Fifty Years of Secrecy: Investigating CIA Mind Control Experiments in Vermont

[The following is a submission from Karen Wetmore, a survivor of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA research experiments. She is the author of Surviving Evil: CIA Mind Control Experiments in Vermont. Interested readers might wish to also see my review of Karen's book, written last year.]

FIFTY YEARS OF SECRECY: INVESTIGATING CIA MIND CONTROL EXPERIMENTS IN VERMONT

by Karen Wetmore

After I wrote the book, Surviving Evil: CIA Mind Control Experiments in Vermont, I was left with disturbing questions regarding the research I had been subjected to while a teenage patient in Vermont hospitals. My medical records provided me with many details of different drugs that were used, including evidence of the use of hallucinogens, massive electric shock treatments, chemical shock treatments, hypnosis and prolonged isolation. But I continued to ask myself what else did they do to me and why.

My medical records were incomplete – very clearly cherry picked. During the years after I discovered the CIA presence at the University of Vermont College of Medicine (UVM), UVM Medical Center Hospital and the Vermont State Hospital (VSH), I was repeatedly harassed. The phone company told me my phone was tapped, the Post Master confirmed that my mail was being stolen and strangers followed me. Finally I phoned the FBI in Albany, New York and complained that I believed the CIA was behind the harassment and I told the FBI why. All forms of harassment stopped after that phone call.

I asked myself again and again, why would CIA harass me all these years after the 1977 Senate Hearings exposed the CIA MKULTRA programs? It simply made no sense to me. I strongly suspected that my discovery of Dr. Robert W. Hyde in my medical records, noted in court documents during my lawsuit against the State of Vermont, and my discovery of the twenty-year long active presence of the CIA in Vermont had made CIA nervous. It was clear that neither CIA nor the State of Vermont ever expected anyone to discover the CIA mind control experiments.

Robert Hyde was a CIA Technical Services Division researcher who conducted extensive LSD and other hallucinogenic drug experiments at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Butler Hospital, Harvard and the Worcester Foundation For Experimental Biology – all research affiliates of UVM, UVM Medical Center Hospital and VSH. McGill University was also a research affiliate of UVM-VSH.

Personality Assessment System and MKULTRA

Hyde conducted extensive personality assessment research for CIA psychologist John Gittinger, utilizing Gittinger’s Personality Assessment System (PAS). Hyde’s declassified CIA subprojects, 8, 10, 63 and 66 show that Gittinger’s Washington D.C. CIA office, Psychological Assessment Associates, funded Hyde’s research, and as I wrote in my book, also funded research at UVM, UVM Medical Center Hospital and VSH.

Robert Hyde was Director of Research at the Vermont State Hospital during the time I was a patient in 1965, 1970, 1971 and 1972. He held that position until his death in 1976. Hyde, as I have discovered, is the CIA researcher almost completely overlooked by investigators. He continues to be very well protected by CIA. His research from 1965 on is almost impossible to find, except for benign articles, and in sharp contrast to the other MKULTRA researchers, no photograph of Hyde has been located, despite years of searching by me and others. Using Hyde as a starting point enabled me to unravel and expose Vermont’s role in the CIA mind control experiments. I was only able to begin my search using his name because I found it in my medical records.

Why after all of these years does CIA still find it necessary to protect Robert Hyde’s CIA research? I’ve concluded that Hyde wasn’t overlooked – he and his Vermont research remain very carefully guarded by CIA.

There were other disturbing questions as well. Why would no Senator or Congressman or Senate Committee help me? They wouldn’t even acknowledge letters from me much less reply. Senator Bernie Sanders tried to help me for years but for the most part was unable to do much.

It is interesting to note that after I wrote a letter in January 2015 to Senator John McCain asking for his help, mentioning Senator Sanders attempts to help me over the years, I learned that shortly after I wrote McCain, Senator Sanders had closed the file on my case. For the first time in over a decade, Sanders’ staff was cool and distant on the phone, in sharp contrast to all the many other phone conversations I had with his staff over the years. Sanders’ office clearly did not want to hear from me again about the CIA research in Vermont.

In mid-December 2014, I wrote a letter to the CIA Inspector General, informing him of the original source documents I located. I also described the experimentation detailed in my medical records that I had been subjected to and I offered proof, not speculation, as to the CIA research conducted in Vermont institutions. I also pressed CIA for compensation for the damage done to me physically and psychologically. I requested an internal CIA investigation by his department, since investigating CIA wrongdoing is what the IG does. Several weeks after I sent the letter I learned that the CIA IG had resigned.

The Vermont press and the national press remain silent on the information I documented in my book, despite having been informed. A foreign journalist told me that he couldn’t understand why American journalists were not, as he put it, “All over this story.” Again I ask the question: What did CIA do in Vermont institutions that require such measures to ensure secrecy fifty years later? Beginning in September 2013, I decided to try to find out.

Using FOIA to Investigate

Between 2000 and 2009 I wrote dozens of FOIA requests to CIA seeking documents about Vermont’s role in MKULTRA. During those years I could not be specific as to procedures in particular and each FOIA response came back noting “No Documents Located”. After I wrote my book, Surviving Evil, I felt I had enough information to craft my FOIA requests very specifically. I based my requests on information documented in my medical records and information gleaned from UVM-VSH research documents.

I began my search with a Vermont Records Act request dated October 7, 2013 seeking financial records that existed between UVM-VSH and Psychological Assessment Associates and the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. Both the latter two were CIA fronts and both were verified in UVM-VSH research documents. I had a PAS assessment in my medical records, dated December 21 and 22, 1965. I was then thirteen years old. CIA has described the use of the PAS as, “... anti-ethical rather than therapeutic...”, “... a way to get at people...” “... to compromise people...”

The State of Vermont responded on October 16, 2013: “The records you requested in your letter dated October 7, 2013 are not available because they were discarded pursuant to public records retention schedule effective March 3, 2010, on file with the State Archives and Records Administration.”

On October 24, 2013, I filed a FOIA with the CIA requesting: “Research documents including subprojects for research conducted and or funded by CIA at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and the Vermont State Hospital during the years 1959, 1962, 1965 and 1966... I filed a Vermont Records Act request on October 7, 2013 for research contracts that existed between UVM-VSH and the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology and Psychological Assessment Associates during the years noted. The response from the State was that the records I requested had been destroyed. Therefore a contractual relationship existed between CIA and UVM-VSH.

“I obtained UVM-VSH research documents (MH-01076) that show the psychological tests (PAS) created by CIA psychologist John Gittinger were given to VSH patients and, according to the documents, sent directly to Gittinger at Psychological Assessment Associates, 1834 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Also noted in the documents are plans to expand and continue research with Gittinger.”

CIA response dated November 21, 2013 was that the records I requested are Classified. Based on the information in my medical records I had a strong suspicion about the true nature of the experiments I was involved in and I decided to craft several FOIA’s, one at a time, over the next 17 months in order to be able to put them all together when completed and lay out a clearer picture of the CIA research I was thrust into as a child.

Special Interrogations Research From 40+ Years Ago: “Classified”

On March 24, 2014, I filed a FOIA with CIA requesting “documents involving the use of Special Interrogations at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, UVM Medical Center Hospital and the Vermont State Hospital during the years 1970, 1971 and 1972.”

Special Interrogations (SI) involves the use of LSD (or other hallucinogens), Mescaline, electric shock, chemical shock agents like Metrazol, hypnosis and prolonged isolation. These methods are part of my medical records and SI was the forerunner of what is now termed Enhanced Interrogations.

CIA’s response, dated April 16, 2014, was that the documents I requested were “Classified.” More specifically, they said CIA could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive” to my request. This is known as a “Glomar” response.

I filed an appeal on May 5, 2014. CIA’s reply, dated August 28, 2014, was that my appeal had been denied because the documents are Classified. The denial letter stated, “The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified and relates to intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure….”

On September 16, 2014 I filed a FOIA with the CIA requesting “research documents including budget office receipts and confidential funds posting vouchers, involving the use of biological, chemical and psychological procedures to produce altered states of consciousness, with or without amnesia at the Worcester Foundation For Experimental Biology during the years 1970, 1971 and 1972.”

CIA response dated October 17, 2014 was that the documents I requested are Classified. I filed the identical request naming UVM, UVM Medical Center Hospital and VSH on November 5, 2014. CIA’s response, dated November 21, 2014, was that the documents I requested are Classified.

On December 2, 2014, I filed a FOIA with CIA requesting “research conducted by, funded by or in the interest of CIA involving the use of hypnosis to create amnesia with posthypnotic suggestion at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, UVM Medical Center Hospital and Vermont State Hospital during the years 1970, 1971 and 1972.”

CIA response, dated January 21, 2015, was that the documents I requested are “Classified.”

On January 28, 2015 I filed a FOIA with CIA requesting, “research conducted by, funded by or in the interest of CIA involving the use of the drugs LSD, LAE, Scopolamine, Metrazol, Sernyl, (PCP) and Quinuclidinyl Benzilate, (BZ) at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, UVM Medical Center Hospital and Vermont State Hospital during the years 1970, 1971 and 1972.”

CIA’s response, dated February 25, 2015, was that the documents are “Classified.”

