Letter to HHS on Proposed "Intelligence Surveillance" and Criminal Justice Exceptions to Human Subject Protections

The following was my response to a call for comments from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding proposed changes in the federal rules regarding the protection of human experimental subjects. The deadline for comments was today, and the following reproduces what I sent HHS.

Outside academia and the departments that run Institutional Review Boards, the issues surrounding these changes may seem arcane. But as my letter documents, the issues on protection of human subjects in federal funded experiments touches on some of the most important issues of our time, not least the torture program ran by the CIA and Department of Defense in the past 15 years. Other comments can be read at the link provided above. My very modest contribution in no way touches many of the important issues raised by these proposed changes, and interested readers should peruse the comments of others to get a fuller picture of the stakes involved in these proposed changes.

Note: Rather than embed links, I have provided endnotes with links, which reproduces how I sent the letter to HHS. One interesting side benefit of drafting and posting this letter was that it allowed me to update old links that had gone missing or dead over the years. Sadly, the links to much of the relevant material (Project Shad, for instance), had changed or disappeared, as public interest in the subject waxes and, sadly, wanes.

----------------------------

Date: January 6, 2016

To: Jerry Menikoff, MD, JD
Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP)
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
1101 Wootton Parkway, Suite 200
Rockville MD 20852
and
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other relevant agencies

From: Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D.
xxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx, CA xxxxx

Re: Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), Docket ID HHS-OPHS-2015-0008
(CFR Citation: 45 CFR 46)

HHS has asked for public responses to changes proposed in law regarding Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, also known historically as the “Common Rule.”

In particular, my comment is related to proposed exceptions to protections under federal law for human subjects on matters related to “intelligence surveillance” and “criminal justice activities.” In addition, I address suggestions of weakening protections related to Subpart C of the Common Rule, which covers research on prisoners.

Currently, the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), and the intelligence agencies that operate under the umbrella of the Department of Defense, are all regulated by 45 CFR 46, and protection of human subjects falls under the Common Rule. There is good reason historically for this, as government agencies, often under the auspices of “national security,” failed to protect human beings who were harmed significantly under experiments undertaken by such agencies.

These agencies act under a veil of secrecy, and safeguards on potential misuse of actions considered research, as defined, or even potentially close to research, should be strengthened, not weakened.

As Jay Katz said in a 1994 review of the history of human experimentation:

“In my review on the regulations on the conduct of research, I have tried to demonstrate that medical science's commitment to individual autonomy continues to remain ambiguous.

“The call for balancing the need to advance science for mankind's benefit and to protect the inviolability of subjects of research all too commonly tilts in favor of progress….

“As you know, I do not believe that the current federal regulations on the protection of subjects of research go far enough.”¹

Lack of Research Protections in the DoD and CIA

Failures to protect are not instances of the distant past. According to a 2010 investigatory report by Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye²:

“In January 2004, the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) initiated a DoD-wide review of human subjects protection policies. A Navy slide presentation at DoD Training Day (PDF)³ on Nov. 14, 2006, hinted strongly at the serious issues behind the entire review.

“The Navy presentation framed the problem in the light of the history of U.S. governmental ‘non-compliance’ with human subjects research protections, including ‘U.S. Government Mind Control Experiments – LSD, MKULTRA, MKDELTA (1950-1970s)’; a 90-day national ‘stand down’ in 2003 for all human subject research and development activities ‘ordered in response to the death of subjects," as well as use of "unqualified researchers.’

The Training Day presentation said the review found the Navy ‘not in full compliance with Federal policies on human subjects protection.’ Furthermore, DDR&E found the Navy had ‘no single point of accountability for human subject protections.’”

This review was ordered in late January 2004, only a few months after the Supreme court had agreed to hear the case later known as Rasul v Rumsfeld, which would decide that the Guantanamo detainees had a right to challenge their detention. The DoD-wide review came over two years after a DoD directive authored by Paul Wolfowitz had indicated such procedures should be in place. As a result, none of the required assurances by the different Defense Department components regarding their human subjects protection policies had been filed with DDR&E. In effect, there was little or no oversight over DoD research policies at exactly the time when both DoD and CIA were engaged in an experimental torture program, or using detainee prisoners as human guinea pigs for the study of the effects of torture and harsh detention (about which more below).

The DoD directive (3216.02), authored by Paul Wolfowitz, mentioned in the paragraph above, was titled “Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research,” and released in March 2002. The directive was updated in 2011. But in its 2002 version, and for many years, it represented a significant weakening of human subjects protections, making waivers of informed consent the responsibility of lower-level heads of DoD divisions, and weakening protections that had been in place for decades by limiting research safeguards to “prisoners of war.” There had never been such loose rules on informed consent ever explicitly allowed in the history of military research.⁴ While protections against use of research on detainees, such as those held at Guantanamo, supposedly now restrict research or experiments on that population,⁵ the history of attempts by DoD officials to push back against such restrictions should not allow for further weakening of any protections now in place.

There are a number of other instances of lack of protection of research subjects under the Department of Defense. One of the most egregious, which like so many of these abuses, took decades to come to light, concerned the military’s Project Shad.

Project Shad was a DoD experiment that exposed at least 4,000 Navy men to various chemical agents and decontaminant chemicals, "including Bacillus globigii (BG), Coxiella burnetii [which causes Q fever], Pasteurella tularensis [which causes tularemia or 'rabbit fever'], Zinc Cadmium Sulfide, Beta-propriolactone, Sarin, VX, Escherichia Coli (EC), Serratia Marcescens (SM), Sodium Hydroxide, Peracetic acid, Potassium hydroxide, Sodium hypochlorite, ‘tracer amounts’ of radioactivity and asbestos, [and] Methylacetoacetate."⁶ The existence of these experiments was denied by the U.S. government for 35 years, until Congressional hearings were finally held in 2002.⁷ While back in 2002, there were major news reports on the subject, today the story has dropped off the radar. Nevertheless, the government website, Health.mil, still has a webpage dedicated to information on the subject.⁸

The history of abuses surrounding Project Shad, and other similar instances of dangerous military research, e.g. projects Copper Head, Flower Drum, Shady Grove, Autumn Gold, among others undertaken from 1963-1970, argue strongly against any lessening of human subjects protections when it comes to military research.

Finally, on the subject of military research, it is worth noting the warnings aired in a National Research Council (NRC) 2008 report on a conference on “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies.”⁹ Participants concluded, “On the whole… the system of protections for human research subjects is not well designed to capture instances of intentional wrongdoing,” providing “rather… guidance for well-motivated investigators who wish to be in compliance with regulatory requirements and practice standards.”

While some find the current “formal procedures in place for the use of military personnel in medical experiments” are “stringent,” that doesn’t imply “that no abuses can occur, nor that convenient alternative frameworks (such as field testing) cannot be used to circumvent the research rules, but only that the official policies and procedures in the military are rigorous.” (bold emphasis added)

But even with such supposedly “rigorous” policies, the report’s authors see a problem. They ominously ask whether “classified research can ever be ethically sound inasmuch as it lacks transparency, such as in the form of public accountability. For example, if a member of an ethics review board disagrees with a majority decision involving a classified human experiment, that member would be unable to engage in a public protest of that decision.”

I think the questions raised in the NRC 2008 report are germane and vital to the issue of NPRM changes on matters related to “intelligence surveillance” and “criminal justice activities.” In particular, the kinds of artifice that can be engaged in relation to what exactly constitutes research is precisely what makes changes in these sensitive areas of high concern.

One such instance where the issue of using field testing or adjustment of technique and program assessment vs. formal research, i.e., to test areas of generalized knowledge, concerns charges of experimentation by the CIA and DoD in regards to the application of interrogation techniques on prisoners captured in the “war on terror,” prisoners which the U.S. government removed from coverage by the “prisoner of war” provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

Research done by the government in relation to interrogation or detainees was usually couched in terms that the research was only program evaluation, as in the case of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams at Guantanamo, or involved only research related to improvement of conditions for individual detainees, or response to specific applications of an interrogation technique, as when the CIA monitored the oxygenation level of a waterboarding victim.

The point is that in the case of intelligence or national security agencies, especially those aspects covered by secrecy and classification, or that are “covert,” determinations of what is and what is not research, i.e., what can be covered or monitored by the Common Rule, what the “exceptions” are, is actually nonsensical. Either the coverage is complete and total, or it is not.

