Newly Revealed Portions of CIA Torture Manual: Doctoring Tapes, Foreign Detentions & Interrogating 'Defectors”

Describing interrogation techniques and approaches used during the Cold War, an old 1960s CIA counterintelligence interrogation manual advised covertly photographing the interrogation subject and also audio taping his interrogations.

A tape player could free an interrogator from note taking, the CIA’s experts wrote, while also providing a live record of an interrogation that could replayed later. The manual’s author noted that for some of those interrogated, "the shock of hearing their own voices unexpectedly is unnerving."

Portions of the manual, originally declassified over 16 years ago, have remained censored until now. In March 2014, the CIA released an updated version [PDF] of the manual, which contains new revelations that extend our knowledge of CIA interrogation activities.

For example, in the case of audio taping interrogations, the newly declassified version of the manual adds that the CIA believed the doctoring of such tapes to be “effective.”

"Tapes can also be edited and spliced, with effective results, if the tampering can be hidden," the CIA manual explained in a section previously redacted. The CIA further elaborated on the effects of having a tape "edited to make it sound like a confession."

While controversy remains pitched over the release of a portion of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” torture program, the CIA’s release of material – including portions that speak to the agency’s years-long use of foreign intelligence services for detention and interrogation – was quietly released with little fanfare. Meanwhile, leaks to news media and analysis by commentators demonstrate that the CIA lied to Congress about aspects of its post-9/11 rendition, detention and interrogation (torture) program.

What has not been emphasized much until now is that the post-9/11 program in regards to torture, rendition and detention, both at "black sites" and by foreign intelligence services working with the CIA, is the continuation of a CIA practice going back decades.

KUBARK as a Model for Interrogation and Torture

The CIA’s 1963 set of instructions on counterintelligence interrogation, known as the KUBARK manual, was first declassified in 1997. (KUBARK was the CIA’s own code name for itself.) Recently, since that initial declassification, I obtained an update of the CIA’s infamous document, obtained on March 12, 2013 via Mandatory Declassification Request. The document was obtained by using the FOIA-activist website Muckrock.com, and the document and all materials regarding its production, including my initial request, is posted at their site. Click here to download the document (or on the thumbnail below).



The updated version of the KUBARK manual still contains numerous redactions, even 51 years after the document’s origination. But it also includes brand-new information about the CIA’s use of torture, including never before revealed discussions of the CIA’s early use of foreign intelligence services for both interrogation and detention, including the use of such foreign services as cover for CIA interrogations. The new unredacted material includes the finding that KUBARK techniques were used at “defector reception” or interrogation centers during the Cold War.

The Baltimore Sun, which originally had gained the manual via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it first made in May 1994, linked the KUBARK manual to later torture and interrogation techniques utilized in a 1983 set of manuals used in Central America to train Honduran and other Central American interrogators.

The product of years of experimentation and field experience, the KUBARK manual written in 1963 utilized a set of torture and other interrogation techniques that included use of solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, fear, stress positions, electric shock, sleep deprivation, drugs, and other methods to induce compliance and the “exploitation” of the prisoner or subject interrogated.

After the Abu Ghraib scandal, when the kinds of abusive interrogation and detention techniques used on U.S. “war on terror” detainees were vividly visualized for U.S. and world audiences, the similarities between what the U.S. was doing and the early instructions in the KUBARK manual became front-page news in the mainstream U.S. press.

The similarity of the KUBARK techniques to certain abusive techniques used by other government agencies, such as the FBI, has been noted. But it is the connection with the CIA’s own Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program that resonates the most in the context of a major government dispute over the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program.

The Intelligence Committee has voted to release the Executive Summary of the report, but most of the 6,000 page report will not be released. Meanwhile, the CIA itself has been asked (or demanded, perhaps) to be centrally involved in classification decisions made in the release of the Executive Summary. The chance we'll see much of that full report is slim. As we can see, it's taken 51 years and we still don't have all the information in the CIA's 1963 interrogation manual.

A recent article by Jason Leopold at Al Jazeera America suggested that the Senate report will show that CIA “enhanced interrogation” techniques “either went beyond what was authorized by the Justice Department or were applied before they had been authorized.” Those techniques included, among other forms of torture, physical slapping, sleep deprivation, isolation, confinement of a prisoner in small box, stress positions, and waterboarding.

Early Evidence of Black Sites and Rendition

Among the most prominent portions of the KUBARK manual that were not originally declassified and held secret until now -- labeled KUBARK II here to forego confusion with the 1997 declassified version -- concern CIA’s interrogations conducted “with or through liaison.” Such liaison included “foreign” or “host” services, including those interrogations that “involved illegality.”

While there is no portion of the document that specifically uses the term "rendition," there is a lot of discussion about having to use foreign intelligence services as liaison on interrogation, and on the limited amount of detention time the CIA had when holding prisoners in other countries. (It is widely known that post-9/11, the CIA held prisoners at secret prisons in Thailand, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania, while rendition to torture sent kidnapped detainees to foreign intelligence prisons in Syria, Morocco, Egypt and other countries.)

CIA ex-Deputy Counsel John Rizzo recently admitted that the CIA rendition program was a practice of long standing. “Renditions were not a product of the post-9/11 era…” Rizzo recently told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, “... renditions, in and of themselves, are actually a fairly well-established fact in American and world, actually, intelligence organizations.”

Until now, most discussions of the U.S. post-9/11 CIA interrogation program have presumed that renditions to foreign interrogation services were something that originated after the Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, or perhaps earlier, during the Clinton administration. But the newly restored sections in KUBARK II suggest that such activities by the CIA were common practice during the Cold War.

One example of this, not referenced in the KUBARK document, but known from other CIA documents, was known in intelligence circles as the “Kelly Case,” and described by H.P. Albarelli and this author in a 2010 article. Kelly, a code name for a Bulgarian operative named Dimitrov, was kidnapped by the CIA in the early 1950s and sent to a secret interrogation center run by the CIA at Fort Clayton, Panama (then Panama Canal Zone) where he was tortured using drugs and hypnosis, part of the Agency's Operation Artichoke.

