Gov't Gets Ornery over Gitmo Murder Cover-Up Claims

Keith Olbermann reported tonight that the Department of Justice had contacted him and expressed how unhappy they were with his report on Scott Horton's Harpers Magazine expose of the 2006 killings of three Guantanamo prisoners, and the subsequent government cover-up, extending into the Obama administration.

Now Scott Horton reports in a new column at Harpers on the blowback he's been getting from DoD and DoJ over his reporting:

Last night on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I focused on the first responses to “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides.’” Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the former commander at Camp America, had sent an email to the Associated Press, the text of which AP confirmed to me, in which he said he would have to get clearance from the Defense Department to speak, but then stated:

This blatant misrepresentation of the truth infuriates me. I don’t know who Sgt. Hickman is, but he is only trying to be a spotlight ranger. He knows nothing about what transpired in Camp 1, or our medical facility. I do, I was there.

This statement merits closer inspection. The first sentence is a classic nondenial denial. It appears on the surface to deny part of the account, but in fact denies nothing. Bumgarner needs to state specifically what allegations he considers inaccurate. His failure to do so is telling.

The second statement is an attempt to frame the conflict in terms of a controversy between Sergeant Hickman and himself, which he leads into by saying he doesn’t even know who Hickman is. That statement is demonstrably false. As we confirmed with Defense Department records, Bumgarner recommended Hickman for a medal...

The Justice Department had no response to any of these serious allegations. Instead, in a January 18 e-mail, department spokesman Laura Sweeny claimed that two of the witnesses interviewed by the department had misremembered the names of the lawyers present at those meetings. She refused to address any of the other allegations in the article. Instead, she insisted that I note that Justice had “conducted a thorough inquiry into this matter, carefully examined the allegations, found no evidence of wrongdoing and subsequently closed the matter.” And then she said, as she had when I contacted her in reporting the story, that she would not arrange an interview with any of the officials involved in the matter.

Meanwhile, the first in hopefully a cascade of newspaper editorials has the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calling for an investigation into the "three questionable Gitmo suicides":

There’s growing evidence that suggests that three detainees — two from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen — died from torture-related injuries at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in 2006. The military cover story strains credulity. A subsequent inquiry by the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service fared worse.

Methodically examined and parsed by a team from Seton Hall Law School in Newark, N.J., the Navy investigation seems to have been pursued with either inexcusable incompetence or using a massive cover-up....

Evasions of this kind hardly are unprecedented. In 2004, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba revealed abuses and deception up the chain of command in connection with criminal misconduct at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Ranking officers were found complicit in the sadistic mistreatment of prisoners. It was not the work of only a few bad apples.

Enough is enough. Prisoner abuse and botched investigations undermine national security, handing America’s enemies a devastating recruiting tool.

Mr. Obama should appoint an unrelenting career prosecutor to the case, someone of the caliber of Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, to dig deeper. He must follow where the evidence leads.

H/T Stephen Soldz, who is also keeping close watch on these events.

CCR on 2006 Gitmo Murders: Families of Deceased Demand Answers

The following is a press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights, responding to Scott Horton's article in Harpers Magazine released on January 18, revealing that the government's claim of suicide in the case of three Guantanamo prisoners found dead in June 2006 is in fact false, and has been perpetuated by a cover-up that began immediately after the men were killed (either by military or CIA or other intelligence torturers).

New Facts Suggest 2006 GTMO Deaths Not Suicides As Government Claims

CCR Represents Deceased and Families, Demands Answers

Contact: press@ccrjustice.org

January 18, 2010, New York – An article published today in Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton raises grave questions about the manner in which three prisoners died in Guantanamo in June 2006, two of whom are plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the deceased and their families, Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld. While the current and former administrations have consistently maintained that the deaths were suicides, new facts, including interviews with four former soldiers stationed at the base at the time of the deaths, raise questions about the government’s claims and about the continued role of the Obama administration in keeping information about the deaths from the public and the families of the men.

CCR Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, lead counsel in the civil case surrounding the deaths, which charges the government and 24 federal officials with responsibility for the abuse and wrongful death of the deceased, said, "President Obama’s Department of Justice has tried to keep our case out of the courts, beyond the reach of the legal system and any oversight or accountability. It is critical that the full story of how our clients died and who was responsible be brought to light in open court before an impartial judge. Serious gaps and questions remain, more than three years after the deaths."