Charges of CIA Experiments in Torture

In the case of the CIA experimental torture or “enhanced interrogation” program, OHRP referred any research misdeeds back to the agency itself, in this case, back to the CIA. Such is their policy, which is in this case is shown as grossly inadequate.

The fact remains, as documented in the recent release of the Executive Summary of the Senate Select Committee Intelligence report on the CIA’s torture program, that the plans for the “enhanced interrogation” program were formed in the same division of the CIA that ran the MKULTRA program.¹⁰

Do we really want less, not more, safeguards on “intelligence surveillance” activities?

On January 15, 2015, two United Nation Special Rapporteurs wrote an official letter to the U.S. government expressing their concern over “the role of health professionals in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogation program, between 2001 and 2009, and the subsequent lack of investigation into these allegations.”¹¹

The letter was prompted by new information released when in December 2014 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a redacted version of its Executive Summary of its report on the CIA “enhanced interrogation” program. One section of the letter contained charges and concerns about the research component aspect of the CIA program.

I reproduce that section of their letter in its entirety, as it helps explain my contention that the secrecy of the intelligence and covert operations world cannot allow any weakening of research or informed consent protections, as the agencies involved are without moral scruple, and have a long and even recent history of covering up misdeeds.

From the Special Rapporteurs’ letter:

3. Engaging in potential human subjects experimentation to provide legal cover for torture

From the SSCI summary it can be inferred that the OMS officers played an active role in determining, along with the DoJ lawyers, what techniques would be considered authorised for the CIA to employ. The 2004 OMS Draft Guidelines stated “in order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented”. The OMS personnel analysed data previously collected from the detainees during torture to make generalized conclusions about the techniques. In 2004 and 2005, this data and analysis was provided to the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to determine what techniques and applications would be legitimate under their interpretation of U.S. laws.

On at least two occasions, CIA personnel expressed concerns that this process would amount to human experimentation. Similarly, on 11 April 2005, OMS personnel expressed such concern when stating that the “OMS did not review or vet these techniques prior to their introduction, but rather came into this program with the understanding… that they were already determined as legal, permitted and safe. We see this current iteration as a reversal of that sequence”.

However, despite these concerns, the 2005 Office of Legal Counsel memos (known as the Bradbury memos) reveal that the final determinations on the legality and safety of the techniques relied heavily on OMS data and analysis.¹²

There was no known response to this letter.

A Mysterious Use of Research Regarding the Department of Justice and the HIG

The NPRM states that the suspension of the common rule for “intelligence surveillance” includes “interviews, surveillance activities and related analyses... where these activities are conducted by a defense, national security, or homeland security authority solely for authorized intelligence, homeland security, defense, or other national security purposes.”¹³

The proposed Criminal Justice exclusion from the Common Rule involves “data collection and analysis that enables the uniform delivery of criminal justice. The scope of this exclusion is collection and analysis of data, biospecimens, or records by or for a criminal justice agency for activities authorized by law or court order solely for criminal justice or criminal investigative purposes. The activities excluded are necessary for the operation and implementation of the criminal justice system.”¹⁴

How does this look in light of the reality of research undertaken within the arcane workings of the criminal justice system? One example occurred during the interrogation of accused would-be assassin Manssor Arbabsiar. Under interrogation after arrest in 2012, a “research psychologist,” Susan Brandon, unknown to Arbabsiar was making observations and notes on defendant Arbabsiar. The research appears to have been for the FBI-led High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, for whom Dr. Brandon worked as “Chief of Research.”

According to another psychologist contracted to the government, Gregory H. Saathoff, Brandon was present during all of Arbabsiar’s post-arrest questioning, viewing him via closed-circuit camera, where she “closely monitored and documented Mr. Arbabsiar’s behaviors.”¹⁵

She produced a 21-page document, which has been withheld from public view, the subject of a court protective order.¹⁶ Brandon’s document, and hence her research, became part of the prosecution’s case against Arbabsiar, and was apparently part of the process of reaching a plea bargain with him and his attorneys. How did a secretive research protocol become part of a prosecutor’s evidence against a defendant?

As I wrote at the time: “So what was the administration’s top interrogation researcher doing at Arbabsiar’s interrogation? And if she was doing research, was Arbabsiar so informed? And whether he was or not, what in her role as researcher later led Brandon to file a report with the court? These are all important questions....” (see endnote vi)

In the context of the new proposed changes in the Common Rule, the questions involved are vital to the workings of both science and of a democratic society.

Research on Prisoners

Related to the Criminal Justice and Intelligence Agency exclusions are calls for weakening the protections regarding use of prisoners in research, which currently fall under Subpart C of the Common Rule. The very way this is brought up in the call for discussion is insulting: “The subpart was written in the wake of harsh criticism regarding research abuses involving prisoners that occurred or became public in the 1960s and 1970s.”

This was not simply “harsh criticism,” but well documented instances of horrific abuse of prisoners. The classic work in this field was Allen Hornblum’s book, Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison, published by Routledge in 1998. There is no reason to lighten the restrictions against such research, which was the result of decades of abuses. Whatever positive results regarding such lightening of restrictions on consent in this case are outweighed by the dangers of unchecked power over a vulnerable population, the examples of which ruined untold number of lives.

As Mr. Hornblum concluded at the end of his book:

"It couldn't happen in America" we reassured ourselves about medical practices in Nazi Germany. But intolerable medical practices were practiced on vulnerable populations in America, without the support of the political culture or the despotic leadership that captivated Germany under the Third Reich, without any protest from the AMA, which prides itself on its ability to regulate itself.

History suggests that we are as susceptible to abusing our socially and economically disenfranchised citizens as any other nation. If, as many believe, a democracy is only as strong as the respect accorded its weakest members, we must work to assure that neither these abuses nor the "conspiracy of silence" that makes them possible ever happen again. We must do this not only for the benefit of the powerless, but also for the benefit of society as a whole.¹⁷

In conclusion, I ask that the NPRM changes proposed for weakening of protections on issues related to “intelligence surveillance” and “criminal justice activities,” as well as weakening protections related to Subpart C of the Common Rule relating to research protections for prisoners, be soundly rejected.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D.

Endnotes:

¹Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Public Meeting, Tuesday, July 5, 1994, Presentation by Jay Katz. URL: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/radiation/dir/mstreet/commeet/meet4/trnsct04.txt

²Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, “Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program,” Truthout, Oct. 14, 2010. URL: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/257:wolfowitz-directive-gave-legal-cover-to-detainee-experimentation-program

³“DON Human Research Protection Program: What’s New -14 November 2006.” URL: http://www.dtic.mil/biosys/docs/hu-navy_cs-2006.pdf

⁴See Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye at i. above.

⁵See “New DoD Directive on Detainees Allows Sleep and Sensory Deprivation, Biometric IDs,” Invictus, September 17, 2014. URL: http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/new-dod-directive-on-detainees-allows.html?m=1

⁶“American Servicemen Used As Guinea Pigs - Tests Revealed DOD Releases Project SHAD Fact Sheets”, (no date, but first webpage circa 2002). URL: http://web.archive.org/web/20070221064138/http://www.testsubjects.net/shad.htm

⁷Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, Second Session, October 9, 2002, “Military Operations Aspects of SHAD and Project 112.” URL: http://web.archive.org/web/20090805150741/http://fhp.osd.mil/CBexposures/pdfs/oct9h02.pdf

⁸See “Project 112/SHAD,” (no date), URL: http://www.health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/Health-Readiness/Environmental-Exposures/Project-112-SHAD

⁹See Jeffrey Kaye, NRC on Research on “War on Terror” Detainees: “A Contemporary Problem,” February 12, 2011. URL: https://shadowproof.com/2011/02/12/nrc-on-research-on-war-on-terror-detainees-a-contemporary-problem/

Also National Research Council (NRC) 2008 , “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies”. URL: http://www.nap.edu/read/12177/chapter/6#118

¹⁰Jeffrey Kaye, “SSCI Report Reveals CIA Torture Program Originated in Same Department as MKULTRA,” The Dissenter (later changed name to Shadowproof), December 11, 2014,. URL: https://shadowproof.com/2014/12/11/ssci-report-reveals-cia-torture-program-originated-in-same-department-as-mkultra

¹¹Dainius Puras and Juan E. Méndez, Letter to the U.S. Government, January 15, 2015, “Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
URL: https://spdb.ohchr.org/hrdb/29th/public_-_OL_USA_15.01.15_%281.2015%29.pdf

¹²Ibid., pp. 3-4.