In another example of early rendition practice, the CIA and the Army Intelligence Corps (CIC) allegedly ran a kidnapping program called "Snatch/Countersnatch" in Europe after World War II. There were notable early examples of CIA kidnapping as well. One of these was the case of Peter Moroz, an employee of the CIA's Institute for the Study of the USSR, who "was seized by CIA operatives posing as German police," and taken to a "safe house" near Munich. Munoz was subjected to loud music and bright lights for almost three months in isolation, all because the CIA wanted to question him after his son purportedly had defected to the East Germans. (See Maris Cakars & Barton Osborn, "Operation Ohio: Mass Murder by US Intelligence Agencies," Win Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 30, 9/18/1975*)

According to KUBARK II, "Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to involve illegality and to entail damaging consequences for KUBARK." The newly declassified material shows approval for such actions, including interrogations involving “physical harm” and “medical, chemical or electrical methods or materials… used to induce acquiescence,” derived from a CIA official labeled “KUDOVE,” a cryptonym which according to a National Archives document describes the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations (DDO).

Such approval by the DDO was also necessary “[i]f the detention is locally illegal and traceable to KUBARK...."

James Pavitt was Deputy Director of Operations from 1999 to June 4, 2004. He was succeeded by Stephen Kappes, whose tenure only lasted until August 2004. Kappes was followed by Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. Rodriquez famously ordered the destruction of video tapes used in the interrogation and torture of Abu Zubaydah and other "high-value detainees" held by the CIA at their Thailand "black site." During Rodriquez's tenure, the CIA's Directorate of Operations, which was once known as the Directorate of Plans, changed its name once again to the National Clandestine Service (NCS). Whether Directorate of Plans, Directorate of Operations, or NCS, this section of CIA is responsible for covert operations.

While it seems likely Rodriquez's destruction of the tapes was meant to destroy evidence of torture, the revelation about doctoring tapes in the new version of the KUBARK document raises the question whether or not the evidence had to be destroyed so that no one would know the tapes had been altered in an effort to produce or manufacture the appearance of confessions.

The Detention Problem

Most of the discussion of working with foreign intelligence agencies is in the manual’s section on “Legal and Policy Considerations.” In 1997, much of that material was redacted, so that it was difficult to know that there was any coordination between the CIA and foreign services. But the newly unredacted material shows that the CIA turned to foreign “liaison” services because the legislation that formed the Agency "denied it any law-enforcement or police powers."

As "the necessary powers are vested in the competent liaison service or services, not in KUBARK, it is frequently necessary to conduct such interrogations with or through liaison,” the CIA wrote. The legality of such an interrogation – whether conducted “unilaterally” by either CIA or the host service – was “"determined by the laws of the country in which the act occurs.”

According to the CIA document, detention of prisoners was the primary legal problem, as the CIA had no legal power to hold prisoners. "Even if the local authorities have exercised powers of detention in our behalf," the CIA wrote, "the legal time-limit may be narrow." Hence, the manual suggests that the determination has to how long a prisoner can be held in detention be determined as quickly as possible. As the reference to “locally illegal” detention cited earlier suggests, sometimes that determination included a decision to hold prisoners unlawfully. A full paragraph on how to determine how much time could be available to CIA for interrogation in such circumstances remains censored in KUBARK II.

The issue of control over a prisoner’s detention is raised more than once in the document. "As a general rule, it is difficult to succeed in the CI [counterintelligence] interrogation of a resistant source unless the interrogating service can control the subject and his environment for as long as proves necessary," the manual states. While most of the ensuing discussion remains classified in the latest manual release, a portion of this section was unredacted.

The CIA expresses concern over what is done to prisoners or detainees held by foreign liaison services. Some "sources may demand immediate release," the CIA document states, or "later bring suit for illegal detention.” There does not appear to be any easy solution to this dilemma, from the CIA’s standpoint, though the manual warns against either pressing “too hard” on a detainee or releasing him too early, before the information desired has been obtained. "Transfer to an interrogation center should not be used as an automatic solution,” the CIA manual noted.

It was not clear what type of "interrogation center" the manual was referring to at this point.

Security Leaks

The newly declassified material shows the CIA as very concerned with possible security leaks. A released prisoner, subjected to KUBARK-style interrogation and torture, is such a possible security leak, according to the manual.

If a "subject is to be turned over to a host service,” KUBARK II states, “it becomes more than usually important to hold to a minimum the amount of information about KUBARK and its methods that he can communicate." It is possible that these are some of the same types of concerns that, unspoken, keep dozens of detainees cleared for transfer or release held indefinitely at Guantanamo.

That the CIA wished to keep its collaboration with “foreign services” secret can be discerned from the numerous times even small references to such services, even in passing, were deleted from the original declassification release.

In an “Interrogator’s Checklist” towards the end of the manual, the CIA asks the interrogator to consider whether an arrest is "contemplated." "By whom?” the manual asks. “Is the arrest fully legal? If difficulties develop, will the arresting liaison service reveal KUBARK's role or interest?" Furthermore, "If the interrogatee is to be confined, can KUBARK control his environment fully?"

In a tantalizing revelation of even further considerations around sharing detention and interrogation with foreign services, one of the newly declassified “checklist” items asks, "If the interrogation is to be conducted jointly with a liaison service, has due regard been paid to the opportunity thus afforded to acquire additional information about that service while minimizing KUBARK's exposure to it?"

To date, none of the discussions about the post-9/11 RDI program have dwelled upon the intelligence activities the CIA and its allies may have conducted upon each other, or the intelligence vulnerabilities or risks the RDI program may have entailed in that regard.

“Defector Reception Center”

One of the topics the KUBARK manual touches upon is the existence of “defector reception centers.” In the original declassification, all references to such centers were censored, even though such centers concerned possible defectors from the Soviet Union or its allies, and the 1997 FOIA release of KUBARK came six years after the fall of the USSR and its East European satellite states.

Very little has been written about these centers. According to declassified CIA and State Department documents and some memoirs by former CIA personnel, we know that the CIA maintained a “defector reception center” near Frankfurt, West Germany. It was housed at the primary Allied post-World War II interrogation center, Camp King, at Oberursel.

According to a memoir by former CIA Deputy Director of Covert Operations, Ted Shackley, “all people defecting in Europe from countries of the Soviet bloc were brought here" (to Camp King). They were held in villas scattered around Frankfurt. CIA documents released a few years ago show the housing and resettlement aspect of this defector program was code-named HARVARD.

In Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks’s classic 1975 exposé, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, detainees at the Defector Reception Center at Camp King were “subjected to extensive debriefing and interrogation by agency officers who are experts at draining from them their full informational potential. Some defectors are subjected to questioning that lasts for months; a few are interrogated for a year or more.”

According to KUBARK II, all defectors, escapees, and refugees were “customarily sent to a defector center for detailed exploitation." "Defection reception centers and some large stations are able to conduct preliminary psychological screening before interrogation starts," the manual states.

