How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us an Army Field Manual that (Still) Includes Torture (updated)

I'm marking the 12th anniversary of the abomination that is Guantanamo with a couple of repostings related to how the Bush administration, with the connivance of key members of the press and the human rights community, sold a continuation of torture as an end to torture.

Such a reposting seems necessary as the entire press, human rights groups, and blogging world continues to ignore the ongoing issue of torture via interrogations. While indefinite detention, forced cell extractions aka beatings, and the painful forced-feeding of hunger strikers still garners attention, and rightly so, the fact the U.S. continues to have an official policy of torture in its interrogation manual continues to be ignored, even though it is the most important issue about torture facing America today.

Eschewing the worst-looking forms of torture, like waterboarding, in 2006, at the same time that "high-value detainees" like Khalid Sheik Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah were transferred out of the CIA black sites and sent to Guantanamo, the U.S. put out a new Army Field Manual (AFM) with instructions on interrogations that claimed to be "humane."

Origin of AFM Rewrite Out of Ashes of Abu Ghraib Scandal

Only recently have I found the possible origin of the new AFM's drafting in the August 2005 recommendations of a Joint Chiefs of Staff panel subsequent to the military investigations into the Abu Ghraib scandal. (See pg. 315-16 of this document.)

Recommend a policy-level review and determination of the status and treatment of all detainees, when not classified as EPWs [Enemy Prisoners of War]. This review needs to particularly focus on the definition of humane treatment, military necessity, and proper employment of interrogation techniques. (e.g. boundaries or extremes)....

Recommend study of the DoD authorized interrogation techniques to establish a framework for evaluating their cumulative impact in relation to the obligation to treat detainees humanely.

The study of "authorized interrogation techniques" was tasked to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone.

But a number of the new techniques that ultimately showed up in the newly written AFM were not humane at all. In fact, they amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhumane and degrading behavior. Over the years various human rights groups recognized this and came out publicly for changes to the AFM. (See here, and here, and here, and here, and here.)

The AFM made changes to its text that allowed wider latitude in use of drugs in interrogations, while eliminating prohibitions against sleep deprivation and stress positions that had been in the pre-2006 AFM. Even worse, a category of prisoners that were not considered subject to Geneva Convention POW protections was singled out for a special kind of interrogation "technique," as described in the manual's Appendix M.

Appendix M allowed for use of isolation for 30 days, and potentially indefinitely; sleep deprivation for up to 30 days, but potentially indefinitely; manipulation of environment and diet (so long as it wasn't "extreme"); and forms of sensory deprivation, so long as every form of sensory input wasn't affected.

There was very little interest in whether or not or how these new techniques were being used. In fact, no one had apparently even thought to ask the government until I did in January 2010 whether or not Appendix M had even been used. Not surprisingly, the Department of Defense confirmed it was using Appendix M interrogations at Guantanamo.

More surprising was my discovery, confirmed by a DoD spokesman, that the use of the Appendix M torture techniques was approved in a Bush-era Office of Legal Council memorandum, and left in place by the Obama administration despite claims that all such memos were withdrawn in January 2009. Even to this day, in a massive political failure, not one human rights group or legal organization has recognized this fact.

The Torture Never Stopped

Intense abusive interrogations continue. We know from a filing by Omar Khadr in his Canadian court case that prior to release from Guantanamo to Canadian authorities, and shortly after his plea deal with Military Commissions authorities in October 2010, Khadr was subjected to prolonged interrogation that likely was conducted, given the key presence of the use of isolation, to Appendix M parameters: "Following the Pre-Trial Agreement, the Americans transferred Omar to a maximum security detention facility restricted for prisoners convicted of offenses. Omar was thrown back into solitary confinement and continued to be subjected to months of prolonged interrogations consisting of a sequence of 9 hours of interrogation per day for 9 days at a time."

With an even dozen years of crimes at Guantanamo -- fully over 1/3 of them under the auspices of the Obama administration -- I think it's time to review just how consensus around torture takes place in actuality. As we shall see, it is a complex story, involving media manipulation, psychological effects such as denial, and subordination of human rights to party politics and an achingly slow platform of reformist change. I say "consensus" because silence about all this amounts to consensus.

The following was published at Alternet and my own blog, Invictus, in January 2009. (My first writing recognizing torture in the AFM goes back to the introduction of the new manual in September 2006, when I wrote under my pseudonym Valtin.) In a day or two, I will publish part two, which will look at how the foreign press saw through what DoD was doing, and how a major blogging news and opinion site helped cover that up.

++++++++++++

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us an Army Field Manual that (Still) Includes Torture

A January 17 [2009] New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation's interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented "a good start." The editorial noted the vagueness of Holder's statement. Left unsaid was the question, if the AFM is only a "good start," what comes next?

The Times editorial writer never bothered to mention the fact that three years earlier, a different New York Times article (12/14/2005) introduced a new controversy regarding the rewrite of the Army Field Manual. The rewrite was inspired by a proposal by Senator John McCain to limit U.S. military and CIA interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual. (McCain would later allow an exception for the CIA.)

According to the Times article, a new set of classified procedures proposed for the manual was "was pushing the limits on legal interrogation." Anonymous military sources called the procedures "a back-door effort" to undermine McCain's efforts at the time to change U.S. abusive interrogation techniques, and stop the torture.

A Forgotten Controversy

Over the next six months or so, a number of articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times described the course of the controversy. By mid-June 2006, the NYT was reporting that, under pressure from unnamed senior generals and members of Congress (including McCain, and Senators Warner and Graham), the Pentagon was rethinking its plan to have a classified annex to the AFM, which would include a different set of interrogation rules for "unlawful combatants," like the detainees at Guantanamo. Included in the discussion about these classified procedures were, reportedly, members of the State Department and various human rights organizations.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, this latest fight over the classified procedures went back at least to mid-May 2006. The manual itself had been written at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, roughly a year earlier, and then sent to the Pentagon for further evalution. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man, Stephen Cambone, was put in charge of its final draft. According the L.A. Times article, members of Congress were "keen to avoid a public fight with the Pentagon." The announcement that the controversial and still unknown procedures might not be included in the manual was seen as a success by human rights groups.

Yet the proverbial chickens never hatched, and by early September 2006 the new Army Field Manual was finally released. The section on special interrogation procedures for "unlawful combatants" was included as a special appendix (Appendix M), and published in unclassified format. According to a L.A. Times story on September 8, Cambone was crowing that the new Army Field Manual instructions would give interrogators "what they need to do the job." The article noted:

The new manual includes one restricted technique that will only be used on so-called unlawful combatants – such as Al Qaeda suspects – not traditional prisoners of war.

That technique, called “separation,” involves segregating a detainee from other prisoners. Military officials said separation was not the equivalent of solitary confinement and was consistent with Geneva Convention protections.

As for the proposed secrecy surrounding the new techniques, the Pentagon had decided it couldn't keep them secret forever. Senator Warner was also on record as against any classified annex to the manual.

Not long ago, I wrote about what was included in Appendix M, which purports to introduce the single technique of "separation." In fact, the Appendix M includes instructions regarding solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and, in combination with other procedures included in the Army Field Manual, amounted to a re-introduction of the psychological torture techniques practiced at Guantanamo, and taught by Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE psychologists and other personnel at the Cuban base and elsewhere.

The rewrite of the Army Field Manual included other seemingly minor changes. It introduced dubious procedures, such as the "False Flag" technique, wherein interrogators could pretend they were from another country. It also redefined the meaning of "Fear Up," a procedure meant to exploit a prisoner's existing fears under imprisonment. Now, interrogators could create "new" fears. The AFM rewrite was a masterpiece of subterfuge and double talk, which could only have been issued from the offices of Rumsfeld and Cambone.

One would think this turnaround of the Pentagon's position regarding a removal of these controversial procedures would have been a matter of some note. But there was no protest from Congress, no mention of the past controversy in the press, and only vague comments at first and then acceptance by human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Only Physicians for Human Rights protested the inclusion of the techniques listed in Appendix M. For the rest... silence.