¹³Federal Register, Vol. 80, No. 173, Tuesday, September 8, 2015, Proposed Rules., p. 20. URL: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-09-08/pdf/2015-21756.pdf

¹⁴Federal Register, Vol. 80, No. 173, Tuesday, September 8, 2015, Proposed Rules., p. 18. URL: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-09-08/pdf/2015-21756.pdf

¹⁵Jeffrey Kaye, “Government’s Psychological Evaluation of Manssor Arbabsiar Fails to Impress,” The Public Record, October 10, 2012. URL: http://pubrecord.org/law/10586/governments-psychological-evaluation/

¹⁶U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, Protective Order, 11 Cr. 897 (JFK), USA vs. Manssor Arbabsiar, August 15, 2012. URL: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/459526-8-15-12-protective-order-manssor-case.html

¹⁷Hornblum, Allen M. (2013-05-13). Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison (Kindle Locations 4625-4631). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

US Congress Delays Review of Current US Torture Protocols

In what Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein called a "minor" change to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a mandated review of the Army Field Manual (AFM) on interrogation was moved from one year to three years from now.

According to a "Q&A" at Human Rights First last June, the mandated review of the AFM was part of the McCain-Feinstein amendment to the NDAA, and was meant "to ensure that its interrogation approaches are lawful, humane, and based on the most up-to-date science."

The fact there was any "review" at all was really a response to criticism from the United Nation's Committee Against Torture, which demanded a review of the AFM's Appendix M, which has been long criticized as allowing abusive interrogation techniques, including isolation, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation. In Beth Van Schaack's Dec. 2014 article on the UNCAT review, published at Just Security, Schaack quoted one UN critic who complained the US delegation would not answer his questions on abuse:

My question related to the field expedient separation, which involves a deprivation of sensory inputs that have scientifically been demonstrated to provoke psychotic conditions, so I did not get any response to the considerations of whether this might involve ill-treatment.

Of course, US officials told the UN committee that interrogations were conducted under "all applicable legal, regulatory and policy principles and guidelines."

In fact, the UN CAT criticism of the Army Field Manual was if anything too soft. The AFM allows other forms of abuse amounting to torture, including use of drugs that can change consciousness, use of techniques that heighten fear (including pretending that interrogators are from other countries), and a variety of procedures gathered under the label "Futility."

The Futility "approach" is meant to induce feelings of "hopelessness and helplessness" in a prisoner. Military documents show that when loud music and strobe lights for hours on end were used for this purpose, the military called it "Music Futility."

While the NDAA was vetoed by the GOP-controlled Congress, and is the subject of ongoing negotiations between Congress and the Obama administration, nothing about the controversy over the veto concerns interrogation or the rules for same as laid out in Army Field Manual 2-22.3.

The changes in the timespan allocated for the "review" were made in Congressional conference to "reconcile" the differing versions of the NDAA bill between that of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Such reconciliation conference is common and part of the process of bringing a bill to the president's desk.

Feinstein's Press Release on NDAA

In an October 7, 2015 press release from Sen. Feinstein lauded the supposed "anti-torture" provisions of the NDAA. The California senator, who was previously chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was specifically referring to the part of the bill that made adherence on interrogation policy to the Army Field Manual a matter of statutory law for military and intelligence agencies. This so-called "anti-torture provision" was meant to forestall any repeat of the institution of torture procedures such as those used by the CIA in its "enhanced interrogation program."

While it is a good thing that waterboarding and other SERE-derived forms of torture are not to be allowed anymore -- and they were part of an experimental program in any case -- long-standing forms of torture are now protected by law because they are part of the Army Field Manual itself.

The idea that the AFM allows torture is not unique or bizarrely limited to myself. Last year, as the Just Security link above shows, the UN also leveled such a critique. I've written in various venues and with differing emphases just how the AFM allows such abuse. As a small example, see this article, or this, or this.

When the pre-veto version of the NDAA was passed -- the version that made the Army Field Manual on interrogation literally the law of the land -- all the liberals and human rights groups stood up and applauded. None of them mentioned that only months before the UN had criticized the document for use of abusive techniques, and in particular the use of isolation, and sleep and sensory deprivation noted above. Not one.

Some of those human rights groups and individuals had previously been highly critical of the AFM. One that in particular stands out is Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Back in 2006 they uniquely saw the problems with the AFM and criticized that document publicly. In 2010, PHR, along with Amnesty International, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the Open Society Foundations, the Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch, sent a letter to the Pentagon calling for the elimination of the AFM's Appendix M.

Today, none of these organizations have opposed the NDAA enshrinement of the AFM as the guide for interrogations, which includes the UN-condemned Appendix M. It's not as if they give critical support, or anything like that. They are simply silent about the presence of torture. I suppose they believe -- given the fight, for instance, over closing Guantanamo, which also is intertwined with the politics of the NDAA's passage, or language in the NDAA that supposedly guarantees the U.S. cannot delay in notifying the International Red Cross when it holds a prisoner -- that quibbling over the presence of torture techniques in the nation's primary interrogation manual would be politically inexpedient.

Delayed and "Disappointed"

There have been a very few who were aware or sensitive to this issue - and that included people associated with interrogation policy and research as it is pursued by the government's High-value Detainee Group, or HIG. Some of them assured me, prior to the language of further delay that came out of the conference version of the bill, that the review process in the NDAA was meant to take care of the offenses currently in the AFM. Later, when the review process was then delayed for three more years, one of these individuals, Mark Fallon, a former whistleblower on Pentagon torture, tweeted that he was "disappointed" by the Congressional change.

But Feinstein was not disappointed. Here's how she described the shift in policy related to the AFM "review" in her press release, which bore the title, "Feinstein Hails Congressional Passage of Anti-Torture Legislation." Please bear with me, as her explanation is quite lengthy for such a "minor" change, but then it takes awhile to lay out the terms of a double talk explanation. I've bolded a few places I thought worth emphasizing:

Mr. President, in order to make sure that the legislative history is clear, I’d like to describe the minor changes that were made to the language of this anti-torture provision during the conference.

As described in the Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of the Conference, the following two minor changes were made to the amendment....

The second minor change to the anti-torture amendment that was made in the conference committee is that the timing for the completion of the required update to the Army Field Manual — after the specified “thorough review” — was changed from “[n]ot later than one year” to “[n]ot sooner than three years” in subsection (a)(6)(A) of Section 1045.

This change does not alter the importance of the required review, the imperative that it be initiated in the immediate future, and that it be completed in three years time.

The language of the provision is clear: the conferees wanted the Secretary of Defense to be thorough and gave him three years to complete the review. But the amendment says that he “shall complete” a thorough review after three years, not that he “shall initiate” a thorough review after three years.

It is also important to point out that, regardless of the timing of this statutorily required review, this administration or the subsequent administration may at any time revise portions or the entirety of the Army Field Manual.

As Section 1045(a)(6)(A) states, revising the Army Field Manual is not optional; it is a “Requirement to update.” Moreover, the provision makes clear that this requirement must be undertaken every three years. Therefore, it would be inconsistent with the title, structure, and purpose of this subsection to suggest that the initial review following enactment can be postponed indefinitely.

Also, as the amendment notes, revisions to the Army Field Manual may be necessary to ensure that it complies with the legal obligations of the United States, a requirement that the Executive Branch is obligated to adhere to at all times.

In addition, no matter when the updates to the Army Field Manual are made, the manual “is designed to reflect best practices for interrogation to elicit reliable statements,” as the conferees also wrote their Joint Explanatory Statement. America’s best and most experienced interrogators have consistently and emphatically stated that best practices for eliciting reliable, actionable intelligence solely involve non-coercive techniques that elicit voluntary statements.

The double-talk starts immediately. The delay doesn't mean the review isn't important. It was only done to allow the Secretary of Defense plenty of time to be "thorough." Besides, the AFM could be revised anytime the administration desired!