I’ve been researching CIA experiments in Vermont for eighteen years now but I have to say that this FOIA response shocked me, even though I expected CIA to respond this way. It’s one thing to suspect what the response will be and a whole other thing to have the response in hand. The idea that Vermont institutions were using these drugs on unwitting patients, including me is hard to process. Medical ethics were clearly abandoned by doctors and professors who publicly tout themselves and the institutions they work for as being caring, compassionate health care professionals.

These drugs were used on vulnerable, helpless mental patients who were in the care of the State of Vermont. Sernyl, also known as PCP and Angel Dust, causes acute, sometimes permanent psychosis and was intended for use as an animal anesthetic. BZ, one of the most powerful hallucinogens ever created, causes violent reactions, hallucinations, dissociation and a complete detachment from reality. It is classified as a chemical warfare agent. The idea that these drugs were used on unwitting mental patients is astonishing and as far as I am concerned, it is an unforgivable betrayal.

The UVM-State of Vermont doctors who used these drugs did not do so for any therapeutic reason whatsoever. CIA already knew the effects of these powerful hallucinogens and the effects were that people were driven completely out of their minds.

I crafted the FOIA requests to try to determine what CIA program was used in UVM-VSH. Each response from the CIA cited the same protections from disclosure: Section 3.6 (a) of Executive Order13526, Section 6 of the CIA Act of 1949, Section 102A(i) (l) of the National Security Act of 1947 and FOIA exemptions (b) (1) and (b) (3). The responses to my requests, when put together demonstrate evidence that the CIA program generally known as the Manchurian Candidate research was conducted in Vermont institutions. These methods would have been the building blocks for the creation of a Manchurian Candidate.

A Manchurian Candidate?

CIA has long denied they ever conducted Manchurian Candidate research. I’m certain that the actual name of the program is different than the public name of Manchurian Candidate and I have no idea if the program is still operational. I am now convinced that CIA honed their techniques in Vermont institutions, using unwitting severely mentally ill subjects.

I’m certain CIA calculated that these were people that no one would care enough about to endanger their research. No one would know, no one would complain and there would be no consequences for CIA’s behavior. Tragically, CIA calculated correctly.

CIA began mapping each subject’s psychological profile, looking for soft spots and ways to compromise people using the PAS. When an appropriate subject was selected, Special Interrogations were conducted using hallucinogens, electric shock, chemical shock, hypnosis and prolonged isolation. These methods broke down the subject’s defenses and made the mind far more pliable to suggestion. SI in some cases causes dissociation, which would have been the desired effect for Manchurian Candidate experimentation. By adding drugs like LSD, PCP and BZ a complete mental break with resulting dissociation could almost be guaranteed.

The production of altered states of consciousness, with or without amnesia can be understood as breaking down the mind- a psychological response to unbearable physical and emotional trauma. It’s as if the trauma is happening to someone else-an extreme detachment from the self. It is dissociation.

The use of hypnosis to create amnesia also figures into the Manchurian Candidate research. A person under hypnosis, especially under circumstances described here could have easily been conditioned to behave in specifically suggested ways and then the subject would have been instructed to not remember the suggestion or the behavior.

Much has been written about the Manchurian Candidate program, despite CIA’s claims that the research never happened. The program is thought to have been important to CIA in order to enable them to program their agents in the field in this manner. The theory being that if an agent was captured and tortured, sensitive information would be stored in another previously created personality. The boundaries between the personalities and the amnesia would assure that even under torture, the agent would not be able to reveal the information.

Is this the program that was conducted by CIA in Vermont hospitals during the 60’s and 70’s? Evidence suggests that it was. One thing is very clear: the research conducted in Vermont remains classified. I now realize that I was involved in Classified CIA research.

Vermonters have the right to know the details of the CIA experiments in Vermont hospitals. As an American citizen, I have rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but apparently because I was unwittingly involved in Classified CIA research beginning as a 13-year-old child, my government has chosen to deny me these rights. I find this especially difficult to live with.

In December 2014 when the Senate released the report on CIA Enhanced Interrogations conducted on foreign detainees during the war, I watched and listened as Senators and Congressmen, newsmen and others denounced the treatment of these detainees. Special Interrogations techniques were begun during the 60’s and 70’s and SI techniques were conducted on me and other Vermonters at the University Of Vermont College Of Medicine, UVM Medical Center Hospital and the Vermont State Hospital. Special Interrogations became Enhanced Interrogations and were used during the Iraq war.

Every American should be concerned that CIA and Vermont are able to keep the information about these experiments covered up. I have always believed that the American press was independent and free from pressure by the government. I no longer believe this is true.

The stated primary goal by CIA for conducting MKULTRA was “…to learn how to manipulate and control men’s minds”. Unfortunately, for all of us, it appears as if the CIA has achieved its goal.

Originally posted at Firedoglake.com

New Revelations Suggest DoD Cover-Up Over Detainee Drugging Charges

Two new revelations, and a critical analysis of the recent Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General (IG) report on the drugging of DoD-held detainees, reveals a cover-up of such drugging by the Pentagon and possibly other government agencies.

A recent attorney's affidavit charges that at least one Guantanamo detainee was involuntarily drugged before his plea hearing at the military commissions. In addition, a declassified Guantanamo medical standard operating procedure (SOP) describes how scopolamine was administered to all detainees rendered to the US Cuban-based prison. Scopolamine has a long history as a supposed "truth drug."

The IG report held that it could not find evidence that detainees were administered "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation of detainees." However, as reported in a July 2012 article at Truthout, which obtained the report by the Freedom of Information Act, the IG held that some detainees had been drugged with powerful antipsychotics and other medications that "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information."

Some of these detainees were interrogated even though they were "diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions, and being treated with psychoactive medications on an ongoing basis," the IG said.

The IG also concluded that some detainees had been involuntarily administered drugs as "chemical restraints ... used to control behavior or restrict the patient's freedom of movement." In addition, at least one prisoner, supposed "dirty bomber" José Padilla, held in isolation at a Navy brig in South Carolina, was tricked into believing he had been given a "truth drug."

But while the IG report was spurred by a June 2008 Washington Post article reporting a number of former detainees' complaints of drugging and a subsequent letter to the IG from three US senators, the IG report never interviewed any of the detainees mentioned in the Post story.

The IG interviewed only three detainees, all of whom were still held at Guantanamo. "We did not attempt to interview detainees who had been repatriated," the IG stated, which would include any of the detainees who had previously made public statements to the press that they had been forcibly drugged.

Drugs Placed in Detainees' Food

One of the detainees making such accusations was former Australian detainee David Hicks. Hicks detailed those charges in a book published last year, "Guantanamo: My Journey." The book is not for sale in the United States and the Australian government went to court to seize any profits Hicks could make from book sales in Australia.

In July 2012, the Australian government dropped its case against Hicks. Possibly this was because of revelations that could have come out in court over Hicks' torture in US custody.

One such document that had been prepared for by Hicks' defense team has been released. According to an affidavit by New York attorney Josh Dratel, who represented Hicks with military commission authorities, DoD "periodically sedated [Hicks] for non-therapeutic reasons."

A military prosecutor in Hicks' case confirmed one example of such drugging to Dratel in July 2007.

"David says the guards forced him to eat a meal which contained a sedative before you read him the charges," Dratel said he told the government prosecutor. To which the latter replied, "That was done to protect the officers reading the charges from any of the detainees' reactions."

Dratel's affidavit was first reported by Natalie O'Brien at the Sydney Morning Herald. Truthout has obtained a copy of Dratel's affidavit, which can be downloaded.

Human rights attorney and contributing editor to Harper's Magazine Scott Horton told Truthout, "The administration of drugs for non-medical purposes on prisoners held in wartime raises very serious issues under the Geneva Conventions - which establish a presumption that such use of drugs is generally unlawful and may rise to the level of a grave breach, or war crime - as well as other international agreements."

"The disclosure surrounding Hicks appears at first blush to be a criminal violation by US authorities," Horton said, "but it would be important to ascertain the reasons the US had for doing this before making any final judgment."

An Australian senator from South Australia has said that the new revelations backing Hicks' claims of forced drugging mean the government "can no longer put off" a formal inquiry into Australia's role in Hicks' incarceration and treatment by US authorities.

Scopolamine Patches for Rendition

While it has been assumed that some sort of medication was given to detainees who were subjected to the Bush-era program of extraordinary rendition, an October 2003 nursing SOP declassified a few years ago documented the use of scopolamine patches on all detainees rendered to Guantanamo.

The SOP describes the sequential steps of medical in-processing on all detainees. Only at step ten are nurses instructed to "remove the scopolamine behind each ear (used to prevent airsickness during transit)."

The stated rationale for the use of scopolamine - that is, for airsickness - is not repeated for other medical instructions in the SOP, including the administration of two other drugs during in-processing, mefloquine and Albendazole, raising questions as to why nurses had to be informed of the use of the scopolamine patches.

A separate SOP for "Out-processing Procedures" for detainees being flown out of Guantanamo Bay prison camp (revised July 2005) states, "A scopolamine patch will be placed on each detainee 4 hours before the flight" out of Cuba. There is no indication that any medical reasons might contravene this procedure.

The IG report on drugging of detainees never mentioned the use of scopolamine.

