Psychologist "Swat Team" Serves Bush's Torture Gulag

Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, current president of the American Psychological Association, in a new column in the APA Monitor, brags that APA lobbyists are a vertable "swat team" in support of government dollars for scientific research. Much of that money funds the work of psychologists "in support of homeland security after 9/11", "psychological research within the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense", and the "special relevance of psychological science on... counter-terrorism" research, among other items.

It is surely cosmic irony that places Dr. Kazdin's article in contrast to new revelations from the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. government documenting "the role of psychologists in military interrogations."

"The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse — a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "The documents only underscore the need for an independent investigation into responsibility for the systemic abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody abroad."

In 2006, the ACLU received a highly redacted version of the Church Report, which was commissioned by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a comprehensive review of military interrogation operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay based on 187 investigations into detainee abuse that had been closed as of September 30, 2004. The report did not analyze information relating to 130 abuse cases that remained open as of that date, and issues of senior official responsibility for detainee abuse were beyond its mandate. Written by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, the report skirts the question of command responsibility for detainee abuse, euphemistically labeling official failure to issue interrogation guidelines for Iraq and Afghanistan as a "missed opportunity."

The report states that "analogous to the BSCT in Guantanamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations."

The documents also demonstrate the failure of medical personnel to report abuses upon those ostensibly under their care. Moreover, when it comes to the use of torture techniques, such as forced nakedness, stress positions, the use of dogs, and other illegal forms of "interrogation" or incarceration, there was a decided policy of ignoring even the flimsy legal justifications and prohibitions issuing from the Department of Defense:

"The unredacted sections of the report provide new evidence confirming the use of abusive interrogation techniques after they were no longer authorized. According to the report, "the use of some of the techniques... continued even until July 2004, despite the fact that many were retracted by the October 2003 memorandum, and some were subsequently prohibited by the May 2004 memorandum."

As psychologists are implicated in the worst sort of human rights abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Dr. Kazin, who is the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology, Child Psychiatry, and Institute of Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, positively gushes over the "APA... dream team of experts that is nimble and can move into action as needed with Congress, funding agencies and other organizations."

Kazin's organization, the APA, took five years to make a detailed statement against torture techniques that were documented at U.S. prisons, including Guantanamo, although even then the APA mimicked Bush administration language in saying that only psychologists who "knowingly" inflicted harm are to be sanctioned. This makes judging the intent of a torturer supposedly a crucial question. This doctrine of "specific intent" was written into the infamous Bybee memo, and represents a get out of jail free card for those who torture. (See John Mikhail's excellent discussion of the implications of that little word, "knowingly," over at the Georgetown Law Faculty Blog.)

APA Springs into Action for... Defense Funding

Despite all protestations of good faith by APA, psychologists still staff the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams at Guantanamo, and other interrogation sites, including, presumably, secret "black site" prisons run by the CIA. Psychologists at these sites are under the military chain of command, not APA ethics codes and committees. These sites are known to be in violation of Geneva Conventions and other national and international laws and agreements concerning prisoners, including the holding of detainees in indefinite detention, hiding detainees from the Red Cross, subjecting detainees to abusive conditions of detention, transferring via secret rendition some detainees to foreign prisons to be tortured, and subjecting prisoners to secret courts where hearsay evidence and evidence supplied via tortured confession is allowed.

In his article, Dr. Kazin brags how when the National Science Foundation threatened to defund some pet projects, "within approximately 12 hours, an APA swat team mobilized an effort that drew on targeted individuals, other organizations, congressional staff, grass-roots support from many psychologists, and more." Two hundred phone calls and many emails later, the bills were saved. And yet, to this day, the APA cannot find the time to pass a resolution or make a statement calling for the closure of Guantanamo prison, where basic human rights are not allowed, and a policy of isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, and a policy of indefinite detention remains in force. Show me where you put an organization's time and money, and I'll show you what that organization is really about. The APA is an obscentiy.

The newly unredacted Church report includes this statement about the role of psychologists, highlighting the use of psychologists throughout the different theaters in Bush's misnamed "war on terror":

Analogous to the BSCT in Guantanamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations.

Supposedly, those working clinically with the disease and mental illness fostered by abusive treatment and conditions at U.S. prison sites do not share medical records with interrogators, but the report, while claiming that use of such information to "plan interrogations" doesn't take place, admits that such "sharing" has taken place:

According to the Director, Psychological Applications Directorate (US Army Special Operations Command), the only reason for sharing any medical information would be to ensure that detainees are treated in accordance with their medical requirements.

If you believe that, I've got a proverbial bridge to sell you. Meanwhile, the unredacted portions of the Church Report corroborate the findings of the Pentagon's own Office of the Inspector General report that exposed the existence of abusive techniques at Guantanamo, just at the time that APA honchos like Colonel Larry James (then Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba) were in charge.

Alan Kazdin's article represents the mindset of the APA bureaucracy, which is dying to feed at the trough of "homeland security" and "counter-terrorism" millions drained from the public coffers to build up the power of the overtly militarist state that America has become.

Recently, APA dissident candidate for president, Dr. Steven Reisner, is campaigning on an overt call for an end to psychologist participation in military interrogations, such as at Guantanamo. While garnering a minority of votes, he still won a plurality in the first round of voting, demonstrating that rank-and-file psychologists are growing increasingly disgusted with the policy of their organization. A related group of APA dissidents are circulating a petition that psychologists "not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

When I left the APA earlier this year, I specifically cited the overall stance of that organization in relation to the national security state. While the complicity with torture and human rights abuses is bad enough, the promise of further integration into "counter-terrorism" and "homeland security" programs of the government is an ominous foreshadowing of what the APA intends to become. If those looking to change APA are unsuccessful, they must ponder what they are doing in an organization so steadfastly dedicated to serving those that torture, that are obsessed with national security at a time when the government of this country engages in illegal, genocidal wars abroad, and seems incapable of reforming its own increasingly militarist and anti-democratic policies and actions.

Hunting Down the War Criminals

WANTED

Associated Press has a story up on the ongoing hunt for Nazi war criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center releases periodic lists of top war criminals from the Nazi era still at large. Despite the Wiesenthal Center's one-sided apologetics for Israeli crimes against the Palestinians (all sides have engaged in atrocities), we should pay attention to their efforts to bring Nazi war criminals and their collaborators to justice, even decades after their hideous crimes took place. Such efforts should also make Bush and his cronies start sweating, for reasons I will make clear.

