Two Important Articles Expose Government Torture Practices

Stephen Soldz has a new article out at Counterpunch: Pentagon IG Report Details Central Role of Psychologists in Detainee Interrogations and Abuse -- Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo. Additionally, the New York Times has an article today on the growing chorus of official criticism aimed at Bush's interrogation policies. The NYT article validates, though with much less details, Soldz's reporting on the use of "reverse engineering" by the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Program (SERE) of its POW training into torture practiced on detainees in the government's "war on terror". The use of torture by the U.S. has been documented from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq to Afghanistan to U.S. secret prisons abroad.

Dr. Soldz based his article on the declassification of a Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (OIG) report, "Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse". The report was dated August 26, 2006. One result of this investigation was that it seemed to expedite the issuance of the new Army Field Manual 2-22.3, "Human Intelligence Collector Operations" (AFM). I have critiqued the AFM before, which even in its "new" version still contains interrogation techniques that are abusive and constitute psychological torture.

Soldz highlights portions of the OIG report that detail the use of SERE psychologists in the implementation of coercive interrogation techniques in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He writes, quoting the OIG report:

Central to SERE is the role of psychologists. A psychologist is required to be present during certain aspects of the process, such as waterboarding as a "safety officer," to stop the training if (s)he perceives the trainee is being overly-traumatized....

"On September 16, 2002, the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency co-hosted a SERE psychologist conference at Fort Bragg for JTF-170 [the military component responsible for interrogations at Guantanamo] interrogation personnel. The Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team from Guantanamo Bay also attended the conference. Joint Personnel Recovery Agency personnel briefed JTF-170 representatives on the exploitation techniques and methods used in resistance (to interrogation) training at SERE schools. The JTF-170 personnel understood that they were to become familiar with SERE training and be capable of determining which SERE information and techniques might be useful in interrogations at Guantanamo. Guantanamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team personnel understood that they were to review documentation and standard operating procedures for SERE training in developing the standard operating procedure for the JTF-170, if the command approved those practices. The Army Special Operations Command was examining the role of interrogation support as a " Sere Psychologist competency area" (p. 25, emphasis added.)

For those of opposed to the participation of psychologists in abusive interrogations, this document contains the first definitive proof that the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), consisting at that point of psychologists and psychiatrists (later, the military announced that they preferred psychologists for this role), were deliberately trained in abusive SERE techniques.

The NYT article also mentions the SERE training, as well as Senator Carl Levin's announcement that he will hold hearings into the SERE torture trainings.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he found the report “very troubling” and intended to hold hearings on how the SERE training methods became the basis for interrogation. “They were put to a purpose that was never intended,” Mr. Levin said.

The NYT highlighting of various critiques of the administration's interrogation policies comes at an opportune time, as the article makes clear:

The Bush administration is nearing completion of a long-delayed executive order that will set new rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The order is expected to ban the harshest techniques used in the past, including the simulated drowning tactic known as waterboarding, but to authorize some methods that go beyond those allowed in the military by the Army Field Manual.

President Bush has insisted that those secret “enhanced” techniques are crucial, and he is far from alone. (emphases mine)

Dr. Soldz's article returns to the important subject of the use of psychologists in Bush's torture plans, and the facilitating role of the American Psychological Association in giving institutional cover to these inhumane and criminal policies.

...like the Bush administration, the APA is always against torture and abusive treatment but never actually sees it. Thus, the APA has never expressed concern as reports have come flooding out suggesting that abuse treatment (whether formally "torture" or merely "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment") is common in US detention facilities holding so-called enemy combatants. Neither has the APA expressed concern at the repeated reports of psychologist participation in abusive interrogations. Rather, they have attacked the critics of psychologist abuse....

However, the APA, like other health provider professional organizations felt the heat as these reports escalated. Thus, in June 2005 they convened a Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS), clearly designed to provide a rubber stamp on the participation of psychologists in national security interrogations....

Especially relevant, given the revelations in this newly-released OIG, at least two of the members of this Task Force had direct SERE connections....

