Chris Floyd on the ABC Torture Revelations

Chris Floyd has captured the situation facing any pathetic soul unlucky enough to be a citizen of the United States at this point in history. Noting that torture was not restricted to "high value al Qaeda suspects," that the work of Bush and his National Security Council Principals have been involved from the very beginning in planning and implementing CIA/Pentagon torture post-9/11.

I offer Chris's conclusion as a coda to my own articles of recent days.

As mountains of evidence has already shown, these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used throughout the Terror War prison system, from top to bottom, on prisoners rounded up at random in mass raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, on innocent people sold into captivity by bounty hunters, on innocent people snatched off the streets in Asia, Africa, Europe. They've been used on "low-level prisoners" in Bagram, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, South Carolina, and all the other "secret prisons" and holding pens of the Terror War regime....

We are the degraded now, ruled by brutes: by deliberate torturers, military aggressors and mass murderers who walk the streets freely, live in wealth and comfort, receive public honors, and will never face justice, never have to answer for their crimes against humanity. If this were not so, these evil counsellors and their leader would already be subjected to the workings of the law: impeachment proceedings, criminal investigations, arrest, trial. The fact that they are not is yet another crime -- a crime in which the entire political establishment is deeply complicit.

We'll say it again: anyone in public life who accords these criminals the slightest legitimacy is an accomplice to their crimes. It's really that simple. You can move toward the light or you can hang back with the brutes.

Answering the Question -- "Will They Get Away with It?"

Buhdydharma, the intrepid web proprietor of Docudharma, has posted an article today asking if, after the revelations by ABC news that basically the entire top administration hierarchy has been implicated in the oversight and implementation of a secret torture program, right out of the White House, if after such a massive revelation Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. "will they get away with it?"

It has become obvious that left to her own devices Nancy Pelosi WILL let them get away with it....no matter what they do or how horrendous "it" is. She is the only one with the real authority to stop them. And she, apparently, will not. The answer then, seems to be: Yes, they will. And a new administration is not the answer either.

The implications here are truly chilling. If the Democrats won't pursue prosecution....We are faced with a government with NO internal or external checks. A government not subject to the law. A government which can wage aggressive war and torture with complete impunity. That is NOT hyperbole, it is where we stand at this very moment in time.

My colleague at Docudharma describes the situation accurately. He also notes that the inaction of a pivotal figure in this drama -- the ostensibly liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi -- marks her as a member of this same conspiracy, not least because "she was... partially informed that it was occurring." I made much the same point in an essay last December (also published at Docudharma and Daily Kos, with a vibrant discussion at each). Let's revisit what Pelosi had to say about her "briefings" in the light of today's knowledge:

"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

"I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

It may be time to ask both Pelosi and Harman what they knew and when they knew it. But I think we already know the answer to those questions, and it's not a comforting one. The ABC revelations -- that the U.S. leadership, including the president, vice-president, national security officers and secretaries of defense and state, the attorney general and the head of the CIA are all implicated in the specific instructions given to torturers, and not only approving but directing such torture -- represent as stark a confrontation with the truth of the complete corruption and evil that lies at the heart of our government as any we will get. What I wrote back last December seems almost quaint in its naivete in describing a political path out of the wilderness:

Let not those who profess progressive politics and really want to change this country sit back in silence or disbelief and let this kind of betrayal stand. Now is the time to change things. Not tomorrow. Not in November 2008. Not in some other lifetime. If we fail to speak out now, our acquiescence weakens the entire progressive cause, and all the elections in the world will not make such a stain any cleaner, or go away.

We could start by asking for the resignation from the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi, and the resignation from the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairmanship of John D. Rockefeller.

Now I can see that even such elementary statements of justice are insufficient to address the crisis at hand, even when joined with slogans shouting for impeachment of the execrable criminals Bush and Cheney.

(By the way, I called Pelosi's office today, asking for the Speaker's reaction or any statement on the ABC newsstory revelations. I spoke to a couple of staffers in her San Francisco office, and each time was told, after hearing my question, that the person I wished to talk to "was not in right now." This comic episode reminded me of the title of Franz Kafka's first novel, Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared, published, however as Amerika).)

Reading buhdydharma's latest plaintive post about the torture plotters in the White House, and their assault against elementary decency and political sanity, I realized the answer to his question could only be made with some advert to history, and the perspective the latter brings.

Answering the Question

So, will they get away with it?

Answer: in the short-term, yes. If there is no accountability or price the Bush team suffers for their crimes, there is no accountability or price the Democratic leadership suffers for their culpability or failure to act.

