UN Review Cites Torture & "Ill Treatment" in U.S. Army Field Manual's Appendix M

The United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) has released their "Concluding observations on the third to fifth periodic reports of United States of America" in regards to US adherence to the prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading forms of treatment of prisoners.

Within the context of the world of diplomacy, the UNCAT findings belie the US insistence that it abides by the Convention Against Torture treaty (CAT), or that it is an adequate model for humane treatment of prisoners.

In particular, the committee took aim at the presence of ill-treatment and torture within the Army Field Manual's Appendix M, which purports to describe a "restricted interrogation technique" called "Separation." In a victory for those who oppose government-sanctioned torture and abuse of prisoners, the UNCAT called for the US "to review Appendix M of the Army Field Manual (AFM) in light of its obligations under the Convention."

More specifically, UNCAT identified the "minimal" sleep regulations in the manual as actually a form of sleep deprivation -- "a form of ill-treatment" -- and called for adherence to humane norms. In addition, the committee called for the elimination of sensory deprivation in the "field expedient" section of Appendix M, as such sensory deprivation can "create a state of psychosis with the detainee."

The UNCAT findings should be a wake-up call to the US press, which has repeatedly reported as true the assertion by the Bush and Obama administrations that the AFM allowed only humane interrogations. (The findings also validate my years-long campaign against the use of torture and abuse in the AFM, which has also been the focus at times of most of the human rights and legal groups who have made torture an issue, and bloggers such as Marcy Wheeler.)

While I want to concentrate here on what UNCAT said about the Appendix M and the Army Field Manual, which President Obama by executive order made the primary interrogation tool for forces in "armed conflict," the committee's other findings also are worth noting. The relative effectiveness of the UNCAT review process, or lack of same, is something that deserves its own analysis, but for the purposes of this article we'll put that off for now.

UNCAT Findings

The UNCAT found fault with the US's federal definition of torture -- the way it implements its torture laws -- not to mention the very way the US interprets the CAT treaty. It called for the US to consider withdrawing its "interpretive understandings and reservations" with which it ratified the CAT treaty. The UNCAT did the same thing in its May 2000 review of US practices. (For more on this, see this ACLU report.) The US "reservations" to the CAT treaty in particular eviscerate the protections against torture by replacing adherence to international norms on cruel treatment to less stringent US judiciary interpretations.

UNCAT also called for the US to criminalize "the specific offense of torture" at the federal level, and to remove the caveat in other statutes that says psychological torture requires evidence of “prolonged mental harm”. The UN officials warn that the presence of "serious discrepancies between the Convention’s definitions and those incorporated into domestic law create actual or potential loopholes for impunity."

In other notable, though not exhaustive, findings in the US review, the UNCAT told the US it had "concern over the ongoing failure to fully investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment of suspects held in U.S. custody abroad, evidenced by the limited number of criminal prosecutions and convictions." It called for "prompt, impartial and effective investigations," noting in addition that "alleged perpetrators and accomplices are duly prosecuted, including persons in positions of command and those who provided legal cover to torture..."

In particular, the UNCAT noted that the US had supplied "minimal statistics on the number of investigations, prosecutions, disciplinary proceedings and corresponding reparations" from the US military.

In regards to the military's regime at Guantanamo, the UNCAT forcefully pronounced that "force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike constitutes ill-treatment in violation of the Convention." The committee called for the immediate release of all uncharged or cleared detainees, an end to force-feeding and indefinite detention, and investigation of all torture, abuse or ill-treatment charges, including prosecution of those responsible and redress to victims.

The UNCAT and Appendix M

The back and forth between US and UN officials over whether certain practices used in the Army Field Manual constitute torture or other forms of abuse sounded like a diplomatic version of "he said, she said." But readers may not be aware what all the shouting was about.

In 2006, the US rewrote the Army Field Manual (AFM) on interrogation (formally known as FM 2-22.3, "Human Intelligence Collector Operations"). In 2009, in Executive Order 13491, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations," President Obama declared that US officials could not use "any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2-22.3."

The 2006 AFM banned certain practices associated with the CIA and/or DoD's harsh interrogation and torture programs implemented under the Bush Administration, including forced nakedness, hooding, use of military dogs to threaten, and "waterboarding." But at the same time, the AFM removed restrictions against "abnormal sleep deprivation," use of stress positions, and "chemically induced psychosis."

The question of what constitutes sleep deprivation arose in the argument back-and-forth between the US and UNCAT on Appendix M.

In 2006, Appendix M was one of the new portions of the rewritten Army Field Manual. It involved the use of certain techniques, collected under the amalgam "Separation," which were not allowed for use on prisoners protected under the Geneva Conventions rules for POWs. So-called "unprivileged combatants" (or "unprivileged belligerents," as the Obama administration likes to call them) were subject, after approval, to the use of isolation (solitary confinement), sleep deprivation, adjustments in environmental and dietary rules, and, in the case of a special "field expedient" application of "separation," subjected to use of blindfolds or goggles, and earmuffs to shutoff both vision and hearing.

The UNCAT was specific in pointing out that the field expedient form of "separation" was in fact sensory deprivation, and that "based on recent scientific findings with high probability will create a state of psychosis with the detainee (Daniel C., Lovatt A., Manson OJ. Psychotic-like experiences and their cognitive appraisal under short-term sensory deprivation. Frontiers in Psychiatry; Vol. 5, Art 106:1), raising concerns of torture and ill-treatment."

As the UNCAT and the press have pointed out, Appendix M's stated purpose is to prevent communication among detainees, the better to prevent learning "counter-resistence techniques". But it is also, as Appendix M states, about "decreasing the detainee's resistance to interrogation." Indeed, both physical and so-called field expedient forms of "separation," are specifically described in Appendix M as meant to "foster a feeling of futility."

"A feeling of hopelessness and helplessness"

Appendix M does not describe what is meant by "futility," but the term is defined elsewhere in the AFM. When describing a technique known as "Emotional-Futility," the DoD-authored manual notes that the purpose of "futility" is to convince "the source that resistance to questioning is futile. This engenders a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness on the part of the source."

The manual clearly states that the use of futility is not enough to assure a prisoner's cooperation. Hence it strongly recommends the combination of Appendix M "separation" (which, remember, includes both isolation, sleep deprivation, and at times application of psychotic-inducing sensory deprivation) with other AFM "approaches." Indeed, Appendix M itself suggests combining "separation" with the use of the "futility" technique (actually, a natural extension of the purpose of Appendix M), "incentive," and "fear up."

In other words, shorn of all the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, an Appendix M interrogation means keeping a detainee isolated for up to 30 days, or even months longer, exposed to noise (as long as it is not "excessive") or other environmental changes (again, so long as they are not "excessive"), and allowed no more than 4 hours sleep per day for weeks and perhaps months on end. The detainee is meant to feel both hopeless and helpless about their condition. Psychological and sociological weaknesses are exploited to increase the sense of despair. Incentives are offered to entice the prisoner to cooperate and end the solitary confinement and sleep deprivation or sensory deprivation. If the prisoner should still refuse to divulge information or otherwise cooperate (such as to turn informant), then the level of fear a prisoner feels is to be increased, playing off fears the prisoner may feel, including phobias.

While the US representatives responding to UNCAT's review -- and one of these was Tom Malinowski, who as a representative for Human Rights Watch back in 2006 applauded the then-new version of the Army Field Manual -- have offered only boiler-plate defenses to the depredations of Appendix M, the AFM itself calls for the presence of medical personnel, including, optionally, a "behavioral health consultant," whenever an Appendix M interrogation takes place. To my knowledge, the presence of medical personnel is not required for any other kind of interrogation in existence -- with the sole exception of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation" torture.

The use of certain "approaches" in the main body of the AFM, such as Fear Up, Ego-Down, and Futility, demonstrate that use of cruel treatment is not limited to Appendix M, but exists within the main body of the AFM itself. As an example of the kind of warnings such "approaches" generate, the instructions regarding Fear Up warn the interrogator not to induce so much fear the prisoner becomes unresponsive.

Drugs and the Army Field Manual

Another area of abuse that exists in the main body of the AMF concerns the use of drugs. A close examination of the current AFM with its predecessor shows that the wording regarding restriction of the use of drugs changed in 2006. As noted above, the prohibition against use of drugs that cause psychotic-like symptoms was removed from the current AFM. The prohibition now is only against drugs that cause "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage," a significantly lowered bar for use of drugs in interrogations.

