Former PENS Participant Exposes APA on Interrogations Issue

On June 18, the American Psychological Association released an open letter from the regarding psychologists' involvement in abusive national security interrogations. While APA openly admitted for the first time that psychologists had been involved in the torture interrogations scandal, a number of human rights activists and groups released a statement criticizing APA for "minimizing the extent of psychologists’ involvement in state-sanctioned abuse as well as APA’s own defense of such involvement."

Now, Stephen Soldz has posted at his blog a letter from Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo, a member of the APA's 2005 Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) Task Force, responding to the June 18 APA Open Letter:

APA Board of Directors:

I was troubled to see the primary Board Liaison [1] to the June 2005 PENS Task Force among the signatories to your June 17, 2009, Open Letter. As a member of the PENS task force, I sat next to the primary Board Liaison throughout the three-day meeting. Your representative contributed to the flawed process of the PENS report and failed to reveal the severe conflicts of interest that shaped the process and the outcome of the meeting. As part of any statement to the membership, I therefore believe the Board should accept responsibility for the flawed PENS process and annul the PENS Report.

Prior to the PENS meeting, as documented in the PENS listserv, the primary Board Liaison proposed that Dr. Russell Newman, then Director of the Practice Directorate, attend the PENS meeting as an “observer.” In fact, Dr. Newman dominated the agenda with his arguments that our fundamental task was to put out the fires of controversy at APA, that we must act in great haste, introduce no context-specific ethics principles, project unanimity, and speak to the membership only through the voice of appointed representatives.

Dr. Newman is married to BSCT psychologist Debra Dunivin, who had served at Guantanamo. We now know she conferred with Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley (author of the BSCT instructions) immediately after our completion of the PENS report, as documented in the PENS listserv. Given his wife’s close personal interest in the matter, Dr. Newman’s major role in setting the agenda of the PENS meeting constituted a severe conflict of interest. The primary Board Liaison was an accessory to this arrangement. Similarly, the CEO, an ex officio member of the Board who was Dr. Newman’s immediate supervisor, presumably knew of this significant conflict and violated his fiduciary responsibility to the membership to protect them from such conflicts.

Other undisclosed guests at the PENS meeting also had conflicts of interest. Former and current high-level APA staff members Drs. Susan Brandon, James Breckenridge, Heather Kelly, and Geoff Mumford all had lead roles in the funding of psychology through national security agencies. Two had even sought funding for psychology through task force member Dr. Scott Shumate, director of the Behavioral Sciences Directorate, Department of Defense Counterintelligence Field Activity, as announced in the October 2004 APA Science Policy Insider News.

It was your primary Board Liaison who suggested, early on the first day of the PENS meeting, that the entire proceeding be kept secret from the APA membership. At that time there were no sensitive matters under discussion, and no sensitive information in regard to national security emerged as the meeting continued. The confidentiality served both to conceal severe conflicts of interest in production of the PENS Report and to reduce the likelihood of informed dialogue throughout the APA concerning the PENS Report.

Finally, as is now well known, six of the ten psychologists the Board appointed to the task force worked for the very government security organizations whose behavior was in question. As representatives of their employers in formulating the PENS Report, the six members subordinated psychological ethics and international human rights law to Bush Administration interrogation law. The primary Board Liaison was witness to this development during the three-day meeting.

Although not currently on the Board, the secondary Board Liaison to the PENS Task Force took a much stronger role than the primary Liaison in subordinating international human rights law to U.S. law and in corrupting the PENS process. Examples of his inappropriate interference in task force business, far exceeding the role of Liaison, appear throughout the PENS listserv.

The Board of Directors cannot reasonably disclaim responsibility for the PENS Report, which it accepted without even waiting for approval of Council. The recent Open Letter does not reflect the knowledge held by the two Board Liaisons and several other APA staff members and officers. Annulment of the 2005 PENS Report is crucial to the credibility of the 2009 Board.

Sincerely,
Jean Maria Arrigo, Ph.D.
Member of the 2005 APA PENS Task Force

Footnote 1: This footnote is not from Dr. Arrigo, but I am adding here for clarification. Dr. Arrigo speaks of two Board Liaisons at the PENS meetings. The two Board Liaisons were Dr. Barry Anton and Dr. Gerald Koocher. The latter was also APA President in 2006. I believe Dr. Anton, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve for 22 years (although a civilian at the time of the PENS meetings), was the "Primary Liaison" to which Dr. Arrigo refers, making Dr. Koocher the "Secondary Liaison." See link for more information.

War Crimes and the White House

The video below -- "War Crimes and the White House: The Bush Administration's Cover-Up of the Dasht-e Leili Massacre" -- was produced by Physicians for Human Rights, who have been campaigning for an investigation into alleged war crimes by a U.S.-linked warlord in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has impeded three (or more) investigations into the massacre of up to 2,000 surrendered Taliban soldiers, buried in mass graves at Dasht-e-Leili.

