, and we were able to film, which is why we’re able to bring this to you.

Dan Aalbers, now the new president of the American Psychological Association has, to your surprise, said this will be instituted now.

DAN AALBERS: And I think that’s a very significant change in policy, that now we have an opportunity to change course. You know, as I said a year ago, that this ship is going to go down. And I really think that psychology has an opportunity to become part of the cleanup crew to stop the abuses. When we have been participating, we have been collaborating, we have been helping Guantanamo stay afloat. Now that this detention and interrogation program is going down, we now have an opportunity to be on the right side of this issue. It’s what the members want. I think you heard it in that tape of the hall. That is the voice of the membership. We have close to 60 percent of members voting for this. And I’m really happy to see that President Kazdin understands that a good leader is led from below.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Dan Aalbers, what’s the practical effect of the ban now? Do members have to automatically stop, or is this an individual decision on their part still? And how will it actually work out in practice?

DAN AALBERS: That’s something that remains to be seen. Again, we’re very inspired by this letter. We hope that the APA is going to go forward with a full implementation. And full implementation means putting psychologists on the side of the detainees and not the detainers. And that will mean removing psychologists from these places that operate outside of and in violation of US and international law. And so, practically, it means psychologists out as soon as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. This has not gotten a tremendous amount of attention outside the APA. Ironically, the New York Times had quite a significant piece on this, but it was the day they made an error, and they printed one page of the New York Times on two separate pages, and that second page covered up the article about this APA dissident victory. And they had a little correction in the New York Times that said go to our website if you want to see that article. They had that days later.

This is—this vote is the largest vote on any referendum in APA history. How did you figure out—after the resolution was voted down, after you saw the leadership was adamantly against what you were doing, how did you figure out this approach, to go with a referendum that would come from the grassroots up?

DAN AALBERS: A psychologist by the name of Dan Denuit [phon.] at the University of Oregon suggested this. And I just took his suggestion to use as part of the association bylaws, which had never been used before. I contacted the recording secretary. And it really—it really snowballed from there. So, the APA said—allowed us to use an electronic petition, and from there, it was really grassroots organization. So it started with Dan Denuit [phon.], and he got the ball rolling, and we took it from there.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, how does it work? I mean, this is not exactly like a law passed by Congress. So, you pass this referendum. The president says it will be adopted immediately, of the American Psychological Association. He sends a letter to Gates and to President Bush. What does it mean for a member of the American Psychological Association now, if they’re at Guantanamo?

DAN AALBERS: Well, one thing, I think, that the APA, if it wants to show that it really understands this to be the primary issue of the day, that this is the—this is the moral issue of our time, is going to see that the White House, the CIA, the Department of Defense, complies with APA policy and brings these psychologists out and brings independent psychologists in. We want to have independent psychologists working inside of Guantanamo and the black sites to repair the damage. We know that Guantanamo, the black sites are systems that are designed to break a person down. We also know that psychologists can do something to repair the damage. And this referendum gets the psychologists that are working for the detainers out, and we want to ensure that the APA fights to get psychologists who are working for the detainees in, to offer them therapy, to record what has been done, and we want a full and transparent process. And we’re waiting to see what the APA will do to fully implement this.

AMY GOODMAN: Dan Aalbers, I want to thank you for being with us, member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, dissident APA group. He co-authored the APA referendum banning involvement in prisoner interrogations that has just won in the largest vote in APA history for such a referendum. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’ll link to your website on our website at democracynow.org.

Add comment October 10th, 2008

Guantanamo defense lawyers, heroes for our time

In these dark times, one bright spot has been the reistance to the Dark Side from many who previously had it made. Government officials, military oficers, interrogators, and intelligence professionals have all come out against the abuses being committed in our name. One of the most amazing group has been the attorneys, both military and civilian, who have taken risks and invested much to protect human rights and those constitutional protections that are essential to the preservation of our liberties and our sense of human decency. they undertook to defend the “worst of the worst,” as former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld called the Guantanamo detainees, only to find out that they were far from that. [I would argue that the "worst of the worst" surely includes those US officials who condemned hundreds to detention without trial, abuse, and often torture in pursuit of a warped view of an all-powerful executive.]