Currently, the sadistic SS doctor from Mauthausen concentration camp, Aribert Heim, is at the top of Wiesenthal's list. (A former Israeli Air Force Colonel claims Heim was kidnapped and executed over twenty years ago, but other Nazi hunters are not convinced.) Heim was captured by U.S. forces, but mysteriously released. The AP article notes that "his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen". The U.S. protected numerous fleeing Nazis. The Nazi Gehlen intelligence organization was specially protected, and Nazi scientists were imported into the United States in the little-known Operation Paperclip.

Perhaps the U.S. saw SS Dr. Heim, grotesquely, as some sort of scientist, because he engaged in so-called scientific experiments at Mauthausen. Here's an example of Dr. Heim's "science":

It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.

Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.

Why would the United States protect such a ghoul? But this is not a question that can be publicly asked in America today, where a mainstream politician like Barack Obama is pilloried because he dare mention that some out-of-work small town Americans may feel "bitter", or his pastor has anti-establishment or unorthodox beliefs about the perfidy of the American government.

The Wiesenthal Center supposedly lists the top ten wanted Nazis, who besides Heim include John Demjanjuk, whose numerous prosecutions, appeals, acquittals, and legalistic maneuvers ended with a conviction for war crimes committed as a concentration camp guard, a conviction upheld in 2004. Just last January, Demjanjuk's order for deportation was upheld, and he awaits, pending further appeal his deportation to the Ukraine.

Demjanjuk is 88. Heim, if alive, would be 93. The other wanted Nazis are all elderly. But they remain underground, or under threat of prosecution and deportation, while protected by the state where they reside. SS-Obersturmführer Søren Kam is one of those. Wanted for the 1943 murder of Danish editor Carl Clemmensen, a German court denied the extradition of the 87 year old Lam, saying the statute of limitations on Clemmensen's murder has run out, accepting that Lam, who has admitted to involvement in the case, had committed manslaughter, not murder. (Clemmensen's body had been riddled by eight bullets from three different revolvers.)

U.S. War Criminals to Be Hunted Someday?

The geriatric status of Heim, Lam, Demjanjuk and others has not prevented them from being charged with crimes, and they will no doubt be pursued one way or another for the rest of their remaining lives.

U.S. war criminals -- currently uncharged -- like George W. Bush, president of the United States, and other members of his administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc.), should ponder the fate of the Nazis pursued by justice, even unto their last years. No matter what they think they can get away with, if a party or regime in this country ever comes into power and sets its aim as cleaning up the crimes of this country, whether to serve justice, or as a matter of realpolitik, needing to reclaim some measure of integrity internationally, then Bush et al. had better have set aside a defense fund.

This is in addition to the possibility that other countries may choose to extradict or prosecute those criminals who aggressively invaded a sovereign country (Iraq), killing over a million people, and then proceeded to torture thousands or tens of thousands of individuals. Attempts to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld for torture have been made in France, Germany, Argentina, and Sweden.

Evidence has been mounting for some time on the war crimes of the Bush Administration. I knew the ACLU has a call for the release of a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report on the investigation of the FBI's role in the unlawful interrogations of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, but only recently came across this article from a few years back in The New Standard (emphasis added):

Dec. 21, 2004 – Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday. Other documents describe the initiation of investigations into alleged incidents of torture and rape at detention facilities in Iraq....

The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.

An Executive Order is a presidential edict -- sometimes public, sometimes secretive -- instituting special laws or instructions that override or complement existing legislation. The White House has officially neither admitted nor denied that the president has issued an Executive Order pertaining to interrogation techniques.

The specific methods mentioned in the email as having been approved by the unnamed Executive Order and witnessed by FBI agents include sleep deprivation, placing hoods over prisoners' heads, the use of loud music for sensory overload, stripping detainees naked, forcing captives to stand in so-called "stress positions," and the employment of work dogs....

The correspondence is dated May 22, 2004 -- a couple of weeks after images of torture and humiliation at the prison broke in the world media...

Of course, it was only earlier this month that news broke that the highest officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in the planning and execution of torture at Guantanamo, and possibly elsewhere, and that Bush himself admitted knowledge of the entire process and "approved" it.

Some believe that Bush's September 6, 2006 speech to Congress "amounted to a public confession to criminal violations of the 1996 War Crimes Act", in that he "implicitly admitted authorizing disappearances, extrajudicial imprisonment, torture, transporting prisoners between countries and denying the International Committee of the Red Cross access to prisoners." And certainly, it's not that that Bush and his cronies weren't warned about what they were doing.

It was no less than then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales who warned Bush in a memo dated January 25, 2002 that their treatment of detainees already amounted to war crimes:

In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes -- defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions - such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners - was "undefined."

One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales wrote.

"It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 [the War Crimes Act]," Gonzales wrote.

The only thing keeping Bush and his top political aides and cabinet members from being prosecuted as war criminals is will... well, also their tremendous political power, the cowardice of the opposition party, and the fear and/or torpor of the mass of the American population.

Still, as the fates of Aribert Heim, John Demjanjuk, and others demonstrate, times do change. And one day it may be Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice, who must hide for their lives, or stand in the dock of a criminal court and answer for their crimes.

As an aside, the Establishment hatred for Obama's now-former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is not because of his conspiracy theory about the AIDS virus -- a crank notion rooted in some very real crimes by the United States, not least the barbaric, racist Tuskagee syphilis experiments, wherein "for forty years the US Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis," without their knowledge or provision of medical assistance. No, they hate him, and seek to use the black preacher against the moderately liberal mainstream politician Obama, because he dared to criticize the United States for its own use of terrorism.

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you," said. "Those are Biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

It is incontroverible that the United States has engaged in state terrorism and illegal war and occupation upon other countries. I very much don't want to see it "come back" upon America. But I do want to see those responsible brought to justice in a court that provides full rights for the accused, but also is unafraid to mete out justice to the convicted.

Darkness Fell (An Answer to "Darkness Falls")

Originally posted at Daily Kos

I started to write a comment to OPOL's excellent, impassioned diary, Darkness Falls. But the comment grew and grew until I knew I had to post it as a diary.

I've taken the present tense of OPOL's work and put it in its proper past tense, because the U.S. association with and operation of torture goes back decades. OPOL asks why the American people have not moved to stop their government from torturing. The question can be asked retrospectively. The problem remains a timid and bought-off press, and two political parties uninterested, at best, in tackling the issue, or complicit, at worst, in war crimes and their cover-up.