[Author's Note, 1/13/2014: By 2009, Amnesty International had clearly come out against Appendix M, as we can see at this posting. In 2010, Open Society Foundations, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch signed a letter to the Pentagon, along with other groups, asking for the removal of Appendix M. The letter stated, "we are concerned that Appendix M creates a legal precedent that may be used in the future by othergovernments to justify abusing captured U.S. personnel. As we make clear above, Appendix M can be interpreted to allow serious abuse, including months of abnormal sleep deprivation.]

DoD Rolls Out the New Model

On September 6, 2006, a news briefing was held by the Department of Defense, as part of the unveiling of the new Army Field Manual, in conjunction with the then-new Defense Department Directive for Detainee Programs (DoD Directive 2310.01E). Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson and Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) Lt. Gen. John Kimmons were the DoD presenters.

Much of the belief that the AFM provides an improvement over previous policies of the Department of Defense is likely due to a confusion between the two documents introduced that summer of 2006, the new Detainee Program Directive and the new Army Field Manual.

DoD Directive 2310.10E made a number of changes in regards to detainee operations and management. It made clear that "All persons subject to this Directive shall observe the requirements of the law of war, and shall apply, without regard to a detainee’s legal status, at a minimum the standards articulated in Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949..." The same type of language appears in the text of the Army Field Manual itself.

During the press briefing on September 6, and a different one the next day for the foreign press, reporters were not so easily fooled.

One unnamed reporter at the DoD briefing challenged Lt. Gen. Kimmons on the "single standard" issue:

Q General, why was the decision made to keep these categories -- the separate categories of detainees? You have traditional prisoners of war and then the unlawful enemy combatants. Why not treat all detainees under U.S. military custody the exact same way?

Kimmons's answer gives us insight into the kind of convoluted legal thinking that went into the Pentagon's rationale for the acceptability of coercive interrogation -- for some (emphasis added):

GEN. KIMMONS: Well, actually, the distinction is in Geneva through the Geneva Convention, which describes the criteria that prisoner -- that lawful combatants, such as enemy prisoners of war -- which attributes they possess -- wearing a uniform, fighting for a government, bearing your arms openly and so on and so forth. And it's all spelled out fairly precisely inside Geneva.

Geneva also makes clear that traditional, unlawful combatants such as in the -- 50 years ago, we would have talked about spies and saboteurs, but also now applies to this new category of unlawful -- or new type of unlawful combatant, terrorists, al Qaeda, Taliban.

They clearly don't meet the criteria for prisoner of war status, lawful combatant status, and so they're not entitled to the -- therefore to the extra protections and privileges which Geneva affords.

But Kimmon's clarification was not very helpful. In fact, if a prisoner is judged not a "lawful combatant", then he or she immediately becomes covered by Geneva IV, the "Civilian Convention," which protects anyone "who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever find themselves" held prisoner. According to the International Red Cross Commentary on the Geneva Conventions:

Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third [POW] Convention, [or] a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention.... There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.

Separation and Sensory Deprivation

One questioner took on the topic of the "Separation" technique. Wasn't it the same as solitary confinement, and wasn't solitary confinement "banned by Common Article 3 in the affront to human dignity, other provisions? "Are you confident," a reporter asked, "that separation is permitted under Common Article 3?"

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs responded by denying that separation amounted to solitary confinement, even though the AFM describes the technique as, among other things "physical separation" "limited to 30 days of initial duration." Extensions for such physical separation must be reviewed and approved the General Officer or Flag Officer who initially approved the original "separation."

Kimmons' reply was even more disingenuous:

We have always segregated enemy combatants on the battlefield at the point of capture and beyond, to keep them silent, segregate the officers from the enlisted, the men from the women, and so forth. That's traditional; it goes back to World War II and beyond.

So, is "separation" a matter of segregating prisoners, or what? In the Army Field Manual itself, one gets that same kind of double talk. At first it is presented thus:

The purpose of separation is to deny the detainee the opportunity to communicate with other detainees in order to keep him from learning counter-resistance techniques or gathering new information to support a cover story; decreasing the detainee's resistance to interrogation.

This description sounds a lot like segregation for security purposes, although there is that phrase "decreasing the detainee's resistance." A page or so later, however, we find the following (emphasis added):

The use of separation should not be confused with the detainee-handling techniques approved in Appendix D [Guide for Handling Detainees]. Specifically, the use of segregation during prisoner handling (Search, Silence, Segregate, Speed, Safeguard, and Tag [5 S's and a T]) should not be confused with the use of separation as a restricted interrogation technique.

Furthermore, we learn that "separation" requires an interrogation plan, and medical and legal review, as well, of course, as "physical separation." If this is not solitary confinement for the purposes of breaking a prisoner down for interrogation, then the English language has lost all purpose in explaining things.

Another line of questioning took on the AFM's contention that it banned sensory deprivation. The entire exchange at the September 6 hearing is worth reproducing here. It represents, among other things, the most thorough line of inquiry I have seen by any reporter in quite some time. The following quote contains added emphases.

Q General, as an expert in interrogations, do you believe that sensory deprivation was abusive, or did it ever prove to be helpful in interrogation?

GEN. KIMMONS: Sensory deprivation is abusive and it's prohibited in this Field Manual, and it's absolutely counterproductive, in my understanding of what we have used productively. Sensory deprivation, just to be clear -- and we define it in the Field Manual, but basically, it comes down to the almost complete deprivation of all sensory stimuli, light, noise, and so forth, and to the point where it can have an adverse mental, psychological effect on a -- disorienting effect on a detainee.

Q So could there be deprivation of light alone for extended periods of time, as opposed to complete sensory deprivation?

GEN. KIMMONS: I think the total loss of an external stimulus, such as deprivation of light, would not fit what we have described here as -- for example, if you're hinting about separation, separation does not involve the darkness or lack of that type of sensory stimulation.

Q That wasn't the question, though. Would sensory -- would the deprivation of light alone be permitted under the current manual, as opposed -- because you described sensory deprivation as total deprivation --

GEN. KIMMONS: That's correction.

Q -- of all senses. So deprivation of light alone for extended periods would be permitted?

GEN. KIMMONS: I don't think the Field Manual explicitly addresses it.

It does not make it prohibited.And it would have to be weighed in the context of the overall environment. If it was at nighttime during sleep hours, then it would make personal sense to turn the lights off.

Q You know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to get at -- because you said specifically total sensory deprivation -- so deprivation of any one sense might be permitted. Like light, for example. They could be kept in the dark for extended periods of time beyond the usual nighttime hours.

This is really too specific and challenging for the DoD briefers, and they turn on their double-talk machine:

MR. STIMSON: Jim, questions like this are good questions to ask. And what's important to remember is that interrogation plans are put together for a reason so that not just one person can decide what he or she wants to do and then run off and do it. They're vetted. It's laid out how they're vetted. General Kimmons could go into that in exhaustive detail. Typically, there would be a JAG, as I understand it, General Kimmons --

GEN. KIMMONS: That's correct.

MR. STIMSON: -- that would have to review that. It goes up through various chains of command. And so, you know, types of questions like this would have to be asked and then vetted through that process.

Burying the Story

With all the hard questioning by the press, you'd think the issues would have been aired in the media in the days and weeks following the introduction of the Army Field Manual. As should be evident by now, that's not what happened.

Here's how the L.A. Times covered it (9/6/06), getting the story exactly backwards (emphasis added):

Bowing to critics of its tough interrogation policies, the Pentagon is issuing a new Army field manual that provides Geneva Convention protections for all detainees and eliminates a secret list of interrogation tactics.

The manual, set for release today, also reverses an earlier decision to maintain two interrogation standards – one for traditional prisoners of war and another for “unlawful combatants” captured during a conflict but not affiliated with a nation’s military force.

