The letter on torture The New Yorker would not print

Dear Editor,

Many of us share Jane Mayer's disgust at the revelations about CIA torture ("Torture and the Truth," Dec. 22 & 29, 2014 [The New Yorker]), and the dishonesty whereby the CIA hid the hideous effects of their "enhanced interrogation" program. But I was disappointed that Ms. Mayer continues to imply that the U.S. gave up torture when President Obama issued his famous executive order in January 2009, when the President formally announced the Army Field Manual was to be the interrogator's only guide for interrogation techniques.

But numerous human rights and legal groups have said the Army Field Manual still includes techniques that amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Indeed, in November 2014, the UN Committee Against Torture, which monitors adherence to a UN treaty against torture to which the U.S. is a signatory, stated in a review of U.S. practices that the U.S. needed to review Appendix M of the Army Field Manual. The reason? The manual allowed the use of sleep and sensory deprivation, and that kind of treatment of prisoners goes against treaty obligations. In the case of sensory deprivation, the Committee called the manual's use of the technique "torture" which can "create a state of psychosis with the detainee."

The UN report did not go unnoticed. The story made headlines in the New York Times and other newspapers. It is a shame that it is ignored in the pages of The New Yorker, and that a false picture about the current state of U.S. interrogation procedures is propagated.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Kaye

[Note: the only change I've made in posting this is to add whatever is in brackets, as well as the embedded links. These minimal additions are added for the convenience and potential interest of readers.]

Torture-linked Shrink's Army Program Labels Some Soldiers "Spiritually Unfit"

Originally posted at Firedoglake

Jason Leopold has posted a new article at Truthout, describing how an "experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative" called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is drawing criticism from civil rights groups and rank-and-file soldiers by testing military personnel for "spiritual fitness."

CSF appears to be the brainchild of Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum and Dr. Martin Seligman, the psychologist who developed the theories of "learned helplessness" and "learned optimism." Jane Mayer, Scott Shane, and others have connected Seligman to talks at San Diego's SERE school in May 2002, where he discussed, in Seligman's own words, "how American troops and American personnel could use what is known about learned helplessness and related findings to resist torture and evade successful interrogation by their captors." Notorious SERE/CIA interrogator-psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were present at the Seligman talk. Former Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman told Jane Mayer that he knew Mitchell for years, and "learned helplessness was his whole paradigm."

According to Jason Leopold, five months prior to the May 2002 SERE lecture:

... Seligman hosted a meeting at his house that was attended by Mitchell, along with the CIA's then-Director of Behavioral Science Research, Kirk Hubbard, and an Israeli intelligence agent. Seligman has claimed he was totally unaware his theory on Learned Helplessness was being used against detainees after 9/11 and denied ever engaging in discussions about the Bush administration's torture program with Mitchell, Jessen, or any other government official.

But Seligman's SERE days appear to be behind him, and he has repackaged himself as "Dr. Happy." His new "learned optimism" theories, supposedly sold in program format (for millions of dollars) to the Army as a way to reduce PTSD and suicide rates, are instead packaging conformist and religious ideologies in the name of resiliency "fitness" for the Army.

CSF examines "spiritual fitness" with questions like "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." One soldier tested last month told Truthout that he was labeled "spiritually unfit" because he answered the "not like me at all" box. As a result, the Army has told him he "may lack a sense of meaning or purpose in his life." Presumably, like other soldiers with low spirituality scores, he'll have to attend remedial courses and "be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to 'train' soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality."

According to the Truthout article, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has sent letters to the Army demanding it "immediately cease and desist administering the 'spiritual' portion of the CSF test.

The fact the Army is enforcing religious ideology upon soldiers is already outrageous enough, but the piquant irony by which the primary theorist of the program is also one of the primary theorists behind the use of certain techniques to break down and torture people, and whose theories were used by DoD/CIA psychologists to devise a diabolical torture program, well... one's head could spin for days processing the internal contradictions. But that's America today, a torturing country that uses huckster psychology to promote ersatz spirituality in soldiers sent to invade foreign countries for the purpose of selling arms and controlling oil and gas supplies.

What's next? Will atheism be pronounced a new form of "material support to terrorism"? Will Elmer Gantry replace Robert Gates as next Secretary of Defense? Gates has been President Obama's Secretary of Defense nearly as long now as he served as same in the administration of George W. Bush.

Truly, nothing can be considered strange anymore.

ACLU Files FOIA on CIA Drone Attacks

Thanks, Spencer Ackerman, for noticing, with everything else going on, that the ACLU has filed a "Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA and the Departments of State, Justice and Defense for documentation establishing the legal basis for the drone strikes."

Additionally, the civil liberties group wants to see the government’s estimates for how many civilians the drone program is responsible for killing. A recent New America Foundation report arguing that most drone critics overstate overstate civilian casualties still found that one in every three Pakistanis killed by the drones is a civilian, not a combatant.

The drone attacks were profiled in an amazing piece last October by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.

Consider the following selection from Mayer's article. Note the bolded, emphasized text. It's quite indicative of how morally bankrupt, even corroded the U.S. has become, as it practices naked assassination from flying bomb-holding drone robot planes in the sky.

Defining who is and who is not too tangential for the U.S. to kill can be difficult. John Radsan, a former lawyer in the C.I.A.’s office of general counsel, who is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, in St. Paul, Minnesota, says, “You can’t target someone just because he visited an Al Qaeda Web site. But you also don’t want to wait until they’re about to detonate a bomb. It’s a sliding scale.” Equally fraught is the question of how many civilian deaths can be justified. “If it’s Osama bin Laden in a house with a four-year-old, most people will say go ahead,” Radsan says. “But if it’s three or four children? Some say that’s too many. And if he’s in a school? Many say don’t do it.” Such judgment calls are being made daily by the C.I.A., which, Radsan points out, “doesn’t have much experience with killing. Traditionally, the agency that does that is the Department of Defense.”

Though the C.I.A.’s methodology remains unknown, the Pentagon has created elaborate formulas to help the military make such lethal calculations. A top military expert, who declined to be named, spoke of the military’s system, saying, “There’s a whole taxonomy of targets.”

From the ACLU release:

The administration has used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away.

Today's FOIA request was filed with the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice (including the Office of Legal Counsel), the Department of State and the CIA.

"The use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not just legal questions but policy and moral questions as well," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "These are not questions that should be decided behind closed doors. They are questions that should be debated openly, and the public should have access to information that would allow it to participate meaningfully in the debate."

I hope readers will want to spread the word on this story, and hopefully ACLU will not be stonewalled by the self-proclaimed transparency mavens at the White House. I won't bet my farm on it though.

U.S. Funding of the... Taliban?!

From a new Democracy Now! article by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, posted over at Truthout:

In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack....

“How the US Funds the Taliban” is the cover story of the latest issue of The Nation magazine.

Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack. The practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. US military officials in Kabul told Roston that a minimum of ten percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts consists of payments to the Taliban.

Well, well, well. Just when I thought the inanity and corruption of the U.S. adventure in Afghanistan couldn't get any weirder... I thought the scandal about Karzai's heroin-kingpin brother had already topped it all. Then there was the excellent article by Jane Mayer on the Predator assassinations in the Ag-Pak war. Now it's U.S. funding of the Taliban. Oh boy, no wonder Obama reportedly doesn't like any of the options presented on Afghanistan.