If the latter is true, then why does the Obama administration allow portions of the AFM that have been widely hailed as torture to continue? We can only assume that he intends it to.

Tip of the Spear

The entire discussion of torture by the United States is so distorted, so hypocritical, and filled with misdirection and falsehood that is is not surprising that any thinking or sensitive person would just want to turn away, or bury their heads in the sand.

The use of the Army Field Manual is the tip of the spear in the use of torture techniques by the United States today, not the CIA's old EIT program, which ended by executive order of by President Obama in 2009 (or the CIA says even earlier).

The AFM techniques embody the program created by the military and CIA during the Cold War, described best in the CIA's 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual, which relies on the use of fear, sleep and sensory deprivation, including profound use of isolation of the prisoner, and other forms of producing debility and dependency, as a means to control and demand cooperation, the better to "exploit" the prisoner for whatever use the government agency deems fit. The latter usually includes provision of information and/or demand the prisoner work as an agent of the intelligence component itself.

The government, despite claims that it is "transparent" now about interrogation issues, and that policies are well-reviewed, produces literally nothing to back up its claims when it comes to the Army Field Manual. The reader can judge for themselves by the frustrating non-results of my various FOIA requests to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the DIA, and SOUTHCOM, regarding supposed mandated requests for review of the AFM or use of Appendix M.

The failure of U.S. civil society, by which I mean academics, intellectuals, news media and bloggers, professional medical societies, human rights and legal organizations, and politicians, to respond to the fact of torture in the Army Field Manual -- and in some cases, as with PHR, to turn their back on former positions -- is profound and depressing.

One significant exception are the psychologists around the group Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), who publicly came out against Appendix M last year. But when the pressure to pass the NDAA with its provision on use of the AFM was put forward, the psychologist-based organization suddenly went silent. One leading member told me that it was because so much effort and time was being put into changes in policies on interrogation and torture in the larger American Psychological Association that leading members of PsySR were involved in. That may be true, but how much time does it really take to stand up and say something is wrong?

Still, the individuals around PsySR have done far more than any other group, and uniquely helped engineer the APA's recent letter to administration officials on torture policy, which included the first statement by a professional medical organization calling for the U.S. to end its "understandings and reservations" to the UN Convention Against Torture treaty itself. (See October 28, 2015 letter sent by APA to President Obama, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, and others.) The US reservations to the UNCAT were fashioned by attorneys for the Reagan and Bush administrations and were uniquely meant to eviscerate protections against use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. But APA's position on that has been universally ignored by the press.

It is difficult to know how or if the mendacity surrounding U.S. interrogation policy and use of the Army Field Manual will change. Feinstein's double-talk demonstrates that administration and Congressional figures are sensitive to the fact that torture remains. The real problem now lies with the press, who appear unable to take on the issue, wedded only to topics that are approvable by editors, and really don't challenge the current status quo.

It's easy, in a way, to criticize at this point the CIA's old EIT program. But the presence of abuse in the Obama-sanctioned use of the Army Field Manual, or use of foreign intelligence agencies as torture proxy agents via rendition (an important aspect of the torture issue I did not touch upon in this article), go unregarded and unremarked. I cannot let that be so, but who really will join me on this?

[Acknowledgment to VICE's reporter, Jason Leopold, who forwarded Feinstein's October 2015 press release to me. Thanks as always, Jason!]

New Evidence on CIA Medical Torture: Injection "to the Bone" on Former Black Site Prisoner Majid Khan

Quite recently, U.S. authorities allowed the declassification of notes from Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) attorney Wells Dixon that described what his client, high-value detainee Majid Khan, told him about his torture at the hands of the CIA. Khan, a Pakistan citizen, is currently at Guantanamo, and awaits trial by military commission.

Dixon has described the hideous torture of his client, which comes on the heels of revelations in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence executive summary of their report on the CIA's torture program.

According to a June 2 Reuters report, Dixon described from interview notes with Khan, CIA use of solitary confinement; sexual abuse, including frequent touching of "private parts"; threats of physical harm; being hung naked from a pole for days; so-called "rectal feeding" (a form of anal rape); denial of food; water immersion and waterboarding, among other atrocities.

According to a CCR press release on Khan's torture, CIA doctors onsite were among the "worst torturers." Both Reuters and CCR have noted how doctors would check Khan's condition, ignore his appeals for help, and send him back into extreme forms of torture.

In a June 10 phone interview with Wells Dixon, Khan's attorney revealed there was more unreported material left out of the Reuters and CCR reports. In particular, Dixon revealed that Khan told him he was "also injected with a needle to the bone, and screamed in pain, then lost consciousness."

According to my research, an injection that just happens to hit a bone does not usually cause great pain. But an injection that enters the bone can. The latter is called an intraosseous or IO injection, and is used to quickly infuse drugs, particularly in instances where a person's life is at stake. It is usual medical procedure to insert lidocaine, a pain reliever, with or prior to injection because of the great pain associated with IO injections. Certain kinds of drugs can also cause great pain upon injection.

Did the CIA have medical need to make an IO injection, and withhold lidocaine or other pain reliever? Did CIA use the IO injection specifically to cause pain? Was a drug injected into Khan that specifically, or as side effect, caused great pain, in order to further torture him?

We don't know exactly what the CIA did with this, or any other injection, but the evidence of such forms of medical torture cannot be denied, despite recent attempts by the CIA to minimize allegations of such medical torture, such as the use of drugs in interrogation. In fact, a recent FOIA release from CIA obtained by Jason Leopold at VICE News showed that the CIA used blood thinners to prolong certain forms of torture.

It has not been easy to obtain this information. As Dixon noted in a June 22 op-ed at Al Jazeera, "The CIA has long tried to bury evidence of its crimes. When we filed a legal case challenging Majid's detention after his arrival at Guantanamo, the government prevented us from meeting with him for a year so that we would not learn about his torture."

UN Special Rapporteurs' "Letter of Allegation" to U.S. on Medical Torture and Experimentation

A new article by Adam Goldman at the Washington Post revealed that hundreds of photos from the CIA black sites exist. The fact they may be evidence at any future military commissions trial is currently being determined, as military prosecutors review the photos, which are said to include pictures of naked detainees, CIA personnel, and "photographs of confinement boxes where detainees such as Abu Zubaydah... were forced into for hours."

But it seems highly unlikely the public will see these photos, and we will have to rely on detainee testimony, and other various attempts by journalists, domestic and international bodies and organizations to pry out the information from the U.S. government. Along those lines, CCR has called for the full Senate CIA torture report and the Panetta Review to be released. A letter initiated by ACLU and signed by approximately 100 national and international rights groups on the need to ensure accountability for the U.S. CIA Torture Program was delivered to the most recent session of the UN Human Rights Council.

In another attempt to gain more information and some degree of accountability on CIA torture, last January 15 two UN Special Rapporteurs wrote a letter to U.S. officials. In the wake of the revelations in the release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence executive summary of their report on the CIA's torture program, the rapporteurs, Dainius Puras (Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health) and Juan E. Méndez (Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) asked the U.S. to respond to charges that doctors and other medical personnel were involved in torture and experimentation on detainees held by the CIA.

The letter was made public in relation to a periodic report submitted to the Human Rights Council earlier this year. (See this webpage, and then page 40 at document linked at A/HRC/29/50, "Communications report of Special Procedures.")

The UN officials also expressed "concern at the reported lack of investigation into these allegations."

Puras and Méndez  asked U.S. officials to respond to these charges and "explain how the role of health professionals in the CIA interrogation program is compatible with international human rights standards, including those ratified by the United States of America."

CIA health professionals played a central role in the CIA interrogation programme to an extent not understood or seen before. These health professionals designed, directed and profited from the CIA interrogation program; intentionally inflicted harm on detainees; enabled the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyers to treat the interrogation practices as safe, legal and effective; engaged in potential human subjects research to provide legal cover for torture; monitored detainee torture and calibrated levels of pain; evaluated and treated detainees for purposes of torture; conditioned medical care on cooperation with interrogators; and failed to document physical and/or psychological evidence of torture.

The role and conduct of these health professionals, which included psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians assistants, would not only imply a gross violation of medical and professional ethics but also violations of domestic and international law given the seriousness of the crime of torture, which is subject to universal jurisdiction.