Transcript to video

Outrage: U.S. Covers Up Major Afghan War Crime

James Risen has an article at the New York Times about the long-time cover-up by U.S. officials during the Bush Administration to block any investigation into Dasht-e-Leili massacre. In November 2001, US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly in northern Afghanistan when U.S. backed warlord Gen. Dostum had up to 2,000 surrendered Taliban fighters locked into metal containers and suffocated to death.

From Risen's article (emphasis added)

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A., and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official....

The question of culpability for the prisoner deaths — which may have been the most significant war crime in Afghanistan after the 2001 American-led invasion — has taken on new urgency since the general, an important ally of Mr. Karzai, was reinstated to his government post last month.

Apparently, the Obama administration has quietly tried to dissuade the Karzai government from allowing Dostum back into office, but without success.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has issued a call for a criminal probe, citing new evidence that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan in 2002. It is also calling for Attorney General Eric Holder "to investigate why the Bush Administration impeded an FBI criminal probe of the alleged Dasht-e-Leili massacre."

Physicians for Human Rights, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, first documented the existence of the alleged mass grave in January 2002 and since then:

-- Advocated for witnesses to be protected, the mass grave site to be secured, and for a full and impartial investigation;

-- Conducted preliminary forensic investigations — including exposing 15 remains and conducting three autopsies — under UN auspices at Dasht-e-Leili;

-- Successfully sued for compliance with a PHR Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the release of US government documents that reveal US intelligence knowledge of the magnitude of the alleged crime and awareness of the execution and torture of witnesses to the incidents;

-- Helped identify the US chain of command likely responsible for impeding federal investigations into the alleged massacre;

-- Discovered and reported on alleged tampering of the site; and

-- Requested satellite image analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that appears to demonstrate that tampering occurred soon after PHR filed its FOIA request in June 2006.

In a late breaking news report by AP, the Obama administration has lamely said it does not have jurisdiction to investigate the crime. This is total bullshit. As PHR put it in a press release late Friday (emphasis added):

“For US Government officials to claim that there is no legal basis to investigate this well-documented mass atrocity is absurd,” stated Physicians for Human Rights Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. “US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly and accepted the surrender of the prisoners jointly with General Dostum’s forces in northern Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has a legal obligation to determine what US officials knew, where US personnel were, what involvement they had, and the actions of US allies during and after the massacre. These questions, nearly eight years later, remain unanswered.”

“Furthermore,” added Nathaniel Raymond, PHR’s lead researcher on the Dasht-e-Leili case, “The New York Times has shown that the Bush Administration engaged in a coordinated effort to prevent this alleged war crime from ever being investigated. Under the Geneva Conventions, the cover-up of a war crime can itself constitute a war crime.”

PHR has a timeline of the investigation, and has posted an appeal to sign a petition to Attorney General Eric Holder to "let the FBI finally proceed with a fair and impartial investigation."

As Nathaniel Raymond, PHR’s lead researcher on Dasht-e-Leili, put it:

“The Bush Administration’s disregard for the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions led to torture of prisoners in Guantánamo and many other secret places.... Contrary to the legal opinions of the previous Department of Justice, the principles of the Geneva Conventions are non-negotiable, as is their enforcement. President Obama must open a full and transparent criminal probe and prosecute any US officials found to have broken the law.”

Last December, writing on the revelations surrounding the destruction of mass grave sites in Afghanistan associated with the Dasht-e-Leili massacre (from a McClatchy papers report), I wrote:

... I can't believe that NATO or U.S. forces will work strenuously to investigate war atrocities, especially as atrocities continue in the U.S.-backed military occupation of the country, and put zero faith in either NATO or the U.S.'s ability to conduct such an impartial investigation....

An international investigatory commission, independent of any government, and staffed by human rights representatives and other trusted citizens, including what representatives from the victims' families, in all the countries involved, perhaps sponsored by the UN or the ICC, should be formed to prosecute these kinds of cases, as the governments involved are too compromised. In the meantime, the work of PHR's forensic department, and the organization as a whole, deserves your support.

Self-professed War Criminal Robert McNamara Dies (1916-2009

Clips from Errol Morris's documentary, The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2004)

From Joe Costello's obit at AlterNet:

Today, Mr. McNamara's ilk remain very much in charge. Our political system is even more centralized than it was when he was at Defense. The idea that technocrats can run a large and unwieldy government is the true-faith of DC. While we are no longer bombing SE Asia, we kill with the same technical ferocity in the illegitimate wars of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. While our auto companies, no longer the shining star of global industry, still remain vital to the health of the US economy, or so we are told from DC. And behind the present financial fiasco, we find any number of well educated young men working in elaborate offices and manipulating numbers and formulas thinking they control the world. And yes, at the same time committing fraud after fraud, and lying through their teeth every step of the way.

Mr. McNamara's America is a fairly ugly place, it is in so many ways against the politics of this republic's founding. It is imperial, elitist, and predatory.

For me, Robert McNamara represented everything that was wrong about America. I grew up with his face on television, telling smooth lies about the Vietnam War. He served the titans of industry, from Ford Motor Company to the World Bank, and in the Pentagon, of course. He was involved in the murder of over a million of people, many of them burned to death.