In the long-term, we will all pay. But the total bankruptcy -- political, moral, economic -- of the society will leave this entire crew, all the leadership of this society, including the full intelligentsia, inclusive of the blogosphere, as bankrupt. Bankrupt and ignorant of the lessons of history, lessons that were staring them in the face all the time, but they refused to acknowledge, drunk on the belief in their own omnipotency (in the case of the powerful) or in their own essential rightness (the case of the rest of us).

There is a straight line from the American and French revolutions, through the 1848 revolutions, the Paris Commune, the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions, the rise of fascism, the slaughters of World Wars I and II, the national liberation movements, the Cold War, the collapse of Soviet Stalinism, to the triumphalism of the "American Century"... this line steers and staggers between its central understandable component: the reality of the division of the world into classes of exploited and exploiter, and the struggles of the former, often blind and contradictory, and poorly led, to throw off the shackles of the latter.

The smug and oh-so-powerful leadership of this country is overreaching, much as Hitler overreached, and a similar catastrophe awaits all of us... unless... unless we can come together, throw off the weight of the bought-off Democratic Party, and make a real struggle for power against those who seek to control the entire world. I, frankly, don't see this happening. And I do not advocate adventurist forays to smash one's head up against a repressive governmental apparatus. All one can do is wait, patiently explain, and hope the lessons are learned before they are foisted upon us in the form of a total collapse of the society, or what is just as likely, another world war.

The real question to ask is: Will YOU (or WE) let them get away with it?

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow

Awake, awake!
Ring the alarum-bell. Murder and treason!
Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake!
Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself! up, up, and see
The great doom's image! Malcolm! Banquo!
As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,
To countenance this horror! Ring the bell.
.................

Ah, good father,
Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?

Macbeth, Act II

The Torture Planners: "Why are we talking about this in the White House?"

In a very interesting follow-up to the unfolding story on the 2003 John Yoo memorandum that justified the use of torture, ABC news is reporting how the CIA came to the White House after the spring 2002 capture of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan and asked for permission to use more "aggressive" interrogation techniques. Citing anonymous sources, ABC says that beginning with the Zubaydah case, "the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency." These discussions evidently included the use of waterboarding, as the CIA has admitted using this torture technique on Zubaydah.

The "Principals" -- high-level Bush administration officials -- present included National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice, who chaired the meetings, "Vice President Cheney... Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft."

While Ashcroft is said to have signed off on the legality of the interrogations, he got squeamish about how it was being approved. Perhaps he was afraid of future legal and political consequences. Perhaps he remembered how the secrets of the Wannsee Conference were ultimately leaked. Per the ABC story (also reported over at Reuters):

Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.....

But even after the "Golden Shield" was in place, briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal....

Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas....

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Despite Ashcroft's qualms -- mainly concerned with his political neck, not the safety of prisoners -- the Principals "approved interrogations... pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval." Condi Rice was said to be particularly forceful in giving the CIA power to torture (with Powell echoing Ashcroft's wimpy protests).

As the blogger buhdydharma wrote in an article today, the new revelations "clearly point to a high level, willful conspiracy to commit torture." Beyond the question of conspiracy, serious violations of a number of laws that prohibit torture and inhumane treatment have also been broken. Courtesy of Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First own examination of criminal laws governing laws on torture, let's review what Ashcroft, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, and possibly others, may find themselves vulnerable with aggressive prosecution (for footnotes, please refer to original via link):

The recent amendments to the War Crimes Act establish as war crimes “grave breaches” of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,10 including “torture” and “cruel or inhuman treatment.”11 “Torture” is characterized, in pertinent part, as “an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”12 The separate war crime of “cruel or inhuman treatment,” is defined as “an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering.”13

For the crime of torture under the WCA 14 and the Torture Act,15 severe mental pain or suffering is defined as “the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from” several specified actions, including “the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering” and “the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mindaltering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.”16

For the WCA crime of “cruel or inhuman treatment,” serious mental pain or suffering is defined as “the serious and non-transitory mental harm (which need not be prolonged) caused by or resulting from” the same specified actions.17

The Detainee Treatment Act requires that “no person in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (CIDT).”18 The DTA defines CIDT as conduct prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Since the "CIA’s reported “enhanced” interrogation techniques cause the types of physical and mental anguish that are criminalized under the WCA and other laws," it's clear that top administration officials have committed war crimes.

But what are the governmental officials, including elected members of the legislature, going to do about it? Certainly we can expect nothing from Mukasey's Justice Department, which even has all but signed off on waterboarding, and refuses to rule out evidence obtained by same. Rep. Conyers has asked John Woo to appear at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee next month. Meanwhile, the story barely reaches the significance of front page coverage in the U.S. press.