In September 2009, a Department of Defense Inspector General report concluded that drugs had not been used in DoD interrogations. Even so, the report did reveal that detainees who were drugged for ostensible non-interrogation reasons were interrogated while drugged. There was also at least one case -- that of Jose Padilla -- where DoD used deception to make a prisoner believe he had been give "truth serum."

Still the IG report was seriously flawed, particularly in that it did not interview any of the released detainees who had alleged use of drugs. One of who made such a charge was Murnat Kurnaz, who was in Geneva for the UNCAT review. Kurnat has charged that he was subjected to repeated beatings, had his head dunked in water, was given electric shock to his feed, suspended by his arms, humiliated, and placed in solitary confinement by US forces. He has also said in the past he was forcibly administered drugs. But when he gave a statement to the UNCAT, unfortunately it did not mention the forcible use of drugs.

When Kurnaz gave, with the parents of Michael Brown, a teleconference in Geneva on November 12, I asked him about his drugging charges. Kurnaz stated, "I was forced to take medication. I didn't know what it was. When I refused they came afterwards... five to ten people held me down and tie me and give as injection." Kurnaz also charged that he was forced to take an "antimalaria medication," while, as Kurnaz added, "the whole world knows in Guantanamo there is no malaria." He further charged the drug was given "for its side effects, which include hallucinations."

Last year, a report by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the Open Society Foundation called for an investigation into the use wide-spread use of the anti-malaria drug mefloquine (Lariam) at Guantanamo.

None of the press reported Kurnaz's charges in relation to drugs. UNCAT never referred to the issue of drugging at all (see even the full transcript of the UNCAT review). As an article in the Jurist noted, "legislation implementing the Convention Against Torture defines torture to include 'the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.' 18 U.S.C. 2340. (In fact, under federal law, committing such acts outside of the United States is a very serious crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. 18 USC 2340A)."

The UNCAT is to be praised for bringing to the fore some of the worst aspects of the current use of torture and abuse by the US government, and in particular for calling out the endemic abuse in the practices of forced-feeding and Appendix M techniques in the Army Field Manual. But the full story is still not out there, and the investigations called for by UNCAT are not on anyone's agenda. (There is a supposed "independent review" concerning collaboration of leading figures of the American Psychological Association with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program, but that will be the subject of a future article.)

In addition, the release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA torture program -- or at least it's Executive Summary -- keeps being delayed. The latest word is that it might be out by the end of the year, lost in the news wasteland that is the Christmas and New Years' holidays.

It's good to take some time to reflect upon the progress made in the fight against torture, but there's still a long, long way to go before such crimes are truly eliminated, and the perpetrators of such crimes prosecuted.

Cross-posted at The Dissenter/FDL

My Letter to Sen. Udall Asking Him to Release the Senate's Report on CIA Torture

The following was sent to Senator Mark Udall on the evening of November 17, answering the request of my fellow colleagues in Psychologists for Social Responsibility for psychologists to personally write to the senator, who has made some gestures relating to getting out the truth of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on the CIA torture and rendition program. The report's release itself has been throttled, with the Senate leadership limiting any public access to an Executive Summary of the full 6,000+ page report, which itself has been withheld pending charges of CIA excessive censorship.

I can't say I am sanguine about the results of such an appeal, and at first I felt that it would only sow illusions to hope that Sen. Udall will do for the Senate report what Sen. Mike Gravel did for the Pentagon Papers so many years ago. But I have put aside my own political feelings for the sake of those who are and have been tortured, and their loved ones. Such evil must be stopped somehow. If there's a chance a U.S. Senator can help facilitate that, then I must surely ask.

Dear Sen. Udall,

I am a psychologist who has worked on torture issues for some years now. I found myself turning to such activism after my experiences working with torture survivors from other countries who had come to the United States seeking political asylum.

I can tell you there is no terror worse and as deeply damaging as torture. It destroys not only the souls of those who are victimized, but their families and the entire civil society that countenances such torture, whether directly or by failure to stop it, or to render justice.

U.S. society has already been terribly damaged by the adherence to torture. Practices amounting to torture have not yet been fully extirpated, as the members of the Committee Against Torture at the UN reminded us via their questions during the recent U.S. review.

It would be naive to think that even your release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's full report on CIA torture will be enough to undo the damage done by the turn to torture by the military and intelligence agencies in this country. But it would be a giant blow against those that support such barbarism.

I know that you personally would pay a heavy toll for taking such a step. It would be facile to say otherwise. But you do have a responsibility, one you took when you made an oath to the Constitution when you took office. The Constitution lies in tatters, shredded by policies the Founders of the Republic held anathema.

You can make a difference. This is what it means to stand at the apex of history. No one will likely remember if you fail here. But you will be a hero if you choose to stand on the side of those fighting against the forces of ignorance, prejudice, and blind vengeance.

The people of this country need to know about what was done in their names. I humbly ask that you help them.

Sincerely, Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D.

Gitmo "Team Leader" in Slahi Torture Sued for Framing Innocent Chicago Man for Murder

Two worlds of governmental crime. Both involve the imprisonment of innocent men. The article that follows links the torture booths at Guantanamo to the interrogation rooms run by crooked Chicago cops. It is the story of a part of America as it really is. For those caught up in it, it is a living nightmare.

"I am dying in here man..."

July 2003, Guantanamo. A sole man was kept in a darkened solitary cell for months on end. For many days in a row he is interrogated 16 hours a day. Loud music blared constantly, dogs menaced. Guards cursed him, banged on his cell at all hours to keep him awake. The temperature in the cell was purposely set close to freezing. An interrogator told the prisoner about a dream he had, one that supposedly had other detainees digging a grave and carrying a coffin with the prisoner's number on it.

Another interrogator, actually the chief of a "Special Projects Team" at the American naval base prison, lied and told the prisoner his mother had been detained, and that if he did not cooperate she would be brought to Guantanamo and kept as the only woman prisoner there. The implication of the threat against his mother seemed dire. The chief of the SP team produced a forged letter to back up his contention. But the prisoner had nothing to admit, and kept telling interrogators the truth, until finally he gave in under torture and told them what they wanted to hear.

The Guantanamo prisoner was Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The interrogation team leader in charge of Slahi's "Special Project" torture was then-Lieutenant (and former Chicago homicide detective) Richard Zuley.

Meanwhile, also in 2003, another man sat in solitary confinement in an Illinois prison. Lathierial Boyd had been sentenced to 82 years in jail for the alleged shooting of two men, one of whom, Michael Fleming, died at the scene; the other was permanently paralyzed. Police called it a revenge drug murder. Both the victims and Boyd were African-American.

For 13 years Boyd had proclaimed his innocence. He told the story of how Chicago police officers had hid witness testimony, fabricated evidence, lied in reports, and coerced witnesses. In 2002, his plight picked up some news interest after a Chicago television station's investigation dug up new evidence (see video), but Boyd, a former fashion model, remained in jail awaiting another appeal. He told anyone who would listen, "I am dying in here man, can't you see I am dying."



According to recent legal filings, one of these cops was alleged to have withheld the fact the sole survivor of the shooting, Ricky Warner, could not identify the shooter, nor could any of those who viewed the police line-up.

This same cop was said to have coerced Warner's father to say his son had been threatened by Boyd. The cop fabricated evidence for the father to look at. He also convinced Warner to ID Boyd as the man who shot him and his partner. In this, the cop worked together with other Chicago police. Later, the cop allegedly helped fabricate a piece of evidence for Warner to use to help "lead" interrogators to Boyd.

The cop was the same man who years later led Slahi's torture, Richard Zuley.

Zuley's role in the torture of Mohamadou Slahi can be gleaned from the footnotes in the Nov. 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody (see pages 137 and 140), while he is identified more specifically in a July 7, 2010 declassified legal filing in Slahi's case.

Zuley was also profiled in Jess Bravin's book, The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay. Bravin wrote that in July 2003 Zuley became the head of the Special Team that conducted "enhanced interrogations" at Guantanamo. Elsewhere in the book, Bravin quotes Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt, who testified that "Zuley was a 'zealot' who loved tormenting his prisoner."

Zuley also helped identify himself. In his sole review at Amazon.com, Zuley signs himself:
"LCDR Richard Zuley, USN (Ret)
Former EUCOM LNO, senior interrogator
and Special Projects Team Chief,
Joint Task Force – Guantanamo (2002-2004)"

EUCOM stands for U.S. European Command. LNO stands for Liaison Officer. Today, according to his LinkedIn page, Zuley is Projects Administrator at City of Chicago's Department of Aviation, Aviation Police division.