In December, the U.S. government filed reply papers in support of its motion to dismiss Al-Zahrani, arguing that no federal court has the power to hear cases seeking accountability for abuse of detainees at Guantánamo. The Center for Constitutional Rights brought the suit on behalf of the families of Yasser Al-Zahrani and Salah Ali Abdullah Ahmed Al-Salami, two detained men found dead at the base in June 2006.

CCR’s complaint, the government briefs and other court documents can be found here on the case page for Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld.

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last eight years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to resettle the approximately 50 men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

Video: What If You Were Imprisoned at Gitmo? (Viewer Advisory: Strong, Graphic Images)

Stephen Soldz found an amazing, if shocking, video that recreates the experience of being imprisoned and abused at Guantanamo prison. I'll let him explain it:

British Channel 4 TV took seven volunteers and subjected them for 48 hours to the tactics authorized for use at Guantanamo. Quite chilling. It took only 10 hours for the first volunteer to be removed due to the severe trauma he underwent. Only four of the seven survived 48 hours of hell. Many of the Guantanamo detainees have been there over four years: 35,040 hours, 730 times as long. If we do not help them, they may spend the rest of their lives there. Everyone, including all APA members, should watch this.

Feinstein Introduces Bill to Close Gitmo in One Year

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has introduced a bill to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The closure would be slated for one year after the passage of the bill -- a long time if you are a detainee being held in solitary confinement, or otherwise.

A recent Amnesty International report, quoted by Turkana in a diary over at Daily Kos on this issue, describes the current conditions for those imprisoned at "Gitmo":

The isolated prisoners are now spending 22 hours alone in a windowless cell with no natural light or fresh air. They exercise alone, often at night and can go for days without seeing daylight. Inmates have their meals alone in their cells, which are constantly lit, and they are observed 24 hours a day.

Senator Feinstein has previously supported both the Patriot Act and the incarceration of "war on terror" detainees at Guantanamo Bay. (Her bill says nothing about other U.S.-run prisons abroad that hold similar "enemy combatants", and also are similarly tarred with reports of torture.)

In her website statement, she declares:

“Guantanamo Bay has become a lightning rod for international condemnation.... This has greatly damaged the nation’s credibility around the world. Rather than make the United States safer, the image projected by this facility puts us at greater risk. The time has come to close it down.”

“I want to be clear. I am absolutely opposed to releasing any terrorists, Taliban fighters or anyone else held at Guantanamo who is committed to harming the United States.

“At the same time, we must recognize the sustained damage this facility is doing to our international standing. We are better served by closing this facility and transferring the detainees elsewhere.”

Feinstein's language, oddly, shows greater concern for the image of the United States than for the human beings broken by coercive interrogation, isolation, sensory deprivation, beatings, and other forms of torture. Her bill would call for a transfer of detainees to U.S. courts to be charged with crimes, or turned over to an international tribunal, or returned to their own or a third country, with "guarantees" of no torture if returned.

As an example of the kind of pressure being exerted upon the politicians of this country around the torture issue, Feinstein's bill represents a victory, albeit only one step in a long and arduous process. It may be the best bill that can be expected at this time out of this Congress. George W. Bush will be hard pressed to veto this bill, but sabotage it or veto it he will.

Or, will he go ahead and let Gitmo close, as a damage control operation, transferring the prisoners elsewhere in his gulag? It will be a symbolic defeat. But hell, they can handle symbolic defeats. They don't challenge the raw naked power of the military state.

I nevertheless cannot help but feel heartened by Feinstein's bill. Her website contains a detailed timeline that discusses the torture that has taken place at Guantanamo at the hands of U.S. agencies. I don't know of any other Congressional website that does that. Here's a sampling:

November 30, 2004: The New York Times reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross charged, in confidential reports to the United States government, that the American military had intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on Guantanamo Bay detainees. The report said detainees were forced to endure "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions." The story also revealed that a January 2003 confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross raised questions whether “psychological torture” had taken place at Guantanamo Bay.

December 21, 2004: The Washington Post reported that FBI agents, in memos spanning a two-year period, witnessed a variety of abuses at Guantanamo Bay. The newspaper reported that one FBI agent, on August 2, 2004, wrote: "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more." In once case, the agent continued, "the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

June 2005: An official Department of Defense report by Air Force Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt, launched in response to the FBI concerns, found three instances of “degrading and abusive treatment” in violation of Department of Defense guidelines. These included the use of dogs in interrogations, extended period of solitary confinement and sleep deprivation. The report concluded that these acts did not constitute torture or inhumane treatment, and that some of the abuses alleged to have been witnessed by the FBI could not be corroborated.

