Trump Reveals Details of His CIA Torture Program: Isolation, Sleep Deprivation, Shackling, and Slow Starvation

According to the leaked draft version of President Trump's Executive Order, "Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants," Trump's interrogation policy will resurrect a version of the CIA's torture program, such as it existed in July 2007. [See Update at end of posting.] That was when Steven Bradbury wrote an Office of Legal Counsel [OLC] memo to John Rizzo, who was then Acting General Counsel at the CIA.

Trump's draft order rescinds two Executive Orders former President Obama issued in the first weeks of his first term. Section 1 of Trump's order reads:

Revocation of Executive Orders. Executive Orders 13491 and 13492 of January 22, 2009, are revoked, and Executive Order 13440 is reinstated to the extent permitted by law.

Besides formally shutting down the CIA's torture and detention program, and (supposedly) close Guantanamo, Obama's action also withdrew all the OLC memos on interrogation/torture drawn up during the Bush administration.

Bush's Executive Order 13440, "Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency," was issued the same day as a new OLC memo that clarified the legalities as the Bush Administration wanted them to be to prosecute the CIA's interrogation and detention program, which had been under attack from various quarters at that time. EO 13440, where Bush signed off on the supposed compliance of the CIA's program with Common Article 3 protections in the Geneva Conventions, was meant to go with Bradbury's memo. It was a two-fer.

Trump's order would withdraw Obama's own rescissions of the Bush-era CIA torture memos and replace them with Bradley's July 2007 memo. But none of the press accounts have explained what that means concretely. That's a shame, because the 2007 version of the CIA's torture program is very likely what we are going to see under a Trump-era CIA and national security interrogations in general.

The 2007 Bradbury memo gives approval to six "techniques" for the CIA to use in its interrogation of "enemy combatants" who have been denied protections as "prisoners of war" under the Geneva Conventions.

Similarly, even today, prisoners interrogated under the current Army Field Manual, approved by Obama and the US Congress, must adhere to Prisoner of War protections except those the administration deems unprotected or unprivileged. Those detainees are subject to further measures under the Field Manual's Appendix M.

The Appendix M techniques rely on sleep deprivation and solitary confinement or isolation, among other techniques, including the use sensory deprivation by means of goggles that obscure vision. As we shall see, these techniques are drawn from the more intense versions in the 2007 memo.

"Conditions of Confinement"

Both Trump's resurrection of the old OLC-CIA memo and today's Appendix M depend upon the use of isolation and sleep deprivation. For Bradbury, isolation and solitary confinement were relegated to "conditions of confinement." These conditions were promulgated in the CIA's black site prisons, under the advice and consult of the US Bureau of Prisons, and -- incredibly -- with the knowledge of Congressional leadership, at least that of the Senate Intelligence committee.

Bradbury noted in his 2007 memo that he had no need to justify the issues raised in an OLC memo on the subject, "Application of the Detainee Treatment Act to Conditions of Confinement at Central Intelligence Agency Detention Facilities," which he authored in August 2006. The use of isolation and other "conditions of confinement" noted below were taken for granted in the 2007 memo, and we too need to shoehorn them into our understanding of the burgeoning Trump torture program.

The other CIA "conditions of confinement" included blocking the vision of prisoners with some type of opaque material; forced shaving; the use of constant white noise and constant day-night illumination, as well as the practice of leg shackling in the cell.

Given these cruel and inhuman, if not tortuous conditions in and of themselves, the 2007 memo approved six special "techniques," among them slow starvation and "extended sleep deprivation," which amounted to keeping prisoners awake in forced standing positions for up to 4 days straight.

Slow Starvation and Extended Sleep Deprivation

The six "techniques" were as follows: 1) "Dietary manipulation," which means limiting caloric intake to "at least" 1000 calories per day, an amount that would result in slow starvation and malnutrition; and 2) "Extended sleep deprivation," which means up to 96 hours of enforced sleep deprivation, with up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation per month (maybe more if the CIA Director were to ask), and effected via use of shackles, extended standing (despite risk of dangerous edema), and the wearing of "under-garments" (really diapers), to shame the prisoner who cannot hold in urine or feces for up to four days straight.

The other four "techniques" were drawn from the military's torture survival course (known as SERE), and included 3) "Facial hold"; 4) "Attention grasp"; 5) "Abdominal slap"; and 6) "Insult or Facial slap." All of these SERE techniques are meant to demonstrate power over the person interrogated, and to enhance the humiliation and terror of the prisoner.

Taken together, there's no question that this 2007 version of the "enhanced interrogation" program, even though lacking use of the waterboard and confinement boxes, amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the least, and more likely torture as a normative description.

The use of "dietary manipulation" deserves some further consideration. "Semi-starvation" was listed as a variable of "induced debilitation" in Albert Biderman's "chart of coercion", also known as "Biderman's Principles", which was taught to interrogators at Guantanamo by instructors from the Navy SERE program Dec. 2002, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee 2008 report on Detainee Abuse (p. 22 - link is a large PDF).

"Semi-starvation" is a form of inducing debility in a prisoner. According to Dr. Josef Brozek, of "the famous Minnesota Starvation Study," who gave a talk on the subject to CIA-linked scientists back in a 1950s symposium, explained:

"A situation in which food would be offered on certain occasions and would be withdrawn on other occasions would constitute a more intensive psychological stress than food restriction alone. It would result in severe frustration, and would more readily break a man's moral fiber. By combining such a treatment with other forms of deprivation and insult, one could expect eventually to induce a "breakdown" in the majority of human beings."

I have campaigned long and hard against the use of Appendix M and other techniques within the Army Field Manual's main section, especially the techniques "Fear Up," "Futility," "Ego Down," and "Mutt and Jeff." But the proposed Trump interrogation program -- incorporating a more intense and inhumane form of sleep deprivation, forms of sensory deprivation, physical abuse inherent in the "slaps," and the use of shackling and starvation -- is a giant step in the wrong direction.

Nothing describes the reactionary nature of a society more than its use of torture. The US has not rid itself of this evil, and even worse, it has collaborated with allies around the world to perpetuate it, even while formally, it has signed treaties that eschew the crime.

According to news accounts, the Trump administration claims current members of the White House staff did not produce the new draft Executive Order, nor has Trump signed it... yet. Given the strident right-wing course of this administration, I don't think this draft EO is a trial balloon.