While DoD has studied scopolamine patches for motion sickness in military personnel, they are not the first-line medication used by DoD for this purpose. As far back as 1956, a military study complained that scopolamine: "gave the most distressing side effects of all the prophylactics used. For continued use, meclizine was the most satisfactory."

US Army psychiatrist, Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis (retired) confirmed military policy as regards medications for motion sickness.

“Military doctors recommended meclizine for motion sickness during my career & not scopolamine because of the side effects,” Xenakis told Truthout. “I have seen psychotic reactions to the drug," he said.
At times, the military has noted the effectiveness of scopolamine for some people in treating motion sickness. One NATO study described scopolamine's "high variability between subjects in both effectiveness and incidence of side effects." The side effects included lowered heart rate, blurred vision, impaired attention and alertness, and memory problems.

According to US Coast Guard instructions on "Antimotion Sickness Medications," the scopolamine patch is contraindicated in patients due to variability of effectiveness and associated medical precautions for some users. Scopolamine patches "should be used only after other methods of motion sickness control have proven unsatisfactory," the Coast Guard directive states.

The Coast Guard instruction, still in effect today, further states, "Uncommon but potentially severe side-effects [of scopolamine] include disorientation, hallucinations, and urinary retention."

Scopolamine has a very long history of consideration as a potential truth drug, going back over 80 years. Readers of 1960s military thrillers may remember discussion of the drug for interrogations in old Alistair MacLean novels.

According to a CIA account, the drug was ultimately rejected for use as a "truth drug." The reasons given for such rejection are interesting given the later use of the drug on "war on terror" detainees.

"Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a 'truth' drug," the 1961 CIA document states. "Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects."

According to government documents, scopolamine was one of a number of drugs, including mescaline and LSD, which were investigated as part of a US Navy research program called Project Chatter. Chatter ran from 1947 until 1953 and "focused on the identification and testing of such drugs for use in interrogations and in the recruitment of agents."

Mefloquine as "Pharmacological Waterboarding"

The nursing SOP that mentioned scopolamine was first noted by Army public health physician Remington Nevin in an August 2012 article in a peer-reviewed medical journal examining DoD's purported medical rationale for another use of another drug, mefloquine.

The "empiric" use of mefloquine - an antimalarial drug that has long been controversial for its serious neurological and psychological side effects - on all incoming detainees at Guantanamo was the subject of a series of Truthout articles by Jason Leopold and this author.

Mefloquine has been connected to a number of serious side effects, including damage to the vestibular system, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores, and homicidal and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The drug was previously sold under the brand name Lariam.

Nevin told Truthout in December 2010 that the high dosage of mefloquine Guantanamo detainees were forced to take upon arriving at the prison facility was akin to "pharmacologic waterboarding."

In Nevin's article for the August 2012 edition of Tropical Medicine and International Health, he wrote, "the troubling possibility that the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo may have been motivated in part by knowledge of the drug's adverse effects ... points to a critical need for further investigation to resolve unanswered questions regarding the drug's potentially inappropriate use."

As in the case of scopolamine, the IG report never mentioned the use of mefloquine.

Limiting the Investigation

One reason scopolamine, mefloquine or even the drugs put in David Hicks' food were never mentioned by the DoD inspector general was that the investigation was carefully limited to the purported use of "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogations."

The IG report states that its report was a response to "a tasking to the Inspector Generals of DoD and the Central Intelligence Agency from Senators Biden, Hagel and Levin." DoD's IG does not reproduce the April 24, 2008, letter from the senators, though an online version of the letter still extant at TPM Muckraker clearly describes the tasking precisely.

"We are deeply concerned about the allegations reported in the April 23rd Washington Post article entitled Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned regarding the alleged use of drugs on detainees to facilitate interrogations," the senators wrote. "They are the most recent in a series of allegations relating to the abuse and mistreatment of detainees in United States custody."

Pointing out as well that John Yoo, working for the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), had apparently approved of the legality of "the forced administration of mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation," Sens. Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and Carl Levin wrote, "The allegations reported in the Washington Post article warrant a thorough investigation by the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency."

The letter twice mentions the use of drugs "to facilitate interrogations," but the 2008 Washington Post article, written by Joby Warrick, did not limit itself to the use of drugs during interrogations. Warrick explained, "Other detainees, in interviews or in statements provided by their attorneys, described pills and injections being forcibly administered for reasons that were not always clear to them."

But an analysis of government documents shows that the dichotomy between using drugs to facilitate interrogations and using drugs to shape the detention environment are not counterpoised.

In a "Background Paper on the CIA's Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques," sent to the OLC in December 2004, the CIA explained that detention conditions "may be a factor in interrogation."

The CIA document noted, "Detention conditions are not interrogation techniques, but they have an impact on the detainee undergoing interrogation."

The DoD's own 2003 Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures describe the detention environment to which incoming prisoners are to be exposed. New prisoners are to adhere to a "Behavioral Management Plan" for at least the first six weeks, whose purpose is to "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator."

While the 2003 SOP never mentions the use of drugs to "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization" of detainees, certainly the use of drugs such as scopolamine and mefloquine, among others, could help accomplish this purpose, and do so without technically being used to "facilitate interrogation." This would be one purpose, for instance, of Yoo's argument for the use of mind-altering drugs.

The DoD IG never mentions Yoo or his recommendation in their report. Nor do they mention that the current Army Field Manual (AFM) on interrogation allows for the use of drugs for interrogation-related purposes.

The AFM, revised in 2006, states that the only drugs forbidden for use are those "that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage." The earlier version of the AFM had prohibited drugs that caused "chemically induced psychosis," but this language was dropped in the new manual.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale told Truthout that no further changes have been made to the AFM since its last rewrite in 2006, meaning the changes in drugging prohibitions still stands.

CIA and Drugging of Detainees

The DoD IG report was clear it was not addressing charges of CIA drugging, which was to be investigated by the CIA Inspector General. Truthout has filed a FOIA request for the CIA IG report.

Claims of the CIA's use of drugs on detainees rendered to its secret black site prison and "enhanced interrogation" torture program have been the subject of foreign investigations, even as in the United States, the DOJ has closed the book, it claims, on prosecuting CIA crimes.

But the truth about what was done under the CIA's program has leaked out over the years. In terms of its use of drugs, at Harper's Horton reported in November 2010 that German prosecutors told him that torture victim Khaled El-Masri, himself a German citizen who was kidnapped and rendered to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, had been given drugs by CIA jailers.

"By studying El-Masri's hair and skin samples," Horton wrote, German prosecutors "were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen."

The investigation into the illegal CIA kidnapping was shut down after a deputy US ambassador intervened with German Foreign and Justice ministry officials to register Washington's disapproval of any prosecution of its CIA torturers, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

"I expect this would have figured in the prosecution that the German prosecutors were preparing before the United States shut down the case through threats and political manipulation," Horton told Truthout.

Historically, the CIA had approved the use of drugs in interrogations and to influence detention conditions that bear upon interrogation. In a declassified interrogation manual from the early 1960s, the CIA explained that the function of using drugs, "is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation."

"Once this shift has been accomplished," the manual reads, "coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive" for interrogation purposes.

Special Operations Command and the IG Report

In an interesting aside to the IG report, a letter to the DoD Inspector General from Col. William Melendez, deputy director for intelligence, US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) noted that USSOCOM "cannot agree or disagree with the report findings" because its forces involved in any interrogations in Iraq and Guantanamo were under authority of Central or Southern military commands (CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM, respectively). The letter was included in an appendix to the IG report itself.

According to Colonel Melendez, SOCOM "did not contribute to the completion" of the IG report, raising questions as to what degree Special Operations forces' interrogation practices were investigated by DoD's inspector general.

Speaking of the recent reports concerning the drugging of detainees, Horton told Truthout: "The new evidence points to the use of drugs for nonmedical purposes as a far broader practice, which is troubling. It is hard to imagine this practice being undertaken without high-level authorization, particularly because it is at least arguably illegal, and the medical personnel involved would not likely have risked their professional licenses without getting some formal assurances that they would be protected."

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted without permission. Original URL: http://truth-out.org/news/item/11640-new-revelations-suggest-dod-cover-up-over-detainee-drugging-charges

Changes in Army Field Manual on Drugging Detainees Date to Bush Sr. Administration

This is one of those "for the record" posts I make from time to time, pending a larger article. Such posts are necessary as providing potentially important information that researchers or human rights activists may need for their work.

In the past I have written more than once on the changes made to language on drugs in the 2006 version of the Army Field Manual on interrogation (FM 2-22.3, "Human Collector Intelligence Operations"), most notably in this June 30, 2009 article at Firedoglake. In that article I noted how John Yoo had approved the use of drugs by CIA interrogators, so long as they did not "rise to the level of 'disrupt[ing] profoundly the senses or personality.'" Such a "profound disruption," Yoo wrote, "must penetrate to the core of an individual’s ability to perceive the world around him, substantially interfering with his cognitive abilities, or fundamentally alter his personality."

As an example of such disruption, Yoo pointed to DSM-IV psychiatric diagnoses, including "drug-induced dementia," "brief psychotic disorder," obsessive-compulsive disorder, or induced suicidal or self-mutilating behavior. Even more, Yoo said that the use of "truth drugs," "where no physical harm or mental suffering was apparent," was rejected by the State parties to the UN Convention Against Torture as "not viewed as amounting to torture per se."

