Wake up, America! On July 15, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled by 5 votes to 4 in the case of Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli (PDF) that the President can arrest US citizens and legal residents inside the United States and imprison them indefinitely, without charge or trial, based solely on his assertion that they are “enemy combatants.” Have a little think about it, and you’ll see that the Fourth Circuit judges have just endorsed dictatorial powers.
In the words of Judge William B. Traxler, whose swing vote confirmed the court’s otherwise divided ruling, “the Constitution generally affords all persons detained by the government the right to be charged and tried in a criminal proceeding for suspected wrongdoing, and it prohibits the government from subjecting individuals arrested inside the United States to military detention unless they fall within certain narrow exceptions … The detention of enemy combatants during military hostilities, however, is such an exception. If properly designated an enemy combatant pursuant to legal authority of the President, such persons may be detained without charge or criminal proceedings for the duration of the relevant hostilities.”
As was pointed out by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, who was steadfastly opposed to the majority verdict (and whose opinion was endorsed by Judges M. Blane Michael, Robert B. King and Roger L. Gregory), “the duration of the relevant hostilities” is a disturbingly open-ended prospect. After citing the 2007 State of the Union Address, in which the President claimed that ‘[t]he war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others,’” Judge Motz noted, “Unlike detention for the duration of a traditional armed conflict between nations, detention for the length of a ‘war on terror’ has no bounds.”
The Court of Appeals made its extraordinary ruling in relation to a habeas corpus claim in the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, whose story I reported at length here. To recap briefly, al-Marri, a Qatari national who had studied in Peoria, Illinois in 1991, returned to the United States in September 2001, with his US residency in order, to pursue post-graduate studies, bringing his family -- his wife and five children -- with him. Three months later he was arrested and charged with fraud and making false statements to the FBI, but in June 2003, a month before he was due to stand trial for these charges in a federal court, the prosecution dropped the charges and informed the court that he was to be held as an “enemy combatant” instead.
He was then moved to a naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where he has now been held for five years and one month in complete isolation in a blacked-out cell in an otherwise unoccupied cell block. For the first 14 months of this imprisonment, he was subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme temperature manipulation, frequently deprived of food and water, and interrogated repeatedly.
In August 2003, representatives of the International Red Cross were finally allowed to visit al-Marri, and two months later he was permitted to meet with a lawyer, when he finally had the opportunity to explain that his interrogators had “threatened to send [him] to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia where, they told him, he would be tortured and sodomized and where his wife would be raped in front of him.”
Based on advice given to Donald Rumsfeld by Defense Department lawyers regarding the use of isolation at Guantánamo, when the lawyers warned that it was “not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days,” al-Marri has now been held in solitary confinement for 67 times longer than the amount of time recommended by the Pentagon’s own lawyers (this figure includes the six months that he spent in isolation in Peoria County Jail and the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York, before being transferred to Charleston).
It is, therefore, unsurprising that his lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, has explained that he is suffering from “severe damage to his mental and emotional well-being, including hypersensitivity to external stimuli, manic behavior, difficulty concentrating and thinking, obsessional thinking, difficulties with impulse control, difficulty sleeping, difficulty keeping track of time, and agitation.”
So what is Ali al-Marri supposed to have done to justify being held in solitary confinement for almost as long as the duration of the Second World War? The presidential order declaring him an “enemy combatant” stated simply that he was closely associated with al-Qaeda and presented “a continuing, present, and grave danger to the national security of the United States.” Elaborating, in subsequent statements, the government has claimed that he was part of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, who had been instructed to carry out further terrorist attacks in the United States, targeting reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange and military academies.
What’s particularly worrying about these charges is that, by the government’s own admission, the primary sources for its supposed evidence against al-Marri are confessions made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks, during the three months following his capture in March 2003, when, as even the CIA has admitted, he was subjected to waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, which the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition at least had the honesty to call “tortura del aqua.”
As I discussed at length in an article last summer, KSM stated during his tribunal at Guantánamo in March 2007 that he had given false information about other people while being tortured, and, although he was not allowed to elaborate, I traced several possible victims of these false confessions, including Majid Khan, one of 13 supposedly “high-value” detainees transferred with KSM to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006, Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman and philanthropist held in Guantánamo, and his son Uzair, who was convicted in the United States on dubious charges in November 2005, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
As I also stated last November, “It’s possible, therefore, that al-Marri is another victim of KSM’s tangled web of tortured confessions, but whether or not this is true, the correct venue for such discussions is in a court of law, and not in leaks and proclamations from an administration that appears to be intent on holding him without charge or trial for the rest of his life.”
When I wrote these words, it seemed possible that the Fourth Circuit judges would act to prevent al-Marri from having the dubious distinction of being the last “enemy combatant” on the US mainland, and would put pressure on the government to transfer him to a federal prison to face a trial in a US court, as happened with Jose Padilla, a US citizen and one of two other “enemy combatants” imprisoned without charge or trial -- the other being Yaser Hamdi, a US-born Saudi, who was held in Guantánamo until it was ascertained that he held US citizenship. In Hamdi’s case, however, a brief stay at the Charleston brig was followed by a deal that allowed him to return to Saudi Arabia.
In June 2007, a panel of three Fourth Circuit judges dealt a blow to the administration’s claims by ruling that “the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them ‘enemy combatants.’” Last week’s decision followed a successful appeal by the government, but when the Fourth Circuit court met en banc to reconsider al-Marri’s case in October, it seemed possible that they would uphold the panel’s June verdict. When Judge Michael asked the government’s representative, Gregory J. Barre, “How long can you keep this man in custody?” and Garre replied that it could “go on for a long time,” depending on the duration of the “war” with al-Qaeda, Judge Michael stated, “It looks like a lifetime.”
I now realize, of course, that it was always highly improbable that the Fourth Circuit court -- widely regarded as the most right-wing court in the country -- would end Ali al-Marri’s legal limbo, although it was somewhat ironic that, in a separate ruling, the swing-voting Judge Traxler ruled in al-Marri’s favor when it came to a decision to grant him some as yet unspecified ability to challenge the basis of his definition as an “enemy combatant.”
This, at least, earned him the gratitude of Judge Motz, who stated that “the evidentiary proceedings envisaged by Judge Traxler will at least place the burden on the Government to make an initial showing that ‘the normal due process protections available to all within this country’ are impractical or unduly burdensome in al-Marri’s case and that the hearsay declaration that constitutes the Government’s only evidence against al-Marri is ‘the most reliable available evidence’ supporting the Government’s allegations.”
In other respects, however, the court only added to its reputation as a defender of the indefensible. Not content with endorsing the President’s dictatorial right to imprison “enemy combatants” without charge or trial on the US mainland, the judges responsible for the majority verdict ruled that the President did not even have to allege, as he did with Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, that an “enemy combatant” had either been in Afghanistan or had ever raised arms against US forces.
The injustice of this was pointed out in the opinion of Judge Motz, who stated that, “unlike Hamdi and Padilla, al-Marri is not alleged to have been part of a Taliban unit, not alleged to have stood alongside the Taliban or the armed forces of any other enemy nation, not alleged to have been on the battlefield during the war in Afghanistan, not alleged to have even been in Afghanistan during the armed conflict, and not alleged to have engaged in combat with United States forces anywhere in the world.”
Judge Motz added, however, “With regret, we recognize that this view does not command a majority of the court. Our colleagues hold that the President can order the military to seize from his home and indefinitely detain anyone -- including an American citizen -- even though he has never affiliated with an enemy nation, fought alongside any nation’s armed forces, or borne arms against the United States anywhere in the world. We cannot agree that in a broad and general statute, Congress silently authorized a detention power that so vastly exceeds all traditional bounds. No existing law permits this extraordinary exercise of executive power.”
Disturbingly, as Judge Motz mentioned above, the court also indicated its presumption that its ruling applies not just to legal residents like Ali al-Marri, but to US citizens as well. Judge Traxler noted, “it is likely that the constitutional rights our court determines exist, or do not exist, for al-Marri will apply equally to our own citizens under like circumstances,” and Judge Motz explained that the lack of distinction between citizens and residents had become apparent at oral argument, when the government “finally acknowledged that an alien legally resident in the United States, like al-Marri, has the same Fifth Amendment due process rights as an American citizen. For this reason, the Government had to concede that if al-Marri can be detained as an enemy combatant, then the Government can also detain any American citizen on the same showing and through the same process.”
We have, to be honest, been here before. In September 2005, a three-member panel upheld, in Padilla’s case, the President’s power to hold US citizens indefinitely without charge or trial (PDF). This verdict was never tested, as the government took Padilla out of the brig and into the court system (where he was convicted in January) before the Supreme Court could rule on his case, but as Glenn Greenwald noted in an article in Salon, the upshot is that the 2005 Padilla verdict still stands. To that extent, all that has changed now is that the Fourth Circuit court has reinforced its former ruling en banc.
Al-Marri’s lawyers will doubtless appeal, and, if justice still counts for anything, his case will go all the way to the Supreme Court. However, it remains incomprehensible to me that the whole sorry saga has lasted for so long already. As Jonathan Hafetz and his colleagues explained last November when they presented their arguments to the Fourth Circuit judges (and as Judge Motz noted last week), the President “lacks the legal authority to designate and detain al-Marri as an ‘enemy combatant’ for two principal reasons”: firstly, because the Constitution “prohibits the military imprisonment of civilians arrested in the United States and outside an active battlefield,” and secondly, because, although a district court previously held that the President was authorized to detain al-Marri under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (the September 2001 law authorizing the President to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those involved in any way with the 9/11 attacks), Congress explicitly prohibited “the indefinite detention without charge of suspected alien terrorists in the United States” in the Patriot Act, which followed five weeks later.
That seems pretty clear to me. In the “War on Terror,” however, as I have learned during my research over the last two and a half years, all forms of logical thought -- sometimes in the courts, most of the time in military custody, and as a permanent fixture in the war rooms where torture was endorsed -- have been engulfed in a fog of fear and barbarism.
I leave the final words to Judge Motz, and her clear-eyed awareness of the injustice of the al-Marri verdict. “To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President call them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution – and the country,” Judge Motz wrote. “For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. It is that power -- were a court to recognize it -- that could lead all our laws ‘to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces.’ We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”
Unless Ali al-Marri is allowed a meaningful review of his status as an “enemy combatant,” Judge Motz’s fears have already come true.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Court Confirms President’s Dictatorial Powers in Case of US “Enemy Combatant” Ali al-Marri
As posted on the website of Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files. I saw the following important article reposted over at Michael Otterman's American Torture website. I think it's so important, I'm reproducing it here in full.
APA Referendum on Interrogations Policy to Come Up for Vote
As readers of this blog know, internal opponents of the policy of the American Psychological Association, which encourages psychologists to collaborate with the military and CIA in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantanamo, CIA "black site" prisons, and elsewhere, started a petition campaign to call for a special referendum on this APA policy. The petition was successful, and a mail-in vote by the APA membership will begin August 1, with the deadline for returning ballots the end of the business day, September 15.
According to the APA website:
According to the APA website:
In early June 2008, APA received a petition with the required number of signatures of full Members in good standing concerning the issue of whether psychologists may work in certain settings that involve the detention of individuals.APA then gives links to the following relevant documents:
The full text of the petition statementReproduced below, without comment here, are the Pro and Con statements written by each side on this issue. They are offered in full, in an effort to expand discussion on the issue. Italic emphases are reproduced from original.
The Pro Statement
The Con Statement
The Rebuttal to the Pro Statement
The Rebuttal to the Con Statement
and Questions and Answers on the Petition on Psychologists’ Work Settings
Pro StatementNote: The APA states that if the resolution passes, it would become official APA policy. The question of its enforceability is, however, entirely different, per APA:
As psychologists, our first ethical principle is to do no harm; yet substantial documentation reveals that American psychologists have systematically designed and participated in interrogations that amount to torture. In addition, they have helped to legitimize cruel and abusive treatment in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA black sites.
Responding to these revelations, the APA has passed several resolutions barring psychologists from participating in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. These resolutions, however, are insufficient as they do not address the critical role that psychologists play in perpetuating harmful interrogation strategies and in maintaining conditions that the International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled “tantamount to torture.”
These concerns, which have propelled over a thousand APA psychologists to bring this referendum to the membership, are not hypothetical. Psychologists, as “consultants”, have been active in interrogations that have brought about extreme forms of torture. In at least one of these cases, the psychologist advocated for an escalation to even more extreme 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'
Psychologists have also played a critical role in this administration's legal defense of torture. Justice Department lawyers have argued that torture can only take place if the perpetrator intends to cause 'prolonged mental harm' which, in turn, is measured by a subsequent diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychologists instead routinely provide diagnoses other than posttraumatic stress disorder, thus giving the illusion of safety and legal cover in otherwise objective instances of “torture”. Moreover, psychologists play a role in maintaining the conditions of detention, for instance, by removing “comfort items” such as toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap.