Given what the OIG's report reveals about the central role of SERE in the development of US abusive interrogation techniques, as well as revelations regarding other PENS members, it appears ever more likely that the APA appointed some of this country's top torturers to formulate its policy on participation in abusive interrogations. The PENS report lacks any credibility. If the APA maintained a shred of decency, they would take the opportunity provided by the release of the OIG report to admit that they made a mistake in creating the PENS Task Force and would immediately set aside the PENS report and begin a new open discussion of the facts and the ethics involved in participation in national security interrogations.

Please go read Soldz's entire article, for he has done a terrific job of parsing the OIG's over 100 page report. And also, support his call, along with Physicians for Human Rights and torture researcher Dr. Steven Miles, for congressional investigations. Now that Senator Levin has apparently responded to this call, I'd suggest calling his office and offering support.

The Bush Administration plans to issue "guidelines" for CIA interrogation that will go beyond what is already allowed in the Army Field Manual. The AFM already allows, for "special" cases, use of sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, debilitation of the prisoner, and techniques that enhance fearfulness. Long ago, Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle demonstrated how these activities alone can bring about a state of "disordered brain syndrome", producing organic states of confusion, mental impairment, and delirium, often with long-term effects.

Turn up the heat now on the Bush administration and demand NO to ALL Torture Practices!

Shocking: 2003 CIA/APA "Workshop" Plots New Torture Plans

Imagine that the top behavioral scientists of this country got together with top secret intelligence agencies, not 20, 30 or 50 years ago, but today, to plot new ways to conduct torture interrogations. Imagine that there was irrefutable proof of this. And finally, imagine they did this all in plain view.

Imagine no longer, and read how the CIA, the RAND Corporation, and the American Psychological Association (APA) met on July 17-18, 2003, and in a workshop entitled the "Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory" discussed new ways to utilize drugs and sensory bombardment techniques to break down interrogatees. The latter are signal techniques of psychological torture long utilized by the CIA and other intelligence agencies and military around the world.

The kicker is: the CIA denies it uses torture, and the APA claims that its official position is against torture and involvement in psychologists in research, planning or implementation of coercive interrogation. So what's going on?

Let's get to the meat of the revelations right away. At Arlington, Virginia, at the headquarters of the privately-held but long linked-to-the-government think tank, the RAND Corporation, approximately 40 participants met at a "workshop" to discuss the issue of deception in interrogations, with "generous financial support" from the CIA, which also provided "operational expertise". The participants included:

...research psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists who study various aspects of deception and representatives from the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense with interests in intelligence operations. In addition, representatives from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security were present.

What did they discuss?

According to APA's Public Policy Office, who publishes an online newspaper called, with perhaps an unconscious taste for irony, "Spin":

The scenarios dealt broadly with issues such as embassy walk-in informants, threat assessment, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement interrogation and debriefing. Participants were prompted in advance to think about research issues and practical considerations they wanted the broader group to consider. Across the two days, there were a number of thought-provoking discussions suggesting the need to develop both short-term and long-term research programs on deception

Research into Torture

The workshop proceeded to discuss various "scenarios", per their program. Some of these scenarios -- really questions for consideration by the agencies involved -- are not remarkable in and of themselves. Others appear potentially sinister.

But none are more sinister than those that appear in the section "Law Enforcement Interrogation and Debriefing". (All following quotes, unless otherwise noted, come from the APA's Government Policy: Science Policy website.)

Law enforcement routinely question witnesses and suspects regarding criminal activity. How do you tell if the individual is telling the truth, lying, or something in between? Acts of omission and acts of commission are both important to identify.

This truly is an ancient problem. The accused of former times were brought before judges and called to "the question". In the Parlements of France that preceded the French Revolution, the accused would be first given the question ordinaire, which only consisted of arms and legs stretched on the rack. If that didn't work, the accused would be encouraged to confess via the question extraordinaire, i.e., compelled to drink up to 20 jugs of water. (Thanks to Ian Davidson and his research in the marvelous book, Voltaire in Exile, for info on French medieval torture.)

But the modern APA and their police and intelligence cohorts have another idea.

How do we find out if the informant has knowledge of which s/he is not aware?

How important are differential power and status between witness and officer?

What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?....

What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?

The Unknown History of Psychological Torture, or How They Do It

Using drugs to influence interrogations; using sensory deprivation, distortion and overload or bombardment; these were signal techniques in a decades-long research program that came to be known by its most famous moniker, MKULTRA. Its techniques were codified by the early 1960s in a CIA Counterinsurgency Interrogation Manual, also known by its codename, KUBARK.