The 2007 Bradbury memo derived its authorities, as it explained, from President Bush's September 17, 2001 Memorandum of Notification (MON), which gave the CIA authorization to run a detention program. That 2001 MON has never been rescinded, and no doubt Trump's attorneys will lean on it, and any new OLC memos considered necessary to firm up the implementation of the new torture program.

I believe the 2007 version of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program will be what the new Trump torture program will look like. What is described above is a first peek. I'm sure we'll hear and know more as time goes on.

Update: Wait! Trump pulls back

A February 4 New York Times article by Charlie Savage reports that the Trump Administration has pulled back on portions of the draft interrogation memo discussed above. In particular, Trump appears to have pulled back on the full revocation of the Bush-era OLC memos, has dismissed a study of reopening the CIA black sites, and withdrawn any reliance on the 2007 Bradbury memo, which would allow for the "extensive sleep deprivation," solitary confinement, and other forms of abuse detailed above. Even so, the revised draft is supposed to contain language that would keep Guantanamo open.

The revised draft itself has not been released, so we'll have to wait to see what Trump actually intends. At the least, it sounds like he wishes to keep Guantanamo open, and accelerate interrogations, which would of course include Appendix M interrogations.

The Savage article says nothing about a provision to review the Army Field Manual. I wouldn't be surprised if an earlier suggestion from the Bush years -- to add a secret portion to the manual -- is recycled.

But even as is, as the UN committee that monitors the international treaty on torture made clear, the US interrogation program under the Army Field Manual provisions still contains cruel, inhumane, and degrading techniques, some of which rise to the level of torture (the UN singled out sensory deprivation actions that can cause psychosis). This remains true even if the press and the "liberal" bloggers don't care to report or comment on it!

Obama Admits He Banned Only "Some" of the CIA's Torture Techniques

Forgive the tongue-in-cheek, but it is almost as if the only person who reads and responds to my work on torture is President Obama.

There was a cascade of coverage of the President's August 1 remarks concerning John Brennan and his defense of his embattled CIA chief, as Obama was also widely derided for his seeming defense of those who tortured "some folks" after 9/11. (Obama did not mention that the order to torture came from the Oval Office.)

"Well, at least he called the crimes out as 'torture," some observers noted. Others, including some in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), called for John Brennan's resignation as CIA director after he admitted the CIA had spied on Congressional investigators who were writing a thousands-of-pages-long report on the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program.

An Executive Summary of that report, in a censored version produced by the CIA itself, is now back in the hands of the SSCI, who may or may not release it soon. The Committee has already decided the full 6000 or so page report itself will not be released for years (if ever), a cover-up of immense proportions.

Jason Leopold, who has been covering the story for Al Jazeera America and VICE, noted astutely in a tweet the other day, that Obama's comments at his August 1 press conference included a reference to his only banning "some" of the CIA's torture techniques. Leopold believed Obama previously had always been more absolute in his prohibition of torture.

The full quote from the August 1 presser is worth reproducing here. The quote below begins in the middle of Obama's defense of those who used torture after 9/11, i.e., those who are the subjects of the Senate's controversial torture report (bold emphasis is added):

And it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that's what that report reflects. And that's the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.

Only "some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques"? Not all? Was this merely a slip of the tongue by the President? No one in the press corp seemed to notice, and no one took him up on the issue. To date, no one has in the press has at all (besides Leopold's tweets), though it is very much worth noting that Jeremy Scahill reported in July 2011 on the CIA's continuing use of black sites and torture in an important article in The Nation. Others had surmised as much even earlier.

But there was a much more insidious and institutional salvage of torture by the U.S. government, which, rocked after the Abu Ghraib revelations, tried to hide and maintain its use of detention and interrogation techniques that relied on force, mental cruelty, fear, isolation, stress positions, sleep and sensory deprivation, and the use of drugs. Waterboarding, for all the attention given to that brutal form of torture, was never really a major component of U.S. torture. There were even some in the CIA who would be glad to see it go.

Using solitary confinement, loud music and 24 hour bright lights, verbal abuse and humiliation, "dislocating the expectations" of prisoners by, for instance, moving them around every day so they never had a sense of solid place or safety or time to rest, or using drugs to disorient them -- this is the kind of torture that leaves deep psychological wounds, and which the U.S. wanted to maintain in its interrogation arsenal.

What Obama Meant by Banning Only "Some" Torture

Over the past few years, I have shown how first the Bush administration hid their torture program within a 2006 rewrite of the Army Field Manual on interrogation, then how the Obama administration via Executive Order made that same field manual the law of the land, incumbent on both the CIA and the Defense Department.

I showed that when in January 2009 Obama publicly revoked the Bush torture program, which the government labeled "extraordinary interrogation techniques," and all the John Yoo/Jay Bybee/Steven Bradbury Justice Department memoranda approving that same torture program, he did not do it in a blanket fashion, but referred the memos themselves to Eric Holder for review. Ultimately, as a Department of Defense spokesperson actually told me, the Holder and the Justice Department never rescinded one of the Bush-era torture memos, in particular the one that approved forms of torture that would be used in a special section, called Appendix M, of the Army Field Manual.

Obama's admission that he had only banned "some" of the previous administration's torture techniques was not the first time the government has made such an admission, however obliquely.

Last April, I wrote how the Department of Defense's main directive on interrogations (3115.09), which supposedly had banned SERE-derived torture techniques (like waterboarding, hooding, etc.) used by the government after 9/11, in fact made a note that only some of the SERE techniques were banned. The ones that were not banned resided in -- the Army Field Manual on interrogation, the same manual Obama had endorsed in his Jan. 2009 executive order on "lawful interrogations."

SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, and is the name given to DoD's program to prepare military and CIA and other specific government personnel for capture and imprisonment by a brutal enemy. Its participants take part in a mock-prison camp exercise, and it was the kinds of torture practiced during that exercise that were utilized in full-blown operational mode by CIA and Defense Department interrogators in the so-called War on Terror.

The SERE-derived model, which is what the "extraordinary interrogation techniques" really were, was superimposed on an earlier torture program based on isolation and sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, fear and drugs, developed by the CIA and codified in a 1963 interrogation program that is referred to today as KUBARK. Earlier this year, I obtained a version of the previously declassified KUBARK manual with new portions now unredacted.