If you want to know who this man was -- and there is a complexity to the man, as there is a complexity to our civilization, so full of marvels and mass murder -- watch Morris's documentary, The Fog of War, from which the clip above are drawn. In the film, McNamara comes closer than he ever would to acknowledging the immensity of his crimes:

"I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S.-Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history -- kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time -- and today -- has not really grappled with what are, I'll call it, 'the rules of war.' Was there a rule then that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night?

"[World War II General Curtis] LeMay said, 'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

Unfortunately, no era dies with McNamara's death. The struggle against imperialist wars and policies continues, and the "might makes right" ethos that is the unpronounced ideology of the governmental and societal leadership of this country.

Torture News Roundup: Farewell (for awhile) (updated)

Originally posted at Daily Kos, the "farewell" relates to the decision to place on hiatus the "Torture News Roundup" series that I, Meteor Blades, and Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse had written on alternate weeks over at Daily Kos since earlier this year. I am not saying "farewell" to writing or blogging.

This is not a GBCW (good bye cruel world) diary. TNR is simply going on hiatus, though not without this one final foray into the news of the week. Meteor Blades, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, and myself, feel that the initial purpose for these TNR diaries -- to bring torture to the fore as a major issue on this site -- has been achieved. There have been and continue to be diaries almost every day on one or other aspect of the latest news about the U.S. government's use of torture, and the fight for accountability for such crimes, whether by prosecutions, a "truth commission" investigation, or both.

We will continue writing our own diaries on torture topics, as the need arises (and sadly, the need is still acute). We appreciate all the support our work has had from a myriad of Daily Kos readers, and one couldn't ask for a better and more motivated audience. When appropriate, it's very likely TNR will return, when the need for such a format is again apparent.

This diary will look at the latest release of previously classified docs on torture at Guantanamo, at the delay in release of the CIA Inspector General's report on CIA torture, on developments in the UK over their own torture scandal, and more. [The update is a BBC video on Bagram, H/T Vyan -- see below.]

ACLU Gets Release of New Documents

Defense Department Releases Previously Secret Torture Documents
Written by Jason Leopold

The Department of Defense released redacted documents Thursday related to abuse and torture of detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas prisons.

The 12 documents were released as part of the American Civil Liberties Union's long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the government.

The Obama administration agreed to reprocess the documents, but it continues to withhold many key details related to the Defense Department's use of torture methods. In some documents, the Obama administration has withheld details that were previously disclosed by the Bush administration.

"These documents provide still more evidence of the widespread and systemic abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas locations," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney. "They further underscore the need for a congressional select committee to examine the roots of the torture program as well as an independent prosecutor to investigate issues of criminal responsibility.

Miami Herald: Documents describe chaos of Gitmo's early months

By PAMELA HESS and NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Newly released Defense Department documents and memos about the first years of operation of the jail at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, portray a chaotic and sometimes violent operation that its own commanders described as dysfunctional....

Dunleavy said he was brought in to bring "a commonsense way on how to do business." He had experience with more than 3,000 interrogations going back 35 years.

Dunleavy said he was initially told that he would be reporting to U.S. Southern Command, but that quickly changed.

"I got my marching orders from the president of the United States," he said.

He also wrote, "The mission was to get intelligence to prevent another 9/11."

Pentagon Report Verified Detainee Torture
by Thomas R. Eddlam

Mohamedou Ould Slahi of Mauritana had allegedly recruited some of the 9/11 highjackers and apparently underwent some of the worst torture at Guantanamo up to the time that the documents were written. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally approved his interrogation regimen, according to commanding Major-General Mike Dunlavey. A Pentagon Criminal Investigative Division (CID) report explained the approved torture regimen: “The plan included isolation, interrogations for up to 20 hours, the use of various types of sound, deprivation of light and auditory stimuli (whereby Slahi would at times be placed in a silent 'white room'), removal of all comfort items, MRE-Only diet, forced grooming, and sleep adjustment....

After three months of sleep deprivation, isolation, and sensory deprivation nearly identical to the “brain-washing” techniques used by Chinese communists on American POWs during the Korean war to elicit false confessions, U.S. interrogators turned the torture up a notch. Slahi was told that “beatings and physical pain are not the worst thing in the world,” and that much was the truth.... interrogators told him that he should “use his imagination to think of the worst possible scenario he could end up in,” adding that “he will very soon disappear down a very dark hole” where “his very existence would become erased” and “no one will know what happened to him and, eventually, no one will care.” Then interrogators created an elaborate ruse that gave Slahi the impression he was being transferred from Guantanamo in a confusing, five-hour boat ride.

[Note: I have a different view of the claim that the North Korean/Chinese methods of torture and interrogation were meant to only achieve "false confessions." For those interested in this issue, please refer to my article "The Truth About False Confessions."]

The ACLU's Accountability Project garnered the support of a number of prominent bloggers last week, with stories by Glenn Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler, and Daily Kos's drational, among others.