A Miscarriage of Justice

In September 2013, Boyd walked out of prison free, released after a review of his case, subject previously to numerous rejected appeals, showed he was in fact innocent. Last month, he filed a $20 million civil suit against Zuley and five other Chicago officers for destruction and/or concealment of material exculpatory and impeachment evidence, malicious prosecution, and conspiracy to deprive him of his Constitutional rights. The other officers named are Lawrence Thezan, Andrew Sobolewski, Steve Schorsch, John Murray, and Wayne Johnson.

The particulars of the case are astounding, as Zuley and his cohorts are alleged to have manufactured evidence regarding Boyd, coerced the only eyewitness (shooting survivor Ricky Martin) to ID Boyd at the scene, withheld evidence of eyewitnesses who specifically said Boyd could not have been the shooter, and fabricated a note with supposedly incriminating evidence against Boyd, among other instances of malfeasance. The fact Boyd had an alibi staying at his sister's home with her boyfriend, a Cook County Sheriff, was ignored.

The miscarriage of justice in Lathierial's case was so egregious that the judge who sentenced him called for his case to be reopened. Many of the facts concerning the frame-up against Boyd can be read in his 2008 habeas filing (PDF).

Boyd's time in prison was a terrible ordeal. According to his October 4 lawsuit complaint, Boyd wrote "thousands of letters, pleading with lawyers and the media to help him." He spent approximately 90 percent of his 23 years in prison confined to his cell. He lost contact with friends and family. Due to what he alleges was poor medical care, he lost sight in one eye. Boyd, who was a former fashion model, "sank into a black hole of depression so profound and debilitating that he frequently contemplated suicide as the only way to be free again."

"Extensive and severe mistreatment"

The Slahi case was singled out by the Senate Armed Services Committee as a primary example of detainee abuse, produced under the auspices of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. (Wolfowitz signed off on a memo recommending the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and "sound modulation," or sensory overload, on Slahi.)

Slahi, who was severely beaten, subject to false flag deception and threats of torture and harm to his family, sexually humiliated, deprived of religious comfort, and also experienced at times sensory deprivation, has told his own story in a 466-page draft memoir about his seizure and incarceration, portions of which were published at Slate.com in April 2013. The full diary is supposed to be published in January 2015.

Like the torture of Mohamed al-Qahtani some months before him, Slahi's torture supposedly was justified by his alleged role in 9/11. As a high-value detainee, he was kidnapped and rendered first to Jordan, and then via Bagram, Afghanistan to Guantanamo in August 2002. The "evidence" against Slahi came via what was likely coerced interrogation by Ramzi Binalshibh, who told the CIA that Slahi was involved in the planning for 9/11. Subsequent "evidence" came from Slahi's confessions made under torture.

When it came time to try Slahi under President George W. Bush's first attempt at military commissions, the MC prosecutor, Col. Stuart Couch, famously refused to prosecute Slahi's case because it was based primarily on tortured evidence.

In April 2010, Slahi's habeas petition was granted by Judge James Robertson, who stated "there is 'ample evidence in this record that Salahi was subjected to extensive and severe mistreatment at Guantánamo from mid-June 2003 to September 2003.'" But in November 2010, the government, who appealed Robertson's decision, won a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to vacate Robertson's decision, remanding the case to the D.C. District Court, where it still languishes. Not one habeas petition that has gone to that court has ever been approved.

A System Out of Control

The oozing scandal that is the Chicago Police Department has been the subject of numerous investigations and news reports. Torture, kidnapping of witnesses, robberies and criminal home invasions, these are only some in the long list of corrupt operations exposed over the years.

After many attempts, some of Chicago's crooked cops have gotten justice. But the system remains pathetically slow, and no one knows how many lives have been ruined by cops out of control in Chicago and many other major urban areas in the United States. Recently, an activist group has produced a "shadow report" for the UN Committee on Torture, testifying to the ongoing use of police violence.

Meanwhile, an ongoing scandal concerning U.S. government torture by both the CIA and the Department of Defense, centered on operations at Guantanamo and elsewhere, has been the subject of Congressional investigations and dozens of books and articles. But despite a good deal of attention, torture techniques in some cases similar to those used on Slahi, based on SERE methods used to inoculate US soldiers against torture, are still in use.

Most recently, a controversy over the release of an executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the CIA torture program has dragged on for months. It's not clear the report will tell us that much more than what other investigations and leaks have already produced. A McClatchy article last month indicated that the report will not touch upon the responsibility for the torture program among top Bush Administration officials.

While the Senate Committee, led by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, has announced it is suppressing (for now) the full report they made, they are seeking release of its executive summary, which the White House gave the CIA to vet for declassification. Not surprisingly, the CIA wants more classified in the rump report's release than the Senate Committee does.

The press rarely reports on the full extent of the torture scandal. Rarely are the dots connected that place issues like massive use of solitary confinement in US prisons, or the epidemic of police abuse and prosecutorial frame-up, in conjunction with US use of torture and rendition at Guantanamo and abroad.

It's time for a reckoning on torture and abuses of justice, whether in the name of "law and order" or "war on terrorism." What we have now is a system out of control with abuse of power.

Crossposted at The Dissenter/FDL

New DoD Directive on Detainees Allows Sleep and Sensory Deprivation, Biometric IDs

On August 19, 2014, the Department of Defense released an updated version of its Directive 2310.01E on the "DoD Detainee Program." It supercedes the previous version, dated September 5, 2006.

Earlier this month, Steve Vladek at the Just Security blog, pondered why the government chose this particular time to release the new, updated directive. While his observations are important and worth considering, much of importance is omitted from his brief analysis.

In my analysis -- besides the potential legalities explored by Vladek, which impact the definition of what the government considers the definition of an “unprivileged belligerent" (like the detainees at Guantanamo), and access of legal counsel to these prisoners -- the new directive propounds a number of new rules that summarize the Obama administration's detainee regime, particularly as it relates to Guantanamo.

The new directive expands upon what "humane treatment" means for those caught in its "detainee program." It also adds an item about the collection of biometric identification information (BII). Such information "will be collected from all detainees in accordance with DoDD 8521.01E." It also includes a statement of how long a detainee can be held, which appears to operationalize Obama's policy of indefinite detention of detainees. Finally, the directive greatly expands on the issue of who can be held, how charges can be brought against detainees, and what procedures are necessary for a detainee's release. (This article will not cover the very last item.)

A long analysis of all the changes would take many pages, and I am going to concentrate on those of immediate relevance to me. I would hope that Vladek, or other attorneys or human rights organizations will pursue the relevant legalities in the sections on how detainees are held and released.

No protection from sleep deprivation

In the 2006 version of the directive, the issue of humane treatment of detainees is summarized in a sentence: "All detainees shall be treated humanely and in accordance with U.S. law, the law of war, and applicable U.S. policy."

In the new 2014 version, the section on "humane treatment" expands to nearly 250 words. To understand the significance of what is written here, one must realize that the procedures "established for the treatment of persons consistent with this directive" includes U.S. Army Field Manual 2-22.3, “Human Intelligence Collector Operations" (AFM).

As I have written at various times, numerous human rights, medical, and legal groups have identified the AFM, and in particular its Appendix M on a "restricted Separation technique," to include methods of interrogation and conditions of confinement that amount to torture and/or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners. In particular, it allows use of isolation, sleep deprivation, use of drugs, sensory deprivation, environmental manipulation, and techniques that induce fear and degrading verbal treatment of prisoners, intending thereby to induce, according to the manual iself, "hopelessness and helplessness" in its victims.

Hence, while the new DoD directive makes some pretty noises about providing detainees with "Adequate food, drinking water, shelter, and clothing"; and while DoD claims detainees will be protected "against threats or acts of violence, including rape, forced prostitution, assault, theft, public curiosity, bodily injury, reprisals, torture, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment," DoD never mentions any provision of adequate sleep. This is not, in my opinion, a mere oversight.

Sleep deprivation is a key foundational element, along with isolation (solitary confinement), of the torture program to break down individuals used by the CIA and the Department of Defense. The AFM's Appendix M provides specifically that prisoners (of the "unprivileged" sort) can be limited to 4 hours sleep per day for up to 30 days, and even longer. In principle, that can even be done indefinitely.

This sort of sleep deprivation is not as dramatic as the kind advertised in the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" version of torture, but it is debilitating nevertheless. Former DoD interrogator Matthew Alexander wrote in the New York Times, "The [Army Field] manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let’s face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency."

Alexander added, "And if this weren’t enough, some interrogators feel the manual’s language gives them a loophole that allows them to give a detainee four hours of sleep and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can “reset” the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep. This is inconsistent with the spirit of the reforms, which was to prevent “monstering” — extended interrogation sessions lasting more than 20 hours."