But oddly, besides myself, only Obama seems to have noticed that not all the torture techniques were rescinded by him. The press and certainly the Senate and the House of Representatives have ignored entirely the use of torture in the Army Field Manual. While some bloggers and human rights groups have noted the anomaly of having the nation's primary instructions on interrogation include torture techniques, and some have even called for a repeal of Appendix M or a rewriting of the field manual itself, none of these groups or individuals have made this a primary issue. Nor, when the controversy over the Senate report on the CIA torture program is discussed, is the ongoing presence of torture in the Army Field Manual ever mentioned.

The failure to take on the entire torture apparatus is one reason accountability for U.S. torture cannot get sufficient traction. The argument remains shackled by what the Establishment deems reasonable dialogue about torture. So one can criticize the embrace of euphemism to describe torture, or argue why waterboarding is torture, or shout loudly why the redacted portion of the SSCI's Executive Summary of their years-long investigation should be released, but evidently it is not reasonable, that is, establishment-sanctioned via the New York Times or other media or political authority, to bring up torture beyond the terms already established.

But now Obama has done it. He has said he banned only "some" of the torture techniques that were the target of the SSCI's report. Now, besides me, who's going to take him on about this?

Crossposted from The Dissenter/FDL

Psychologists Call for End to Abusive Interrogation Techniques in Army Field Manual

A group of psychologists who have been outspoken in opposing the use of U.S. medical professionals in interrogations have released a letter to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel condemning the ongoing use of interrogation techniques amounting to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners.

The use of such techniques are found in the current Army Field Manual (PDF), and in particular in its special Appendix M, which summarizes a set of techniques, under the label "separation," that are only meant to be used on prisoners who the U.S. government claims don't meet the additional Prisoner of War protections of the Geneva Conventions -- prisoners like those held in indefinite detention at Guantanamo.

Even so, most human rights and legal groups have found the techniques under question -- solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, manipulation of diet and environment, use of fear and emotional abuse of prisoners -- to be against Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture, and other international and domestic laws. (See "Contrary to Obama's promises, the US military still permits torture," The Guardian, Jan. 25, 2014).

Not mentioned in the letter, signed by Steven Reisner, President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), on behalf of his organization, is the recent discovery that the use of torture techniques derived from a government program to help military personnel resist torture (the "SERE" program), was never totally removed from the military's Army Field Manual. Instead, the Pentagon used obfuscating language and obscure references to hide that fact from the casual onlooker.

Indeed, the current Army Field Manual on interrogations, including its Appendix M, was the subject of an Office of Legal Council 2006 memorandum by "torture memo" author Steven Bradbury. While President Obama rescinded most of the Bush-era torture memos when he first came into office, he never rescinded the Bradbury memo on Appendix M.

To this day, the use of methods amounting to torture in the Army Field Manual continues, and while this is opposed by nearly every human rights group that has looked at the torture question -- from Amnesty International to Physicians for Human Rights, from Center for Constitutional Rights to The Constitution Project -- Congressional oversight personnel at the Senator Carl Levin's Armed Services Committee (SASC) state the procedures in the Army Field Manual and its Appendix M are not abusive.

The procedures in the Army Field Manual currently are backed by presidential executive order, and its methods are used by both the Department of Defense and the CIA.

A SASC staffer was quoted recently as saying, “We are comfortable that Appendix M of the Army Field Manual no longer permits the use of interrogation techniques that are cruel and inhuman, or are a violation of our obligations under international law.”

"No longer permits..."? Does SASC admit Appendix M once did permit torture? If it "no longer permits" such use of cruel and inhuman techniques, nor violate international obligations, can someone at SASC inform us of when that change took place? And what did that change consist of?

I don't think we'll ever get an answer to these questions. As long as the mainstream media, including so-called alternative outlets, continue to ignore the current use of torture by the United States, government apologists and those who cover for use of torture have nothing to lose by keeping mum.

History will not treat such cowardice and dishonesty kindly.

Below is the full text of the letter from PsySR. The link to the letter is here.

**********

April 29, 2014

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As an organization of health professionals dedicated to human rights advocacy, Psychologists for Social Responsibility strongly objects to practices that violate the ethics of health professions and lie outside the norms of international law and practice. The recent Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirms that, beginning during the Bush Administration, interrogation and detention practices were put in place by the CIA that constituted torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Practices once condemned under law and international treaty were soon redefined by the Justice Department to permit a "culture of torture" to proliferate under U.S. policy. These practices quickly spread to the detention centers of the Department of Defense and throughout the theaters of war. While legal progress has been made to limit these policies and practices, significant remnants remain under your authority. We write to you today to urge you to eliminate all existing procedures allowing for torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees.

In 2009, via Executive Order 13491, your administration officially announced its intention to end the torture practices developed and instituted under the Bush Administration. Interrogation practices that did not conform to the Army Field Manual were abolished. However, as documented by numerous legal and human rights groups, as well as by former interrogators,[1] the Army Field Manual still includes abusive techniques in violation of these standards.

We concur with the recent recommendation of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP)/Open Society Foundations report [2] calling for you to issue a new executive order banning interrogation techniques using isolation, sleep deprivation, exploitation of fear, and other methods that violate international standards regarding torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. We, too, urge you to remediate the ethical standards of the Army Field Manual via executive order.

The current edition of the Army Field Manual (2006) officially supports interrogations using "approach techniques," including the creation, manipulation, and intensification of phobias and fears in prisoners ("Fear Up") and the calculated psychological attack against ego or self-esteem ("Emotional Pride and Ego Down"). The "Emotional Futility" approach intends to create a perception in a prisoner that "resistance to questioning is futile." The manual describes the purpose of this technique as engendering "a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness" in a detainee and notes the "potential for application of the pride and ego approach to cross the line into humiliating and degrading treatment of the detainee."

Also problematic on both basic health and human rights grounds is Appendix M, added to this most recent version of the Army Field Manual (2-22.3). This special annex proposes a technique known as "Separation," which includes the use of solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, forms of sensory deprivation, and environmental manipulations -- all of which could theoretically be extended indefinitely -- as ostensibly legitimate forms of treatment on "unlawful combatants." The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture [3] and independent human rights organizations describe such practices as torture and/or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. As health professionals and human rights advocates, we are disturbed that such techniques are conducted under an official capacity and by executive order.

We are particularly concerned that health professionals, including psychologists, have been engaged to support such efforts, directly or indirectly, in violation of their ethical obligations and in violation of the policies of their professional associations.

As you must be aware, these practices are not only cruel, but also yield questionable intelligence and contribute to a perception of our country as a systematic violator of human rights. It would serve as a strong and principled legacy of your Administration if these remaining practices of torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment were finally and definitively ended.