According to numerous researchers, the CIA, and the psychologists and psychiatrists they contracted to work with them, including many of the top behavioral scientists of their day, experimented with many drugs in their quest to find a "truth" drug that would open up the recalcitrant and expose the liar and the dissembler. It's not hard to find information on this in many places, some dubious, some not, on the Internet. The CIA has declassified a paper from its in-house intelligence journal from the early 1960s, "'Truth' Drugs in Interrogation", where they discuss research on drugs for interrogation ranging from scopolamine, amphetamine and barbiturates to cannabis, LSD, and mescaline. The CIA authors discuss the limitations of using drugs, based on research, and conclude that a special use for drugs may be found in detection of deception.

The general abhorrence in Western countries for the use of chemical agents "to make people do things against their will" has precluded serious systematic study (at least as published openly) of the potentialities of drugs for interrogation....

...at best a drug can only serve as an aid to an interrogator who has a sure understanding of the psychology and techniques of normal interrogation. In some respects, indeed, the demands on his skill will be increased by the baffling mixture of truth and fantasy in drug-induced output. And the tendency against which he must guard in the interrogatee to give the responses that seem to be wanted without regard for facts will be heightened by drugs: the literature abounds with warnings that a subject in narcosis is extremely suggestible.

It seems possible that this suggestibility and the lowered guard of the narcotic state might be put to advantage in the case of a subject feigning ignorance of a language or some other skill that had become automatic with him. Lipton found sodium amytal helpful in determining whether a foreign subject was merely pretending not to understand English. By extension, one can guess that a drugged interrogatee might have difficulty maintaining the pretense that he did not comprehend the idiom of a profession he was trying to hide.

But the quotes from the CIA/RAND/APA deception workshop are not from 40 years ago. They are from 2003! Evidently the research into using drugs on captured or arrested or incarcerated prisoners or "enemy combatants" has not ended.

Sensory Bombardment, or Why Can't We Watch the Movie "The Ipcress File?

In the hit 1960s spy drama, The Ipcress File, starring a young Michael Caine as the British intelligence agent Harry Palmer. Palmer stumbles upon a secret government project codenamed Ipcress, which stands for "Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS".
In the film, Palmer is himself tortured by the proponents of Ipcress, shut into a small chamber and bombarded for hours by extremely loud noises and music, meant, it seems to drive him insane. He keeps his sense of personal self by jamming a secretly hidden nail into the palm of his hand: the pain keeps him centered and helps him resist the brainwashing.

I've gone into the plot because if you live in the U.S., you cannot obtain this film new on DVD or video. Despite the fact it stars the popular star Michael Caine, and despite the fact it won British awards for Best Screenplay and the BAFTA Award for Best British Film of 1965, and despite siring three sequels, the picture has not been released in the U.S. for many years. It's probably some legal hang-up, but given the subject matter, one wonders.

Research into sensory deprivation, sensory and perceptual distortion, and sensory overload or bombardment constituted a gigantic research project in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience from the early 1950s through the late 1970s. Subsequently, the research, which had engendered hundreds if not thousands of papers, many of them with research funded by the Pentagon, seemed to disappear. Yet strangely, the topic did not disappear. It remained part of the apparatus of secret intelligence programs, and one would presume, classified research.

I have written some on this before in my recent essay, "Heart of Darkness: Sensory Deprivation and U.S. Torture -- Where from Here?" But what is needed is a full history, and an explanation that the layman will understand. I will attempt a small example of the latter here. But those wishing to investigate further will have to send away to their local used bookseller to find two important books that document this history and research:

Sensory Deprivation, A Symposium held at Harvard Medical School, Solomon, Philip, Jack H. Mendelson, Philip E. Kubzansky, Richard Trumbull, P. Herbert Leiderman & Donald Wexler, Editors, 1961, Harvard University Press

Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research, John Zubek, Editor, 1969, Appleton-Century-Crofts

Sensory Bombardment and Deprivation: A Crash Course

The brain needs a certain amount of stimulation. Early developmental studies show that early sensory deprivation during formative periods of development often results in the failure of the somatosensory systems to develop normally, both neuroanatomically and neurochemically. For those of you into such disputes, "nature" needs "nurture" to express itself.