Alexander was not alone in his analysis. The right to sleep is considered part of "humane treatment" under international law. A 2003 US Southern Command instruction (pdf) to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, stated sleep deprivation was defined "as keeping a detainee awake for more than 16 hours" (see pgs. 5-6).

It is worth noting that the version of the AFM that preceded the current September 2006 version forbid use of sleep deprivation and stress positions.

The current version of the AFM, used to help define the parameters of treatment in the just released directive, eliminated the prohibitive language concerning sleep deprivation and stress positions. This is not an accident. And additionally, DoD's new directive also contains no prohibition on stress positions.

No protection from non-punitive sensory deprivation

Directive 2310.01E, like Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, does contain a prohibition on the use of sensory deprivation. The problem is in how the government defines "sensory deprivation."

The directive states, detainees "will not be subjected to medical or scientific experiments or to sensory deprivation intended to inflict suffering or serve as punishment."

One must ask, why is there a condition put on the prohibition of sensory deprivation? Sensory deprivation intended to inflict suffering, or as punishment is prohibited, but what about in other matters?

The directive is being opaquely coy here, as sensory deprivation is allowed in a particular procedure in the current Army Field Manual. In the description of the latter's "Field Expedient Separation," goggles or blindfold and earmuffs are put on a detainee for up to 12 hours. Again this is expandable upon official approval.

The AFM warns that care must be taken to protect the blindfolded, earmuffed prisoner from self-injury, and the prisoner must be medically monitored. The AFM doesn't explain why this is necessary, but the reason is that such sensory deprivation is intolerable for some people and can lead to hallucinations and self-injurious behavior. The inclusion of a procedure that so obviously needs medical monitoring should be a red flag that it violates basic humane treatment.

The purpose of the blindfold, goggles and earmuffs (and here, one may recall those pictures of be-goggled and earmuffed and bound detainees taken out of doors at Camp X-ray in the very earliest days at Guantanamo) is not to "inflict suffering." No, according to the AFM itself, it is to "prolong the shock of capture," prevent communication with other detainees, "and foster a feeling of futility." While the prevention of communication with other detainees may have a security factor, the other instances do not.

To that point, the new directive includes a section on the separation or "segregation" of detainees from each other for security and other reasons. It should be noted that such administrative segregation is not what is involved in the Appendix M version of "isolation." The AFM itself makes it clear that solitary confinement or isolation is used as an interrogation technique.

The use of "separation" itself as an interrogation technique should, according to the AFM, "be distinguished from segregation, which refers to removing a detainee from other detainees and their environment for legitimate purposes unrelated to interrogation...." (pg. M-1).

Isolation of prisoners is itself a form of sensory deprivation, in that it provides restricted environmental and social stimulation. (See this classic paper (long PDF) by Stuart Grassian on "The Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement.")

Of course, isolation is something that is also sanctioned by the Army Field Manual, for up to 30 days, with the possibility of indefinite extension. The "humane treatment" section of the new DoD directive provides no protection against such treatment.

Biometrics

Also new to the DoD directive on its detainee program is a section on the collection of biometrics.

Biometric data "will be collected from all detainees... as soon as practicable after their capture by, or transfer to, the custody or control of DoD personnel, and will be included in detainee records. BII collected on detainees who are U.S. citizens or U.S. resident aliens will be conducted in accordance with U.S. law and policy and all applicable DoD regulations."

The use of biometrics deserves its own lengthy analysis. The fact that U.S. citizens or resident aliens may have different legal rights when it comes to such collection than, for instance, the Guantanamo detainees, is a matter worth pursuing.

According to DoD, biometrics is "A measurable biological (anatomical and physiological) and behavioral characteristic that can be used for automated recognition." (italics added)

As a process, biometrics concerns "Automated methods of recognizing an individual based on measurable biological (anatomical and physiological) and behavioral characteristics....

"Biometrics-enabled Intelligence. Intelligence information associated with and or derived from biometrics data that matches a specific person or unknown identity to a place, activity, device, component, or weapon that supports terrorist / insurgent network and related pattern analysis, facilitates high value individual targeting, reveals movement patterns, and confirms claimed identity."

The use of "behavioral characteristics" stretches the definition to something beyond the biological. One source I consulted said such characteristics include "Speaker Recognition, Signature Recognition, Keystroke/Keyboard Dynamics," or any "measurable behavioral trait that is acquired over time and is used to recognize or verify the identity of a person."

According to an oft-cited paper, "An Introduction to Biometric Recognition," types of biometric identification include via DNA, face and ear recognition, gait, retinal scan, odor, voice, and even the way a person signs their name or types upon a keyboard."

The new provisions for biometric collection on detainees comes just weeks before the FBI announced the full operational capability of its own biometric database system.

The possible dangers inherent in use of biometrics is beyond the scope of this article, and tend to involved concerns about privacy and the expanding use of or security of biometric databases. I've included the information here because it is something new in the detainee program, as delineated by DoD. For more discussion of the issues, see this Electronic Frontier Foundation discussion.

Indefinite Detention

In this already long essay on the new DoD Directive, I should note that it includes a brand-new item that seems to speak to the powers of indefinite detention propounded by the Obama administration. The new item states, "Subject to the requirements of the law of war and this directive, POWs and unprivileged belligerents may lawfully be detained until a competent authority determines that the conflict has ended or that active hostilities have ceased, and civilian internees may lawfully be detained until the reasons that necessitated the civilian’s internment no longer exist."

Who will this "competent authority" be? Whatever the answer to that question may be, it is frightening to see in official language the assertion that "civilian internees" can be "lawfully" detained until whatever "reasons necessitated" their internment "no long exist." In the "war on terrorism" we know that will be never. In its bold proclamation of the powers of indefinite detention, the document is profoundly unconstitutional and undemocratic.

In summary, we can see there is a lot more in the new DoD Directive on its Detainee Program than indicated in the Just Security discussion of its release. In particular, the directive makes explicit policies concerning so-called "humane treatment" of detainees that allows for the use of torture or cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of prisoners as set down in the current Army Field Manual. It does this despite formal statements of providing prisoners' rights, or following Geneva protocols, by omitting key items from its description of such "humane treatment," by burying actual abuse in references to other documents not specifically quoted in the directive, and by use of dodgy legalistic language that make things appear other than what they are.

If Bush or a Republican were President of the United States, this new DoD directive would have been subject to intense scrutiny and examination by a plethora of commentators and analysts. But because the Obama and the Democrats are in charge of the White House and Senate, a close examination of how Obama has perpetuated Bush and Cheney's torture program is not on the such analysts' political agenda.

The U.S. has become a Torture Nation. Torture is legalistically bound up in main government documents and how the government operates. Figures directly implicated in the planning and execution of torture have high positions in government or other major civil institutions (cf. John Yoo), while those who protest torture or expose it are punished.

[Update: Since writing this article, I discovered that were a few other postings at Just Security concerning the new DoD directive, besides that of Steve Vladek, including one by Gabor Rona, and one by Marty Lederman. These postings appear to be primarily concerned with the language around the definition of "unprivileged belligerents.” None of the other postings are critical of what Lederman called "expanded humane treatment provisions" in the new directive.

Meanwhile, Ryan Vogel, who says he "led the drafting and coordination process for DoDD 2310.01E", published today at Just Security a new article, "A Response on Department of Defense Directive 2310.01E (Detainee Program)."

Vogel writes, "... this new detainee directive is dramatically different from its predecessor, mandating, as a policy matter, those practices and lessons learned over the prior decade. Some of the more notable changes include: expanded humane treatment provisions and added emphasis by moving them into the main body from the attachments section; clarification regarding the general process for handling detainees from point of capture or assumption of custody until final transfer, repatriation, or release; expansion of the policies related to the transfer, repatriation, and release of detainees, including applicable humane treatment and security assurances; references to Article 75 of Additional Protocol I and Articles 4-6 of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as applicable detention principles (even though the United States is party to neither Protocol); and, most significantly, a new policy requirement to conduct detainee review processes, used to ascertain the status and continued necessity of detention for individuals detained by DoD under the law of armed conflict."

I think my answer to Vogel is explicitly aired above. What is disturbing is that the legal analysts at Just Security are so obtuse on the issue of what constitutes "humane treatment." Vogel is probably not obtuse. He must know where the textual bodies are buried, so to speak.]

Crossposted at FDL/The Dissenter

Navy Continues to Persecute Nurse Who Refused to Force-feed Guantanamo Hunger Strikers

Carol Rosenberg reported today that a Navy commander had decided not to court-martial a Guantanamo nurse for refusing to participate in the forced-feeding of hunger strikers at the U.S. military prison. Announcement of the "pending court-martial" was made in late August.

