Judicial Ignorance and Bias Doom Ahmed Abu Ali to Decades in Isolation in Key "War on Terror" Case

Even as a desperate hunger strike by detainees at Guantanamo prison camp continues, with dozens in medical peril, preferring death to the lawless existence of indefinite detention and ongoing planned (or some might say, capricious) abuse, human rights and civil liberties activists often point to the Article III courts as an alternative in the prosecution of "war on terror" crimes. But an examination of actual cases prosecuted in the criminal courts shows that use of accepted rules and appeal procedures merely produce their own version of unfairness and arbitrary injustice.

Ahmed Abu Ali is a young man in his early 30s, who at this point in his life should be coming into his career prime, consolidating his family, and making his mark upon the world. Instead, he is held in the extremely onerous conditions of government-imposed Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) at the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, held "in 23-hour lockdown, in a 7x12 cell", out of all practical reach to anyone, essentially buried alive.

Notoriously, Ahmed was framed up by the notorious torturing security forces of Saudi Arabia. A confession, including incredible assertions he was a member of Al Qaeda, was planning another 9/11-type terrorist plot, and planning to assassinate former President George W. Bush, was coerced out of him via use of physical and psychological torture. But the evidence for this torture was contested in court. As often happens, there was a disagreement between government and defense experts, even as to the meaning of the scars on Ahmed's back.

Determining Evidence of Torture

The main forensic difficulty in determining that torture took place is providing convincing evidence of an event that happens understandably behind closed doors, in secret. The perpetuators of torture will not admit the act. If you are experts in torturing -- and according to human rights groups, the Saudi Mabahith al-Amma, or secret police of the Ministry of the Interior, are such experts -- physical evidence of torture is kept to a minimum. Much of the primary evidence of torture must come from the victim him or herself. Hence, from a judicial standpoint, the judge's assessment of the credibility of the victim's testimony in court is paramount.

I personally know this as I have stood as a defense expert witness in a number of asylum cases brought in the U.S. immigration courts, and have conducted psychological assessments of dozens of torture victims. Hence, it was with alarm and dismay that I read Judge Gerald Bruce Lee's opinion on the defense suppression motion regarding Ahmed Abu Ali's confession while in Saudi Arabian custody. (The FBI had garnered some sort of confession from Ahmed when interviewing him some three months into his incarceration by the Saudis, but that confession was never used in court because Ahmed was not read his Miranda rights.)

It is with my training and expertise that I turned to my examination of the public records on the Ali case. What I found was egregious ignorance displayed by the judge in his decision, who relied on his own arbitrary subjective experience of Ahmed's testimony in court, and discounted the testimony of expert witnesses. Instead, he showed a notable deference to those in power and to even foreign police testimony, accepting the credibility of key officials from the Mabahith, and in allowing the torture-produced testimony to stand and deny Ali's motion to suppress, dismiss the Ahmed's story of his torture as "non-credible."

Here is what Judge Lee wrote in his decision (bold emphasis added):

Mr. Abu Ali’s own testimony and his demeanor cause the Court some reservations. It is not uncommon for the victim of such horrors to have difficulty recalling details of the event, or to put them out of their mind. However, while Mr. Abu Ali dramatically recounted a brutal beating and humiliating treatment, it is noteworthy that Mr. Abu Ali could not recall, even by texture, shape, or dimension, what hit him. Was it a cylinder? Belt? Whip? Stick? Baseball bat? Of course, he was blindfolded and chained to the floor when the beating allegedly occurred so he may not know the exact item used to hit him. However, it seems to the Court that he could, at the very least, provide some basic description of what the item might have been based on how it felt to him.....

The Court has already said that it finds that Mr. Abu Ali is intelligent, capable, and articulate. The Court cannot discern whether Mr. Abu Ali is sincere or just cunning.

This was followed by appellate review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which noted:

... the district court found itself "left with lingering questions concerning the credibility of Mr. Abu Ali and his claim that he was tortured," id. at 378. The court credited the testimony of the Saudi Arresting Officer and the Lieutenant Colonel (the Warden at the Medina detention facility where Abu Ali was held for two days following his arrest) that no Saudi official used coercive interrogation techniques on Abu Ali. The court found that the Lieutenant Colonel’s testimony that Abu Ali was never abused was believable while Abu Ali’s contrary testimony "raise[d] questions that bear on the defendant’s credibility." Id. at 373.