In settings that fail to meet basic standards of international law, it is unrealistic to rely on psychologists to challenge their superiors, report on violations, and protect abused detainees. We know, from decades of psychological research, that good people do bad things in bad situations. Psychologists are no less vulnerable to “behavioral drift” than others, particularly when subject to the chain of command in the closed environment of a geographically isolated detention center.
We do believe that psychologists working independently, and outside of the institution’s chain of command, can and should be available to detainees, through NGOs such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. In abusive settings, clinicians working in the chain of command cannot know whether they are helping detainees recover only to return them to more abusive interrogations; and detainees cannot gauge whether the information being gathered by the clinician will be used against them — as has been documented on several occasions. Instead, the proposed referendum policy places psychology and psychologists squarely on the side of the most vulnerable.
Some APA psychologists have argued that the presence of psychologists in these settings protects the detainee from abuse. Yet, in the six years since captives began arriving at Guantanamo, there have been few documented cases of psychologists speaking up on the behalf of detainees. There is significant evidence of many more cases of silence. While we commend anyone who has acted heroically, a reliance on individual heroism is an unsound basis for policy.
We stress that the referendum does not exclude any psychologist from working in any settings where international law and human rights are fundamentally upheld. Imperfect as our U.S. domestic justice system may be, people held within the present system have basic legal protections, including the right to know the charges against them, meet with an attorney, receive family visits and, most importantly, to be free of torture. This is in sharp contrast to the individuals gathered up and illegally taken to CIA black sites. For the past 60 years, international law has held professionals responsible for upholding basic human rights. This referendum would thus protect psychologists from risk of future prosecutions.
Your vote in favor of the referendum will increase the independence of psychologists and protect the reputation of our discipline. The policy puts psychology and psychologists on the side of those who are the most vulnerable to mental harm. On behalf of Psychologists for an Ethical APA and all the APA members who have petitioned for this referendum, we strongly encourage you to research this topic through books, websites and articles, and to vote “yes” -- to support human rights and to restore the integrity of American psychology.
Brad Olson, PhD
Con Statement
This Overbroad Petition Will Harm Vulnerable Populations and Put Ethical Psychologists at Risk
1. This petition seeks to prohibit APA member psychologists from working in settings that are inconsistent with international law and/or the US Constitution. The petition’s “Be It Resolved” clause sets forth this prohibition even though a psychologist may adhere to all APA ethical standards, and despite the difficulty in determining whether a particular site meets the petition’s ambiguous criteria.
2. The petition thus threatens to restrict the scope of practice for psychologists whose work in psychiatric hospitals, US correctional facilities, and countless other settings serves the public good each day.
3. The petition is unnecessary given APA’s strongly worded Council resolutions against torture and concerted federal advocacy directed at the Bush administration and Congress.
4. The unintended consequences arising from a resolution prohibiting locations of employment rather than unethical behavior make this petition impossible for us to support. Many psychologists are employed in settings where constitutional challenges arise. Such settings include jails, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and emergency rooms, and forensic units. Likewise, many psychologists work in settings that could be considered inconsistent with international standards, for example, settings where the death penalty may be administered. The “Be It Resolved” clause potentially affects thousands of APA members.
5. While APA is clear that the petition, if adopted, is not enforceable, allegations that a psychologist was violating APA policy could arise in multiple venues (civil court; a licensing board; state psychological association, hospital, and other professional organizations’ ethics committees). Especially given the petition’s ambiguity regarding whether international standards and/or the US Constitution apply in a given instance, the petition places APA members doing good and ethical work in an untenable position of uncertainty regarding whether their practice is consistent with APA policy.
6. The clause “unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights” would prevent psychologists in a prohibited setting from providing services to a person in psychological distress, since in most all settings psychologists work for the institution and not for the individual being held. Unlike the Ethics Code, the petition does not provide a way to resolve this ethical dilemma, i.e., between a prohibition from providing services and the need for services. (See e.g., Ethical Standard 2.02, Providing Services in Emergencies, allowing psychologists without the necessary training to provide services in emergent situations when other services are not available.) A psychologist who, in all good faith, assisted an individual in distress could nonetheless be in violation of APA policy.
7. The sponsors’ good and noble intentions notwithstanding, for over two decades APA has held that torture is unethical and always prohibited. Five APA resolutions provide clear, explicit condemnations of torture. The last sentence of the 2008 resolution states: Psychologists are absolutely prohibited from knowingly planning, designing, participating or assisting in the use of all condemned techniques [Note: nearly two dozen techniques are enumerated] at any time and may not enlist others to employ these techniques in order to circumvent this resolution’s prohibition. APA has stated emphatically: Following orders is never a defense to torture.
8. In August, 2007, the APA Council passed one of several resolutions condemning torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment. Council expressed “grave concern over settings in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection of their human rights” and “affirmed the prerogative of psychologists to refuse to work in such settings.” Council noted that “APA will explore ways to support psychologists who refuse to work in such settings or who refuse to obey orders that constitute torture.” APA has called upon US courts to reject testimony resulting from torture or abuse.
9. APA has strongly and unequivocally condemned the abuse of detainees in letters to President Bush, Attorney General Mukasey, CIA Director Hayden, and members of Congress, and in articles in the media, and has urged the establishment of policies and procedures that fully protect the human rights of detainees, including judicial review of their detentions.
10. The petition seeks to prevent psychologists from working where the federal, state, or local government is acting wrongly. The precedent-setting nature of this petition, which restricts the settings in which psychologists may work, raises insurmountable concerns. A highly unfortunate side effect of the petition will be to place at risk APA members who serve vulnerable populations and behave in legal, ethical, and entirely moral ways. This petition harms the very groups it seeks to protect: Vulnerable populations and ethical psychologists.
Robert J. Resnick, PhD
Q: If adopted would the petition be enforceable by APA?Oh, and I know I said I would offer the above without comment, and so I will. But I do have a question of APA? Where is that resolution so long promised on an APA call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison? It was supposed to sail through APA Council, I was told a year ago. Last February, the resolution was being kicked around, and now, I suppose it's totally lost and forgotten... just like the prisoners at Guantanamo itself.
As explained above, the petition would not become part of the APA Ethics Code nor be enforceable as are prohibitions set forth in the Ethics Code. Such amendments to the Ethics Code require a more deliberative process and by rule must include review by the full APA governance and a public comment period. However, the resolution would become APA policy. APA communicates its policy statements broadly to media, legislators and the public. Policy statements can be considered by the Ethics Committee in adjudicating cases. They may also be considered by third parties in their engagement of, interaction with or employment of psychologists.
On Eve of the Convention: Is APA Leadership Splintering?
Dr. Bryant Welch's recent article, Why Did They Do It? - Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association, published online at Counterpunch, Psyche, Science and Society, and many other sites, is a powerful indictment of the moral and political bankruptcy of the American Psychological Association, written by a key insider.
Dr. Bryant is a Harvard law school graduate and a licensed psychologist. For over twenty years he's been a key member of the APA bureaucratic apparatus. Bryant's article is best when it details some of the organizational and personnel links inside APA that helped fashion that organization's pro-military policies, including its seeming indifference to the issue of psychologist involvement in torture.
From Dr. Bryant's article (see links above):
Dr. Byrant's fusillade against APA comes on the eve of the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Anti-torture dissidents within APA are rallying around the presidential candidacy of Steven Reisner, and political heat generated by, among other things, a mail-in referendum on APA policy around psychologists and detainees at Guantanamo and other U.S. "war on terror" prisons, which currently supports psychologist involvement at these prisons, which do not allow for international protections against inhumane treatment, and have been implicated over and over again in torture.
Psychologists for an Ethical APA is planning a protest at the APA convention in Boston on Saturday, August 16, from 12pm - 2pm, at the plaza at the front entrance of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center at 415 Summer St. The demonstration is co-sponsored by PEAPA, Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and others. Bryant and a number of others are planned speakers.
Bryant was a key insider in APA's internal structure. How many other major APA figures are willing to stand up and speak against the self-destructive, Faustian bargain APA has made with the military and the intelligence agencies? I suspect the vast majority of such insiders are corrupt, bought off, or are true believers in the military's grandiose plans of conquest and technological-psychological-military Valhalla. But Bryant's article has given me hope that there are more principled figures wormed away inside the bloated carcass of APA governance.
Come on out, folks. The air is far better out here. And your souls will certainly thank you for it.
Dr. Bryant is a Harvard law school graduate and a licensed psychologist. For over twenty years he's been a key member of the APA bureaucratic apparatus. Bryant's article is best when it details some of the organizational and personnel links inside APA that helped fashion that organization's pro-military policies, including its seeming indifference to the issue of psychologist involvement in torture.
From Dr. Bryant's article (see links above):
When the torture issue broke last year, the answer to the first question about APA’s military connection seemed obvious to me. Since the early 1980’s APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye’s office. Inouye, for much of that time, has served as Chair of the Subcommittee on Defense for the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Subcommittee has responsibility for all U.S. defense spending. One of Inouye’s administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick DeLeon, has long been active in the APA and served a term as APA president. For over twenty-five years relationships between APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon. It was DeLeon acting on behalf of Inouye who initiated the DOD psychologist prescription demonstration project in the late 1980’s that began psychology’s efforts to secure prescriptive privileges....I strongly recommended reading Bryant's full article. But where it is weakest is in its delineation of the decay of APA governance and moral stature, so that APA's "terrible regression" is traced to the 1990s.
... there is no question that APA had formed a strong relationship with military psychologists and the DOD through its connections with Inouye’s office.
What is clear to me, instead, is that the pluralistic and multi-faceted governing process that I witnessed when I first entered the APA in the early 1980’s was sharply curtailed during the 1990’s. Differences of opinion stopped and the APA suffered a terrible regression. Increasingly inbred, under the administration of Raymond Fowler, the association agenda was primarily and at times exclusively financial, focusing on making money both through real estate ventures and through what many of us felt was a an unwarranted, financially harsh treatment of APA employees.Dr. Bryant ignores the longer history of professional psychology in the United States. This history reveals a decades-long pattern of subservience to the needs of the military, police, prison, and national security interests. I hope he will incorporate this history into his further writings, as his sincerity in regards to his disgust with with APA as an organization -- "a regressed and chronically manipulated organization" -- cannot be doubted. His statement reminds me of the article released by distinguished APA member and former Ethics Chair, Ken Pope, earlier this year, when he resigned from APA over their scandalous torture-collaborationist policy.
More peculiarly, Fowler’s “agenda”.... served as a means of social control, a subtle injunction against raising any of the conflictual issues, challenges, or ideas that need to be addressed in any vital and accountable organization. The APA became placid and increasingly detached....
As a result of the lengthy era of regression, the governance of APA was ill prepared for thoughtful deliberation on a matter as important as the torture issue. As I have written in State of Confusion when people are confused they are eager to be told what is real. The governance was simply over its head in trying to effectively deliberate on such an issue when there was organized support on the other side coming from the military interests supported by [APA former presidents, Gerald] Koocher and [Ronald] Levant and possibly DeLeon.
Dr. Byrant's fusillade against APA comes on the eve of the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Anti-torture dissidents within APA are rallying around the presidential candidacy of Steven Reisner, and political heat generated by, among other things, a mail-in referendum on APA policy around psychologists and detainees at Guantanamo and other U.S. "war on terror" prisons, which currently supports psychologist involvement at these prisons, which do not allow for international protections against inhumane treatment, and have been implicated over and over again in torture.
Psychologists for an Ethical APA is planning a protest at the APA convention in Boston on Saturday, August 16, from 12pm - 2pm, at the plaza at the front entrance of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center at 415 Summer St. The demonstration is co-sponsored by PEAPA, Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and others. Bryant and a number of others are planned speakers.
Bryant was a key insider in APA's internal structure. How many other major APA figures are willing to stand up and speak against the self-destructive, Faustian bargain APA has made with the military and the intelligence agencies? I suspect the vast majority of such insiders are corrupt, bought off, or are true believers in the military's grandiose plans of conquest and technological-psychological-military Valhalla. But Bryant's article has given me hope that there are more principled figures wormed away inside the bloated carcass of APA governance.
Come on out, folks. The air is far better out here. And your souls will certainly thank you for it.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
More to Chew On
Until I return from vacation break in a few days, here's a few important tidbits picked up from some of my favorite commentators.