While on Twitter it appeared that many were relieved the nurse would not be going to jail for taking a principled stand against the medically unethical practice of forced "enteral" feeding -- and that must be some relief, after all -- the fact is the Navy announced that after some months of investigation, the nurse is now subject to an administrative review, or "Board of Inquiry," that may continue on for up to nine more months, according to Rosenberg.

The nurse, who is threatened with expulsion from the military and loss of his military benefits, is a 40-ish year old, possibly Latino, Navy Lieutenant. The discovery of his protest against the forced feeding of Guantanamo hunger-strikers, which he had participated in for many months, noted first in a letter from Guantanamo prisoner Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a Syrian prisoner cleared for release in 2010. Dhiab languishes in ill-health at the Cuban-based prison, as he awaits possible transfer to Uruguay. (See this latest report on Dhiab from Andy Worthington.)

The military is not interested in doing its conscientious-objector nurse any favors. The Board of Inquiry will no doubt cause the Navy Lieutenant a great deal of stress and money, with no certain outcome. Anyone who has been under administrative investigation and "review" for many months knows how difficult such a procedure really is. Whatever the outcome, the continued legal wrangling by the Navy amounts to persecution of a medical officer who had decided not to obey an unlawful order.

Forced feeding of prisoners is denounced as both medically unethical and in the form practiced at Guantanamo to amount to torture, according to a report from the prestigious Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) report released last year.

The Navy certainly had little interest in an actual court-martial proceeding. As Rosenberg reported, "The administrative review, also known as a Board of Inquiry, keeps the circumstances of that episode secret. A military trial could have put a very public spotlight on both Guantánamo’s hunger-strike policy and how the military manages medical-ethics issues." 

A very different fate for former BSCTs

It is very embittering for anyone who cares about this country's mainstreaming of torture to reflect upon the experience of this Navy nurse. It strongly reminds me of the case of former Guantanamo guard Albert Melise, who was threatened with dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of all his military benefits because he spoke to reporter Jason Leopold about his experiences with former Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks. (Hicks today is fighting to have his conviction in the Guantanamo military commissions overturned.)

While the military continues to persecute those who stand against torture and medical maltreatment, key personnel who participated in interrogations and torture at Guantanamo are rewarded. I recently was made aware that one of the members of Guantanamo's infamous Behavioral Consultation Science or BSCT ("biscuit") teams, Lisa Teegarden, is today the chief of Psychology at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland (not to be confused with Walter Reed Army Hospital, which, plagued with scandals over patient neglect, closed in 2011).

According to her LinkedIn page, she was Behavioral Science Command Consultant from May 2008 to October 2010. Teegarden indicates that during this period she "[s]erved as Special Staff to Commander, Joint Task Force, Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Served as the subject matter expert to the Commander, JTF-GTMO on matters pertaining to clinical psychology, organizational psychology / dymanics [sic] and social psychology principles as they pertain to military organizations. Specialized in behavioral management of detainees, behavioral drift, and counter-interrogation / intelligence operations."

The BSCTs were notorious for their participation in abusive interrogations, including use of SERE-derived torture. The American Psychiatric Association went so far as to prohibit its members from participating, while the American Psychological Association was (and to some degree still is) embroiled in controversies over allowing psychologists to staff the interrogation consultant role at Guantanamo. (For a full discussion of the pertinent issues, see this excellent article by psychologist Stephen Soldz.)

Teegarden's stint at Guantanamo, providing her expertise on clinical psychology and "behavioral management of detainees" and intelligence operations, at the time of the mysterious death of Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi in June 2009. Al Hanashi was found dead in a constantly-monitored cell in Guantanamo's Behavioral Health Unit. An NCIS report on his death has not been released.

I requested a copy of the report via FOIA in January 2012. NCIS to date refuses to even give me a date of completion for the FOIA request. A separate request for the AR 15-16 report on Hanashi's death has been sitting in Southcom's FOIA office since January 2013.

When the autopsy report for Hanashi's death was finally released, it raised many questions about what actually happened to the former hunger-striking prisoner. But one aspect of the latter document is especially relevant when it comes to Teegarden, as the autopsy stated Hanashi suffered from "stressors of confinement."

If true, Teegarden, a psychologist who as BSCT had great responsibility in regards to "behavioral management of detainees," should answer for what kind of conditions of confinement drove Hanashi to make multiple suicide attempts, and what the actual circumstances of his death were.

But Teegarden is not being investigated, unlike the nurse who protested the brutal process of forced cell extraction and forced feeding of hunger-striking prisoners, despairing of years of indefinite detention, psychological torture, beatings, forced drug injections, isolation and more.

Instead, Teegarden isn't worried about her medical benefits or her job. Like scores of others involved in the torture of prisoners, including Department of Defense SERE officials, Pentagon attorneys, psychologists and doctors and nurses, flag officers, CIA and JSOC officers, Teegarden is rewarded with plum assignments for her adherence to a torture regime. Meanwhile, a lowly Navy lieutenant can only count himself lucky that he isn't being thrown into the brig, and only must endure a stressful "inquiry" about whether to throw him out of the military.

Teegarden is not alone in being an ex-BSCT who has gone on with her career. Former head BSCT and chief psychologist at Abu Ghraib, Larry James, who personally led the rendition and detention of young teens from Afghanistan, went on to a career as dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. (James ultimately left, and his subsequent attempt at a career has not been without controversy.)

At least one BSCT psychologist, Lt. Col. Dianne Zierhoffer was called to account for her participation in the torture of another Guantanamo juvenile prisoner, Mohammed Jawad (now released), but was allowed to plead the Fifth Amendment in order not to testify. John Leso, yet another BSCT, who had been identified in helping organize Guantanamo's SERE-inspired torture regime, was exonerated of ethics charges by the American Psychological Association

The real message is for those who staff or would staff the military and intelligence bureaucracy of 21st century America: Don't make waves. Do your job in support of or conducting torture, and you will be rewarded.

Crossposted from The Dissenter/FDL

Did CIA/SSCI Revolving Door Lead Feinstein to Suppress Full Torture Report?

Marcy Wheeler at the Emptywheel blog is known for her facility at connecting the dots in relation to government and intelligence matters. An excellent recent example is her most recent posting, which looks at how "vague references to claims that surely were torture derived" were used back in 2004 by now-CIA chief John Brennan in a scare memo to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to substantiate his case for legally justifying a Internet dragnet. (I use the word "substantiate" guardedly.)

I have a tangential interest in this same memo, as it mentions (and not the first time this has been documented) that Tenet spent seven years working for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the very same institution that was charged with investigating the torture program under George W. Bush's Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. For over four of those years with SSCI (November 1988 through January 1993), Tenet was SSCI Staff Director.

After leaving SSCI, Tenet went straight to the White House, where he worked as "Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs." In a relatively short time, he was appointed deputy director of the CIA in July 1995. By December 1996, Tenet replaced John Deutch as temporary director of the CIA. Bill Clinton would nominate him as full director the next year. (For more on the CIA scandals that led to the fall of Deutch and Tenet's accession, see this 2009 story.)

In four quick years, Tenet went from SSCI Staff Director to head of the CIA.

While Tenet was SSCI Staff Director, the Minority Staff Director was John H. Moseman. In February 1996, Moseman was appointed Director of Congressional Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency, demonstrating that the revolving door between the CIA and its Congressional overseers was not a partisan affair.

Moseman went on to become Tenet's Chief of Staff at CIA in 2001, serving until 2005. Today, he is an "Executive Advisor" at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Not everyone went from Congressional cloakroom to Langley. The Chief Clerk for the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kathleen McGhee, has served from Tenet's days at SSCI until January of 2014. In addition, sometimes the revolving door rotated in the opposite direction. When in February 2002, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees announced a joint investigation into the facts behind 9/11, they hired former CIA Inspector General L. Britt Snider to head the unified staff for the joint inquiry.

Another hire from CIA was Charles Battaglia. Battaglia, who had been the Navy's director for psychological operations during the Vietnam War, served as special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence from 1978 to 1981. He was a senior line manager at the CIA from 1981 to 1985, and then went to work on staff at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He ultimately became Staff Director, like Tenet, in the mid-1990s.

If this were any other institution, there would be an outcry, or a least some raised eyebrows, over this revolving door between IC regulators and the IC itself. One has to ask whether what we have with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees isn't an instance of what George Stigler called "regulatory capture."

But, you may ask, isn't there a big conflict between the SSCI and the CIA over the former's attempt to regulate the latter, in the sense of holding them accountable for their torture-interrogation program?