Both his diary and mine grow out of the latest New York Times revelations that Mukasey's Justice Department has a working set of rulings that allow U.S. agents to "legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law." Indeed, the government's letters are worth reading, going on for paragraph after sick paragraph about what could possibly be meant by the Geneva Protocol's use of the term "humane treatment."

OPOL asks why the U.S. populace doesn't rise up and stop the torture. If you wish the answer to this question, then you must be prepared to learn the entire history, and to teach the entire history.

Why? Why? Why? The earnest question is asked. The answer is that torture has been conducted under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Until (and if ever) the progressives decide to clean out their party of anyone associated with the program and practice of torture, including those who assisted in the legal shenanigans that allowed torture to go unprosecuted (including the Clinton White House legal team that allowed the evisceration of the UN Convention Against Torture with the legal "Reservations" attached to the treaty -- the same "Reservations" that Ashcroft was screaming about the other day, as reported in Elisona's diary), then U.S. torture will continue, overtly or covertly.

(The Reservations to UNCAN made the treaty "non-executable" without laws passed by the Congress. Such laws weakened the language of the treaty, and the use of these "reservations", concocted by Reagan Administration attorneys, but used by the Clinton team, has helped legally cover torture and the use of cruel, inhumane and degrading detainee treatment, from the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to the American Psychological Associations's interrogations resolutions of the past few years. -- See David Luban's coverage of the issue. Luban is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.)

"Darkness Falls" is a good, impassioned diary, which I recommend, but it has one crucial factual error. It asserts that Bush has constructed "the first official torture program in American history".

This is hardly the case, nor is it the largest such program (although it is the largest rendition program).

The Phoenix Program in Vietnam (and its precursors there), which killed tens of thousands (according to the Church Committee in the 1970s), and tortured hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, probably deserves the distinction of the largest such program. But it, too, wasn't the first.

Then there was the CIAs Ed Lansdale. His work may deserve that distinction for his use of torture and terror in the Philippines against the so-called Huk rebellion in the early 1950s. Lansdale later helped set up counterinsurgency programs in Vietnam.

There was also the multi-million dollar MKULTRA program, which researched brainwashing and mind control through use of isolation, sensory deprivation and drugs. This program began in the late 1940s, and saw its heyday from 1953-1968.

Consider, too, this:

The CIA also bears responsibility for the creation of SAVAK, the Shah of Iran's ruthless secret police force. SAVAK killed 20,000 Iraqi "dissidents" during the Shah's reign. In the Philippines, CIA instruction resulted in 3,257 murders and 35,000 victims of torture by the Ferdinand Marcos regime.

After its defeat in Vietnam, the United States government infiltrated Latin America with a vengeance (to stop the spread of the "Communist threat"). Project X, represented another CIA endeavor to impart their wisdom in the arts of torture to ruthless US allies. Not satisfied with their 1963 torture manual called Kubark, the CIA wrote a sequel in Spanish entitled Handling of Sources, Interrogation, Combat Intelligence, and Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla.

Once located in Panama, an odious US Army institution known as the School of Americas (sometimes called the School of Assassins) bestowed the CIA's torture wisdom upon hundreds of Latin American military officers. The School of Americas fell under the auspices of Project X and provided the "hands on" training to accompany the CIA torture manuals. Interestingly, by 1983 the CIA had begun to re-emphasize the use of psychological over physical torture when it wrote its [Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual]. A laundry list of CIA-trained Latin American military personnel and dictators murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands thanks to the tutelage of Project X. Link

The best book on Phoenix is Douglas Valentine's The Phoenix Program. Library Journal wrote:

Designed to destroy the Vietcong infrastructure and ostensibly run by the South Vietnamese government, the Phoenix Program--in fact directed by the United States--developed a variety of counterinsurgency activities including, at its worst, torture and assassination. For Valentine... the program epitomizes all that was wrong with the Vietnam War; its evils are still present wherever there are "ideologues obsessed with security, who seek to impose their way of thinking on everyone else." Exhaustive detail and extensive use of interviews with and writings by Phoenix participants make up the book's principal strengths...

OPOL well described in his diary the psychological response of denial to this kind of information. But we must move past this if we are ever to stop this cancer of terror and torture that has eaten so corrosively away at the foundations of the nation, and threaten to destroy what ever is left of this democracy and the promise of freedom began back in the days of the Enlightenment.

I like OPOL, and consider the contributions of this diarist to be top notch. I hope and trust that the criticisms I engage in here are seen as constructive and in the best interest of moving the dialogue forward.

Two Important Petitions Regarding Torture

Always it seems when it rains, it falls (my apologies to the Morton people), and it seems true even when it comes to petitions.

First, the American Freedom Campaign has a petition online calling on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers "to subpoena John Ashcroft and John Yoo so that they can explain their role in enabling torture." This comes on the heels of Yoo's statement that he would not testify before the House as "invited" on May 9.

Unless there's significant public pressure, it seems unlikely Yoo, Ashcroft, or anyone else -- including Torturer-in-Chief George W. Bush, and his Vice-Torturer Dick Cheney -- will be held accountable. Go sign the AFC petition today.

Meanwhile, some of my colleagues, who are fighting within the American Psychological Association to change that organization's position on having psychologists participate in interrogations at Guantanamo and other U.S. military and CIA sites, are petitioning the APA to allow a referendum on the interrogations issues.

I think the initiators of the petition have a long, difficult road ahead of them if they want to get this referendum before the APA membership. But the recent results of the nominating stage for the APA presidency, where anti-torture candidate and APA critic Steven Reisner won the plurality of the vote, shows that they have a chance, and that the normally placid APA membership may be getting fed up with its leadership's policies. The petition requires signatures from 1% of current APA members in order to be brought before the entire APA membership for a direct vote.

I encourage all members in good standing of APA to support this call and sign the petition for a referendum. -- Sorry, this particular petition is only for APA members. If you want to support those who are working on this issue, go to the website of Psychologists for an Ethical APA.

What follows is the text of the call for a referendum.

We the undersigned APA members in good standing, pursuant to article IV.5 of the APA bylaws, do hereby petition that the following motion be submitted to APA members for their approval or disapproval, by referendum, with all urgency:

Whereas torture is an abhorrent practice in every way contrary to the APA's stated mission of advancing psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting human welfare.

Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Mental Health and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture have determined that treatment equivalent to torture has been taking place at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. [1]

Whereas this torture took place in the context of interrogations under the direction and supervision of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) that included psychologists. [2, 3]

Whereas the Council of Europe has determined that persons held in CIA black sites are subject to interrogation techniques that are also equivalent to torture [4], and because psychologists helped develop abusive interrogation techniques used at these sites. [3, 5]

Whereas the International Committee of the Red Cross determined in 2003 that the conditions in the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay are themselves tantamount to torture [6], and therefore by their presence psychologists are playing a role in maintaining these conditions.

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.[7]

[1] United Nations Commission on Human Rights. (2006). Situation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_02_06_un_guantanamo.pdf The full title of the ‘Special Rapporteur on Mental Health’ is the ‘Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’.

[2] Miles, S. (2007). Medical ethics and the interrogation of Guantanamo 063. The American Journal of Bioethics, 7(4), 5. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://ajobonline.com/journal/j_articles.php?aid=1140

[3] Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense: Review of DoD-Directed

Investigations of Detainee Abuse. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/abuse.pdf

[4] Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (2007). Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc07/edoc11302.htm

[5] Eban, K. (2007). Rorschach and Awe. Vanity Fair. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707

[6] Lewis, N. A. (2004, November 30). Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html

[7] It is understood that military clinical psychologists would continue to provide psychological treatment to military personnel.

18 USC 2441 (also, Yoo Bails)

That headline of mine above -- I wish it read "Yoo Fails to Make Bail", or even, "Yoo Makes Bail," because that would imply a process is taking place wherein the criminal elite (the real elitists!) who run this country are being held to account before a legal tribunal of some sort. Alas, that is not currently the case.

Vyan over at Daily Kos makes a good case that administration officials, despite numerous CYA efforts on torture, and collaborative efforts from Congress (in the form of the 2006 Military Commissions Act), are vulnerable to prosecution under 18 USC 2441 of the War Crimes Act. The relevant crime (of those still open to potential U.S. prosecutors): conspiracy.

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

As Vyan points out, no matter how Congress or the administration try to slice and dice it, their torture activities have resulted in dead bodies, and no amount of legislation can wash that blood away.

...44 US military autopsy reports on the ACLU website -evidence of extensive abuse of US detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan 2002 through 2004. Anthony Romero, Executive Director of ACLU stated, "There is no question that US interrogations have resulted in deaths." ACLU attorney Amrit Sing adds, "These documents present irrefutable evidence that US operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations."

Oh, yes, and John Yoo, author of at least two legal memos giving a purported legal rationale to the Bush Administrations torture program? When last seen, Yoo was refusing to testify before the House, which is holding hearings on torture in the Judiciary Committee on May 9.

From ABC via Thinkprogress:

We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch.

This has worked for the administration thus far. Why should we believe it will be any different this time?

Who with any power in this country will stand up against the torturers and murderers who run this country -- and I mean stand up in a court of law or a congressional panel?

The Torture Election: Fighting for the Soul of the American Psychological Association

Originally posted at AlterNet

In a surprising turn of events, New York psychologist Steven Reisner won over 30% of the votes in the mail balloting for nominations for the presidency of the American Psychological Association (APA), as announced at the beginning of April. This represented more votes than any other candidate running.

Dr. Reisner, a psychoanalyst, is a Senior Faculty member and Supervisor at the International Trauma Studies Program, an Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University, and a consultant to the United Nations on stress and trauma. As a key leader of Psychologists for an Ethical Psychology, he is also a leading critic of APA's position on torture and interrogations.

A number of APA members see Reisner's showing as a great victory for critics of APA's position of allowing psychologists to participate in Bush's "war on terror" interrogations. Reisner received 1,765 votes, four hundred more than Robert E. McGrath, the next most popular candidate. The impressive numbers are testimony to two years of anti-torture activism within APA, involving scores of dedicated professionals. The electoral results guarantee that Dr. Reisner will be on the ballot for APA president next October.

All told, however, the vast majority of votes still went to candidates who have very different positions on interrogations. Moreover, there are signs that some APA office holders and loyalists are hostile to Reisner's candidacy. One inside source says that a top member of the California Psychological Association -- a state affiliate of APA -- called it "despicable" that Reisner was running for APA president, after all he's done to "disrupt" that organization.

The APA ostensibly takes a hard line against torture. But it refuses to forbid its membership from working at Pentagon or CIA prison sites that deny its prisoners basic human rights, like habeas corpus, and with documented histories of abuse and torture. Amy Goodman, in a recent column, summarized the battle within APA to turn the organization away from collaboration with governmental interrogators. The story of this collaboration, and how psychologists came to be key members of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs, popularly called "biscuits") at Guantánamo and elsewhere, has been told in great detail by myself, psychologist Stephen Soldz, and writers Katherine Eban, Jane Mayer, Arthur Levine, and Mark Benjamin, among others. The narrative is as dense or as simple as one wishes to make it, and depends how deeply one looks into the history of U.S. torture.

The APA's shifting position on interrogations is rooted in a long commitment to serve the national security apparatus of the United States. That commitment has been reflected in the current APA election, where Dr. Reisner appears as the first true candidate of change on this issue.

The Candidates: The Psychopharmacology Doctor

While Reisner received the plurality of votes in the first round of APA balloting, second place went to Robert E. McGrath at 1,340 votes. (Only 3-4% of APA members seem to have cast nominating ballots in this election.) McGrath runs a postdoctoral program in psychopharmacology at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and was president of APA's Division 55, the American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy. (APA is a federated organization, divided into 53 professional divisions; each division, along with representatives to the state and provincial psychological associations, is represented on APA's Council of Representatives.)

McGrath has said little on the record regarding APA's interrogation policy, though he did write a letter to the house APA organ, the Monitor, last September on "psychologists' military roles":

In response to recent claims that psychologists have been involved in torture and abusive interrogations, some psychologists are now calling for a complete ban on any involvement in military interrogations. I am troubled by these claims, but I am also troubled by two questions concerning this proposed solution: By extension, shouldn't psychologists withdraw from all coercive interrogations, including those by law enforcement agencies? Don't further restrictions in the diversity of individuals involved in such interrogations increase the potential for abuse even further?

One wonders how objective Dr. McGrath is on this issue, given Division 55 is largely devoted to teaching psychologists psychopharmacology and lobbying for prescription rights for psychologists. The practice, which has been fought tooth and nail by the psychiatric establishment, has found its greatest support in the military, which established a Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project in 1989 to train military psychologists to prescribe. (In an article on psychologists and torture in Vanity Fair last year, Katherine Eban looked at the possibility of a "quid pro quo" between APA and the military, in which APA would give "its stamp of approval to military interrogations" in agreement for the Pentagon allowing "psychologists -- who, unlike psychiatrists, are not medical doctors -- to prescribe medication, dramatically increasing their income.")