How about this, President Obama? Withdraw now.

And, by the way, as long as I've brought up the Predator issue, Mayer is now reporting that:

Philip Alston, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s investigator on extrajudicial executions, issued a formal warning to the Obama Administration, demanding proof that the C.I.A. program doesn’t violate international law:

While there may be circumstances in which the use of such techniques is consistent with applicable international law, this can only be determined in light of information about the legal basis on which particular individuals have been targeted, the measures taken to ensure conformity with the international humanitarian law principles of discrimination, proportionality, necessity and precaution, and the steps taken retrospectively to assess compliance in practice.

Glenn and Jane on Democracy Now! -- Has Torture Been "Wiped Out"?`

Glenn Greenwald and Jane Mayer appeared on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! the other day. There was a lot to be grateful for in letting these two important voices get further exposure. Both Mayer and Greenwald agreed there were things to be concerned about regarding the Obama administration's positions re suppression of state secrets privilege in cases such as that of Binyam Mohammed. Both agreed that the Bush Administration's organization of state torture deserved investigations and prosecutions. Both warned that dangers remain for those who would see the reestablishment of basic civil liberties.

While there is much to praise in the work of these intrepid journalists (see Glenn Greenwald's column at Salon.com on any given day, or read Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side), a few of their comments at Democracy Now! bear further scrutiny.

Mayer, at one point, took umbrage at what she felt was Greenwald's overly negative representation of the Obama administration's actions thus far concerning torture, interrogations, rendition, and secrecy:

And they —- you know, I’m giving them maybe a little bit more credit than Glenn is, because I think what they did in their first week in office was stupendous. They put out executive orders that said, from here on out, everybody’s got rights, everybody’s covered by the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC gets to see every detainee, we’re closing the black site prisons, we’re going to shut down Guantanamo. They are moving on —- these things are not nothing; these things are really seriously great reforms.

Greenwald replied, in part (emphasis added):

Well, I mean, I actually agree with Jane that it’s a mixed picture, more than perhaps my answer might have suggested, because I was addressing two specific areas where I think the Obama administration has done the wrong thing. But she’s right that the executive orders issued in the first week were promising and encouraging, and there are complexities and conflicting pressures. They need to make sure the CIA doesn’t revolt over the idea that, you know, they’re going to be dragged into court for what they did. They’re figuring out ways to try and keep some of these secrets without becoming complicit in them....

As far as looking forward, you know, those executive orders were good, and they were encouraging, but they leave some of the trickiest questions open. You know, are we going to close Guantanamo but then move those due process-abridging military commissions inside the United States and call them national security courts, where they might be even worse? Are we going to, as you just asked and as Leon Panetta suggested, preserve some of the rendition policies that have led to such severe abuse and some of the most grotesque acts of the last eight years? I mean, these are all good questions that are very much unresolved.

There are two pertinent points I'd like to make here. One, Mayer's accolades regarding the Obama executive orders on torture and interrogation appear overly optimistic. While Obama and his team deserve credit for removing (for now) the CIA's approval for "enhanced interrogation techniques", such as waterboarding, and a closing down of CIA prisons, it left the door open for changes in the near future, and allowed the CIA to still operate prisons for unspecified short-term prisoners. Would that mean, say, the three or six month imprisonment and torture of a suspect by means of sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation and manipulation of fears, or administration of short-acting psychotropic medications?

The latter is not an inapposite question, as all of these techniques are allowed by the current Army Field Manual, which by executive order of Barack Obama is now the standard operating procedure for interrogations by governmental and military agencies. And furthermore, I know that Jane Mayer knows this, because I emailed her to inform her of my articles on the subject, and she emailed back that it was something she would look into.

Besides the information I provided, Ms. Mayer could have perused some of the statements of Center for Constitutional Rights or Physicians for Human Rights, who have indicated their opposition to these aspects of the Army Field Manual and its Appendix M, and asked the current administration to rescind these techniques.

Greenwald's reply to Mayer shows that understands the ongoing problems with the Obama administration's actions thus far. While he has yet to mention the problems with the Army Field Manual, he doesn't pretend that Obama's reforms have totally ended any danger of torture by the current administration, which is how Mayer described the current situation in her interview with Terri Gross of NPR's Fresh Air program on 2/18/2009. She told Gross that when Obama's administration put all detainees held by the U.S. under the Geneva Conventions, they "wiped out the whole issue of torture" (quote can be heard 24 minutes into the interview).

Now, maybe Jane Mayer knows more that I do. Literally. The new executive order, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations" has the following subsection:

[3](c) Interpretations of Common Article 3 and the Army Field Manual. From this day forward, unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance, officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government may, in conducting interrogations, act in reliance upon Army Field Manual 2 22.3, but may not, in conducting interrogations, rely upon any interpretation of the law governing interrogation -- including interpretations of Federal criminal laws, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, Army Field Manual 2 22.3, and its predecessor document, Army Field Manual 34 52 -- issued by the Department of Justice between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009.

The provision by which the Army Field Manual claims that its techniques are legal pertains to legal reviews done by "senior DOD figures at the secretarial level, by the Joint Staff, by each of the combatant commanders and their legal advisers, by each of the service secretaries and service chiefs and their legal advisers, in addition to the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the director of National Intelligence, who coordinated laterally with the CIA." It was also "favorably reviewed" by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department.

If all those legal opinions regarding Army Field Manual 2-22.3 are now rescinded, where does that leave the techniques enumerated within its Appendix M and elsewhere, including the use of partial sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, the use of fear and humiliation, isolation, and other objectionable techniques that many legal observers have termed as cruel, inhumane, and degrading, if not torture? I don't know. But leaving these techniques still in the document is like leaving a landmine intact with its fuse and only placing red flags around it. The document is still highly dangerous and violates Geneva and the Convention Against Torture. I would note that with or without legal opinions, the drafters of the AFM took care to make Common Article 3 the minimal criteria. Common Article 3 does not ban use of "coercion" on detainees, something that is specifically spelled out in the full conventions governing both POWs and Civilians.

Maybe Jane Mayer knows what the Obama administration plans to do in regards to new legal opinions on the AFM. She certainly may have the sources. But I don't put a lot of stock on intimations of insider knowledge, and besides, Mayer has suggested no such special knowledge on this point. Hence, her assertion that the issue of torture is now "wiped out" appears precipitous at best.

As for Glenn Greenwald's comments, I have no such bone to pick with its content. But I did think he revealed a certain aspect of the current situation politically that isn't emphasized enough. In commenting on the Obama administration's approach to these problems he indicated that wants to "make sure the CIA doesn’t revolt over the idea that... they’re going to be dragged into court for what they did."

What sort of a revolt does Greenwald have in mind? And why should we be so worried about it? Will the CIA go on strike? Or will they do something worse than that, i.e., strike out somehow at those they perceive as their enemies?

It's not the "revolt" aspect that is most telling. It's that a primary player in this scandal, the CIA, has so much power of intimidation, backed up by very little actual accountability to anyone. Senator Levin and the Senate Armed Services Committee did an incredible job investigating detainee abuse by the Department of Defense, but they had almost no cooperation from the CIA. The CIA's Inspector General John Helgerson reportedly wrote a stinging report in 2004 on CIA torture abuse, including the deaths of prisoners in custody, but the report has been classified. Some enterprising reporter may want to ask Obama about that at his next press conference. (Helen Thomas, are you listening?)