While there is no direct evidence of torture of any defectors or East Bloc escapees held at any defector reception center, the fact the KUBARK manual itself describes procedures that amount to “coercion,” even by CIA standards, strongly suggests that some torture was conducted on Soviet and East European detainees held at one or more such reception centers.

Further exploration of the Defector Reception Center and activities at Camp King are a fruitful source of possible future research. Other authors have determined that the former Nazi doctor Kurt Blome, tried but released at Nuremberg, and former head of the Nazi’s biological warfare program, worked as a doctor at Camp King in the early 1950s. In addition, Camp King was known for using drugs and other experimental torture methods on Soviet bloc prisoners.

The CIA, explaining they could neither confirm nor deny any records on Blome, rejected a FOIA I filed with the CIA on Blome’s activities.

Blome was also a top member of Nazi Germany’s biological warfare program. On February 28, 2014, the CIA’s Agency turned down my appeal of their non-confirmation/non-denial, or “Glomar” response, for records on the Camp King physician.

“Squeezed dry”

There is a small amount of other newly unredacted material. Much of it consists of quotations from Albert Biderman's secret 1959 report, "A Study for Development of Improved Interrogation Techniques." It is not clear why these sections were originally withheld. The new declassification still contains a number of redactions of material referenced in the KUBARK manual.

One of the restored Biderman quotes notes, “skilled and determined interrogations are almost invariably successful in eliciting some information from their sources.” Biderman continued, describing those “who abandon the ‘name, rank, [serial] number only’ rule or other injunctions of silence, are between 95 and 100 percent.”

Another new section concerns the interrogation of “penetration agents.” The discussion included the pros and cons of coercive interrogation.

"All good interrogators avoid coercive techniques whenever the necessary information can be gained without them,” the CIA manual stated. “In other words, physical or psychological duress is counter-productive when employed against a source whose voluntary cooperation can be enlisted without pressure."

But if such “coercion must be used and is successful,” the interrogator is cautioned that such action is likely to leave a victim “drained and apathetic.” "A resistant source who has been 'broken' should not be disregarded as a person when squeezed dry," the manual warns. Left to his own devices after "the use of pressure exceeding his resistance (for example, narcosis or hypnosis)... he is likely to revert to the role of antagonist and try to cause us trouble by any means available to him."

Addendum: Click here to see the final response letter from the CIA to me granting the request for new declassified material, and giving their explanation why some of the material was censored.

*Use of materials from Win Magazine comes via Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

Article adapted from original posting at Firedoglake/The Dissenter

UN Report Documents Secret Detention Practices by U.S., Other Countries

Also posted at FDL/The Seminal

Andy Worthington is posting portions of the United Nations’ “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” a detailed, 186-page report issued last February (PDF). As he explains it, he’s "posting the section of the report that deals with US secret detention policies since the 9/11 attacks [section 4 of the original report], in the hope that it might reach a new audience — and provide useful research opportunities — as an HTML document." Andy adds:

I do, however, urge everyone to read the whole report, because the introduction and conclusions are important, as are the sections establishing the legal approach to secret detention and its historical context, the section detailing current practices in 25 other countries worldwide, and the annexes, which contain government responses to a questionnaire about secret detention, and a number of case studies.

The report concludes:

In many contexts, intelligence agencies operate in a legal vacuum with no law, or no publicly available law, governing their actions….

Secret detention as such may constitute torture or ill-treatment for the direct victims as well as for their families. As many of the interviews and cases included in the present study illustrate, however, the very purpose of secret detention is to facilitate and, ultimately, cover up torture and inhuman and degrading treatment used either to obtain information or to silence people….

The generalized fear of secret detention and its corollaries, such as torture and ill-treatment, tends to effectively result in limiting the exercise of a large number of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression and freedom of association.

Part One of the report is here. Part Two is linked here. I’ll post the link to Part Three when he uploads it. All links are easy to download HTML.

I’d follow Andy’s advice and download the whole thing, especially as the full details for all the footnotes can only be followed in the original report. He says he’s added what he can in square brackets, and also kindly supplied some hyperlinks — a distinct bonus over the report itself!

The report was prepared by "Martin Scheinin, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Shaheen Ali, the vice-chair of the Working Group on arbitrary detention, and Jeremy Sarkin, the chair of the Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances." The scope of the report is quite large, including 66 countries, including various European states, China, Canada, Iraq, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Israel, Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and many more.

The UN experts’ conclusions were criticized by a number of countries, including some grumbling over the report’s "methodology" from Eileen Donahoe, U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Council. As Worthington noted in his original story on the report on June 15:

Despite the experts’ hopes, Deutsche Welle noted that a detailed questionnaire that experts sent to the UN’s 192 member countries was only answered by 44 of those countries, and, moreover, “Of these, not one admitted to the existence of secret prisons. The report’s authors depended on independent sources for their investigation and many countries denied them any kind of access to relevant materials or sources.”

The article also noted, “During the debate, China, Russia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Algeria and other African nations denied that any secret detention facilities existed on their territory.” Revisiting the complaints they made when the report was first published, “They accused the report’s authors of sloppy research, of overstepping their mandate and of compiling the report without being commissioned to do so by the UN Human Rights Council"….

Nevertheless, reflecting on the discussion, Martin Scheinin told IPS, “It went better than expected. The report has been very controversial and now there appears to be acknowledgement that the issue is serious enough not to be trivialized by procedural filibustery.”

While the UN experts were dismayed over the U.S. failure to close Guantanamo, as promised by President Obama, they reportedly were somewhat understanding, in that they believed "The [U.S.] government is unable to do anything when the legislature prohibits part of the options available: namely taking a single person from Guantanamo to the mainland United States." Maybe the report’s authors were simply pleased the U.S. had not opposed the report in general. Given the fact that in the past year new secret prisons have been revealed at both Guantanamo and Bagram Air Base, the role of the current administration in relation to secret detention sites and abuse of prisoners in U.S.-run secret prisons, and those of its allies, like Iraq, remains the least reported scandal of the Obama years.

The UN report on secret detentions in the name of "counter-terrorism" was hardly reported by either the U.S. press or the blogosphere. This is not a subject fit for discussion in the era of Obama. While part of the country chokes on a diet of corporate-supplied oil swill, the military-industrial-technical might of the country is engaged in military adventures and empire-building that is bankrupting the nation, and sowing ill-will world-wide.