Tortured to Death: New Details On Detainee Abuse Prove Bush Officials Are (Literally) Getting Away With Murder
By Suzanne Ito

Today, several prominent bloggers are writing about detainees who died in U.S. custody, using documents released through the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. We’re not talking suicide, or death by "natural causes." No, this is death as a result of torture and abuse while in custody.

Torture and Britain

Binyam Mohamed launches legal fight to stop US destroying torture images

Former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has launched an urgent legal attempt to prevent the US courts from destroying crucial evidence that he says proves he was abused while being held at the detention camp, the Guardian has learned. The evidence is said to consist of a photograph of Mohamed, a British resident, taken after he was severely beaten by guards at the US navy base in Cuba.

The image, now held by the Pentagon, had been put on his cell door, he says....

In a sworn statement seen by the Guardian, Mohamed has appealed to the federal district court in Washington not to destroy the photograph, which neither he nor his lawyers have a copy of, and which is classified under US law....

The photograph will be destroyed within 30 days of his case being dismissed by the American courts – a decision on which is due to be taken by a judge imminently, Clive Stafford Smith, Mohamed's British lawyer and director of Reprieve, the legal charity, said today....

Mohamed was seized and held in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly renditioned to Morocco. He was subsequently flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantánamo. Mohamed says he knows of other photographs taken of him in Morocco and Afghanistan, but he has not seen them. "These pictures including photos of my genitals," he said. "Although the US authorities still apparently deny it and refuse even to admit that I was rendered to Morocco, I was horribly tortured there and had a razor blade taken to my genitals".

MI5 accused of bribe offer in Rangzieb Ahmed torture case

The Security Service MI5 is being accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice by offering a man inducements to drop his allegation that its officers colluded in his torture.

Rangzieb Ahmed had three of his fingernails ripped out after MI5 and Greater Manchester police (GMP) drew up a list of questions for officers from a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency who had detained him in Pakistan. He was later deported to the UK and jailed for terrorism offences. Ahmed says he was visited in prison by an MI5 officer and a police officer who offered to secure a reduction in his sentence or a payment of money to withdraw his torture complaints when his appeal against conviction is heard later this year.

And, in a story that should make every American sit up and take notice, there is this story out by The Guardian yesterday.

Inquiry agreed into alleged torture of Iraqis by UK soldiers (emphasis added)

An independent inquiry is to be held into allegations that British soldiers mutilated and murdered civilians in Iraq – and the government has been forced to admit that key documents had not been disclosed.

In a letter read out in court today, the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, said he "profoundly regrets" the failures to disclose relevant documents. Though he denied the allegations, he said he was now prepared to set up an inquiry under European human rights convention articles enshrining the right to life and prohibiting torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment.

The government made the concession after documents, which contradict claims made on oath by officials, were belatedly disclosed to the high court.

They reveal that ministers, possibly including Tony Blair, knew much more about the incident than they have admitted.

Delay in Release of CIA Inspector General Report on Torture Interrogations

Obama Administration Wants CIA Torture Report Withheld Until August 31 (includes copies of the letters by the Department of Justice and reply letter from Amrit Singh, staff attorney for the ACLU
article by Spencer Ackerman

Word’s coming now that the Obama administration is seeking to withhold the CIA’s 2004 inspector-general report on the implementation of its former “enhanced interrogation regime” until August 31. The ACLU, which had an agreement with the administration to declassify the report as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is going to challenge the administration’s efforts....

The Justice Department argues that the volume of material it needs to go through in the CIA’s 2004 inspector general report is just too great to meet any pre-August 31 timetable. Not only is the IG report itself 200 pages, that’s just one of 319 documents under review as part of the case.

The ACLU replies that the CIA and the Justice Department have already missed three deadlines for the agreed-upon disclosure, and lawyer Amrit Singh writes that she’s “disturbed by the clear trend emerging in the government’s repeated delays in disclosure of documents critical to a complete understanding of the CIA’s interrogation program.” She says that instead of delaying, Judge Alvin Hellerstein should order the “expediting the reprocessing and release of all CIA documents at issue.”

Justice Dept. again delays release of CIA interrogations report

In a letter to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, Justice officials said the 2004 Inspector General's report had to be considered in relationship to 318 other documents under court-ordered review.

The Battle over "Indefinite Detention"

White House Drafting Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention; Move Would Bypass Congress
By Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn,

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate suspected terrorists indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said....

Since the inauguration, 11 detainees have been released or transferred, one prisoner committed suicide and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release....

Three months into the Justice Department's reviews, several officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees can not be charged or released.

Obama uneasy over indefinite Guantánamo detentions

Obama Seems to Rule Out Executive Order on Indefinite Detentions

President Obama appeared to rule out issuing an executive order to establish indefinite detention Thursday, nearly a week after White House officials first acknowledged that it was an option.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Obama said that if he goes ahead with indefinite detentions for terrorism suspects that he would ask Congress to approve it by law.