It was the testimony of two defense experts, Dr. Allan Keller from the NYU School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital, and psychiatrist Lynne Gaby from George Washington University Medical Center and the Program for Survivors of Torture and Severe Trauma in Falls Church, Virginia, that Ahmed suffered PTSD, and that his testimony regarding his torture was credible. See the written reports of Drs. Keller and Gaby here and here, respectively.

Judge Lee obviously decided to rely on the government experts (more on that down below), FBI testimony, and the word of the Saudi security officials. He did not, however, allow testimony pertaining to Saudi Arabia's human rights record, evidence that would have corroborated Ahmed's claims, and thrown doubt on the testimony of the Saudis.

From Amnesty International's December 2005 special report on their observations of the Ali trial:

Amnesty International is particularly concerned that during the trial, defence lawyers for Ahmed Abu Ali were not allowed to present any evidence pertaining to Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, its record on torture and even particularly on the record of the Mabahith al-Amma. Judge Lee ruled that only evidence which related directly to Ahmed Abu Ali’s interrogation would be admissible, thus denying the defence the opportunity to present relevant evidence, including from two UK nationals who were held in al-Ha’ir prison at the same time as Ahmed Abu Ali and claim to have been tortured into confessing to terrorist offences. One of the men, William Sampson, described in detail to Amnesty International the use of torture and torture techniques during his detention in Saudi Arabia similar to Ahmed Abu Ali’s allegations.

Memory, Trauma, and Judicial Assessment of Credibility

Most egregious from my point of view was Judge Lee turning his back on psychiatric testimony to base his assessment of Ahmed's credibility on whether or not Ahmed could remember or identify the instrument of torture used on his back, even though he was blindfolded and chained to the floor at the time, and was undergoing extreme duress.

Yet, the fact is such forgetting of elements of the trauma is a prime criterion of the PTSD diagnosis. To use such forgetting as evidence against someone who was tortured is to turn the entire clinical literature and experience of PTSD and torture on its head.

According to a governmental website, which describes the modern psychiatric diagnosis of PTSD, using criteria from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic Manual, version IV, Criterion C of the diagnosis pertains to "avoidant/numbing." It describes what this means (bold emphasis added):

Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by at least three of the following:

Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma

Judge Lee pondered whether this inability to remember what kind of instrument (to which he was blinded anyway) hit his back was due to "cunning." In fact, Lee was either ignorant of or refused to consider mainstream findings in PTSD research.

Here's just a few examples of what are widespread findings on memory and PTSD. In the 1996 book Trauma and Memory (Sage Publications), Linda Williams writes, "Numerous studies have found that a significant proportion of adults who report a trauma histroy also describe a period of time when they did not recall the experience."

In a 2007 article in the British Journal of Psychiatry, "Asylum claims and memory of trauma: sharing our knowledge," Drs. Jane Herlihy and Stuart Turner wrote, "When it comes to memories of personal experiences, we also know that emotion plays a big part both in what is encoded at the time and what is recalled later. The Yerkes–Dodson inverted-U model of performance and emotional arousal (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908; see Deffenbacher, 1983) reminds us that high levels of emotion may impair encoding of any memory, not just traumatic memories."

In a 1998 article in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences by one of the most notable of all PTSD experts, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. van der Kolk discussed in depth issues with "Trauma and Memory":

While the vivid intrusions of traumatic images and sensations are the most dramatic expressions of PTSD, the loss of recollections for traumatic experiences is well documented....

Amnesia of traumatic experiences, with delayed recall for all or parts of the trauma, has been noted following natural disasters and accidents... war-related trauma... kidnapping, torture and concentration camp experiences... physical and sexual abuse... and after committing murder....

Christianson described how, when people feel threatened, they experience a significant narrowing of consciousness, and remain merely focused on the central perceptual details. As people are being traumatized this narrowing of consciousness seems to sometimes evolve into a complete amnesia of the experience. More than 80 years ago, Janet claimed:

"Forgetting the event which precipitated the emotion... has frequently been found to accompany intense emotional experiences in the form of continuous and retrograde amnesia.... They are an exaggerated form of a general disturbance of memory which is characteristic of all emotions".

He claimed that when people become too upset, memories cannot be transformed into a neutral narrative; a person is 'unable to make the recital which we call narrative memory, and yet he remains confronted by (the) difficult situation'. This results in 'a phobia of memory' that prevents the integration ('synthesis') of traumatic events and splits off the traumatic memories from ordinary consciousness.....

Similar observations have been made by other clinicians treating traumatized individuals.