There's an article up at Counterpunch, Torture and the Strategic Helplessness of the American Psychological Association, which critiques the non-response of the American Psychological Association to revelations over the past few years of psychologist participation in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture program. Here's one part of the article, written by Stephen Soldz, Brad Olson, Steve Reisner, Jean Maria Arrigo, and Bryant Welch, all members of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology:
Glenn Greenwald has a piece, taking off from a report in the UK Guardian. The story arises from the release of the Human Rights Annual Report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons. The report is apparently a withering criticism and condemnation of the Bush Administration and its complacent Pentagon toadies, who have ridden the pale horse of torture into a major historical quagmire (emphasis in original, probably added by Greenwald):
There's an article up at Counterpunch, Torture and the Strategic Helplessness of the American Psychological Association, which critiques the non-response of the American Psychological Association to revelations over the past few years of psychologist participation in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture program. Here's one part of the article, written by Stephen Soldz, Brad Olson, Steve Reisner, Jean Maria Arrigo, and Bryant Welch, all members of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology:
In May 2007, the Defense Department declassified the Office of Inspector General report, documenting the role of SERE psychologists in training military and CIA personnel in techniques of abuse that "violated the Geneva Conventions." The APA responded with silence. When we inquired about the APA’s reaction, we were told that the organization needed time to "carefully study" the report. It has been 14 months, and to date no APA leader has commented upon the Report.In reply to one of the authors of the piece, I wrote:
The APA leadership has failed psychologists and failed the profession of psychology. It has also failed the country. When ethical guidance was required, the APA put its ethical authority in the hands of those involved in the questionable practices that needed investigation. When the evidence became overwhelming that psychologists helped design, implement, and standardize a U.S. torture regime, the APA remained silent. When it was reported that the use of psychological paradigms such as ‘learned helplessness’ have guided psychologists’ manipulation of detainee conditions, the APA continues to ignore or discount these reports. They instead assert that psychologists presence’ at CIA black sites and detention camps “assures safety.” When it became clear that the APA should offer a strong voice and a clear policy prohibiting psychologists’ participation in operations that systematically violate the Geneva conventions and international law, the APA leadership raised concern that a “restraint of trade” lawsuit might be brought against them. These arguments, of course, do not pass the red face test in any discerning forum of world opinion.
These are not our values. The APA leadership has shamed us and our profession with its strategic helplessness. It is time for the APA to clarify that psychologists may not ethically support in any way abusive or coercive interrogation tactics in any settings. It is also time to identify and hold publicly responsible the individual psychologists who have created the institution that the APA has now become. It is time to hold these psychologists accountable for developing the widespread and systematic moral failures in the organization’s current infrastructure. Indeed, if we do not do this, then we, too, are complicit with torture.
The question becomes how to hold the individuals involved accountable. We do not even know who all the individuals are.UK House of Commons Decries U.S. Lies
We could start by asking as a matter of total transparency that all relevant documents held by APA or key members be released (that aren't classified anyway). Examples would be the text or outline of Dr. Seligman's address at SERE, or the agenda and attendee list and other relevant materials from the APA/CIA/RAND 2003 workshop referenced in the article (the one that looked at ways to break down individuals by sensory overload and/or drugs).
Glenn Greenwald has a piece, taking off from a report in the UK Guardian. The story arises from the release of the Human Rights Annual Report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons. The report is apparently a withering criticism and condemnation of the Bush Administration and its complacent Pentagon toadies, who have ridden the pale horse of torture into a major historical quagmire (emphasis in original, probably added by Greenwald):
In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used "waterboarding". The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture....They got away with major, massive war crimes in the prosecution of the Vietnam War, but this time I believe it's going to be different, and stories such as the one Greenwald reports coming out of Britain portend the first major war crimes trials of U.S. leaders in history.
"The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future," said the committee. "We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US."
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
On the Siberian Railroad
No, I'm not actually taking the Trans-Siberian Railway (maybe someday), but I am going to take a few days off from blogging. It's hard to break away, especially when it seems so much is going on.
There's John Conyer's continued refusal to support any attempt of impeachment of Bush, even as he allows Kucinich a committee hearing to "discuss" it.
There's Jane Mayer's interview at NPR's Fresh Air, where she repeats the "false confessions" mythology about the creation of U.S. torture that I addressed last week in my review of a Scott Shane story at the New York Times. Despite that, the rest of the interview is quite interesting.
There was my exchange with Sen. Levin over at firedoglake, where he addressed my insistence that the timeline on the SERE torture issue be moved back to Dec. 2001. The relevant documents were still "classified", and he seemed lackadaisical about getting them unclassified. But you read the exchange (they are in the comments section of the "liveblog") and see what you think. He certainly saw the issue I raised important enough to respond to.
For those looking for the latest in the fight against torture, you can go and check out the good folks at NeverInOurNames.com, who have started up blogging again after an absence of some months.
See you soon.
There's John Conyer's continued refusal to support any attempt of impeachment of Bush, even as he allows Kucinich a committee hearing to "discuss" it.
There's Jane Mayer's interview at NPR's Fresh Air, where she repeats the "false confessions" mythology about the creation of U.S. torture that I addressed last week in my review of a Scott Shane story at the New York Times. Despite that, the rest of the interview is quite interesting.
There was my exchange with Sen. Levin over at firedoglake, where he addressed my insistence that the timeline on the SERE torture issue be moved back to Dec. 2001. The relevant documents were still "classified", and he seemed lackadaisical about getting them unclassified. But you read the exchange (they are in the comments section of the "liveblog") and see what you think. He certainly saw the issue I raised important enough to respond to.
For those looking for the latest in the fight against torture, you can go and check out the good folks at NeverInOurNames.com, who have started up blogging again after an absence of some months.
See you soon.
Two Videos: Omar Khadr Interrogation, & Turley on War Crimes
The attorneys of Omar Khadr -- the teenager arrested in the rubble left in the aftermath a battle in Afghanistan, and subsequently imprioned in Guantanamo -- have released a two minute video showing some of his interrogation there in 2004. Remember, this is a 16 year old teenager: Link to video at BBC. Khadr should be released from custody immediately! (H/T to A.K. on link)
Another Khadr link (and thanks to B.O. for this):
+++++++++
George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley has been adamant about holding this administration accountable when it comes to torture and war crimes. Here is a video from YouTube of Turley on Countdown, responding to new revelations re a report of the International Committee of the Red Cross describing the U.S. has engaging "categorically" in torture and war crimes. (Also see my story on this.) Turley argues that an international tribunal may have to be constituted to deal with this administration's crimes: "I thought I'd never say this, but..." Watch the video!
Another Khadr link (and thanks to B.O. for this):
A 16-year-old captured in Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo Bay sobs during his questioning, holding up his wounded arms and begging for help in a video released Tuesday that provided the first glimpse of interrogations at the U.S. military prison.Here is a longer version of the Khadr taped interrogation, via the Globe and Mail. This more extensive link is powerful, disturbing viewing, with Khadr alone in his cell, weeping, burbling "help me" over and over and over again.
"Help me," he cries repeatedly in despair.
+++++++++
George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley has been adamant about holding this administration accountable when it comes to torture and war crimes. Here is a video from YouTube of Turley on Countdown, responding to new revelations re a report of the International Committee of the Red Cross describing the U.S. has engaging "categorically" in torture and war crimes. (Also see my story on this.) Turley argues that an international tribunal may have to be constituted to deal with this administration's crimes: "I thought I'd never say this, but..." Watch the video!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Physicians, Psychologists & the Problem of "The Dark Side"
"Any of us could be the man who encounters his double." -- Friedrich Durrenmat (1)Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (not due out in the bookstores until tomorrow), is already creating headlines and generating controversy. This article will examine the issues around U.S. torture practice, in light of new allegations in the book, and review an email conversation between myself and a prominent nationally-known psychologist whom Mayer says assisted in the planning of U.S. government torture.
Scott Shane at The New York Times wrote an article last Friday describing how Mayer reveals that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told the CIA last year in a report that the interrogation of "high-level" detainees, such as Abu Zubaydah, "categorically" constituted torture, were illegal, and amounted to prosecutable war crimes. Zubaydah, famously, was one of three prisoners the government has admitted were waterboarded. A videotape of his interrogation was destroyed by the CIA.
In an July 14 interview with Scott Horton at Harper's, Jane Mayer discussed the reaction to the ICRC charges:
... Abu Zubayda claimed to have been locked in a tiny cage, in which he had to remain doubled up for long periods of time, prior to the period when he was waterboarded. This account — which he gave to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — was confirmed to me independently by a former CIA officer familiar with his interrogation....Ms. Mayer concludes that the addition of an immunity provision in the Military Commissions Act passed by Congress in 2007 was an attempt to address such fears among administration figures. She further opines that it seems unlikely to her that anyone in the Bush administration will actually face domestic prosecution for war crimes, as the "political appetite" seems lacking. And then she adds the following (emphasis added):
The reaction of top Bush Administration officials to the ICRC report, from what I can gather, has been defensive and dismissive. They reject the ICRC’s legal analysis as incorrect. Yet my reporting shows that inside the White House there has been growing fear of criminal prosecution...
An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised.A Prominent Psychologist Comes Under Fire
While medical personnel associated with the ICRC have played a heroic role in documenting and advocating for prisoners' rights, doctors and psychologists associated with U.S. detention and interrogation of so-called "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror" have not acquitted themselves with the same ethical probity. In fact, they may be guilty of war crimes themselves.
Jane Mayer's new book also looks more closely at the utilization of SERE techniques as a template for U.S. torture of detainees. (SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape, and is a military program aimed at training U.S. soldiers for torture at the hands of vicious captors, those who would not honor Geneva Convention protocols. Ironically, the U.S. itself announced that "enemy combatants" are not bound by those same Geneva agreements.)
It's been a year since SERE military psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen were accused, in an article by Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair, of teaching SERE techniques to interrogators at Guantanamo and elsewhere. (I covered the "nuts and bolts" of how SERE procedures were taught at Guantanamo in a recent essay.) According to a different article by Jane Mayer last year, Mitchell utilized the theories of "learned helplessness" in implementing his interrogation lessons. (Mr. Mitchell denied this assertion.) Mayer wrote:
Steve Kleinman, a reserve Air Force colonel and an experienced interrogator who has known Mitchell professionally for years, said that “learned helplessness was his whole paradigm.” Mitchell, he said, “draws a diagram showing what he says is the whole cycle. It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners’ ability to forecast the future—when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn’t after intelligence.”This torture model of dread, debility through isolation, and dependency may have been the model of the K.G.B., but it was intellectually codified by U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists in the 1950s, most notably in a 1956 article in the journal Sociometry, Brainwashing, Conditioning, and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread). One of the authors of this article, Harry Harlow, went on to become a president of the American Psychological Association (APA).
In Mayer's new book, she implicates another former APA president in the development of torture, Martin Seligman, the creator of the theory of "learned helplessness". I have not seen Mayer's book, which hasn't been released yet, so my accounts come from statements online by Scott Horton, as well as the latter's interview with Mayer previously cited. Horton wrote (emphasis added):
[Mayer] traces the development of the torture techniques to the work of two contractors, Mitchell and Jessen, and disclosed the specific techniques they developed. She notes that the techniques rely heavily on a theory called "Learned Helplessness" developed by a Penn psychologist Martin Seligman, who assisted them in the process.Seligman is no obscure academic, or bureaucrat. He is one of the best known psychologists in the country, a prominent professor, and leader of the Positive Psychology movement, often quoted in the nation's psychology textbooks. Mayer's allegations about Seligman were picked up anti-torture activist and psychologist Stephen Soldz at his blog. This brought a rejoinder from Seligman himself, denying he assisted in torture in any way. He continued:
I gave a three hour lecture sponsored by SERE (the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape branch of the American armed forces) at the San Diego Naval Base in May 2002. My topic was how American troops and American personnel could use what is known about learned helplessness and related findings to resist torture and evade successful interrogation by their captors.What Seligman Told Me
I was told then that since I was (and am) a civilian with no security clearance that they could not discuss American methods of interrogation with me. I have not had contact with SERE since that meeting. I have not worked under government contract (or any other contract) on any aspect of interrogation or any aspect of torture. Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Jessen were present in the audience of about 50 others at my speech, and that was, to the best of my knowledge, the sum total of my “assisting them in the process."
In December 2006, following suspicions (at that time uncorroborated by government documents) that SERE had been used to reverse-engineer torture, as reported by Jane Mayer in a July 2005 New Yorker article, which mentioned Seligman by name, and by Mark Benjamin at Salon.com, I wrote to Seligman and asked him about reports he had taught at the SERE school. I was then researching an article on psychological research into sensory deprivation and torture. (The article turned into a presentation at the APA convention in 2007, and was subsequently published as "Psychology and Research into Coercive Interrogation".) Dr. Seligman's answer to me then (December 2006) was much the same as that made to Soldz above.