In fact, given the amount of worldwide outrage over the revelations surrounding the US/CIA/DOD torture program, the actions of the SSCI appear to be one of helping the CIA with damage control, rather than actually bringing the scofflaws to heel.

The Senate investigation only began years after the revelations about CIA torture were made public. Indeed, scandals over CIA torture and assassination have come and gone over the decades without the SSCI, including the SSCI under Tenet, initiating any major investigation.

Moreover, even now, with some 6000+ pages of report and millions of pages of documentation, the SSCI has indicated that it will only release a few hundred pages of "Executive Summary." This "Summary" will be so carefully controlled by the CIA, i.e., by the very agency the SSCI is supposed to be overseeing, that, as Jason Leopold revealed the other day, it will not even name key personnel in the torture program like James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, despite the fact their identities were revealed by a separate investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But behind the hullaballoo over the CIA fight with Feinstein and her committee over the Executive Summary is the unassailable fact that the SSCI has suppressed its own report. Feinstein has said there is no planned release of the actual report itself, even though the mainstream press continues to treat the fight over censorship in the Executive Summary as a fight over the report itself. No, there is no fight over the main report. George Tenet's former employers do not threaten the CIA with that.

Another Suppressed Congressional Report on the CIA

This is not the first time Congress has suppressed a report on the CIA. In 1976, Congress voted to suppress the House Select Committee on Intelligence's Pike Report. A sampling of the report's conclusions may help one understand why.

"If this Committee's recent experience is any test," the Pike report concludes, "intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congressional lawmaking are, today, beyond the lawmaker's scrutiny.

These secret agencies have interests that inherently conflict with the open accountability of a political body, and there are many tools and tactics to block and deceive conventional Congressional checks. Added to this are the unique attributes of intelligence -- notably, "national security," in its cloak of secrecy and mystery -- to intimidate Congress and erode fragile support for sensitive inquiries.

Wise and effective legislation cannot proceed in the absence of information respecting conditions to be affected or changed. Nevertheless, under present circumstances, inquiry into intelligence activities faces serious and fundamental shortcomings.

Even limited success in exercising future oversight requires a rethinking of the powers, procedures, and duties of the overseers."

This was said even after the Committee had spent many months gathering a great deal of evidence (some of which today can be accessed here).

The Pike Report was suppressed by Congress after it was completed and after the CIA complained. It was never officially released to the United States citizens who paid for it. The late Daniel Schorr famously released a leaked copy to the Village Voice, which published it to great fanfare. Schorr was castigated, and his career and liberty temporarily threatened.

The history of what was in the Pike Report has mainly been ignored and forgotten, which is what happens when political history is suppressed.

Could the CIA have learned from this that to keep matters under control that one of their own should be well-placed inside the very oversight instruments of Congress itself? Could this have been George Tenet's role from his very first day working for SSCI?

I have no evidence that is the case, but there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to present to at least ask the question.

Here's another question, though no one -- and ponder that "no one" a bit -- no one has asked Senator Feinstein and her committee why they are not releasing the full report. The taxpayers paid for it. The crimes ostensibly investigated therein constitute among the most heinous possible, being torture and murder by torture, ordered by the Chief Executive of the land.

Why is the SSCI acting as an agent of cover-up? If the Congress cannot do their job of oversight, what options are left for civil society?

Appendix: Who was on the SSCI back when Tenet served? Looking at a hearing from April 1992, we see that Democratic Senator David Boren was chairman, while Republican Senator Frank Murkowski was vice-chair. Others serving included Ernest Hollings, Bill Bradley, John Warner, Alfonse D'Amato, Alan Cranston, John Danforth, John Chafee, John Glenn, Dennis Deconcini, Slade Gorton, Howard Metzenbaum, and Bob Kerrey. George Mitchell and Robert Dole served Ex Officio. Sen. Feinstein entered the Senate as Tenet was leaving his post at SSCI to work for the NSC.

Appendix II (9/1/14): Recently, working on other materials, I discovered yet another CIA/SSCI link. In the mid 1980s, the SSCI Staff Director was Bernard F. McMahon (see this PDF file). Earlier, McMahon had served as Executive Director to the Director of the CIA (date documented as 1997 - see link and this 2002 Baltimore Sun article, which notes McMahon served under then CIA Director Stansfield Turner).

Appendix III (July 16, 2019): Some recent reading led me to revisit the issue of the CIA-Congressional intelligence oversight committees revolving door. Two important CIA figures also held prominent positions with the House Select Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPSC). The first was Porter Goss, who had been a CIA operative from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Most famously, he was caught in a January 1963 photo that supposedly showed a collection of figures from CIA's Operation 40 assassination team.

Goss served in Congress as a Republican member from Florida's 14th Congressional district from 1989 to 2004. He was assigned to the HSPSC and served as its chairman from 1997 to 2004. In addition, along with Sen. Graham from the Senate Intelligence Committee, he co-chaired the Congressional Joint 9/11 investigation committee. In 2004, President George W. Bush appointed Goss to be Director of the CIA, where he served from 2004-2006.

Goss's tenure may have been shortened when, according to one news report, he got caught up in "a widening FBI sex and cronyism investigation that's targeted Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No.3 official at the CIA, and also touched on Goss himself."

The other prominent HSPSC official I want to touch on here who had connections with the CIA was former CIA case officer John Millis. According to a brief NY Times obituary, Millis worked for the CIA for "nearly 13 years. In that period, he lived in Pakistan, working to provide covert aid to Afghan rebels who were fighting the Soviet army."
 

The Times article also states Millis served as staff director of a special Congressional committee that investigated the Clinton administration's approval of arms shipments from Iran to Muslim forces in Bosnia" from 1996-1997. Later in 1997, he became staff director for the House Intelligence Committee, its top staff position. 

On June 4, 2000, Millis apparently shot himself in a motel room in Fairfax, Virginia. He was reportedly depressed as he was under investigation by the very House intel committee he served as top aide. Millis had also recently helped bring about the fall of former CIA director John Deutsch, who had supposedly taken top secret CIA information home with him on his personal computer.

In fact, Millis had been suspended without pay from the HSPSC only weeks before, according to a August 14, 2000 article by Jamie Dettmer and Paul M. Rodriguez in Insight on the News. Both Goss, who was then panel chairman, and CIA Director George Tenet insisted in public accounts that the suspension did not involve and threats to national security.

"The suicide was a private tragedy and should stay off-limits to the press, they maintained."

 Whether or not it was or not, I certainly can't know. Interested readers can pursue the link just above. However, I'll note that Millis's suicide and his connections with both the CIA and the House intelligence committee was something I came across while reading NYT reporter James Risen's January 3, 2018 Intercept article on his experiences as a national security reporter.

In the Intercept piece, Risen revealed that sometime early in 2000 Millis had leaked to him an internal CIA Inspector General report. The IG erport had "concluded that top CIA officials had impeded an internal investigation into evidence that former CIA Director John Deutch had mishandled large volumes of classified material...."

Risen had long wondered whether the stories he filed stemming from this revelation had led somehow to Millis's death. In the 2018 article, Risen feels that he was reassured by Millis's wife, Linda, telling him that the leak about the Deutsch affair had nothing to do with John's death. Indeed, Dettmer and Rodriguez had reported about marital difficulties the Millis's had suffered, including the rumor that John Millis had had a homosexual affair. Interestingly, Risen never mentions that Linda Millis herself had worked for the CIA (per the article in Insight in the News).

Whatever the labyrinthine politics behind the downfall of Goss and the death of John Millis, the point remains that their work for the Congressional oversight committees, and in Goss's case, for the Congressional 9/11 investigation, remain tainted by their association with the CIA, the very institution the oversight committees were sworn to investigate.

But their cases are not, as we can see above, unique -- nor do I imagine this article, with its later appendices, has definitively listed all the cases of possible conflict of interest between the committees and the various intelligence agencies they supposedly oversee. I add them to this article in order to further complement the thesis of the original work above.

One other example merits mention here: in 1995, Mark Lowenthal served as staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. By 2002, Lowenthal, a PhD in History from Harvard University, had become CIA's Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production. He played a key role in the CIA analysis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction just prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country.

Finally, while I don't have time to investigate fully the case of Daniel J. Jones, the fact that this primary aide both Senators Rockefeller and Feinstein at SSCI, and later put in charge of the  investigation into CIA torture, later was revealed to have worked as an investigator for the FBI, supposedly on international terrorism operations.