"It is very important that the American people and Congress, in conjunction with my administration, come up with a structure that is not only legitimate in the eyes of our constitutional traditions, but also in the eyes of the international community," he said, according to the AP....

The possibility of carrying out such a policy through an executive order was widely criticized by civil rights groups last week, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Mohammed Jawad Case

Must Read from Bob Herbert - How Long Is Long Enough?
by teacherken

It begins like this

No one seems to know how old Mohammed Jawad was when he was seized by Afghan forces in Kabul six and a half years ago and turned over to American custody. Some reports say he was 14. Some say 16. The Afghan government believes he was 12.

The penultimate paragraph

There is no credible evidence against Jawad, and his torture-induced confession has rightly been ruled inadmissible by a military judge. But the Obama administration does not feel that he has suffered enough. Not only have administration lawyers opposed defense efforts to secure Jawad’s freedom, but they are using, as the primary basis for their opposition, the fruits of the confession that was obtained through torture and has already been deemed inadmissible — without merit, of no value.

Read the column.

Will Obama Now Defend Torture In Court?
by Andrew Sullivan

I wish I knew that the answer was categorically not. But we've learned the hard way that the Obama Department of Justice can defend things it doesn't allegedly believe in, using arguments from the far right of the Bush administration. Well, as Chris Good explains, we may soon find out:

According to U.S. court precedent, now that Jawad's lawyers have questioned his confessions as coerced, the burden now shifts to the Department of Justice to show that they weren't. The court will hear arguments about the statements at a hearing scheduled for August 5-6, according to Hafetz.

Torture Effects and Death by Torture

The Lingering Effects of Torture
Scientists assess the long-term effects of torture on the human mind
by Devin Powell, July 03, 2009 (emphasis added)

New research that tries to untangle the horrors suffered by torture survivors was recently presented at the 11th European Conference on Traumatic Stress in Oslo, Norway. Metin Basoglu, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, described the statistical techniques he used to single out the mental impacts of "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatments" that range from threats and isolation to electric shocks and beatings on the feet.

His previous work suggested that the distinction between the harshness of "physical" torture and the mildness of "psychological" torture is a false one. When torture victims from the former Yugoslavia rated the distress caused by different forms of abuse on a scale from zero to four, those techniques that did not involve physical pain were just as distressing, or even slightly more so, than those that directly inflicted pain. "The threat or anticipation of pain may be worse than the pain itself," said Basoglu.

The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture (Glenn Greenwald)

When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan (Andy Worthington)

How long it would have taken the US military to investigate the murders, if left to their own devices, is unknown. Instead, they issued a press release, announcing that a prisoner had died of a heart attack, and then refused to release any further information. Investigating further, the journalist Carlotta Gall (in another impressive story for the New York Times in March 2003) traced Dilawar’s family and was shown his death certificate, on which an army pathologist stated unequivocally that, although he had coronary artery disease, his heart failed because of “blunt force injuries to the lower extremities.” The extent of his injuries was later summed up by two coroners: one said that his legs had “basically been pulpified,” and the other said, “I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.”

Gall’s article provoked an investigation into the murders, which, in 2005 and 2006, led to various minor punishments and reprimands for the soldiers involved, although at no point, as with the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, was anyone encouraged to look higher up the chain of command to explain why it was that such murderous treatment had become “standard operating procedure.”

By Yoo’s Own Analysis, Army Field Manual Allows Torture with Drugs (emphasis in original)

The use of drugs in interrogations by U.S. agencies is, unfortunately, nothing new, but it is illegal. In the rewrite of the Army Field Manual, supervised by Rumsfeld right-hand man, Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon changed the wording around the use of drugs in interrogations to prohibit "drugs that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage." Previously, the former AFM had prohibited "chemically induced psychosis." So, unless that psychosis causes "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage" -- something that is not typical with the use of psychotropic, hallucinogenic, or so-called "truth" drugs, like sodium amytal -- it's presumably allowed in the current AFM.

ACLU Says Government Used False Confessions

ACLU to Argue Against Use of Evidence Obtained Through Torture in Federal Court

A Sliver of Good News
By emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)

I hate that I'm now clinging to scraps like this to make myself happier about President Obama's efforts to overturn torture, but this is an improvement over the Bush Administration. The acting head of OLC has determined that military commissions cannot use statements gotten through torture to convict detainees.

The Justice Department has determined that detainees tried by military commissions in the U.S. can claim at least some constitutional rights, particularly protection against the use of statements taken through coercive interrogations, officials said.

The conclusion, explained in a confidential memorandum whose contents were shared with The Wall Street Journal, could alter significantly the way the commissions operate -- and has created new divisions among the agencies responsible for overseeing the commissions.

More Torture News

[Added at 9pm, PDT: A link to this excellent diary by Vyan, Bagram AFB:America's OTHER Torture Chamber, and the video that went with it, a BBC report from approximately a week ago.]

Guantánamo detainee interview sites to remain

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- A prosecutor agreed Thursday that the government will not dismantle overseas locations where a former Guantánamo detainee claims he was interrogated by the CIA before he was brought to the United States for trial on terrorism charges.