We look forward to your timely response.

Sincerely,

Steven Reisner, PhD
President
Psychologists for Social Responsibility

cc: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

[1] Scott Horton, "Interrogators Call for the Elimination of Appendix M", Harpers, Nov. 16, 2010. URL: http://harpers.org/blog/2010/11/interrogators-call-for-the-elimination-of-appendix-m/
[2] Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror, IMAP/OSF Task Force Report (PDF), Nov. 2013. URL: http://www.imapny.org/File Library/Documents/IMAP-EthicsTextFinal2.pdf
[3] "'Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases," UN expert says'", UN News Centre, Oct. 18, 2011. URL: https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40097

[Note: The letter was first posted at Counterpunch on April 30. Also, in regards to full disclosure, I should say that I am a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and while I am not on the steering committee that decided to publish this letter, nor have ever held any leadership position in that organization, I was consulted on the matter of this letter. I am proud that an organization I belong to took a principled stand on this issue.]

Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter

Newly Released Document Shows FBI Interrogation Advice Draws on CIA Torture Manuals

A 2010 FBI interrogation “primer” (PDF), apparently a fifth version of earlier FBI manuals dealing with “Cross-cultural, Rapport-based” “intelligence-oriented interrogations in overseas environments,” repeatedly draws upon advice from two CIA torture manuals, the 1963 KUBARK Counter-intelligence Manual and the 1983 Human Exploitation Resource Manual.

According to the National Security Archive, the KUBARK manual “includes a detailed section on ‘The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources,’ with concrete assessments on employing ‘Threats and Fear,’ ‘Pain,’ and ‘Debility.’ “ Even so, the manual is on the FBI’s “Recommended Reading” list for agents conducting overseas interrogations.

The 1983 Human Exploitation manual, which has been connected with atrocities by Latin American governments, drew upon both KUBARK and U.S. Army Intelligence manuals, describing the interrogator as someone “‘able to manipulate the subject's environment… to create unpleasant or intolerable situations, to disrupt patterns of time, space, and sensory perception.’”

The FBI document quotes the 1983 manual twice. While not referenced by name in the body of the document, the source is noted in the footnotes. One such quote from the 1983 torture document describes “the principle of generating pressure inside the source without the application of outside force.”

“This is accomplished by manipulating [the prisoner] psychologically until his resistance is sapped and his urge to yield is fortified,” the Human Exploitation Resource manual states, and FBI agents are so advised. The quote is in bold in the FBI instructions and reproduced as such here.

Meanwhile, the KUBARK manual is repeatedly mentioned in the body of the FBI work. “There are two purposes of screening according to the KUBARK Manual,” the “primer” states. According to the FBI, the “wise Interrogator” will follow “KUBARK Manual guidance.”

According to an ACLU blog posting, the FBI document was “written by an FBI Section Chief within the counterterrorism division.”

The rehabilitation of the KUBARK document began with an essay by U.S. interrogation consultant Colonel (ret.) Steven Kleinman. The essay was published in an Intelligence Science Board (ISB) December 2006 monograph, Educing Information. Kleinman noted KUBARK’s “disturbing legacy,” but added he felt the manual contained “the potential for lessons learned that could be derived from a highly controversial document.”

The FBI “rapport-based” manual repeatedly references another ISB document. Written in 2009, Intelligence Interviewing: Teaching Papers and Case Studies, includes in its two case studies a long discussion of a case of years-long isolation of a very senior North Vietnamese military official. While the interrogator in charge, Frank Snepp, said the treatment of this official ultimately disillusioned him about what the U.S. was trying to achieve in Vietnam, the ISB authors found Snepp had been successful in establishing “some operational accord” with the prisoner.

In his essay, Kleinman seriously played down the nature of the CIA’s manual, which had drawn upon years of MKULTRA research into use of drugs, sensory deprivation and the induction of fear and debility in interrogation subjects.

“Although criticized for its discussion of coercion, the KUBARK manual does not portray coercive methods as a necessary — or even viable — means of effectively educing information,” Kleinman wrote.

But in fact the CIA manual devotes fully a fifth of its instructions to coercive interrogation techniques, or torture, including isolation, “deprivation of sensory stimuli,” induction of physical weakness, use of “fear and threats,” hypnosis, and “narcosis”, i.e., use of drugs (including use of drugs as a placebo to fool prisoners).

Kleinman is the Director for Strategic Research for The Soufan Group, an organization named after ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan, and includes ex-FBI interrogators on its list of experts. It would seem that unwittingly Kleinman’s focus on what was of use to the legal interrogator in the KUBARK manual did not stop some FBI officials from allowing certain forms of coercive interrogation, i.e., reliance on use of isolation and manipulation of human emotional needs to get information and confessions. At times this is taken to extremes that amount to torture.

Kleinman himself is on the record as opposing all coercive interrogation methods. The 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee investigation into detainee abuse described then-Col. Kleinman's efforts to stop torture occurring at a JSOC interrogation facility in Iraq. The criticism of his KUBARK essay is not meant to imply that he supports in any way the kinds of coercive techniques described therein.

[Update, 8/6/12: Furthermore, it is worth noting, and after hearing critique regarding the first version of this article from Mr. Kleinman himself, that in his  essay on the CIA manual, Kleinman specifically says  "long-term isolation"  causes "profound emotional, psychological, and physical discomfort, and that such abuse would therefore fail to measure up to the standards for the treatment of prisoners as set forth in international accords and U.S. Federal statutes" (p. 138)]

FBI Uses Isolation to Achieve “Rapport”

The FBI manual also argues for the use of isolation to achieve rapport by leveraging the isolation or solitary confinement of a detainee.  Kevin Gosztola highlighted this aspect of the FBI “primer” in an August 2 article at Firedoglake’s The Dissenter blog.

What both Gosztola and the ACLU miss in their otherwise important commentary about the coercive isolation technique (even the CIA’s KUBARK manual recognizes isolation is a coercive technique, i.e., torture) is how the FBI intends to leverage the effects of isolation to achieve effects under their “rapport” paradigm. This psychological aspect of the use of isolation has not been generally publicized.

“The need for affiliation is one of the advantages the Interrogator has if a subject has been isolated from fellow detainees, “ the FBI “primer” states.  