Agence France Presse has an article on some of those attorneys:

Principles, not money, power Guantanamo defense lawyers

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The 700-odd lawyers defending the suspected foreign terrorists held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay say they share a common mission — to make amends for the US government’s actions in its “war on terror”.

Some go to work in pinstripe suits, others in crisp military uniforms. Some get paid, others do it for free.

“Nothing else is as important, meaningful and significant as Gitmo cases,” said David Remes, 53, a former corporate attorney in Washington who represents 18 mostly Yemeni detainees.

“I couldn’t be on the side of the prosecution,” agreed Commander Suzanne Lachelier, a US Navy lawyer appointed to defend one of five men accused of participating in the September 11 attacks in 2001.

“It is such fundamental work,” Lachelier said. “The damage to our Constitution are wounds that will have to be dealt with for decades to come.”

From a variety of backgrounds, the lawyers have come to the legal fore since a US Supreme Court ruling in 2004 that entitled the Guantanamo detainees — currently numbering around 250, and all held without charge — to representation.

“Some are experienced, some work in very big firms, some are law professors,” said David Cynamon, who is defending four Kuwaitis. “But we have the same goal: to try to make sure our country represents the bases on which it was built.”

Cynamon, a Washington partner in a global law firm with three decades of litigation experience, reckons he spends three-quarters of his time on complex cases that, he says, involve defending the Constitution rather than winning ten million dollars.

For his Guantanamo work, his fees are met by the well-to-do Kuwaiti father of a detainee who is convinced of his son’s innocence.

Law professor Buz Eisenberg taps into his retirement fund — shared with his wife — to cover the cost of representing three detainees. That includes footing his own bill for translators and trips to Guantanamo.

“There is no way to explain it without sounding sanctimonius, but it really is because I took an oath” upon becoming a lawyer to fight injustice, he told the Legal Times website.

“Now that I have been exposed to all this, I can’t see how I could ever again be happy litigating a fractious partnership agreement. It just doesn’t rise to the level of importance that it used to.”

Remes has gone so far as to give up corporate law — clients at the global law firm where he was a partner included ExxonMobil and IBM — to devote all his working time to his Guantanamo cases.

“What the Bush administration has done in the last six years is uncontroversially indefensible,” he told AFP.

“This is not work you do in order to get paid. This is the type of case that allows lawyers to devote their time not for personal gain, but to vindicate basic principles and values.”

More than defending detainees, Remes described he and his fellow lawyers as vital links between their isolated clients and the outside world.

“Between 2002 and 2004, our clients were not able to see a lawyer, and the only people they saw were the military,” he explained.

“During that time, the military were able to control the perception of reality of these men, to maintain strict control. We brought them a perception of what was going on in the outside world.”

At the same time, Remes added, the defence lawyers have cast a light on “the cruelty, the brutality, the inhumanity of the treatment of the men there”.

A specialist in constitutional law, Remes co-drafted a successful application to the Supreme Court earlier this year enabling Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

Lachelier vividly recalls her first trip to Guantanamo, situated within an eponymous US Navy base on the eastern tip of Cuba, and condemned by human rights activists for the ill-treatment of detainees and avoidance of due process.

“I was suffocating,” she said. “There were so many rules and restrictions — even for us in uniform — to have access to a room, to a computer.”

“I had this idea that they (the detainees) were the most dangerous criminals in the world,” said Brian Mizer, a lieutenant commander in the US Navy who first went to Guantanamo in 2007 to represent Osama bin Laden’s driver Salim Ahmed Handan.

“And then I sat down with Salim Hamdan. How divorced is the government’s vision of reality,” he wondered.

Add comment October 9th, 2008

A cartoon is worth 1,000 essays

Today’s Modern World. A Must read. And Doonesbury tackles 24 and torture.