What the research on sensory deprivation/distortion/overload demonstrated was that the nervous system is adapted to a range of stimuli, and requires an certain minimum of cortical activation. If this range is exceeded (sensory overload) or is lacking (sensory deprivation), the brain does not operate correctly. A special case is sensory or perceptual distortion. As the researchers got more deeply into it, they found that distortion of expected stimuli, or producing a vague, featureless visual field, caused greater disruption of psychological functioning than sensory deprivation per se.

What all this comes down to is that the CIA and Pentagon, searching for ways to disrupt the will and functioning of those being interrogated, found in the various modalities of sensory disruption a shiny new tool in their armamentarium of coercive techniques, joining it to isolation (itself a special form of deprivation), stress positions, sleep deprivation, and the induction of fear and physical debility (e.g., starvation).

According to the British writer Dominic Streatfeild, in his recent book Brainwashed: The Secret History of Mind Control (2007, St. Martin's Press), both the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) at Guantanamo Bay, and the British Intelligence Corps have lately experimented with the effects of loud, overpowering sounds upon interrogatees, including "babies crying, discordant car horns, bloodcurdling screams and Chinese opera tapes" (p. 360). Americans preferred to torture via thrash-metal music and white noise.

The actual choice of noise doesn't appear to make much difference: what matters is that it's loud, repetitive and annoying. To an interrogation subject who hasn't been allowed proper sleep for a couple of days, an unexpected cacophony will cause him to jump out of his skin. This is how the big boys maintain the shock of capture.

How CIA Uses This Kind of Torture

The CIA's torture manual, known as KUBARK, declassified in part some years ago, but still bearing many redactions, describes in its Chapter IX, "Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources" its theory and practice of coercion. I will highlight what it says on sensory forms of torture, as it also describes in this chapter alone use of threats and fear, induction of weakness and debility, hypnosis, narcosis (drugs), and pain.

Coercive procedures are designed not only to exploit the resistant source's internal conflicts and induce him to wrestle with himself but also to bring a superior outside force to bear upon the subject's resistance....

All coercive techniques are designed to induce regression. As Hinkle notes in "The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject as it Affects Brain Function" (7), the result of external pressures of sufficient intensity is the loss of those defenses most recently acquired by civilized man: "... the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to meet new, challenging, and complex situations, to deal with trying interpersonal relations, and to cope with repeated frustrations. Relatively small degrees of homeostatic derangement, fatigue, pain, sleep loss, or anxiety may impair these functions." As a result, "most people who are exposed to coercive procedures will talk and usually reveal some information that they might not have revealed otherwise."

So much for the idea that torture produces nothing. It does in fact produce information, it's the reliability of the information that is often in question. But this author has direct experience of talking with people who have been interrogated under torture, and I can tell you that it does sometimes produce actionable intelligence, at the expense of the humanity and suffering of the "subject". Much of the time, however, it produces nothing, because the arrested person is innocent, or has been made too disabled by the torture, or is producing what he or she hope the interrogator wants, irregardless of truth value.

The CIA puts it this way:

Psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist. This pragmatic objection has somewhat the same validity for a counterintelligence interrogation as for any other. But there is one significant difference. Confession is a necessary prelude to the CI interrogation of a hitherto unresponsive or concealing source.

...the use of coercive techniques will rarely or never confuse an interrogatee so completely that he does not know whether his own confession is true or false. He does not need full mastery of all his powers of resistance and discrimination to know whether he is a spy or not. Only subjects who have reached a point where they are under delusions are likely to make false confessions that they believe.

As for sensory distortion:

...a person cut off from external stimuli turns his awareness inward, upon himself, and then projects the contents of his own unconscious outwards, so that he endows his faceless environment with his own attributes, fears, and forgotten memories....

(1) the deprivation of sensory stimuli induces stress; (2) the stress becomes unbearable for most subjects; (3) the subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli; and (4) some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, and produce delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects.

The astute reader will note that KUBARK does not mention sensory overload (although it does mention disruption of familiar "patterns" in a person's life). But the research literature is clear: sensory overstimulation is meant to disrupt a person's normal functioning, and like other forms of psychological torture, leaves scars upon a person's psyche, having been subjected to a regimen of dependency, debility and dread.