In this matter, the FBI is following in the footsteps of the CITF doctrine it followed in DoD interrogations under an October 2003 directive that stated, “The use of isolation facilities will not be employed as an interrogation tactic; however, on a case-by-case basis it can be used as an incentive.” Perversely, the use of isolation under this directive was supposed to be “approved” by the detainee.

The KUBARK manual describes the anxieties, emotional discomfort and psychological regression that follow from enforced isolation, and how the interrogator exploits this situation (italics added for emphasis):

“As the interrogator becomes linked in the subject's mind with the reward of lessened anxiety, human contact, and meaningful activity, and thus with providing relief for growing discomfort, the questioner assumes a benevolent role….

“At the same time, the calculated provision of stimuli during interrogation tends to make the regressed subject view the interrogator as a father figure. The result, normally, is a strengthening of the subject's tendencies toward compliance.”

The Appendix M Torture Virus Spreads to FBI Doctrine

Writing in an August 2 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, ACLU Director Laura Murphy and Legislative Counsel Devon Chaffee make the important connection between FBI policy on using isolation and current Department of Defense interrogation policy.

As official interrogation doctrine of the Obama administration, Army Field Manual FM 2-22.3 (AFM), Human Intelligence Collector Operations made use of isolation part of their “Separation” technique, as described in its Appendix M.

Murphy and Chaffee write:

“By recommending that FBI agents ask the U.S. military to isolate detainees in its custody, the FBI primer appears to be encouraging the application of Appendix M of the Army’s interrogation manual—a controversial, restricted appendix that allows detainee isolation only in certain circumstances not involving prisoners of war. The FBI primer states that in a Department of Defense facility ‘a formal request from the FBI must be made to isolate the detainee’ and that this request ‘must be approved by the first O-6 in the chain of command.’ Appendix M of the military’s interrogation manual (which requires O-7 level approval) permits the use of isolation—as well as the placement of goggles, blindfolds, and earmuffs on the detainee—to ‘foster a feeling of futility.’ Experienced interrogators and human rights groups, however, have called for Appendix M to be revoked, questioning the technique’s effectiveness and highlighting the risk that its use will lead to serious human rights abuses.”

The abusive techniques of Appendix M, which also includes sleep deprivation and allowed environmental manipulations, along with the AFM’s allowance for use of fear techniques and even use of drugs, were approved in a 2006 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum for the files (PDF) by torture memo author Steven Bradbury.

Although President Obama, with the advice of Attorney General Eric Holder, revoked the 2002, 2005 and a few other OLC Bush-era torture memos, the administration never revoked the memo on Appendix M.

Use of isolation was something the FBI adopted early on, and its use was in evidence even in the early days at Guantanamo, where FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan was in charge of the interrogation of Mohamed Al Qahtani. While Al Qahtani’s interrogation was later the subject of an escalation of use of torture techniques by the military, which was itself a matter of some protest within DoD and FBI circles, while the FBI was in charge, Soufan had Al Qahtani placed in harsh isolation.

Soufan went so far as to remove Al Qahtani from the usual cellblock and built a special cell for him alone, meant to duplicate the hard isolation conditions Jose Padilla had been placed into in a Charleston, South Carolina Navy brig. When Soufan, NCIS Chief Psychologist Mark Gelles, and others protested use of other techniques of physical and psychological torture on Al Qahtani, their alternate proposal was to put the already near-psychotic and ailing prisoner in months more intense isolation.

The use of isolation to break prisoners has a long history. When two former prisoners in the USSR gulags, writing under the pen names F. Beck and W. Godin, published their account of Soviet torture in 1951 in a book entitled Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession, they described the use of isolation at the start of their detention by the Stalin secret police:

“When a man was arrested he was completely isolated from the outside world….

“Each prisoner was carefully isolated from fellow prisoners who knew him. Consultation with defense counsel was unheard of, and in the overwhelming majority of cases no defense of any kind was permitted.” (pp. 40-41)

American sociologist Albert Biderman studied the effects of coercive interrogation on prisoners. His famous “chart of coercion” was taught to interrogators at Guantanamo. With its emphasis on isolation to deprive the prisoner of all social report and the will to resist, it could be a blueprint for modern FBI interrogation, minus Biderman’s emphasis on induction of debility.

For instance, Biderman’s chart describes demonstrating interrogator “omnipotence” and the use of threats and degradation of the prisoner. The FBI manual explicitly allows AFM “techniques” that play exactly on this, including “Emotional Fear Up,” “Emotional Pride and Ego Down,” “Emotional Futility,” and “The All Seeing Eye or We Know All.”

Changes in Procedures for Law Enforcement Interviews Overseas

Unremarked by the ACLU or other commentators is the FBI manual’s Annex B, “Conducting Custodial Law Enforcement Interviews Overseas.” The first FBI concern is evidence tainted by torture (though they don’t use the word “torture” anywhere in the document, at least in its redacted form).

The FBI counterterrorism Section Chief notes, drily, “Given the extensive media coverage of interrogation activities at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram and other facilities the threshold is particularly high for establishing that any statement you obtained overseas was not coerced in some way.”

Three sentences in the document are then redacted, and the text continues, “The assumption of the court may be that you used prior knowledge of the subject’s statements to obtain a statement which you are asserting is admissible even if you did not confront the subject with information he previously provided. Always keep in mind that you may one day be on the stand swearing that you had no knowledge of the subjects previous statements during intelligence interviews.” [Bold emphasis in original]

A second concern is the videotaping of interrogations. Recognizing that DoD routinely videotapes all interrogations, the FBI manual infers that the government may destroy or has destroyed such interrogation recordings.

“This creates a tremendous suppression hearing issue,” the FBI notes, “because the defense will become aware that the U.S Government (USG) taped the interview but the tape cannot be provided to the defense if a copy was not retained. The obvious accusation will be that the tape was destroyed to hide the fact that the confession was coerced. Seek out information on the videotaping policy for any facility you work in and document it.”

A third concern is the reading of rights to a subject held by a DoD or a foreign power, while emphasizing that the FBI agent has “no control” over such detainees and how they are held. While it requires the agents to document the subject’s condition, the manual does not forbid agents from interrogating subjects held in tortuous or cruel, degrading or inhuman conditions. In fact, the FBI manual’s section about “Recommended practices” regarding agents in such situations is entirely redacted.

A further distortion of normal FBI functioning concerns the advice of rights given to interrogation subjects held by DoD or another state.  The FBI uses a “modified advice of rights” form in such cases, which begins with standard wording regarding the right to remain silent, to have an attorney present.

