Psyche, Science, and Society

Did PBS bury a Frontline episode on torture?

Attorney and blogger Scott Horton asks Did PBS Bury a Frontline Episode on Torture? This episode was apparently “delayed” till after the Bush administration left office, due to a threat to cut PBS funding. It is thus showing as Torturing Democracy on some PBS stations. Call and make sure yours is among them. And make sure to watch and tell others to watch. [See my earlier comments here.]

We must keep up the pressure for accountability as a new administration comes in. We must not allow them to “forget about the past and look to the future,” as their political instincts will suggest. getting a wide viewership for this film is an excellent place to start.

Here is Horton’s article:

“Torturing Democracy” premieres on affiliates as PBS ducks the torture issue

By Scott Horton

This spring, PBS’s distinguished Frontline series aired a mildly critical account of the lead-up to the Iraq War entitled “Bush’s War.” As the airing of the program was announced, the Bush Administration proposed to slash public funding for PBS by roughly half for 2009, by 56% for 2010 and eliminating funding entirely for 2011. Did PBS get the message? Perhaps.

On Thursday evening WNET in New York will air an important new documentary by Emmy and Dupont Award winning producer Sherry Jones entitled “Torturing Democracy.” It appears on WNET and several other affiliates independently because PBS would not run the show—at least not until President Bush has left office. The show delivers impressively on a promise to “connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody that became ‘at a minimum, cruel and inhuman treatment and, at worst, torture’” (quoting Alberto Mora, who served as general counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, and features in an interview). In one dramatic scene, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage describes being waterboarded as part of a training program he went through before being sent to Vietnam. Did he consider waterboarding to be torture, Armitage was asked? “Absolutely. No question.” And he continued, “There is no question in my mind—there’s no question in any reasonable human being, that this is torture. I’m ashamed that we’re even having this discussion.” Watch the footage here:

No one who has seen this dramatic documentary is likely to buy into the “rotten apples” narrative any longer.

Which may help explain why PBS appears to be suffering from acute corporate indigestion over the work. The project was first offered to PBS in September 2007, with the representation that it would be available to air after May 2008. It was completed and circulated to PBS decision makers on schedule in May of this year. Their response? According to producer Sherry Jones, PBS told her that “no time slot could be found for the documentary before January 21, 2009”—the day after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office. Does that reflect concern that PBS would face retaliation from the Bush Administration for airing the program? I put that question to John Wilson, PBS’s Senior Vice President for Program, who didn’t respond following multiple inquiries. But January 21 is a Wednesday, and to me the only obvious reason for its selection is regime change.

The producers decided to offer the show directly to local affiliates. As of this writing, roughly sixty-five percent of the PBS network have signed on to run the program, including the flagship New York (WNET) and Boston (WGBH) stations. Curiously, however, just one major player in the network has declined: Washington affiliate WETA. The program manager for WETA also told the producers tha t the station simply had “no free time” until early next year. It’s worth noting that WETA’s CEO is Sharon Percy Rockefeller. She is the daughter of one senator and the wife of another—Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller. While neither Rockefeller nor Congressional oversight play any role in the documentary, there can be little doubt but that it raises painful questions for him. As public demands for accountability over torture policy rise, both Administration critics and defenders point to the role of the “Gang of Eight”—of which Rockefeller was one of the most prominent members. According to the Administration, they were briefed in detail about torture policies and acquiesced. Rockefeller handwrote a letter of protest after one briefing concerning the Administration’s broad-based surveillance program and locked a copy in his safe—but there is no suggestion he did anything comparable when torture was the issue. If the next Administration opts to fully air the dark secrets surrounding the Bush Administration torture policies—as many now anticipate—Rockefeller may well have reason to be concerned about what will come out.

Does this explain why WETA alone among the major PBS affiliates has opted not to broadcast this important documentary? WETA station manager Kevin Harris likewise didn’t respond to requests for comment in which I posed that question.