I tried to push Seligman a little harder on the issue:
I really have only one outstanding question that remains from my original questions: Were you aware -- or do you even believe -- that your work on learned helplessness has been used not only to help our soldiers withstand coercive interrogation, but to conduct such types of interrogation by U.S. interrogators themselves?Martin Seligman replied tersely:
I am not available for further comment. (2)About seven months later, as further revelations about SERE and torture surfaced, including admissions by the Pentagon Office of Inspector General (in a report publicly released in May 2007) that SERE reverse-engineering had taken place, and that Mitchell and Jessen were involved, I revisited the issue with Dr. Seligman in August 2007:
When I wrote to you before, you declined to comment on my question. But I think it is incumbent upon you now to say more about what you know, as well as what you think, about the use of your work by military and CIA psychologists to instigate torture. I ask you this as a colleague in the field, and as a psychologist interested in stopping torture, and ashamed of the actions of some in our field in perpetuating abusive behavior. I would think you would like to clear your name, which otherwise remains linked (even if in obscure ways) to some of the worst episodes in our nation's and our profession's history.Dr. Seligman replied (emphasis added):
I am entirely out of this loop, having had zero contact with SERE since my talk in April 2002. I know nothing at all about how they have applied LH concepts to either help our own people or to the interrogation of prisoners. When I asked about the latter at my talk, they told me that they could not give me any information at all, since I had no "classification."Once again, I persevered, intrigued that Seligman appeared to be admitting that he had asked about application of "learned helplessness" techniques to the interrogation of prisoners. Why, in December 2002, had he bothered to ask? Was he suspicious? Did he know more than he was saying, or even worse, had he done more than he was admitting? I wrote (emphasis in original):
My talk was about how to teach our people to resist LH [Learned Helplessness] and my life work has been devoted to the issues of undoing LH, not about inducing it in other human beings.
I appreciate your quick reply, and I understand that you had nothing to do with how LH concepts were used by others. But, given the controversy over psychologist participation in interrogations (a vote on competing resolutions is due at the next [APA] Council meeting), and the fact that your ideas and research were obviously used (you even asked them about it), what is your position on the use of your research by others, and on psychologists involved in military/CIA interrogations under the current administration?Dr. Seligman replied:
The only "position" I am comfortable staking out is "Good science always runs the risk of immoral application. It goes with the territory of discovery."Doubling and Collaboration with Torture
Dr. Seligman's "position" was startling. Even if one accepts his denial of further association with the torture program initiated by the Bush administration, utilizing SERE coercive techniques, Seligman seems to believe it's okay to settle for a "see no evil" approach. In his point of view, he is a scientist, a discoverer of new knowledge. If his work might be abused, that is not a concern of his.
This is an immoral position, of course, even if not necessarily criminal, in a forensic sense. If I could question him further, I would ask why he was asked to give this particular "lecture" at a SERE school at this time, and who asked him to do so. (Mayer says Seligman was connected with the CIA, but no further details are given.) I would further ask what led him to inquire about the possible use of SERE techniques on interrogations of prisoners, and why, when he was waved off, he acquiesced so meekly.
For years now, Dr. Seligman has been quiet about the use of his own theories in the application of horrifying torture techniques. Why this silence?
The situation with Seligman, like those of other psychologists and psychiatrists who worked for the CIA's MKULTRA and like programs over forty years ago, reminds me of the analysis Robert Jay Lifton made of the behavior of doctors in Nazi Germany, who were implicated in anti-semitic purges of Jews from the medicine field, and in programs of forced sterilization, euthanasia of mental patients, and later, in the operations of the concentration camps. (The Germans, I should note, were not the only people to engage in forced sterilizations. The United States, too, engaged in eugenics policies such as forced sterilization earlier in the twentieth century, and many doctors participated in that.)
In his book, The Nazi Doctors, Lifton describes the phenomenon of "doubling", or "socialization to evil."
Doubling arises in the context where a professional must "function psychologically in an environment... antithetical to his previous ethical standards..." The person must be able to connect with both the prior, ethical self and the new, unethical environment or institution. The splitting of the professional self allows for an adaptation to evil and an escape from subsequent feelings of guilt or wrong-doing, as "the second self tends to be the one performing the 'dirty work'." What makes the entire process so insidious is that it usually takes place outside of individual consciousness, even as it involves "a significant change in moral consciousness." Thus, doubling can be understood as an adaptation to an extremely immoral culture or institution, allowing for disavowal of guilt. (See The Nazi Doctors, Lifton, pp. 421-423).
We can see this in Seligman's disavowal of any wrong-doing, and even his strong protestations of being against torture. Now, it's notoriously difficult to psychoanalyze someone from afar, but how else are we to explain the monumental and repeated violations of basic ethical practice by physicians and psychologists over the years, whether it has to do with secret study done on unknowing African-American subjects as part of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis patients experiments that lasted for forty years, until 1972; the human plutonium radiation experiments of the last century; the CIA mind control programs noted above; or the development and implementation of current psychological torture programs, which continues to date?
Are We Morally Doomed?
I think Jane Mayer is wrong on one point. As pointed out earlier, she is pessimistic that this nation has the "political appetite" to bring the perpetrators of torture to the bar of justice in his country. I hear that from many. But where there is a will, there is, proverbially, a way. It is not about "appetite" anymore. It is about what we must do, if we are not to take that final step into the dark side, a place Vice President Cheney so-famously told us we would have to go. We know now what awaits us there.
Worse even than the doubling of an individual like Martin Seligman is the behavior of the professional organizations for doctors and psychologists. The American Medical Association, while officially having a policy of not participating in interrogations at Bush's war on terror prisons, has taken no steps I know of to investigate or police violations of this policy. For years, the American Psychological Association has maintained that, while against torture, it supports psychologists working at prisons like Guantanamo, even if they do not allow basic human rights, because supposedly they lessen the possibility of abuse. The logic is grotesque, at best, and grossly misleading when you realize it's psychologists who have been implicated in organizing the abuse. But on this, the APA remains silent, rendering that organization, in Mayer's own characterization, "worthless."
In the famous legend, Faust bargains away his soul to the devil for the privilege of obtaining knowledge. In Goethe's rendering of the story, Faust is redeemed in the end, and the spirits who help him remind us, "He who persists in striving ever upwards, him we can save."
(1) Quote taken from Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors, Basic Books, 1986/2000, p. 418.
(2) The quotes from my email correspondence with Dr. Seligman were the source of some quandary for me, as I was unsure whether to utilize them. I sought consultation for this issue with a long-time, highly respected journalist who thought it appropriate. I do want to make clear that all who communicate with me by voice or by writing (including email) and ask for confidentiality or non-attribution will have their request respected. My quotations from the Seligman correspondence with me are drawn from a professional exchange and not, in my opinion, privileged.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Another Perspective: Torture by Other Countries
Sometimes I wonder, as this is a blog dedicated to exposing and reforming the use of torture by the U.S. government, whether readers of this blog realize to what a great extent torture is practiced by countries other than the United States. The fact is that torture is practiced by many other countries. A websearch turns up the following from InformationPlease.com:
One country worth examining in a bit more depth is Egypt, as it exemplifies the effects of an out of control use of torture upon the civil life of a society. A Human Rights Watch article in February 2005 reported:
The U.S. State Department produces Reports on Human Rights of many countries around the world -- I often utilize these reports when doing research on U.S. asylum applicants for my work -- and despite some shortcomings, the State Department reports often document human rights violations, including torture, in many countries around the world. Furthermore, they document the tremendous legal and reporting difficulties experienced by workers of NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] in those countries when they seek to expose or remedy these wrongs, including harassment, jailing, even disappearances of such workers.
It's important to note that despite its faults and its struggles the United States remains a country where, even if it is difficult to penetrate the mass media on this subject, journalists, bloggers, NGO organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, etc. do not experience this kind of heavy-handed governmental oppression, at least not as a normal occurrence. And then, too, despite the paucity of coverage in the U.S. press, as readers of this blog know, some important coverage does occur here, coverage that is essential in providing much of what we know about the fight against torture. Furthermore, it seems that within the military and even the intelligence agencies, there are those individuals who do not go along with the misuse of interrogation practices at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Alberto Mora is one such individual who comes to mind. Retired Major General Antonio Taguba is another.
Hence, it was an international embarrassment when some months back an internal training manual developed by the Canadian foreign affairs department labeled the United States as a country where foreigners risked torture, relying on reports of maltreatment in the U.S. prison at Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib, and "black site" prisons. The U.S. protested, and the Canadian government made moves to remove the U.S. from such a list.
The United States is also a major destination for torture victims seeking asylum from around the world. I know. I've worked personally with a fair number of these victims. While the U.S. has tightened the procedures for gaining asylum in the U.S., making them too restrictive, many thousands still find refuge in this country, sometimes from the very countries that remain U.S. allies, some of which have also been harshly criticized by the same State Department reports noted above. Making matters even stranger, many asylum refugees are torture victims fleeing the same countries to which the U.S. sent foreign prisoners in the "war on terror" via "extraordinary rendition", where they then experienced torture (such as Maher Ahar). The entire situation is so irrational, it almost seems invented by a madman trying to confuse any reasonable person into a state of insensibility.
The fight against torture is a world-wide struggle. One major outcome of that political fight was solidified with the production of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory. (The U.S. ratified the CAT with a number of reservations that unfortunately complicate the enforcement of the CAT when it concerns U.S. possible violations.)
As a statement on Worldwide Torture by Human Rights Watch puts it:
According to Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org), the use of torture was documented in the following countries in 2004 and 2005: China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Uganda, and Uzbekistan.Amnesty International's Annual Report for 2008 lists many other countries where torture and other human rights violations occur on a not irregular basis. These include, among others, Myanmar (Burma), Sudan, Belarus, and Afghanistan (where "violations of international humanitarian and human rights law were committed with impunity by all parties, including Afghan and international security forces and insurgent groups," and where U.S. coalition forces continue to turn over prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate of Security, "despite allegations of torture and other ill-treatment by the NDS".)
One country worth examining in a bit more depth is Egypt, as it exemplifies the effects of an out of control use of torture upon the civil life of a society. A Human Rights Watch article in February 2005 reported:
Human Rights Watch interviewed several former detainees who provided credible accounts of torture they underwent at the hands of SSI [State Security Investigation service] interrogators. Others spoke of seeing fellow detainees who had been badly tortured, and hearing the screams of those being abused. Given that those most likely to have been tortured are among the hundreds if not thousands of persons still in detention, and that many of those released fear the possible consequences of meeting with independent human rights monitors, Human Rights Watch believes that torture and ill-treatment by the SSI has been widespread in connection with the investigations into the Taba attacks. [The Taba attacks concerned a terrible series of bombings of tourist areas, including the Taba Hilton hotel in near the Egyptian-Israeli border in October 2004.]A HRW "briefing paper" a year earlier described the terrible cost torture had wrought upon Egyptian society:
Torture in Egypt is a widespread and persistent phenomenon. Security forces and the police routinely torture or ill-treat detainees, particularly during interrogation. In most cases, officials torture detainees to obtain information and coerce confessions, occasionally leading to death in custody. In some cases, officials use torture detainees to punish, intimidate, or humiliate. Police also detain and torture family members to obtain information or confessions from a relative, or to force a wanted relative to surrender.The other countries that practice torture are not always outside Western Europe. Great Britain scandalously tortured IRA prisoners at Long Kesh internment camp in the 1960s-1970s, utilizing techniques such as hooding, sensory deprivation, and isolation that are remarkably similar to those practiced by the United States, as revealed in recent exposes the past five years or so. In the early 1960s, the French were charged with hideous use of torture against Algerian "insurgents".
While torture in Egypt has typically been used against political dissidents, in recent years it has become epidemic, affecting large numbers of ordinary citizens who find themselves in police custody as suspects or in connection with criminal investigations. The Egyptian authorities do not investigate the great majority of allegations of torture despite their obligation to do so under Egyptian and international law. In the few cases where officers have been prosecuted for torture or ill-treatment, charges were often inappropriately lenient and penalties inadequate. This lack of effective public accountability and transparency has led to a culture of impunity.
The U.S. State Department produces Reports on Human Rights of many countries around the world -- I often utilize these reports when doing research on U.S. asylum applicants for my work -- and despite some shortcomings, the State Department reports often document human rights violations, including torture, in many countries around the world. Furthermore, they document the tremendous legal and reporting difficulties experienced by workers of NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] in those countries when they seek to expose or remedy these wrongs, including harassment, jailing, even disappearances of such workers.
It's important to note that despite its faults and its struggles the United States remains a country where, even if it is difficult to penetrate the mass media on this subject, journalists, bloggers, NGO organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, etc. do not experience this kind of heavy-handed governmental oppression, at least not as a normal occurrence. And then, too, despite the paucity of coverage in the U.S. press, as readers of this blog know, some important coverage does occur here, coverage that is essential in providing much of what we know about the fight against torture. Furthermore, it seems that within the military and even the intelligence agencies, there are those individuals who do not go along with the misuse of interrogation practices at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Alberto Mora is one such individual who comes to mind. Retired Major General Antonio Taguba is another.
Hence, it was an international embarrassment when some months back an internal training manual developed by the Canadian foreign affairs department labeled the United States as a country where foreigners risked torture, relying on reports of maltreatment in the U.S. prison at Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib, and "black site" prisons. The U.S. protested, and the Canadian government made moves to remove the U.S. from such a list.