One could go on and on, but the point is well-made, and if Judge Lee were an honorable man, he would come forward now to admit his mistake and help initiate a re-hearing on Ahmed's behalf.

The defense experts are not without criticism either, but their mistakes, primarily of omission -- they should have, for instance, conducted assessments for other posttraumatic responses besides PTSD, such as depression -- are not in the same league as the concerted bias and willful ignorance of the prosecution and the judge in this case. Notwithstanding the terrible injustice of the use of SAMs, and solitary confinement of US prisoners like Ali (see this most recent report by Physicians for Human Rights on the torture that is solitary confinement), the capricious application of judicial assessment of credibility in this case merits widespread outrage.

According to the American Bar Association Publication, "Judging Credibility," by John L. Kane (Litigation Magazine, Volume 33, Number 3, Spring 2007), "There is no law on judging credibility. Judges and jurors receive guidelines and elementary observations in the form of stock instructions but are essentially free to decide for themselves."

An examination of Kane's recommendations helps us better understand the trap Lee, even if he were without bias, and other judges may fall into when it comes to complex mental health considerations surrounding PTSD. Kane discusses, for instance, the issue of memory as a matter of assessing credibility:

The standard credibility instruction tells the fact-finder to consider the witness’s strength of memory, ability in the described circumstances to see and hear, and the clarity with which he is able to recall events. Tone of voice, shades of expression, and gestures are also to be considered. Motive and interest are said to create bias. The natural and acquired experience that an observant person uses to form an opinion of whether to trust the veracity of someone in the important transactions of his own life is said to be the most important qualification of all....

....internal coherence is critical in evaluating credibility. When the actions of the persons involved are shown to be in accordance with their nature or characters, when they do the kinds of things people will do (consistent with probability or necessity), credibility is enhanced....

Persuasion is determined by the strength, not the volume, of the evidence. If what the lawyer seeks to prove is suspect or differs from ordinary experience, it must be broken down into constituent parts that do reflect normality. For a statement to be believed it must fit; the story in which it takes place must be coherent and plausible. What the fact-finder believes is what resonates with his understanding of life. More than analytical rigor, judging credibility requires imagination and empathy for the human condition.

Is it "coherent and plausible" that a man chained to the floor, blindfolded, undergoing physical abuse and threat, with the concordant physiological and psychological consequences of such abuse on a person's sensorium, will have no difficulty in recalling all aspects of his abuse?

Bias and Government "Experts"

A final word about the use of government "experts" in this case should not go unnoted.

Judge Lee's bias in the Ali case could be determined from the very moment that he allowed the prosecution to use Dr. Gregory Saathoff as a psychiatric expert. As Judge Lee himself noted, Dr. Saathoff is "a consultant to the FBI." Given the prominence of FBI testimony in the case, one would think that the presence of potential bias by use of someone paid by the FBI would eliminate him from consideration as an expert. Sadly, I am told by someone with some knowledge of federal court procedures that while a definite conflict of interest, this kind of use of government-linked professionals as "experts" in national security case is not unknown. That doesn't make it right, however.

Dr. Saathoff was, by the way, the government expert used in the recent prosecution of Mansour Arbabsiar. He was also provided psychiatric evaluations and testimony in the cases of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and former Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Dr. Saathoff has indulged in conflict-of-interest examinations in the past. In late 2009, U.S. District Court for D.C. Judge Royce C. Lamberth tagged Saathoff to write a postmortem psych eval on purported anthrax terrorist Bruce Ivins. According to the L.A. Times, Saathoff, who headed up Lamberth’s ersatz Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel on Ivins, “served as an FBI consultant during the anthrax investigation,” raising basic conflict-of-interest questions. It was no surprise that Saathoff and his partners found Ivins to be as mentally disturbed as the FBI portrayed him.

Nor am I the first to raise issues about Saathoff's conflict-of-interest problems, as this article in Clinical Psychiatry News relates.

The case of Ahmed Abu Ali represents an abomination of justice in a variety of different ways, and was in the past a subject of intense media scrutiny. See here and here for examples. When it comes down to issues of credibility, it is not Mr. Ali who is not credible, but the actions of the justice system itself. In the name of prosecuting the "war on terror," the government has revealed itself as cloaked in ignorance, addicted to unfair procedures, and allied to torturing states, even as the innocent are left to fates worse than death itself.