Over thirty years since the worst scandals related to CIA power and abuse were reported, the agency still retains its incredible power and secrecy. Its tentacles reach into the military in ways that we have yet to fully understand. (See the participation of the CIA's General Council as represented in the minutes from a meeting about interrogations and torture at Guantanamo in October 2002.) Without understanding the full consequences of how the power of the CIA is wielded in Washington, we cannot make a certain assessment of the issues at stake nor where they stand.

One could also, by the way, add in any problematic response by the military-surveillance complex to the fight against limitless wiretapping by the U.S. government. The extent of the surveillance is wonderfully, if scarily, presented in James Bamford's excellent new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. Bamford documents the size of this empire, which includes many tens of thousands of employees and gigantic corporations -- not even counting the ongoing collaboration of the telecommunications industry in the huge surveillance scheme collecting all our telephone calls, e-mails, and Internet browsing. Along with Mayer's Dark Side, The Shadow Factory provides a two-volume introduction into the secret life of American intelligence.

Reactions to Obama/Holder Injustice in Jeppesen Case

Ateqah Khaki, from the National Security Project, in an article posted at ACLU Blog of Rights, has described the significant press reaction following the Obama Administration's decision to claim "state secrets" in their argument to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to drop plaintiffs' plea to let their suit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplans, Inc. go forward. ACLU attorneys argued the case for plaintiffs.

It is public record that Jeppesen knowingly participated in the CIA extraordinary rendition program, providing critical flight planning and logistical support services and aircraft crews. Jeppesen employees were even known to brag about their services to the CIA program. One managing director told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker:

"We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights—you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way."

The five men involved in the lawsuit, which was dismissed by a lower court in February 2008 thanks to the Bush administration's inappropriate assertion of "state secrets privilege," that release of information in court regarding the case would supposedly harm national security. The men had been forcibly disappeared by the Jeppesen-serviced CIA program and sent from countries like Sweden, Gambia, Pakistan, and Jordan and flown to secret detention and torture in CIA prisons, or by CIA proxies in Morocco and Egypt, or elsewhere.

One of these five, Binyam Mohamed, lies near death on hunger strike in Guantanamo prison, where U.S. authorities are pondering his release to return to Britain. One of Mohamed's attorney's, Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, an American military lawyer, has written an appeal for his release, published in today's UK Guardian. She describes some of what her client is currently suffering. This, not yesterday's Obama press conference, displays the real face of American power and how it is used:

Guards told Binyam that he was going home in December, and so he is on hunger strike (together with 50 or so other prisoners). This means that he is tube-fed while strapped to a chair, twice a day. Binyam has lost so much weight that he speaks of the pain he suffers from being strapped to the chair for hours each day – he speaks of feeling his bones against the chair. I am really worried that if Binyam does not come home soon, he will leave Guantánamo Bay in a coffin.

The Joint Task Force, which runs Guantánamo Bay, gives me no information about Binyam. When I called to enquire about his condition, they said first, that they would look into it and then that they would tell me nothing and that I should make a Freedom of Information request, which would have taken months to process. Therefore, whenever I want information about Binyam, I have to make the 5-hour trip to Guantánamo. Each time, he asks why he is still there.

It is worth bearing in mind that all charges against Binyam have been dropped and that Binyam's chief prosecutor resigned, citing the unfairness of the system.

Meanwhile, outrage continues to pour out regarding the injustice of the Obama administration's actions in court on Monday. The Los Angeles Times highlighted the incredulity of one judge regarding the government's argument to dismiss the Jeppesen case:

At one point during the hearing, Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, a Clinton appointee, told the government’s lawyer that he was not convincing.

"So any time the executive branch of the government says the fact is classified, it means it cannot be examined?" Hawkins asked Letter.

Letter, noting that national security was at stake, told the court it should "not play with fire" by permitting the suit to go forward.

"Nor should the government in asserting [secrecy] privilege," Hawkins shot back.

The New York Times editorialized today against the Obama Department of Justice actions:

The Obama administration failed — miserably — the first test of its commitment to ditching the extravagant legal claims used by the Bush administration to try to impose blanket secrecy on anti-terrorism policies and avoid accountability for serial abuses of the law....

Incredibly, the federal lawyer advanced the same expansive state-secrets argument that was pressed by Mr. Bush’s lawyers to get a trial court to dismiss the case without any evidence being presented. It was as if last month’s inauguration had never occurred....

The fact that some of the evidence might be legitimately excluded on national security grounds need not preclude the case from being tried, and allowing the judge to make that determination. More fundamentally, the Obama administration should not be invoking state secrets to cover up charges of rendition and torture.

The simple truth is this: the government has had years to make their cases against the Guantanamo detainees. If they cannot bring a case today, the detainees should be released. They could be given provisional residency status in the United States, pending final disposition. Those for whom their is acceptable evidence of crimes could be turned over to federal courts and charged and tried accordingly. Binyam Mohamed should be released immediately. Britain has already indicated they are ready to accept him.

The news last week that President Obama is still considering some kind of modified version the hated military commissions to try Guantanamo prisoners should be dropped. The U.S. courts can handle any appropriate prosecutions. Whether its bogus military commissions or "state secrets privilege" to torpedo accountability lawsuits, why doe the U.S. government want to keep these issues out of American courts? One good reason: their actions and programs would not withstand legal scrutiny.

FYI: The ACLU has posted a link so everyone can hear the oral arguments made last Monday in the Jeppesen case.

Why the Silence on Real Torture Timeline?

Last month, I examined the testimony from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogations and torture. The hearings concentrated on the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, and its use of military psychologists hired by the CIA to "reverse-engineer" SERE program elements for use in coercive interrogations by the United States at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere.

The timelines constructed out of this testimony and ancillary documentary evidence showed the Department of Defense turned to SERE for help in interrogating "enemy combatants" in July 2002. At least, that seems the case if you follow the summary given by SASC Committee Chair, Senator Carl Levin, adhered to in subsequent reports by every other journalist (but one).

Except, the timeline was wrong, and that fact is available for anyone to read in black and white. It was also admitted, grudgingly, by Levin himself, in an exchange with me during a "liveblog" session at Firedoglake.

As I wrote in my June 23 article:

While Senator Levin gives a fairly thorough presentation of how SERE techniques migrated to Guantanamo, including discussions and meetings and when they took place, and descriptions (at least in the documents released by the committee) of what kind of techniques were being taught, one date is inexplicably left out which Lt. Col. Baumgarten gave in his testimony. [Baumgarten is former Chief of Staff of Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) for the Department of Defense, and administratively responsible for the SERE program.] Levin concentrates upon the late July 2002 request by Richard Shiffrin, a Deputy General Counsel in the Department of Defense, for information on SERE techniques and their effects upon prisoners.... But Baumgarten's own opening statement gives a more nuanced, different story. From [Lt. Col. Baumgarten's] statement, as published online (bold emphasis added):

My recollection of my first communication with [Department of Defense] OGC [Office of General Counsel] relative to techniques was with Mr. Richard Shiffrin in July 2002. However, during my two interviews with Committee staff members last year I was shown documents that indicated I had some communication with Mr. Shiffrin related to this matter in approximately December 2001. Although I do not specifically recall Mr. Shiffrin’s request to the JPRA for information in late 2001, my previous interviews with Committee staff members and review of documents connected with Mr. Shiffrin’s December 2001 request have confirmed to me the JPRA, at that time, provided Mr. Shiffrin information related to this Committee’s inquiry. From what I reviewed last year with Committee staff members, the information involved the exploitation process and historical information on captivity and lessons learned.