The United States is also a major destination for torture victims seeking asylum from around the world. I know. I've worked personally with a fair number of these victims. While the U.S. has tightened the procedures for gaining asylum in the U.S., making them too restrictive, many thousands still find refuge in this country, sometimes from the very countries that remain U.S. allies, some of which have also been harshly criticized by the same State Department reports noted above. Making matters even stranger, many asylum refugees are torture victims fleeing the same countries to which the U.S. sent foreign prisoners in the "war on terror" via "extraordinary rendition", where they then experienced torture (such as Maher Ahar). The entire situation is so irrational, it almost seems invented by a madman trying to confuse any reasonable person into a state of insensibility.
The fight against torture is a world-wide struggle. One major outcome of that political fight was solidified with the production of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory. (The U.S. ratified the CAT with a number of reservations that unfortunately complicate the enforcement of the CAT when it concerns U.S. possible violations.)
As a statement on Worldwide Torture by Human Rights Watch puts it:
This is a critical time to insist on revelation of the full extent of torture and related abuses by U.S. authorities and to press for prosecution of those responsible. It is also a critical time to press other governments, many of which have been quick to condemn the U.S. for its actions at Abu Ghraib, to investigate and prosecute torture and mistreatment in their own holding cells, detention facilities, and prisons.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
CIA Wiretapping, FISA, & an Obama Presidency
With the genuflection of the Democratic-led Congress to the Bush Administration for near-unlimited warrantless wiretapping privileges, I thought I would add some historical perspective to the ongoing analysis of this debacle. The fight against executive branch tyranny goes back a long time. The "flip" by Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama that led him to vote for the new FISA bill was not an electoral nod to a conservative electorate, but a necessary ticket to be rendered for entrance to the top spot at the apex of the national security state.
The amazing folks over at National Security Archive, who have posted the entire "family jewels" -- documents of CIA misdeeds in the 1950s-1970s -- and much, much more on the operations of the military and intelligence agencies, posted the link to the following documents. It discusses themes and facts highly relevant to the current debate on FISA, and is partially transcribed here as a public service and contribution to political discourse. The full document can be found here.
The January 26, 1973 Memo
This memo is from Lawrence Houston, then General Counsel of the CIA, to the Acting Chief, Division D. The subject? "Intercept of Communications in the U.S." Remember: this was written before the original FISA law was implemented later in the 1970s. According to a Wikipedia entry, "Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors." Earlier revelations of Division D activity has been covered by Wired Magazine. The New York Times also has published on CIA wiretapping of reporters, including a discussion of the activity as approved by the Kennedy administration (a fact inconvenient to those who hold up the Democrats as saviors from the GOP, which certainly isn't the case when it comes to National Security issues).
In the transcribed memo below (which is partial, please see here for full text), note the "exceptions" on prohibitions to wiretapping mentioned by Mr. Houston. Do they sound eerily familiar?
A memorandum from the Chief of CIA Division D to the Deputy Director of Operations on May 7, 1973 was written to discuss "Potentially Embarrassing Activities Conducted by Division D."
Of course, it's widely believed that the release of the CIA "family jewels" documents remained highly selective. We know, by their own testimony, that the CIA destroyed thousands of documents related to illegal activities over the years. But, as Noah Shachtman at Wired put it, documents such as those highlighted in the piece you're reading have a particular significance:
Millions of people will be making a decision soon regarding a choice for President of the United States. McCain is certainly a clear choice for continuation of the dangerously insane Bush policies. Obama's vote on the FISA bill has put serious doubt into the minds of many as to whether he will be different. (He did vote for amendments to limit the Bush-supported bill and take away telecom immunity.) No one has a crystal ball, so no one really knows, and arguments can be made on both sides.
When it comes to domestic policies and competency in government, a very good argument can be made that Barack Obama is the progressive candidate (or the best we can do at this time). But when it comes to national security matters, and the massive influence of military contractors, and the pervasive influence of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies -- even their supremacy, many might argue -- Obama's vote on FISA telegraphs to those who run such agencies and associated organizations that Obama won't go too far in challenging their activities. This is chilling, as the expansion of the infrastructure of the "anti-terrorist" domestic security apparatus is moving along very rapidly.
This is the truth, circa July 2008. What might happen if Obama is elected is anyone's guess. There are many in the power structure of this country that fear that forces unleashed by the belief that a progressive president is in power will not be contained by the Democratic Party, or a Democratic President and Congress. If Obama is elected, elements within the national security and military apparatus will move quickly, in the initial months of an Obama presidency, to force Obama to commit himself to their agenda. He has shown he is willing, but then, he does not have the power yet.
I see little to believe Obama will make the necessary challenge to the national security state apparatus. In any case, he cannot do it alone. He will need the people behind him, an informed people. And in that spirit, I offer this history lesson today.
The amazing folks over at National Security Archive, who have posted the entire "family jewels" -- documents of CIA misdeeds in the 1950s-1970s -- and much, much more on the operations of the military and intelligence agencies, posted the link to the following documents. It discusses themes and facts highly relevant to the current debate on FISA, and is partially transcribed here as a public service and contribution to political discourse. The full document can be found here.
The January 26, 1973 Memo
This memo is from Lawrence Houston, then General Counsel of the CIA, to the Acting Chief, Division D. The subject? "Intercept of Communications in the U.S." Remember: this was written before the original FISA law was implemented later in the 1970s. According to a Wikipedia entry, "Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors." Earlier revelations of Division D activity has been covered by Wired Magazine. The New York Times also has published on CIA wiretapping of reporters, including a discussion of the activity as approved by the Kennedy administration (a fact inconvenient to those who hold up the Democrats as saviors from the GOP, which certainly isn't the case when it comes to National Security issues).
In the transcribed memo below (which is partial, please see here for full text), note the "exceptions" on prohibitions to wiretapping mentioned by Mr. Houston. Do they sound eerily familiar?
1. In referent you request our views as to the legal aspects of a radio telephone intercept activity carried on at our communications site [two or three words redacted]The May 7, 1973 Memo
2. The basic law is contained in section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S. C. 605, which prohibits interception of any radio communication without the authorization of the sender and also prohibits divulging the substance thereof to any person. Chapter 119 of Title 18, U.S.C., makes the interception of any wire or oral communication a crime punishable by $10,000 or five years' imprisonment, or both. There are two exceptions to these prohibitions:a. The first provides for application through the Department of Justice to a Federal court for a court order authoizing such interception for specific purposes in connection with law-enforcement duties. Since this Agency is prohibited by statue from any police or law-enforcement activities, obviously we cannot operate under this exception.3. The type of information you describe in your memorandum does not appear to fall within any of these categories and since its ultimate destination is BNDD [Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs], it appears to be collection for law-enforcement purposes, which as noted above is barred to this Agency by statute....
b. The other exception is contained in section 2511 of Title 18, U.S.C., at subsection (3). This provides that the prohibition cited above on interception shall not limit the constitutional power of the President to take such measures as he deems necessary to protect against attack, to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States or to protects such information, and to protect the United States against overthrow by force or other unlawful means or against any other clear and present danger to the structure or existence of the Government.
A memorandum from the Chief of CIA Division D to the Deputy Director of Operations on May 7, 1973 was written to discuss "Potentially Embarrassing Activities Conducted by Division D."
There is one instance of an activity by Division D, with which you are already familiar, which the Agency General Counsel has ruled to be barred to this Agency by statue: the collection [approx. four words redacted] of international commercial radio telephone conversations between several Latin American cities and New York, aimed at the interception of drug-related communications. The background on this is briefly as follows: [about five or six lines excised]. Therefore on 29 September 1972 NSA asked if Division D would take over the coverage, and on 12 October 1972 we agreed to do so. On 14 October 1972 a team of interceopt operators from the [about seven or eight words redacted] began the coverage experimentally. On [unclear date] January 1973, NSA wrote to say that the test results were good, and that it was hoped this coverage could continue.There's more, but I ask that you go to the NSA [National Security Archive, not National Security Agency -- there's no relation] link above to read the whole thing.
Because a question had arisen within Division D as to the legality of this activity, a query was addressed to the General Counsel on this score... With the receipt of his reply... the intercept activity was immediately terminated. There has been a subsequent series of exchanges between Division D and the General Counsel as to the legality of radio intercepts made outside the U.S., but with one terminal being in the U.S., and the General Counsel has ruled that such intercepts is also in violation of CIA's statutory responsibilities. [About four or five lines excised] Since the [few words redacted] link being monitored carries a large number of totally unrelated conversations, the operators do intercept other traffic, frequently involving U.S. citizens -- for example, BNDD staffers talking to their agents. I have described this situation to the General Counsel, and his informal judgment was that, as long as the primary purpose of the coverage is a foreign target, this is acceptable. He suggests, however, that it might be desirable to inform the Attorney General of the occasional incidental intercept of the conversations of U.S. citizens, and thus legalize the activity.
Of course, it's widely believed that the release of the CIA "family jewels" documents remained highly selective. We know, by their own testimony, that the CIA destroyed thousands of documents related to illegal activities over the years. But, as Noah Shachtman at Wired put it, documents such as those highlighted in the piece you're reading have a particular significance:
Before the release of the "family jewels," some speculated that CIA director Michael Hayden might be allowing the documents to see the light of day, to make today's operations seem meek, in comparison. But, at least in this one small area, yesterday's spooks seem a lot more scrupulous than some of today's. After all, it was Hayden himself who authorized the surveillance programs that wound up ensnaring so many American citizens in their nets.Obama and the National Security State
Millions of people will be making a decision soon regarding a choice for President of the United States. McCain is certainly a clear choice for continuation of the dangerously insane Bush policies. Obama's vote on the FISA bill has put serious doubt into the minds of many as to whether he will be different. (He did vote for amendments to limit the Bush-supported bill and take away telecom immunity.) No one has a crystal ball, so no one really knows, and arguments can be made on both sides.
When it comes to domestic policies and competency in government, a very good argument can be made that Barack Obama is the progressive candidate (or the best we can do at this time). But when it comes to national security matters, and the massive influence of military contractors, and the pervasive influence of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies -- even their supremacy, many might argue -- Obama's vote on FISA telegraphs to those who run such agencies and associated organizations that Obama won't go too far in challenging their activities. This is chilling, as the expansion of the infrastructure of the "anti-terrorist" domestic security apparatus is moving along very rapidly.
This is the truth, circa July 2008. What might happen if Obama is elected is anyone's guess. There are many in the power structure of this country that fear that forces unleashed by the belief that a progressive president is in power will not be contained by the Democratic Party, or a Democratic President and Congress. If Obama is elected, elements within the national security and military apparatus will move quickly, in the initial months of an Obama presidency, to force Obama to commit himself to their agenda. He has shown he is willing, but then, he does not have the power yet.
I see little to believe Obama will make the necessary challenge to the national security state apparatus. In any case, he cannot do it alone. He will need the people behind him, an informed people. And in that spirit, I offer this history lesson today.
Monday, July 7, 2008
1st Hard Evidence U.S. Condoned Korean Slaughter
Associated Press continues to follow the story being unravelled by South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, investigating war crimes and atrocities long kept secret from the Korean War of the early 1950s. Their latest story follows an earlier report last May, which I also discussed here.
The latest news continues the grisly tale of uncovering mass graves, and unearthing formerly classified documents. The number of leftists, political opponents, and just plain innocent citizens killed at the orders of then South Korean President Syngman Rhee, shortly after North Korean troops invaded the south. The number killed is estimated to be from 100,000 to 200,000 people, many of them lined up above hastily-dug trenches and shot by military police. Some apparently were buried still alive.
There were no charges or trials for these victims. Furthermore, though U.S. officials definitely knew about the killings, and maybe condoned or even ordered some, a number of U.S. military personnel seem to have had foreknowledge of the killings. The full story of U.S. involvement awaits the declassification and study of hundreds of previously classified documents.
The bulk of the evidence thus far shows that while some U.S. commanders on-site had qualms about the killings, General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of U.S. forces there, saw the killings as an "internal matter". Other officers appeared to approve, at least conditionally.
In what is the biggest exposure thus far of U.S. involvement, in an uncensored version of a narrative of events written at the time by U.S. adviser in Korea, Lt. Col. Rollins S. Emmerich admits he gave advance sanction to summary executions in the city of Busan (now Pusan). According to the AP report, a a South Korean regimental commander wanted "to execute some 3500 suspected peace time Communists, locked up in the local prison". Lt. Col. Emmerich at first thought such atrocities unnecessary, but then seemed to change his mind. (Emphasis in bold added)
There are plenty of atrocities to go around. A North Korean report describes the killings of 1,000 prisoners in Incheon in June 1950, supposedly at the orders of a U.S. military adviser. A British communist journalist at the time reported U.S. forces were supervising "the butchery" at Daejeon. One U.S. officer invited another to come witness the "turkey shoot" outside the city. While the officer so invited apparently declined, others went and took photos of the killings. (Warning: these are gruesome photos.) Today, U.S. historian Bruce Cumings at the University of Chicago finds the U.S. guilty of collaboration in the Daejeon killings, and also of a cover-up. Of course, during the Cold War the U.S. labeled all communist reports of massacres in Korea as "lies".