I've gone into some detail here so the casual but interested reader can understand the import of what is here discovered.

Stop Psychological Research into Coercive Interrogation -- Summary

1. The CIA bankrolled a meeting of behavioral scientists, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, under the banner of the American Psychological Association, and hosted by the RAND Corporation. Also present were officials from the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the White House.

2. At this workshop, the participants considered ways of combatting deception in interrogations. Two ways they discussed were consistent with a long-standing use of coercive interrogation techniques -- use of drugs in interrogation, and the use of sensory manipulation of subjects, both in order to produce debilitating changes in subjects that make them more pliable in interrogations

3. This meeting proves that the research that made up the mind control project of the 1950s and 1960s is not dead, and that psychological forms of torture and mind manipulation are studied at the highest levels of government, and with the connivance and collaboration of major U.S. academic and social institutions, in this case the American Psychological Association.

A group of psychologists in the APA are fighting to stop the use of psychologists in the kinds of interrogations discussed in this article. You can read about it here and here. I suggest the following: write to the President of the APA, and tell her your opposition to the kinds of activities documented herein.

I would also suggest that these activities and the deception workshop itself involved unethical, if not illegal, actions, and that the members involved should be sanctioned. -- You can contact Sharon Brehm, Ph.D., President of the APA at her webpage, where there is a form for this purpose. Or you can write APA at

American Psychological Association, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242

Or call the Ethics Office of APA and complain directly: (800) 374-2721, extension 5930. Tell them to direct your message to Dr. Stephen Behnke, the APA flack working on these issues.

Democrats Cave to Bush on Iraq Funding

An AP story published online at the New York Times today reports the Democratic Party Congressional leadership has decided to give Bush his war funding for the occupation of Iraq, at least until the end of the fiscal year in September.

In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday....

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. [emphases mine]

The story adds that Democrats "are expected to seek other opportunities to challenge Bush's handling of the unpopular conflict later this year". Additionally, they are said to be tying passage of the long-stymied minimum wage hike to the Iraq funding. But nothing can hide their craven capitulation to the Bush veto and the war party's thirst for militarist imperialism.

The minimum wage maneuver is all the more obscene, as it attempts to link the needs of the lowest and most vulnerable strata of workers to the needs of the war machine. One would have thought that only the GOP could turn the minimum wage into the equivalent of blood money, but the Democrats appear to be outdoing themselves these days.

The article also states that the legislation was "subject to change", and the story's author could get no Democrat to speak on the record about the pending legislation. What a surprise!

It remains to see if this is a trial balloon, or the last popgun shot in the Democrat's phony antiwar stance.

Did Gonzales Skip Out on SERE/Torture Training?

Also posted at NION

Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is known to have served in the U.S. Air Force. Multiple sources describe his transfer to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where he spent two years, 1975-1977. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Academy, in those days SERE training was mandatory for all cadets between their 3rd and 4th years. But Gonzales never made it to his third year, per Wikipedia's anonymous author(s):

Prior to beginning his third year at the academy, which would have caused him to incur a further service obligation, he transferred to Rice University (Houston, Texas), where he was a member of Lovett College and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1979. He then earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1982. [Emphasis mine]

Now the further service obligation was probably another sign up, as he had already been in the Air Force four years, spending the first two years in Alaska as an enlisted man. But could the "further obligation" have been attending SERE training, known to be horribly onerous?

For those not familiar with SERE, the acronymn stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. A program that started with the Air Force, and had its roots in resistance to capture programs in the Cold War, it spread to the other services over the years.

One area of concentration in SERE's curriculum is resistance to interrogation, and is said to include teaching of and experience of the following:

extreme temperatures

waterboarding - being tied to a board with the feet higher than the head and having water poured into the nose

noise stress - playing very loud and dissonant music and sound effects. Recordings have been reported to include babies wailing inconsolably, cats meowing, and irritating music (including a record by Yoko Ono)

sexual embarrassment

religious dilemma - being given the choice of either seeing a religious book desecrated or revealing secrets to interrogators.

flag desecration

prolonged cramped or restrictive confinement

sleep deprivation

starvation

mock execution

overcoming food aversion (finding nutrition from alternate sources which might include insects, roadkill, dumpsters)

height/water/enclosed spaces

physical beating

"stress inoculation"

According to a document discovered by Mark Benjamin of Salon in a ACLU cache of released government documents:

A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said instructors from SERE also taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba.