This is not surprising, as the Executive Branch of the U.S. government has gotten away with the criminal execution of an illegal, pre-emptive war in Iraq, even when the evidence for this was placed in the public domain for all to see (going back at least to the publication of the Downing Street memos). Reportedly, the congressional offices of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats receive emails and faxes demanding action, up to and including the initiation of impeachment hearings in the House. All to no avail.

The poet William Blake wrote over two hundred years ago:

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

We know that this is more than enough to put the criminal leadership of the Bush administration away in prison for many years. Therefore, enough!!

Give us our bill of indictment. Give us our impartial jury to examine the evidence. Give us justice. Failing this, I shudder to think what monstrous conclusion is being prepared for us in the bowels of history.

National Lawyers Guild: Fire Yoo & Try for War Crimes

The National Lawyers Guild has issued a press release calling for University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school to fire Professor John Yoo. The NLG calls for the rescission of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 provisions that allow immunity and the prosecution of Yoo as a war criminal. Meanwhile, yesterday, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) threatened to subpoena John Yoo to testify about the memo at a May 6 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

The declassification and release of Yoo's memorandum to William Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, written in March 2003, has caused a firestorm in the press. Yoo's memo is the smoking gun for those looking for evidence of how the Bush Administration flouted basic human rights law, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the U.S. War Crimes Act to initiate a campaign of torture against detainees swept up in the aggressive U.S. military and covert campaigns that followed 9/11.

The NLG nicely summarizes much of what is outrageous about Yoo's memo. But as an excellent article in the current Vanity Fair, Philippe Sands' "The Green Light," explains, the torture began before Yoo's memo was even written.

Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks....

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option.

Yoo's memo sought to give the legal justification to the worst kind of physical and psychological torture. The NLG memo and the press have not fully plumbed the significance of what doors were opened by Bush and his co-conspirators. Jeff Stein, at Congressional Quarterly, tied the Yoo memo to an increase of drug use on detainees. The use of drugs -- from marijuana to LSD to PCP to sodium amytal -- in interrogations was a hallmark of the CIA's MKULTRA research program in the 1950s-1960s.

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation. All that’s missing is the syringes and videotapes.

Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s instantly infamous 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects.

Yoo advised top Bush administration officials that interrogators could employ mind-altering drugs if they did not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.”

Yoo had first rationalized the use of drugs in a 2002 memo for top Bush administration officials....

“The new Yoo memo, along with other White House legal memoranda, shows clearly that the policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs was being laid,” says Stephen Miles, a University of Minnesota bioethicist and author of “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror".... “The use of these drugs was anticipated and discussed in the memos of January and February 2002 by DoD, DoJ, and White House counsel using the same language and rationale. The executive branch memos laid a comprehensive and reiterated policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs.”

Stein also cites the CIA/Rand Corp./American Psychological Workshop in 2003 that looked at use of "pharmacological agents" on interrogation subjects as part of an attack on prisoner attempts at deception. The full story on this "workshop", which also included work on sensory overload mechanisms to "overwhelm the senses" of detainees, was first broken by me last year.

The heat is on the administration on torture yet again. But I warn all my readers that NONE of the crimes of the Bush Administration have yet met any legal consequences. The relevant governing bodies seem to have no stomach for actually prosecuting any top war criminals, much less taking Bush, Cheney, and their mob on politically. The news media of record, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc., bluster about the outrages, but have yet to call for any prosecution or impeachment. It seems likely that little of consequence will come from the latest expose over Yoo's 2003 memo. One can't help but feel that in America the government can declare they will pull the fingernails out of your children, and there still will be no action taken.

Is it fear? Is it laziness? What is it?

The following is the text of the NLG release, signed by Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, and Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director. I've added bold emphases for editorial effect.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 9, 2008

Contact: Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 619-374-6923
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, director@nlg.org; 212-679-5100, x11

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON BOALT HALL TO DISMISS LAW PROFESSOR JOHN YOO, WHOSE TORTURE MEMOS LED TO COMMISSION OF WAR CRIMES

New York. In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. According to Yoo, the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war.

The federal maiming statute, for example, makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of another person." It further prohibits individuals from "throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent.

Yoo also narrowed the definition of torture so the victim must experience intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result; Yoo's definition contravenes the definition in the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the US has ratified which is thus part of the US law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Yoo said self-defense or necessity could be used as a defense to war crimes prosecutions for torture, notwithstanding the Torture Convention's absolute prohibition against torture in all circumstances, even in wartime. This memo and another Yoo wrote with Jay Bybee in August 2002 provided the basis for the Administration's torture of prisoners.