Yet a few years later, when the authors of the AFM rewrite (working for Stephen Cambone, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld's putative right-hand man) got to the sectio on drugs, even "profound disruption" wasn't too awful for them. They prohibited drugs to be used by Army interrogators to only "drugs that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage." Earlier language banning drugs that could produce "chemically induced psychosis" was dropped.

In my June 2009 article I wrote:

The main text of the AFM [2-22.3] also changed the wording from the previous Army Field Manual [FM 34-52] 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.

While this was true, I had not realized that FM 34-52 itself represented a change from earlier Army interrogation doctrine regarding the use of drugs for interrogations. According to authoritative military sources, the change in drugging policy in FM 34-52 represented a definitive break with previous post-Nuremberg military policy, as the documented below.

Nor did I realize that Yoo's point about "truth drugs" and the CAT were in actuality a feint.

FM 34-52 was dated September 28, 1992, so we can date the changes in DoD doctrine regarding use of drugs in interrogation at least back to the close of the Bush, Sr. administration. As we begin to look with a more critical eye at US government denials of drugging of "war on terror" prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere (see the stories about the Dod Inspector General Report on use of "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation" and the lastest revelations about the drugging of former Guantanamo detainee David Hicks), it will be important to understand the historical record.

I discovered this not insignificant change on policy about drugging prisoners in a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report for Congress, "Lawfulness of Interrogation Techniques under the Geneva Conventions." The report is dated September 8, 2004. The author is listed as Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division. The relevant part of the reported is excerpted below.

Under the interpretation set forth in [Army Field Manual for Interrogation] FM 34-52, “physical or mental torture and coercion revolve around the elimination of the source’s free will.”46 These activities, along with “brainwashing,” are not authorized, it explains, but are not to be confused with the psychological techniques and ruses presented in the manual. FM 34-52 includes in the definition of mental coercion “drugs that may induce lasting and permanent mental alteration and damage.” This appears to reflect a change from earlier doctrine, which prohibited the use of any drugs on prisoners unless required for medical purposes. 47 

46 FM 34-52 at 1-8
47 See Stanley J. Glod and Lawrence J. Smith, Interrogation under the 1949 Prisoners of War Convention, 21 MIL. L. REV. 145, 153-54 (1963)(citing JAGW 1961 / 1157, 21 June 21, 1961).

In an opinion by The Judge Advocate General of the Army reviewing the employment of [“truth serum”] in the light of Article 17, it was noted that Article 17 justly and logically must be extended to protect the prisoner against any inquisitorial practice by his captors which would rob him of his free will. On this basis it was held that the use of truth serum was outlawed by Article 17. In addition, its use contravenes Article 18, which states in part : “. . . no prisoner of war may be subject to . . . . medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental, or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.” The opinion declared that “. . . the suggested use of a chemical “truth serum” during the questioning of prisoners of war would be in violation of the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.” From this opinion it seems clear that any attempt to extract information from an unwilling prisoner of war by the use of chemicals, drugs, physiological or psychological devices, which impair or deprive the prisoner of his free will without being in his interest, such as a bonafide medical treatment, will be deemed a violation of Articles 13 and 17 of the Convention.

The 1987 version of FM 34-52 suggested that the use of any drugs for interrogation purposes amounted to mental coercion. FM 34-52 ch. 1 (1987).

Alyona Show Interviews Jason Leopold on DoD Drugging of Detainees

Alyona Mikovski at RT TV interviewed Jason Leopold, co-author of our July 11 Truthout article, DoD Report Reveals Some Detainees Interrogated While Drugged, Others "Chemically Restrained.

The Truthout article was noted by numerous news outlets, including Associated Press, the UK Daily Mail, and Wired Magazine. Kevin Gosztola also interviewed me about what the Inspector General report, "Investigation of Allegations of the Use of Mind-Altering Drugs to Facilitate Interrogations of Detainees" (PDF), was really all about.



If you're not done wanting to know more about the IG report and the whole issue of drugging the "war on terror" detainees, you might also want to listen to Scott Horton at The Scott Horton Show interview Jason on the latest revelations.

For more penetrating, original commentary on the IG report and the drugging issue in general, see Andy Worthington and Marcy Wheeler's recent blog postings.

DoD Report Reveals Some Detainees Interrogated While Drugged, Others "Chemically Restrained"

Reposted with permission from Truthout

by Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold
Original date of publication, July 11, 2012

Detainees in custody of the US military were interrogated while drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information," according to a declassified Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general's report that probed the alleged use of "mind altering drugs" during interrogations.

In addition, detainees were subjected to "chemical restraints," hydrated with intravenous (IV) fluids while they were being interrogated and, in what appears to be a form of psychological manipulation, the inspector general's probe confirmed at least one detainee - convicted "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla - was the subject of a "deliberate ruse" in which his interrogator led him to believe he was given an injection of "truth serum."

Truthout obtained a copy of the report - "Investigation of Allegations of the Use of Mind-Altering Drugs to Facilitate Interrogations of Detainees" - prepared by the DoD's deputy inspector general for intelligence in September 2009, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed nearly two years ago.

Over the past decade, dozens of current and former detainees and their civilian and military attorneys have alleged in news reports and in court documents that prisoners held by the US government in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan were forcibly injected with unknown medications and pills during or immediately prior to marathon interrogation sessions in an attempt to compel them to confess to terrorist-related crimes of which they were accused.

The inspector general's investigation was unable to substantiate any of the allegations by current and former detainees that, as a matter of government policy, they were given mind-altering drugs "to facilitate interrogation."

But the watchdog's report provides startling new details about the treatment of detainees by US military personnel. For example, the report concludes, "certain detainees, diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions being treated with psychoactive medications on a continuing basis, were interrogated."

Leonard Rubenstein, a medical ethicist at Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights and the former president of Physicians for Human Rights, said, "this practice adds another layer of cruelty to the operations at Guantanamo."

"The inspector general's report confirms that detainees whose mental deterioration and suffering was so great as to lead to psychosis and attempts at self-harm were given anti-psychotic medication and subjected to further interrogation," said Rubenstein, who reviewed a copy of the report for Truthout. "The problem is not simply what the report implies, that good information is unlikely to be obtained when someone shows psychotic symptoms, but the continued use of highly abusive interrogation methods against men who are suffering from grave mental deterioration that may have been caused by those very same methods."

Shayana Kadidal, the senior managing atty of the Guantanamo Project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the report, which he also reviewed, "reinforces that the interrogation system at Guantanamo was a brutal system."

"One of the things that struck me after reading this," Kadidal said, "is under the system set up by the [US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia], any statements detainees made during these interrogations would be presumed accurate even if detainees took medication that could produce unreliable information."

"The burden ends up falling upon the detainee to prove what was said wasn't accurate if they were challenging their detention" in habeas corpus proceedings, Kadidal added.

Explaining the rationale behind forcibly drugging detainees, the former commander of the Joint Medical Group at Guantanamo said, "some detainees were involuntarily medicated to help control serious mental illnesses," according to the report, which added that an ethics committee approved of such plans.

"For example, one detainee had a piece of shrapnel in his brain which resulted in control problems and a limited ability to provide effective consent," the report said.

The detainee with the shrapnel injury may be Abu Zubaydah. In 1992, Zubaydah had suffered a shrapnel wound to the head while fighting on the front lines of a civil war in Afghanistan. Brent Mickum, Zubaydah's habeas attorney, said the high-value detainee has been routinely overdosed with Haldol, the only drug the inspector general identified that was used on certain detainees.

But the report suggests detainees were often not told what types of drugs they were given when they asked or for what purpose it was administered.

Brandon Neely, a former Guantanamo guard who was at the prison facility the day it opened in January 2002, told Truthout, "medics never informed the detainees what the medication was."

"The medics walked around with little white cups that had pills in it a couple of times a day," said Neely, who sometimes accompanied the medics when they distributed the medication. He added that if detainees refused to take it an "Immediate Reaction Force" team, who guards would call to deal with resistant or combative detainees, would administer the medication to prisoners by force.

Rubenstein said the failure to inform prisoners what drugs they were given means "some basic principles of medical ethics were cast aside, especially those requiring a doctor to explain his or her recommendation and seek consent for it as an affirmation of the dignity and autonomy of the patient."
"Even where consent is not forthcoming and involuntary medication is allowed after voluntary medication is not accepted, it should never take place unless this process is followed," Rubenstein said.

The cumulative effects of indefinite detention, interrogations, use of drugs, and other conditions of confinement also appear to have taken a toll on the detainees' mental state and impacted the DoD watchdog's ability to conduct a thorough investigation.

Indeed, when the inspector general sought to interview the attorney representing one detainee who claimed he was given mind-altering drugs during interrogations, the attorney responded, "at this state of his incarceration, [redacted] memory is severely compromised and, unfortunately, we are skeptical that he can provide you with any further details ..."

The investigation also found instances where "chemical restraints" were used on detainees "that posed a threat to themselves or others," which Rubenstein said, "is contrary to US Bureau of Prison regulations, decisions of the US Supreme Court and to medical ethics principles that forbid subordinating the patient's medical interests to prison security."

Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Defense Department spokesman, said, "as a matter of long-standing department policy," he could not comment on whether "chemical restraints" continue to be part of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), also known as Tactics, Techniques, Procedures (TTPs), at Guantanamo and other prisons operated by the DoD because "doing so might not only compromise security but [the SOPs] are 'living' documents, subject to regular change and updating."

Media Report Sparked Probe

The inspector general's yearlong probe was launched in June 2008, two months after the publication of a Washington Post report in which some detainees claimed they were forcibly drugged and coerced into making confessions.

One of the detainees at the center of The Washington Post report, Adel al-Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman who was imprisoned at Guantanamo from 2002 to 2005, is prominently featured in the inspector general's report and identified as "IG-02."

According to his attorney's notes cited in The Washington Post, al-Nusairi claimed he was injected with an unknown medication that made him extremely sleepy just before he was interrogated in 2002. When his captors awakened him, he fabricated a confession for US interrogators in hopes they would leave him alone so he could sleep.

"I was completely gone," al-Nusairi told his attorney, Anant Raut. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'"

The inspector general's review of al-Nusairi's medical records showed he was diagnosed as "schizophrenic and psychotic with borderline personality disorder" and injected with Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic medication, whose side effects include lethargy, tremors, anxiety, mood changes and "an inability to remain motionless," according to the watchdog's report.

Haldol can also cause the usually irreversible movement disorder known as tardive dyskinesia. But the inspector general did not say that in his report. The inspector general noted al-Nusairi had told his interrogators he was being forced to take monthly injections that he no longer wanted to receive. The report said "uncooperative" detainees were sometimes forcibly injected with psychoactive medications.

But the investigation concluded there was "no evidence that [al-Nusairi] was administered shots during interrogation."

Despite his diagnosis and the unreliability of the information he provided to his interrogators due to the effects of the antipsychotic medication, al-Nusairi was declared an enemy combatant after he confessed to being a member of al-Qaeda and imprisoned at Guantanamo for three more years before finally being repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

"I think any rational person would agree that confessions of terrorism while under the influence of mind-altering drugs are about credible as professions of love while under the influence of alcohol," Raut, al-Nusairi's attorney, told Truthout.

Two days after The Washington Post story was published, then-Sen. Joe Biden, who at the time was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Sen. Chuck Hagel, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter urging him to investigate the detainees' allegations and to focus solely on whether the Department of Defense and its sub-agencies issued written and/or oral policy authorizing the use of "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogations."

The CIA's inspector general also conducted an investigation at the request of the Democratic lawmakers into the claims about the use of mind-altering drugs pertaining to detainees in custody of the agency. That report, which Truthout is also seeking under the FOIA, remains classified.

Investigative Gaps

The inspector general reviewed Department of Defense interrogation policy from 2001 through 2008 and interviewed more than 70 military intelligence and medical officials who had oversight of detainee operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Top military intelligence officials interviewed by the inspector general said they were "unaware" of any special access "black" program, policies, direction or order authorizing the use of drugs as an interrogation tactic or to "facilitate interrogations."

The watchdog also looked at classified and open-source documents, including detainees' medical records and 1,620 interrogation plans covering 411 detainees between August 2002 and January 2005.

"No interrogation plans were noted which mentioned drugging, medicating, or threatening to drug or medicate a detainee to facilitate interrogation," according to the report, which added that a separate review of detainees' medical records documenting their "physical and psychological care and treatment" did not turn up any evidence "of mind-altering drugs being administered for the purposes of interrogation."

"The 'headline' here is that there's no evidence of any organized, systematic [Department of Defense] effort to use drugs for interrogation purposes," said Gregg Bloche, the author of "The Hippocratic Myth" and a health policy expert and professor of law at Georgetown University who also reviewed the inspector general's report for Truthout. "Can isolated cases of drug use for interrogation purposes be absolutely ruled out? No - as the report acknowledges, there are gaps in evidence available to the [inspector general]. But if there were such cases, they were likely few and far between."

But it appears that the probe did not scrutinize other documents, such as a second set of detainee medical records maintained by the Behavioral Science Consultant Teams or BSCTs that may have contained information relevant to the inspector general's investigation into the use of mind-altering drugs during interrogations.

The BSCTs were made up of psychologists and other mental health technicians and, at one time, psychiatrists. The BSCTs work closely with interrogators in crafting interrogation plans based on the psychological assessments of a detainee's weaknesses. The BSCT psychiatrists and at least one psychologist who passed a special Defense Department psychopharmacology program were able to administer drugs, at least in principle.

Human rights activists have long believed the Defense Department controlled a second set of detainee medical records, but evidence never surfaced to support the suspicions.

However, Truthout has uncovered previously unreported testimony from Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley's 2005 report on detainee medical operations in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan (pg. 18-13) that confirms the suggestion.

Kiley indicated that, while BSCTs were not medical personnel and "did not document the medical condition of detainees in the medical record," they "did keep a restricted database which provided medical information on detainees."

Rubenstein added, "if drugs were used those BSCT records should be consulted."

Jose Padilla and "A Deliberate Ruse"

The report also delves into the area of so-called "truth" drugs, which are administered for their presumed mind-altering effects.

Since the start of the "war on terror," intelligence officials have publicly said drugs like sodium pentothal should be introduced in interrogations as a way of getting "uncooperative" detainees to talk.

"We ought to look at what options are out there," former FBI and CIA Director William Webster told reporters in 2002.

The inspector general's report pointed to instances in which top military officials had considered introducing "truth" drugs during interrogations. The watchdog cited an October 2, 2002 meeting of Guantanamo interrogation command and legal staff where the use of "truth serum" on detainees was discussed as having a "placebo effect."

George Bimmerle discussed the use of placebos as ersatz "truth drugs" in a classic 1961 CIA text titled "'Truth' Drugs in Interrogation." Bimmerle wrote that placebos are "most likely to be effective in situations of stress." The drugs are described as acting upon "a subject's sense of guilt," absolving a prisoner under interrogation of responsibility for giving up information, because it is assumed the effect of the drug was to blame.

Interrogators utilized the "placebo effect" when they questioned convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, a US citizen who was arrested in May 2002 on suspicion of plotting to build and detonate a dirty bomb and held as an enemy combatant at the US Naval Brig in South Carolina.

Padilla's federal public defender, Michael Caruso, in a 2006 federal court filing, claimed Padilla was "given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations."

Sanford Seymour, the technical director of the US Naval brig in South Carolina where Padilla was held, however, vehemently denied the charge during a 2006 hearing to determine whether Padilla, a US citizen, was competent to stand trial. Seymour asserted Padilla was injected with an influenza vaccine.

But what Seymour failed to disclose, reported here for the first time, was that Padilla was given the flu shot during an interrogation session and told by his interrogators the injection was "truth serum."

The inspector general's probe determined "the incorporation of a routine flu shot into an interrogation session ... was a deliberate ruse by the interrogation team, intended to convince [redacted, Padilla] he had been administered a mind-altering drug," such as LSD.

Investigators from the inspector general's office reached that conclusion after a visit to the Naval Brig where they reviewed records and interviewed Brig officials about Padilla's claims.

Padilla's name is redacted from the report, but it's clear, based on the detailed descriptions of the allegations, the inspector general is referring to him. The report says the FBI and Joint Task Force 170, the "predecessor organization" of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, interrogated Padilla from June 2002 through October 2002. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) took over his interrogations from October 2002 through March 2003 at which point the FBI and DIA jointly conducted the interrogations.

The inspector general's office also viewed some of Padilla's interrogation videotapes where Padilla "expressed concern about the possible use of drugs to induce him to cooperate with the interrogators."

"The most detailed discussion of truth serum occurred on November 14, 2002, after [redacted] declined to take a polygraph examination," according to the inspector general's report. "The interrogation video recording depicts that following the polygraph declination, [redacted] and the interrogator had a discussion of other techniques which could be used to verify [redacted] statements. Among the techniques described by the interrogator was the use of a 'truth serum.'"

At the end of the tape, according to the inspector general, the interrogator told Padilla, "There is no such thing as a 'truth serum.'" But the initial suggestion apparently affected the detainee when he was given a flu shot during his interrogation session about three weeks later. Padilla asked his interrogator why he was given a shot.

"It was necessary," the interrogator said, "and proceeded to ask [redacted] what kind of shot he received."

Padilla said he was told it was a flu shot, but as the interrogation wore on he said he did not feel well and asked, "what did you shoot me with? Did you shoot me with serum?"
Bloche, the health policy expert and Georgetown University law professor, said the ruse interrogators pulled on Padilla "sounds like a juvenile prank."

"But it's a serious breach of medical ethics," Bloche said. "It undermines trust in military physicians and it's an unfair insult to the integrity of the vast majority of military doctors, who quite rightly believe that this sort of thing is contrary to their professional obligation."

The inspector general rebuked a government agency - possibly the DIA or FBI - involved in Padilla's interrogation for failing "to follow legal review procedures" established by US Joint Forces Command.

Padilla was convicted of terrorism support charges in 2007. Recently, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal Padilla filed against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. The high court let stand an appeals court ruling, which dismissed Padilla's complaint related to his treatment at the Naval Brig. Caruso, Padilla's federal public defender, did not return messages left at his Miami office for comment about the inspector general's conclusions.