Cross-posted from The Dissenter/FDL

US Army, Martin Seligman "CSF Research Fails the Test"

Last week, psychologists Stephen Soldz and Roy Eidelson published their analysis of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program. It's a professional look at the much-hyped program that finds it seriously wanting. A press release by Coalition for an Ethical Psychology details their findings, and I've reposted it below.

Their report, "Does Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Work? CSF Research Fails the Test" (PDF), seriously dismantles the structure and implementation of the Army's program, while understanding the rationale -- to lower rates of mental illness, suicide, and PTSD among enlisted personnel -- is both meaningful and important.

The conclusions of the report were foreshadowed in a March 2011 Psychology Today article by Eidelson, Soldz and Mark Pilisuk, "The Dark Side of 'Comprehensive Soldier Fitness'". The PT article stressed ethical concerns with the CSF program, particularly the fact that it constituted a research program, but that soldiers were not given informed consent regarding their participation, and no Institutional Review Board had reviewed the program.

In January 2011, Jason Leopold at Truthout published an investigation describing criticism of CSF from those who found its emphasis on "spiritual fitness":

CSF is comprised of the Soldier Fitness Tracker and Global Assessment Tool, which measures soldiers’ “resilience” in five core areas: emotional, physical, family, social and spiritual. Soldiers fill out an online survey made up of more than 100 questions, and if the results fall into a red area, they are required to participate in remedial courses in a classroom or online setting to strengthen their resilience in the disciplines in which they received low scores. The test is administered every two years. More than 800,000 Army soldiers have taken it thus far and more than 100,000 soldiers have participated in the remedial training.

But for the thousands of “Foxhole Atheists” like 27-year-old Sgt. Justin Griffith, the spiritual component of the test contains questions written predominantly for soldiers who believe in God or another deity, meaning nonbelievers are guaranteed to score poorly and will be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to “train” soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality.

Griffith, who is based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, took the test last month and scored well on the emotional, family and social components. But after completing the spiritual portion of the exam, which required him to respond to statements such as, “I am a spiritual person, my life has lasting meaning, I believe that in some way my life is closely connected to all humanity and all the world, ” he was found to be spiritually unfit because he responded by choosing the “not like me at all” box.

The Soldz/Eidelson paper does not focus on this "spirituality" critique, but on more technical matters of quantification of effectiveness, and the self-promotion aspect of program. Their work includes a "Technical Appendix" for those who wish to follow the statistical and methodological arguments.

The critique of self-promotion includes a look at the role of psychologists Martin Seligman and the American Psychological Association in promoting this shoddy program, dressing it up with the language of science, and reaping millions of dollars for those who are contracting with the government to implement the program. In October 2010, Mark Benjamin at Salon revealed Seligman's Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvannia was the ultimate recipient of a $31-million no-bid contract for the Army's resiliency program.

Seligman, of course, is best known as the primary theorist of "learned helplessness," a theory of the total psychological break-down of animals or humans due to uncontrollable stress. "Learned helplessness" (LH) became one of the primary theories behind the use of certain torture techniques used by DoD/CIA psychologists after 9/11. LH was taught to incoming members of the Behavioral Consultant Science Teams (BSCT) used by DoD to assist interrogations of "war on terror" detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Behavioral Science Consultants are psychologists or psychiatrists, and they are still used in interrogations to this day. A former trainer for BSCT teams is today the Chief Clinical Officer of the Washington DC Department of Mental Health.

Finally, there is the question of just what this program is actually trying to do. Reducing PTSD rates is one thing, but producing "indomitable" soldiers who can fight brutal wars without psychic damage to them is another, for it presents an unrealistic view of what war actually is, and hides the fact it seriously damages the mental health and psychic coherence of those who engage in it. (Of course, war outright kills untold tens of millions, both soldier and civilian, and physically damages tens of millions of individuals more.)

In a report released today by the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/Eidelson-&-Soldz-CSF_Research_Fails_the_Test.pdf), two psychologists call upon the Army to retract or publicly correct a recent research report that claims the Army’s $140 million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) resilience program “works.” The psychologists Roy Eidelson and Stephen Soldz argue that the study design is flawed and that the results do not justify the researchers’ favorable conclusions.

Report coauthor Roy Eidelson stated: “The over-hyping of CSF’s effectiveness should be of concern to everyone, including taxpayers who have paid over $100 million for the program, and especially the one million soldiers who are forced to participate in this massive experiment, whether they want to do so or not.”