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

Cross-posted at American Torture and Daily Kos

AI/PHR Letters to NY Times on Yoo Torture Memo

From the Letters to the Editor, New York Times, April 7, 2008

Re “’03 U.S. Memo Approved Harsh Interrogations” (front page, April 2):

It’s high time that the authors of the Bush administration’s legal recipe book for torture be brought out of the kitchen and into the courtroom. Yet despite volumes of highly credible evidence of human rights crimes, or even war crimes, a negligent Congress continues to fail miserably in its responsibility to mandate proper investigations into these cruel policies.

The United States’ moral and political standing in the world have completely eroded, and legitimate prosecutions of crimes against humanity against the United States have been compromised. Congress must finally face its own complicity in torture with concrete measures — not shortsighted hearings — by ordering a full, independent investigation into how torture became United States modus operandi and holding those responsible accountable.

Curt Goering
Deputy Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
New York, April 2, 2008

+++++++++++++++++++

To the Editor:

The Bush administration attributes detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere to the rogue actions of a few soldiers and a lack of clear interrogation guidelines. But the mounting evidence, particularly the declassified memo by John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department official, proves that administration officials themselves are responsible for the torture and cruel treatment of detainees in United States custody.

The continuing effort to exempt the president from anti-torture law, among other revelations, shows that the government’s calculated policy of torture originated at the highest levels of the administration. The Justice Department’s interpretation of long-held tenets of American and international law provided the executive branch with the unlimited power to treat detainees as it saw fit.

Longstanding legal precedents were willfully twisted to justify a systematic regime of abuse employing the expertise of military psychologists and medical personnel. These “enhanced” techniques inflicted severe and lasting harm on detainees — the kind of harm explicitly criminalized by the United States War Crimes Act.

The use of these interrogation techniques has eroded our international standing and compromised the rule of law. The question is no longer who is responsible. The question now is whether they will be held accountable.

Frank Donaghue
Chief Executive
Physicians for Human Rights
Cambridge, Mass., April 3, 2008

Submissions to APA Ethics Casebook on Interrogation

The tireless activists at Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (CEP) have answered the call of the American Psychological Association for contributions to a proposed ethics casebook, which would examine critical or contentious issues that could arise for psychologists working for the military or CIA in Bush's "war on terror".

Of course, psychologists shouldn't be working at sites such as Guantanamo or CIA "black site" prisons, where basic human rights are limited, and psychological methods of torture are routine. Taking the latter as a touchstone of basic ethical practice, the submissions of CEP point out the absurdity of mixing "ethics" with illegal detention and torture.

I applaud the excellent job done by those who constructed the scenarios. Yet, I remain unconvinced that any actual reform of the process of national security interrogation can take place under the current political and military structure, into which APA has slowly been incorporated over many years. Even if reform were possible, it is inconsistent with the strategic and tactical pressures of trying to enforce a foreign policy that aims to dominate internationally by force.

While there are some at APA who sincerely hope that an ethical compromise can be achieved, and something short of a full withdrawal of psychologists from Guantanamo and elsewhere can still allow for ethical participation, I just don't see it happening. Others believe that the casebook process allows an excellent opportunity to polemicize and educate, and intend to keep pushing APA for a full moratorium on psychologist participation in interrogations. I publish this in the hopes of educating the wider populace in the ways behavioral "specialists", including psychologists, have been used by the national security apparatus for purposes of abuse and torture.

APA's call for contributions is as follows:

The Ethics Committee seeks critical incidents/vignettes concerning the casebook/commentary on psychological ethics and national security. The goal of the casebook/commentary is to provide ethical guidance to psychologists advising or consulting to national security-related interrogations.

I've been given permission to reproduce the following by a leading member of CEP. All critical incidentes/vignettes have been represented to me as official submissions to APA. I am making them public here, with no editorial changes of any sort, except for readability, in the spirit of APA's own stated determination that the process of developing this casebook be open and transparent.

SCENARIO 1

According to international instruments and their accompanying jurisprudence, “disappearance,” i.e., the capture and transport of a human being to a place of detention without acknowledgement of the capture or detention, is a form of torture. It is a form of torture directed at both the detainee’s family and the detainee himself or herself. Detainees held at CIA black sites are considered “disappeared” according to the UN definition (i.e., the detainee, “by being subjected to prolonged incommunicado detention in an unknown location, is the victim of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment,” El-Megreisi v Libya, Report of the United Nations Human Rights Committee). The Inter-American Court of Human Rights states that, “prolonged isolation and deprivation of communication are themselves cruel and inhuman treatment, harmful to the psychological and moral integrity of the person.”

May a psychologist at a CIA black site supervise the interrogation of a detainee kept in such conditions? Or must the psychologist follow the 2006 resolution, which asserts that “should torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment evolve during a procedure where a psychologist is present, the psychologist shall attempt to intervene to stop such behavior, and failing that exit the procedure”?