Now something is very strange here, as Levin's own staff appear to have documents indicating DoD was asking about SERE techniques in December 2001, eight months before the July 2002 request everyone else is concentrating on. Why this gap? My guess is that it would take us even closer to the Oval Office than Levin or anyone else wants to go at this point. Where are these documents on the December 2001 request? Why did no one on the committee question Baumgarten about this issue during the hearings?

Senator Levin Responds

Learning that Carl Levin was to participate in a "liveblog" discussion at Firedoglake on July 15, I showed up to ask my questions. What follows are my questions and Sen. Levin's responses.

[Valtin:] Sen. Levin, Your timeline for SERE interjection into U.S. torture training goes to July 2002. But Lt. Col. Baumgarten’s own statement indicates that he was approached by Shiffren (or others?) in December 2001. This is verified, supposedly, by documents your committee staffers showed him.

Why are these documents not released? Why isn’t this Dec. 2001 part of the timeline emphasized? Would not this early of an approach to use SERE for reverse-engineering purposes put some in the Administration in greater legal jeopardy, as the OLC rulings on detainees did not come until early 2002?

[Levin:] Lt. Col. Baumgartner did so testify at our hearing. However information relating to his discussions with Shiffrin remains classified. When our report is finalized we will press the DoD to declassify this matter.

[Valtin:] Thank you for your response, Sen. Levin. I suspected this was the case. Can you comment on the significance of a timeline that begins in December 2001 instead of July 2002, as that would help educate the public as to why such documents should be declassified. DoD could certainly do their usual redactions for security purposes. Or is it not just DoD we are talking about here?

Also, Sen. Levin, why wait until your report is “finalized” to press for declassification? That could be many months from now. Why not ask for declassification… now?

[Levin:] We have many pending requests for declassification, and we’re not waiting for our report to be finalized to ask for declassification of numerous documents. The Yoo memo is an example of where we put maximum pressure on for declassification. There is only one minute left in the roll call, so I have to run. Thanks for joining me today.

I hope the reader notices the care with which Sen. Levin made his remarks. He said nothing about the significance of the Baumgartner revelations. He also answered my complaint about the lassitude in pursuing declassification of the relevant documents with a huffy protestation of how the committee is pursuing the declassification of "numerous documents" -- though not necessarily the ones in their possession showing Pentagon OCG approaches to SERE re "the exploitation process" and the "lessons" of captivity and torture interrogation in December 2001.

The Importance of the Timeline

Why bury the information on the December 2001 portion of the timeline, moving the supposedly relevant first approach to SERE to July 2002? The answer is quite simple: the Administration had not gotten all its legal ducks in a row by December 2001, a time when the first detainees, such as so-called "American Taliban", John Walker Lindh, were being captured and tortured by U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan.

Lindh was found barely alive, shot in the leg, and suffering from dehydration, hypothermia and frostbite. Although Lindh was seriously wounded, starving, freezing, and exhausted, U.S. soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed him naked, scrawled “shithead” across the blindfold, duct-taped him to a stretcher for days in an unheated and unlit shipping container, threatened him with death, and posed with him for pictures. Parts of his ordeal were captured on videotape.

From the very beginning of the U.S. "war on terror", post-9/11, Bush Administration lawyers, led by David Addington (as argued so persuasively in Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side), looked for ways to deny U.S. and internationally recognized rights to prisoners caught up in the anti-terrorist dragnet and ongoing military operations.

Ultimately, President George W. Bush denied that even minimal Geneva Conventions protections applied to the "illegal enemy combatants" captured by the U.S. Subsequently, in an infamous set of memos written by Addington, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and others, long-standing protections against torture and cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment were taken away from the burgeoning population of prisoners, imprisoned now in ad hoc bases in Afghanistan, held on prison ships, and some subsequently either sent via "extraordinary rendition" to be tortured by foreign "allies", held incommunicado in secret CIA prisons, or shipped to the new U.S. prison constructed at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.

On February 7, 2002, Bush signed an executive order outlining treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban detainees:

Pursuant to my authority as commander in chief and chief executive of the United States, and relying on the opinion of the Department of Justice dated January 22, 2002, and on the legal opinion rendered by the attorney general in his letter of February 1, 2002, I hereby determine as follows:

a. I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world because, among other reasons, al-Qaida is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva.

b. I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time. Accordingly, I determine that the provisions of Geneva will apply to our present conflict with the Taliban. I reserve the right to exercise the authority in this or future conflicts.

c. I also accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al-Qaida or Taliban detainees, because, among other reasons, the relevant conflicts are international in scope and common Article 3 applies only to "armed conflict not of an international character."

d. Based on the facts supplied by the Department of Defense and the recommendation of the Department of Justice, I determine that the Taliban detainees are unlawful combatants and, therefore, do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva. I note that, because Geneva does not apply to our conflict with al-Qaida, al-Qaida detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war.

A list of the Bush Administration documents on interrogation can be found at this Washington Post web page, including the January 22, 2002 memo written by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and addressed to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes II. Bybee argued that that the War Crimes Act and the Geneva Convention did not apply to al Qaeda prisoners; the August 1, 2002 memo to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales from Jay S. Bybee of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that techniques used to interrogate al Qaeda operatives would not violate a 1984 international treaty prohibiting torture", and others documents not mentioned here. (Of course, the WP list doesn't include new memos recently declassified, at least in part, as part of the ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government.)

The crucial point about all these memos and executive orders is that they come afdter the December 2001 approach by officials of the Department of Defense looking -- against all national and international laws, treaties and covenants then in effect -- how to torture prisoners held by the United States. Keeping the "timeline" safely within the July 2002 parameter provides a veneer of legal cover, as flimsy as it might be (since torture is always illegal, and it's not clear that even the Bybee, Yoo, and other memos will protect administration officials against prosecution for war crimes, at least by international tribunal).

While I am no attorney, I strongly believe the December 2001 origin of the timeline exposes officials in the U.S. government to prosecution for war crimes by both domestic and international bodies. Congressional officials, and first among them the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have not seen fit to seriously address their watchdog role, satisfying themselves with toothless votes of censure, limited hang-out investigations, and a refusal to pursue impeachment against Bush and Cheney.

A Call to Activists, Attorneys, and Journalists

The December 2001 Baumgartner documents are not going to be declassified, at least not in any timely way, unless public pressure is put upon the government to do so. One little blogger is not going to be enough to push back against bureaucratic inaction and/or obstructionism. Why important reporters and/or press or bloggers have not picked up on this is beyond me, but I will withhold judgment on that score for the time being, if only the delay in coverage is remedied soon.

The smoking gun is out there. And even if these documents do not turn out to be the smoking gun I think they are, the need to know our history for the last seven years, to come to terms with how the U.S. became a torturing nation, demands that we know the truth.