But just a few months after the deception on Padilla, according to the inspector general's probe, an unnamed DIA "representative" came up with a list of 40 techniques at the request of a Pentagon "working group" overseen by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that met between January and April 2003 to discuss interrogation methods to use on detainees captured in the global war on terror.

The "DIA representative" was identified in a declassified 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee report that probed the treatment of detainees in custody of the US military as Dave Becker, the Interrogation Control Element (ICE) Chief at Guantanamo. Becker recommended to the "working group" the use of drugs, "such as sodium pentothal and Demerol," which was number 40 on the list of interrogation methods presented to the "working group." Becker said those drugs "could prove to be effective" and "relaxes detainee to a cooperative state."

When Senate Armed Services Committee investigators interviewed him about the list of interrogation techniques, Becker said he had recommended the "use of drugs" to Rumsfeld's panel because he'd heard "a rumor" that another agency "had used drugs in their interrogation program."

The inspector general's report went on to say the working group ultimately rejected the use of drugs. But the report failed to mention an important document: a March 2003 legal opinion sent to Pentgaon general counsel William "Jim" Haynes by Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo, which said drugs could be used in interrogations as long as they did not "disrupt profoundly the senses or personality." Yoo's memo was cited in the senators' letter to the inspector general calling for the investigation. It's unclear why it was not mentioned in the watchdog's report.

The investigation also reviewed published reports prepared by the US government and human rights organizations revolving around the treatment of detainees in US custody. One report scrutinized was Kiley's 2005 US Army surgeon general report on detainee medical operations in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, which said a doctor refused "to provide cough syrup as a 'truth drug'" to an Iraqi detainee. The inspector general interviewed this doctor, who indicated the request, which he turned down as unethical, came from his "brigade S-2 (Intelligence Officer)."

The surgeon general's report also said a licensed practical nurse saw "sedatives (ativan, diazepam, etc.) being used by medical personnel to calm a [Iraqi] detainee so that the detainee would talk more."

According to the DoD inspector general's investigation, after the watchdog attempted to obtain a sworn statement from the nurse, identified in its report as a "non-commissioned officer," about the use of sedatives on detainees, the nurse "elected to make a corrective statement" to what he had claimed three years earlier.

"Sedatives were only given to patient detainees to alleviate pain," the nurse's statement now says.

"They Said It Was Some Candy"

The inspector general's office also received permission from the deputy secretary of defense to interview three detainees in January 2009 about their claims of being forcibly drugged during interrogations. An attorney for one of the detainees declined the interview request. The inspector general did not attempt to interview detainees who claimed they were administered mind-altering drugs during interrogations and have since been repatriated.

The names of the two detainees interviewed are redacted in the report.

The detainee told the inspector general after he was captured in Karachi, Pakistan, by Pakistanis in September 2002 where he held for three days he was transferred to the "Prison of Darkness," in Kabul, Afghanistan for 40 days. He was then sent to the US prison base at Bagram for about a week and then shipped off to Guantanamo.

"[Redacted] stated that during an interrogation at Bagram he was given pills; green and red ones," according to statements the detainee gave the inspector general in April 2009. "After I ate like three of them, my tongue started getting heavier. After that, I woke up and they (interrogators) said thank you very much, we've got what we need. After I ate the stuff, it was like a state of delusion ... it took like three-four days to (feel normal again). I was not normal until I came to Cuba and then I started to feel my mind back. It was a state of delusion. Like everything was a dream. My sensation was not great."

The inspector general asked the detainee if he was told what the pills were.

"At the time they said it was some candy. And I was so hungry so I ate it," the detainee said.

The inspector general then asked the detainee if it was possible what he had experienced at the "Prison of Darkness" was due to exhaustion.

"I don't remember exactly," the detainee said. "If you saw my condition in the Prison of Darkness after 40 days of being tortured and having to stand all the time at Bagram. Those were things consuming my mind at the time ... when I start to remember that, I get somewhat upset, because it was a terrible event in my life. When you had been standing for three-four days in a row, I was so tired, I was exhausted. I can't describe those sensations."

Interrogators who questioned the detainee were interviewed by the inspector general's office. They did not remember the detainee "as each had interrogated over 100 persons during their respected assignments." They denied giving detainees drugs or medication for "interrogation purposes" and never witnessed other military personnel administer detainees drugs. The interrogators said, however, they "frequently gave the detainees food and candy to reward or encourage them to talk," such as "Fruit Loops," "Jolly Ranchers," "cookies," "suckers," and "Taffy's."

"Based on the statements provided by the interrogators and lacking any evidence of drugging, we concluded that we could not substantiate [redacted] allegation," the inspector general's probe concluded.

The inspector general also interviewed a detainee who was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002 and claimed after he was transferred to Guantanamo that summer an interrogator told him "he would give me something that will make me talk."

However, the watchdog was unable "to correlate this information with records and documents pertaining to [the detainee's] interrogations."

Responding to the completion of the investigation in August 2009, J. Alan Liotta, the principal director in the office of detainee policy, warned in a letter to the inspector general signing off on the document, "The release of this report is likely to generate media attention."

"Please keep our office informed as to when it will be released and efforts to craft talking points regarding the release," Liotta wrote, signing off on the report.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

From Past to the Present-day: Guatemala Revelations & CIA/DoD Experimentation

Headlines were made last week concerning revelations of a 64-year-old scandal only recently discovered by historian Susan M. Reverby of Wellesley College. Reverby discovered that a key researcher who was part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment had also headed a project in Guatemala that deliberately infected prisoners and insane asylum inmates with various venereal diseases, ostensibly in order to study how the diseases were transmitted and if they human contagion could be blocked.

Inoculation was difficult, the researchers found, and they had to result to making abrasions and dripping rabbit-infected pus on the genitals of human beings, some of whom had no idea what was being done to them, to try and get the desired results. The study was inconclusive, and ended after only a few years, but not before more than 700 individuals had been inoculated. The human subjects were supposed to be treated with penicillin if they contracted any disease, but record keeping and controls on the project were poor. None received adequate informed consent. Moreover, the researchers involved, working for the U.S. Public Health Service, knew the experiment would never pass muster if done in the United States. A similar experiment in U.S. prisons in 1911 was shut down because of controversy over the unethical experimentation upon prisoners. See Reverby's preprint version (PDF) of her academic article for a much fuller discussion of what occurred.

These revelations are only the latest in an ongoing series of scandals regarding government illegal and unethical experimentation. Earlier this year, investigative journalist H.P. Albarelli detailed the many activities of the government its decades-long mind control project, as well as the use of drugs in clandestine operations in his book A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War. (Albarelli was also a guest at FDL Book Salon last January.) Albarelli's book also covered the LSD poisoning by the CIA of the entire French village Pont-St.-Esprit in August 1951, a story picked up only a few months ago by BBC.

There are plenty of other underreported and important stories out there on the terrible scandal that has been U.S. illegal experimentation. The Department of Defense experimented on over 7000 soldiers at its Edgewood Arsenal, part of "a secret testing program in which U.S. military personnel were deliberately exposed to chemical and biological weapons and other toxins without informed consent." Troops were tested with "nerve gas, psychochemicals, and thousands of other toxic chemical or biological substances and perhaps most gruesomely, the insertion of septal implants in the brains of subjects in a ghastly series of mind control experiments that went awry." The program ended in 1976 after approximately twenty years. Remarkably, a lawsuit by veterans is still alive and wending its way through the courts.

It was approximately only ten years ago when another DoD experiment scandal became big news. Project Shad was a DoD experiment that exposed at least 4,000 Navy men to various chemical agents and decontaminant chemicals, "including Bacillus globigii (BG), Coxiella burnetii [which causes Q fever], Pasteurella tularensis [which causes tularemia or 'rabbit fever'], Zinc Cadmium Sulfide, Beta-propriolactone, Sarin, VX, Escherichia Coli (EC), Serratia Marcescens (SM), Sodium Hydroxide, Peracetic acid, Potassium hydroxide, Sodium hypochlorite, 'tracer amounts' of radioactivity and asbestos, [and] Methylacetoacetate." So outrageous were these experiments, denied by the government for 35 years, that there were Congressional hearings (PDF) in 2002, and major news reports by CBS Evening News. Today, the story has dropped off the radar, though thanks to some Congressional pressure, and the activism of some of the Shad victims, veterans and the government can get more information on Shad and its land-based twin experiment, Project 112, at this Veterans Administration webpage.

The government use of drugs and other experimental torture techniques during the Bush administration has led to a number of studies and reports. Most recently, the DoD Inspector General concluded an investigation on the drugging of detainees, or so-called "unprivileged enemy combatants" in DoD custody. But the results of the review remain classified, and the fact the report was even ever concluded was kept from public knowledge for many months. In 2008, now-Vice President Joesph Biden had been one of three senators asking for an investigation into the drugging charges. Biden's office at the White House refused to reply to questions for comment on the report's existence or what have been revealed by the investigation.