What the UN report also demonstrates is that the U.S. practice of holding "ghost prisoners" in undocumented and hidden prisons is by no means unusual, that in a world run by corrupt elites and nationalist dictators dreaming revanchist dreams, and running ethnic cleansing enterprises, the practice of secret detention has a wide dissemination. In this we can see the U.S. is only one among many malefactors, if perhaps more responsible (or more cynical) for the breadth of their enterprise, their use of allies utilizing secret prisons for the rendition program, and their long practice of such detentions, going back to the secret backing for Operation Condor, the kidnapping-assassination-secret detention program in South America in the 1970s. (See the article Operation Condor: Deciphering the U.S. Role, by historian J. Patrice McSherry.) Condor is specifically singled out in the UN report as a precursor to the current practice of secret detentions in a number of countries.

According to an IPS article on the report, "The study’s recommendations included an explicit prohibition of secret detention, and the keeping of clear detention records, even at times of armed conflict, as stipulated by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war." Both the report itself and its recommendations should be broadcast widely and well. I thank Andy Worthington for his tireless pursuit of the issue of prisoners held without legal standing, as his long reporting on Guantanamo demonstrates.

Obama Interrogation Official Linked to U.S. Mind Control Research

Originally posted at The Seminal/Firedoglake
A new article at Truthout, by H.P. Albarelli and Jeffrey Kaye, describes how the CIA’s Artichoke Project* was the contemporaneous and operational side of the MK-ULTRA mind control research program. It was not superseded by MK-ULTRA in the 1950s, as often supposed. Even more, Artichoke-derived methods of using drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and overload, behavioral modification techniques and other methods of mind control have resurfaced as a primary component of U.S. interrogation practice.
The Truthout article includes some amazing revelations, including the largest description to date of the roles of then-Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in working hand-in-glove with the CIA to suppress information on Artichoke from surfacing.
The article also references the November 2006 release of an "Instruction" from the Secretary of the Navy (3900.39D) regarding its "Human Research Protection Program." While this memo specifically prohibits the use of research upon prisoners, including so-called "unlawful enemy combatants," waivers of informed consent for research, or suspension of the protections enumerated in the memo can be made by the Secretary of the Navy under conditions of "operational contingency or during times of national emergency." It is likely the latter rests upon the legislative language within the September 18, 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, where terrorist acts are said to "continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
The waivers allowed for normal human research testing gains further piquancy when one considers the kinds of research referenced in the Secretary of the Navy’s memo. Section 7(a)(2)(a) describes the Undersecretary of the Navy as the "approval authority" for research done upon prisoners, as well as "Severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques)" [emphasis added].
This referencing of "mind-control techniques" in a document specifically discussing human subjects protections by then Secretary of the Navy, Donald C. Winter, is not an anomaly, but a rare instance in which the actual activities of the government in this area are openly revealed. Some of these activities can be documented via publicly available materials. This article describes how some of the individuals involved in U.S. government mind control and torture activities can be tracked and identified.
APA, CIA: "How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses…?"
Another instance in which the curtain was pulled back on mind control research by the U.S. government involved the online description by the American Psychological Association (APA) of a CIA and Rand Corporation workshop which it co-sponsored in July 2003 at Rand’s Arlington, Virginia headquarters. The event was attended by approximately 40 research psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, as well as "representatives from the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense with interests in intelligence operations."
One of these workshops, ostensibly on detection of deception, specifically described how participants should consider "sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors," including the use of "pharmacological agents. "How might we," the workshop asked, "overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?"
The man in charge of "recruiting the operational expertise" for the workshop was Kirk Hubbard, Chief of the Research & Analysis Branch, Operational Assessment Division of the CIA. It appears likely that Hubbard was responsible for the presence at the workshop of SERE psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who were instrumental in the construction of the Bush administration’s "enhanced interrogation" torture program. Hubbard was also reported (by Scott Shane of the New York Times) to have brought James Mitchell to an informal meeting "of professors and law enforcement and intelligence officers… to brainstorm about Muslim extremism" at the home of former APA president Martin Seligman in November 2001.
Sometime in the past six months, the APA eliminated all references to the webpage described above, even going so far as to eliminate linked references to it on other webpages on its site. While the webpage that described the workshops has been scrubbed, mirrored images of the site remain available at well-known web archive sites, as I described in a recent article on this attempt to rewrite or hide APA’s offensive history. In one sense, this attempt to hide its history is not surprising, because the kind of activities discussed in these workshops are exactly like those that involved CIA and military mind control torture programs going back fifty years or more, and evidently still operational today.
The Role of Government Psychologist Susan Brandon
In a recent article, Scott Horton at Harper’s picked up on the unique link between the APA/CIA workshop and the recent revelations about torture at a hitherto unknown black site prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. That link was an individual, Susan Brandon.
Referenced by Horton as working for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA), Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC), a recent publication identified Brandon more fully as Chief for Research in the DCHC’s Behavioral Science Program. As Horton notes, a recent column by Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic described the DCHC as providing "intelligence operatives and interrogators….. [performing] interrogations for a sub-unit of Task Force 714, an elite counter-terrorism brigade." Interrogations at the Afghan black site reportedly have included use of sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, brutality, isolation, relying on the guidelines of the Army Field Manual, including its Appendix M. Many human rights groups have criticized Appendix M as including techniques tantamount to torture and/or cruel, inhumane and degrading and illegal by domestic and international law.
Back in 2003, according to an APA news article, Brandon "jointly conceived" the APA/CIA workshops with Rand Associate Policy Analyst, Scott Gerwehr. At the time, psychologist Susan Brandon was the Program Officer for Affect and Biobehavioral Regulation at the National Institute of Mental Health, and worked on the APA/CIA program while also serving as "Senior Scientist" at the APA.
In the early 2000s, Dr. Brandon served as Behavioral and Social Science Principal at the Mitre Corporation, a company highly linked to U.S. Air Defense. Subsequent to her stint as APA’s Senior Scientist, she went on to work in for the Bush administration as Assistant Director of Social, Behavioral, and Educational Sciences for the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. In addition, she became an instrumental member of the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBES) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council’s Committees on Science and Homeland and National Security.
Subsequently, as described in an important article by Stephen Soldz that extends many of the points in this essay, Brandon joined the Defense Department’s Counterintelligence Field Activity group (CIFA), which was later disbanded and reformed as part of the DCHC. Soldz also reminds us that Brandon was "one of the silent observers at the [APA] PENS [Psychological Ethics and National Security] taskforce described by dissident taskforce member Jean Maria Arrigo as exerting pressure on members to adopt a likely pre-approved policy in favor of participation in Guantánamo, CIA, and other interrogations. According to a 2005 article by Geoff Mumford, APA’s Director of Science Policy, Dr. Brandon "helped steer much of the association’s scientific outreach relevant to counter-terrorism after 9/11."
One example of such outreach would include the June 11, 2002 meeting between Brandon, and other top APA officials with "two senior staff members in the National Security Council’s (NSC’s) Office of Combating Terrorism" (OCT). Since Vice Admiral William McRaven was head of OCT at that time, perhaps Brandon’s acquaintance with the world of Special Operations dates to that time, as McRaven was to become Commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
JSOC is the other Defense Department component, besides DIA, that has been linked currently with the management of the black site prisons run by the Obama administration, subsequent to President Obama’s apparent closure of the CIA black sites. One reputable source has informed me that there are eight such black site prisons in Afghanistan alone. A recent report by the BBC corroborated earlier reports by the New York Times and the Washington Post. The article by Ambinder further elaborated upon this story.
Why is the Obama Administration Still Involved in Torture?
It is not known if Dr. Brandon has been involved in any of the reported abuses of prisoners coming out of Bagram’s Tor prison, or elsewhere. Yet one would think the Obama administration and the Pentagon has a lot to explain in utilizing as their behavioral chief of research for an agency involved in intelligence operations, including interrogation. But then, why is the Obama administration involved in torture or operating secret prisons at all? President Obama has manifestly broken his promise to the American people to end torture and close all secret prisons. Nor has Congress done their due diligence in investigating these matters. Only when the American people fully understand the extent to which these activities have occupied the government and their various collaborators, like the APA, will society be able to take the necessary steps to end these abuses, and hold those accountable for what amount to crimes against humanity.
As for psychologists, Dr. Soldz rightly notes, "Psychology as a profession is at a crossroads." The same holds true for other professions involved with this abusive and criminal history, including the activities of anthropologists in the military’s Human Terrain System teams in Afghanistan, researchers in numerous academic departments across the country, and the many reports of doctors and other medical personnel involved in the monitoring of torture activities for the CIA and Defense Department. The use of torture has suborned U.S. civil society as a whole in activities that are dark and evil, and the society as a whole must make a tremendous effort if it is to extirpate such evil from its midst.
*For an early document referring to Artichoke’s history, see CIA, Memorandum for the Record, Subject: Project ARTICHOKE, January 31, 1975. While this MOR downplays Artichoke’s history, it represents the degree to which the CIA was willing to reveal such operations. The Truthout article discusses Operation Dormouse, where then Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld worked with the CIA to limit revelations about Artichoke and other CIA torture and assassination operations.