There is no mention of Appendix M or any controversy over techniques. Jumana Musa, an "advocacy director for Amnesty International, is quoted as noting, "“If the new field manual embraces the Geneva Convention, it is an important return to the rule of law.'"

The 9/7/06 article in the Washington Post was, if anything, even more laudatory of the new AFM:

Pentagon officials yesterday repudiated the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, specifically forbidding U.S. troops from using forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and waterboarding to elicit information from detainees captured in ongoing wars.

The Defense Department simultaneously embraced international humane treatment standards for all detainees in U.S. military custody, the first time there has been a uniform standard for both enemy prisoners of war and the so-called unlawful combatants linked to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.

The article falsely claims the AFM bans manipulation of sleep patterns. Regarding any controversy, the article explains:

Three expanded techniques -- good cop, bad cop; pretending to be an official from another country; and detention in a separate cell from others -- are allowed but require approval from senior officers. Officials originally considered keeping those three techniques classified but decided to make them public for the sake of full transparency.

The Post article also briefly mentions the generally positive response of human rights groups:

"This is the Pentagon coming full circle," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "This is very strong guidance."

As for the human rights organizations, Amnesty International later essentially signed off on the AFM. In an article from the Winter 2007 issue of Amnesty International Magazine, Jumana Musa, quoted in the L.A. Times article above, had this to say about the new AFM:

AIUSA also worked with U.S. representatives and senators to introduce legislation to create a single, transparent standard for interrogations and to limit the CIA to approved interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual.

In a telephone interview for this article, Mr. Malinowski said he supported using the Army Field Manual as a replacement for the CIA "enhanced interrogation techniques," and described the question of abuse in Appendix M as not entirely clear. The language in Appendix M was "ambiguous," and open to criticism due to a "lack of clarity." He maintained, however, that using the current Army Field Manual as a model was merely a beginning, and that a new overhaul of interrogation techniques was on the agenda.

A call made to Amnesty International's press contact regarding this issue, and an e-mail sent to Jumana Musa, were both unreturned.

Conclusion

Two conclusions can be drawn from the above examination of the "selling" of the Army Field Manual to the American public in the late summer of 2006 and beyond. One is that reporters on the beat were very aware of the origins and implications of the issues surrounding Geneva and the AFM, and the controversies surrounding the use of isolation and other techniques under the rubric of "Separation." The extremely muted or non-existent discussion in the mainstream press of these issues after the AFM was introduced means that a decision to suppress these issues was made at an editorial level, and were not the result of laziness or dilatory reporting on behalf of reporters.

Secondly, the role of some human rights organizations in promoting the new Army Field Manual -- in particular, the actions of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch -- are curious, to say the least. Press reports and the interview with Malinowski show that inclusion of certain human rights organizations in the vetting of the AFM started at the very beginning. We may not be able to find out what went on in the editorial offices of the nation's top newspapers, but we should know more about the discussions within the human rights organizations on how they advised, or were fooled, by talks with Bush administration and Pentagon personnel.

Meanwhile, other human rights organizations, such as the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights, have criticized the language and techniques described in Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, and called for rescission of the offending text. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in May 2007, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR, and retired Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, former Commanding General of the Southeast Regional U.S. Army Medical Command, wrote:

The new Army Field Manual on human intelligence gathering... explicitly prohibits several SERE-based techniques, yet Appendix M of the manual explicitly permits what amounts to isolation, along with sleep and sensory deprivation. The manual is silent on a number of other SERE-based methods, creating ambiguity and doubt over their place in interrogation doctrine....

PHR, therefore, respectfully urges you to take the following actions:

1. Fully implement the OIG’s recommendation to “preclude the use of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape physical and psychological coercion techniques” in all interrogations. (Id, pp. 29-30.) This includes rescission of Appendix M of the new Army Field Manual and specific prohibition, by name, of each of the known SERE-based methods and their equivalents.

It seems likely that the Army Field Manual, whether by executive order (most likely) or by legislation, will become the new "single standard" for U.S. interrogation. Press reports hint that the Obama administration may yet allow a loophole for CIA interrogators. I don't know how that will sit with the many military lawyers and officers who have been instrumental in opposing Bush/Rumsfeld's torture policies from the beginning. I'm thinking of people like Alberto Mora and Antonio Taguba, or the new nominee for DoD General Counsel, Jeh Charles Johnson, who apparently intends to seriously change the policies set by his predecessor, Jim Haynes.

[Author's note, 1/12/2014: Johnson never did change the Army Field Manual/Appendix M policies. Last month, he was confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of Homeland Security.]

In any case, the full history and controversy behind torture and U.S. interrogation policy deserves a full airing. What happened, for instance, between June and September 2006, allowing for Pentagon acceptance of the Appendix M abusive procedures? When it comes to the implementation of a host of torture and cruel, inhumane interrogation techniques by the U.S. government, both an investigation and prosecutions are needed.

It will be a challenge for our society to bring out the full story, while also bringing to justice those individuals who broke both domestic law and international treaty. We will need both investigations and prosecutions in order settle scores with the past, to understand where we stand now, and what we need to change to move forward.

Bradley Manning Forced to Strip Naked for Seven Hours

Originally posted at Firedoglake/MyFDL

With all the news about the new charges brought against alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning, the fact of his abusive treatment under onerous Maximum Security and Prevention of Injury (POI) conditions of confinement don't get enough attention in the mainstream press. Perhaps the latest revelations by Manning's attorney, David E. Coombs, will make America stand up and take notice.

Besides conditions of solitary confinement, harassment day and night, restriction of reading material, making him walk in shackles if he leaves his cell, inability to communicate with any other prisoners, we must now add degradation and humiliation. Do we need to be reminded that Bradley Manning has not been convicted of any crime?

From Coomb's report this afternoon:

Last night, PFC Manning was inexplicably stripped of all clothing by the Quantico Brig. He remained in his cell, naked, for the next seven hours. At 5:00 a.m., the Brig sounded the wake-up call for the detainees. At this point, PFC Manning was forced to stand naked at the front of his cell.

The Duty Brig Supervisor (DBS) arrived shortly after 5:00 a.m. When he arrived, PFC Manning was called to attention. The DBS walked through the facility to conduct his detainee count. Afterwards, PFC Manning was told to sit on his bed. About ten minutes later, a guard came to his cell to return his clothing.

As Manning's attorney says, this kind of treatment is "degrading... inexcusable and without justification." It comes on top of the imposition of isolation, cynically imposed in the name of protecting the young private, when in fact, it is fashioned to torture him, or at least impose cruel, inhumane treatment, both of which are violations of torture law and treaties.

Manning's attorney noted that in a Department of Defense news conference the other day, DoD spokesman Geoff Morrell agreed that PFC Manning "has been exemplary in terms of his behavior on the cell block," leading Mr. Coombs to comment: "Other detainees typically are removed from Maximum custody and from POI watch once they demonstrate, through their behavior, that the conditions are no longer warranted. Under Secretary of the Navy Instruction (SECNAVINST) 1649.9C, Maximum custody and POI are intended to be used sparingly and for a limited duration of time. Despite the Navy Instruction, PFC Manning remains subject to unduly harsh confinement conditions."

The latest manifestation of the Pentagon's animus against Manning is the use of degrading and humiliating treatment. Forced nakedness is exactly the kind of treatment meted out in the torture techniques approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and used at Guantanamo, and by the CIA in their black site prisons. We can see now that in their impeccable power, the U.S. government feels it must strip a young accused person totally in their power and leave them naked in their cell for hours. For what purpose? It can only be to demonstrate their power and to psychologically attempt to break down the prisoner.

This latest atrocity should be strongly condemned by all proponents of human rights and justice. This is cruel treatment. It should stop, and Manning should immediately be taken off POI, at the very least. But then, to any thinking person, it makes no sense that Manning is in prison, while the war criminals that killed tens or hundreds of thousands in Iraq, and gave military orders to ignore torture and turn prisoners over to be tortured, walk free.