The developments surrounding “Torturing Democracy” fit a pattern. In late May, NPR’s Nina Totenberg secured a U.S. broadcast exclusive for Philippe Sands’s book Torture Team, published by Palgrave Macmillan. The Sands book took a close look at the Administration’s claim that the impetus for harsh new interrogation practices came from the bottom up—from interrogators at Guantánamo—and demonstrated that this was false. Instead, he showed, the practices had their origins near the top of the Administration in Washington, among a group of senior lawyers that called itself the War Council. Totenberg prepared a piece for Morning Edition that was instead put up on the NPR website and released in a minor news show.

Producer Alex Gibney’s “Taxi to the Dark Side” was originally set to run this fall on the Discovery Channel, but the company–then seeking SEC approvals in connection with a proposal to go public—decided to shelve the show until the Bush Administration left office. The movie went on to receive the Oscar for Best Documentary and was premiered last week, after HBO acquired the rights.

When pictures of detainee abuse first circulated in April 2004, the Administration insisted that the abuse was unauthorized and was all the product of a “few rotten apples,” in Donald Rumsfeld’s memorable phrase. Four and a half years later, however, a mountain of evidence has risen against the Administration’s characterization. Most recently, Condoleezza Rice and her lawyer have confirmed their participation in National Security Council meetings in which individual torture programs were approved for prisoners. Jane Mayer published The Dark Side establishing that Alberto Gonzales and other lawyers within the administration warned that the practices could be viewed as war crimes. And Bart Gellman published Angler, documenting the leading role played by Vice President Cheney and his lawyer David Addington in the introduction of torture techniques. Simultaneously with the release of “Torturing Democracy,” its producers have also published for the first time a damning document issued by military authorities at Guantánamo clarifying the highly coercive techniques—regularly identified by the United States as torture when used by other nations—which the Bush Administration had approved to use on prisoners held in the war on terror. “Torturing Democracy” provides a look at the evolution and application of the new techniques from an insider’s perspective. The most impressive of the interviewees are high-level figures in the Defense Department, Department of State and Department of Justice who became involved in the issue.

“Torturing Democracy” runs on Thursday, October 16 at 9:00 pm on New York’s WNET. It can be viewed online at torturingdemocracy.org, and other broadcast times and locations can also be found on the website.

We will update this post if and when Messrs. Wilson and Harris respond to the questions posed or give us other comments.

Add comment October 14th, 2008

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.

1 comment October 12th, 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

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

——————————————————————————–

Media Contacts:

Nathaniel Raymond
nraymond [at] phrusa [dot] org

——————————————————————————–

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

APA writes President Bush: Psychologists do not belong in the illegal detention centers

In a MAJOR development today, APA President Alan Kazdin wrote President Bush to inform him of the new APA policy from the referendum passed two weeks ago:

“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 (e.g., the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture),”

The full letter is available here.

This is a truly wonderful development! We have worked for years for this day and should all be proud. And President Kazdin deserves credit for stepping up and doing the right thing.

We have many struggles ahead of us, for investigation of the roles of psychologists in detainee abuse, for accountability, for implementing the AMA/A Psychiatric A policy removing psychologists from all detainee interrogations, and for changes within the APA to prevent a recurrence when the next crisis hits.

But today is truly a day of celebration. A few highly principled people stood up and changed history. We should be proud and the APA should be proud.

Add comment October 2nd, 2008

Discussion of Jane Mayer’s the Dark Side

At Talking Points Memo, the TPMCafe is featuring a discussion of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side. In addition to Mayer, participants include Scott Horton, Spencer Ackerman, Marty Lederman, Christopher Hitchens, ad many others. Here is Jane’s foirst contribution:

The Unmentionable Question

By Jane Mayer

Welcome to all who are part of this discussion - please let it rip.