Senator Levin, release the documents from December 2001 that discuss any or all approaches by government officials to Lt. Col. Baumgartner, or other SERE or JPRA individuals or bodies regarding the "exploitation" or interrogation of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Senator Carl Levin can be reached at 269 Russell Office Building, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510-2202. His email link is here. His telephone number is (202) 224-6221; Fax (202) 224-1388; TTY (202) 224-2816.

Physicians, Psychologists & the Problem of "The Dark Side"

"Any of us could be the man who encounters his double." -- Friedrich Durrenmat (1)

Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (not due out in the bookstores until tomorrow), is already creating headlines and generating controversy. This article will examine the issues around U.S. torture practice, in light of new allegations in the book, and review an email conversation between myself and a prominent nationally-known psychologist whom Mayer says assisted in the planning of U.S. government torture.

Scott Shane at The New York Times wrote an article last Friday describing how Mayer reveals that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told the CIA last year in a report that the interrogation of "high-level" detainees, such as Abu Zubaydah, "categorically" constituted torture, were illegal, and amounted to prosecutable war crimes. Zubaydah, famously, was one of three prisoners the government has admitted were waterboarded. A videotape of his interrogation was destroyed by the CIA.

In an July 14 interview with Scott Horton at Harper's, Jane Mayer discussed the reaction to the ICRC charges:

... Abu Zubayda claimed to have been locked in a tiny cage, in which he had to remain doubled up for long periods of time, prior to the period when he was waterboarded. This account — which he gave to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — was confirmed to me independently by a former CIA officer familiar with his interrogation....

The reaction of top Bush Administration officials to the ICRC report, from what I can gather, has been defensive and dismissive. They reject the ICRC’s legal analysis as incorrect. Yet my reporting shows that inside the White House there has been growing fear of criminal prosecution...

Ms. Mayer concludes that the addition of an immunity provision in the Military Commissions Act passed by Congress in 2007 was an attempt to address such fears among administration figures. She further opines that it seems unlikely to her that anyone in the Bush administration will actually face domestic prosecution for war crimes, as the "political appetite" seems lacking. And then she adds the following (emphasis added):

An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised.

A Prominent Psychologist Comes Under Fire

While medical personnel associated with the ICRC have played a heroic role in documenting and advocating for prisoners' rights, doctors and psychologists associated with U.S. detention and interrogation of so-called "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror" have not acquitted themselves with the same ethical probity. In fact, they may be guilty of war crimes themselves.

Jane Mayer's new book also looks more closely at the utilization of SERE techniques as a template for U.S. torture of detainees. (SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape, and is a military program aimed at training U.S. soldiers for torture at the hands of vicious captors, those who would not honor Geneva Convention protocols. Ironically, the U.S. itself announced that "enemy combatants" are not bound by those same Geneva agreements.)

It's been a year since SERE military psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen were accused, in an article by Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair, of teaching SERE techniques to interrogators at Guantanamo and elsewhere. (I covered the "nuts and bolts" of how SERE procedures were taught at Guantanamo in a recent essay.) According to a different article by Jane Mayer last year, Mitchell utilized the theories of "learned helplessness" in implementing his interrogation lessons. (Mr. Mitchell denied this assertion.) Mayer wrote:

Steve Kleinman, a reserve Air Force colonel and an experienced interrogator who has known Mitchell professionally for years, said that “learned helplessness was his whole paradigm.” Mitchell, he said, “draws a diagram showing what he says is the whole cycle. It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners’ ability to forecast the future—when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn’t after intelligence.”

This torture model of dread, debility through isolation, and dependency may have been the model of the K.G.B., but it was intellectually codified by U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists in the 1950s, most notably in a 1956 article in the journal Sociometry, Brainwashing, Conditioning, and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread). One of the authors of this article, Harry Harlow, went on to become a president of the American Psychological Association (APA).

In Mayer's new book, she implicates another former APA president in the development of torture, Martin Seligman, the creator of the theory of "learned helplessness". I have not seen Mayer's book, which hasn't been released yet, so my accounts come from statements online by Scott Horton, as well as the latter's interview with Mayer previously cited. Horton wrote (emphasis added):

[Mayer] traces the development of the torture techniques to the work of two contractors, Mitchell and Jessen, and disclosed the specific techniques they developed. She notes that the techniques rely heavily on a theory called "Learned Helplessness" developed by a Penn psychologist Martin Seligman, who assisted them in the process.

Seligman is no obscure academic, or bureaucrat. He is one of the best known psychologists in the country, a prominent professor, and leader of the Positive Psychology movement, often quoted in the nation's psychology textbooks. Mayer's allegations about Seligman were picked up anti-torture activist and psychologist Stephen Soldz at his blog. This brought a rejoinder from Seligman himself, denying he assisted in torture in any way. He continued:

I gave a three hour lecture sponsored by SERE (the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape branch of the American armed forces) at the San Diego Naval Base in May 2002. My topic was how American troops and American personnel could use what is known about learned helplessness and related findings to resist torture and evade successful interrogation by their captors.

I was told then that since I was (and am) a civilian with no security clearance that they could not discuss American methods of interrogation with me. I have not had contact with SERE since that meeting. I have not worked under government contract (or any other contract) on any aspect of interrogation or any aspect of torture. Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Jessen were present in the audience of about 50 others at my speech, and that was, to the best of my knowledge, the sum total of my “assisting them in the process."

What Seligman Told Me

In December 2006, following suspicions (at that time uncorroborated by government documents) that SERE had been used to reverse-engineer torture, as reported by Jane Mayer in a July 2005 New Yorker article, which mentioned Seligman by name, and by Mark Benjamin at Salon.com, I wrote to Seligman and asked him about reports he had taught at the SERE school. I was then researching an article on psychological research into sensory deprivation and torture. (The article turned into a presentation at the APA convention in 2007, and was subsequently published as "Psychology and Research into Coercive Interrogation".) Dr. Seligman's answer to me then (December 2006) was much the same as that made to Soldz above.

I tried to push Seligman a little harder on the issue:

I really have only one outstanding question that remains from my original questions: Were you aware -- or do you even believe -- that your work on learned helplessness has been used not only to help our soldiers withstand coercive interrogation, but to conduct such types of interrogation by U.S. interrogators themselves?

Martin Seligman replied tersely:

I am not available for further comment. (2)

About seven months later, as further revelations about SERE and torture surfaced, including admissions by the Pentagon Office of Inspector General (in a report publicly released in May 2007) that SERE reverse-engineering had taken place, and that Mitchell and Jessen were involved, I revisited the issue with Dr. Seligman in August 2007:

When I wrote to you before, you declined to comment on my question. But I think it is incumbent upon you now to say more about what you know, as well as what you think, about the use of your work by military and CIA psychologists to instigate torture. I ask you this as a colleague in the field, and as a psychologist interested in stopping torture, and ashamed of the actions of some in our field in perpetuating abusive behavior. I would think you would like to clear your name, which otherwise remains linked (even if in obscure ways) to some of the worst episodes in our nation's and our profession's history.