What We Can Learn from the Torture Scene in Shakespeare's King Lear

Perhaps the most famous torture scene in world literature takes place at the end of Act III of King Lear. In this scene, Lear's ungrateful daughter, Regan, and her ambitious, power-hungry husband, the Duke of Cornwall, have discovered that the Earl of Gloucester, himself betrayed by his own bastard son, has proven loyal to the deposed king, Lear.

Having captured him, Cornwall and Regan torture Gloucester, supposedly to gain information. But as Shakespeare makes clear at the very beginning, the torture is not in the main about gaining information, but about exerting control, and serves as a release for Cornwall and Regan's "wrath" and sadism.

Take note, as have generations of playgoers and critics, of the role of one of the play's "bit players," the First Servant, who becomes the moral center of the scene, and recognizes, as the great powers do not, the horror of torture and its absolute prohibition among civilized persons.

CORNWALL
Go seek the traitor Gloucester,
Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.

Exeunt other Servants

Though well we may not pass upon his life
Without the form of justice, yet our power
Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men
May blame, but not control. Who's there? the traitor?

Enter GLOUCESTER, brought in by two or three

REGAN
Ingrateful fox! 'tis he.

CORNWALL
Bind fast his corky arms.

GLOUCESTER
What mean your graces? Good my friends, consider
You are my guests: do me no foul play, friends.

CORNWALL
Bind him, I say.

Servants bind him

REGAN
Hard, hard. O filthy traitor!

GLOUCESTER
Unmerciful lady as you are, I'm none.

CORNWALL
To this chair bind him. Villain, thou shalt find--

REGAN plucks his beard

GLOUCESTER
By the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done
To pluck me by the beard.

REGAN
So white, and such a traitor!

GLOUCESTER
Naughty lady,
These hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin,
Will quicken, and accuse thee: I am your host:
With robbers' hands my hospitable favours
You should not ruffle thus. What will you do?

CORNWALL
Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?

REGAN
Be simple answerer, for we know the truth.

CORNWALL
And what confederacy have you with the traitors
Late footed in the kingdom?

REGAN
To whose hands have you sent the lunatic king? Speak.

GLOUCESTER
I have a letter guessingly set down,
Which came from one that's of a neutral heart,
And not from one opposed.

CORNWALL
Cunning.

REGAN
And false.

CORNWALL
Where hast thou sent the king?

GLOUCESTER
To Dover.

REGAN
Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charged at peril--

CORNWALL
Wherefore to Dover? Let him first answer that.

GLOUCESTER
I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.

REGAN
Wherefore to Dover, sir?

GLOUCESTER
Because I would not see thy cruel nails
Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister
In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.
The sea, with such a storm as his bare head
In hell-black night endured, would have buoy'd up,
And quench'd the stelled fires:
Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain.
If wolves had at thy gate howl'd that stern time,
Thou shouldst have said 'Good porter, turn the key,'
All cruels else subscribed: but I shall see
The winged vengeance overtake such children.

CORNWALL
See't shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot.

GLOUCESTER
He that will think to live till he be old,
Give me some help! O cruel! O you gods!

REGAN
One side will mock another; the other too.

CORNWALL
If you see vengeance,--

FIRST SERVANT
Hold your hand, my lord:
I have served you ever since I was a child;
But better service have I never done you
Than now to bid you hold.

REGAN
How now, you dog!

FIRST SERVANT
If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean?

CORNWALL
My villain!

They draw and fight

FIRST SERVANT
Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.

REGAN
Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus!

Takes a sword, and runs at him behind

FIRST SERVANT
O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left
To see some mischief on him. O!

Dies

CORNWALL
Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!
Where is thy lustre now?

GLOUCESTER
All dark and comfortless. Where's my son Edmund?
Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature,
To quit this horrid act.

REGAN
Out, treacherous villain!
Thou call'st on him that hates thee: it was he
That made the overture of thy treasons to us;
Who is too good to pity thee.

GLOUCESTER
O my follies! then Edgar was abused.
Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him!

REGAN
Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell
His way to Dover.