I wanted to start by bringing up the unmentionable question in the current presidential campaign, where both candidates are avowedly against the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture and lesser cruelties in the “war-on-terror.” While both McCain and Obama have spoken out against torture, neither has spelled out what he plans to do about holding Bush Administration officials accountable who may have committed or authorized crimes. Understandably, this is a toxic subject, reeking of political payback. But I have personally interviewed CIA officers who have said they refused to partake in the “enhanced interrogation” program because they feared that eventually it would lead to criminal charges. They had seen this happen before, and wanted nothing to do with it, even if it meant in some instances, leaving the CIA. The threat of prosecution clearly acted as a deterrent. My question is what happens if there is no accountability for America’s first program of state-authorized torture? Does it send a green light to torture again when the next attack takes place? Is it an invitation to other forms of lawlessness by the U.S. Government? But, if top officials of the Bush Administration who were acting in what they believed to be the best interests of the country’s security, are now prosecuted, is that just? Will the public support it? Particularly if Obama is elected, wont this become exhibit A that the Democrats are soft on terrorism, and members of the “Blame-America-First” Club?

Stewart Taylor has urged a truth commission rather than criminal prosecutions. Is this likely? Will it do any good? Or is it more likely that President Bush will simply pardon everyone who could conceivably be criminally liable in connection with this program before he leaves office, and then sweep the whole sordid episode under the rug? Why not?

So–on a morning when accountability seems to have evaporated in the financial world - I’d like to know what we do about accountability at the top of our government for authorizing the abuse- and in some cases the killing of U.S.-held prisoners, all of which were criminal until the day before 9/11. Any thoughts?
(Those who are uncertain about the connection between U.S.-policy and the abuse, and even deaths that resulted from it, should tune in tonight to HBO, which is airing for the first time, the Oscar-winning documentary on torture, Taxi to the Dark Side.)

Add comment September 29th, 2008

Senate Armed Services Committee on importing SERE techniques to Iraq

Yesterday the Senate Armed Services Committee [SASC], or rather, its Chair, Senator Carl Levin [no other members deigned to come to the hearing on US war crimes] held a hearing on the export of SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] tactics to Iraq, leading, eventually, to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

At the hearing they heard from Col. Steven Kleinman, an interrogator and former JPRA official [Joint Personnel Recovery Administration, the SERE parent agency] and Col. John Moulton, former JPRA Commander. They testified about Col. Kleinman’s mission to Iraq, in which he was asked to demonstrate SERE techniques. He witnessed abusive interrogations and stopped them. He was then sent back home. Col. Kleinman is one of the heros of this sordid episode.

Documents released at the hearing also contained a questionaire ansered by Secretary of State, and foemer National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice in which she admitted being briefed on SERE methods in the White House. She claims to have been  “that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm.” In fact, as was clarified by th hief SERE psychologists at the June 17 SASC hearing, these techniques were deemed safe for use in training US troops, because of the combination of psychological screening, careful monitoring, ability of troops to stop at any time, and extensive multi-session debriefings afterwards. This psychologist did not claim or provide any evidence that these techniques were safe when used as interrogation techniques of captured detainees.

There are many other goodies revealed in these hearings that I am only beginning to understand.

The AP and Washington Post covered the hearings. I will here post the AP account. Then I will post Senator Levin’s Opening Statement separately. Here is the AP:

Interrogator details pre-Abu Ghraib abuses

By Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON — A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions.

One interrogation was conducted by an Air Force civilian and a contractor employed by his own organization, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. It had sent a small team to Iraq in September 2003 to help a special forces task force improve its interrogations of stubborn prisoners. The team was asked to demonstrate an interrogation on an Iraqi prisoner. It was an unusual role for the organization, which trains soldiers how to resist interrogations, not conduct them.

Kleinman said his two colleagues forcibly stripped an Iraqi prisoner naked, shackled him and left him standing in a dank, six-foot cement cell with orders to the guards that the prisoner was not to move for 12 hours. Had the prisoner passed out, he would have hit his head on a wall, Kleinman said.

Kleinman stopped the interrogation, which had veered from his careful plan into abuse.

“Until their time in Iraq they had never seen a real world interrogation,” he said.

The men, Terrence Russell and Lenny Miller, had learned the harsh techniques working with the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program for U.S. forces, which conducts stressful mock interrogations to prepare soldiers to withstand and resist abusive questioning in the event they are taken prisoner. The program uses methods derived from the real-life experiences of American prisoners of war. The techniques include forced nudity, stress positions, exposure to extremes in weather and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

Russell is a civilian JPRA employee involved in research and program development. Miller was a contractor who no longer works for JPRA, according to the military.