Dr. Seligman replied (emphasis added):

I am entirely out of this loop, having had zero contact with SERE since my talk in April 2002. I know nothing at all about how they have applied LH concepts to either help our own people or to the interrogation of prisoners. When I asked about the latter at my talk, they told me that they could not give me any information at all, since I had no "classification."

My talk was about how to teach our people to resist LH [Learned Helplessness] and my life work has been devoted to the issues of undoing LH, not about inducing it in other human beings.

Once again, I persevered, intrigued that Seligman appeared to be admitting that he had asked about application of "learned helplessness" techniques to the interrogation of prisoners. Why, in December 2002, had he bothered to ask? Was he suspicious? Did he know more than he was saying, or even worse, had he done more than he was admitting? I wrote (emphasis in original):

I appreciate your quick reply, and I understand that you had nothing to do with how LH concepts were used by others. But, given the controversy over psychologist participation in interrogations (a vote on competing resolutions is due at the next [APA] Council meeting), and the fact that your ideas and research were obviously used (you even asked them about it), what is your position on the use of your research by others, and on psychologists involved in military/CIA interrogations under the current administration?

Dr. Seligman replied:

The only "position" I am comfortable staking out is "Good science always runs the risk of immoral application. It goes with the territory of discovery."

Doubling and Collaboration with Torture

Dr. Seligman's "position" was startling. Even if one accepts his denial of further association with the torture program initiated by the Bush administration, utilizing SERE coercive techniques, Seligman seems to believe it's okay to settle for a "see no evil" approach. In his point of view, he is a scientist, a discoverer of new knowledge. If his work might be abused, that is not a concern of his.

This is an immoral position, of course, even if not necessarily criminal, in a forensic sense. If I could question him further, I would ask why he was asked to give this particular "lecture" at a SERE school at this time, and who asked him to do so. (Mayer says Seligman was connected with the CIA, but no further details are given.) I would further ask what led him to inquire about the possible use of SERE techniques on interrogations of prisoners, and why, when he was waved off, he acquiesced so meekly.

For years now, Dr. Seligman has been quiet about the use of his own theories in the application of horrifying torture techniques. Why this silence?

The situation with Seligman, like those of other psychologists and psychiatrists who worked for the CIA's MKULTRA and like programs over forty years ago, reminds me of the analysis Robert Jay Lifton made of the behavior of doctors in Nazi Germany, who were implicated in anti-semitic purges of Jews from the medicine field, and in programs of forced sterilization, euthanasia of mental patients, and later, in the operations of the concentration camps. (The Germans, I should note, were not the only people to engage in forced sterilizations. The United States, too, engaged in eugenics policies such as forced sterilization earlier in the twentieth century, and many doctors participated in that.)

In his book, The Nazi Doctors, Lifton describes the phenomenon of "doubling", or "socialization to evil."

Doubling arises in the context where a professional must "function psychologically in an environment... antithetical to his previous ethical standards..." The person must be able to connect with both the prior, ethical self and the new, unethical environment or institution. The splitting of the professional self allows for an adaptation to evil and an escape from subsequent feelings of guilt or wrong-doing, as "the second self tends to be the one performing the 'dirty work'." What makes the entire process so insidious is that it usually takes place outside of individual consciousness, even as it involves "a significant change in moral consciousness." Thus, doubling can be understood as an adaptation to an extremely immoral culture or institution, allowing for disavowal of guilt. (See The Nazi Doctors, Lifton, pp. 421-423).

We can see this in Seligman's disavowal of any wrong-doing, and even his strong protestations of being against torture. Now, it's notoriously difficult to psychoanalyze someone from afar, but how else are we to explain the monumental and repeated violations of basic ethical practice by physicians and psychologists over the years, whether it has to do with secret study done on unknowing African-American subjects as part of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis patients experiments that lasted for forty years, until 1972; the human plutonium radiation experiments of the last century; the CIA mind control programs noted above; or the development and implementation of current psychological torture programs, which continues to date?

Are We Morally Doomed?

I think Jane Mayer is wrong on one point. As pointed out earlier, she is pessimistic that this nation has the "political appetite" to bring the perpetrators of torture to the bar of justice in his country. I hear that from many. But where there is a will, there is, proverbially, a way. It is not about "appetite" anymore. It is about what we must do, if we are not to take that final step into the dark side, a place Vice President Cheney so-famously told us we would have to go. We know now what awaits us there.

Worse even than the doubling of an individual like Martin Seligman is the behavior of the professional organizations for doctors and psychologists. The American Medical Association, while officially having a policy of not participating in interrogations at Bush's war on terror prisons, has taken no steps I know of to investigate or police violations of this policy. For years, the American Psychological Association has maintained that, while against torture, it supports psychologists working at prisons like Guantanamo, even if they do not allow basic human rights, because supposedly they lessen the possibility of abuse. The logic is grotesque, at best, and grossly misleading when you realize it's psychologists who have been implicated in organizing the abuse. But on this, the APA remains silent, rendering that organization, in Mayer's own characterization, "worthless."

In the famous legend, Faust bargains away his soul to the devil for the privilege of obtaining knowledge. In Goethe's rendering of the story, Faust is redeemed in the end, and the spirits who help him remind us, "He who persists in striving ever upwards, him we can save."


(1) Quote taken from Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors, Basic Books, 1986/2000, p. 418.

(2) The quotes from my email correspondence with Dr. Seligman were the source of some quandary for me, as I was unsure whether to utilize them. I sought consultation for this issue with a long-time, highly respected journalist who thought it appropriate. I do want to make clear that all who communicate with me by voice or by writing (including email) and ask for confidentiality or non-attribution will have their request respected. My quotations from the Seligman correspondence with me are drawn from a professional exchange and not, in my opinion, privileged.

Inside Secret CIA Interrogation Program

Also posted at Daily Kos

The August 8 interview Amy Goodman of Demcracy Now! conducts with New Yorker writer Jane Mayer and Jameel Jaffner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Program, makes for more impeachment fodder. Mayer reveals that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) labelled the CIA's detention and interrogation methods "tantamount to torture". The ICRC warned that "U.S. officials responsible for the abusive treatment may have committed 'grave breaches' of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act". Mayer reported on much of this in her recent New Yorker article on the "black sites".

Even more disturbing, if that's possible, the ICRC, which keeps its reports to the government confidential, the better to maintain access to prisoners, reported on all this to the Bush Administration last year, but access to the report was limited to only a trusted few. Following Jaffner's analysis quoted below, I'll bet Gonzales was one of them.

Jaffner is involved in a Freedom of Information Act request for records regarding oncerning treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. He is also author of an upcoming book about torture: Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. He began his comments with an indictment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his role in the Bush Administration's use of torture.

Well, it's actually, I think, a little frustrating that senior officials, including Alberto Gonzales, have not been held accountable for the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but also elsewhere. We now know that prisoners were abused in US custody all over the world -- Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. We know that they were abused because of policies that were adopted at the highest levels. Alberto Gonzales is one of the people who participated in constructing the policies that led to the abuse and, in many cases, the torture of prisoners, and yet neither Mr. Gonzales nor any of the other senior officials who were involved in creating those policies have been held to account. I think that, you know, actually, most of the senior officials who should have been held to account have been rewarded instead.