Update: Alert commenter Mad Dog noticed this important part of David Coombs' article, chilling in its open avowal of continuing abuse. Referring to the imposition of forced nakedness, Coombs reports that "PFC Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight." Meanwhile, Trudy B. has sent me a link to a Kate Zernike and David Rohde's June 2004 piece in the New York Times, on the "pervasive pattern" of forced nakedness at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

It got so bad at Abu Ghraib that in October 2003, Zernike and Rohde wrote that "Red Cross monitors were so alarmed by the number of nude detainees that they halted their visit and demanded an immediate explanation. 'The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was "part of the process,"' the Red Cross wrote in a report in February."

I guess that's the case now at Quantico. "Part of the process" is what torture has now come down to, embraced on U.S. soil against an American citizen. Those wanting to do something can contribute to The Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund. 100% of contributions to this fund will be used to pay expenses related to the advocacy and defense of Bradley Manning.

.

Abu Ghraib Torture Case to Move Forward

Center for Constitutional Rights, whose attorneys have defended so many Guanatanamo prisoners, have announced that their lawsuit centered on accusations of torture and abuse by former Iraqi prisoners against L-3 (formerly Titan Corp.) contractors at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq has cleared an important hurdle.

CCR's press release:

Judge Denies Motion to Dismiss Abu Ghraib Torture Case

Contact: press@ccrjustice.org

July 30, 2010, New York - A group of 72 Iraqi citizens who allege they were tortured while imprisoned at detention facilities across Iraq can continue with their lawsuit against military contractor L-3 Services, Inc. and a former employee, a federal judge in Maryland ruled Thursday.

In a 92-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Peter J. Messitte denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss the Iraqis’ federal and state court claims. He wrote, “On the facts alleged, Defendants’ actions arguably violated the laws of war such that they are not immune from suit under the laws of war.” The court also rejected claims of government contractor immunity defense.

“During wartime,” the court wrote, “‘many things are lawful in that season, which would not be permitted in a time of peace.’ Some actions, however, have been deemed so repulsive to mankind, or so disconnected from prosecuting and winning a war, that they are universally condemned. The law of war attempts to rein in these behaviors. ...One such universally recognized rule is that torture is prohibited.”

The former detainees, all of whom were released without charge, are represented by Susan L. Burke, of Burke PLLC in Washington, D.C.; Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights; and Shereef Akeel, of Akeel & Valentine, PLC in Troy, Mich.

Susan Burke, of Burke PLLC, stated, “With the Court’s ruling, these innocent men are a step closer to completing the true history of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. These men were senselessly tortured by a company that profited from their misery. They came to U.S. courts because our laws, as they have for generations, allow their claims to be heard here.”

Katherine Gallagher, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, stated, “This thoughtful and thorough decision makes it crystal clear that when corporations, including those which contract with the government, engage in conduct that it universally condemned, they can be held accountable for their illegal acts. The court rightly found that the defendants' status as a contractor cannot shield claims of war crimes and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment from review.”

The lawsuit alleges that L-3 employees, including Adel Nakhla, a U.S. citizen born in Egypt, tortured and otherwise physically and mentally abused the detainees who were arrested by coalition forces and held for up to four years between July 2003 and May 2008 at various detention facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib.

The detainees assert 20 causes of action, including war crimes including the war crime of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, sexual assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, pursuant to the federal Alien Tort Statute and under state law. The abuses they allege include beatings, hanging by the hands and feet, electrical shocks, mock executions, threats of death and rape, sleep deprivation, stress positions, sexual assault, and sensory deprivation.

Nakhla worked as an Arabic translator from June 2003 through May 2004 at Abu Ghraib. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Nakhla was photographed participating in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and confessed his involvement in acts of torture and abuse to military investigators.

The case is “Wissam Abdullateff Sa’eed Al-Quraishi, et al., v. Adel Nakhla, et al.,” Civil No. PJM 08-1696 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Greenbelt Division

Legal discovery is an important tool to find out just how the contractors were instructed, who was in charge, what were the linkages to Department of Defense and/or CIA officials, and other important details, not least, those that would confirm the prisoners' charges, and help bring accountability and justice to them for their suffering.

Click here for CCR's page on the case.

IHR Clinic's Statement on Complaint Against Former Gitmo Psychologist

Ohio Board Urged to Investigate Former Guantánamo Psychologist Larry James

Ohio residents join others across the country in filing complaints against psychologists complicit in prisoner abuse

Cambridge, MA, July 8, 2010 - The International Human Rights Clinic of Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program filed a complaint with the Ohio Psychology Board yesterday, calling for an investigation into the conduct of Ohio-licensee Dr. Larry C. James, former Chief Psychologist of the intelligence command at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Despite the prison's record of torture during his tenure, Dr. James obtained an Ohio psychology license in 2008 and currently holds the influential post of Dean at Wright State University's School of Professional Psychology in Dayton.

The Clinic, along with Toledo attorney Terry Lodge, filed the 50-page complaint on behalf of four Ohio residents-Michael Reese, a veteran, of Columbus and Cleveland; Trudy Bond, a psychologist, of Toledo; Colin Bossen, a minister, of Cleveland Heights; and Josephine Setzler, a retired professor and mental health advocate, of Fremont.

"We rely on psychologists to follow the ethics of their profession, and to do no harm," said Setzler, who became an advocate after her brother was diagnosed with mental illness. "If a psychologist uses his professional training to facilitate suffering, then should he really be licensed to treat patients in Ohio?"

The complaint follows a filing last month by the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law against Texas psychologist James Mitchell, a CIA-contractor accused of torturing prisoners in the agency's secret prisons program. Also yesterday, the Center for Justice and Accountability filed a complaint in New York against psychologist John Leso, Dr. James's predecessor on the Guantánamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) known as "Biscuit."

According to the Ohio complaint, for several months in 2003, and from 2007-2008, Dr. James was the senior psychologist of the Guantánamo BSCT, a small but influential group of mental health professionals whose job it was to advise on and participate in the interrogations, and to help create an environment designed to break down prisoners.

During his tenure at the prison, boys and men were threatened with rape and death for themselves and their family members; sexually, culturally, and religiously humiliated; forced naked; deprived of sleep; subjected to sensory deprivation, over-stimulation, and extreme isolation; short-shackled into stress positions for hours; and physically assaulted. The evidence indicates that abuse of this kind was systemic, that BSCT health professionals played an integral role in its planning and practice, and that Dr. James, in his position of authority, at minimum knew or should have known it was being inflicted.

"We can't afford to have the Board turn a blind eye to these allegations," said Trudy Bond, a practicing psychologist in Ohio for the past 30 years. "The profession relies on the state board to safeguard the public's trust in psychologists."

The complaint details conflicts of interest that marred Dr. James's role as a psychologist, particularly in the case of three minors, aged 12-14 years old, whose treatment he supervised at Guantánamo. Dr. James oversaw their arbitrary detention and forcible transfer to an island thousands of miles away from their families. The complaint also alleges that he failed to fulfill his duty to report abuse, including abuse he personally witnessed.

"It is the day-to-day business of the board to investigate credible allegations against psychologists," said lawyer Deborah Popowski, Skirball Fellow at the International Human Rights Clinic. "We have faith the board will recognize its responsibility and fully investigate the claims in this complaint."

Much of today's complaint addresses information revealed in Dr. James's book, entitled Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib, which he published a few weeks after applying for an Ohio license. In the book, Dr. James alleges that there have been no reports of abuse in Guantánamo since he first arrived in January 2003. The complaint documents, in detail, evidence to the contrary.

I covered some of this story in a longer article yesterday. You can find coverage of the IHR complaint against James in the Ohio local press, including the Dayton Daily News, and the Springfield News-Sun.

To view the complaint, click here (PDF). To learn more about the complainants, click here.

Amicus Briefs Ask Supreme Court to Hear Abu Ghraib Contractors Torture Case

The following is a press release from Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). It concerns a petition to the Supreme Court by CCR stemming from last September's DC Court of Appeals decision ruling in favor of defendants CACI and L-3, whose employees were alleged to have been involved in torture at Abu Ghraib. The 2-1 decision said that that private contractors are entitled to immunity from lawsuit due to so-called “battlefield preemption.”