Puras and Méndez also asked the U.S. to "provide details, and where available the results, of any investigation, medical examination, judicial or other inquiries carried out in relation to this case. If no inquiries have taken place, or if they have been inconclusive, please explain why."

The Special Rapporteurs gave the U.S. 60 days to reply.

State Department Kicks the Can on UN Charges

Last week I asked the State Department about the UN letter and whether the U.S. had replied. On June 24, a State Department official told me, "Our exchanges with mandate holders, such as the Special Rapporteurs, are private correspondence. We expect the mandate holders to treat these exchanges as such, and we do the same on our part."

The State Department didn't mention -- and likely does not want people to know -- that the communications are actually posted online a year after the initial communications take place. See this example of an October 2013 statement by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture on the situation of detainees held at Guantanamo, and its link at bottom to the actual communication, or "letter of allegation" to the U.S., originally sent to U.S. authorities on November 2012.

Or maybe the State Department doesn't want the public to know that many communications from the U.S. to these "letters of allegation" and "urgent appeals" from UN human rights officials go unanswered. Indeed, in the past 4 years, according to one U.N. document, 95 such communications were sent by UN officials to the United States, but the U.S. only replied to 56 of them. (Hat-tip to Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program, for this stat.)

Perhaps nothing portrays the weakness at present of international human rights mechanisms as the degree to which UN member states ignore these "special procedures" or communications from UN officials on human rights matters. Indeed, this is a large-scale problem. In a 2005 report summarizing statistics on these "letters of allegation" and "urgent letters" from different UN Special Rapporteurs, the overall government response rate from 137 member countries was only 46%. (The U.S. rate described above is 59%. Examples of recent non-responses by the U.S. to urgent appeals and letters of allegation from UN officials can be examined here.)

Feinstein Hiding Information on CIA Medical Experimentation

It's not only State Department officials who are reticent to engage dialogue on torture. The Senate Select Committee has determinedly stated they will not release their full report on CIA torture. As explained below, medical experimentation by the CIA is presumably included in the classified portions. Over 90% of the report remains classified.

I remembered that back in 2010, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me that in response to a revelatory report by Physicians for Human Rights on the question of CIA experimentation on detainees she would issue further comment on the matters discussed in the PHR report after the SSCI's report was done.

"The findings of the new report from Physicians for Human Rights will be considered in our review," Feinstein said, "and I will have further comment on this when the report is completed.”

A few days ago, Feinstein's press secretary Tom Mentzer replied to my query about Feinstein's 2010 promise, "The study’s executive summary includes details about CIA medical and psychological personnel involved in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. Any additional information included in the full report is classified. The committee did closely examine the Physicians for Human Rights report, and the senator commented on the more recent APA report here."

Mentzer's link is to an April 30, 2015 statement by Sen. Feinstein in relation to allegations of links between the American Psychological Association and the CIA torture program.

Feinstein's statement said she was "troubled" by the allegations. "I understand an independent review has been commissioned by the APA and look forward to reviewing its conclusions," she wrote. "This is a stark reminder that torture can corrode every institution it touches, including medical and psychological professions.”

I wrote back to Mentzer to ask whether Sen. Feinstein was aware of links I've made between Chicago attorney David H. Hoffman leading the supposed "independent review... commissioned by the APA" and CIA figures George Tenet and Kenneth J. Levitt, and Rand Corporation figure Newton Minow. Tenet was CIA director when the "enhanced interrogation" and "extraordinary rendition" programs were initiated.

Mentzer did not respond to my query. (An Illinois psychologist has recently written calling for the resignation of Hoffman for conflict of interest in the APA matter.)

Feinstein's reply to my recent query, to the point that "any additional information in the full report" on CIA experimentation on detainees is "classified," constitutes a cover-up of possible grave war crimes. At the very least, PHR should demand that Feinstein release all materials in the Committee's possession that bear on medical torture and human experimentation by the CIA.

As I told Mentzer in my request to Sen. Feinstein, "the issue of experimentation arises in the Executive Summary in the context of an interchange between OMS personnel and the CIA Inspector General on the feasibility of doing research on the 'effectiveness' of the CIA techniques. The PHR report, however, was concerned with specific data requested and transmitted regarding the operations of the techniques themselves, including measuring oxygen levels in waterboarding victims, and adjusting temperatures in detention settings for maximum discomfort."

It is likely that CIA experimentation went well beyond this, including new ways to measure physiological correlates of supposed deception, as well as physiological markers of being overwhelmed by the various torture techniques applied.

If, as Mentzer/Feinstein now maintain, the SSCI did take up PHR's charges of medical experimentation, the SSCI is not revealing what they found, and has no recommendations about what to do about it.

Sadly, the authors of the 2010 PHR report on CIA experimentation tried to steer public outrage into a complaint made to the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But OHRP referred the complaints back to the CIA, as such is their policy. 

The authors of the PHR report knew this was OHRP policy to begin with, but led their supporters down the dead end of OHRP "protections." In personal correspondence, one of the report authors told me they knew the appeal to OHRP was a "long shot," but that "PHR lawyers went through law journals and found evidence that OHRP could be interpreted as having jurisdiction, though the situation was ambiguous." (Because this was personal correspondence, I am not using the person's name.)

Another example of the kinds of information being kept from the public was revealed recently by Jason Leopold at VICE News, who released a letter from former Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who was himself a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to the CIA complaining about their refusal to show him "four written passages — located in an unknown document that may still be classified — related to the agency's destruction of interrogation videotapes."

Did this information ever surface in the classified SSCI report? We don't know. Just as we don't know what the U.S. will say to UN Special Rapporteurs about charges of medical torture and illegal experimentation, or if they even bother to respond. (Actually, we will know that, but not for another six months or so.)

For now, all we have -- and it is hideous enough -- are the cries from the torture chamber itself, as witnessed and reported by the detainees' attorneys. Will such cries be loud enough to stir real action and change?

Crossposted at Firedoglake

The letter on torture The New Yorker would not print

Dear Editor,

Many of us share Jane Mayer's disgust at the revelations about CIA torture ("Torture and the Truth," Dec. 22 & 29, 2014 [The New Yorker]), and the dishonesty whereby the CIA hid the hideous effects of their "enhanced interrogation" program. But I was disappointed that Ms. Mayer continues to imply that the U.S. gave up torture when President Obama issued his famous executive order in January 2009, when the President formally announced the Army Field Manual was to be the interrogator's only guide for interrogation techniques.

But numerous human rights and legal groups have said the Army Field Manual still includes techniques that amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Indeed, in November 2014, the UN Committee Against Torture, which monitors adherence to a UN treaty against torture to which the U.S. is a signatory, stated in a review of U.S. practices that the U.S. needed to review Appendix M of the Army Field Manual. The reason? The manual allowed the use of sleep and sensory deprivation, and that kind of treatment of prisoners goes against treaty obligations. In the case of sensory deprivation, the Committee called the manual's use of the technique "torture" which can "create a state of psychosis with the detainee."

The UN report did not go unnoticed. The story made headlines in the New York Times and other newspapers. It is a shame that it is ignored in the pages of The New Yorker, and that a false picture about the current state of U.S. interrogation procedures is propagated.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Kaye

[Note: the only change I've made in posting this is to add whatever is in brackets, as well as the embedded links. These minimal additions are added for the convenience and potential interest of readers.]

UN Review Cites Torture & "Ill Treatment" in U.S. Army Field Manual's Appendix M

The United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) has released their "Concluding observations on the third to fifth periodic reports of United States of America" in regards to US adherence to the prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading forms of treatment of prisoners.

Within the context of the world of diplomacy, the UNCAT findings belie the US insistence that it abides by the Convention Against Torture treaty (CAT), or that it is an adequate model for humane treatment of prisoners.

In particular, the committee took aim at the presence of ill-treatment and torture within the Army Field Manual's Appendix M, which purports to describe a "restricted interrogation technique" called "Separation." In a victory for those who oppose government-sanctioned torture and abuse of prisoners, the UNCAT called for the US "to review Appendix M of the Army Field Manual (AFM) in light of its obligations under the Convention."