Exit one with GLOUCESTER

How is't, my lord? how look you?

CORNWALL
I have received a hurt: follow me, lady.
Turn out that eyeless villain; throw this slave
Upon the dunghill. Regan, I bleed apace:
Untimely comes this hurt: give me your arm.

Exit CORNWALL, led by REGAN

Cornwall dies off stage, between Acts III and IV, setting the stage for the dispute between Lear's daughters, Goneril and Regan, over the villain, Gloucester's son Edmund, and ultimately to the deaths of both daughters, and indirectly, to that of Edmund as well. Shakespeare, in probably his bleakest play, of evil rampant in the world, appears to be saying that taking responsibility and action for oneself and ones world, and standing up to evil, even by those otherwise humble and of minimal power, can have profound effects upon the course of events.

While I do not advocate running swords through the government's torture plotters and policy makers, it is incumbent on all of us to take a stand against this poison that destroys the state and civil society. Tell your friends and family how much you abhor torture. Do not turn away from criticism of this administration's stance of no accountability for torture, and cozening CIA and Department of Defense policies, such as the use of psychological torture techniques such as isolation, sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation, in the Army Field Manual, or the continuing operation of secret "black" prison sites by Joint Special Forces Command.

The ensconced power of the torturers in the military, intelligence agencies, and even to some extent in the Department of Justice (consider David Margolis's recent rescue of torture advocates John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, and Steven Bradbury) means accountability will NOT take place, UNLESS there is a major upsurge of pressure from the ranks of society itself, from the average citizen, the church, synagogue or mosque worshipper, the union member and the guild practitioner, from doctors and nurses, auto workers and construction workers, from all the "First Servants" of this world who are not content to be bit players to the major actors, drenched in torture, murder, and malfeasance.

What can one do? Write letters, join anti-torture and civil liberties organizations like ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, or the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, or send them money. Write your congressman and senator, write to President Obama. But most of all, do what you can to raise the level of disgust with these policies. Educate yourself and others. We must purge this evil from our society, and it begins with you.

Ghost Prisoners? Indefinite Detention? "Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply."

In a report at Truthout, Andy Worthington described a new UN report on secret detention policies by governments around the world. The report, available in an advance, unedited version here (long PDF), concentrates on the situation over the last nine years, with "a detailed account of US policies... and also running through the practice of secret detention in 25 other countries, including Algeria, China, Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Libya, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Uganda and Zimbabwe."

A major new report on secret detention policies around the world, conducted by four independent UN human rights experts, concludes that, “On a global scale, secret detention in connection with counter-terrorist policies remains a serious problem,” and that, “If resorted to in a widespread and systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity"....

Of particular concern to the authors of the Joint Study — beyond the overall illegality of the entire project conceived and executed by the Bush administration — is the fate of dozens of men held in secret prisons run by the CIA, or transferred by the CIA to prisons in other countries. Based on figures disclosed in one of the Office of Legal Counsel’s notorious “torture memos” (PDF), written in May 2005 by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Bradbury, the CIA had, by May 2005, “taken custody of 94 prisoners [redacted] and ha[d] employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these detainees.”

The 28 men subjected to “enhanced techniques” are clearly the “high-value detainees” — including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Abu Zubaydah and twelve others — who were transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, but no official account has ever explained what happened to the other 14 “high-value detainees,” or, indeed, to the majority of the other 66 men.

Tracking the missing men has been difficult, and the report looks into the various black prison sites in Afghanistan, including Bagram. In addition, the report examines "the cases of 35 men rendered by the CIA to Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Morocco, between 2001 and 2004." For many of these "ghost prisoners", we have no idea of where they were ultimately sent, or even if they are even alive.

The Bagram Project

Andy Worthington has begun a project on Bagram prisoners not dissimilar to the research he conducted on the Guantanamo prisoners, which culminated in the excellent book, The Guantanamo Files. Ever since the Pentagon released a list of the names of 645 prisoners it was holding at Bagram as of September 22, 2009 (PDF).

Worthington has been examining this list, and trying to determine who many of these prisoners are, as well as who may be missing from the list.

However, although it is probable that a number of former “ghost prisoners” have been repatriated to face death or further detention, it is not inconceivable that some prisoners were not included in the list because they are being held elsewhere — perhaps in a corner of Bagram to which the list does not extend.

One indication that this is so is the apparent omission from the list of Amanatullah Ali, a Pakistani who was seized by British forces in Iraq in 2004 and rendered to Bagram. His detention in Bagram has been confirmed through letters to his family, and his story, which was told by David Rose in Britain’s Mail on Sunday on December 9, is significant not only because it sheds light on the British government’s complicity in the Bagram rendition program, but also because it reveals the extent to which depriving the prisoners of the right to challenge the basis of their detention perpetuates the same mistakes that were made at Guantánamo.

Andy is producing an annotated version of the Bagram prisoner list, and you can read the initial form of it here. He asks that if anyone has any further information about any of the names on this list to email him.

Obama OLC Supports Indefinite Detention Policies, or Marty Lederman Turns to the Dark Side

As I was reading the articles on the secret detentions, I was reminded that Obama's Office of Legal Council (OLC) has been quite active in promoting indefinite detentions for some of the Guantanamo prisoners. According to Joe Palazzolo at Main Justice, OLC -- which under Bush's appointees Yoo and Bybee had authored the memos approving torture -- has been quite active in advising Department of Justice attorneys who are fighting the habeas cases of Guantanamo prisoners in the federal courts. OLC also "worked closely with the [detention] task force that recently completed a yearlong review of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. The task force determined that of the 198 detainees at the military-run prison, about 50 are unprosecutable but thought to be too dangerous to transfer [i.e., they will be held indefinitely, without charges], underscoring the importance of the habeas corpus cases — the chief means for testing the Obama administration’s detention regime.

One wonders what apostasy former supposed civil liberties proponent Marty Lederman underwent once he joined Obama's Justice Department. But Palazzolo quotes a recent study by Benjamin Wittes and Rabea Benhalim of the Brookings Institution and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas Law School, who expound upon the crucial importance of the Obama administration's legal actions on this front (emphasis added):

They are more than a means to decide the fate of the individuals in question. They are also the vehicle for an unprecedented wartime law-making exercise with broad implications for the future. The law established in these cases will in all likelihood govern not merely the Guantánamo detentions themselves but any other detentions around the world over which American courts acquire habeas jurisdiction. What’s more, to the extent that these cases establish substantive and procedural rules governing the application of law-of-war detention powers in general, they could end up impacting detentions far beyond those immediately supervised by the federal courts. They might, in fact, impact superficially-unrelated military activities, such as the planning of operations, the selection of interrogation methods, or even the decision to target individuals with lethal force….