Will the Supreme Court recognize the fundamental need for redress for torture victims, the importance of protections for prisoners pronounced by international human rights and humanitarian law? I'm not too sanguine myself, but the Court has surprised before. I salute groups like CCR, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights and the Center for Victims of Torture, who are fighting to maintain civilized norms in these dark ages of American empire. This country needs fundamental change. We cannot rely on human rights and civil liberties organizations like ACLU alone to stem the tide of militarism that threatens to swallow up the last vestiges of democracy in the United States, as it rides rough-shod over other countries abroad. Sooner or later, this need for greater political organization will take form in either new political parties or new social entities that better express the will of the people for peace, fairness and democracy, and an end to barbaric practices like torture and military conquest.

In the meantime, please support CCR's lawsuit and press for the case to be taken up by the Supreme Court.

Retired Senior Military Officers, Rights Groups File Amicus Briefs Asking Supreme Court to Hear Abu Ghraib Torture Case Against Contractors CACI and L-3

May 28, 2010, Washington, D.C. – Today, three amicus curiae or friend-of-the-court briefs were filed in the Supreme Court, in support of CCR’s petition for certiorari in its case against CACI and L-3 Services (formerly Titan), two corporations whose employees are alleged to have participated in the infamous torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. One brief, submitted by retired high-ranking military officers, argues that private military contractors are not the equivalent of U.S. soldiers and cannot be considered “combatants” because they are not fully incorporated into the armed forces or subject to a military chain of command. The Counsel of Record for the retired military brief is John J. Gibbons, former Chief Judge of the Third Circuit, who served in the U.S. Navy in WWII, and signatories to the brief include: David M. Brahms, retired Brigadier General; James P. Cullen, retired Brigadier General and former Chief Judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals; Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, former Navy’s Judge Advocate General; and Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, also a former Navy’s Judge Advocate General. In a 2-1 decision rendered in September 2009, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the claims against CACI and L-3, finding that the private contractors were entitled to immunity from suit through “battlefield preemption.”

Another brief was filed by Professors of Federal Courts, International Law, and U.S. Foreign Relations Law, stating that there is no basis for immunity or a pre-emption defense for the federal claims, including war crimes, under the Alien Tort Statute. The third brief, filed on behalf of human rights organizations including Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights and the Center for Victims of Torture, as well as international law scholars, highlights the need for redress for torture victims and the protections that should be afforded to detainees under international human rights and humanitarian law.

Notably, the retired military officials brief reads: “Membership in the U.S. Armed Forces carries with it significant privileges but also heavy obligations, foremost among them being respect for the law of war and for the military chain of command. These cornerstones of the modern American Armed Forces reflect a culture and tradition that demands rigorous training, discipline and accountability. But private military contractors, by contrast, are no more than corporate entities, whose activities are governed only by contractual relationships with the military and who are primarily accountable to private shareholders. Because they are not subjected to the same standards of accountability as are members of the military, private contractors do not merit the immunity afforded to sovereign governmental entities, now provided to them by the decision of the court of appeals.”

“The amicus briefs filed today demonstrate why the Supreme Court must review the decision taken by the court of appeals against the individuals tortured at Abu Ghraib,” said Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) attorney Katherine Gallagher. “The lower court’s result not only places the United States on the wrong side of international human rights law, but it runs counter to the views of experienced military leaders on how best to ensure that our obligations regarding humane treatment of detainees are met, and what the nature of the relationship is between U.S. military personnel and private military contractors hired to assist them.”

Last month, CCR and co-counsel argued in their petition for certiorari that the Supreme Court should hear the case because the Court of Appeals decision of September 11, 2009, gave corporate government contractors more protections than even U.S. soldiers enjoy, and constituted judicial overreaching. In that decision, a majority of the panel effectively immunized contractors for torture and other serious mistreatment of Iraqi detainees because of the integration it found of contractors into the military’s operational mission and chain of command. The legal team argued that the military’s own investigations had found CACI and L-3 employees participated in the torture, humiliation and dehumanization of the Iraqi civilians detained at Abu Ghraib. The legal team further argued that corporations could be held liable for war crimes, including torture, under international law.

Saleh v. Titan, first filed in 2004, is a federal lawsuit brought by more than 250 former Iraqi prisoners against private contractors CACI and L-3 Services that alleges the companies’ employees participated in torture and serious abuses while they were hired to provide interrogation and interpretation services, respectively, at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq.

The suit charges defendants with torture and other war crimes, as well as common law torts including sexual assault and battery, and negligent hiring and supervision. The acts to which the plaintiffs alleged they were subjected at the hands of the defendants and certain government co-conspirators include: rape and threats of rape and other forms of sexual assault; being forced to watch a family member tortured and abused so badly that he died; repeated beatings, including beatings with chains, boots and other objects; forced nudity; hooding; being detained in isolation; being urinated on and otherwise humiliated.

The victims are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, and law firms Burke PLLC, Motley Rice LLC, Akeel & Valentine, P.C , The Law Firm of L. Palmer Foret, P.C. and Edmond Jones Lindsay, LLP.

Download copies of the amici curiae briefs or visit the Saleh et al v. Titan et al case page for more information.

Pressure Grows Over Torture Pics, Obama Turns to SCOTUS

First, President Obama said he would agree to the release of 21 photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel (and 23 additional photos "identified as responsive"), as ordered by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a suit filed by the ACLU. Then Obama changed his mind, and on Thursday, went to back to the Circuit Court and asked it, according to the Washington Post, "to recall its order requiring the release of photographs held by the Pentagon."

But, there was a new wrinkle. The UK Telegraph released a story saying the photos that could be released included horrific pictures from Abu Ghraib that "show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." Furthermore, their sourcing was impeccable, as the information came from Gen. Antonio Taguba, who had conducted an internal Pentagon investigation of the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004.

Of course, as Peterr's post pointed out, the Telegraph story was met with immediate denial by the Pentagon. The Daily Telegraph was accused of having "completely mischaracterized the images."

Do you smell the rising smoke of a pending scandal growing? If not, consider what came next.

"Bad Apples"? The Interrogation of Abu Ghraib Internee #151363

The following is an example of the requested approval for exceptions to the interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib, in this case made on behalf ofthe interrogation plan for internee #15163, a (presumably young) Syrian male. Such requests meant that extraordinary means were to be used, i.e., torture, and needed, per Pentagon policy, approval by the higher ups. This request was made by Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, Iraq, to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

The version here comes from scvhistory.com. A big H/T for my finding this document goes to Dr. Steven Miles, where a large excerpt and analysis of the document can be found on pp. 56-57 of his excellent book, Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors (UC Press, 2009).

Miles notes:

It is reasonable to infer that a behavioral scientist helped design this proposal. At the time is was written, the Abu Ghraib BSCT [Behavioral Science Consultation Team] was functional and psychological monitoring of interrogations was being done. The plan contains a psycho-cultural approach to exploiting a prisoner's religion.

As you read, note the integration of MPs into the interrogation "plan." When the guards said they were instructed by military intelligence and others to "soften up" the prisoners, they were given short shrift by the media and the public. Here is documentary proof of planning of the Abu Ghraib torure from high up, and only months before the scandal over it broke.

In the following document, I have taken the liberty of emphasizing some text in bold.