More specifically, UNCAT identified the "minimal" sleep regulations in the manual as actually a form of sleep deprivation -- "a form of ill-treatment" -- and called for adherence to humane norms. In addition, the committee called for the elimination of sensory deprivation in the "field expedient" section of Appendix M, as such sensory deprivation can "create a state of psychosis with the detainee."

The UNCAT findings should be a wake-up call to the US press, which has repeatedly reported as true the assertion by the Bush and Obama administrations that the AFM allowed only humane interrogations. (The findings also validate my years-long campaign against the use of torture and abuse in the AFM, which has also been the focus at times of most of the human rights and legal groups who have made torture an issue, and bloggers such as Marcy Wheeler.)

While I want to concentrate here on what UNCAT said about the Appendix M and the Army Field Manual, which President Obama by executive order made the primary interrogation tool for forces in "armed conflict," the committee's other findings also are worth noting. The relative effectiveness of the UNCAT review process, or lack of same, is something that deserves its own analysis, but for the purposes of this article we'll put that off for now.

UNCAT Findings

The UNCAT found fault with the US's federal definition of torture -- the way it implements its torture laws -- not to mention the very way the US interprets the CAT treaty. It called for the US to consider withdrawing its "interpretive understandings and reservations" with which it ratified the CAT treaty. The UNCAT did the same thing in its May 2000 review of US practices. (For more on this, see this ACLU report.) The US "reservations" to the CAT treaty in particular eviscerate the protections against torture by replacing adherence to international norms on cruel treatment to less stringent US judiciary interpretations.

UNCAT also called for the US to criminalize "the specific offense of torture" at the federal level, and to remove the caveat in other statutes that says psychological torture requires evidence of “prolonged mental harm”. The UN officials warn that the presence of "serious discrepancies between the Convention’s definitions and those incorporated into domestic law create actual or potential loopholes for impunity."

In other notable, though not exhaustive, findings in the US review, the UNCAT told the US it had "concern over the ongoing failure to fully investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment of suspects held in U.S. custody abroad, evidenced by the limited number of criminal prosecutions and convictions." It called for "prompt, impartial and effective investigations," noting in addition that "alleged perpetrators and accomplices are duly prosecuted, including persons in positions of command and those who provided legal cover to torture..."

In particular, the UNCAT noted that the US had supplied "minimal statistics on the number of investigations, prosecutions, disciplinary proceedings and corresponding reparations" from the US military.

In regards to the military's regime at Guantanamo, the UNCAT forcefully pronounced that "force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike constitutes ill-treatment in violation of the Convention." The committee called for the immediate release of all uncharged or cleared detainees, an end to force-feeding and indefinite detention, and investigation of all torture, abuse or ill-treatment charges, including prosecution of those responsible and redress to victims.

The UNCAT and Appendix M

The back and forth between US and UN officials over whether certain practices used in the Army Field Manual constitute torture or other forms of abuse sounded like a diplomatic version of "he said, she said." But readers may not be aware what all the shouting was about.

In 2006, the US rewrote the Army Field Manual (AFM) on interrogation (formally known as FM 2-22.3, "Human Intelligence Collector Operations"). In 2009, in Executive Order 13491, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations," President Obama declared that US officials could not use "any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2-22.3."

The 2006 AFM banned certain practices associated with the CIA and/or DoD's harsh interrogation and torture programs implemented under the Bush Administration, including forced nakedness, hooding, use of military dogs to threaten, and "waterboarding." But at the same time, the AFM removed restrictions against "abnormal sleep deprivation," use of stress positions, and "chemically induced psychosis."

The question of what constitutes sleep deprivation arose in the argument back-and-forth between the US and UNCAT on Appendix M.

In 2006, Appendix M was one of the new portions of the rewritten Army Field Manual. It involved the use of certain techniques, collected under the amalgam "Separation," which were not allowed for use on prisoners protected under the Geneva Conventions rules for POWs. So-called "unprivileged combatants" (or "unprivileged belligerents," as the Obama administration likes to call them) were subject, after approval, to the use of isolation (solitary confinement), sleep deprivation, adjustments in environmental and dietary rules, and, in the case of a special "field expedient" application of "separation," subjected to use of blindfolds or goggles, and earmuffs to shutoff both vision and hearing.

The UNCAT was specific in pointing out that the field expedient form of "separation" was in fact sensory deprivation, and that "based on recent scientific findings with high probability will create a state of psychosis with the detainee (Daniel C., Lovatt A., Manson OJ. Psychotic-like experiences and their cognitive appraisal under short-term sensory deprivation. Frontiers in Psychiatry; Vol. 5, Art 106:1), raising concerns of torture and ill-treatment."

As the UNCAT and the press have pointed out, Appendix M's stated purpose is to prevent communication among detainees, the better to prevent learning "counter-resistence techniques". But it is also, as Appendix M states, about "decreasing the detainee's resistance to interrogation." Indeed, both physical and so-called field expedient forms of "separation," are specifically described in Appendix M as meant to "foster a feeling of futility."

"A feeling of hopelessness and helplessness"

Appendix M does not describe what is meant by "futility," but the term is defined elsewhere in the AFM. When describing a technique known as "Emotional-Futility," the DoD-authored manual notes that the purpose of "futility" is to convince "the source that resistance to questioning is futile. This engenders a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness on the part of the source."

The manual clearly states that the use of futility is not enough to assure a prisoner's cooperation. Hence it strongly recommends the combination of Appendix M "separation" (which, remember, includes both isolation, sleep deprivation, and at times application of psychotic-inducing sensory deprivation) with other AFM "approaches." Indeed, Appendix M itself suggests combining "separation" with the use of the "futility" technique (actually, a natural extension of the purpose of Appendix M), "incentive," and "fear up."

In other words, shorn of all the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, an Appendix M interrogation means keeping a detainee isolated for up to 30 days, or even months longer, exposed to noise (as long as it is not "excessive") or other environmental changes (again, so long as they are not "excessive"), and allowed no more than 4 hours sleep per day for weeks and perhaps months on end. The detainee is meant to feel both hopeless and helpless about their condition. Psychological and sociological weaknesses are exploited to increase the sense of despair. Incentives are offered to entice the prisoner to cooperate and end the solitary confinement and sleep deprivation or sensory deprivation. If the prisoner should still refuse to divulge information or otherwise cooperate (such as to turn informant), then the level of fear a prisoner feels is to be increased, playing off fears the prisoner may feel, including phobias.

While the US representatives responding to UNCAT's review -- and one of these was Tom Malinowski, who as a representative for Human Rights Watch back in 2006 applauded the then-new version of the Army Field Manual -- have offered only boiler-plate defenses to the depredations of Appendix M, the AFM itself calls for the presence of medical personnel, including, optionally, a "behavioral health consultant," whenever an Appendix M interrogation takes place. To my knowledge, the presence of medical personnel is not required for any other kind of interrogation in existence -- with the sole exception of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation" torture.

The use of certain "approaches" in the main body of the AFM, such as Fear Up, Ego-Down, and Futility, demonstrate that use of cruel treatment is not limited to Appendix M, but exists within the main body of the AFM itself. As an example of the kind of warnings such "approaches" generate, the instructions regarding Fear Up warn the interrogator not to induce so much fear the prisoner becomes unresponsive.

Drugs and the Army Field Manual

Another area of abuse that exists in the main body of the AMF concerns the use of drugs. A close examination of the current AFM with its predecessor shows that the wording regarding restriction of the use of drugs changed in 2006. As noted above, the prohibition against use of drugs that cause psychotic-like symptoms was removed from the current AFM. The prohibition now is only against drugs that cause "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage," a significantly lowered bar for use of drugs in interrogations.

In September 2009, a Department of Defense Inspector General report concluded that drugs had not been used in DoD interrogations. Even so, the report did reveal that detainees who were drugged for ostensible non-interrogation reasons were interrogated while drugged. There was also at least one case -- that of Jose Padilla -- where DoD used deception to make a prisoner believe he had been give "truth serum."

Still the IG report was seriously flawed, particularly in that it did not interview any of the released detainees who had alleged use of drugs. One of who made such a charge was Murnat Kurnaz, who was in Geneva for the UNCAT review. Kurnat has charged that he was subjected to repeated beatings, had his head dunked in water, was given electric shock to his feed, suspended by his arms, humiliated, and placed in solitary confinement by US forces. He has also said in the past he was forcibly administered drugs. But when he gave a statement to the UNCAT, unfortunately it did not mention the forcible use of drugs.