The “modified” rights form continues:

“If you cannot afford lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning, if you wish.

“Our ability to provide you with counsel at this time, however, may be limited by the decisions of local authorities or the availability of an American or qualified attorney.”

The “modified” form concludes the same as the FBI standard form, informing the individual that even if they talk without an attorney present, they “have the right to stop answering at any time.”

The modification of procedure is necessary because, as the FBI manual states, “there is no way that a detainee in DOD or foreign custody will be allowed access to an American defense attorney…”

Conclusion

The FBI is often contrasted with the military and the CIA in regards to its use of abusive procedures during interrogation. While eschewing “enhanced interrogation” techniques that amount to torture, such as waterboarding, close confinement, and stress positions, the FBI relies instead on psychological manipulations of “rapport” building procedures, while using the harsh pressure of isolation and sensory deprivation to break down the prisoner psychologically.

Isolation itself is a form of sensory deprivation, and is described as such in the KUBARK manual.

This form of psychological torture is added to standard police techniques, and in particular a form of interrogation procedure known as the Reid Technique. The FBI manual references several times the 1963 work on this technique, Criminal interrogation and confessions.

A 2009 study of this kind of interrogation technique in the journal Legal and Criminological Psychology found “innocent people are sometimes induced to confess to crimes they did not commit as a function of certain dispositional vulnerabilities or the use of overly persuasive interrogation tactics.”

These are exactly the tactics the FBI uses, though they are then supercharged via use of isolation of a prisoner, which, as the FBI itself notes, “advantages” the interrogator by playing off the human need for “affiliation” or communication with others. Modern psychological and neuroscience investigators understand that this “need” is hard-wired in the brain, and deprivation of such social stimulation is a direct attack on the nervous system of the individual.

The failure to hold anyone accountable for the use of torture by U.S. officials, including accountability for those who planned and sanctioned such torture, meant that forms of torture were institutionalized in U.S. policy documents, such as the Army Field Manual.

The declassification of this FBI interrogation manual has allowed us to understand that such institutionalization has extended as well to the Department of Justice and the FBI. 

[This article has been altered to reflect feedback from Col. Steven Kleinman received after the story was first published.]

Cross-posted at MyFDL/Firedoglake

Slapping David Shedd, Part 2, or How to Spin the Torture Story in Two Simple Lessons

Marcy Wheeler's over at Emptywheel picked up on Daniel Klaidman's version of Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden's December 2008 briefing of then-President-elect Barack Obama, and in particular of Hayden's defense of certain interrogation techniques then in use by the CIA.

Wheeler notes the discrepancy between the kinds of techniques Hayden said were in use at that time and the techniques approved by Bush's Department of Justice Office of Legal Council in the final year of that administration. Steven Bradbury was the author of these memos, of which the most substantive appears to be his July 20, 2007 memo to John Rizzo, then-CIA Acting General Counsel on "Application of the War Crimes Act, the Detainee Treatment Act, and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to Certain Techniques That May Be Used by the CIA in the Interrogation of High Value Al Qaeda Detainees."

Now in that memo, the techniques the CIA proposed as "necessary" were "dietary manipulation," "extended sleep deprivation," "insult (or facial) slap," "facial hold," "attention grasp," and "abdominal slap." The latter four are meant to shock the detainees, who supposedly (and this is a lie on Bradbury's part) believe the U.S. will not touch them during interrogation.

How Bradbury can get away with such a statement three years after the Abu Ghraib revelations is strange enough, but the Manchester Manual explicitly told detainees to expect physical maltreatment from intelligence agency interrogations, as former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan pointed out in his book The Black Banners: "It was on the basis of the information in this manual that the two [former SERE psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen] reportedly concluded that harsh techniques would be needed to break al-Qaeda detainees.... This constituted a misreading of the Manchester manual and in fact Boris’s [CIA/EIT] techniques played into what the manual instructed captured terrorists to do.”

But that's not what I'm here to write about today.

Klaidman's tale of the Hayden briefing was actually told once before, but I've not seen anyone note that. Bob Woodward wrote about it in his book, Obama's Wars, back in 2010, and I analyzed that portion of Woodward's narrative in a posting at Firedoglake not long after.

Learn this Mantra: "Debility, Dread, Dependency"

In Woodward's earlier version of the account of Hayden’s Shedd shaking we get a somewhat different listing of what techniques Hayden was selling Obama.

Woodward's version:

Hayden said: Isolation of the detainee; noise or loud music; and lights in the cells 24 hours a day. There was limited use of shackles when moving a prisoner or when the prisoner was a danger. In addition, blindfolds were used when moving prisoners or when the prisoners might gain information that could compromise the security of the facility.

And then followed Hayden's demonstration of the facial slap upon Director of National Intelligence Deputy Director for Policy Shedd. "Then [Hayden] shook the deputy DNI." The latter could be construed as the "attention grasp," which, per Bradbury's memo cited above, used a towel or other collaring device... to prevent any whiplash from the sudden motion."


While Woodward reports Shedd was "shaken," he doesn't mention "walling." He may not have had the entire story and his reporting of Shedd being shaken may have lacked the missing explanation about the "flexible artificial wall" Klaiman's sources provide. Or there may not have ever been any discussion of "walling," and it was about "attention grasp" all along, with "walling" added later, as I explain below.

Klaidman's version:

Not long into his presentation., Hayden called Shedd over. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Hayden slapped Shedd's face. Then he grabbed him by the lapels and started to shake him. He'd wanted to throw him up against the wall during this demonstration, but there were chairs in the way. Instead he explained to Obama and his aides about the interrogation technique known as "walling," in which detainees were thrown against a flexible artificial wall that made a loud noise on impact but cause little physical pain.

Hayden went on to explain that the only other three techniques still used then were playing loud music, keeping lights on all day and sleep deprivation. He didn't mention that sleep deprivation was accomplished by hanging prisoners from ceiling hooks.

So, whoever Klaiman's sources were, they left out the use of isolation and use of blindfolds on the detainees, itself a form of sensory deprivation. And where do we find such techniques used otherwise? In the Army Field Manual on interrogation's Appendix M, precisely the approved standard for all interrogation per Obama's Executive Order. Can this sudden switch in narrative be accidental?

Klaiman's sources elide the blindfolding entirely, while Isolation is replaced (supposedly) by Walling, as there must be only "six techniques," and the narrative is bound by the numerical restriction, which was originally laid out in Bradbury's 2007 memo.