If you feel so inclined, call Sen. Feinstein's office and give her your support, and maybe you'll want to add that the legislation doesn't go far enough. Tell her you want the restoration of habeas corpus and the outlawing of all forms of psychological torture, and that you want those who authorized the torture held accountable. Tell her you want an end to secret renditions and the closing of the black prisons. Who knows? She may be inclined to listen (though I wouldn't hold my breath).

Washington, DC - (202) 224-3841
San Francisco - (415) 393-0707
Los Angeles - (310) 914-7300
San Diego - (619) 231-9712
Fresno - (559) 485-7430

(tip of the hat to Turkana)

Action Diary! Your help needed RIGHT NOW to stop torture

Politics is about timing and tactics. By a unique confluence of events, and the way the CIA and military organized their methods of interrogation, a serious weakness in their ability to conduct torture has been discovered. If we strike now -- with letters, faxes, emails, etc. -- we can put a great deal of pressure on a particular vulnerable group who has the ability to greatly hamper the ability of the U.S. government to torture.

When the government researched coercive interrogation in the 1950s and 1960s, they put a great deal of emphasis on the psychological means of understanding human beings, and then using this knowledge to break human beings down. Now, psychologists at the American Psychological Association are trying to stop members from participating in this criminal process, just as members of other health organizations have so prohibited their members.

The psychologists are fighting what seems like a losing battle. But the struggle isn't finished. It is time to reach out to the public to exert their influence on the insular APA leadership. What follows is a brief description of the situation, followed by a direct action call for messages to be sent to key figures at APA.

A Moratorium Against Psychologist Participation in Torture

Stephen Soldz has a good diary up right now at Daily Kos that explains how the American Psychological Association is trying to deep-six a resolution that calls for a moratorium on psychologist participation in torture interrogations at places like Guantanamo Bay prison.

One year ago (!), Neil Altman, an APA psychologist, presented a resolution that was non-binding, but called for APA to take a stand against psychologist participation in foreign intelligence interrogations, after the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 made clear that cruel and unusual methods of interrogation, if not outright torture, would be allowed, and that Bush would decide what met Geneva treaty norms and what didn't.

APA leadership could have fast-tracked this resolution, but they sunk it under a thousand tons of bureaucratic verbiage and the full weight of the serpentine process that is approval of a proposal at APA. Here's a snippet of the response to Dr. Altman's resolution by the Ethics Chair of APA, Dr. Stephen Behnke, dated 11/1/06:

In reviewing the item, the Ethics Committee had several points of observation that it offers for your consideration and on which it requests your feedback.

First, the Committee noted the phrase “U.S. detention centers.” The Committee was uncertain as to the intended scope of this term, which interpreted broadly could include any facility where individuals are detained, for example psychiatric hospitals, jails and prisons, or INS centers....

Second, the Committee noted the term “foreign detainees” and was unclear what group of individuals you wished to identify. Do you, for example, mean individuals who are not
citizens of the United States?

Uh, well, what's the definition of a "detention center"? What's a "foreign detainee"? -- Behnke and the APA leadership seek to bury the resolution the way a high priced lawyer destroys a poor litigant by filing multiple motions. They would make a simple statement of honest integrity, a statement easily made, for instance by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association, into a case as dense and eternal as Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce.

We have been through all this before with APA. Avila wrote a great diary back in 2006 explaining how APA reversed an earlier stand on torture to make their membership available for Guantanamo and similary interrogations. I followed up with an explanation of how phony legal arguments inserted into an anti-torture resolution at an APA conference rescued the use of torture for the CIA and Pentagon.

According to the U.S. Declaration to the UN Convention on Torture, psychological harm or suffering is defined as NOT COMING from psychological forms of torture. -- Of course, it doesn't SAY this outright, but that's what IT'S MEANT to allow, by art of legal definition.

I don't want to rehash the entire controversy here. Suffice it to say -- and please go read more, following the links -- both the U.S. government and the American Psychogical Association leadership have consprired to keep the legal and organizational justifications in place to allow psychological forms of torture to continue.

By psychological torture, I mean sensory deprivation and sensory overload, sleep deprivation, isolation, manipulation of time and temperature, inducement of phobic fears and humiliation, forced stress positioning, and the propagation of psychological futility. There is a wealth of evidence that shows such techniques break down the nervous constitution of human beings, inducing psychosis and long-term psychological damage, primarily PTSD.

The Strategic Place of Mental Health Professionals in CIA-style Torture

When the American Psychiatric Association saw fit to forbid its members from participating in Bush's torture interrogations, the Pentagon made it clear it would turn elsewhere -- and by that, they meant psychologists!