When Kurnaz gave, with the parents of Michael Brown, a teleconference in Geneva on November 12, I asked him about his drugging charges. Kurnaz stated, "I was forced to take medication. I didn't know what it was. When I refused they came afterwards... five to ten people held me down and tie me and give as injection." Kurnaz also charged that he was forced to take an "antimalaria medication," while, as Kurnaz added, "the whole world knows in Guantanamo there is no malaria." He further charged the drug was given "for its side effects, which include hallucinations."

Last year, a report by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the Open Society Foundation called for an investigation into the use wide-spread use of the anti-malaria drug mefloquine (Lariam) at Guantanamo.

None of the press reported Kurnaz's charges in relation to drugs. UNCAT never referred to the issue of drugging at all (see even the full transcript of the UNCAT review). As an article in the Jurist noted, "legislation implementing the Convention Against Torture defines torture to include 'the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.' 18 U.S.C. 2340. (In fact, under federal law, committing such acts outside of the United States is a very serious crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. 18 USC 2340A)."

The UNCAT is to be praised for bringing to the fore some of the worst aspects of the current use of torture and abuse by the US government, and in particular for calling out the endemic abuse in the practices of forced-feeding and Appendix M techniques in the Army Field Manual. But the full story is still not out there, and the investigations called for by UNCAT are not on anyone's agenda. (There is a supposed "independent review" concerning collaboration of leading figures of the American Psychological Association with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program, but that will be the subject of a future article.)

In addition, the release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA torture program -- or at least it's Executive Summary -- keeps being delayed. The latest word is that it might be out by the end of the year, lost in the news wasteland that is the Christmas and New Years' holidays.

It's good to take some time to reflect upon the progress made in the fight against torture, but there's still a long, long way to go before such crimes are truly eliminated, and the perpetrators of such crimes prosecuted.

Cross-posted at The Dissenter/FDL

Harper's Magazine: "U.N. Official Presses Query into Gitmo Deaths"

reposted from Scott Horton's "No Comment" blog at Harper's

U.N. Official Presses Query into Gitmo Death
By Scott Horton

One month ago, Truthout’s Jeffrey Kaye published a review of autopsy reports released last year by the Department of Defense in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request concerning two unwitnessed prisoner deaths at Guantánamo that authorities had described as suicides. Now, Kaye reports that Christof Heyns, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary executions, is “looking into” the deaths. Heyns is a South African law professor who teaches at American University in Washington and holds a fellowship at Oxford.

Kaye also asked Cyril Wecht, a renowned forensic pathologist, to review the autopsy report and its supporting documents. Wecht agreed that the autopsy results supported the conclusion of suicide, but he noted that the report failed to rule out the possibility of homicide. He also faulted the military for not providing the pathologist conducting the autopsy with the ligature used in the alleged suicides. “If this is what a respected forensic expert states,” Kaye told me, “then the government should listen and release the evidence held in their investigations and be open to independent investigations held by international forensic investigators.”

In his initial February 29 review of the autopsy reports for Abdul Rahman Al Amri, who died in May 2007, and Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi, who died in June 2009, Kaye wrote:

[D]etails in the autopsy reports show that Al Amri was found dead by hanging with his hands tied behind his back, calling into question whether he had actually killed himself…

Al Hanashi was found wearing standard-issue detainee clothing, the undergarments from which he supposedly used to kill himself, and not the tear-proof suicide smock issued to detainees who are actively suicidal. It remains an open question if he [was] in fact under suicide watch, even though he had been repeatedly banging his head on prison walls, and had made five suicide attempts in the four weeks prior to his death.

Both Al Amri, who was housed in isolation at Guantanamo’s high-security Camp 5, and Al Hanashi, who was resident at the prison’s Behavioral Health Unit, were supposed to be under constant video surveillance, and according to camp officials, someone was supposed to be checking on them every three to five minutes.

Kaye noted that the reported deaths and autopsies are odd in a number of respects. First, the detention facility supposedly stopped using regular bed linens in February 2002, replacing them with “suicide watch” linens that could not be torn and used in such a manner. Second, the report claims that the linens were fashioned using a razor blade, but the Gitmo Standard Operating Procedure then in effect denied prisoners access to razor blades other than during shower periods, when their use was supervised. Kaye also focused on the fact that the autopsy failed to scrutinize the ligature purportedly used in the suicide.

According to the autopsy report on Al Hanashi, he had made five suicide attempts in the four weeks prior to his death, and was therefore under suicide watch, which entailed continuous monitoring. The report noted that his death was detected 25 minutes following the last check. Both Al Hanashi and a prior alleged suicide, Yasser Al Zahrani, had been held in northern Afghanistan at the time of the prison riot at Qali Jangi and the massacre at Dasht-i-Leili, and both could have figured as witnesses in an inquiry into those events.
I asked professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall Law School, who has directed a series of studies on prisoner deaths at Guantánamo, what he thought of the latest developments. “Once again,” he replied, “a report of suicide, a questionable autopsy, and no investigation. It is deeply troublesome.”

The issues surrounding the autopsy reports from the Al Hanashi and Al Amri deaths are in some respects similar to those surrounding the three deaths that occurred on June 10, 2006. These questions do not disprove the U.S. government’s claims of suicide. But as U.N. rapporteur Philip Alston noted in a confidential communication about the 2006 deaths to the U.S. government:

When the State detains an individual, it is held to a heightened level of diligence in protecting that individual’s rights. As a consequence, when an individual dies in State custody, there is a presumption of State responsibility…

In order to overcome the presumption of State responsibility for a death in custody, there must be a “thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of all suspected cases of extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, including cases where complaints by relatives or other reliable reports suggest unnatural death in the above circumstances.”

Serious questions remain about Guantánamo authorities’ claims that they have taken steps to address prisoner suicides since 2006. Rather than dispel these questions, the recent autopsy reports bear signs of errors and secrecy that actually multiply them. Was this just sloppy work, or was it a desire to cover up embarrassing or harmful facts associated with the deaths?

Citing Truthout Report, UN Special Rapporteur "Looking Into" Guantanamo "Suicides"

Originally published at Truthout

Earlier this month, Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, responded to an inquiry by this reporter regarding new information on the deaths of two Guantanamo prisoners, Abdul Rahman Al Amri and Mohammad Salih Al Hanashi.

According to the Department of Defense (DoD), both prisoners died of suicide in 2007 and 2009, respectively. But new details surrounding their deaths, first reported by Truthout March 1, challenged government accounts concerning what happened. The new information was drawn from an examination of the autopsy reports for the prisoners and other findings pertaining to their conditions of confinement at Guantanamo, including statements from detainees and their attorneys.

The autopsy reports revealed that one of the detainees, Saudi national Abdul Al Amri, had been found hanging with his hands tied behind his back, and had been tested after his death for the presence of the controversial drug mefloquine (Lariam). Mefloquine can cause neurotoxic and serious psychiatric side effects, including psychosis, in some users.

In the case of Mohammad Al Hanashi, the autopsy examiners stated that they had never seen the actual device (or ligature) by which he was said to have strangled himself to death. The ligature was reportedly made from an elastic underwear band from a pair of white briefs. But news reports indicate that this was not the type of underwear in use at Guantanamo at this time.

There was also some question as to whether Al Hanashi had been on suicide watch at the time of his death, as he was not found wearing the requisite "suicide smock" typically used on actively suicidal prisoners, despite the fact he had made five suicide attempts in the four weeks prior to his death.

In an email to UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Professor Juan Mendez, other officials at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and this author, Heynes said he had heard about the March 1 Truthout article "through several avenues during the week."

Heynes wrote, "We are looking into this matter, and I have received provisional feedback, thank you for bringing it to my attention."

Asked if the DoD had been in contact with Heyns' office on this issue, or had any other comment on the earlier Truthout article about the two Guantanamo detainee deaths, DoD Spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale told Truthout, "Our ongoing relationships with the various concerned offices of the United Nations are positive, open, and constructive."