Without pilot testing, the CSF program was launched in 2009. It trains soldiers in thinking skills that purportedly diminish the likelihood of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicide, and other combat-related psychological problems. CSF is based upon the “positive psychology” framework of University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman.

In their new report Eidelson and Soldz identify five areas of serious concern with the Army’s CSF evaluation: (1) the researchers’ failure to measure the important outcomes of PTSD, depression, or other psychological disorders despite the availability of validated measures for doing so, (2) a flawed research design that fails to control for important confounding variables, (3) significant problems with the method of data analysis, (4) the researchers’ failure to acknowledge plausible risks of harm from the CSF intervention, and (5) miscellaneous related issues of concern. Individually these concerns raise troubling questions regarding the CSF study. Taken together, they severely undercut the CSF researchers’ assertion that “There is now sound scientific evidence that Comprehensive Soldier Fitness improves the resilience and psychological health of Soldiers.”

Stephen Soldz, Professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and report coauthor, noted that CSF has been the subject of a wide range of criticism since it was rolled out in 2009: “The problems identified with CSF are legion. It is time for the Army to step back from uncritically promoting this untested program. A careful, independent, evaluation is urgently called for.”

Concerns raised by critics in the past span a wide range of significant issues, including indications that CSF is actually a research study involuntarily imposed upon troops without mandated protections such as independent ethical review by an institutional review board (IRB) and informed consent; the possibility that CSF may serve as a distraction from the documented adverse effects of multiple and lengthy deployments and high levels of combat exposure; potential negative effects of CSF, common in prevention programs, that have not been carefully considered or monitored; and the insufficient examination of ethical questions posed by efforts to build “indomitable” soldiers.

This new Coalition report follows a detailed critique last year of CSF by Eidelson, Soldz, and their colleague Marc Pilisuk, The Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, which led to Congressional inquiries regarding the program. CSF has also been criticized in a series of comments in the October 2011 issue of the American Psychologist and by experts interviewed by the PBS NewsHour and other press.

About the research weaknesses they identify, Eidelson and Soldz conclude in their report:

“These scientific shortcomings are all the more troubling given the obvious importance of what is at stake here: soldiers’ welfare. It may be comforting to some to assume that, at worst, CSF is merely ineffective. However, we should not settle for such wishful thinking. It is not outlandish to suggest that CSF may negatively impact some soldiers, and unjustified enthusiasm about the program can prove costly in terms of directing attention and funding away from the consideration and development of alternatives that may be far more beneficial for our troops.

“It is not hard for us to imagine the tremendous pressures faced by those responsible for addressing and protecting the psychological health of the men and women who serve in our military. We recognize and admire the dedicated work of so many toward this goal. But in the search for answers, nobody benefits from research that, inadvertently or not, misrepresents the current state of knowledge and accomplishment in this arena. For this reason, we believe it is essential that the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness leadership correct the record in regard to their Research Report #3.”

For more information go to: http://www.ethicalpsychology.org

Both Eidelson and Soldz are past presidents of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. Dr. Eidelson is also the former executive director of the Solomon Asch Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and today is the president of Eidelson Consulting. Dr. Soldz is Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He was also a contributing writer on the Physicians for Human Rights report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program.

More Evidence SERE Training Caused PTSD in Some Soldiers

The fact that the brutality of the stress-inoculation version of torture perpetuated by DoD's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program can cause Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has gone totally unremarked by the nation's media, including "progressive" bloggers and various human rights groups. The issue has greater import when you consider that when the government was looking to SERE authorities and the military to vet the possible dangers of these techniques (they wanted to use them for "interrogations," right?), they were told that nobody, or practically nobody ever had a serious injury or response from SERE training.

John Yoo wrote it up accordingly in his August 2002 torture memo (PDF) to CIA's John Rizzo: "Through your consultation with various individuals responsible for such [SERE] training, you have learned that these techniques have been used as elements of a course of conduct without any reported incident of prolonged mental harm."

Hence, this is an interesting case to ponder, today being Memorial Day and all, from a government record:

A May 1989 service medical screening form for survival, evade, resist and escape (SERE) training shows that the line for whether the veteran had been seen by a doctor or psychologist in the past three months was unchecked. The veteran reported he was under no emotional strain at present. It was commented that the veteran no longer drank or was dependent, and it was not felt this would be a problem.

A psychiatric disorder was not diagnosed at the appellant's February 1993 separation examination.

In February 1994, the veteran filed a claim of entitlement to service connection for an anxiety disorder.