MEMORANDUM THRU Commander, CJTF- , ATTN: C2 (AETV-CJ2), BG(P) Fast, Victory Base, Iraq, APO AE 09342

Commander, CJTF- , ATTN: StaffJudge Advocate (AETV-JA), COL Warren, Victory Base, Iraq, APO AE 09342

FOR Commander, CJTF- 7, LTG Sanchez, Victory Base, Iraq, APO AE 09342

SUBJECT: Request for Exception to CJTF- 7 Interrogation and Counter Resistance Policy

1. Request exception to the CJTF - 7 Interrogation and Counter Resistance Policy to authorize the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JDIC) interrogator to be authorized to use the Fear up Harsh and isolation approaches during interrogations with the following detainee.

a. Name: J[redacted] K[redacted]

b. ISN: 151363

c. Date request employment of approach: As soon as possible.

d. Circumstances of capture: Detainee is a Syrian male [redacted] years of age, captured in an attempted IED attack in Baghdad, IZ. Detainee is an admitted foreign fighter who came to commit Jihad against Coalition Forces in Iraq. He was captured with [approx. four words redacted] and [approx. three words redacted] while attempting to set up an IED.

e. Assessment of detainee: Detainee is at the point where he is resigned to the hope that Allah will see him through this episode in his life, therefore he feels no need to speak with interrogators. Detainee will not answer open ended questions, has a smug attitude and is running counter approaches on interrogators. Detainee needs to be put in a position where he will feel that the only option to get out of jail is to speak with interrogators.

f. Potential information: Detainee can provide information related to safe houses facilitators, financing, recruitment and operations of foreign fighter smuggling into Iraq. Detainee can also potentially provide names and target information of local facilitators in Ar-Ramadi. Detainee can also confirm information provided from others captured with him.

g. Limitations of approach: Detainee will be interrogated in the Camp Vigilant Steel site. Detainee argues that Allah is the only one that can decide his fate. Interrogators will establish control of detainee by allowing detainee to take this stance then implement a Fear up harsh approach. Interrogators will reinforce the fact that we have attempted to help him time and time again and that they are now putting it in Allah' s hands. Interrogators will at a maximum throw tables, chairs, invade his personal space and continuously yell at the detainee. Interrogators will not physically touch or harm the detainee, will take all necessary precautions that all thrown objects are clear of the detainee and will not coerce the detainee in any way. If the detainee has not broken yet, interrogators will move into the segregation phase of the approach. Interrogators will coordinate with Military Police guards in the segregation area prior to initiation of this phase. For the segregation phase of the approach the MPs will put an empty sandbag onto the prisoners head before moving him out of Vigilant B. This measure will be for force protection purposes and transporting the detainee to the segregation area by HMMWV. MPs will be transporting the detainee with the interrogators present. During transportation, the Fear up Harsh approach will be continued, highlighting the Allah factor. Interrogators will take all necessary precautions in conjunction with the MPs to ensure detainees safety during transport. Upon arrival at site, MP guards will take him into custody. MP working dogs will be present and barking during this phase. Detainee will be strip searched by guards with the empty sandbag over his head for the safety of himself, prison guards, interrogators and other prisoners. Interrogators will wait outside the room while detainee is strip searched. Interrogators will watch from a distance while detainee is placed in the segregation cell. Detainee will be put on the adjusted sleep schedule (attached) for 72 hours. Interrogations will be conducted continuously during this 72 hour period. The approaches which will be used during this phase will include, fear up harsh, pride and ego down, silence and loud music. Stress positions will also be used in accordance with CJTF- 7 IROE in order to intensify the approach.

2. The approval for this approach is essential due to the information this detainee possesses. It will greatly enhance and expedite the collection effort in support of CJTF - 7 Intelligence requirements and could potentially save countless lives of American soldiers in the future.

3. POC for this action is CPT Fitch, 205th MI Bde SJA at DNVT 302-559-4031 or via SIPR at c5cm205misia@205mi.c5.army.smil.mil or CPT Wood, JIDC Interrogation OIC, at DNVT 302-559- 1764 or via SlPR at Carolyn.wood@us.army.smil.mil.

THOMAS M. PAPPAS
COL, MI
Commanding

Exception to the CJTF- 7 Interrogation and Counter Resistance Policy is granted/not granted.

AETV-MI
SUBJECT:
Request for Exception to CJTF - 7 Interrogation and Counter Resistance Policy

RICARDO S. SANCHEZ
LTG, USA
Commanding

This document totally destroys the "bad apple" theory of the torture, if it hasn't been adequately destroyed already. But sometimes documents speak their own tremulous truth, in ways that even well-written journalism cannot.

Feel free to pass this one around.

Released FBI Memo Documents Bush Ordering Torture

For the Soldier who fights for Truth, calls his enemy his brother. -- William Blake

Jason Leopold had an amazing find when perusing old released FBI documents the ACLU posted has posted on their site. There are about 100,000 such memos at the site, and who knows how much else is buried in that cache? The memo he reports on was first posted by the ACLU in December 2004, but the information in it lay buried until just this week.

Senior FBI agents stationed in Iraq in 2004 claimed in an e-mail that President George W. Bush signed an executive order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other harsh tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI e-mail -- dated May 22, 2004 -- followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential executive order.

According to the e-mail, Bush’s executive order authorized interrogators to use military dogs, “stress positions,” sleep “management,” loud music and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” to extract information from detainees in Iraq, which was considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Bush has never before been directly linked to authorizing specific interrogation techniques at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Bush has admitted, however, that he personally signed off on the waterboarding of three "high-value" prisoners.

Leopold notes that previously the Bush White House (in the person of Alberto Gonzales) stated in 2004, "The president has not directed the use of specific interrogation techniques." But the Senate Armed Services report on Department of Defense treatment of prisoners did note that at the very least it was President Bush himself whose February 7,2002 Executive Memorandum denying al-Qaeda and the Taliban Geneva protections, “opened the door” to torture and abuse of prisoners.

While Jason is writing a news article and can't call Bush and Gonzales liars, I can. The FBI memo is clear evidence of such an executive order. The FBI agents are writing for clarification of what constitutes reportable "abuse," since they have been ordered to report abuse to their superiors.

From the memo:

Our questions relate to the instruction in the EC to report abuse. The EC states that if "an FBI employee knows or suspects non-FBI personnel has abused or is abusing or mistreating a detainee, the FBI employee must report the incident.

This instruction begs the question of what constitutes "abuse." We assume this does not include lawful interrogation techniques authorized by Executive Order. We are aware that prior to a revision in policy last week, an Executive Order signed by President Bush authorized the following interrogation techniques among others sleep "management," use of MWDs (military working dogs), "stress positions" such as half squats, "environmental manipulation" such as the use of loud music, sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc. We assume the OGC instruction does not include the reporting of these authorized interrogation techniques, and that the use of these techniques does not constitute "abuse."

In a posting earlier today, Emptywheel noted that the FBI memo above was also quoted in the Department of Justice Inspector General Report on FBI involvement in detainee interrogations. The e-mail made a stir when first reported in December 2004, but the news dropped out of site after the White House issued a denial, and no EO surfaced.

Looking at the DoJ OIG report, I noticed that there was no denial of the claims made regarding coercive interrogation methods in a Bush presidential executive order by either OIG, or any number of officials who received this message. One would think that if the agent was incorrect, someone would have noted it. But in fact, the reference by the FBI agent to Bush's presidential EO is not denied by those who best would have known if it were true. I take this as convergent, though not definitive, evidence of the EO's existence.

Take for instance the final follow-up to the agent's request, by FBI General Counsel, Valerie E. Caproni:

Does it answer his question to say that conduct that is known to be authorized need not be reported?

In other words... go away, don't bother me! Just follow what constituted authority tells you to do.

Shame on the FBI agents who wrote this memo, and shame on the FBI higher-ups who hid behind terms like "lawful" or "authorized" for what are clearly abusive torture techniques. While noting they would still report physical beatings, sexual humiliation "or other conduct clearly constituting abuse," the effect of the Bush EO was to draw indefinable lines between torture and "harsh" abuse. Apparently these agents were unaware that even "cruel, inhumane, and degrading" treatment is outlawed by both the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against Torture, treaties to which the U.S. is signatory, and are law in the United States. Clearly, Bush was unaware or uncaring of such facts, having used his attorneys to cook up bogus legal opinions for the ongoing torture he had already ordered.