McGrath's opposition to pulling psychologists out of Guantánamo and other military/CIA interrogation centers is manifest. Reading his letter, psychologist Martha Davis, a visiting scholar at John Jay School of Criminal Justice, was struck by how APA's position has totally changed the way psychologists view their professional role when it comes to interrogations. "The APA has so successfully finessed this business," Davis wrote on a listserve of APA critics, "that most people hearing about the interrogations and psychology controversy, including psychologists, think that psychologists 'do' or supervise interrogations of criminal suspects in the US. THEY DO NOT … There is no mention of interrogation work in the ethics code. You won't find panels on doing interrogations in forensic psychology conference programs. Psychologists do not have the authority to 'do' interrogations or to supervise them in the US."

The Military Nominee?

The author of Jews in Blue: The Jewish American Experience in Law Enforcement, and consultant "for the police and law enforcement community since 1983," Jack Kitaeff, Ph.D, JD, was a military psychologist (as a Major) in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Both his psychological internship and postdoctoral residency were in military settings. Currently, he is Secretary-Treasurer-Elect for the Police and Public Safety Section of Div. 18 (Psychologists in Public Service).

While Dr. Kitaeff does not appear to have made a public statement on the current controversy on APA and interrogations, he did speak about his work and his views of himself as a "patriot" in an interview in 2006 at FrontPage Magazine, a well-known right-wing neo-conservative outlet run by David Horowitz's Freedom Center. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to guess where Kitaeff, who received 1,128 votes and third place in APA voting, probably stands on psychologist staffing of military interrogations.

The Insiders

Rounding out the final five nominees are Ronald H. Rozensky, PhD and Carol E. Goodheart, EdD, who received 1,057 and 134 votes, respectively. Goodheart was a last-minute write-in candidate; last year she came in second in the nomination balloting, behind eventual presidential winner, James Bray. Reisner, who also ran, failed to make the top five in 2007. Reportedly, Goodheart wasn't going to run in 2008, but she appears to have changed her mind. According to one APA insider, many on APA Council see her as a major competitor to Dr. Reisner in the upcoming election.

Goodheart is, as Steven Reisner once labeled her, an "APA stalwart." A psychotherapist in private practice, and a clinical supervisor in the psychology training program at Rutgers, she has served on the APA Board of Directors, and most recently was APA Treasurer. Currenly, she's working with APA President-elect Bray on his 2009 Presidential Task Force on the Future of Psychology Practice. Is part of that future staffing the BSCTs for the military at Guantánamo and elsewhere?

When psychologists mobilizing to withhold their dues from APA in protest against APA's interrogation policy queried Dr. Goodheart about her position, she replied:

I know that some psychologists in good conscience and good faith want APA also to prohibit psychologists from any participation whatsoever in military interrogations. There is serious debate within APA about the appropriate role for psychologists and I do not know if we will ever be able to reach total agreement. I, along with the majority of the Council of Representatives, voted against a moratorium, after listening carefully and considering all views seriously. As my own act of personal conscience, in the hope that we will be able to influence policy and practices related to interrogations, I believe that we must support psychology's promotion of ethical interrogations to prevent violence, safeguard detainees' welfare, and facilitate communications with them. We must stay engaged and work with the people, both military and non-military, who are working with great dedication to prevent torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment.

In other words, as one prominent member of APAs Division of Psychoanalysis put it:

She feels that to exclude psychologists from morally problematic places may leave prisoners even more vulnerable, and she argues that defining psychologists' presence as unethical would jeopardize ethical professionals who have been in this situation.

This makes Goodheart's stance on psychologists and interrogation a mirror image of APA's official position: psychologists make interrogations safer for detainees. Yet overwhelming evidence implicates psychologists in both the construction and implementation of a torture paradigm that emphasizes sensory deprivation and overstimulation, sleep deprivation, inculcation of debility, psychological regression, and dependency. Furthermore, psychologists have been specifically singled out as the agents responsible for reverse-engineering the military's torture resistance program, SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), in order to teach military interrogators coercive forms of interrogation. This was documented, no less, by the Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General in a report on detainee abuse, declassified last year.

The news hasn't gotten through to a final candidate, Ronald H. Rozensky, Ph.D. Dr. Rozensky has a resume a mile long. Former Chair of APA's Board of Professional Affairs, President of the Illinois Psychological Association, award-winning Outstanding International Psychologist, and co-author of Psychological Assessment in Medical Settings, Rozensky is a major lobbyist for governmental money for psychologists, supporting especially research in neuroscience, functional MRI and space programs. Concerned, like the APA honcho he is, in expanding the role of psychologists in particular societal institutions, he is worried that the controversy over military interrogations will spill over to domestic correctional settings, considered by APA a "proliferating" source of psychologist jobs. According to Dr. Rozensky:

...current discussions about psychologists' roles in interrogation in the military have implications within organized psychology for those psychologists working within the correctional system. It is key that our field recognize the important role that psychologists in the correctional system play in assuring ethical treatment of individuals remanded to the system and that information obtained from those individuals is factual and useful.

Whither APA?

Steven Reisner's candidacy for president represents a significant challenge to the status quo of APA governance. While all the other candidates for APA president support the continued presence of psychologists as an integral part of Defense Department and CIA interrogations, Reisner says no:

When leaders of other health professions reject all participation in detainee abuse, and our leaders justify participation, I am ashamed of our profession....

My candidacy calls for a clear departure from the complicity of psychologists in state-sponsored abuses of human rights, whether these take place at Guantánamo, CIA black sites, or domestic supermax prisons.

I have been told that psychologists might fear for their jobs if we hold to a principled stance on detainees' basic human rights. I fear for our nation and our profession if we don't.

Whether Steven Reisner's candidacy for APA president represents the high-water mark for opposition to the pro-military APA bureaucracy, or the beginning of a real sea change within the civil institutions of U.S. society regarding complicity in torture and other criminal, unethical practices of the government, remains to be seen. If Reisner is able to carry the presidential vote, he will still have to contend with a ruling apparatus that remains committed to cementing its ties with the Department of Defense and the CIA.