On VA examination in March 1994, the veteran reported symptoms of anxiety and depression over the past few months. He stated the symptoms increased since his wife left him in November 1993. The veteran reported he had panic attacks in 1989, which started following in-service survival training. During the training, he was "drowned" on a torture board, and since then he had nightmares of the incident. He reported being distressed about the flashbacks and nightmares. The veteran stated that he continued with the survival training since he volunteered to do so. Prior to 1989, he did not have anxiety or panic attacks, but since then he had unusual fears.

After examination, it was commented that the veteran by history had symptoms of anxiety, panic disorder, and symptoms suggestive of PTSD. The trauma in his case was the training he had received in the military. The drowning incident had affected his life quite significantly. Although he had PTSD symptomatology, his disability was related to associated anxiety, depression, and psychosocial stressors, particularly regarding his two difficult marriages. The diagnoses were major depression, recurrent, in partial remission; PTSD, delayed, of mild severity; panic disorder, in remission; and history of alcohol use, active.

By rating action of April 1994, with notice to the veteran in the same month, service connection for PTSD was denied. The RO determined that the VA examiner accepted the veteran's report regarding the incident in service at face value, and there was no independent verification that the rigorous training actually existed.

Evidence included in the claims file subsequent to the April 1994 rating action, includes VA treatment records dating from December 1993 to December 2002 that show treatment for alcohol abuse, PTSD, panic disorder, depression, and anxiety. A record from December 1993 shows the veteran was seen with sleep disorder. He had a history of anxiety attacks for three and one-half weeks. He reported he could not sleep, and was paranoid and edgy. He thought this related to his survival training in service when drowning was simulated. The diagnostic impression was anxiety/depression and question panic.

A record from February 1994 shows the veteran reported anxiety and panic attacks. He had survival training in service where he was strapped and tied. A few months later, he started having panic attacks. Stressors were trauma while in a service prisoner of war training, leaving service, break up of marriage, and finding a place in civilian life. The impression was dysthymia, anxiety, panic, and adjustment reaction to civilian life.

A VA record from September 1998 notes that the veteran reported that he had experienced panic attacks over the prior 10 years which he believed stemmed from specialized "POW training" in service when he was nearly drowned. He believed that he was going to die and experienced panic attacks and nightmares ever since. He stated he drank to avoid panic attacks. He also described problems with relationships, and wanted to be isolated. A December 1998 record shows that the veteran had PTSD with the traumatic event being well documented in the record.

A Vet Center record from November 1998 shows that the veteran reported that in service he volunteered for a survival, evasion, resistance, and escape school in May 1989. He reported being tied, stripped of clothing and beaten. He also reported that a bag was placed over his head, an unloaded gun was placed to his head and the trigger was pulled. With respect to the drowning episode the veteran stated that he was strapped to a table with a cloth over his mouth and was unable to breath and water was poured in his mouth when the cloth was removed and replaced quickly to prevent breathing. He reported experiencing panic attacks one month later and having violent nightmares. The diagnosis was chronic PTSD....

In response to a request from the veteran sent to people who had been in the SERE program with the veteran, Mr. G. stated that he would like to help concerning the VA claim, however all events that occurred during SERE school were classified and could not be discussed without the service's permission.

Interesting, eh?

Don't worry, I wouldn't bum you out on Memorial Day. There is a happy ending to this story. In June 2003, the VA heard this vet's appeal, and decided to consider a statement he made under oath in November 2001 about his experiences to constitute "new evidence", even though it mainly repeated his earlier story. In any case, the VA appeal board stated:

In light of the fact that the veteran has been diagnosed with PTSD, as the evidence shows that the appellant did experience a verified in-service stressor at SERE school, and as the SERE school experience is the basis for the diagnosis of PTSD, the undersigned finds that service connection for PTSD is in order.

Now, this is not the only case in which a VA service connection for PTSD related to SERE training has taken place. A few years ago, I wrote about another such case here.

Given the inherent interest of these cases for their impact on the lies that were used to justify SERE-style torture and the psychological and permanent damage resulting therefrom -- even in school training -- lies presented by and to OLC, DoD, CIA, etc., and not to mention the fact that SERE training may just be too dangerous to use in general... how much media interest has there been in these cases? I'll tell you. Zero.

PTSD and the "Mind-erasing" pill

RT America interview, talking about PTSD, research into new drugs, and the "pissing Marines" scandal.

Can memories be erased? Check out the interview.