The consequences of Bush's torture program are incalculable, from the loss of international trust, to the decay of law, both at home and abroad. Of course, there is the damage to the tortured themselves. PHR wrote a great book, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, on how torture affects its victims. But here, I only want to point out how it affected just one of Bush's torture victims, Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times, and who was never the Al Qaeda mastermind the administration claimed he was. He was tortured so he could cough up a (false) link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, in order to provide a cause for war for the bellicose Bush administration.

How's Zubaydah doing today? Years now let out of his CIA prison, and held still at Guantanamo, even months after Obama determined the prison should close, let this description by Joseph Margulies in the Los Angeles Times today on Zubaydah's current condition serve as an epitaph for this article, if not for this nation's soul:

Partly as a result of injuries he suffered while he was fighting the communists in Afghanistan, partly as a result of how those injuries were exacerbated by the CIA and partly as a result of his extended isolation, Abu Zubaydah's mental grasp is slipping away.

Today, he suffers blinding headaches and has permanent brain damage. He has an excruciating sensitivity to sounds, hearing what others do not. The slightest noise drives him nearly insane. In the last two years alone, he has experienced about 200 seizures.

But physical pain is a passing thing. The enduring torment is the taunting reminder that darkness encroaches. Already, he cannot picture his mother's face or recall his father's name. Gradually, his past, like his future, eludes him.

If a monarch leader who orders torture cannot be prosecuted for this heinous crime, then what hope is there left for our society?

Sunday Torture Weekly "Round-up"

Also posted at Daily Kos

The Sunday Weekly Torture "Round-up" is intended to be a new regular feature at Daily Kos, capturing stories on the ongoing torture scandal, especially those that might otherwise escape notice. At the same time, we will strive to present an overview of important new developments in the drive to hold the U.S. government responsible for its war crimes, in addition to covering stories concerning torture from other countries, as time and space permit. (Alas, the U.S. has no monopoly on this hideous practice.)

The editors for the WTR are myself, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, and Meteor Blades and we will rotate each week. Interesting or important news or tips concerning torture or civil liberties issues bearing upon it can be emailed to any of these individuals.

There were many new developments this week: the CIA announced it would withhold a list describing 1000s of documents related to the destruction of videotapes depicting torture; an ex-Bush administration official told of administration indifference to evidence of innocence for the great bulk of "enemy combatants"; a major lawsuit against Pentagon contractors accused of torture was allowed to proceed; a "released" Guantanamo hunger striker was refused more humane prison conditions, and more.

Cheney, Wilkerson, Obama and the Fake Scandal over Gitmo Prisoner Releases

Dick Cheney has been running around the country trying to spread his particular style of panic and fear in the wake of reports that released Guantanamo prisoners will swell the ranks of terrorists who will then strike at America. Andy Worthington refutes these lies in "The Stories of Six Prisoners Who Were Released from Guantanamo" and this story at Huffington Post.

As has been covered extensively elsewhere (and at Daily Kos), Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, has revealed that most of the Guantanamo prisoners are innocents, and moreover, shockingly, that the Bush Administration knew this from the get-go, belying Cheney's fabrications about the "worst of the worst." Here's Wilkerson from The Washington Note article earlier this week:

The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces.

And yet days after this revelation, we get this kind of crap from the current administration, as reported by Associated Press, via the Miami Herald:

Obama says in a broadcast interview [on 60 Minutes tonight] that some of the people released from the prison camps in southeast in Cuba have rejoined terrorist groups. He also says U.S. officials have not always been effective in determining which prisoners will be a danger once they are let go.

If you think I'm too harsh on Obama, read the Sunday editorial in today's New York Times (H/T Stephen Soldz):

we did not expect that Mr. Obama, who addressed these issues with such clarity during his campaign, would be sending such confused and mixed signals from the White House. Some of what the public has heard from the Obama administration on issues like state secrets and detainees sounds a bit too close for comfort to the Bush team’s benighted ideas.

Meanwhile, today's UK Guardian is reporting that despite Obama's comments above, his administration will change previous U.S. policy and allow some former Guantanamo prisoners to be resettled in the United States:

The White House is set to reverse a key Bush administration policy by allowing some of the 240 remaining Guantánamo Bay inmates to be resettled on American soil.

The US is pushing for Europe to take a share of released inmates, but the Obama administration is reconciled to taking some of them, even though there will be noisy resistance from individual states....

The cases of the 240 inmates are being reviewed by a team of experienced US prosecutors to determine whether there is a basis for criminal charges. It remains unresolved what to do if there is a substantial "third category" of detainees who are deemed to pose a security threat, but against whom there is insufficient evidence to file criminal charges either because evidence was obtained under torture or because it is in the form of classified intelligence.

In a 90-minute interview on CBS tonight, Obama struck back at the former vice-president Dick Cheney over his charge that the new Guantánamo policy was putting US security at risk. The president said his predecessor's policy of indefinite detention was unsustainable and had generated anti-US sentiment without making the country safer.

Despite the change in policy, there was this ominous portent for the future:

The Obama administration is still contemplating the option of military courts martial, reconstituting the Bush-era military commissions or even instituting some new form of preventive detention.

The dance being done by current and former administration officials over the abominable crimes conducted at Guantanamo and elsewhere are dizzying in their vertiginous lurchings from mea culpas to lies to attempts at "reform."

Saudi Gitmo Prisoner, Cleared for Release, But Refused Transfer from Maximum Security Detention, Remains on Hunger Strike

Andy Worthington brings the case of Guantanamo hunger striker Ahmed Zuhair to our attention in a posting last Friday. (If this link isn't working, try this one.) Zuhair, a father of ten children, was arrested in Pakistan, and ultimately was sent to Guantanamo, accused of associations with Al Qaeda. He has been accused of being involved with the bombing of the USS Cole, and of the murder of an American in Bosnia in 1994 or 1995, among other supposed crimes or dubious connections (see Wikipedia link).

Yet the U.S. government decided in an Administrative Review Board hearing last December 23 that he was cleared for release from Guantanamo. Worthington notes that "he was not informed until February 10, and his lawyers were not told until February 16," noting:

This rather makes a mockery of the Guantánamo authorities’ complaints about the “threat” he poses, and the allegations, still cited in news reports, that “US authorities allege that he trained with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and was a member of an Islamic fighting group in Bosnia in the mid-1990s,” but above all it confirms — as if any confirmation were required — that, in the isolated world of Guantánamo, what counts against the majority of the prisoners is not the supposed rationale for their detention in the first place, which is often nothing more than a distant memory, but their behavior in detention.

Zuhair has been identified as having "history of disciplinary infractions", no doubt associated with his hunger strike, which began in June 2005. On March 18 of this year, the government refused a deal with Zuhair whereby he would end his years-long hunger strike if he were moved from the high-security Camp 6, where prisoners endure "the isolation of a prison block modeled on a maximum security prison for convicted criminals on the US mainland," to the lesser regimen of Camp 4. The government says it's afraid of the precedent such a move might make. This is in spite of the fact that Zuhair has been cleared for release!

So his hunger strike continues, and the record of the Obama administration releasing any of the many innocent men held at Guantanamo in the two months Obama has been in charge remains at a pitiful... one! (That one release was Binyam Mohamed.) According to his attorney, on his last visit to Mr. Zuhair:

... he weighed no more than 100 pounds, and “also appeared to be ill, vomiting repeatedly during meetings” at the prison. “Mr. Zuhair lifted his orange shirt and showed me his chest,” Kassem explained. “It was skeletal.“ He added, “Mr. Zuhair’s legs looked like bones with skin wrapped tight around them.”

Andy Worthington concludes, "While this reflects badly on the prison authorities, I believe it also reflects badly on the Obama administration."

CACI International Loses Bid to Spike Torture Lawsuit

According to a CNN report:

U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee rejected claims by defense contractor CACI that the company was immune from accountability over claims of physical abuse, war crimes and civil conspiracy.