The prosecutor, David Raskin, told U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that the United States would preserve the locations for now even though it does not plan to use at trial any statements Ahmed Ghailani made while he was in the custody of any other government agencies.

Torture survivors testify at the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Commission hearing

WASHINGTON – Torture survivors and advocates implored Congress June 25 to investigate allegations of military torture of war prisoners, saying that the U.S. must be an example for other countries in respect for human rights.

The hearing, sponsored by Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., chair of the Congressional Human Rights Commission, was one of several programs held June 25-27 in observance of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition’s annual Torture Awareness Month.

The panel members declared that Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration must take concrete action in investigating and prosecuting torture in order to uphold accountability in the world.

“These are issues, not abstractions. ... We know that there is considerable value in precise information,” said Felice Gaer, head of the American Jewish Committee’s human rights institute.

But, Gaer added, simply gathering facts about abuse is not enough.

“Countries need to recognize these obligations and live up to these obligations,” she said.

Disbar the Torture Lawyers Now

Human Rights Groups Critique American Psychological Association's Recent Statement on Interrogations

This has been a painful time for the association and one that offers an opportunity to reflect and learn from our experiences over the last five years. APA will continue to speak forcefully in further communicating our policies against torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment to our members, the Obama administration, Congress, and the general public. (Board letter, June 18, 2009.)

Any meaningful approach to this issue must start by acknowledging the fact that psychologists were absolutely integral to our government's systematic program of torture. When the Bush administration decided to engage in torture, they turned to psychologists from the military's SERE [Survival, Evasion, resistance, and Escape] program for help in designing and implementing the torture tactics. This fact was first reported in 2005, within days of the release of the APA's PENS [Psychological Ethics and National Security] report and was officially acknowledged by the Defense Department in its Inspector General's Report, declassified in May 2007. Other psychologists monitored torture to calibrate how much abuse a detainee could tolerate without dying. Nonetheless, APA leaders continued, and still continue, to pretend that psychologists' participation in abuse was the behavior of rogue members of the profession.

Similarly, the APA Board still refuses to acknowledge the evidence of apparent collusion between APA officials and the national security apparatus in providing ethical cover for psychologists’ participation in detainee abuse. This collusion was most notable in the creation of the military-dominated PENS task force. Only a policy that comes to terms with this APA collusion can begin to reduce the furor among APA members, psychologists, and the general public.

APA leadership has much work ahead to begin to repair the harm they have caused to the profession, the country, former and current detainees and their families.

Much thanks to Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse for help with links on this diary. And final thanks, again, to all Daily Kos readers. We hope you'll be here when we return. In the meantime, we are not really going away, and we hope you'll check in and read our regular diaries --

Because we're not going away.

Sanchez, Maddow, Warren, & Suskind Debate Torture Accountability Issue

Link TV has produced a fascinating video that has made the rounds of YouTube and other websites. The video presents an eight minute portion of a panel discussion that took place on May 31 at The Times Center on issue related to obtaining accountability for torture, featuring MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Ron Suskind, Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq during 2003-2004. The video is part of the Culture Project's "Blueprint for Accountability" series.

Famously, Lt. Gen. Sanchez announced in the video linked here that he supported a Truth Commission to investigate what really happened around the torture issue during the Bush years. Suskind and Warren argue for the importance of prosecutions, while Rachel Maddow argues for the importance of the rule of law. Watch for how uncomfortable everyone gets when Rachel says that if the institutions cannot function, because we cannot the "redress the wrongs that were done... then we need a revolution."

The video is a remarkable discussion, and I urge my readers to follow-up and look at the larger program from which it was derived, and the other fascinating links and videos at the Link TV page at the Culture Project's "Blueprint for Accountability" webpage.

By Yoo's Own Analysis, Army Field Manual Allows Torture with Drugs

Originally posted at Firedoglake

Sometimes people can be too smart for their own good.

According to recent news stories (see Spencer Ackerman's article in the Washington Independent), the Obama administration task force on interrogations is likely to recommend "small, mixed-agency teams for interviewing the most important terrorist targets." Moreover, according to former Deputy Attorney General and Intelligence Science Board member Philip Heymann:

... interrogators from across the military, CIA, and FBI, would be charged with creating a "syllabus" of best interrogation practices that fall within the boundaries of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which complies with the Geneva Conventions.

Obama's reliance on the most recent iteration of the Army Field Manual, which went into effect in September 2006, has been the subject of a number of critiques by myself, and by human rights organizations, including Physicians for Human Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Amnesty International. Its Appendix M allows for use of psychological torture techniques, including isolation, sleep deprivation, and partial sensory deprivation.

The main text of the AFM also changed the wording from the previous Army Field Manual as regards the use of drugs on prisoners, and did so in a way that allowed greater latitude for drugs that cause disruption of the senses and temporary psychosis. You'd think this was the brainchild of someone like John "Crush the Testicles" Yoo, but you'd be wrong.