Despite Yoo/Bybee Denials, PTSD "Service Connected" to SERE Torture Techniques

Originally posted at FDL/The Seminal

In the August 2, 2002 memo to John Rizzo at the CIA, "Interrogation of an Al Qaeda Operative," written primarily by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee (PDF), a number of statements are made as regards the relative safety of the SERE training program for use on U.S. soldiers. As most readers must know by now, SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, and the program of the same name is used to teach pilots, Special Operations personnel, "code of conduct" behaviors and strategies should they ever be captured by an enemy force. The Resistance component provides an exposure experience, where trainees are subjected to mock torture with the idea that familiarity with possible torture techniques will harden them should they ever be presented with the real thing.
 
It was this mock torture component, as taught in SERE classes SV-83 and SV-91 (the latter class aimed specifically at teaching clandestine "Special Mission Units"), that was reverse-engineered by military psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, and further fine-tuned by CIA officials, and constituted the torture that was used at CIA (and possibly JSOC) black site prisons under the rubric of "enhanced interrogation techniques." Subsequently, physicians and psychologists at the CIA's Office of Medical Services were used to provide "opinions to the agency and [OLC] lawyers whether the techniques used would be expected to cause severe pain or suffering and thus constitute torture."

In a series of recent articles, I've pointed out Yoo, Bybee, and later Office of Legal Counsel attorney Stephen Bradbury, disregarded internal SERE documents related to the safety of waterboarding. Now we can add the suppression of complaints by SERE trainees of having contracted PTSD from participation in SERE training. This directly contradicts the Yoo/Bybee contention in the Aug. 2, 2002 memo to Rizzo, where they wrote, "Through your [i.e., CIA] consultation with various individuals responsible for such training, you have learned that these techniques have been used as elements of a course of conduct without any reported incident of prolonged mental harm."

Yet it shouldn't have taken too long to know, and certainly JPRA officials should have been aware of complaints made by various enlisted personnel such that they had incurred PTSD as a result of their "service connection" to SERE training. One such complaint, made as far back as 1999, received approval of disability status for PTSD by the Veterans Administration in July 2003. The decision regarded an appeal of a 2000 decision against a veteran claiming PTSD. The serviceman, who had retired in 1996, was represented by the American Legion.

After review of the appeal, it was found that "The veteran has a current diagnosis of PTSD associated with experiences he suffered as part of his in-service SERE training."

The veteran's December 1999 claim relates that he attended SERE training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1992. During the training, he was subject to interrogations, stripping down, mockery, assault, and exposure to extreme weather conditions. The veteran's February 2000 statement, as well as the January 2003 testimony at the Travel Board hearing, further describes physical assault and interrogations with emotional abuse he experienced during the SERE course. The Board finds the veteran's hearing testimony to be credible and probative.

The decision has even more power when one considers that there was other evidence indicating that there were other sources of possible traumatic experience, e.g., childhood abuse. But the judge at the Board of Veteran's Appeals found that the PTSD from SERE training was the actionable occurrence. Also, note that the veteran's experience at SERE did not include the waterboard, as only the Navy SERE schools used the waterboard in their training, even as far back as 1992.

The military has a scandalous history of denying PTSD claims. In a 2007 article by Joshua Kors at The Nation, doctors admitted to feeling pressured to not diagnose PTSD, and instead, soldiers with PTSD were receiving diagnoses of personality disorders, or otherwise denied PTSD claims. Last month, the Obama administration loosened VA rules on determination of PTSD, which will not now rely so heavily on proving a specific event caused the condition.

Yoo himself apparently believed that PTSD constituted "prolonged mental harm" of the sort that is labeled torture. He said as much in his March 2003 OLC memo to William Haynes at the Department of Defense on the interrogation methods at DoD (PDF).

"...the development of a mental disorder such as posttraumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which also can last for a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement.”

Yoo's 2003 memo closely followed the reasoning of his earlier memos, though later, then-OLC head Jack Goldsmith told Haynes to disregard the Yoo memo in December 2003. It is not clear what DoD relied on for legal advice as regards their interrogation program after that point (for more, see this article by Marcy Wheeler).

Despite the SASC report into "detainee" abuse, released last year, much of the involvement by DoD actors and entities in the torture program remains highly obscure. Jason Leopold and I are working on a major investigative story to be published in the weeks ahead regarding the Bush torture program, and Department of Defense research and experimentation into interrogations and torture.