Even more, while Wheeler notes that "Walling" is not an approved technique in the latter-stage Bush OLC memos, it's worth noting that neither is Isolation, or the sensory overload techniques noted by both Woodward and Klaiman ("loud music," 24-hour lights).

Every opponent of torture should note carefully this very important statement from Bradbury's 7/20/07 memo:

The [CIA] program is designed to dislodge the detainee’s expectations about how he will be treated in U.S. custody, to create a situation in which he feels that he is not in control, and to establish a relationship of dependence on the part of the detainee.

This is not spin, but the psychological core of the program, based, as I’ve repeatedly emphasized, on decades-old research showing that the induction of Debility (sleep deprivation, isolation, dietary restrictions) and Dread (the physical assaults, dislocating the expectations, humiliation) produced Dependency for the purpose of CONTROL.

(Interested readers should see how this is all documented in early writings by Bruce Jessen, in a story Jason Leopold and I wrote at Truthout in March 2011.)

As I wrote in my first Shedd-related posting (bold emphasis added here):

From reading this account [Woodward's], apart from the hilarious bit of play-acting with the ever-obliging David Shedd, it’s difficult to see what six of the EITs were retained, and what, besides waterboarding, was eliminated. For one thing, Hayden’s reply focuses on techniques that were not part of the EITs — isolation, sensory overload, and partial sensory deprivation — while demonstrating by a slap to O’Connell’s deputy that “Facial or insult slap” was still in use.

Hayden then makes his play to keep “these methods” under an Obama administration, because “the very existence of the interrogation program was more important than its content.” The CIA director told the President-elect, “Terrorists would know they faced a more severe interrogation if picked up by the CIA than by the military, which used the Army Field Manual.”

But how would the terrorists know this, when even I can’t figure out what exactly the U.S. intelligence agencies do? Woodward quotes Hayden in an unintentional moment of self-revelation. For the CIA, the form is more important that the content. The “terrorists” don’t really know, but they believe they know they can expect something terrible, something especially bad. The point of this is to engender fear. And fear is an essential component to psychological torture. It enhances the effects of sensory overload and sensory deprivation, and contributes to the psychological breakdown of the victim. The use of SERE trainees as experimental subjects for coercive interrogation and techniques did not begin in 2001 or 2002 — it began at least over 50 years ago.

It's easy to get righteously indignant over the torture program of the CIA, but I'm amazed at how easy it's been to be lulled over the torture program inserted into the 2006 Army Field Manual. I think it's not an outrageous thought to believe that in the interim between Woodward's tale of the Hayden meeting and the Shedd slap-heard-round-the-intertubes and the one told by Klaiman, someone said "hey, icksnay on the the isolation-ay."

Bradbury, OLC Ignored Damage Done by Waterboarding

Originally posted at Firedoglake

On Monday [April 5], I described the years-long controversy within the military services over the use of waterboarding in SERE training, which left the Navy SERE school in North Island, California the last remaining survival school to use the technique on its students. The executive authority for SERE, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, had argued for its elimination as as an unsafe technique with deleterious psychological and possibly physiological consequences upon trainees, causing them to be “psychologically defeated.” The North Island school ended use of waterboarding in November 2007.

In the May 10, 2005 “techniques” memorandum by Steven Bradbury to CIA Senior Deputy Counsel, John Rizzo, Bradbury mentioned the waterboarding issue at the SERE schools, in a footnote (H/T Marcy Wheeler). “We understand that the waterboard is currently used only in Navy SERE training,” Bradbury wrote. He explained that the CIA Inspector General report on the Agency’s interrogation program mentioned that “individuals with authoritative knowledge of the SERE program” believed that waterboarding had been excluded from most of the SERE schools “because of its dramatic effect on the students who were subjects.”

Despite the presence of this unexplained “dramatic effect,” Bradbury continued:

We understand that use of the waterboard was discontinued by the other services not because of any concerns about physical or mental harm, but because students were not successful at resisting the technique, and, as such, it was not considered to be a useful training technique.

Bradbury received his assurances from the CIA’s Office of Medical Services (OMS), who he quotes as saying “[w]hile SERE trainers believe that trainees are unable to maintain psychological resistance to the waterboard, our experience was otherwise.” OMS soothingly assures that “Some subjects can unquestionably withstand a large number of applications,” with no harm greater than a “strong aversion to the experience.” The testimony of the “SERE trainers” is blithely brushed aside, and no questions are asked about what it means to be “unable to maintain psychological resistance.”

Even more, Bradbury and OMS’s assurances don’t correspond with the evidence from JPRA internal documents, which describe the use of waterboarding as leaving students “psychologically defeated” and impaired in the ability to develop “psychological hardiness.” Furthermore, as a Truthout article last month notes, the discontinuance of waterboarding was not due to mere failure at resistance to the technique. They were finding measures of physiological harm.

The Navy SERE school in Brunswick, Maine, discontinued the use of waterboarding in its training curriculum after a SERE psychologist found via “empirical medical data … elevated levels of cortisol in the brain stem caused by stress levels incurred during water boarding.” Cortisol is a stress hormone released by the adrenal glands as part of the body’s fight-or-flight mechanisms. Excess cortisol can lead to chronic stress, impaired cognitive abilities, thyroid problems, suppressed immune functioning, high blood pressure, and other health problems.

The origins of misinformation about waterboarding go back to the original Yoo/Bybee memos in August 2002. Emptywheel has been following the story around the machinations surrounding the composition of these memos pretty closely (see here, and here, and here). In the memo to Rizzo on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, John Yoo writes:

With respect to the waterboard, you have also orally informed us that the Navy continues to use it in training. You have informed us that your on-site psychologists, who have extensive experience with the use of the waterboard in Navy training, have not encountered any significant long-term mental health consequences from its use…. JPRA has likewise not reported any significant long-term mental health consequences from the use of the waterboard.

Yoo explains the cessation of waterboarding training as due to the fact “it was so successful as an interrogation technique,” and not because of any concerns over harm from its use. This is, we know now, plainly not the case. Is it any surprise that the Navy SERE psychologists clung to their use of waterboarding, and that Yoo and the CIA found a willing group of practitioners to give them the fairy tale story they desired? The use of anecdotal statements from biased participants does not add up to due diligence or reliance on experts.