"When I arrived at GTMO," reads the statement, "my predecessor arranged for SERE instructors to teach their techniques to the interrogators at GTMO ... The instructors did give some briefings to the Joint Interrogation Group interrogators."

This is directly relevant to those in the American Psychological Association who are fighting to gain a moratorium on psychologist participation on interrogations, such as those at Guantánamo, and who maintain the leadership of the APA is pro-government and pro-torture, despite all their protestations and pretty, if legalistic, resolutions.

Why? Because the the Chief Psychologist of SERE at the time was Colonel Morgan Banks. Banks was also, and importantly, handpicked by then APA President Gerald Koocher to serve with five other members of the military (out of 10 members total) on the PENS committee of the APA, which in 2005-06 investigated the question of psychologist involvement in coercive interrogations and torture in Bush's "war on terror". It issued a report that formally condemned torture, and psychologist participation in same, but supported ongoing psychologist participation in national security interrogations.

For his part,Banks denied to the Washington Monthly introducing SERE techniques to Guantánamo interrogators, but then he may not have been "chief of the Interrogation Control Element". Nevertheless, he is

responsible for the training and oversight of all Army SERE Psychologists, who include those involved in SERE training and in the repatriation of former detainees and prisoners of war. He provides technical support and consultation to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support, and his office currently provides the only Army training for psychologists in repatriation planning and execution, interrogation support, and behavioral profiling.

By the way, thanks to the Kiley report (of then Army Surgeon General, the now-disgraced Kevin Kiley), we know that all Behavioral Science Consultation Team or BSCT members at Guantánamo must undergo SERE training. And, New York Times writers M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks had a source tell them that Banks was intimately involved in constructing interrogation policy at Guantánamo, just as he had been when stationed at Baghram Air Force Base in Afghanistan in 2002-2003:

We also learned from a Pentagon official that the SERE program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for the "behavioral science consultants" who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy (we've been unable to learn the content of that guidance).

And this is the man who was to dispassionately investigate and counsel on the role of psychologists in interrogations for the oh-so-liberal APA?

Which takes me back to Alberto Gonzales. He, of course, is infamous for counseling Bush for rejecting Geneva Convention protections to prisoners captured in the military actions against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Here's a link to his memo of January 25, 2002.

Would Gonzales have as easily made his recommendation to allow torture if he himself had suffered, as many Air Force cadets of his age did, the torments of SERE training? Or if he had taken the training, and I cannot be sure he didn't undertake it, could that experience have hardened him, made him ready to revenge his sufferings on nameless men, women, and children he had never seen, who would undergo coercive interrogations because they were deemed "enemy combatants" in a new kind of war that Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales felt existed above national and international law?

We can't answer that question. But one thing for sure, the torture continues. The perpetrators escape accountability. And the nation sleeps in restless slumber, dreaming of American Idol fame, of Jack Bauer rescue and failure, and of invisible American and Iraqi corpses, hidden from the T.V. screens.

Gonzales's likely skipping of SERE training is like Bush's playing hooky from National Guard service. Both are symbols of American adolescent irresponsibility and hauteur: let the others do the dirty work, and screw everybody else.

Baghdad Fallen: Diplomats Ordered into Flak Jackets

Crossposted at Daily Kos

No. Bagdad has not fallen to the "insurgents". Not yet. But it's only a matter of time before the headline of this diary appears upon the front pages of U.S. newspapers.

Today, the Green Zone of Baghdad -- the so-called safety zone that is the hub of U.S. operations, a 3.5 square mile area in the heart of the city -- was hit by mortar fire for the second day in a row. According to an AP report, two people were killed and at least 10 wounded. The State Department minimized the attack, but U.S. Embassy officials "ordered diplomats to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings."

It's the anti-surge. Instead of making Baghdad safer, the various groups that make up the Iraqi insurgency are stepping up their attacks in the very heart of the U.S. war and occupation regime.

Both the intensity and skill of the attack were noteworthy. The shells, believed to be 122mm, exploded in rapid succession over about a three-minute period.