Sources: The U.N. Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have all issued decisions on individual petitions that deal with the issue of "disappearances" amounting to possible acts of torture. For example, Mojica v. Dominican Republic ("the disappearance of persons is inseparably linked to treatment that amounts to a violation of Article 7") (449/1991, para 5.7). The European Court of Human Rights has also held that the extreme pain and suffering inflicted on the mother of the "disappeared" person is a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Kurt v. Turkey, Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts, Case No.15/1997/799/1002, 25 May 1998, para.134). Similarly, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in the well-known case of Velásquez Rodríguez, held that "the mere subjugation of an individual to prolonged isolation and deprivation of communication is in itself cruel and inhuman treatment" (Inter-American Court H.R., Velásquez Rodríguez case, Judgment of July 29, 1988. Series C Nº 4, para.187).

SCENARIO 2

In 2003, the CIA acknowledged that it had kidnapped two children of a suspected terrorist, ages 7 and 9, and held them at a CIA ‘black site.’ Before their father was captured, the children were interrogated so that the CIA might discover from them their father’s whereabouts. After their father was captured, the detained children were held as hostages to pressure their father into giving up information.

By one account, the two children were pressured into giving up information by having insects put on their legs to scare them. [Testimony of Ali Khan, father of Guantánamo prisoner Majid Khan, submitted to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantánamo in March 2007.]

CIA interrogators stated at the time that, “We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."

Is it ethical for a child psychologist to offer care in such a circumstance?
Is it ethical for a child psychologist to permit his or her treatment of these children to be the basis of a propaganda statement for the U.S. government? For instance, how can it be said that children who have been kidnapped and are being held as hostages, away from home and family, in order to facilitate the interrogation of their father, be considered are held under “the best of care”?
Is it ethical for the child psychologist to allow the dissemination of such a statement to legitimize the governmental use of children for coercive purposes?

Source: http://intellnet.org/news/2003/03/08/17655-1.html

SCENARIO 3

A psychologist is sent to Guantánamo to be Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group in order to put operating procedures in place for detainees.

During the four months he or she is there and responsible for supervising the psychologists that advise on the conditions of detention, the following operating procedures are written and instituted:

4-20. Behavior Management Plan
a. Phase One Behavior Management Plan (First thirty days or as directed by JIG). The purpose of the Behavior Management Plan is to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator. During the first two weeks at Camp Delta, classify the detainees as Level 5 and house in a Maximum Security Unit (MSU) Block. During this time, the following conditions will apply: …Restricted contact: No ICRC [Red Cross] or Chaplain contact... No Koran, prayer beads, prayer cap.
b. Phase Two Behavior Management Plan. The two-week period following Phase 1 will continue the process of isolating the detainee and fostering dependence on the interrogator. Until the JIG Commander changes his classification, the detainee will remain a Level 5 with the following: ...Continued MSU....Koran, prayer beads and prayer cap distributed by interrogator...

Would it be ethical for a psychologist to write such procedures?
Would it be ethical for a psychologist to institute such procedures?
Would it be ethical for a psychologist to supervise psychologists or others instituting such procedures?
Would it be ethical for a Chief Psychologist to claim that he/she did not know that such things were written, instituted and/or practiced by psychologists under his/her command?

Source: Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). 28 March 2003 http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Guantanamo_document_confirms_psychological_torture

SCENARIO 4

Two psychologists are interrogating a prisoner using techniques which include isolation, humiliation, forced nakedness, and waterboarding. Their supervisor, also a psychologist, enters the room, sees what the two are doing, and leaves in disgust. The supervisor takes no further action and the interrogation techniques continue.

What ethical violations, if any, have been committed by the supervisor?

Source: Vanity Fair, Rorschach and Awe [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707]

SCENARIO 5

A prisoner is held in a cell that measures nine feet by seven feet. The windows are covered over... No pillow is given. There is no sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. He is fed through a slot in the door. If prison staff enter the cell, their identifying information is covered. The detainee has been held in these conditions for two years, during which time the detainee was prevented from seeing his/her lawyers. In preparation for trial, a psychologist evaluates the prisoner through a rectangular slot in his isolation cell for two minutes. The psychologist concludes, based on that interview and the reports of the guards, that there are no signs of “distress” or “lethality” and there have been no significant changes since a previous assessment two years earlier. This report is offered as testimony that the prisoner is competent to stand trial.

Is it ethical for the psychologist to neglect to report the isolation and sensory deprivation?
Is it ethical to make any form of assessment based on such minimal information?
Is it ethical for the psychologist to support the sensory deprivation plan by not entering the room and by not identifying him or herself?