Add comment October 6th, 2008

APA and torture identified as one of most ignored stories of the year

Every year the 25 most ignored stories are identified. thi year, the APA position on torture [now being changed through member pressure] is #10 on the list:

10. APA Helps CIA Torture

Psychologists have been assisting the CIA and the U.S. military with interrogation and torture of Guantanamo detainees—which the American Psychological Association has said is fine—in spite of objections from many of its 148,000 members.

A 10-member APA task force convened on the divisive issue in July 2005 and found that assistance from psychologists was making the interrogations safe and they deferred to American standards on torture over international human-rights definitions.

The group was criticized by APA members for deliberating in secret, and later it was revealed that six of the 10 had ties to the armed services. Not only that, but as Katherine Eban reported in Vanity Fair, “Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the CIA.”

In particular, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, neither of whom are APA members, honed a classified military training program known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), which teaches soldiers how to tough out torture if captured by enemies. “Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror,” wrote Eban.

And, as Mark Benjamin noted in a Salon.com article, employing SERE training—which is designed to replicate torture tactics that don’t abide by Geneva Conventions standards—refutes past administration assertions that current CIA torture techniques are safe and legal. “Soldiers undergoing SERE training are subject to forced nudity, stress positions, lengthy isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, exhaustion from exercise and the use of water to create a sensation of suffocation,” Benjamin wrote.

Eban’s story outlined how SERE tactics were spun as “science,” despite a void of data and many criticisms that building rapport works better than blows to the head. Specifically, it’s been misreported that CIA torture techniques got al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to talk, when it was actually FBI rapport-building. In spite of this, the SERE techniques became standards in interrogation manuals that eventually made their way to U.S. officers guarding Abu Ghraib.

Ongoing uproar within the APA resulted in a petition to make an official policy limiting psychologist involvement in interrogations. On Sept. 17, a majority of 15,000 voting members approved a resolution stating that psychologists may not work in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the U.S. Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.”

Sources: “The CIA’s Torture Teachers,” Mark Benjamin, Salon.com, June 21, 2007; “Rorschach and Awe,” Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007.

Add comment October 2nd, 2008

Jane Mayer: Could unreleased documents change public opinion?

In the TPMCafe discussion of Jane Mayer’s book, she has a new contribution in which she discusses so-far unreleased documents that might, just might, substantially change public opinion till the public demands accountability for US torture:

Explosive Documents: A Question of Evidence

By Jane Mayer

I agree that at the bottom of it all, the stumbling block to accountability is the complicity of the American public - AT THE MOMENT. But call me naïve, because I think that public opinion could shift if the next administration released certain explosive documents. The case of Abu Ghraib has hammered home the cliché about a picture being worth a hundred words. Humbling though it is for a writer, nothing written has matched the impact of those photographs. The international revulsion they stirred forced President Bush to publicly denounce them, and for the first time, call for some kind of investigation and punishment. As Eric Umansky and others have noted, it was only when President Bush acknowledged that a scandal had taken place, that the mainstream media - including network television news shows — reacted as if something was wrong.

The CIA clearly understood the potential power of incriminating pictures, which is why they destroyed them. I am told that if the CIA’s videotapes of Muslim detainees being waterboarded were seen by the public, the international political reaction would have been, as one former CIA office put it, “unmanageable.” It was bad enough watching Hitch sputtering away. So- this brings me to the question of other photographic evidence. What’s still in the federal cupboard?

Practically every detainee has described being photographed, often naked, with particular attention to their wounds. Presumably at least some of those photographs exist somewhere. In addition, there are numerous descriptions of videotapes other than those of the waterboarding, that were destroyed. The “High Value Detainees” held by the CIA describe constant closed-circuit surveillance. Presumably some was taped. Is it possible that none of these tapes were kept? There is also the interesting question of the frequent video-conferencing done by top administration officials. I am told by a presidential archivist that it is unclear at the moment whether those videotapes are required to be turned over, under the presidential records act. They include high-level conversations between the White House officials and top officials down in Guantanamo, about what to do with the detainees. They also include discussions with Cheney, speaking from his undisclosed remote locations. There were numerous discussions between Washington and Iraq and Afghanistan as well. In Watergate, the tapes were everything. In the Iran-Contra Affair, an early email system was how Oliver North got caught. It certainly would be worth knowing what is on those video-conference reels, and, where they are.