"JTF [Joint Task Force] Guantanamo conducts safe, humane, legal and transparent care and custody of detainees, including those convicted by military commission and those ordered released by a court. We continually evaluate these procedures to ensure that the care, safety, and security of all concerned at the JTF is a top priority," Breasseale said.

Autopsy Specialist Looks at the Reports

Dr. Cyril Wecht, a former president of the American Academy of Forensic Science and currently clinical professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, agreed to examine the autopsy reports for Truthout. In a telephone interview, Dr. Wecht said there was nothing in the autopsy reports themselves to challenge the official ruling of suicide. He noted that the autopsy reports "seemed thorough, detailed," and there was nothing in the reports to "suggest a struggle or someone incapacitated or immobilized."

This was consistent with the examination of another medical expert, Dr. Steven Miles, who said essentially the same thing about Al Hanashi's suicide report.

As for the fact that Al Amri's hands reportedly had been tied behind his back, Dr. Wecht indicated this is something some suicide attempters do in an effort to forestall any last-second frenzied attempts to stop one's own hanging.

However, Dr. Wecht also stated that there was "no way to rule out the possibility of foul play." He indicated that the Truthout investigation had raised questions that needed follow-up investigation, for instance, as to whether or not standard procedures surrounding surveillance of the detainees, or the allowance of razors were followed. Al Amri supposedly used a razor to cut up his bed sheets into the ligature used in his suicide, but Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures do not allow prisoners to possess a razor, and even temporary access to razors is strictly monitored.

In particular, Dr. Wecht criticized the military's actions after Al Hanashi's death for "bad procedure in not turning over the ligature to the [autopsy] examiners." This was not standard autopsy procedure. "Everybody knows that," Wecht told Truthout. Instead, investigators from the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) had given autopsy examiners material they said was similar to what Al Hanashi purportedly used to strangle himself.

Dr. Wecht also indicated that questions over the type of underwear used by Al Hanashi, and the toxicology report on Al Amri, which had noted the testing for mefloquine, "should be addressed."

More Questions on Detainee Deaths

While the questions surrounding the deaths of the two detainees were covered extensively in the earlier Truthout article, new questions and evidence continue to come to light.

One such instance concerns Al Amri's health status, raising further questions of what information the autopsy examiners were given, or the honesty of what they reported. According to Al Amri's autopsy report, "No significant natural diseases or pre-existing conditions are identified within the limitations of this examination."

But according to an October 2007 article by detainee attorney Candace Gorman, one of her clients, Guantanamo detainee Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi told her the previous July "that Amri had been suffering from Hepatitis B and tuberculosis, the same two conditions from which he himself suffers. Like al-Ghizzawi, Amri had not been treated for his illnesses."

Gorman also indicated that Al Amri had earlier stopped hunger striking out of concern for his health. Both Al Amri and Al Hanashi and all of the 2006 purported suicides had been hunger strikers. Al Amri and Al Hanashi had weighed at or under 90 pounds and been force fed. Neither prisoner had ever met with an attorney.

Could lack of treatment for his health conditions have led Al Amri to commit suicide? Without an independent investigation, we will probably never know.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (8 October '05) - A cell inside the new mental health facility [BHU] at Camp Delta. View of inside of cell from entry. Camera is high above sink and toilet. (US Navy photo by Photographer's Mate Third Class Joe Dye, Fleet Combat Camera, Atlantic. Cleared for public release by MG Jay Hood, Commanding General JTF-GTMO.)Video and Other Forms of Surveillance

One of the outstanding irregularities surrounding the government narrative of the two men's death has to do with procedures by which guards kept track of detainee activities. The March 1 Truthout article stated, "Both Al Amri, who was housed in isolation at Guantanamo's high-security Camp 5, and Al Hanashi, who was resident at the prison's Behavioral Health Unit, were supposed to be under constant video surveillance, and according to camp officials, someone was supposed to be checking on them every three to five minutes."

While documentary evidence is lacking that Al Amri was under such video surveillance, guards are under orders to visually check on the detainees every three minutes or so. Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt told Truthout in November 2009 that no Guantanamo detainee goes more than "three minutes" without being checked, one way or another.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (8 October '05) - a cell inside the new mental health facility BHU at Camp Delta. View from inside of cell to cell door. Camera is in upper left corner. (US Navy photo by Photographer's Mate Third Class Joe Dye, Fleet Combat Camera, Atlantic. Cleared for public release by MG Jay Hood, Commanding General JTF-GTMO.)However, DoD photographs of a typical cell in the Behavioral Health Unit (BHU), where Al Hanashi was held until his death, clearly show camera placements, both over the door and at the far end of the small cell, validating numerous reports that video surveillance of BHU prisoners was constant.

The question remains how a prisoner could fashion a suicide device, including the cutting of clothing and/or bed sheets, while

under constant or near-constant surveillance, including by video cameras.

A State Department Cable

While the substance of any discussions between the UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns and the DoD is not known (the former did not reply to further requests for information about their inquiries), some sense of what such communications might involve can be derived from an examination of one of the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks last year.

An unclassified cable from the US Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, dated July 10, 2007, to the US Secretary of State, concerned a direct message to US authorities from Philip Alston, then-UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, predecessor to the position Christof Heyns now holds. The message described lingering questions regarding the June 2006 death of Guantanamo detainee, Yemeni citizen Ahmed Ali Abdullah.

Abdullah was one of three detainees purportedly found dead in their cells on June 9, 2006. The DoD labeled all three men suicides, while later investigations by Harper's writer Scott Horton and a team of legal investigators at Seton Hall's School of Law's Center for Policy and Research found ample reason to question that verdict.

Alston was writing to remind US authorities that Abdullah's family did not believe the official story of suicide. They had "asked a Geneva-based non governmental organisation, Alkarama for Human Rights, to assist with organising an autopsy." But the US had not cooperated with the independent autopsy investigation, refusing "to share the results of its investigation into the death with a US-based law firm retained by them or with any of the other entities who have requested information...." Nor had US authorities returned key anatomical evidence for the new autopsy.

In particular, Abdullah's family noted they did not believe the detainee had committed suicide because of "the tight surveillance of the cells, with permanent video-surveillance and guards passing in front of each cell every two to five minutes, would make a suicide by hanging impossible in the absence of collusion by the guards."

They also cited the impossibility "for a detainee to hang himself in the cell, as there is (again according to reports of other former detainees) absolutely no place a detainee could fix the ligature used to hang himself."

Unknown to Abdullah's family or Alston or earlier investigations into the June 2006 "suicides," and germane to the death by "suicide" of Al Amri, in 2002, Guantanamo authorities had changed the bed sheets used at the facility to a "non-tear" type used by the federal prisons, making it much harder if not impossible to fashion sheets into ropes and nooses. (See PDF summarized witness statement, pg. 7, by Maj. Gen. (ret.) Mike Dunleavy.)

Writing on behalf of his role as UN Special Rapporteur, Alston told US authorities that they had an obligation to follow international law in regards to the investigation of the case. Citing UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, Alston told the State Department, "In order to overcome the presumption of State responsibility for a death in custody, there must be a 'thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of all suspected cases of extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, including cases where complaints by relatives or other reliable reports suggest unnatural death in the above circumstances.'"

Alston went further, stating, "I would like to add that even the most 'thorough, prompt and impartial investigation' of a custodial death will not satisfy your Excellency's Government's obligations under international law if its results are not shared with the family of the victim and subjected to public scrutiny." (Emphasis added.)

The NCIS investigations into the deaths of Al Amri and Al Hanashi remain classified. The investigations into the 2006 deaths were declassified and can be accessed at a DoD web site, though they remain in part redacted.

Truthout has filed Freedom Of Information Act requests for the NCIS investigations into both Al Amri and Al Hanahsi's deaths. The Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry, which, in June 2007, reportedly promised to conduct an independent autopsy on Al Amri, did not return requests for comment.

By promising in 2007 to convene a medical investigation into Al Amri's death, the Saudis were responding to requests from Al Amri's family, who, like Abdullah's family, did not believe their relative could commit suicide. According to Al Amri's brother, in a statement at odds with the conclusion of the autopsy done by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), "We did not find any marks on his body which would hint that he committed suicide."

In a footnote to this story, the AFIP, which conducted all the detainee autopsies at Guantanamo, was shut down by DoD last September, a presumed victim of government cost cutting.