But, it was the United States that was involved this time in massive lying, covering up serious war crimes by its South Korean "ally", who was being sold to the world as a supposed democratic alternative to the godless communists. As I wrote when this story first broke last spring:
The latest news continues the grisly tale of uncovering mass graves, and unearthing formerly classified documents. The number of leftists, political opponents, and just plain innocent citizens killed at the orders of then South Korean President Syngman Rhee, shortly after North Korean troops invaded the south. The number killed is estimated to be from 100,000 to 200,000 people, many of them lined up above hastily-dug trenches and shot by military police. Some apparently were buried still alive.
There were no charges or trials for these victims. Furthermore, though U.S. officials definitely knew about the killings, and maybe condoned or even ordered some, a number of U.S. military personnel seem to have had foreknowledge of the killings. The full story of U.S. involvement awaits the declassification and study of hundreds of previously classified documents.
The bulk of the evidence thus far shows that while some U.S. commanders on-site had qualms about the killings, General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of U.S. forces there, saw the killings as an "internal matter". Other officers appeared to approve, at least conditionally.
In what is the biggest exposure thus far of U.S. involvement, in an uncensored version of a narrative of events written at the time by U.S. adviser in Korea, Lt. Col. Rollins S. Emmerich admits he gave advance sanction to summary executions in the city of Busan (now Pusan). According to the AP report, a a South Korean regimental commander wanted "to execute some 3500 suspected peace time Communists, locked up in the local prison". Lt. Col. Emmerich at first thought such atrocities unnecessary, but then seemed to change his mind. (Emphasis in bold added)
"Colonel Kim promised not to execute the prisoners until the situation became more critical," wrote Emmerich, who died in 1986. "Colonel Kim was told that if the enemy did arrive to the outskirts of (Busan) he would be permitted to open the gates of the prison and shoot the prisoners with machine guns."Later that summer, hundreds of prisoners apparently were summarily executed in Busan.
There are plenty of atrocities to go around. A North Korean report describes the killings of 1,000 prisoners in Incheon in June 1950, supposedly at the orders of a U.S. military adviser. A British communist journalist at the time reported U.S. forces were supervising "the butchery" at Daejeon. One U.S. officer invited another to come witness the "turkey shoot" outside the city. While the officer so invited apparently declined, others went and took photos of the killings. (Warning: these are gruesome photos.) Today, U.S. historian Bruce Cumings at the University of Chicago finds the U.S. guilty of collaboration in the Daejeon killings, and also of a cover-up. Of course, during the Cold War the U.S. labeled all communist reports of massacres in Korea as "lies".
But, it was the United States that was involved this time in massive lying, covering up serious war crimes by its South Korean "ally", who was being sold to the world as a supposed democratic alternative to the godless communists. As I wrote when this story first broke last spring:
After "shock and awe" in Iraq, the carpetbombing of Vietnam, the mass executions of the Phoenix Project, and the thousands imprisoned and untold tortured at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other "global war on terror" U.S. prisons (including the detention of thousands of minors), after these revelations and many, many more, it is time that Americans woke up and began to accept the reality of their history. That history is far bloodier than they care to imagine, and the fact that atrocities of this magnitude were done by or under the guidance of Americans is a hideous truth that we must not hide from.
More importantly, we should not let those implicated in crimes past and present escape without accountability. A civil commission of the most respected Americans -- none of whom should be from government or the military, as they are too tainted -- should be assembled to investigate the full extent of U.S. involved war crimes. This should include the evidence about use of biological weapons by the United States, as well, during the Korean War. [The cover-up of this aspect of the war has been implicated in the origins of the U.S. torture program at Guantanamo and throughout Bush's "war on terror" gulag.] The use of torture post-9/11 should also top the agenda.
We cannot have a clean start, a la Obama, without facing the truth, as ugly as it may be. I ask all of you: are we really a genocidal country? Do we let mass murder go unpunished? How has it come to this, that one has to even ask such questions in this day and age? Speak out now. U.S. militarism has led us to the gates of a moral holocaust. It is happening now.
A Follow-Up Posting
I like when I post my blogs to Daily Kos, because the discussions in the comments section are often so enlightening. This includes opinions and new information added by both friends and critics alike. Sometimes, I find the information in a comment so compelling, I want to reproduce it here.
Such is the case with a comment by Pete Rock on my posting of my NYT "Limited Hangout" article regarding torture and biological warfare in Korea. What follows is his comment from the Daily Kos posting of the article, where I gave it a different title (the rest of the body content was identical), How NYT Distorted My Daily Kos diary on SERE Torture. Note: I have quietly added a few edits for readability and to correct a few misspellings. I also have added a few links that might be of interest to readers. I want to make clear these are my links, and not those of Pete Rock. Hopefully making these small changes will be agreeable to everybody.
Such is the case with a comment by Pete Rock on my posting of my NYT "Limited Hangout" article regarding torture and biological warfare in Korea. What follows is his comment from the Daily Kos posting of the article, where I gave it a different title (the rest of the body content was identical), How NYT Distorted My Daily Kos diary on SERE Torture. Note: I have quietly added a few edits for readability and to correct a few misspellings. I also have added a few links that might be of interest to readers. I want to make clear these are my links, and not those of Pete Rock. Hopefully making these small changes will be agreeable to everybody.
Very good deconstruction, repudiation of the NYT
We have to remember the main purpose of the trad[itional] newspaper media is to reinforce the dominant narrative,in this case the corporate rule and dominance and their associates and benefactors.
Two quick points: the "limited hangout" the partial admission of the story and a controlled release of other info for misdirection purposes is well established and a long term feature of the trad media.
Remember after Vietnam the CIA bragged hundreds of friends were present in the media. When a true story that reflects very badly on the administration or Defense Department gets aired, a counterattack by their allies in the media on the offending stories' veracity, or character or truthfulness of reporters and academics is sure to come out.
Millions of pounds of chemical weapons like Agent Orange (two versions, 2-4D, 2-4-5T used against either trees or forests) along with picloran compound, cacodylic acid, phenols, and even arsenates and arsenites were dumped or sprayed over wide areas of the countryside. These weaponized chemicals were intended to poison or kill off food crops with young leaves, rice, animals, and in the case of arsenates/arsenites man and other plants.
Part of the long resistance to addressing the toxicity of Agent Orange the most commonly used chemical weapon was to avoid revealing the extent and actual targeting of Vietnamese civilians as a byproduct of the struggle to help poisoned American veterans.
These weapons were an extension of research on those used during the Korean War on Korean civilians. That use was strenuously denied at the time. The documents you cite as withdrawn from the National Archive and destroyed was part of a cover-up, a protection racket. In a democracy, no political papers should be permanently hidden away, a decent interval even if it is as long as 25 or 40 years might elapse, but an honest accounting "truth and reconciliation" helps our democracy where as burying and hiding terrible and wrong things ensures their repetition later on, even on a wider and more terrible scale. As we have in our present politics and history.
One last note: The 1954 and 1956 Army field manual have a curious difference:
speaking of Land (based) Warfare and biological chemical agents thus: 1954: "Gas warfare and bacteriological warfare are employed by the United States against enemy personnel only in retaliation for their use by the enemy"
1956: (changed) "The United States is not a party to any treaty, now in force, that prohibits or restricts the use in warfare of toxic or non-toxic gases, or smoke or incendiary materials or of bacteriological warfare"
This came about because the USA refused the 1925 Geneva protocol on toxic weapons, and even in the 1930 disarmament conference pledged never to use CS gas but didn't sign along with Japan. The 1925 Protocol was signed, but not ratified by the Senate.
Sort of similar to the Global Climate change treaty of 1998. A show of words, but no concrete or binding pledge that mattered.
There was a widespread effort in the 1950's to humanize and make acceptable chemical and biological weapons, and that includes the use of drugs like hallucinogenics on prisoners and torture which is a much wider debasement and destruction of our culture even than the excellent points you raise here. See "OPERATION BLUE SKIES", in the Reporter, October 1, 1959 by Walter Schneir.
Not to hijack your excellent diary, but to show this is truly a long standing policy.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
NYT Limited Hangout on SERE Torture & U.S. Biological Warfare
Ex-CIA high official Victor Marchetti wrote:
One only has to read my June 25 article on the same subject, Nuts & Bolts: How U.S. Organized Torture Program, and then compare it with Shane's article to understand the difference between an artfully constructed faux-expose and an in-depth study of an important story. (One commenter at Mathew Yglesias's blog over at The Atlantic suggested I had scooped The New York Times. I'll note for the record that some of the points in Shane's article first appeared in my essay; for instance, the linking of the Biderman chart to deprogrammers websites. I'll let the fact that the diary was the first to fully expose the Biderman charts techniques speak for itself.)
The only new information the Times article reported was the identification of the source material for Biderman's "Principles", adumbrated in a "Chart of Coercion" used as a didactic device by SERE instructors, described as first appearing in an article by Albert Biderman in a September 1957 issue of the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. The article was entitled Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War. (In my own article, I had noted -- erroneously, as it turns out -- that the chart had first appeared in a 1970s... but then I don't have the Times anonymous sources. As we shall see, Mr. Shane only discovered a part of the story.)
Mr. Shane's article writes:
1) The study of Communist interrogation methods was part of a decades-long research program in the effects of coercive interrogation techniques, including use of sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, drugs, semi-starvation, isolation, and other techniques, conducted by the CIA and various military intelligence agencies to the tune of millions of dollars, and included the use of fake academic groups, university researchers, hospitals, and secret experimentation upon U.S. and other countries' civilian population (Mr. Shane could have referenced the New York Times in-house library, where he would have found the NYT August 2, 1977 article, "Private Institutions Used in CIA Effort to Control Behavior," by Nicholas M. Horrock). The findings of this ongoing research project into mind control and torture were implemented by the CIA, and possibly other military intelligence and/or police agencies, as even a cursory glance at the declassified version of the CIA's own 1963 counterintelligence interrogation manual demonstrates.
2) The Times article also is incorrect in its conclusion that particularly "Chinese methods [of interrogation and torture] had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo." Mr. Shane mistakes the fact that the Biderman-SERE chart originated in an article on POW reactions from the Chinese/Korean War with the U.S. for the full history of how U.S. torture was derived. In the Biderman article itself, Mr. Biderman made clear that there was nothing especially novel about Chinese methods of coercive interrogation (although it is true that the Chinese relied more heavily on group pressures and thought reform than other countries did). Biderman concluded (bold emphasis added):
False confessions and the elicitation of information via torture
Published along with Biderman's essay in the September 1957 Bulletin is another article by government researchers, Lawrence Hinkle and Harold Wolff, who are referenced in the Biderman article mentioned above. This article -- The Methods of Interrogation and Indoctrination Used by the Communist State Police -- has as much, or more interest, to those who wish to study the development of governmental torture by the United States, has, for instance, its own very interesting charts, and examines the history of Russian state security procedures, going back to Czarist times. Wolff and Hinkle also describe key differences between Russian-Soviet and Chinese forms of interrogation. The latter's emphasis on re-education of political belief and the role of group pressures to produce the same is cited by both Biderman and Hinkle and Wolff as a chief difference between the two forms of communist-derived interrogation.
Wolff and Hinkle's article, based on studies they had conducted for the military and CIA -- their initial report had remained classified for a number of years -- also produced a number of charts. Two of them are as remarkable as the now more publicized version describing Biderman's so-called "principles." Entitled "A Typical Time Table - Easter European Secret Police Systems (Communist)", the table outlines a period of detention lasting up to 250 weeks. The outline describes an initial period of isolation, followed by the beginning of interrogation, all to be undertaken under a regimen of "progressive disorganization" of the prisoner's psyche. A second table, "The Detention Regimen" describes the procedures to be used, including "Total Isolation... No View Outside, Light in Ceiling Burns Constantly", sitting and sleeping in "fixed position", noting, "Pain May Result from Fixed Positions During Sleep and When Awake." Additionally, food is to be "Distasteful -- just Sufficient to Sustain Nutrition."
The point of all this is to produce a state within the prisoner that includes fear, uncertainty, fatigue, pain, humiliation, and therefore "Great Need to Talk" and "Great Need for Approval of Interrogator." Again, all of this is duplicated in the CIA's own 1963 manual, and subsequently in manuals produced by the CIA for training of foreign interrogators, armed forces and police in the mid-1980s.
Did all this torture, whether by Soviet, Chinese, Korean, or U.S. interrogators produce actionable intelligence? Did it produce "false confessions?