In Yoo's famous memo, dated March 14, 2003, addressed to to William Haynes, then General Counsel at the Department of Defense, Yoo supposedly was answering Haynes/DoD's questions concerning "both domestic and international law that might be applicable to the conduct of... interrogations" of "alien unlawful combatants held outside the United States." Upon public release of the memo, it seemed to many as if Yoo were advocating an "anything goes" attitude towards torture and interrogations.

Accountability for Death by Torture

A number of bloggers, writing as part of an ACLU-initiated campaign to bring accountability for torture -- by stopping the drive for reconstituted military commissions and indefinite detention, and getting an independent prosecutor to investigate and bring charges against those who planned and implemented torture -- are highlighting the issue of deaths by torture under the Bush regime.

Read the selections below, then go to the ACLU site and do something to make a difference! They've got simple web tools that will help you do everything from write a letter to the editor to post on Facebook.

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Glenn Greenwald has written The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody -- at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that's one reason we've always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others -- because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions -- that we Look to the Future, not the Past -- are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.

Marcy Wheeler has written 04-309: Death from Torture

Now I'm no doctor--and I definitely can't make sense of the cardiac findings. But it sounds like "stress positions," "sleep deprivation," "walling," and "water dousing" are all leading candidates to have caused the death of 04-309. Or, to use the terms used for techniques approved for use by one Special Forces group in Iraq until May 18, 2004, about a month after 04-309's death, "safety positions," "sleep adjustment/sleep management," "change of environment/ environmental manipulation," and "mild physical contact." It doesn't really matter what you call the techniques, though, because they amount to torture that--in the case of an apparently healthy 27 year old man--appear to have killed him in three days time.

A lot of people--from the CIA to Cheney to the torture apologists--want this debate to be about waterboarding, a technique they've only admitted to using with three detainees, and a technique that--as far as we know--did not kill anyone in US custody. But that distracts from the other techniques that just as much torture, the ones that were killing Iraqi civilians in a matter of days.

drational, at Daily Kos, has written Torture Autopsy Reveals Death by Enhanced Interrogation

Habibullah was being interrogated by the military. Upon autopsy he was clothed only in an adult diaper. Because he was taken from his cell to the Bagram medical facility "dead on arrival" it is likely he was wearing a diaper when he was found "unresponsive, restrained in his cell" (hanging shackled from the ceiling). This is consistent with the nudity and use of diapering during "sleep deprivation" approved by Rumsfeld and described as part of the protocols for CIA interrogation during one technique: sleep deprivation- in which the detainee is shackled standing or sitting for up to 7 1/2 days straight. We have learned from the 2005 Bradbury memos that sleep deprivation causes venous stasis in the legs and has led to severe leg edema. We know that Habibullah was shackled to the ceiling of his cell for sleep deprivation, where he was ultimately found dead. This scenario is reinforced by a citation of a DOD criminal investigation report in the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Detainee Treatment (PDF). This citation noted that "the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatment at the hands of Bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides [Habibullah and Dilawar]."

And for pure beauty of exposition, don't miss bmaz's article, On the Rule of Law and Crimes of Torture.

What do you say to citizens who say we cannot have accountability, cannot address what has been done in our name because now is:

...not the time to let fly the dogs of revenge. With all the pressing issues facing this country and the world right now, tearing the country apart would be a terrible thing to do. Iran, North Korea, the Middle East, Health Care, Energy, the deficit, imigration, etc. It would be insane to do so.

The Founders gave us the answer to that conundrum. You follow the Rule of Law. You uphold the Constitution, what it stands for, and honor every drop of blood spilled since the Revolution to establish and defend it. You honor your oath to office. You do the right thing and have accountability on the merits. That is what you do, and it is time for a concerted effort from the grassroots to demand just that. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, those who would give up the essential Rule of Law for temporary security and political gain, deserve neither.

Human Rights Groups Critique APA's Recent Statement on Interrogations

From an announcement by psychologist and human rights/anti-torture activist Stephen Soldz:

Today a number of psychological, health, and human rights organizations released the following statement criticizing the American Psychological Association (APA) Board of Directors failure to accept responsibility for the APA’s role in facilitating psychologists' participation in abusive national security interrogations. The coalition statement responds to a June 18 open letter from the APA Board acknowledging for the first time that psychologists have engaged in torture, but making no reference to the APA Board’s own apparently unanimous support extending over several years for psychologists’ right to participate in detainee interrogations.

What follows is the text of the statement:

Open Letter in Response to the American Psychological Association Board

On June 18, 2009, the American Psychological Association [APA] Board issued an Open Letter on the subject of psychologists' involvement in abusive national security interrogations. The letter is among the first formal acknowledgements from APA leadership that psychologists were involved in torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. We welcome this progress.

Similarly, the letter acknowledges APA’s member-initiated referendum prohibiting psychologist participation in detention centers that are in violation of international law and overturning APA Council’s repeated refusals to do so. This is an improvement over very recent messages from APA officials that characterized press descriptions of APA policy as supporting psychologist participation in such interrogations as "fair and balanced."