Source: USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070228/a_padilla28.art.htm

SCENARIO 6

According to draft instructions written for military intelligence psychologists at detainee sites, including Guantánamo, operational psychologists supervising interrogations and detention conditions, “assist in helping make sure that the environment maximizes effective detainee operations. The psychologist can assist in making sure that everything that a detainee sees, hears, and experiences is a part of the overall interrogation plan.”

However, according to a report issued by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, “the general conditions of detention [at Guantánamo], in particular the uncertainty about the length of detention and prolonged solitary confinement, amount to inhuman treatment and to a violation of the right to health as well as a violation of the right of detainees under article 10, paragraph 1, of ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] to be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person." Another report by the U.N. Committee on Torture stated that "The Committee, noting that detaining persons indefinitely without charge, constitutes per se a violation of the Convention [The U.N. Convention on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment], is concerned that detainees are held for protracted periods at Guantánamo Bay, without sufficient legal safeguards and without judicial assessment of the justification for their detention."

Must operational psychologists at sites such as Guantánamo, where, according to reports by Human Rights First and Amnesty International, a majority of detainees continue to be held in indefinite detention and prolonged isolation, follow the requirements of the 2006 APA resolution, which asserts that “should torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment evolve during a procedure where a psychologist is present, the psychologist shall attempt to intervene to stop such behavior, and failing that exit the procedure”?

Do APA ethical principles and standards require operational psychologists (at sites where such conditions are chronic) to request a transfer?

How does the APA ethics committee assess a psychologist’s “willful ignorance” of such circumstances? For example, is it acceptable for a chief psychologists working at a site where a majority of detainees are held in conditions that the UN deems “inhuman treatment” to state, “I learned a long, long time ago, if I'm going to be successful in the intel community, I'm meticulously - in a very, very dedicated way - going to stay in my lane…So if I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."? Is such willful ignorance ethical?

Sources: International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/16/america/web.0216un.php

Human Rights First,
http://www.acsblog.org/guest-bloggers-hamdan-wants-out-from-solitary-confinement-debates-on-classified-evidence.html

CBS News and Associated Press,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/07/national/main3800426.shtml

Amnesty International,
Cruel and Inhuman: Conditions of isolation for detainees at Guantánamo Bay
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engAMR510512007

United Nations Committee on Torture,
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/AdvanceVersions/CAT.C.USA.CO.2.pdf

United Nations Human Rights Commission,
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/E.CN.4.2006.120_.pdf

Also posted at American Torture

U.S. Military "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers"?

This story is NOT getting the attention it deserves.

Noah Shachtman, writing for the Danger Room over at Wired, reports:

A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers"....

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

The JSOU report makes fascinating reading, with lots of quite readable discussion about the influence of blogs, and statistical studies of their netwide distribution structure. I recommend it. It's also free to distribute publicly -- thank you, U.S. taxpayer!

The report explains its thesis, with appropriate political caveats to those consumers of such material, thusly:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence... to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.

This report should be a wake-up call that the powers that run this country intend to game the Internet. The entire idea is redolent of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird. Begun in the late 1940s, OM's purpose was to dominate the mainsteam U.S. and foreign press via CIA payoffs and influence. In 1977, Carl Bernstein famously reported that Mockingbird journalists included Joseph and Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). (You can read much of Bernstein's article here.)

The entire notion of a free press is made a true mockery when its practitioners are bought and paid for by the same government that they are supposed to be monitoring independent of the state. The U.S. government is starting to look more and more like a Stalinist state. The old Soviet Union, too, spoke of being democratic and free, when everyone knew it was a sham. U.S. democracy is exposed as a false flag operation. According to Ctron over at Daily Kos, one of these new "bought" blogs already exists. (I don't know if it is or isn't; the reader will have to judge for him or herself.)

It is called "Iraq, The Model"; it has been in existence since November of 2003. It is "supposedly" run by someone in Iraq.

The Internet is supposed to give democratic expression a new and wide open playing field. But take a close look, and watch your freedom being gobbled up. The government is targeting the military bloggers first, but its clear that it's politics, and not just military secrets, that obsess these totalitarian-minded "patriots."

I close with more from the report (text in bold are my emphases, but the entire thing is frightening as hell):

If assessment of the information environment indicates the presence of blogging activity, the next step is to look at the bloggers and their audiences, determine the blogs’ functions (per Nardi et al.43), and construct a preliminary analysis in terms of the metrics (blog visits and incoming links and references) and indicators of quality and credibility (design, utility, accuracy, and currency) identified earlier.

Questions that must be answered include:

How large is the blogging community?
Who are the bloggers? And what are their positions and status within their communities and within the country as a whole (their general public roles and reputations)?
Who is the target community or audience for each blog?
Do the blogs address issues of social and political importance to the community they serve?
What biases are observed in each blog? Do they reinforce or challenge the biases of their audience?
Do any bloggers invite and engage in free and open interaction with their audience?