Of course, the American Psychological Association was quick to not that its psychiatric sister organization was not proposing a total moratorium, allowing "training to military or civilian investigative or law enforcement personnel... on the possible medical and psychological effects of particular techniques and conditions of interrogation".

That wasn't good enough for the Pentagon, who announced on June 7, 2006:

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that they would try to use only psychologists, and not psychiatrists, to help interrogators devise strategies to get information from detainees at places like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba....

Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told reporters that the new policy favoring the use of psychologists over psychiatrists was a recognition of differing positions taken by their respective professional groups.

(Yes, this is the same Winkenwerder who had to resign over the Walter Reed scandal.)

As far back as 1963, in the text of its infamous KUBARK counterintelligence interrogation manual, the CIA made clear its need for psychological expertise in interrogations. What follows is from the CIA's "Interrogator's Check List":

The questions that follow are intended as reminders for the interrogator and his superiors....

6. Does the interrogators selected for the task meet the four criteria of (a) adequate training and experience, (b) genuine familiarity with the language to be used, (c) knowledge of the geographical/cultural area concerned, and (d) psychological comprehension of the interrogatee?

7. Has the prospective interrogatee been screened? What are his major psychological characteristics? Does he belong to one of the nine major categories listed in pp. 19-28? Which?...

42. Is solitary confinement to be used? Why? Does the place of confinement permit the practical elimination of sensory stimuli?...

44. If hypnosis or drugs are thought necessary, has Headquarters been given enough advance notice? Has adequate allowance been made for travel time and other preliminaries?

45. Is the interrogatee suspected of malingering? If the interrogator is uncertain, are the services of an expert available?

By the early 21st century, the use of psychological personnel was bureaucratically soldified via the formation of Behavioral Consultant Teams or BSCTs ("biscuits"). As described by Arthur Levine at Washington Monthly:

[Guantanamo Commander] Major General Geoffrey Miller believed strongly in breaking detainees down, and that psychologists were crucial to this effort. (Miller would later be dispatched to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmo-ize” the prison by giving advice on detainee treatment, where, according to one general, he told subordinates that detainees should be “treated like dogs.”)

Miller approved the creation of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), which would include psychologists and other medical professionals. In theory, these “biscuit teams” would advise interrogators on how to develop a rapport with detainees, but in practice, things were less Dale Carnegie-esque. When one army psychologist and APA member helped interrogate Mohammed al-Khatani, the supposed “20th hijacker,” some of the techniques used included stripping Khatani naked, giving him intravenous fluids to force him to urinate on himself, exercising him to exhaustion, and making him roll over and perform other dog tricks. The interrogation log includes such psychological observations as “detainee seemed too comfortable.”

Anti-torture Psychologists Need Our Help!

Very few psychologists I speak to think they can really get the APA to back down from their pro-government position. And they may be right, if the fight is limited to only a dispute within APA!

We need to broaden this struggle. The blogosphere has responded to other crises with letters, faxes, phone calls and other forms of legitimate political protest when the issue has called for it.

It is time to bring the struggle against torture to the leadership of the APA. They must hear the voices of the society as a whole, shouting NO to torture, and NO to psychologist participation in coercive interrogations.

Here's How

Write or call the APA:

American Psychological Association
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002-4242
(800) 374-2721
(202) 336-5500

Write and call, now. Let them know how upset you are.

Send an email to the Public Affairs Office of the APA, expressing your outrage:

public.affairs@apa.org

Phone the Ethics Office directly at (202) 336-5930 or use APA's toll free number (800) 374-2721, extension 5930, and give them a piece of your mind.

And finally, write to the President of the APA, Dr. Sharon Stephens Brehm. Be nice, be polite, but be firm (this is true for ALL communications).

Dr. Brehm has a web page, Ask the President. Follow the link to leave an email message directly for her.

If we apply enough pressure, it might make the APA stand up and take notice. Don't forget to write your congressman/congresswoman and senator, too!

WE CAN DO IT!

We don't have to be powerless. We aren't helpless. Write, call, email today. Copy this diary's URL and send it to your friends.

I want to see APA inundated with thousands of messages saying "Stop torture. Stop psychologist participation in coercive interrogations. Support Dr. Altman's moratorium".

Together, we can prevail.