But these are challenges that lie in the future. Right now, Dr. Reisner and his supporters are riding a wave of optimism that things can change. His electoral showing demonstrates that, within APA, critics of torture and interrogations are making a real impact. In the big picture, the future of APA is likely tied to how these same issues play out in the larger society, especially the U.S. presidential race. For now, however, Reisner's supporters can give themselves a hearty congratulations, even as a longer, larger, higher hill to climb lies before them.

[Much thanks to AlterNet editor Liliana Segura for editorial help on this article.]

Wexler Questions FBI Chief -- Is FBI Covering Up CIA Torture?

Congressman Robert Wexler questioned FBI Director Robert Mueller at a House Judiciary hearing this morning. Wexler was intent on wrangling an explanation from Director Mueller "about his agency's response to claims - made by his own FBI agents - that the CIA was torturing prisoners." If, as has been reported, FBI agents had pulled out of interrogations where the CIA was involved in illegal torture, why was such illegal activity not investigated further?

What follows is from the transcript of today's session, provided by Congressman Wexler himself. He asks only this:

I would urge you to contact the editors and news departments of your local media and ask them to look into the responses below. It is critical that this discussion takes place beyond emails and blogs – and is covered by the mainstream media.

In two weeks the Judiciary Committee will be holding hearings to investigate the fact that the highest levels of the Bush Administration sanctioned and ordered the torture of prisoners in United States custody. This is intolerable and we must vigorously oppose this policy that demeans our nation and offends our conscience.

If, as this news gets out, there is not a groundswell of support for the firing or resignation of Robert Mueller, then you can bet either the media is in total control lock-down over the torture issue, or the political instincts of even liberals in this country are so blunted after almost eight years of Bush/Cheney that they wouldn't recognize a principled position anymore if it fell upon their heads.

The Transcript

Robert Wexler: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Director, in January of 2006, the New York Times reported that the NSA wireless wiretapping program had produced thousands of leads each month that the FBI had to track down, but that no Al-Qaeda networks were discovered. During a July 17, 2007 briefing, FBI deputy director John Pistole indicated that the FBI was not aware of any Al-Qaeda sleeper cells operating in the United States. In August of 2007 Congress passed the Protect America Act, giving the intelligence community greater access to electronic communications coming into and out of the United States. I have two questions in this regard.

RW: Has the FBI found any sleeper cells yet? One…

RW: Two. Has the NSA’s wireless wiretapping programs either before the Protect America Act or after led to the prosecution and conviction of any terrorists in the United States?

Robert Mueller: Well, as to your first question as to whether we have found affiliates or, as you would call them, cells of Al-Qaeda in the United States, yes we have. Again, I cannot get into it in public session, but I would say yes we have. With regard to the relationship of a particular case or individual to the terrorist surveillance program, again that is something that would have to be covered in a closed session.

RW: Alright, Mr. Director. An LA Times article from October, 2007 quotes one senior federal enforcement official as saying quote “the CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the decision not to be involved” end quote. The article goes on to say that some FBI officials went to you and that you quote “pulled many of the agents back from playing even a supporting role in the investigations to avoid exposing them to legal jeopardy” end quote.

RW: My question Mr. Director, I congratulate you for pulling the FBI agents back, but why did you not take more substantial steps to stop the interrogation techniques that your own FBI agents were telling you were illegal? Why did you not initiate criminal investigations when your agents told you the CIA and the Department of Defense were engaging in illegal interrogation techniques, and rather than simply pulling your agents out, shouldn’t you have directed them to prevent any illegal interrogations from taking place?

RM: I can go so far sir as to tell you that a protocol in the FBI is not to use coercion in any of our interrogations or our questioning and we have abided by our protocol.

RW: I appreciate that. What is the protocol say when the FBI knows that the CIA is engaging or the Department of Defense is engaging in an illegal technique? What does the protocol say in that circumstance?

RM: We would bring it up to appropriate authorities and determine whether the techniques were legal or illegal.

RW: Did you bring it up to appropriate authorities?

RM: All I can tell you is that we followed our own protocols.

RW: So you can’t tell us whether you brought it; when your own FBI agents came to you and said the CIA is doing something illegal which caused you to say don’t you get involved; you can’t tell us whether you then went to whatever authority?

RM: I’ll tell you we followed our own protocols.

RW: And what was the result?

RM: We followed our own protocols. We followed our protocols. We did not use coercion. We did not participate in any instance where coercion was used to my knowledge.

RW: Did the CIA use techniques that were illegal?

RM: I can’t comment on what has been done by another agency and under what authorities the other agency may have taken actions.

RW: Why can’t you comment on the actions of another agency?

RM: I leave that up to the other agency to answer questions with regard to the actions taken by that agency and the legal authorities that may apply to them.

RW: Are you the chief legal law enforcement agency in the United States?

RM: I am the Director of the FBI.

RW: And you do not have authority with respect to any other governmental agency in the United States? Is that what you’re saying?

RM: My authority is given to me to investigate. Yes we do.

RW: Did somebody take away that authority with respect to the CIA?

RM: Nobody has taken away the authority. I can tell you what our protocol was, and how we followed that protocol.

RW: Did anybody take away the authority with respect to the Department of Defense?

RM: I’m not certain what you mean.

RW: Your authority to investigate an illegal torture technique.

RM: There has to be a legal basis for us to investigate, and generally that legal basis is given to us by the Department of Justice. Any interpretations of the laws given to us by the Department of Justice….
(talking over each other)

RW: But apparently your own agents made a determination that the actions by the CIA and the Department of Defense were illegal, so much so that you authorized, ordered, your agents not to participate. But that’s it.

RM: I’ve told you what our protocol was, and I’ve indicated that we’ve adhered to our protocol throughout.

RW: My time is up. Thank you very much Mr. Director.

Support Call for Investigations on Drugging Detainees

Following a pivotal article by Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly a few weeks back, today's Washington Post published an important article today, "Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned." The story, by Post staff writer Joby Warrick, notes U.S. denials in using drug injections for coercive purposes during interrogations.

Adel al-Nusairi, a Saudi national imprisoned for years at Guanatanmo, and now released without charges, has a different memory:

"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'"

U.S. authorities at the Department of Defense and the CIA say the stories of prisoners being forced to take drugs and make confessions are lies, or perhaps mistaken interpretations of various medical procedures. The Post article, which mentions the March 2003 John Yoo memo to the Department of Defense that gave legal cover to abusive interrogation methods, including the use of drugs on detainees, fails to mention that the CIA and military studied the use of drugs in interrogations for decades. Still, the Post article makes clear that drugs have been alleged to have been used on U.S.-held detainees for purposes of forcing confessions, as chemical restraint, and to forcibly psychologically condition detainees for interrogation.