Answering these questions will require appropriate responses from intelligence agencies at all levels....

Analysts working with blog intelligence must have access to the operational disciplines that they support; the closer the better. We recommend the creation of small special operations units with operational authority and integrated intelligence collections and analysis to conduct blog-based operations....

In order to act and react efficiently in managing bloggers and blogs, the intelligence specialists and planners who have the knowledge should be the ones running the actual blog. Or, in cases where indigenous bloggers and their blogs have been identified and recruited, the blog operations cell should also house the case officer managing the asset, having done the work to cultivate and recruit him or her....

Some of the possible techniques we have explored in our discussion of the military use of blogging require a certain degree of subtlety, finesse, and yes, covert action. By giving military blog-based operations to the Intelligence and Special Operations communities, these uses become less risky and more feasible. However, military operations must necessarily remain only a part of a larger effort. Given the current state of U.S. and international law, and the distribution of the necessary authorities among many (often competing) government agencies, any future conduct of influence operations through the blogosphere will require a truly integrated interagency approach, and thus belongs properly at the national level as a part of an overarching Strategic Communications effort.

U.S. Government Culpability in Death of Martin Luther King

On this 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., there's been a lot of speechifying and article-writing. But I have seen precious little that recounts the campaign of the United States government to discredit and vilify Dr. King. The activities of the FBI's Cointelpro program were documented by the United States Senate in its Church Committee Report. The "likelihood" that King was shot by James Earl Ray "as a result of a conspiracy" was the conclusion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1975. Unlike the JFK case, the HSCA documents on the MLK assassination remain classified to this day.

Yet we will hear nothing about these facts in today's mainstream news. It's unlikely that much will even be said at the liberal blogs. Yet, outside of the work of Dr. King himself, it's the most salient fact about this day of dark remembrance.

I am charging the U.S. government, and most specifically the FBI, with culpability in the assassination of Martin Luther King. What does "culpability" mean?

Culpability generally implies that an act performed is wrong but does not involve any evil intent by the wrongdoer. The connotation of the term is fault rather than malice or a guilty purpose. It has limited significance in Criminal Law except in cases of reckless Homicide in which a person acts negligently or demonstrates a reckless disregard for life, which results in another person's death. In general, however, culpability has milder connotations. It is used to mean reprehensible rather than wantonly or grossly negligent behavior. Culpable conduct may be wrong but it is not necessarily criminal.

I personally believe the guilt of the U.S. government is greater, but I don't have the evidence to prove it. Such a charge of complicity requires much more evidence than the circumstantial but damaging facts I will quote from the Church Committee report below. However, the activities of the FBI in the King case clearly helped create an atmosphere of hatred and distrust around the person of Dr. King. Rather than seeking to protect American leaders from harm, the FBI clearly sought to cripple the life and reputation of the U.S. civil rights leader.

Let's look at the Church Report itself. All bolded material is my emphasis. All footnotes must be referenced in the original document via link:

SUPPLEMENTARY DETAILED STAFF REPORTS
ON INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE
RIGHTS OF AMERICANS

_____

BOOK III
_____

FINAL REPORT

OF THE

SELECT COMMITTEE
TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS

WITH RESPECT TO

INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
UNITED STATES SENATE

APRIL 23 (under authority of the order of April 14), 1976

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CASE STUDY

I. INTRODUCTION

From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "neutralize" him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI's "war" against Dr. King:

No holds were barred. We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business. 1

The FBI collected information about Dr. King's plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau's disposal. Wiretaps, which were initially approved by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were maintained on Dr. King's home telephone from October 1963 until mid-1965; the SCLC headquarter's telephones were covered by wiretaps for an even longer period. Phones in the homes and offices of some of Dr. King's close advisers were also wiretapped. The FBI has acknowledged 16 occasions on which microphones were hidden in Dr. King's hotel and motel rooms in an "attempt" to obtain information about the "private activities of King and his advisers" for use to "completely discredit" them. 2

FBI informants in the civil rights movement and reports from field offices kept the Bureau's headquarters informed of developments in the civil rights field. The FBI's presence was so intrusive that one major figure in the civil rights movement testified that his colleagues referred to themselves as members of "the FBI's golden record club." 3

The FBI's formal program to discredit Dr. King with Government officials began with the distribution of a "monograph" which the FBI realized could "be regarded as a personal attack on Martin Luther King," 4 and which was subsequently described by a Justice Department official as "a personal diatribe ... a personal attack without evidentiary support."5

Congressional leaders were warned "off the record" about alleged dangers posed by Reverend King....