Nevertheless, the letter is profoundly disappointing. It continues the long tradition of APA leaders minimizing the extent of psychologists’ involvement in state-sanctioned abuse as well as APA’s own defense of such involvement. The authors speak as though the information about psychologist’s involvement in torture is fresh news even though it has been available for a long time. Even now, the Board relies on the Bush Administration tactic, employed in the Abu Ghraib debacle, of blaming the abuse on a "few bad apples." This minimization of the greatest ethical crisis in our profession’s history by those who claim to lead the profession is unacceptable. Similarly the APA Board continues to take no responsibility for its own grievous mismanagement of this issue. Instead, the tone of the letter suggests we should all come together and “reflect and learn,” because this has been difficult for all of us, collectively. The Board also presumes the authority to continue to speak for psychologists in the future with neither redress nor evidence of remediation for what they have done:

This has been a painful time for the association and one that offers an opportunity to reflect and learn from our experiences over the last five years. APA will continue to speak forcefully in further communicating our policies against torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment to our members, the Obama administration, Congress, and the general public. [Board letter, June 18, 2009.]

Any meaningful approach to this issue must start by acknowledging the fact that psychologists were absolutely integral to our government's systematic program of torture. When the Bush administration decided to engage in torture, they turned to psychologists from the military's SERE [Survival, Evasion, resistance, and Escape] program for help in designing and implementing the torture tactics. This fact was first reported in 2005, within days of the release of the APA's PENS [Psychological Ethics and National Security] report and was officially acknowledged by the Defense Department in its Inspector General's Report, declassified in May 2007. Other psychologists monitored torture to calibrate how much abuse a detainee could tolerate without dying. Nonetheless, APA leaders continued, and still continue, to pretend that psychologists' participation in abuse was the behavior of rogue members of the profession.

Similarly, the APA Board still refuses to acknowledge the evidence of apparent collusion between APA officials and the national security apparatus in providing ethical cover for psychologists’ participation in detainee abuse. This collusion was most notable in the creation of the military-dominated PENS task force. Only a policy that comes to terms with this APA collusion can begin to reduce the furor among APA members, psychologists, and the general public.

APA leadership has much work ahead to begin to repair the harm they have caused to the profession, the country, former and current detainees and their families. At a minimum the APA leadership should do the following:

1. Fully implement the 2008 referendum as an enforceable section of the APA Code of Ethics. This entails a public announcement that APA policy and ethical standards oppose the service of psychologists in detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Air Base, CIA secret prisons, or in the rendition program.

2. Annul the June 2005 PENS Report due to the severe and multiple conflicts of interest involved in its production.

3. Bring in an independent body of investigative attorneys to pursue accountability for psychologists who participated in or otherwise contributed to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. APA should also: (a) clarify the status of open ethics cases and (b) remove the statute of limitations for violations involving torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, so as to allow time for information on classified activities to become public.

4. Develop a clear and rapid timetable to remove Sections 1.02 and 1.03 [the " Nuremberg defense" of following orders] from the APA Code of Ethics. [We note that the APA Ethics Committee has stated that they will not accept a defense of following orders to complaints regarding torture; this statement is a welcome improvement but it is clearly inadequate as it is not necessarily binding on future committees nor does it cover abuses falling under the category of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.] Revoke the equally problematic Section 8.05 of the Code, which dispenses with informed consent "where otherwise permitted by law or federal or institutional regulations," and Section 8.07, which sets an unacceptably high threshold of "severe emotional distress" for not using deception in the ethics of research design.

5. Retain an independent investigatory organization to study organizational behavior at APA. Due to potential conflicts of interest, independent human rights organizations should be enlisted to select this investigatory entity. The study should address, among other things, possible collusion in the PENS process and the 2003 APA-CIA-Rand conference on the Science of Deception, attended by the CIA's apparent designers of their torture program [James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen] during which "enhanced interrogation" techniques were discussed. The study should explore how the APA governance system permits the accumulation of power in the hands of a very small number of individuals who are unresponsive to the general membership. It should also propose measures to return the APA to democratic principles, scientific integrity, and beneficence, including restructuring for greater transparency and the assimilation of diverse viewpoints.

These five steps will not remove the terrible stain on the reputation of American psychology. However, by taking these steps the APA leadership would make both symbolic and substantive progress toward accountability for psychologists' contributions to detainee abuse and the APA's failure to adequately respond to the public record. These actions would constitute an important step toward rehabilitating the Association and restoring the good name of the profession itself.

Signed by:

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Physicians for Human Rights
Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Center for Constitutional Rights
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Network of Spiritual Progressives
National Lawyers Guild
Amnesty International USA
Program for Torture Victims, Los Angeles
American Friends Service Committee, Pacific Southwest Region
Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles
Massachusetts Campaign Against Torture (MACAT)
New York Campaign Against Torture (NYCAT)

For More Information, Contact:
Stephen Soldz
ssoldz@bgsp.edu
617-935-4246