Finally, we have the ongoing question of human experimentation by the CIA as part of the construction of and operations concerning their "enhanced interrogation" torture program. Earlier this year, Physicians for Human Rights released a peer-reviewed white paper detailing some of the CIA actions. As the following press release by PHR explains, there is a direct line of scientific malfeasance and unethical behavior that runs from the Guatemala experiments of the 1940s to the CIA and DoD illegal experimentation of our era. In an excellent article on the topic by one of the PHR report authors, psychologists Stephen Soldz, explains:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was notified by letter of these abuses, abuses that violate the same research ethics principles — informed consent and minimization of harm — that were violated by the Guatemalan STD research. But, rather than express her outrage at this “reprehensible research,” Secretary Sebelius maintained her silence, as did every government official, other than a CIA press spokesman who denied our claims without presenting the slightest bit of evidence. Secretary Sebelius’ department referred an official complaint regarding unethical CIA research to the very same CIA that had already publicly denied the charges. So far, no government agency has committed to investigating these CIA abuses, which occurred far more recently than the Guatemalan horrors.

The letter denying the complaint and referring it back to the CIA was signed by Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary of Health at the U.S. Public Health Service, the same agency that conducted the Guatemala experiments decades ago (and conveniently never published the results).

What follows is a press release from Physicians for Human Rights (courtesy Stephen Soldz's website):

Physicians for Human Rights Decries Obama Administration’s Double Standard on Illegal Human Experimentation; 1946 Guatemala Case and Alleged CIA Experimentation on Black Site Detainees Both Deserve Equal Justice

Cambridge, MA–In the wake of revelations about America’s experimentation on unwilling human subjects in Guatemala in 1946, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) calls on President Obama to equally investigate credible evidence of illegal human subject research on detainees in CIA custody during the Bush administration.

“What was done to 700 Guatemalans 64 years ago without their consent is appalling,” said Physicians for Human Rights CEO Frank Donaghue. “But President Obama’s apologies for the Guatemala case ring hollow when the White House refuses to investigate similar crimes that allegedly occurred in the past decade. The credible evidence of illegal human experiments by the CIA on black site detainees deserves equal attention and justice.”

PHR’s June 2010 report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, was the first peer-reviewed analysis of evidence indicating that the Bush administration allegedly conducted illegal human research and experimentation on prisoners in US custody. The research was apparently used to insulate interrogators from potential prosecution and to standardize the use of torture.

“The conduct of health professionals in both cases—Guatemala and the CIA black sites—makes a mockery of bedrock principles of medical ethics and the law,” stated Scott Allen, MD, lead medical author of the PHR report. “Human subject research protections mean nothing if they don’t apply to all people all of the time—regardless of politics.”

CIA physicians and psychologists collected and analyzed data on the physical and psychological impact of the “enhanced” interrogation tactics, analysis which became the basis of Department of Justice memos justifying the torture program. This alleged program of illegal human subject experimentation violates medical ethics, federal law, and international research standards, including the Nuremberg Code and the Common Rule. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“While the proposed federal commission on the abuses in Guatemala is welcome, the American people must also learn the truth about what was done in our name over the past decade to detainees in CIA custody,” said Nathaniel Raymond, Director of PHR’s Campaign Against Torture and lead author of the PHR report. “The Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services must investigate these credible allegations of human experimentation on detainees by the CIA with the same mandate as the Guatemala case.”

PHR calls on President Obama, working with Congress, to appoint a federal commission to investigate what American physicians and psychologists did to people subjected to torture in US custody. John Durham, the Department of Justice prosecutor tasked with investigating the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes as well as interrogations that went beyond what was authorized by the Department of Justice memos, should also be given a clear mandate to probe allegations of illegal research at the black sites, Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Also posted at FDL/The Seminal

Government Report on Drugging of Detainees Is Suppressed

By  Jeffrey Kaye & Jason Leopold, originally posted at Truthout

A major Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation on the drugging of detainees held at Guantanamo and other Department of Defense (DoD) facilities was completed almost a year ago and shared with a key Senate committee. But the investigation did not receive any media attention at the time likely due to the fact that the report was classified. News of the completion of the investigation and the report came as a surprise to human rights workers who had been involved in investigating the drugging claims. According to DoD spokesperson, Maj. Tanya Bradsher, the report is classified. While the findings of the investigation are unknown, a spokeswoman for the Senate Armed Services Committee said the OIG's investigation did not substantiate allegations of drugging of prisoners for the "purposes of interrogation." The involuntary use of drugs on prisoners would violate a number of domestic and international laws, as well as basic ethical codes of the medical professions.

Truthout filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last week to gain access to the OIG report. Kelly McHale, a senior FOIA Specialist who works in the Inspector General's office, said Tuesday the Defense Department "may be unable to respond to your request within the FOIA's 20 day statutory time period as there are unusual circumstances which may impact on our ability to quickly process your request.

"These unusual circumstances may be: (a) the need to search for and collect records from a facility geographically separated from this Office; (b) the potential volume of records responsive to your request; and (c) the need for consultation with one or more other agencies or DoD components having a substantial interest in either the determination or the subject matter of the records," McHale wrote in an email in response to Truthout's FOIA request. "For these reasons, we placed your request in our complex processing queue and will process it consistent with the order in which we received your request. Please note that we currently have an administrative workload of 105 cases."

Stephen Soldz, president-elect for Psychologists for Social Responsibility, who also wrote about the drugging controversy in April 2008, told Truthout, "Given that ex-detainees' accounts of other abuses have repeatedly proved reliable when they were independently corroborated by official documents and accounts from guards, there is no reason to doubt detainees' accounts of drugging. Was 'interrogation' defined so narrowly as to exclude drug use designed to make detainees cooperate with interrogators or to instill terror or confusion in detainees?" Soldz asked.

The initial impetus for the OIG investigation was a Washington Post exposé by reporter Joby Warrick in April 2008. A few weeks prior to the Post story, Jeff Stein had written about the drugging of prisoners in an article at Congressional Quarterly, noting that the chief federal defender for supposed al-Qaeda suspect Jose Padilla asserted in a 2007 legal motion that Padilla was "was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations." Warrick's story described as an example of possible drugging the case of former Saudi detainee, Adel al-Nusairi. According to his attorney, "[Nusairi] was injected in the arm with something that made him tired - that made his brain cloudy. When he would try to read the Koran, his brain would not focus. He had unusual lethargy and would drool on himself."

More recent accounts of drugging by detainees include charges by Abdul Aziz Naji, who was forcibly repatriated to Algeria from Guantanamo July 2010. Naji told an Algerian newspaper that detainees at Guantanamo were forced "to take some medicines for three months to drive them crazy, loosing [sic] memory and committing suicide." According to an important exposé by Scott Horton at Harpers last winter, at least one of the three Guantanamo prisoners that DoD claimed committed suicide in 2006 had needle marks on both of his arms. According to Horton, the Obama administration has refused to open an investigation into these mysterious deaths, which allegedly took place at a previously unreported black site at Guantanamo, known informally as Camp No.

Warrick's contention that "[a]t least two dozen other former and current detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere say they were given drugs against their will or witnessed other inmates being drugged, based on interviews and court documents," led to movement in the otherwise glacial US Senate. Sens. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), Joe Biden (D-Delaware) and Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), representing the Senate's Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, respectively, sent letters to "the CIA and Defense Department inspectors general calling for an investigation." The senators said they were reacting to the March 2008 article in the Post, as well as other public reports, confirming the use of drugs on "detainees," and indicated the controversy "warrant[ed] a thorough investigation."

While it is unknown how the CIA replied, the Inspector General's office at DoD began a probe. The final report, entitled "Investigation of Allegations of the Use of Mind-Altering Drugs to Facilitate Interrogations of Detainees," was finally published September 23, 2009.

Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman at the Senate Armed Services Committee, told  Truthout that the Committee received a copy of the September 2009 report, but it was marked as classified and she could not discuss the details. However, she was authorized to say that the OIG investigation "did not substantiate allegations" that mind altering drugs "were used for interrogation purposes" on detainees.

That still leaves a lot of questions. Reports have described the use of drugs for restraint of prisoners, facility control, as a condition of confinement, sedation during transport as well as use in interrogations. The use of drugs in mind control experiments, the purpose of which was to assess the effects of various controlled substances on the physical and psychological functioning of the individual, has been described by numerous authors, investigative journalists, Congressional committees and even (after decades of denial) the DoD.

The use of drugs for sedation or interrogations was raised in the May 10, 2005, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo from Stephen Bradbury to then-CIA Senior Deputy Legal Council John Rizzo on the "Combined Use of Certain Techniques That May Be Used in the Interrogation of High-Value al-Qaeda Detainees." Bradbury noted that the OLC's advice pertained only to interrogations and not "to conditions of confinement or detention, as distinct from the interrogation of detainees." He notes that the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS) rules allow the sedation of detainees during transportation. Even so, Bradbury writes that OMS reported they were "unaware" of the use of sedating drugs in the transport of detainees during the prior two years. This appears to be an admission that they were aware of such practices prior to May 2003. Bradbury told the CIA, "We caution that any use of sedatives should be carefully evaluated," referencing violations of US anti-torture law as an example.

Nearly three years before the Bradbury memo, OLC memos written by John Yoo, with assistance from Jay Bybee and David Addington, had allowed for the use of mind-altering drugs in interrogations, maintaining such use was not torture unless it caused "permanent" or "profound" mental harm or damage. In 2006, when the new version of the Army Field Manual (AFM) on human intelligence collection was approved, it allowed an even less stringent ban on the use of drugs than Yoo had envisioned, dropping the OLC prohibition against use of drugs that could cause "profound mental harm," a standard that could be met, according to Yoo, by induction of even a brief psychotic episode. In the version of the AFM in force prior to 2006, any "chemically induced psychosis" was forbidden. In the new AFM, still currently in effect, only drugs used that cause permanent, lasting harm are not allowable for interrogation use.