The blasts were relatively close to one another, suggesting an experienced mortar crew using more than one launcher.

On May 3, four Asian contractors were killed by a rocket attack in the Green Zone. Yesterday, nine were wounded. Over and over, in the AP article, Americans are voicing their fears:

Nevertheless, the recent increase in attacks has raised alarm among American staffers living and working in what had been considered an oasis of safety in the turbulent Iraqi capital....

Later this year, the United States plans to open a massive new embassy inside the Green Zone despite the ongoing security threat. Embassy staffers have expressed concern that the new facility lacks enough space to house the estimated 1,000 employees in safety.

It was only a little over a month ago that a suicide bomber got into and blew up the cafeteria in the Iraqi Parliamentary Building. Meanwhile, as most news articles covering this story point out, such as this one from the Chicago Tribune, thousands of U.S. soldiers are searching for three soldiers reportedly captured in a surprise raid on a U.S. Humvee patrol. (Today, the Washington Post reports the names of the seven who were slain in the attack.)

The images are building up to an overwhelming sense of conclusion: events in Iraq are spiralling out of control, even from a strictly military point of view. One wonders if the sudden censorship of soldier-bloggers and the military shut down of sites like MySpace aren't related to efforts to stem the tide of information.

Even the British, who saw the departure of Bush ally, Blair, recently, have reversed course and saved the royal body of Prince Harry, announcing he will not be sent to Iraq, citing unacceptable risks and "specific threats".

No one is safe in Iraq today, least of all its ordinary citizens, who have died in the hundreds of thousands. Americans and their allies who felt safe in the Green Zone are beginning to bear the psychic and bloody cost of American imperial policy, and Bush's megalomania.

Today, the Senate failed to cut off war funds, though the vote was larger than ever to do so (67-29). But the entire affair in D.C. has a hallucinatory quality, as does the political analyses that surround it.

U.S. diplomatic staff cannot walk around even the Green Zone without wearing helmets and flak jackets. Rocket and mortar attacks are becoming a daily affair.

The U.S. must be forced to withdraw from Iraq now. Articles of impeachment are likely a necessity to remove the increasingly remote and Nero-esque Bush and his Rasputin-like cohort Cheney (if you can excuse the mixed historical metaphor).

As events related herein make clear: time is short. Tomorrow, Baghdad will be fallen.

[Updated: around 8:00 PM PDT, 5/16]

I wanted to add some links, as there are some sources that deserve credit on reporting a few days back on the fear growing in the Green Zone, and on the precautions ordered for diplomatic personnel.

ABC News: "U.S. Embassy: Wear Flak Jackets, Helmets"

Daily Kos diary by Olds88, 5/14/07, No Warning Sirens During Cheney Visit

McClatchy's story, 5/14/07, U.S. Embassy employees fearful over Green Zone attacks

BBC: War-torn Iraq 'facing collapse'

The latter is an important story, detailing a new British Chatham House think tank report:

Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, British foreign policy think tank Chatham House has warned.

The report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country.

Is Establishment Turning Against Bush Detainee Torture?

Daily Kos has an article by bejammin075 that quotes former Colin Powell Chief of Staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, as calling for impeachment investigations against Bush and Cheney. This may be remarkable in itself, but I found his rationale, as stated by Wilkerson in an interview with CNN, to be just as important. The man who part of the administration that built a phony case to go to war against Iraq, now says:

I would start my investigation into the detainee abuse issue, which constitutes, I think, a defilement of everything America stands for, and has done irreparable damage to our reputation, and thus to our power around the world. If that doesn't rate a 'high crime' definition, I don't know what does.

And I would also look closely at how we got into this war, particularly the cooking of the books in intelligence. [Emphasis is mine]

Wilkerson has been saying some pretty critical things about the Bush administration since he left some time ago, but the emphasis on detainee abuse, i.e., torture, is welcomed in any case. I wonder how many individuals within the administration or the establishment in general oppose Bush on this. What they don't tell us is how extended and expansive is the organizational reach of the agencies that research and implement this torture. Will they say the "C" word?

A Letter to Dr. Sharon Stephens Brehm, APA President

The following letter was sent to the President of the American Psychological Association, following the call by this blog for action to support the proposed moratorium against using psychologists in national security interrogations, since they have been compromised by copious reports and evidence of torture.