The FBI's program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the civil rights movement entailed attempts to discredit him with churches, universities, and the press. Steps were taken to attempt to convince the National Council of Churches, the Baptist World Alliance, and leading Protestant ministers to halt financial support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and to persuade them that "Negro leaders should completely isolate King and remove him from the role he is now occupying in civil rights activities." 6 When the FBI learned that Dr. King intended to visit the Pope, an agent was dispatched to persuade Francis Cardinal Spellman to warn the Pope about "the likely embarrassment that may result to the Pope should he grant King an audience." 7 The FBI sought to influence universities to withhold honorary degrees from Dr. King. Attempts were made to prevent the publication of articles favorable to Dr. King and to find "friendly" news sources that would print unfavorable articles. The FBI offered to play for reporters tape recordings allegedly made from microphone surveillance of Dr. King's hotel rooms.

The FBI mailed Dr. King a tape recording made from its microphone coverage. According to the Chief of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, the tape was intended to precipitate a separation between Dr. King and his wife in the belief that the separation would reduce Dr. King's stature. 7a The tape recording was accompanied by a note which Dr. King and his advisers interpreted as a threat to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide. The FBI also made preparations to promote someone "to assume the role of leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited." 8

The campaign against Dr. King included attempts to destroy the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by cutting off its sources of funds. The FBI considered, and on some occasions executed, plans to cut off the support of some of the SCLC's major contributors, including religious organizations, a labor union, and donors of grants such as the Ford Foundation. One FBI field office recommended that the FBI send letters to the SCLC's donors over Dr. King's forged signature warning them that the SCLC was under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS files on Dr. King and the SCLC were carefully scrutinized for financial irregularities. For over a year, the FBI unsuccessfully attempted to establish that Dr. King had a secret foreign bank account in which he was sequestering funds.

The FBI campaign to discredit and destroy Dr. King was marked by extreme personal vindictiveness. As early as 1962, Director Hoover penned on an FBI memorandum, "King is no good." 9 At the August 1963 March on Washington, Dr. King told the country of his dream that "all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, I'm free at last."' 10 The FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division described this "demagogic speech" as yet more evidence that Dr. King was "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country".... The depth of Director Hoover's bitterness toward Dr. King, a bitterness which he had effectively communicated to his subordinates in the FBI, was apparent from the FBI's attempts to sully Dr. King's reputation long after his death. Plans were made to "brief" congressional leaders in 1969 to prevent the passage of a "Martin Luther King Day." In 1970, Director Hoover told reporters that Dr. King was the "last one in the world who should ever have received" the Nobel Peace Prize. 13

The extent to which Government officials outside of the FBI must bear responsibility for the FBI's campaign to discredit Dr. King is not clear. Government officials outside of the FBI were not aware of most of the specific FBI actions to discredit Dr. King. Officials in the Justice Department and White House were aware, however, that the FBI was conducting an intelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation, of Dr. King; that the FBI had written authorization from the Attorney General to wiretap Dr. King and the SCLC offices in New York and Washington; and that the FBI reports on Dr. King contained considerable information of a political and personal nature which was "irrelevant and spurious" to the stated reasons for the investigation. 14 Those high executive branch officials were also aware that the FBI was disseminating vicious characterizations of Dr. King within the Government; that the FBI had tape recordings embarrassing to Dr. King which it had offered to play to a White House official and to reporters; and that the FBI had offered to "leak" to reporters highly damaging accusations that some of Dr. King's advisers were communists. Although some of those officials did ask top FBI officials about these charges, they did not inquire further after receiving false denials. In light of what those officials did know about the FBI's conduct toward Dr. King, they were remiss in falling to take appropriate steps to curb the Bureau's behavior. To the extent that their neglect permitted the Bureau's activities to go on unchecked, those officials must share responsibility for what occurred. The FBI now agrees that its efforts to discredit Dr. King were unjustified.

"The FBI now agrees... its efforts to discredit Dr. King were unjustified" -- ya think? In Taylor Branch's well-regarded biography of MLK, we find the following (NYT link & Google cache link):

The systematic character of the F.B.I. vendetta astonishes to this day. After the bureau learned of assassination threats against a number of prominent Americans, each was notified -- except King.

Forty years after Dr. King was assassinated, we must demand that the government declassify its files on the case. This is the proper way to remember the civil rights leader. Re the suppression of the MLK files, I also found this at Wikipedia:

In January 31, 1977, in the cases of Bernard S. Lee v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al. and Southern Christian Leadership Conference v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al. United States District Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr., ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.

I don't care if Obama, or Hillary, or McCain (who voted against a Martin Luther King Day holiday when it was first proposed), or anyone attended any memorial service. It's all pious posturing. Let us seek justice for the murdered leader, and know the full truth about U.S. culpability (or worse) in King's murder.