While the letters from Senators Biden, Hagel and Levin called for both CIA and DoD inspector general investigations, it is not known if the CIA ever initiated such an in-house review. In 2008, the Senate Armed Services Committee undertook a detailed "Inquiry into the treatment of detainees in US custody," with two public hearings and a published report. Nevertheless, the committee's report did not include an investigation of any abuse by involuntary drugging.

Meanwhile, key personnel working in DoD intelligence circles have a history of exploring or advocating the use of drugs in interrogations. In July 2003, the CIA, in conjunction with the Rand Corporation and the American Psychological Association (APA) conducted a workshop entitled "Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory." The proceedings included a discussion on new ways to utilize drugs and sensory bombardment techniques to break down individuals under interrogation. Links to the description of this workshop have recently been scrubbed at APA's web site. The meeting included the participation of DoD personnel and was co-organized by APA's former senior scientist, Susan Brandon. Dr. Brandon is today research chief for the Behavioral Science Program within the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC). A recent report by Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic described the DCHC as providing "intelligence operatives and interrogators.... [performing] interrogations for a sub-unit of Task Force 714, an elite counter-terrorism brigade."

When the Washington Post story broke in 2008, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) publicly called for Congressional and Department of Justice investigations of the allegations of drugging detainees, noting that some of these abuses may also have involved forced medication "for therapeutic purposes" without informed consent. As one example of this sort of abuse, Brent Mickum, attorney for Abu Zubaydah, told Truthout that since Zubaydah was transferred to Guantanamo in 2006, he "has suffered upwards of 250 seizures due to the fact that he was treated and overdosed with Haldol. On two occasions I went down there to meet with him he was in no position to talk to me."

Soon after the Post story appeared, then-President of PHR, Leonard Rubenstein (currently a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) stated, "The forced medication of detainees without their consent, either for interrogation or as a chemical restraint, is an affront to the very foundations of medical ethics.... Even if used for purportedly therapeutic purposes, absent very exceptional circumstances, detainees have a right to consent to modes of treatment, just as others do and the Department of Defense has indeed recognized this right."

"The Man in the Snow White Cell"

Last month, a government panel investigating interrogation techniques - the shadowy Intelligence Science Board, which has been linked to the creation under the Obama administration of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG - had one of their teaching papers posted online at Secrecy News. Entitled "Intelligence Interviewing: Teaching Papers and Case Studies," the April 2009 study, ostensibly discussing the problems with getting good intelligence from coercive interrogations (i.e., torture), had no problem with one scenario that utilized severe isolation and sensory deprivation to loosen up a prisoner. The case is well-known to intelligence professionals and is known as "The Man in the Snow White Cell":

In early 1972, [Nguyen] Tai ["the most senior North Vietnamese officer ever captured during the Vietnam War"] was informed he was being taken to another location to be interrogated by the Americans. After being blindfolded, he was transported by car to an unknown location and placed in a completely sealed cell that was painted all in white, lit by bright lights 24 hours a day and cooled by a powerful air-conditioner (Tai hated air conditioning, believing, like many Vietnamese, that cool breezes could be poisonous). Kept in total isolation, Tai lived in this cell, designed to keep him confused and disoriented, for three years without learning where he was.

Tai's interrogation began anew....

Without doubt, the South Vietnamese torture gave Tai the incentive for the limited cooperation he gave to his American interrogators, but it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided. [Emphasis added.]

The ISB analysts never mention the deleterious effects that three years of psychological torture may have produced in the prisoner. It is indicative of the way in which psychological forms of torture have been buried in the public's consciousness in lieu of preoccupation with more physical forms of torture, such as waterboarding.

Long ago, the CIA and military discovered that the use of physical methods of torture tended to cause more resistance, or too quickly broke down the prisoner and made him insensible. So, they studied and implemented a more psychological method that relied primarily on isolation, sensory deprivation or overload, sleep deprivation and induction of debility. The introduction of brutal "enhanced interrogation techniques," reverse-engineered from the "Resistance to Interrogation" classes of the SERE schools, were never totally accepted by the intelligence community and may have had more to do with experimental protocols still only dimly understood than with any expected production of operational intelligence.

DoD Review: Guantanamo Medical Records Shared With Interrogators

One intriguing outcome from the DoD drugging investigation was a "Review of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo Inclusion of Detainee Mental Health Information in Intelligence Information Reports," issued May 2010. A short summary of this review appears in Appendix G, "Detailed Summary Agency Oversight" of the July 30, 2010, report to Congress by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. According to Long, the Senate Armed Services Committee has not been briefed on this report.

The investigation into use of mental health information in intelligence reports at Guantanamo had, as its initial public objective, whether interrogators and analysts were considering detainee mental health as "an indicator of reliability" when determining "reliability and accuracy of information" obtained through interrogations. By the time the investigation was completed in May of this year, the issue had become one of confusion over guidelines and procedures at Guantanamo over the sharing of medical information between health care personnel and interrogators. If nothing else, the recent report demonstrates that interrogations and examinations of detainees remain an ongoing issue at Guantanamo, even as it widely assumed that much of the focus on new intelligence has shifted to the interrogations at Bagram Air Base or DoD black site prisons in Afghanistan.

Controversies over the use of private medical and mental health information and records of detainees by interrogators in the prisons at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere were aired in medical journals going back some years. In the July 7, 2005, article "Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay," published in the New England Journal of Medicine, M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks warned against doctors and other medical personnel crossing the line between caregiver and interrogator. Such breaches of privacy would violate the privacy of medical and mental health treatment for the supposed benefit of the interrogator, some of whom use the information to inform their anxiety and fear-based approach to interrogation.

Clinical expertise has a limited place in the planning and oversight of lawful interrogation. Psychologists play such a role in criminal investigations and medical monitoring of detainees is called for by international legal instruments. But proximity of health professionals to interrogation settings, even when they act as caregivers, carries risk. It may invite interrogators to be more aggressive, because they imagine that these professionals will set needed limits. The logic of caregiver involvement as a safeguard also risks pulling health professionals in ever more deeply. Once caregivers share information with interrogators, why should they refrain from giving advice about how to best use the data?

Responding to the controversy around sharing medical records described in the Marks and Bloche article, a few weeks after the NEJM article was published, then-Army Surgeon Gen. Kevin Kiley assured the press that there was a "firewall" between interrogators and members of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) that work with the interrogators and medical records. Whatever the practice, the 2005 Standard Operating Procedure for the BSCTs at that time shows that while the BSCTs were to act as liaisons between interrogators and Guantanamo medical personnel, describing "the implications of medical diagnoses and treatment for the interrogation process," it is clearly stated, "Neither BSCT personnel and interrogation teams have access to medical records of detainees." Medical information coming from Guantanamo's Joint Medical Group is limited to physical, medical and functional limitations "required to consider in order to ensure the safety of the detainee and US personnel, e.g. diabetes, heart condition, special diet or contagious condition."

According to a communication from Stephen Soldz, the 2006 BSCT directives, "while establishing controls on use of medical records, made it clear that these records could be accessed for national security purposes. Thus, any firewalls could potentially be breached." So, it is not surprising to hear that the May 2010 inspector general review of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on use of detainee medical records reports that, under the Obama administration, sharing of such records with interrogators is commonplace, the subject of shabby oversight ten years after the opening of the prison site:

Present regulatory guidance authorizes health-care providers to share detainee medical information with interrogators, but does not provide specific guidance on how to do so. As a result execution of these policies at Guantanamo has been inconsistent, resulting in confusion for both health-care providers and interrogation elements. [Emphasis added.]

Such confusion is not accidental. Oversight means that things that aren't supposed to happen are in fact kept under some kind of control. Given the ongoing controversies about medical information being shared, it is important that, as part of a clear and open investigation of procedures at Guantanamo and other detainee prison sites, that the public be given an understanding of exactly what type of information is in those medical records and of what benefit such information might be to interrogators, the better to understand how such information might be abused and whether rules and procedures for the legal and ethical use of medical information are truly followed.

Nathaniel Raymond, director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture, said "the American people will not know whether those standards were enforced properly unless there is complete transparency about what was done or not done in our name."

"One classified Inspector General's report does little to answer the disturbing questions raised by government documents, news reports and the statements of detainees themselves," Raymond told Truthout in an interview. 

For all its rules and Standard Operating Procedures, Guantanamo remains a lawless place, where maltreatment of prisoners continues and torture is by no means a banished evil. The continuation of Appendix M interrogations at the facility, steeped in techniques such as isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and creation of strong fear, guarantees that abuse continues.

Because this is happening under a Democratic Party administration, oversight by former critics of the Bush administration - especially in Congress - is muted, for fear of tarnishing the reputation of the Democratic Party. That's one major reason these stories are not being reported. No one is bothering to look, for fear of what they might find. Hence, no major investigations either, at least not for public consumption.

Reposted under guidelines of Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial 3.0 License