Omar Khadr Denounces Military Commissions as a Sham

Marcy Wheeler has provided all of us a service and transcribed the written statement of former child soldier Omar Khadr, read aloud in the military commission "court" on July 12, describing why he will not participate in the proceedings surrounding his so-called trial. Omar Khadr fired his American attorneys recently, something he has done before. In his statement, he describes his reasons for doing so. Khadr is the first case to be adjudicated in President Obama's new, supposedly improved military commissions. The latter remain a confused jumble of procedures, and allow wide latitude for the introduction of torture-tainted evidence via hearsay into trial proceedings.

Your honor, I’m boycotting this military commission because:

* Firstly, the unfairness and unjustice of it. I say this because not one of the lawyers I’ve had, or human right organization or any person say that the commission is fair, or looking for justice, but on the contrary they say it is unfair and unjust and that it has been constructed solely to convict detainees and not to find the truth (so how can I ask for justice from a process that does not have it or offer it?) [new color ink--apparently added later] and to accomplish political and public goal and what I mean is when I was offered a plea bargain it was up to 30 years which I was going to spend only 5 years so I asked why the 30 years? I was told it make the US government look good in the public eyes and other political causes.

* Secondly, the unfairness of the rules that will make a person so depressed that he will admit to alligations or take a plea offer that will satisfy the US government and get him the least sentence possible and ligitimize the show process. Therefore I will not willingly let the US gov use me to fullfil its goal. I have been used to many times when I was a child and that’s why I’m here taking blame and paying for thing I didn’t have a choice in doing but was told to do by elders.

* Lastly I will not take any plea offer or [several words redacted] because it will give excuse for the gov for torturing and abusing me when I was a child.

Here is the statement itself, in an image cleared by the military for public release, credit to Carol Rosenberg/The Miami Herald


More from Carol Rosenberg's article:

Alleged ex-teen terrorist Omar Khadr on Monday denounced his coming war-crimes trial as a sham, saying he'd been offered a secret plea deal for release after five years served at Guantánamo.

Instead, the Canadian fired all his attorneys and said he would offer no defense....

The Canadian's family attorney, Dennis Edney, later said that the offer, made about a month ago, was for release from detention here in 2015 -- and continuation of the sentence in his native Canada.

``Mr. Khadr could not admit to guilt to something he did not do,'' Edney said....

Now-fired defense attorneys Barry Coburn and Kobie Flowers sought to show that Khadr as a 15-year-old old captive was coerced into confessing from the start when his first interrogator described scaring him with an American prison gang-rape scenario.

The military commissions are a farce, except for those involved, it is an injustice, and at times, for those abused and tortured, it is re-traumatizing, as it was for Omar Khadr. The Toronto Globe and Mail reported recently that Khadr's attorneys are very worried about their former client:

Omar has lost all hope of a fair trial in Guantanamo, he can see that the trial is rigged,” said Nate Whitling, one of his Canadian lawyers, explaining Mr. Khadr’s decision to dismiss his legal team.

“We tried desperately to talk him out of it,” Mr. Whitling said, adding the Mr. Khadr, 23, was so upset by the pre-trial appearances of interrogators who tortured and abused him after he was captured in 2002 that he chose to cease participating in the tribunals.

“Guantanamo Bay is like a despair factory, it manufactures hopelessness.”— Barry Coburn, American lawyer dismissed by Omar Khadr

I'd add that Omar's response to the appearance of this tormentors in court is indicative of someone with a post-traumatic syndrome. President Obama could order the release of Khadr. The Canadian government could act more strenuously for the return of the former child prisoner. But neither acts for humanitarian reasons, or on behalf of justice. In Canada, however, a federal court recently ruled that the Harper government had failed to intervene appropriately on Mr. Khadr's behalf.

Military judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, has ruled that Khadr's military attorney, Pentagon appointed counsel, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, is to represent Khadr, whether the latter approves or not. According to the Miami Herald story, the judge said, "I want to make sure the proceedings are fair to Mr. Khadr -- whether he boycotts or not."

These kangaroo court hearings are also, in part, the legacy of a complicit Congress, led by a Democratic Party majority, which last year re-approved the Bush-era Military Commissions Act, offering up a new, supposedly improved version of the military commissions court. Last March, no less a person than Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice was quoted in the Washington Post, in a prescient critique foreshadowing Omar Khadr's own, more personal, experientially-derived denunciation:

"Military commissions are antithetical to the administration of justice," Fidell said. "They're slow, they're opaque, the rules are currently unknown."