Medical ethicists and experts in international law say such accounts raise serious questions. While the Geneva Conventions do not specifically refer to drugs, they ban any use of force or coercion in interrogating prisoners of war, said Barbara Olshansky, a law professor at Stanford University and the author of a book on military tribunals. "If you're talking about interrogations, you're talking about very specific prohibitions that mean you cannot use any force, at all, to interrogate someone," Olshansky said. "The law is beyond clear."

Physicians for Human Rights has called for both Congressional and Department of Justice investigations on the forcible drugging of detainees. This may be a good time, too, to support the ACLU's call for the release of a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report on a long-running investigation of the FBI's role in the unlawful interrogations of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. It's believed that "FBI agents stationed at Guantánamo Bay expressed concern after witnessing military interrogators' use of brutal interrogation techniques." Did these techniques include the forcible drugging of detainees?

Investigations Needed, Though Much Information in Public Domain

Investigations are urgently needed to get the full picture of what exactly the government has been up to, as the full extent of the manifold use of torture by the United States government has not been fully documented. Such investigations are also sorely needed to change the political dialogue in this country, and to hold accountable government officials who have broken domestic and international law on torture and the treatment of prisoners.

If the press would do their job and report the known research and give the proper context on this subject, then the work of the investigators would be much easier. (Jeff Klein's work, noted at the beginning of this article, is a notable exception. Other exceptions are Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair, Jane Meyer at The New Yorker, Scott Horton at Harper's, and Mark Benjamin at Salon.com.) The use of drugs in interrogations is not a new subject by any means. The government has researched this, including mixing drugs with other forms of coercive interrogation practice, such as sensory deprivation.

A Course in Narcosis, Part I

Online, I suggest the interested reader -- or Congressional or DOJ investigator -- begin with the CIA's own discussion of the matter in the declassified KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual. Here's some relevant quotes from the CIA on "narcosis" (if this website link is having problems, as it did when I went to reference it, use this cached link instead, or this alternate site, or the photocopy online of the manual itself). Bold emphasis in the following is mine. Remember, this "course" in narcosis was researched with U.S. taxpayer dollars. The CIA drew upon the work of the infamous MKULTRA program of the CIA.

Just as the threat of pain may more effectively induce compliance than its infliction, so an interrogatee's mistaken belief that he has been drugged may make him a more useful interrogation subject than he would be under narcosis....

In the interrogation situation, moreover, the effectiveness of a placebo may be enhanced because of its ability to placate the conscience. The subject's primary source of resistance to confession or divulgence may be pride, patriotism, personal loyalty to superiors, or fear of retribution if he is returned to their hands. Under such circumstances his natural desire to escape from stress by complying with the interrogator's wishes may become decisive if he is provided an acceptable rationalization for compliance. "I was drugged" is one of the best excuses.

Drugs are no more the answer to the interrogator's prayer than the polygraph, hypnosis, or other aids. Studies and reports "dealing with the validity of material extracted from reluctant informants... indicate that there is no drug which can force every informant to report all the information he has. Not only may the inveterate criminal psychopath lie under the influence of drugs which have been tested, but the relatively normal and well-adjusted individual may also successfully disguise factual data"....

Nevertheless, drugs can be effective in overcoming resistance not dissolved by other techniques. As has already been noted, the so-called silent drug (a pharmacologically potent substance given to a person unaware of its administration) can make possible the induction of hypnotic trance in a previously unwilling subject....

Particularly important is the reference to matching the drug to the personality of the interrogatee. The effect of most drugs depends more upon the personality of the subject than upon the physical characteristics of the drugs themselves. If the approval of Headquarters has been obtained and if a doctor is at hand for administration, one of the most important of the interrogator's functions is providing the doctor with a full and accurate description of the psychological make-up of the interrogatee, to facilitate the best possible choice of a drug.

Persons burdened with feelings of shame or guilt are likely to unburden themselves when drugged, especially if these feelings have been reinforced by the interrogator. And like the placebo, the drug provides an excellent rationalization of helplessness for the interrogatee who wants to yield but has hitherto been unable to violate his own values or loyalties.

Like other coercive media, drugs may affect the content of what an interrogatee divulges. Gottschalk notes that certain drugs "may give rise to psychotic manifestations such as hallucinations, illusions, delusions, or disorientation", so that "the verbal material obtained cannot always be considered valid." (7) For this reason drugs (and the other aids discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.

This discussion does not include a list of drugs that have been employed for interrogation purposes or a discussion of their properties because these are medical considerations within the province of a doctor rather than an interogator [sic].

A Course in Narcosis, Part II

If we go back and look at the Washington Post article printed today, we see that the reaction of the detainees who were (allegedly) drugged is replete with traumatic feelings. One wonders if the giving of injections rather than pills was psychologically designed to create greater fear in the prisoners.

The CIA's reference to Gottschalk is to Louis A. Gottschalk. At the time (early 60s), Gottschalk was Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Research Coordinator in the Department of Psychiatry at Cincinnati General Hospital. His essay, "The Use of Drugs in Interrogation" was published in the 1961 book, The Manipulation of Human Behavior. (Online via Questia, for some time this book could be read for free over the net at 4shared.com, but that link is gone now. The Questia read will cost you about $8.00 -- worth it in my opinion, though enterprising web surfers may find it elsewhere for less or free, for all I know.)

In Gottschalk's piece, he looks at such aspects of drug use in interrogation as the use of placebo administration; the effects of individual differences in personality and cerebral functions on drug reaction; the effects of physiological conditions, secondary to manipulation of biological rhythms, nutritional states, isolation and fatigue; and the efficacy of drugs in "uncovering information." Regarding the latter, Gottschalk wrote:

For certain personality types, some drugs lower conscious ego control, thereby facilitating recall of repressed material and increasing the difficulty of withholding available information....

... clinical experience and experimental studies indicate that, although a person's resistance to communicating consciously withheld information can be broken down with drugs, and particularly sodium amytal, the interrogator can have no easy assurance as to the accuracy and validity of the information he obtains.... An interrogator would have to evaluate many other factors... to decide how to interpret the outcome of an interview with a drugged informant.