The other thing the detentions issue reminded me of was a quote from a document I was recently reading. The document has historical significance, and is of great importance in understanding how the dark and secretive forces that are now essentially running this country gained such power and influence.

A Look Back at the Doolittle Report

From the Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, commissioned by the President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954 (otherwise known as the Doolittle Report - PDF, bold emphases added):

As long as it remains national policy, another important requirement is an aggressive covert psychological, political and paramilitary organization more effective, more unique, and, if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy. No one should be permitted to stand in the way of the prompt, efficient and secure accomplishment of this mission....

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

Looks like it took them almost 50 years to fulfill the latter prediction, when Dick Cheney informed us the U.S. was going over to the “dark side”. Of course, they’d made their infernal choice decades ago, and the U.S. citizenry is still catching up with the ramifications of those hidden decisions and multiple crimes.

Also, now the enemy is not world communism, but the forces of Al Qaeda, who (supposed) wish to found a world-wide Islamic Caliphate. Of course, tomorrow the enemy may be world communism again, when the war drive against China is activated in earnest, or perhaps it will be the “Asian hordes” once again.

This is not a time for politics as usual. The "consensus building" of President Obama's administration is a cruel joke upon the people of America and the world. What is needed is boldness in opposition, a readiness to speak the complete truth, and the preparation of the American people to accept this truth, and make the links between Wall Street's stranglehold over any economic "reform", and the insane military drive for extension of U.S. power around the world. The latter has led this country into the darkest crevices of human historical actions: to the secret prison and dungeon, to the torture chamber, to the use of technological devices and sciences to watch, control, and murder countless human beings.

"Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply." It is worth considering well the implications of this statement for all of us.

Cross-posted at FDL/The Seminal

Scott Horton Drops the Bomb on Gitmo: Massive Cover-up of Murder Exposed

When it comes to the torture scandal, I agree with Andrew Sullivan: there's not been as big a story on the lies and crimes committed under the U.S. torture program since the Abu Ghraib photos were released. This story has no pictures, but the details are in and of themselves gruesome in the extreme.

Andy Worthington, who knows more about the Guantanamo prisoners than any other journalist, wrote of Scott Horton's bombshell article in Harper's Magazine:

Despite studying Guantánamo on a full-time basis for nearly four years, this is one of the most chilling accounts of the prison that I have ever read, and one which should not only lead to an independent inquiry, but also to calls to press ahead with the closure of Guantánamo — and the repatriation of as many prisoners as possible — without further delay.

Horton's story, The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle, is dense, and full of amazing facts about the deaths of three Guantanamo prisoners, officially by "suicide." The article is a veritable prosecutor's brief accusing the U.S. government, under both the Bush and Obama administration, of criminal cover-up of these deaths, which were, it seems more and more likely, murder.

We will be absorbing the various facts revealed in this article for weeks or months to come, and it is my fervent hope that tremendous heat will be put on to have an independent investigation. As Sullivan notes, no one in the government can be trusted to investigate this case. It will take a Blue Ribbon panel, or a tribunal, or at the very least an independent prosecutor with power of subpoena.

I'm going to post a bit of Horton's article (I believe "fair use"), but you have to read the entire thing. Really. (I haven't even included any quotes from Horton's compelling story about how the Obama administration jacked around the whistleblowers, then dropped the investigation. After reading Horton, take a look at Keith Olbermann's interview with him on the Jan. 18 edition of Countdown.

Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached.

All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred....

The compound was not visible from the main road, and the access road was chained off. The Guardsman who told Davila about the compound had said, “This place does not exist,” and Hickman, who was frequently put in charge of security for all of Camp America, was not briefed about the site. Nevertheless, Davila said, other soldiers—many of whom were required to patrol the outside perimeter of Camp America—had seen the compound, and many speculated about its purpose. One theory was that it was being used by some of the non-uniformed government personnel who frequently showed up in the camps and were widely thought to be CIA agents.

A friend of Hickman’s had nicknamed the compound “Camp No,” the idea being that anyone who asked if it existed would be told, “No, it doesn’t.” He and Davila made a point of stopping by whenever they had the chance; once, Hickman said, he heard a “series of screams” from within the compound....

By dawn, the news had circulated through Camp America that three prisoners had committed suicide by swallowing rags. Colonel Bumgarner called a meeting of the guards, and at 7:00 a.m. at least fifty soldiers and sailors gathered at Camp America’s open-air theater....

According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags. But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes....

All the families requested independent autopsies. The Saudi prisoners were examined by Saeed Al-Ghamdy, a pathologist based in Saudi Arabia. Al-Salami, from Yemen, was inspected by Patrice Mangin, a pathologist based in Switzerland. Both pathologists noted the removal of the structure that would have been the natural focus of the autopsy: the throat. Both pathologists contacted the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, requesting the missing body parts and more information about the previous autopsies. The institute did not respond to their requests or queries. (It also did not respond to a series of calls I placed requesting information and comment.)

When Al-Zahrani viewed his son’s corpse, he saw evidence of a homicide. “There was a major blow to the head on the right side,” he said. “There was evidence of torture on the upper torso, and on the palms of his hand. There were needle marks on his right arm and on his left arm.” None of these details are noted in the U.S. autopsy report. “I am a law enforcement professional,” Al-Zahrani said. “I know what to look for when examining a body.”

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For those who are interested, here's a link (PDF) to the Seton Hall law school investigation into the 2006 "suicides," an investigation that was key to breaking the story open.

Bagram Interviews, ACLU Letter on Child Prisoners, Obama Seals Up Secrets

Yesterday [11/28], my [Daily Kos] diary on the Washington Post and New York Times articles regarding the existence of torture at a black-site, Special Operations-run prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, sparked a lot of comments. These spanned the spectrum from incredulity at the torture reports to speculations regarding Obama's place in this story.

I want to do a number of things with this follow-up diary. I'd like to highlight one of the New York Times prisoner interviews (long excerpts of which are now posted at the Times), that of Hamidullah, a 42-year-old poor farmer from rural Kandahar Province, who due to the war had to leave his farm, and now tries to make his living as a "spare auto-parts dealer".

I also want to take note of a letter from the ACLU to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "on efforts to bring U.S. policy regarding the treatment, detention and trial of juveniles into compliance with international law." In addition, I think it's worth noting a special report at the Boston Globe on the struggle between the Obama administration and spy agencies over the declassification of decades of secret government documents.