Joint Forces Command, which oversees JPRA, did not investigate Kleinman’s allegations because they were made directly to the task force in Iraq, said spokesman Capt. Dennis Moynihan.

Attempts to locate Russell and Miller independently were unsuccessful.

At the time, Kleinman called his now retired commander, Col. John Moulton II, to express concern about the harsh methods he saw being used in several interrogations. He said Moulton checked with his superiors and called him back to say the techniques had been specifically approved. Moulton later told investigators that he understood that the Pentagon’s general counsel or higher had approved the measures, and that the prisoners were considered terrorists and were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions, however, did apply in Iraq.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also released responses from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and legal counsel John Bellinger regarding their knowledge of the CIA interrogation program when Rice was the national security adviser and Bellinger was the National Security Council’s top lawyer.

She and Bellinger were also briefed on SERE interrogation methods at the White House in 2002 or 2003.

“I recall being told … that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm,” Rice wrote.

Rice told the committee the CIA had sought NSC approval before embarking on its own harsh interrogation program in the spring of 2002. Rice said she asked then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to review its legality. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on legal matters, later determined the CIA’s program to be legal.

Rice also said Bellinger advised her regularly about “concerns and issues” relating to the Pentagon’s interrogation and detention program at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. She said the Justice Department never discussed with her the FBI’s now documented concerns with interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay and CIA detention facilities.

Bellinger said he knew the FBI refused to participate in some CIA interrogations, which included waterboarding for at least three detainees. He was also aware of allegations of abuse at Guantanamo in 2003.

Also Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a step closer to forcing the Justice Department to hand over secret legal memos authorizing the Bush administration to use harsh and potentially illegal interrogation techniques on detainees.

By a 10-9 vote, the committee agreed to give the chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., authority to subpoena the memos from the Office of Legal Counsel. It is now up to Leahy to decide whether to issue the subpoena, which the Justice Department likely will fight because much of the information in the memos is highly classified.

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse did not answer a question about whether the department would comply with such a subpoena.

“We regret that the committee authorized the subpoena,” Roehrkasse said in a statement. “We will continue to work with them to ensure that their legitimate oversight needs are met.”

Add comment September 26th, 2008

Associated Press on referendum victory

Associated Press on referendum victory:

Psychologists vote against role in interrogation

By LINDSEY TANNER - Associated Press

The nation’s leading psychologists’ association has voted to ban its members from taking part in interrogations at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention sites where it believes international law is being violated.

The ban means those who are American Psychological Association members can’t assist the U.S. military at these sites. They can only work there for humanitarian purposes or with non-governmental groups, according to Stephen Soldz, a Boston psychologist. Soldz is founder of an ethics coalition that has long supported the ban.

“This is a repudiation by the membership of a policy that has been doggedly pursued by APA leadership for year after year,” Soldz said Thursday. “The membership has now spoken and it’s now incumbent upon APA to immediately implement this.”

The new policy should take effect at the association’s next annual meeting in August 2009. However, its council likely will discuss whether to act sooner, said spokeswoman Rhea Farberman.

The interrogation ban brings the psychologists more in line with the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association. In 2005, the psychologists association adopted a position that said, for national security purposes, it was ethical to act as consultants for interrogation and information-gathering.

Psychologists have been involved in decisions that approve of coercion methods, including “taking away comfort items like clothes and toilet paper from detainees” to help extract information from them, Soldz said.

He said that some even declined to diagnose post-traumatic stress in detainees because that would suggest detainees had been abused or harmed while in custody.

The group has no real power to enforce its new policy, although its council is expected to discuss whether to recommend the ban become part of its ethics code. That would mean a violator’s membership could be revoked, Farberman said,

Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, the group’s president, said the policy “will have teeth.”

“The organization will be disseminating our position to Congress and to other leaders and make it very clear what psychologists cannot do as part of our policy,” he said.

Add comment September 18th, 2008