Jaffner also spoke about the linkage between CIA and the military on interrogations:

But one of the things that struck me in reading the article is the numerous similarities between what happened in CIA custody and what happened in military custody. And if you look at how the military developed its techniques, its techniques that led to the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo, for example, they were developed in exactly the same way: by reverse-engineering, these SERE methods, the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. These are methods that the military used ultimately against prisoners in its custody, and they are apparently the same methods that the CIA used against prisoners in its custody....

Later in the joint interview, Jane Mayer discusses "the use of psychologists in interrogations as "a way by the CIA to skirt the Convention Against Torture, among other international treaties":

Well, if you take a look at the so-called torture memos, the forty pages or so of memos that were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo way back right after 9/11, and you take a look at how they -- they're busy looking at the Convention Against Torture, basically, it seems, trying to figure a way around it. One of the things they argued, these lawyers from the Justice Department, is that if you don't intend to torture someone, if your intention is not just to inflict terrible pain on them but to get information, then you really can't be necessarily convicted of torture.

So how do you prove that your intent is pure? Well, one of the things they suggest is if you consult with experts who will say that what you're doing is just interrogation, then that might also be a good legal defense. And so, one of the roles that these SERE psychologists played was a legal role. They were the experts who were consulted in order to argue that the program was not a program of torture. They are to say, “We've got PhDs, and this is standard psychology, and this is a legitimate way to question people.”

And now the government is trying to continue their campaign, taking it right into the convention of the American Psychological Association, where military psychologists stand ready to introduce a "substitute" resolution on psychologist participation in interrogations, the aim of which is to torpedo an earlier resolution calling for a moratorium on psychologists operating at foreign detention prisons! Jane Mayer hit the nail on the head, asked about the fate of the protest within APA on psychologists invovled in military/CIA interrogations:

And some of the psychologists who were key players in this actually are officials at the APA who have set the policy here. So there's a bit of a sort of a sense of the foxes guarding the chicken house.

So we await the next stage of the fight against the government and its insistence on maintaining the instruments of coercion, of abuse, of torture.

Moment of Truth Arrives: APA & Participation in U.S. Torture

On August 16, the American Psychological Association (APA) opens a five day convention in beautiful San Francisco. Behind the mise en scene of cable cars, wind-whipped fog, hot sourdough bread, and old Victorian gingerbread homes, a crucial political struggle is taking place over the future of coercive interrogation techniques and inhumane detention conducted by U.S. forces in the wrongly-named "war on terror".

In previous posts, I have explained how psychologists have participated in Pentagon and CIA-run torture of so-called "illegal enemy combatants", how there is a long history of this, and how a large group of APA internal critics and anti-torture activists have proposed a moratorium against use of psychologists in all operations concerning detention and interrogation of detainees in foreign prisons and at Guantanamo. A recent article by Jane Mayer at The New Yorker describes the fight within the Pentagon and CIA by some government behavioral scientific professionals against use of torture techniques:

The use of psychologists was also considered a way for C.I.A. officials to skirt measures such as the Convention Against Torture. The former adviser to the intelligence community said, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have Ph.D.s who have these theories.’ ” He said that, inside the C.I.A., where a number of scientists work, there was strong internal opposition to the new techniques. “Behavioral scientists said, ‘Don’t even think about this!’ They thought officers could be prosecuted.”

Unfortunately, this internal opposition by some CIA and military psychologists and psychiatrists proved impotent. No doubt, however, some of what we know about what's going on internally must have come from leaks by such disgruntled and disgusted personnel.

Bureaucratic Vertigo: Resolutions, Amendments, and Votes

Now the scene shifts to the civilized convention meeting rooms of the APA, where, somewhere, the APA's Council of Representatives will meet on Sunday, August 19 to vote on possibly two separate resolutions: one calls for a moratorium against psychologist participation at Guantanamo, in addition to detainee sites in Iraq, Afghanistan, and secret prisons abroad. The APA Board of Directors has proposed a different resolution, which details a number of prohibited interrogation techniques, but fails to support a moratorium, and will allow psychologists to still work in certain defined ways at prisons that allow indefinite detention. Forces within APA are working to derail the first proposal (on a moratorium) in favor of the weaker, new APA-crafted resolution. I detailed all this in my recent article: Will APA Psychology Convention Endorse Indefinite Detention?

Since the existence of this second proposal appears in part meant to remove the moratorium resolution from consideration, i.e., undemocratically not allow it to come to a vote, a number of the moratorium proponents have been working hard to amend the Board's resolution to make it more like the original proposal to ban psychologist participation (a "ban" by the way that was only advisory, with no enforceable provisions).

These amendments, some of which are very helpful, still have a number of problems. Not least is they leave intact the Board resolution's reliance on a definition of "cruel, unusual, inhumane and degrading treatment" (so-called "torture-lite") that is rooted in shifty and inadequate U.S. constitutional so-called protections, and not on international laws and treaties, which are much more specific in their protections. Consider the barbaric practices that exist in U.S. "supermax" prisons, and you get the idea. Additionally, the amendments fall short on nailing down the definition of certain prohibited techniques, creating loopholes for CIA and Pentagon torture proponents.

Closing the Loopholes

Recently, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) sent a letter to APA President Sharon Brehm calling for a vote on both proposals, and suggesting changes of their own to the Board's proposal to strengthen it. Their changes are worth noting:

We understand, of course, that the list of techniques in the proposed resolution is, by the very nature of a list, incapable of addressing all possible forms of torture; but the list does cover virtually all abusive psychological techniques used by the military and CIA and the Department of Defense since 2002....

To avoid creating loopholes, we urge that the resolution be amended in certain key respects that should not be objectionable:

A. Assure that the description of prohibited techniques leaves no room for ambiguity....

1. The use of isolation and sleep deprivation in interrogation is never permissible (thus eliminating the qualifier that they are condemned only if there is a detriment to health....

2. The use of psychotropic drugs is prohibited;

3. Any exploitation of fears or psychopathology (not just phobias) is unacceptable; and

4. Participation “during” interrogation is expanded to include “or in connection with detention,” because we now know that practices such as isolation, sleep deprivation, and use of persistent loud music have been used as part of a strategy to break down individuals both inside and outside the interrogation room....

The Board’s resolution serves to underscore the importance of other actions we urged in my letter of June 14, especially adopting a stance that psychologists not participate in the interrogation of individual detainees by performing pre-interrogation assessments, designing interrogation plans, assisting in interrogation, monitoring interrogation, or otherwise.

Brehm the Decider

Addressing the PHR letter to Sharon Brehm is more than just an organizational gesture, one organization speaking to the administrative head of another organization. In the APA internal struggle -- one you can be sure is monitored by the military, the CIA, and perhaps even by the White House itself, as the loss of APA support would be a huge blow to the attempt to make Bush's "war on terror" antidemocratic and torture techniques legitimate -- the battle of the two resolutions is likely to be partly decided by Brehm herself, as she is both APA President and also the presiding officer of the Council. This is because the APA Parliamentarian has asked her to judge the procedural matter in such a way that she may make the key decision as to whether the moratorium decision is allowed to come to a vote.

As one insider explained:

Thus, a member — indeed, THE most important member of the Board of Directors — is in a position to rule on the legitimacy of a motion that has been put forward by herself and her own Board of Directors!