In order to answer these questions, we must be clear about what these techniques were meant to produce, and that was, as the Hinkle/Wolff essay makes clear, "progressive disorganization" of the prisoner. Under this weakened state of existence, and in a state of near-total dependency, the interrogator works the art of establishing rapport. The results themselves are related to what is meant to be produced.
When the Soviet Stalinist government of the 1930s meant to discredit old elements of the regime, labelling former cadre of the Communist Party "enemies of the state", the intended result was the "false confession." At that time, the Dewey Commission in the United States (named after the respected U.S. academic who chaired the investigation, John Dewey) investigated and cleared Leon Trotsky and other "old Bolsheviks" from the wild prosecutorial claims of the Russian prosecutors. It was the "confessions" of some of these former leaders of the Soviet Union that seemed so inexplicable at the time. The drama of the situation was captured by novelist Arthur Koestler in his famous novel, Darkness at Noon.
Much later, the supposed confessions of Hungarian Cardinal Josef Mindszenty after his 1948 arrest by the Stalinist police greatly puzzled Western observers. It was supposed that he was tortured, but even then, how had he been made to "confess" in such a relatively brief period of time?
The issue of false confessions elicited under torture had its largest airing when, in 1952-53, captured U.S. airmen told their captors that they had engaged in dropping biological weapons on North Korea and China as part of the U.S. air campaign against those countries. The accusation was vigorously denied by the United States, and a propaganda campaign was begun in the guise of investigating the "brainwashing" of U.S. prisoners. Wild stories of mind control drugs and secret interrogation techniques that could gain unique influence over the personalities of its victims were circulated. It was in this environment that Albert Biderman, Lawrence Hinkle, Harold Wolff, Robert Jay Lifton and others were enlisted to study how the Chinese had produced the "false confessions" of U.S. POWs.
Except, were the confessions false?
Publicly, that was the story. But when researchers met behind closed doors, or at professional meetings, a different story emerges. At a 1957 symposium organized by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) on "Methods of Forceful Indoctrination: Observations and Interviews", Dr. Louis West noted that "the enemy had a considerable degree of success in obtaining intelligence information and in forcing prisoners to engage in propaganda activities" (emphasis added; the quote is from GAP Symposium No. 4, July 1957, published by GAP Publications Office).
(Robert Jay Lifton, quoted in Mr. Shane's New York Times argument as saddened that Chinese interrogation methods were used by the U.S., a "180-degree turn" by U.S. interrogators, was a prominent presenter at this same conference, along with Dr. Edgar Schein of MIT, and the aforementioned Dr. Lawrence Hinkle. When I asked Dr. Lifton some time ago, and in another context, if he had any "personal memories or thoughts" about the work of Drs. Biderman, Hinkle and others, he replied by e-mail that he had no personal memories of these individuals.)
After the airmen were repatriated back to the United States, they all recanted their "confessions", although they had to do so under threat of court martial, a remarkable threat to issue, if the confessions were on the surface of them false.
U.S. Biological Warfare in Korea?
The U.S. chemical and biological warfare program after World War II was one of the most expensive and secretive campaigns ever undertaken by the U.S. government, comparable to the Manhattan Project. The NYT article makes much over the production of "false confessions" to the use of biological weapons by the U.S. during the Korean War. But there is an alternate, studied case demonstrating that the execrable and illegal use of such weapons occurred. (Both chemical and biological warfare were banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention.)
While there is no smoking gun document, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence, much of it detailed by Canadian academics Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman in their 1998 book, The United States and Biological Warfare (Indiana University Press). More recently, respected bioethicist Jonathan Moreno, Senior Policy and Research Analyst for the President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, has called Endicott and Hagerman's claims "compelling, if not conclusive", and the U.S. research program in biological warfare worthy of further investigation.
I cannot do justice to the full extent of information unearthed by Endicott and Hagerman, but the following is a brief summary of the data.
*** At the close of World War II, the United States, under the authority of General Douglas MacArthur granted immunity to members of Japanese Unit 731 "in exchange for data of research on biological warfare". Led by the infamous General Shiro Ishii, this covert branch of the Japanese Imperial Army, based in Manchuria, a conquered portion of China, engaged in the worst sort of experimentation, including live vivisection of POWs, deliberate infection of disease, and study of disease "vectors" of infection, as by fleas, to study the suitability of large-scale bacteriological warfare. According to Jonathan Moreno, in his book Undue Risk, according to recent research Unit 731 may have been responsible for the deaths of over 270,000 civilians.
*** In 1950, U.S. spending on biological warfare research was $5.3 million. In 1951-1953, the high-water mark of the Korean War, money spent on such development was $345 million -- a lot of cash in 2008 dollars. Truman's Secretary of Defense George Marshall approved the recommendation of the Stevenson Committee two weeks after the Chinese entry into the Korean conflict. Chaired by Earl Stevenson, and including representatives from U.S. Rubber, AT&T Co., Harvard Medical School, and a secretariat "drawn from the Defense Department, the Research and Development Board, the Chemical Warfare Service, and the Air Force" (Endicott & Hagerman, p. 45), the Committee recommended "an increase in funding and for research and development to bring biological weapons to operational readiness as soon as possible" (p. 47).
*** U.S. government documents, such as the memo, "Mechanism of Entry and Action of Insecticidal Compounds and Insect Repellents" (Oct. 26, 1952), attached to the 1953 Fiscal Year Budget, which included the following (p. 77):
*** Chinese documents, and the U.S. airmen confessions are another, if controversial, source of information. Altogether, 36 U.S. officers gave statements to the Chinese of involvement in U.S. operational use of biological weapons, including two colonels and two captains. Endicott and Hagerman's book lists a number of manuscript and Chinese government document sources. Also of significance is the Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and China, published by the Chinese, which offered over 600 pages of documentary evidence. Needless to say, this report, which found plausible the charges of bacteriological warfare, examining spent bomb casings and medical documents, among other evidence, was not widely distributed in the U.S., though Time Magazine pilloried it when it appeared. The Commission was headed by Dr. Joseph Needham, a very respected British author and researcher.
Summary
The New York Times article, China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo, is a sophisticated use of journalism in the service of propaganda. While it attaches the recent use of torture and coercive methods of interrogation by the United States to some of its origins in the study of communist methods of interrogation, it does so in a one-sided way. It attributes methods of detention and treatment of prisoners that was not unique to China. If anything, the U.S. model of psychological torture is probably closer to that used by the Soviet secret police. In any case, this type of torture was not developed by the communists, but had its origins in the police procedures of autocratic governments, not least that of Czarist Russia.
The article also fails to mention the long interest of military and U.S. intelligence agencies in the use of these methods, nor their implementation by the U.S. government, long before the "war on terror" and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were twinkles in the eye of the current administration. One wonders how SERE officers and personnel like being the scapegoats for a U.S. policy that goes back decades.
Finally, the article perpetuates a mythology as to the use of "false confessions" during the Korean War to mask the origins of U.S. research into mind control and coercive interrogation that go back at least to the U.S. Navy's Project Chatter in the late 1940s, and the CIA's Operation Bluebird in 1950, both well before the Korean War. The purpose of this form of propaganda is to cover-up very serious questions about the use of biological warfare approved by the highest levels of the U.S. government, a serious war crime if it in fact, as appears very probable, occurred. In any case, the destruction of documents by the United States over the years makes a reconstruction of our own history extraordinarily difficult. CIA director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA documents destroyed in 1973; luckily, one cache of these documents had been copied, and became available later, but much remains unknown, because destroyed.
Many of the Korean War documents were also destroyed, or remain classified or hidden. Endicott and Hagerman note that they were told that archivists at the U.S. National Archives say that some files of the Chemical Warfare Service were recalled by the Army and destroyed in the period 1956 to 1969 (p. 256).
We cannot know the entire story of U.S. covert operations, including the research into torture interrogations, and the use of chemical and biological weapons. The fact that decades after the fact it is difficult to access information on these subjects speaks for itself, as does the destruction of much of the documentation.
The New York Times prides itself as the paper of record in the United States, that publishes "all the news that's fit to print." But as in the run-up to the Iraq War, the NYT, like much of U.S. mainstream media, has acted as a conduit for the official "line" of the U.S. government, much as Pravda and Izvestia once did for the sclerotic Kremlin bureaucracy. The widespread disbelief in the Warren Commission explanation of the Kennedy assassination, and the popularity of conspiracy television shows like The X-Files reflects a nascent consciousness among the mass of the American population that the truth is too often hidden from them.
It is a shame to see with what alacrity the Chinese torture model has been taken as gospel by both bloggers and conventional media sources. Most seem to have never even purused the actual documents that are quoted. Others speak and write passionately about subjects they have barely even studied. In George W. Bush's America, there is nothing needed more than the ability to think clearly and analytically, with an independent and curious mind, and a willingness to take the truth, whatever it may be, wherever it will take us. If that means entering a dark territory where what one believed to be true and honorable turns out to be otherwise, then the sooner we travel such a journey the better.
"A 'limited hangout' is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering - some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."Scott Shane's New York Times article, China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo (7/2/08), details the use of Albert Biderman's "Chart of Coercion" by members of the the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program, or SERE, program to teach torture techniques to interrogators. The article is a fine example of how to conduct a limited hangout, or selected revelation, of intelligence-related material. Its headline and story is disingenuous or betrays ignorance. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the nefariousness or deviance of those who taught SERE techniques to U.S. interrogators, and to hide the truth about the derivation of those techniques, and to the history of the their use by U.S. government agencies.
One only has to read my June 25 article on the same subject, Nuts & Bolts: How U.S. Organized Torture Program, and then compare it with Shane's article to understand the difference between an artfully constructed faux-expose and an in-depth study of an important story. (One commenter at Mathew Yglesias's blog over at The Atlantic suggested I had scooped The New York Times. I'll note for the record that some of the points in Shane's article first appeared in my essay; for instance, the linking of the Biderman chart to deprogrammers websites. I'll let the fact that the diary was the first to fully expose the Biderman charts techniques speak for itself.)
The only new information the Times article reported was the identification of the source material for Biderman's "Principles", adumbrated in a "Chart of Coercion" used as a didactic device by SERE instructors, described as first appearing in an article by Albert Biderman in a September 1957 issue of the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. The article was entitled Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War. (In my own article, I had noted -- erroneously, as it turns out -- that the chart had first appeared in a 1970s... but then I don't have the Times anonymous sources. As we shall see, Mr. Shane only discovered a part of the story.)
Mr. Shane's article writes:
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.What the author fails to mention:
1) The study of Communist interrogation methods was part of a decades-long research program in the effects of coercive interrogation techniques, including use of sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, drugs, semi-starvation, isolation, and other techniques, conducted by the CIA and various military intelligence agencies to the tune of millions of dollars, and included the use of fake academic groups, university researchers, hospitals, and secret experimentation upon U.S. and other countries' civilian population (Mr. Shane could have referenced the New York Times in-house library, where he would have found the NYT August 2, 1977 article, "Private Institutions Used in CIA Effort to Control Behavior," by Nicholas M. Horrock). The findings of this ongoing research project into mind control and torture were implemented by the CIA, and possibly other military intelligence and/or police agencies, as even a cursory glance at the declassified version of the CIA's own 1963 counterintelligence interrogation manual demonstrates.
2) The Times article also is incorrect in its conclusion that particularly "Chinese methods [of interrogation and torture] had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo." Mr. Shane mistakes the fact that the Biderman-SERE chart originated in an article on POW reactions from the Chinese/Korean War with the U.S. for the full history of how U.S. torture was derived. In the Biderman article itself, Mr. Biderman made clear that there was nothing especially novel about Chinese methods of coercive interrogation (although it is true that the Chinese relied more heavily on group pressures and thought reform than other countries did). Biderman concluded (bold emphasis added):
It is that the finding of our studies which should be greeted as most new and spectacular is the finding that essentially there was nothing new or spectacular about the events we studied. We found, as did other studies such as those of Hinkle and Wolff, that human behavior could be manipulated within a certain range by controlled environments. We found that the Chinese Communists used methods of coercing behavior from our men in their hands which Communists of other countries had employed for decades and which police and inquisitors had employed for centuries.Furthermore, the chart in question, labelled "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance," was itself not the original version of this chart. Biderman himself, in the article cited by the Times notes that the chart of techniques is but a "condensed version" of an "outline" produced by the author before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating "Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination and Exploitation of American Military and Civilian Prisoners" in June 1956. As for Chinese use of these techniques, towards the end of his article, Biderman states:
It should be understood that only a few of the Air Force personnel who encountered efforts to elicit false confessions in Korea were subjected to really full dress, all-out attempts to make them behave in the manner I have sketched. The time between capture and repatriation for many was too short, and, presumably, the trained interrogators available to the Communists too few, to permit this.Over and over, Mr. Shane's article tries to portray the torture of detainees at Guantanamo by U.S. interrogators and jailers as something derived from Chinese forms of torture, and he uses the Biderman chart to punctuate his argument. But the evidence from Biderman's own article, and the preponderance of evidence from both primary and secondary historically sources points to a more complex and nuanced view of the origins of U.S. torture. The emphasis upon so-called Chinese origins serves two purposes: it uses the scandal of U.S. torture to make propaganda points against the Chinese, and furthermore, it perpetuates a cover story regarding U.S. use of bacteriological warfare during the Korean War that ascribes its blown cover to the fiction that North Korean and Chinese interrogation were meant to produce "false confessions," as I explain below.