According to a declassified Congressional report, Jones also, as part of his work with "the Penn Quarter Group (PQG), told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in March of 2017 that he had retained the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to 'continue exposing Russian interference' in the 2016 election. Steele is the former British spy who authored the infamous unverified dossier of allegations against President Donald Trump."

It seems possible that Jones will be yet another case of strange interactions between the House and Senate intelligence committees and the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies. Time will tell.

CIA Intervention in Ukraine Has Been Taking Place for Decades

"The most powerful form of lie is the omission..." -- George Orwell

Of all the aspects of the current crisis over the NATO/Russia standoff in Ukraine, the determined intervention into Ukrainian political affairs by the United States has been the least reported, at least until recently. While new reports have appeared concerning CIA Director John Brennan's mid-April trip to Kiev, and CIA/FBI sending "dozens" of advisers to the Ukrainian security services, very few reports mention that U.S. intervention in Ukraine affairs goes back to the end of World War II. It has hardly let up since then.

The fact of such intervention is not hard to find. Indeed, it's hard to know where to start in documenting all this, there is so much out there if one is willing to look for it. But the mainstream U.S. press, and their blogger shadows, are ignoring this for the most part. Some exceptions at the larger alternative websites include Jeffrey St. Clair's Counterpunch and Robert Perry's Consortium News.

Even these latter outlets have almost nothing to say about the approximately 70 year history of U.S. intervention in Ukraine. The liberals and progressives avoid the subject because otherwise one would have to address the full reality of the intensive U.S. Cold War against the Soviet Union, and the covert and overt crimes and operations conducted by the U.S. against the USSR. Because the liberals share an anti-communist consensus, not far removed from Ronald Reagan's view of the USSR as an "Evil Empire," they have little to no interest in addressing the full history of the period.

But the current crisis in Ukraine, which pits a U.S.-backed coalition, which includes neo-Nazis, in Ukraine against Russian-speaking separatists in the eastern regions of the country, threatens to turn into a hot war between not just Ukraine and Russia, but between two nuclear-armed foes, NATO and Russia. Indeed, in the past six months, besides Brennan's visit,  the U.S. Vice-President and the head of NATO have all visited and consulted in Kiev with the current Ukrainian regime.

And now, the U.S. has announced it is sending military "advisers" to Ukraine, as the current government there prosecutes a major military operation against separatists in the East, which human rights groups say has included indiscriminate shelling, killing of civilians, torture, and kidnappings on both sides. The bulk of indiscriminate shelling, according to Human Rights Watch, has come from the U.S.-backed government forces. Amnesty International has documented that human rights violations and war crimes are committed by even a member of the Ukrainian parliament with total impunity.

Return of the Repressed: Recruiting Fascists as Anti-Soviet Allies

Back on March 28, The Nation and Foreign Policy in Focus published jointly an excellent article pulling up some of the relevant history, "Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret." The article does a good job showing how the right-wing, fascistic Svoboda Party in Ukraine has its roots in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], which was one of a number of East Europe parties that allied at various points with the Nazis, and had their own racist, ethnic, nationalist doctrines.

After WWII, the U.S. made a pact with many of these leaders, ostensibly recruiting them as allies against the Soviets in the Cold War. Indeed, in the early years after World War II, the U.S. and the British hired Ukrainian nationalists, many of them associated with fascism, to parachute and conduct guerilla war in Ukraine and the USSR. When doing so, they turned a blind eye to many of these leaders' war crimes, including participation in the Holocaust. When these links were revealed years later, beginning in the 1980s, the CIA and State Department worked assiduously to deny these links to Congress and the press.

Almost all of these men were rounded up and shot. When the Soviets offered an amnesty to members of the Ukrainian Insurgents Army (UPA) in January 1950, 8,000 anti-Soviet guerillas still fighting within Ukraine turned in their arms. The U.S./CIA operation to use Ukraine as a base for war against Russia and the bulk of the Soviet Union ran out of steam. (See Stephen Dorril's MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, The Free Press, 2000, pp. 242-243.)

It has taken many years, and the dedicated work of people like John Loftus, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, Linda Hunt, Christopher Simpson, Tom Bower, and many, many others who fought governmental inertia and lies to get out the truth. Much of that truth still needs to get out, but slowly, surely, it is trying to find its way into the public's consciousness, as this Daily Beast article on Operation Paperclip taken from Annie Jacobsen's new book on the same subject demonstrates so well.

One important article, by Joe Conason in the Village Voice in 1986, examined the role OUN leader Mykola Lebed played for U.S. intelligence. I'm going to take up the controversy about the VV in the near future, looking at how the CIA continued to operate to protect its Ukrainian intelligence assets, even into the early years of the Clinton administration (and likely beyond). Such protection included lying to politicians, consulting with those under investigation for war crimes how best to deal with the political fallout, and in general falsifying history to protect their covert anti-Soviet program.

Yet can the truth stand up to the daily drumbeat of lies and anti-Russian propaganda coming at a feverish pace out of the White House? The U.S. has stepped up its overt intervention in Ukraine, and it would do well for everyone to know as much as possible the lead-up to this moment, as the pending NATO/US/Russia confrontation could threaten the very world we live in, that we all live in. The U.S. is clearly ratcheting up the political and military pressure against both Russia and China, and more than even what is happening in the Middle East, it is this renewed aggressive stance towards those two countries that will dominate the news and our lives in the coming decade.

U.S. National Archives Documents U.S. Collaboration with Fascist Ukrainian Nationalists

In a remarkable book published by the United States National Archives a few years ago, historians Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda have examined recent declassified documents and put together an initial history of Army and CIA collaboration with some of the most important Ukrainian fascist leaders after World War II. Hitler's Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War (PDF) attempts to document "the Allied protection or use of Nazi war criminals; and documents about the postwar political activities of war criminals."

Hitler's Shadow was preceded by the 2005 publication, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, a Cambridge University Press book based on the earliest examination of new documents released as part of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. While the history of Ukrainian nationalism shows that nationalist movements were squeezed between the policies -- and sometimes invasions -- of foreign states, the book makes clear that today's EuroMaidan heroes of yesteryear were in fact trained by the Gestapo and took part in the Holocaust.

Chapter Five of Hitler's Shadow, "Collaborators: Allied Intelligence and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists," examines recently declassified documents in regards to how US intelligence agencies recruited, paid, protected and used war criminals who collaborated with the Nazis. In particular, it looks at the careers Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed, two WWII "heroes" of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

These Ukrainian fascists -- Lebed turned "democratic" once in U.S. hands after the war -- had their careers rehabilitated by former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko. When Putin points to the pro-fascist tendencies and Nazis within Ukraine, he is referring at least to this kind of evidence.

However, Putin cannot really address the full history of the U.S. and CIA campaign because 1) the crimes of the Stalin government is not something the Russians like to talk about, and 2) the long history of U.S intervention in Ukraine is tied up with the decades-long Cold War against Soviet communism. Putin and his allies are antagonistic to Communism, and ambivalent, at best, about the Soviet period (even if many of them were in fact former Communists or Soviet officials themselves).

Like the dilemma of the U.S. liberals mentioned above, to fully embrace a history of U.S. Cold War intervention against the Soviet Union would mean assessing what the role of the Soviet Union was, and in this, Putin and his anti-Soviet allies within Russia (like the oligarchs in Ukraine and other former Soviet states), who got rich off the corpse of the USSR de-nationalization, are not interested in dredging up Cold War history. They all shared an animus against the Communists that matched that of the CIA.