There are written documents too that might impact public opinion. One former Bush Administration official tells me that it is impossible for people to imagine the destructive power of the interrogation and detention program without actually reading the details. Among the documents believed to contain these details, in vivid color, are the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross spelling out what the CIA’s 14 high value detainees (now in Guantanamo) described having gone through. As far as I know, this report is NOT classified. It could conceivably be made public by future administration officials, if they choose to. Additionally, there are several internal investigative reports that were done by the CIA’s inspector general, which are said to be horrifying. They probably wouldn’t have the impact of photographs, but they certainly would make a lot clearer to the American public, what is meant by the euphemism, “enhanced” interrogation methods. There is also the still-secret specific list of authorized techniques, and numerous other Justice Department documents, not yet publicly available.

So, I agree that at the moment, there is not an overwhelming call for accountability inside America. But I also think that many Americans still don’t really understand what happened in this program. If they did, I think there would be a much stronger reaction. The question is whether the public will see the evidence before it goes the way of those videotapes…

PS: I’d be interested in what’s on others’ wish lists, in terms of documentary evidence that the public should someday see.

1 comment October 2nd, 2008

PHR on APA letter to Bush

Physicians for Human Rights has released the following statement on today’s dramatic letter from APA President Kazdin to President Bush, calling for removing psychologists from the illegal detention centers:

PHR Salutes APA’s Ban on Psychologists at Illegal US Interrogations

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Media Contacts:

Nathaniel Raymond
nraymond [at] phrusa [dot] org

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Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) CEO Frank Donaghue congratulates American Psychological Association (APA) President Alan E. Kazdan, PhD, who wrote to President George W. Bush on October 2 to inform him of a significant change in APA policy that limits the roles of psychologists at illegal U.S. detention facilities, such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and CIA black sites overseas, where systematic torture has occurred.

Cambridge, MA. (PRWEB) October 2, 2008 - “APA’s announcement today is a historic victory for medical ethics and human rights,” said Physicians for Human Rights CEO Frank Donaghue. “PHR salutes the APA for telling President Bush that psychologists can no longer serve at illegal US facilities that violate the Constitution and international human rights standards. This dramatic policy reversal represents a massive transformation by an organization that has until now encouraged members to assist interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and CIA black sites overseas.”

The Association’s policy reversal was driven by a first-of-its-kind referendum, pushed by a reform movement among its members, with PHR’s active support. PHR has been campaigning since 2005 for the APA to end psychologists’ participation in U.S. national security interrogations. Government and press reports have confirmed that military and intelligence psychologists were central to the design, implementation, and supervision of the Bush administration’s regime of psychological and physical torture.

“The Pentagon and the CIA must now abide by the APA’s new policy and immediately cease employing psychologists as part of detainee interrogations,” stated Donaghue. “The Bush Administration’s interrogation policies have inflicted grievous damage to the core principles of medical ethics and the rule of law. The APA’s statement today is a watershed moment in the fight to stop psychologists from being used to cause harm and return them to their appropriate role as healers.”

The Department of Defense is expected this month to review the operational guidance for BSCTs (Behavioral Science Consultation Teams), which use mental health professionals in detainee interrogations—an application which violates international standards of health professional ethics. PHR has led the public and behind-the-scenes effort to shut down the BSCT program.

“While today is a proud day for the APA and its membership, the APA must now act to permanently prohibit direct participation by psychologists in interrogations and to ensure those psychologists who engaged in abuse and torture are held to account,” said Donaghue. “The APA has taken a tremendous step forward but has not yet reached the ethical standards of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, organizations which have banned direct participation by physicians in all interrogations. Also, the APA has not yet specified what rights abuses would render a detention facility illegal under its new policy.”

Add comment October 2nd, 2008