Major call for Congress to investigate CIA/Pentagon Torture

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which has been in the forefront of mobilizing medical professionals and citizens in general against torture, has released a major new call for full Congressional investigations into U.S. interrogation policies and their implementation by the CIA and the Department of Defense. Calling for "No More Abu Ghraibs" (the third anniversary of the Abu Ghraib revelations is on April 28), PHR states in its press release:

Over the last three years there has been a continuous outcry against the Administration's interrogation policies, including among the military and intelligence communities. The Department of Defense (DoD) has developed clearer guidelines prohibiting most abusive practices but it still continues to involve mental health professionals in the interrogation of detainees, making them active members of the "Behavioral Science Consultation Teams" (BSCTs). Ambiguities in the DoD guidelines and weaker standards for the CIA leave room for continued abuse and not enough accountability.

PHR has done stellar work in battling the inhumane and illegal coercive interrogation policies implemented by Bush and his unlamented former Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld.

Though Rumsfeld is gone, the torture continues. Amnesty International released a report on April 5, 2007, "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -- Cruel and Inhuman: Conditions of isolation for detainees at Guantánamo Bay", which describes the ongoing torture regime the U.S. conducts at the Gitmo Naval Base.

As of 1 April 2007, approximately 385 men of around 30 nationalities were detained without trial in the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Designated by the US authorities as “"unlawful enemy combatants”", many have been held for more than five years without knowing if or when they will be released or brought to any form of judicial process. None of those currently held has had the lawfulness of his detention reviewed by a court. A few face the prospect of trials by military commission under procedures that violate international fair trial standards....

Built to accommodate around 178 detainees, the compound known as Camp 6 is surrounded by high concrete walls with no windows visible on the façade. Inside, detainees are confined for a minimum of 22 hours a day in individual steel cells with no windows to the outside.... There are no opening windows and detainees are completely cut-off from human contact while inside their cells....

Contrary to international standards, the cells have no access to natural light or air, and are lit by fluorescent lighting which is on 24 hours a day and controlled by guards....

As of March 2007, dozens of detainees are reported to have continued or resumed a hunger strike in protest at their conditions as well as indefinite detention.... A number of them were being force-fed through nasal tubes, some while strapped into restraint chairs. In recently declassified accounts, detainees have described being subjected to considerable pain as the tubes are inserted into their nostrils. One detainee reported how, three times, the tube had been inserted the wrong way so that it went into his lungs; he said he frequently vomited after being force-fed and was not given clean clothes. Guards have allegedly subjected hunger-striking detainees in one block to further punitive treatment, such as pepper spraying them or turning the air-conditioning up high.

The PHR call for action explains how psychologists at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) military training program at Fort Bragg, North Carolina were "instrumental in creating the techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere." In addition, military psychologists have been instrumental, through their organization, the Society for Military Psychology (itself a recognized division within the American Psychological Association (APA)) in maintaining APA support for psychologist participation in coercive interrogations. I discussed this recently in my diary, Military Psychologists Oppose Torture Moratorium.

The word is that Senate committees already have gathered information preparatory to making a full-scale investigation of Bush's torture policies, including the use of medical and psychological personnel. But it may take a public outcry to make such investigations a reality.

Please join PHR in their call for a Congressional investigation. Go their action website, which automates the sending of your letter to the appropriate representatives. Or copy the letter below and send it to your Congressperson and to your Senators.

Congress Must Fully Investigate CIA and DoD Interrogation Methods

I am writing to request that you push for a full Congressional investigation into CIA and Department of Defense interrogations. Specifically, I would like Congress to investigate:

* the role of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) military training program techniques in CIA and DoD interrogations

* the involvement of psychologists and other health professionals in CIA and DoD interrogations

I have been deeply disturbed by the evidence brought forward by writers, such as Steven Miles, MD, Jane Mayer and Mark Benjamin, that harmful interrogation techniques, such as the use of dogs, prolonged sleep deprivation, humiliation, forcible restraint, hypothermia and compulsory intravenous infusions, may have been adapted from the SERE military training program. I am likewise alarmed that health professionals have played pivotal roles in interrogations by treating patients to prolong harsh interrogations and by using their training as behavioral scientists to break prisoners down psychologically.

Physicians for Human Rights has documented the severe physical and psychological harm caused by the current interrogation practices. Please help launch a full Congressional investigation as soon as possible, so we can learn the extent of the abuses in interrogations, how and why they occurred and put an end to these travesties.

Edit this letter as you wish. But do it today.

Please join PHR’s Campaign Against Torture in urging Congress to fully investigate the techniques used in CIA and Department of Defense interrogations, those who authorized them, and the involvement of health professional in these abusive practices.

Sources

Steven Miles, MD, “Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo 063”

Mark Benjamin, “Psychological warfare”

Jane Mayer, “The Experiment”