Reports of torture and humiliation by soldiers and civilian contractors against Iraqi detainees created a political, diplomatic and public relations nightmare for the Bush administration in the months and years after the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Four Iraqi detainees have sued in U.S. federal courts, alleging contract interrogators assigned to the Baghdad Central Prison — known as Abu Ghraib — subjected them to beatings and mental abuse, then destroyed documents and video evidence and later misled officials about what was happening inside the facility.

Center for Constitutional Rights has been following the case and providing part of the legal representation to plaintiffs. From their information page on the case:

The suit, brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and federal question jurisdiction, brings claims arising from violations of U.S. and international law including torture; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; war crimes; assault and battery; sexual assault and battery; intentional infliction of emotional distress; negligent hiring and supervision; and negligent infliction of emotional distress. There are also civil conspiracy and aiding and abetting counts attached to most of these charges. Through this action, Plaintiffs seek compensatory and punitive damages.

In the case of one prisoner:

Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid was detained from 2003 until 2005, during which he was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about three months. While detained there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured Mr. Rashid by placing him in stress positions for extended periods of time, humiliating him, depriving him of oxygen, food, and water, shooting him in the head with a taser gun, and by beating him so severely that he suffered from broken limbs and vision loss. Mr. Rashid was forcibly subjected to sexual acts by a female as he was cuffed and shackled to cell bars. He was also forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner.

Among the heinous acts to which the four Plaintiffs were subjected at the hands of the defendant and certain government co-conspirators were: electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.

All of the plaintiffs are innocent Iraqis who were ultimately released without ever being charged with a crime. They all continue to suffer from physical and mental injuries caused by the torture and other abuse.

In a related story, TheDay.com is reporting:

Thousands of Iraqis held without charge by the United States on suspicion of links to insurgents or militants are being freed by this summer because of little or no evidence against them.

CIA Withholds List of over 3,000 Torture Tapes Documents from Public Release

Last Friday, the ACLU revealed that it "has a list of roughly 3,000 summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency." Only two days earlier, the ACLU had formally asked Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor "to investigate the authorization to use torture at CIA secret prisons," following Mark Danner's article at the New York Review of Books detailing a leaked ICRC report on torture of CIA prisoners.

(The accompanying picture above is an actual sketch by a U.S. MP Reserve Sargeant of how Dilawar was tortured at Bagram prison.)

According to a report on the CIA documents list by Jason Leopold:

The number of documents – but not their contents – was mentioned Friday in a Justice Department letter from Lev Dassin, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Dassin told Judge Hellerstein that unredacted versions of the materials would be available for only him to review "in-camera" on March 26. The CIA also refused to provide the ACLU with a list of individuals who watched the videotapes prior to their destruction because that information "is either classified or otherwise protected by statute."

The number of relevant documents – "roughly 3,000," according to the letter – adds weight to the belief that CIA interrogators were in frequent communication with headquarters at Langley, Virginia, and with senior Bush administration officials who were monitoring the harsh techniques used and approving them one by one or even in combination.

And there was this interesting speculation by Emptywheel at Firedoglake:

Take a look at this list of FOIA exemptions, and you'll see why that may be rather interesting. For example, trade secrets might protect the identities of contractors who had viewed or retained the torture tapes. There's the physical safety exemption that they earlier cited in regards to their destruction of the tapes--but if they invoked this exemption, it might reveal that they're worried about the identities of non-CIA employees being released. There are law enforcement exemptions they might invoke if DOJ had reviewed these torture tapes in 2004 in response to a criminal referral by CIA's Inspector General.

Or the truly interesting possibility--that CIA might claim some identities are exempt from FOIA because they are presidential records more generally exempt from FOIA, which would come into play if someone at the White House had watched the torture tapes.

Rise in Torture Allegations Against Mexican Army

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times carried a report on a sharp increase in allegations of human rights abuses by the Mexican Army, as the Mexican government steps up its campaign against drug traffickers throughout the country.

The allegations include illegal searches, arrests without cause, rape, sexual abuse and torture, eight Mexican and international rights groups said in a report prepared for presentation to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington.

In 28 cases, the report said, the alleged violations resulted in death.

The groups said the number of complaints to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission jumped to 1,230 last year, from 182 in 2006. Calderon launched his anti-crime offensive in December 2006, and assigned the army a leading role....

More than 7,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in the last 15 months, according to government and media estimates.

Darius Rejali on Long History of CIA Torture Abuse

The winner of the 2007 Human Rights Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association for his massive study, Torture and Democracy, Darius Rejali, has a new article at AlterNet detailing some of the history behind recent revelations of U.S. torture.

All the techniques in the accounts of torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, as reported Monday, collected from 14 detainees held in CIA custody, fit a long historical pattern of Anglo-Saxon modern. The ICRC report apparently includes details of CIA practices unknown until now, details that point to practices with names, histories, and political influences. In torture, hell is always in the details.

Dejali covers grisly, sadistic techniques now documented in use by the CIA within recent years, including the "ice-water cure," "the cold cell," "water-boarding," "standing cells," "High-cuffing," and more. Here's Dejali on "Sweatboxes and coubarils":

Abu Zubaydah says, "Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow.... The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 feet 6 inches] in height." The large box, which Abu Zubaydah says he was held in for up to two hours, is a classic sweatbox. Sweatboxes are old, and they came into modern torture from traditional Asian penal practices. If you've seen Bridge on the River Kwai, you know the Japanese used them in POW camps in World War II. They are still common in East Asia. The Chinese used them during the Korean War, and Chinese prisoners today relate accounts of squeeze cells (xiaohao, literally "small number"), dark cells (heiwu), and extremely hot or cold cells. In Vietnam, they are dubbed variously "dark cells," "tiger cages," or "connex boxes," which are metal and heat up rapidly in the tropical sun.

Abu Zubaydah was also placed into the smaller box, in which he was forced to crouch for hours, until "the stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful." This smaller type of box was once called a coubaril. Coubarils often bent the body in an uncomfortable position. They were standard in French penal colonies in New Guinea in the 19th century, where some prisoners were held in them for 16 days at a stretch.

Both kinds of boxes entered American prison and military practice in the 19th century. They were a standard part of naval discipline, and the word sweatbox comes from the Civil War era. In the 1970s, prisoners described sweatboxes in South Vietnam, Iran (tabout, or "coffin"), Israel, and Turkey ("tortoise cell"). In the last three decades, prisoners have reported the use of sweatboxes in Brazil (cofrinho), Honduras (cajones), and Paraguay (guardia). And after 2002, Iraqi prisoners held in U.S. detention centers describe "cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down," as well as a box known as "the coffin" at the U.S. detention center at Qaim near Syria.

Other News

Al-Marri is Held Without Bail Pending Trial

UN Launches Probe of Secret Detention Sites

New pressure in Uighurs’ cases

Islamabad High Court Calls for Repatriation of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Investigation into Her Missing Children

BREAKING -- Newsweek reports that release is imminent of three of the secret Bush administration OLC memos:

Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify—and publicly release—three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against “high value” Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by Justice Department lawyers in May 2005, provide the legal rationale for waterboarding, head slapping and other rough tactics used by the CIA. One senior Obama official, who like others interviewed for this story requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said the memos were “ugly” and could embarrass the CIA. Other officials predicted they would fuel demands for a “truth commission” on torture.

Note this, from the same article:

"I now know we were not fully and completely briefed on the CIA program," Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told NEWSWEEK. A U.S. official disputed the charge, claiming that members of Congress received more than 30 briefings over the life of the CIA program and that Congressional intel panels had seen the Red Cross report.

Other Resources

Torture Documents released under Freedom of Information Act

Law professor David Luban's classic essay, "Liberalism, Torture and the Ticking Bomb"

I close this first installment with a quote from the preeminent American poet, Walt Whitman:

Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear,
     we are beautiful or
sinful in ourselves only.

(O Mother--O Sisters dear!
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us,
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

This week's WTR was put together with the assistance of Patriot Daily News Clearninghouse. Thanks, PDNC!