Dear Dr. Brehm,

I write to support Dr. Reisner's proposed moratorium. There is more than adequate evidence to demonstrate that psychologists have been involved in unethical and probably illegal interrogations, especially those related to work in Special Forces and BSCT teams.

I know of at least two specific instances of documented, direct psychologist misconduct during interrogations. Additionally, Former Army Surgeon General Kiley wrote in his report that BSCT hires from 2004 were primarily psychologists. If you put this simple fact together with the latest report from the International Red Cross on ongoing torture and misconduct concerning treatment of detainees and interrogations at Guantanamo, you have a high likelihood of psychologist misconduct.

The moratorium also must go with a greater openness and an end to secrecy surrounding the activities of the BSCT teams. Redacted documents should be released in unaltered form, and APA must demand this.

The future of the APA hangs by a thin thread, and it would be folly not to recognize this. I am an APA member, and talking with other members, I know that unhappiness with APA leadership on this question is wide-spread.

I also know that you have a tough job, and that many APA members support the current situation, including many in Division 19, but not only inclusive of them.

The history of professional, especially academic, psychology in collaborating with government entities in the preparation of interrogations that use torture is a sordid part of our history. It must end now if psychology is to emerge in the 21st century as a progressive and positive scientific force.

Otherwise, it will be anathemized and become, in the public's mind, congruent with the worst elements of human nature. If you think this is impossible, I ask you to reflect upon the Lysenko scandal among geneticists in the old Soviet Union.

Psychology may suffer soon the same fate. It will take leadership and courage to lead our guild away from this terrible future. I pray you have the wisdom to follow this course.

Sincerely,
XXXX XXXXXX, Ph.D.
San Francisco, CA

U.S. Forcibly Drugs Immigrants -- ACLU Suit

From the ACLU press release on May 8:

Two Men Given Powerful Drugs Against Their Will

LOS ANGELES - The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California has learned that two immigrants were forcibly sedated by the United States government. Raymond Soeoth and Amadou Diouf, clients in an ACLU of Southern California lawsuit, revealed that they had both been drugged involuntarily during attempts to deport them.

Diouf was under court protection from deportation when officers put him on an airplane for return to his native Senegal. When he attempted to protest to the flight captain, he was sedated against his will.

While undergoing deportation Soeoth, a Christian minister from Indonesia, was drugged by guards even after he explained he did not want to be sedated.

In the end, neither man was deported. Both men were released last February after approximately two years in a federal facility in San Pedro as part of a lawsuit in which the ACLU of Southern California has won the release of more than a dozen people held indefinitely in violation of federal rules.

“These druggings were medically unnecessary, immoral, and dangerous,” said ACLU of Southern California Staff Attorney Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents Diouf and Soeoth. “Officers sedated these perfectly sane men, apparently just to silence them. The routine nature of these actions raises serious questions about how common this practice is.”

An article published today in the Los Angeles Daily Journal documents the men’s experiences. The reporter learned about the drugging during interviews with Diouf and Soeoth.

Medical experts consulted by the ACLU of Southern California say the drugs used on Soeoth, Haldol and Cogentin, are used to treat psychosis and should not have been prescribed for someone with no history of mental illness. A federal policy prohibits medication of detainees “solely to facilitate transport, unless a medical professional determines that they present a danger to themselves or to others.” [emphasis added]

The ACLU said that is a loose medical standard that is open to abuse.

“It is frightening that the government is using anti-psychotic drugs on immigrants who have no history of mental illness,” Arulanantham said.

The ACLU of Southern California is aggressively investigating the practice with the pro-bono assistance of the law firm Munger, Tolles, and Olson LLP.

I want to know what medical professional determined these men were a danger to self and others, allowing government agents (who are unspecified, but presumably Homeland Security) to use powerful psychotropic drugs to unwilling victims. Haldol, in particular, can cause permanent nerve damange and a chronic tic-like condition called tardive dyskinesia, sometimes, though rarely, after one administration.

It is hard to keep registering one outrage after another, but this practice must be stopped. Hopefully, the ACLU suit will bring us more information on the policies and personnel involved in this heinous misuse of medical procedure.

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

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

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