The interview with Hamidullah

I've chosen to highlight this interview because the seizure, detention, interrogation, and release of this 42-year-old farmer took place entirely within Obama's months as commander-in-chief. Note that, per the earlier articles, the White House had no comment to make on this and other stories published over the weekend.

There can be, of course, no independent verification of Hamidullah's story. That would be impossible at this point. The existence of the Bagram black site prison is "classified." However, the New York Times noted that the interviews were conducted independently, and were consistent in their details with what other human rights workers interviewing detainees had reported. Since these prisoners were released, I'd add, and not considered ideological or organized opponents of the U.S., they don't, it seems to me, have any particular advantage in making the reports they do.

From the Hamidullah interview (as much as I believe fair use will allow - all bold emphases I have added):

I was in my house with my family, and we had a guest. It was night; about 11:30 p.m. They raided the house and arrested me and my guest. They tied my hands and blindfolded me. A kind of hood was put on my head. It was five and a half months ago in early June....

Then they put me in the Tor jail. I can’t remember the number of days I spent there because it’s hard to tell days from nights in the black jail, but I think every day they came twice to ask questions.

They took me to their own room to ask the questions. They beat up other people in the black jail, but not me. But the problem was that they didn’t let me sleep. There was shouting noise so you couldn’t sleep....

The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place. It is a place where everybody is afraid. In the black jail, they can do anything to detainees.

Hamidullah notes that the Red Cross is not allowed "to see or communicate" with any of the prisoners. He reports his being stripped naked in front of the interrogators and interpreters. While he says he didn't literally see anyone tortured, he could hear "crying" and "moaning" of other prisoners.

When they took us they tied up our hands and blindfolded us and covered our ears....

When I was in the black jail it was very difficult. I couldn’t even think how I felt. If I wanted to go to the bathroom, I banged on the doors for hours and no one came. It was too difficult.

It may be easy for some to dismiss Hamidullah's tale, or the fact that he feared at the time he would never get out of the main Bagram prison, after transferred there from the black site, because he'd talked to other prisoners who had been there "for years." But for those who do, they should think of the moral burden carried by themselves for making such a dismissal, under these circumstances. What we need instead is a full investigation. No more secrets!

ACLU Asks Obama Administration to Comply with UN Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict

Before the Washington Post published their story on the Bagram black site, highlighting the torture of teenaged captives of U.S. Special Forces, earlier this month the ACLU had written a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "requesting updated data on juveniles in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan and information on efforts to bring U.S. policy regarding the treatment, detention and trial of juveniles into compliance with international law."

In May 2008, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child conducted a review of U.S. compliance with the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. The U.S. is a signatory of this protocol. The review found that 513 Iraqi children were imprisoned by the U.S. military as "imperative threats to security." Moreover, the U.S. "had transferred an unknown number of additional children to Iraqi custody." As of April 2008, approximately 10 juveniles were reported being held at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

We know now, thanks to the Washington Post article the other day, which interviewed two teenaged prisoners previously incarcerated at the Bagram black site, what kind of mistreatment, amounting to torture, in my opinion, these children and teens have experienced.

From the Post article:

The two teenagers -- Issa Mohammad, 17, and Abdul Rashid, who said he is younger than 16 -- said in interviews this week that they were punched and slapped in the face by their captors during their time at Bagram air base, where they were held in individual cells. Rashid said his interrogator forced him to look at pornography alongside a photograph of his mother.

The ACLU letter to Gates noted that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in its review had uncovered reports of juvenile mistreatment by the U.S. military, including length of detention and conditions of confinement of juvenile detainees, and lack of adequate access to education, legal services and physical and psychological recovery services.

The committee also was concerned that children were being charged and prosecuted for war crimes without consideration for their status as juveniles. Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Canadian Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces, will be charged in a military commission for allegedly throwing a hand grenade that killed an Army medic and wounded others in Afghanistan.

The human rights community and progressives in general should see to it that Gates' feet are held to the fire on this, and pressure put on the Obama administration to fulfill their obligations to the Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict.

The full letter to Gates can be found here. The full report of the U.N. CRC is here (PDF).

Report: Obama to Maintain Secrecy on Millions of Military/Intel Docs

While not specifically about torture or the Bagram base, not too tangentially, this story about the fight over state secrecy, in terms of ever finding out what this government does, is important. The Boston Globe has a special report by Bryan Bender on how the Obama administration, flummoxed by intelligence agency interference and obstinacy regarding the declassification of documents, many over 25 years old, has led Obama to decide to continue the secret hold on these materials, which originally were to be released on Dec. 31 of this year.

The release was an extension of earlier holds put on the declassification by both Clinton and Bush administrations. The Bender article describes the struggle within the state bureaucracy over these documents, and it's difficult to see anyone, including Obama, who to his credit has made some play for greater transparency and openness, looking good about what is unfolding. The Obama administration appears to not have just been defeated on this, but some of their new proposals apparently are contrary to earlier policies regarding openness made in the early days of the administration.

From the Boston Globe article:

WASHINGTON - President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year, according to administration officials.

The missed deadline spells trouble for the White House’s promises to introduce an era of government openness, say advocates, who believe that releasing historical information enforces a key check on government behavior. They cite as an example the abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, including domestic spying and assassinations of foreign officials....

The failure to meet the disclosure deadline “does not augur well for new, more ambitious efforts to advance classification reform,’’ said Steven Aftergood, a specialist on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “If binding deadlines can be extended more or less at will, then any new declassification requirements will be similarly subject to doubt or defiance.’’

Besides the larger picture around declassification and ever knowing our own history, the failure to declassify even old documents -- in this case, over 400 million pages of documents going back to World War II -- means that the scandals and abuses of the present day are also likely to never be fully understood or revealed, including the facts around U.S. use of torture.

It is time this country squarely face the momentous task of changing the direction we are headed. Recent events are clearly demonstrating the folly of putting all hope of change into one man, or even the electoral process alone, per se. We need powerful investigations, a vibrant and active press and citizenry, and a political leadership that is not afraid to make the hard choices.

If Obama makes a decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and not begin a withdrawal, it will be a decision as fateful as Bush's to illegally invade Iraq. It will be near-impossible to double-back on this path once launched (indeed, the fact that Obama is about to escalate the war is related to the instance of first invading that country).

As an example of how it otherwise could be, see Ray McGovern's excellent article at Truthout, discussing a different president's decision on a different war, and a sober assessment of how things could have been different.

Originally posted at Daily Kos