In fact, no long-term study on the effects of waterboarding, or SERE techniques in general, has ever been made, or at least made public. If there were such a study, and its results backed the contentions of Yoo and the CIA, you can be sure we would have heard of it. Instead, we have the statements of JPRA professionals that the use of waterboarding in SERE training was risky, potentially dangerous, and produced a condition known as “learned helplessness.” My next article will expand on what the dangers of learned helplessness entail from a psychological and physiological standpoint.

Next: “Learned Helplessness” and the waterboard

Obama, Release the Full Bradbury Memos!

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the release of two 2005 memos by then-White House counsel Stephen Bradbury are the subject of much contention in the Obama administration. Essentially, the CIA is lobbying hard to keep large portions of the memos secret. As the WSJ puts it:

A decision to keep secret key parts of the three 2005 memos outlining legal guidance on CIA interrogations would anger some Obama supporters who have pushed him to unveil now-abandoned Bush-era tactics. It would also go against the views of Attorney General Eric Holder and White House Counsel Greg Craig, people familiar with the matter said.

Top CIA officials have spoken out strongly against a full release, saying it would undermine the agency’s credibility with foreign intelligence services and hurt the agency’s work force, people involved in the discussions said. However, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair favors releasing the information, current and former senior administration officials said.

Human-rights groups and many in the administration have called the techniques torture.

People familiar with the matter said some senior intelligence advisers to the president raised fears that releasing the two most sensitive memos could cause the Obama administration to be alienated from the CIA’s rank and file, as happened during the Bush administration when Porter Goss, who was unpopular among CIA officers, headed the agency.

Besides waterboarding, the memos purportedly discuss in details other torture techniques, including "a technique in which a prisoner’s head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator."

Will Obama release the full text of the memos, in the spirit of full disclosure he claimed he would bring to the White House? Or will he cover for the tortures, and bow to implied blackmail from the CIA?

Stephen Soldz put it well in an article at his blog today:

This is a defining moment for the Obama administration. If it makes the wrong decision, in some ways it may ever recover. It will have cast its lot in with the torturers and not with human rights or common decency.

Update:

Now Marc Ambinder is reporting at The Atlantic that his sources say the WSJ article "does not reflect the current state of thinking" at the White House.

Per Ambinder:

Tomorrow, the Department of Justice plans to release largely underacted versions of three Bush-era memorandums that critics suspect contain legal justification for torture and the broad use of executive power during wartime, according to an administration official. The critical question: how much does the administration withhold in the name of national security?....

Various news reports suggest that most of Obama's national security team favors the full release of the memos; Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counsel Greg Craig have lobbied for full release; CIA director Leon Panetta, who last week notified employees that the CIA's secret detention facilities would be shut down, has transmitted the concerns of the agency's field officers, who worry that full disclosure would hamper their efforts to question terrorists. Chief counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan favors releasing the legal analysis but not the specific techniques used; National Security Adviser James Jones and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair count themselves in the transparency camp. Several members of Obama's Office of Legal Counsel urged the release of the memos before they joined the administration....

The ACLU today put pressure on the administration to release "full, unredacted" copies of the Bradbury memos.

The information in these memos is vital to the historical record and to informing the public about what actions were carried out in its name," said Jameel Jaffer the ACLU's top national security lawyer. "The release of the memos is also crucial to holding officials accountable for authorizing torture."

Mr. Ambinder concludes that if Obama doesn't release all the memos, "the left will start to really hammer him on torture proceedings, state secrets privilege and his quiet evolution on the Patriot Act."

We'll see.

How the Justice Department Made the World Safe for CIA Torture

Scott Shane, David Johnston, and James Risen of the New York Times have written a stinging article on U.S. Justice Department decisions that have -- and still do -- provide supposed legal justification for harsh interrogation techniques amounting to torture.

In the article, "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations", the Shane et al. describe the role of former U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales in quashing an internal revolt at the Justice Department over the unprecedented spate of legal alibis for barbaric levels of torture. Some of the department's "opinions" remain secret to this day.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Using the odd formulation that Gonzales "seldom resisted pressure" from Bush's Machivellian vice president, Cheney, and Cheney's sinister consiglieri David Addington, the article singles out "Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department", as the signatory of the secret Justice Department directives. Elsewhere in the article, Bradbury is described as the "linchpin" in the defense of Bush's torture policies.

Meanwhile, Comey was not the only administration official to be revolted by Bush, Cheney and the CIA's plans to unleash inhuman and widely condemned forms of barbaric interrogation.

In late 2003... the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing [John Yoo's] work, which he found deeply flawed. Mr. Goldsmith infuriated White House officials, first by rejecting part of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, prompting the threat of mass resignations by top Justice Department officials, including Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Comey, and a showdown at the attorney general’s hospital bedside.

Then, in June 2004, Mr. Goldsmith formally withdrew the August 2002 Yoo memorandum on interrogation, which he found overreaching and poorly reasoned. Mr. Goldsmith left the Justice Department soon afterward. He first spoke at length about his dissenting views to The New York Times last month, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

In the world of Beltway politics, it's rare that an administration official will go on the record, as Goldsmith has done, as a source for a major news article that is criticizes the government he served. But then, the inhumanity, the evil, that emanates from Bush's torture chambers is so foul that even conservative politicians blanch in recoil.

The Times piece confirms that Gonzales, either with or at the bidding of Addington, locked down opposition to the draconian "war on terror" policies, isolated Comey, presided over Goldsmith's resignation, and put Bradbury on probation under the watchful eye of Bush counsel Harriet Miers.

They need not have worried:

Mr. Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right....

Though President Bush repeatedly nominated Mr. Bradbury as the Office of Legal Counsel’s assistant attorney general, Democratic senators have blocked the nomination. Senator Durbin said the Justice Department would not turn over copies of his opinions or other evidence of Mr. Bradbury’s role in interrogation policy.

Steven Bradbury is another of President Bush's true believers, his army of God, no doubt. One can only wish to whatever god, spirit, or fate that rules this world, if in fact anything rules this world but naked might, that this rotten, disgusting crew is ousted as soon as possible. (I can't resist two other Bradbury factoids: he was law clerk to Clarence Thomas, and was a partner at Kirkland and Ellis, LLP, in Washington, DC. What? Did you forget so soon Ken Starr's old firm?)

The revolt of the bureaucrats has come too little, too late. While it's gratifying to read about some of Comey's statements, and how Goldsmith and others were outraged, it's little beer to those of us who have been opposing this government's policies for years. And it's an obscenity to those who have lost their sanity, or even their lives, in Bush's torture chambers.