False confessions and the elicitation of information via torture
Published along with Biderman's essay in the September 1957 Bulletin is another article by government researchers, Lawrence Hinkle and Harold Wolff, who are referenced in the Biderman article mentioned above. This article -- The Methods of Interrogation and Indoctrination Used by the Communist State Police -- has as much, or more interest, to those who wish to study the development of governmental torture by the United States, has, for instance, its own very interesting charts, and examines the history of Russian state security procedures, going back to Czarist times. Wolff and Hinkle also describe key differences between Russian-Soviet and Chinese forms of interrogation. The latter's emphasis on re-education of political belief and the role of group pressures to produce the same is cited by both Biderman and Hinkle and Wolff as a chief difference between the two forms of communist-derived interrogation.
Wolff and Hinkle's article, based on studies they had conducted for the military and CIA -- their initial report had remained classified for a number of years -- also produced a number of charts. Two of them are as remarkable as the now more publicized version describing Biderman's so-called "principles." Entitled "A Typical Time Table - Easter European Secret Police Systems (Communist)", the table outlines a period of detention lasting up to 250 weeks. The outline describes an initial period of isolation, followed by the beginning of interrogation, all to be undertaken under a regimen of "progressive disorganization" of the prisoner's psyche. A second table, "The Detention Regimen" describes the procedures to be used, including "Total Isolation... No View Outside, Light in Ceiling Burns Constantly", sitting and sleeping in "fixed position", noting, "Pain May Result from Fixed Positions During Sleep and When Awake." Additionally, food is to be "Distasteful -- just Sufficient to Sustain Nutrition."
The point of all this is to produce a state within the prisoner that includes fear, uncertainty, fatigue, pain, humiliation, and therefore "Great Need to Talk" and "Great Need for Approval of Interrogator." Again, all of this is duplicated in the CIA's own 1963 manual, and subsequently in manuals produced by the CIA for training of foreign interrogators, armed forces and police in the mid-1980s.
Did all this torture, whether by Soviet, Chinese, Korean, or U.S. interrogators produce actionable intelligence? Did it produce "false confessions?
In order to answer these questions, we must be clear about what these techniques were meant to produce, and that was, as the Hinkle/Wolff essay makes clear, "progressive disorganization" of the prisoner. Under this weakened state of existence, and in a state of near-total dependency, the interrogator works the art of establishing rapport. The results themselves are related to what is meant to be produced.
When the Soviet Stalinist government of the 1930s meant to discredit old elements of the regime, labelling former cadre of the Communist Party "enemies of the state", the intended result was the "false confession." At that time, the Dewey Commission in the United States (named after the respected U.S. academic who chaired the investigation, John Dewey) investigated and cleared Leon Trotsky and other "old Bolsheviks" from the wild prosecutorial claims of the Russian prosecutors. It was the "confessions" of some of these former leaders of the Soviet Union that seemed so inexplicable at the time. The drama of the situation was captured by novelist Arthur Koestler in his famous novel, Darkness at Noon.
Much later, the supposed confessions of Hungarian Cardinal Josef Mindszenty after his 1948 arrest by the Stalinist police greatly puzzled Western observers. It was supposed that he was tortured, but even then, how had he been made to "confess" in such a relatively brief period of time?
The issue of false confessions elicited under torture had its largest airing when, in 1952-53, captured U.S. airmen told their captors that they had engaged in dropping biological weapons on North Korea and China as part of the U.S. air campaign against those countries. The accusation was vigorously denied by the United States, and a propaganda campaign was begun in the guise of investigating the "brainwashing" of U.S. prisoners. Wild stories of mind control drugs and secret interrogation techniques that could gain unique influence over the personalities of its victims were circulated. It was in this environment that Albert Biderman, Lawrence Hinkle, Harold Wolff, Robert Jay Lifton and others were enlisted to study how the Chinese had produced the "false confessions" of U.S. POWs.
Except, were the confessions false?
Publicly, that was the story. But when researchers met behind closed doors, or at professional meetings, a different story emerges. At a 1957 symposium organized by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) on "Methods of Forceful Indoctrination: Observations and Interviews", Dr. Louis West noted that "the enemy had a considerable degree of success in obtaining intelligence information and in forcing prisoners to engage in propaganda activities" (emphasis added; the quote is from GAP Symposium No. 4, July 1957, published by GAP Publications Office).
(Robert Jay Lifton, quoted in Mr. Shane's New York Times argument as saddened that Chinese interrogation methods were used by the U.S., a "180-degree turn" by U.S. interrogators, was a prominent presenter at this same conference, along with Dr. Edgar Schein of MIT, and the aforementioned Dr. Lawrence Hinkle. When I asked Dr. Lifton some time ago, and in another context, if he had any "personal memories or thoughts" about the work of Drs. Biderman, Hinkle and others, he replied by e-mail that he had no personal memories of these individuals.)
After the airmen were repatriated back to the United States, they all recanted their "confessions", although they had to do so under threat of court martial, a remarkable threat to issue, if the confessions were on the surface of them false.
U.S. Biological Warfare in Korea?
The U.S. chemical and biological warfare program after World War II was one of the most expensive and secretive campaigns ever undertaken by the U.S. government, comparable to the Manhattan Project. The NYT article makes much over the production of "false confessions" to the use of biological weapons by the U.S. during the Korean War. But there is an alternate, studied case demonstrating that the execrable and illegal use of such weapons occurred. (Both chemical and biological warfare were banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention.)
While there is no smoking gun document, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence, much of it detailed by Canadian academics Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman in their 1998 book, The United States and Biological Warfare (Indiana University Press). More recently, respected bioethicist Jonathan Moreno, Senior Policy and Research Analyst for the President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, has called Endicott and Hagerman's claims "compelling, if not conclusive", and the U.S. research program in biological warfare worthy of further investigation.
I cannot do justice to the full extent of information unearthed by Endicott and Hagerman, but the following is a brief summary of the data.
*** At the close of World War II, the United States, under the authority of General Douglas MacArthur granted immunity to members of Japanese Unit 731 "in exchange for data of research on biological warfare". Led by the infamous General Shiro Ishii, this covert branch of the Japanese Imperial Army, based in Manchuria, a conquered portion of China, engaged in the worst sort of experimentation, including live vivisection of POWs, deliberate infection of disease, and study of disease "vectors" of infection, as by fleas, to study the suitability of large-scale bacteriological warfare. According to Jonathan Moreno, in his book Undue Risk, according to recent research Unit 731 may have been responsible for the deaths of over 270,000 civilians.
*** In 1950, U.S. spending on biological warfare research was $5.3 million. In 1951-1953, the high-water mark of the Korean War, money spent on such development was $345 million -- a lot of cash in 2008 dollars. Truman's Secretary of Defense George Marshall approved the recommendation of the Stevenson Committee two weeks after the Chinese entry into the Korean conflict. Chaired by Earl Stevenson, and including representatives from U.S. Rubber, AT&T Co., Harvard Medical School, and a secretariat "drawn from the Defense Department, the Research and Development Board, the Chemical Warfare Service, and the Air Force" (Endicott & Hagerman, p. 45), the Committee recommended "an increase in funding and for research and development to bring biological weapons to operational readiness as soon as possible" (p. 47).
*** U.S. government documents, such as the memo, "Mechanism of Entry and Action of Insecticidal Compounds and Insect Repellents" (Oct. 26, 1952), attached to the 1953 Fiscal Year Budget, which included the following (p. 77):
Application to BW [Biological Warfare]: $25,000 (35% of $72,000).Another memo -- reproduced as an appendix to Endicott and Hagerman's book (p. 202) -- dated March 17, 1953, from the Air Force Chief of Plans to the Chiefs of War Plans and of Psychological Warfare, notes:
Information on the mechanism of action of insecticides is applicable directly to problems involved in both the offensive application of and protection against insect dissemination of biological agents. Under project 465-20-001, insect strains resistant to insecticides are being developed. These represent a potentially more effective vehicle for the offensive use of BW of insect borne pathogens....
The Psychological Warfare Division will direct and supervise covert operations in the scope of unconventional BW and CW [Chemical Warfare] operations and programs and the psychological aspects of BW and CW....Why this document doesn't serve as a "smoking gun" in the eyes of most is beyond me. But extraordinary claims, as such are allegations of serious war crimes, demands a great deal of evidence. There is much more such evidence in Endicott and Hagerman's book, but I cannot reproduce it all here. One important discussion of the evidence occurred in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in May/June 1999. Another discussion, concerning the relevance of newly "discovered" Soviet documents and their effect upon the controversy, occurred in the Cold War International History Project Bulletin in Winter 1998.
The War Plans Division will... Integrate capabilities and requirements for BW and CW into war plans... Participate in the determination of munitions requirements for BW and CW to implement improved plans.
*** Chinese documents, and the U.S. airmen confessions are another, if controversial, source of information. Altogether, 36 U.S. officers gave statements to the Chinese of involvement in U.S. operational use of biological weapons, including two colonels and two captains. Endicott and Hagerman's book lists a number of manuscript and Chinese government document sources. Also of significance is the Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and China, published by the Chinese, which offered over 600 pages of documentary evidence. Needless to say, this report, which found plausible the charges of bacteriological warfare, examining spent bomb casings and medical documents, among other evidence, was not widely distributed in the U.S., though Time Magazine pilloried it when it appeared. The Commission was headed by Dr. Joseph Needham, a very respected British author and researcher.
Summary
The New York Times article, China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo, is a sophisticated use of journalism in the service of propaganda. While it attaches the recent use of torture and coercive methods of interrogation by the United States to some of its origins in the study of communist methods of interrogation, it does so in a one-sided way. It attributes methods of detention and treatment of prisoners that was not unique to China. If anything, the U.S. model of psychological torture is probably closer to that used by the Soviet secret police. In any case, this type of torture was not developed by the communists, but had its origins in the police procedures of autocratic governments, not least that of Czarist Russia.
The article also fails to mention the long interest of military and U.S. intelligence agencies in the use of these methods, nor their implementation by the U.S. government, long before the "war on terror" and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were twinkles in the eye of the current administration. One wonders how SERE officers and personnel like being the scapegoats for a U.S. policy that goes back decades.
Finally, the article perpetuates a mythology as to the use of "false confessions" during the Korean War to mask the origins of U.S. research into mind control and coercive interrogation that go back at least to the U.S. Navy's Project Chatter in the late 1940s, and the CIA's Operation Bluebird in 1950, both well before the Korean War. The purpose of this form of propaganda is to cover-up very serious questions about the use of biological warfare approved by the highest levels of the U.S. government, a serious war crime if it in fact, as appears very probable, occurred. In any case, the destruction of documents by the United States over the years makes a reconstruction of our own history extraordinarily difficult. CIA director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA documents destroyed in 1973; luckily, one cache of these documents had been copied, and became available later, but much remains unknown, because destroyed.
Many of the Korean War documents were also destroyed, or remain classified or hidden. Endicott and Hagerman note that they were told that archivists at the U.S. National Archives say that some files of the Chemical Warfare Service were recalled by the Army and destroyed in the period 1956 to 1969 (p. 256).
We cannot know the entire story of U.S. covert operations, including the research into torture interrogations, and the use of chemical and biological weapons. The fact that decades after the fact it is difficult to access information on these subjects speaks for itself, as does the destruction of much of the documentation.
The New York Times prides itself as the paper of record in the United States, that publishes "all the news that's fit to print." But as in the run-up to the Iraq War, the NYT, like much of U.S. mainstream media, has acted as a conduit for the official "line" of the U.S. government, much as Pravda and Izvestia once did for the sclerotic Kremlin bureaucracy. The widespread disbelief in the Warren Commission explanation of the Kennedy assassination, and the popularity of conspiracy television shows like The X-Files reflects a nascent consciousness among the mass of the American population that the truth is too often hidden from them.
It is a shame to see with what alacrity the Chinese torture model has been taken as gospel by both bloggers and conventional media sources. Most seem to have never even purused the actual documents that are quoted. Others speak and write passionately about subjects they have barely even studied. In George W. Bush's America, there is nothing needed more than the ability to think clearly and analytically, with an independent and curious mind, and a willingness to take the truth, whatever it may be, wherever it will take us. If that means entering a dark territory where what one believed to be true and honorable turns out to be otherwise, then the sooner we travel such a journey the better.
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