Is the "fix" in? Or will Brehm allow, as many suggest, both resolutions to come to a vote? (The idea that the Board's resolution was meant to overturn the moratorium resolution and by the Council's own rules should be thrown out and only the moratorium resolution come to a vote is, while supported by a few, probably a non-starter.)

No one knows what Brehm will do. But one wonders if she wants to go down as the APA president that allowed continued psychologist participation in coercive detentions, and de facto endorsement of working at facilities that allow hellish indefinite (and often solitary) detention. Then again, the blandishments of the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA must be considerable, and the voice of the APA's own Society for Military Psychology (Division 19 of the APA) remains strong and vociferous against any moratorium.

Summing Up

This has been a long and complicated post, especially for those who may not have kept up with this political fight in the Siberia of American politics. But it is not an insignificant tussle. As recent articles in Vanity Fair, the Washington Monthly, The New Yorker, and elsewhere have made clear, the fight over psychologist participation in torture is central to how Bush and Cheney conduct their criminal "war on terror" abroad, with its black site secret prisons, its use of extensive torture and abuse, and its arrogant dismissal of international law and treaties. It's evident the U.S. Congress has little appetite to oppose the Bush regime in any substantive way. That leaves it up to us -- to the rank and file of various civilian organizations, such as the APA -- to fight back against the antidemocratic and criminal impulses and policies both proposed and implemented by the Bush Administration and its compliant Pentagon and CIA toadies.

But perhaps not everybody at Langley and the Pentagon complex are so compliant! There are those within these institutions who want to see the torture and inhumane treatment stop. Perhaps some of these will stand up and reveal more of the inner connections of the Bush war machine with torture and affronts to international law. Perhaps even a few may have something yet to whisper into Sharon Brehm's ear.

Still, it would be foolish to hope much for anything along such lines, as the socialization and organizational pressures of being in the military or intelligence organizations, not to mention on the APA Council or Board of Directors, shapes the context within which these people think and behave. No. It will be up to the APA rank and file, and the general public at large, to the degree they can be mobilized to pressure the APA and their Council of Representatives.

Rally for an Ethical APA

There will be a rally to end APA collaboration with illegal interrogations and torture on Friday, August 17, 4-5:30pm at Yerba Buena Gardens, right by the APA convention. It is endorsed by many psychological organizations, including sections of the APA, as well as by prominent individuals and organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights, Tikkun, School of the Americas Watch, Robert Jay Lifton, MD, Steven Miles, MD, and others. There will be speakers and music. Come show your support.

Operation Phoenix Reborn: New Yorker Expose on CIA "Black Sites"

Jane Mayer at the New Yorker has written a riveting piece on the recent history of the CIA recent torture program, The Black Sites: A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program. The article helps us better piece together the history of CIA and military interrogation post 9/11, even if some of the information is fragmentary and contradictory.

One of the most startling revelations is that the CIA turned to its own history, resurrecting the techniques and model of its Operation Phoenix terror-torture program in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. While a program of "state-sanctioned torture and murder", where over 97% of the Vietnamese victimized were "of negligible importance", "C.I.A. officials viewed the program as a useful model".

A Wikipedia article on "psychological warfare" notes:

The Phoenix Program had the dual aim of assassinating Viet Cong personnel and terrorizing any potential sympathizers or passive supporters. When members of the VCI were assassinated, CIA and Special Forces operatives placed playing cards in the mouth of the deceased as a calling card. During the Phoenix Program, over 19,000 Viet Cong supporters were killed.

Researcher Michael Otterman in his superlative examination of CIA/Pentagon torture over the years, American Torture, wrote of the Phoenix Program:

Phoenix was a CIA operation aimed at eliminating the Vietcong civilian infrastructure (VCI).... Unlike standard military operations, Phoenix targeted civilians, not soldiers. Phoenix was launched in 1965 -- the same year the USA announced it would abide by the Geneva Conventions in Vietnam....

There were two main components to the Phoenix Program: Provisional Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. The PrUs would kill VCI members, terrorise civilians and capture those deemed to have knowledge about VCI structures. At the interrogation centres, CIA interrogators, alongside their Vietnamese counterparts, would torture VCI prisoners in an effort to learn the identity of VCI members in each province....

PRUs were financed by the CIA, composed of Vietnamese fighters, and led on missions by members of the Navy SEALs. (pp. 60-62)

The CIA publishes on its own website the tale of one of Phoenix's prisoners, Nguyen Tai: The Man in the Snow White Cell.

As Tai must have anticipated, his confession did not end his ordeal. After giving him a short rest as a reward, his South Vietnamese interrogators came back with a request that he provide details about his personal background and history. Tai refused, and the torture resumed. He was kept sitting on a chair for weeks at a time with no rest; he was beaten; he was starved; he was given no water for days; and he was hung from the rafters for hours by his arms, almost ripping them from their sockets. After more than six months of interrogation and torture, Tai felt his physical and psychological strength ebbing away; he knew his resistance was beginning to crack. During a short respite between torture sessions, to avoid giving away the secrets he held in his head during the physical and psycho-logical breakdown he could feel coming, Tai tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists.

Hung by his arms from the rafters? Bashing his head against the wall? This is exactly what we read in Jane Mayer's article Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Al Queda "mastermind" kept in isolation and tortured by the CIA endured, along with other "high-profile" detainees, endured.

According to sources, Mohammed said that, while in C.I.A. custody, he was placed in his own cell, where he remained naked for several days. He was questioned by an unusual number of female handlers, perhaps as an additional humiliation. He has alleged that he was attached to a dog leash, and yanked in such a way that he was propelled into the walls of his cell. Sources say that he also claimed to have been suspended from the ceiling by his arms, his toes barely touching the ground....

Professor Kassem said his Yemeni client, Kazimi, had told him that, during his incarceration in the Dark Prison, he attempted suicide three times, by ramming his head into the walls. “He did it until he lost consciousness,” Kassem said. “Then they stitched him back up. So he did it again. The next time, he woke up, he was chained, and they’d given him tranquillizers. He asked to go to the bathroom, and then he did it again.”

The Mayer piece also describes a confidential International Red Cross report on the secret detentions that according to sources makes it clear that torture took place:

One of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency’s detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes. The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act, which Congress passed in 1994. The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.

You can see in Mayer's New Yorker article the tension between two competing narratives. On one hand, like the recent Katherine Eban piece in Vanity Fair, some of Mayer's seek to make SERE psychologists responsible for the CIA's fall into torture, believing the CIA not to have any experienced torturers, oops, I mean interrogators on hand in October 2001. Elsewhere in the New Yorker article, someone tries to tell her the CIA has no experience in running prisons, something which the Phoenix history itself contradicts. On the other hand, Mayer alludes to the previous history of the Agency (the Phoenix material, the decades of sensory deprivation research, the quick transformation of the CIA program into strict professionalism, etc.), which is steeped in torture experience.

As the Red Cross report points to some serious legal and political repercussions -- someone seems to feel that congressional scandal and prosecutions are inevitable -- a scramble is taking place to selectively leak and to mold the narrative of what happened and who's responsible.

The history of American torture is a veritable lost continent of criminal activity with links to the highest levels of the U.S. government and civilian establishment. The time has come to expose the entire substance of this awful truth, and bring those responsible for crimes against humanity, ostensibly done in our names, to justice -- fair, swift, humane, and inevitable.