Breitman and Goda describe how the CIA's Ukrainian operation, codenamed "Aerodynamic," worked (this is taken from a National Archives government document and the extensive quote is not subject to copyright restrictions):

AERODYNAMIC’s first phase involved infiltration into Ukraine and then ex-filtration of CIA-trained Ukrainian agents. By January 1950 the CIA’s arm for the collection of secret intelligence (Office of Special Operations, OSO) and its arm for covert operations (Office of Policy Coordination, OPC) participated. Operations in that year revealed “a well established and secure underground movement” in the Ukraine that was even “larger and more fully developed than previous reports had indicated.” Washington was especially pleased with the high level of UPA training in the Ukraine and its potential for further guerrilla actions, and with “the extraordinary news that... active resistance to the Soviet regime was spreading steadily eastward, out of the former Polish, Greek Catholic provinces.”97

The CIA decided to expand its operations for “the support, development, and exploitation of the Ukrainian underground movement for resistance and intelligence purposes.” “In view of the extent and activity of the resistance movement in the Ukraine,” said OPC Chief Frank Wisner, “we consider this to be a top priority project.”98 The CIA learned of UPA activities in various Ukrainian districts; the Soviet commitment of police troops to destroy the UPA; the UPA’s resonance with Ukrainians; and the UPA’s potential to expand to 100,000 fighters in wartime. The work was not without hazards. Individual members of teams from 1949 to 1953 were captured and killed. By 1954 Lebed’s group lost all contact with UHVR. By that time the Soviets subdued both the UHVR and UPA, and the CIA ended the aggressive phase of AERODYNAMIC.99

Beginning in 1953 AERODYNAMIC began to operate through a Ukrainian study group under Lebed’s leadership in New York under CIA auspices, which collected Ukrainian literature and history and produced Ukrainian nationalist newspapers, bulletins, radio programming, and books for distribution in the Ukraine. In 1956 this group was formally incorporated as the non-profit Prolog Research and Publishing Association [CIA cryptonym: QRPOOL]. It allowed the CIA to funnel funds as ostensible private donations without taxable footprints.100 To avoid nosey New York State authorities, the CIA turned Prolog into a for-profit enterprise called Prolog Research Corporation, which ostensibly received private contracts. Under Hrinioch, Prolog maintained a Munich office named the Ukrainische-Gesellschaft für Auslandsstudien, EV. Most publications were created here.101

.... Beginning in 1955, leaflets were dropped over the Ukraine by air and radio broadcasts titled Nova Ukraina were aired in Athens for Ukrainian consumption. These activities gave way to systematic mailing campaigns to Ukraine through Ukrainian contacts in Poland and émigré contacts in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain, Sweden, and elsewhere. The newspaper Suchasna Ukrainia (Ukraine Today), information bulletins, a Ukrainian language journal for intellectuals called Suchasnist (The Present), and other publications were sent to libraries, cultural institutions, administrative offices and private individuals in Ukraine. These activities encouraged Ukrainian nationalism, strengthened Ukrainian resistance, and provided an alternative to Soviet media.103

In 1957 alone, with CIA support, Prolog broadcast 1,200 radio programs totaling 70 hours per month and distributed 200,000 newspapers and 5,000 pamphlets. In the years following, Prolog distributed books by Ukrainian writers and poets. One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and … there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” The distribution of literature in the Soviet Ukraine continued to the end of the Cold War.104

Prolog also garnered intelligence after Soviet travel restrictions eased somewhat in the late 1950s. It supported the travel of émigré Ukrainian students and scholars to academic conferences, international youth festivals, musical and dance performances, the Rome Olympics and the like, where they could speak with residents of the Soviet Ukraine in order to learn about living conditions there as well as the mood of Ukrainians toward the Soviet regime. Prolog’s leaders and agents debriefed travelers on their return and shared information with the CIA. In 1966 alone Prolog personnel had contacts with 227 Soviet citizens. [pp. 88-89]

This is the first in a series of articles examining the history of U.S. and CIA intervention in Ukraine, from World War II to today.

Crossposted from FDL/The Dissenter

Obama Admits He Banned Only "Some" of the CIA's Torture Techniques

Forgive the tongue-in-cheek, but it is almost as if the only person who reads and responds to my work on torture is President Obama.

There was a cascade of coverage of the President's August 1 remarks concerning John Brennan and his defense of his embattled CIA chief, as Obama was also widely derided for his seeming defense of those who tortured "some folks" after 9/11. (Obama did not mention that the order to torture came from the Oval Office.)

"Well, at least he called the crimes out as 'torture," some observers noted. Others, including some in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), called for John Brennan's resignation as CIA director after he admitted the CIA had spied on Congressional investigators who were writing a thousands-of-pages-long report on the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program.

An Executive Summary of that report, in a censored version produced by the CIA itself, is now back in the hands of the SSCI, who may or may not release it soon. The Committee has already decided the full 6000 or so page report itself will not be released for years (if ever), a cover-up of immense proportions.

Jason Leopold, who has been covering the story for Al Jazeera America and VICE, noted astutely in a tweet the other day, that Obama's comments at his August 1 press conference included a reference to his only banning "some" of the CIA's torture techniques. Leopold believed Obama previously had always been more absolute in his prohibition of torture.

The full quote from the August 1 presser is worth reproducing here. The quote below begins in the middle of Obama's defense of those who used torture after 9/11, i.e., those who are the subjects of the Senate's controversial torture report (bold emphasis is added):

And it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that's what that report reflects. And that's the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.

Only "some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques"? Not all? Was this merely a slip of the tongue by the President? No one in the press corp seemed to notice, and no one took him up on the issue. To date, no one has in the press has at all (besides Leopold's tweets), though it is very much worth noting that Jeremy Scahill reported in July 2011 on the CIA's continuing use of black sites and torture in an important article in The Nation. Others had surmised as much even earlier.

But there was a much more insidious and institutional salvage of torture by the U.S. government, which, rocked after the Abu Ghraib revelations, tried to hide and maintain its use of detention and interrogation techniques that relied on force, mental cruelty, fear, isolation, stress positions, sleep and sensory deprivation, and the use of drugs. Waterboarding, for all the attention given to that brutal form of torture, was never really a major component of U.S. torture. There were even some in the CIA who would be glad to see it go.

Using solitary confinement, loud music and 24 hour bright lights, verbal abuse and humiliation, "dislocating the expectations" of prisoners by, for instance, moving them around every day so they never had a sense of solid place or safety or time to rest, or using drugs to disorient them -- this is the kind of torture that leaves deep psychological wounds, and which the U.S. wanted to maintain in its interrogation arsenal.

What Obama Meant by Banning Only "Some" Torture

Over the past few years, I have shown how first the Bush administration hid their torture program within a 2006 rewrite of the Army Field Manual on interrogation, then how the Obama administration via Executive Order made that same field manual the law of the land, incumbent on both the CIA and the Defense Department.

I showed that when in January 2009 Obama publicly revoked the Bush torture program, which the government labeled "extraordinary interrogation techniques," and all the John Yoo/Jay Bybee/Steven Bradbury Justice Department memoranda approving that same torture program, he did not do it in a blanket fashion, but referred the memos themselves to Eric Holder for review. Ultimately, as a Department of Defense spokesperson actually told me, the Holder and the Justice Department never rescinded one of the Bush-era torture memos, in particular the one that approved forms of torture that would be used in a special section, called Appendix M, of the Army Field Manual.

Obama's admission that he had only banned "some" of the previous administration's torture techniques was not the first time the government has made such an admission, however obliquely.

Last April, I wrote how the Department of Defense's main directive on interrogations (3115.09), which supposedly had banned SERE-derived torture techniques (like waterboarding, hooding, etc.) used by the government after 9/11, in fact made a note that only some of the SERE techniques were banned. The ones that were not banned resided in -- the Army Field Manual on interrogation, the same manual Obama had endorsed in his Jan. 2009 executive order on "lawful interrogations."

SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, and is the name given to DoD's program to prepare military and CIA and other specific government personnel for capture and imprisonment by a brutal enemy. Its participants take part in a mock-prison camp exercise, and it was the kinds of torture practiced during that exercise that were utilized in full-blown operational mode by CIA and Defense Department interrogators in the so-called War on Terror.

The SERE-derived model, which is what the "extraordinary interrogation techniques" really were, was superimposed on an earlier torture program based on isolation and sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, fear and drugs, developed by the CIA and codified in a 1963 interrogation program that is referred to today as KUBARK. Earlier this year, I obtained a version of the previously declassified KUBARK manual with new portions now unredacted.

But oddly, besides myself, only Obama seems to have noticed that not all the torture techniques were rescinded by him. The press and certainly the Senate and the House of Representatives have ignored entirely the use of torture in the Army Field Manual. While some bloggers and human rights groups have noted the anomaly of having the nation's primary instructions on interrogation include torture techniques, and some have even called for a repeal of Appendix M or a rewriting of the field manual itself, none of these groups or individuals have made this a primary issue. Nor, when the controversy over the Senate report on the CIA torture program is discussed, is the ongoing presence of torture in the Army Field Manual ever mentioned.

The failure to take on the entire torture apparatus is one reason accountability for U.S. torture cannot get sufficient traction. The argument remains shackled by what the Establishment deems reasonable dialogue about torture. So one can criticize the embrace of euphemism to describe torture, or argue why waterboarding is torture, or shout loudly why the redacted portion of the SSCI's Executive Summary of their years-long investigation should be released, but evidently it is not reasonable, that is, establishment-sanctioned via the New York Times or other media or political authority, to bring up torture beyond the terms already established.

But now Obama has done it. He has said he banned only "some" of the torture techniques that were the target of the SSCI's report. Now, besides me, who's going to take him on about this?

Crossposted from The Dissenter/FDL