Besides sodium amytal, Gottschalk and other government researchers (from the military, CIA, contracted or unwittingly funded) studied numerous pharmacological agents, including barbiturate sedatives and calmatives (amobarbital, secobarbital), non-barbiturate sedatives (Placidyl, Quiactin), stimulants (ritalin, benzadrine, and methamphetamine, the latter said to be "useful in the interrogation of the psychopath"), autonomic reactors and beta blockers, antimalarial drugs, heavy metals, hormones (ACTH, cortisone, thyroid), and classic hallucinogens like mescaline, LSD and PCP. Marijuana was also an early target of drug experiments on truth telling. Psychoactive medications have (or are?) been studied as well (thorazine, compazine, etc.).

Thorazine was also used heavily by Dr. Ewen Cameron, the famous Montreal psychiatrist, whose attempt to totally control the human mind via a technique called "psychic driving" destroyed many people's lives in the 1950s and 1960s. Cameron used drug-induced coma, multiple electroshock, and drugs like thorazine and LSD in an effort to totally control human beings, from their memory (which he sought to wipe out) and their behavior. The research was funded, in part, by the CIA. The story has been told in all its horrendous detail a number of times, most recently by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, and by researcher Gordon Thomas in his new book, Secrets and Lies.

Summary

While the Washington Post article demonstrates some movement among the official elite who run this country to address the latest revelations on torture, perhaps even to promote some kind of reform inside the Pentagon and CIA, it's also possible that official denials are all we are going to hear.

It's important that the calls from organizations like Physicians for Human Rights for hearings and investigations be supported by phone calls, letters, emails, and donations. The Yoo memo and other issues related to torture are supposed to be examined at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on May 9. Why not bring up the issue of involuntary drugging as part of that hearing? In any case, a full investigation is needed of U.S. torture. In my opinion, the government cannot be trusted to run this investigation. But, lacking any other authoritative forum, a Congressional investigation may be the best we can hope for at this point.

On this topic, with a special emphasis on the possible role of psychologists and other health professionals in these interrogation abuses, see Stephen Soldz's article, "Involuntary drugging of US detainees, a crisis for the health professions".

Lawsuit Reveals Massive Suicide Rate Among U.S. Soldiers

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.

Here's Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:

Kussman had inquired about the accuracy of a news report published that month claiming the suicide rate among veterans was 18 per day.

“McClatchy [Newspapers] alleges that 18 veterans kill themselves everyday and this is confirmed by the VA’s own statistics,” Kussman wrote. “Is that true? Sounds awful but if one is considering 24 million veterans.”

In an email response to Kussman, Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the VA, confirmed the statistics and added “VA’s own data demonstrate 4-5 suicides per day among those who receive care from us.”

These statistics are much larger than official Army statistics quoted only a few months ago at CNN, where it was reported that 5 U.S. soldiers attempt suicide every day, not just those receiving VA treatment. Even at that, the figures represented a significant leap in suicide rates among soldiers.

According to Army statistics, the incidence of U.S. Army soldiers attempting suicide or inflicting injuries on themselves has skyrocketed in the nearly five years since the start of the Iraq war.

Last year's 2,100 attempted suicides -- an average of more than 5 per day -- compares with about 350 suicide attempts in 2002, the year before the war in Iraq began, according to the Army....

The Army lists 89 soldier deaths in 2007 as suicides and is investigating 32 more as possible suicides. Suicide rates already were up in 2006 with 102 deaths, compared with 87 in 2005.

But according to internal VA emails, over 6500 veterans per year are killing themselves. And this news follows the revelations in a RAND Corporation report released last week reporting that over 300,000 of soldiers are returning from the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and brain injuries. That's over 20% of those deployed with a serious mental illness or nervous system disorder.

Inter Press Service had more to report on the Katz email:

"Shh!" the e-mail begins.

"Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?" the e-mail concludes.

According to CBS News, Katz's email was written shortly after the VA provided the network with data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all of 2007 -- a fraction of Katz's estimate.

Earlier this month, the city of Dallas, Texas closed its psychiatric unit after the hospital experienced its fourth suicide of the year.

"On Apr. 4, a man fastened a bed sheet to the bottom corner of a door frame, draped a noose over the top, and hanged himself," the Dallas Morning News reported last week. "Before that, a veteran hanged himself on a frame attached to his wheelchair. And in January, two men who met in the psychiatric ward committed suicide in Collin County days after being released."

Clearly, something is very wrong. But this didn't stop the government attorneys in San Francisco for calling for the dismissal of the veterans' lawsuit, claiming, according to a story at the San Jose Mercury News, that the VA has a "world class" health care system, and blaming the crisis on old Vietnam War veterans.

The veterans lawsuit also alleges that many returning soldiers are denied treatment by the VA, and then wait forever on appeal for benefits. From the SJ Mercury News story:

It also takes an average of more than five years for the VA to decide a veteran's appeal of denied coverage, [veterans lawyer Gordon] Erspamer said. In the last six months, 526 vets have died while awaiting word of their appeal within the VA, he noted.

The situation for veterans is tragic, and increasingly, despairing vets, denied treatment, suffering the hell of intrusive memories, depression, and agonizing confusion and surging irritability that is PTSD, or other disorders or injuries, especially brain injuries, increasingly such victims of the insane war drive of Bush and Cheney are killing themselves. And it's getting worse.

This is not a war for democracy. It's a war on democracy, and on the elementary canons of decency and civilized behavior. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in 100,000s of dead Iraqis, millions of refugees, a world economy spinning out of control, and now, at home in the U.S., an obscene harvest of horribly wounded soldiers, many of whom are committing suicide in record numbers.

When will it stop? Not until the population of this country, and all countries in the world, demand it stop. The U.S. citizenry, in this case, has a larger responsibility than most, as its government is the largest, richest, and most bellicose in the world. Yet the population is mesmerized by an electoral process that promises very little. It is not surprising that those with any hope and desire for change are flocking in large numbers to Barack Obama, who presents himself as an agent of change. Whether he is or not will be tested soon enough.

The fear in the society is palpable, a large creaking and groaning sound that appears to be the harbinger of a bloated and bankrupt empire lurching towards catastrophe. The leaders have decided upon war. They want to enlarge that war to include Iran, with Hillary Clinton the latest to jump on that bus. Obama, too, says "all options are on the table" when it comes to keeping Iran from having nuclear weapons, mimicking the language of torture president Bush.

According to T.S. Eliot, the world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper. That whimper may be the sound of a hopeless veteran staring at eternity, full of pain and loss, a loaded pistol in one hand, or maybe a bottle of pills. A society that cannot serve the needs of those it sends to fight its dirty and predatory wars is a society that ----------.

I'll let my readers fill in that blank.