JUAN GONZALEZ: Retired General Antonio Taguba, who led the US Army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib abuses, has accused the Bush administration of “a systematic regime of torture” and war crimes. Taguba’s accusations appear in the preface to a new report released by Physicians for Human Rights. The report uses medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of eleven former prisoners who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
Taguba writes, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
AMY GOODMAN: The report was published in the midst of two days of congressional hearings on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held an eight-hour hearing that exposed the role of top Bush administration officials in authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques. The committee released a series of previously classified documents detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA transformed the military’s SERE resistance training program into a blueprint for interrogating terrorist suspects. Committee Chair Senator Carl Levin explained the timeline of implementing the SERE, or Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, techniques and the role of military psychologists in devising these routines.
SEN. CARL LEVIN: On October 2, 2002, a week after John Rizzo, the acting CIA general counsel, visited Gitmo, a second senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, went to Guantanamo, attended a meeting of Gitmo staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from Gitmo, who a couple of weeks earlier had attended that training given at Fort Bragg by instructors by the SERE school.
While the training—excuse me, while the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees.
When the Gitmo chief of staff suggested at the meeting that Gitmo “can’t do sleep deprivation,” Lieutenant Colonel Beaver, Gitmo’s senior lawyer, responded, “Yes, we can—with approval.” Lieutenant Beaver added that Gitmo, quote, “may need to curb the harsher operations while the International Committee of the Red Cross is around.”
Mr. Fredman, the senior CIA lawyer, suggested that it’s, quote, “very effective to identify detainee phobias and to use them” and described for the group the so-called “wet towel” technique, which we know as waterboarding. Mr. Fredman said, quote, “It can feel like you’re drowning. The lymphatic system will react as if you’re suffocating, but your body will not cease to function,” close-quote.
And Mr. Fredman presented the following disturbing perspective of our legal obligations under our anti-torture laws, saying, quote, “It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”
“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” How on earth did we get to the point where a senior US government lawyer would say that whether or not an interrogation technique is torture is, quote, “subject to perception” and that if, quote, “the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”? The Gitmo senior JAG officer Lieutenant Colonel Beaver’s response was: “We will need documentation to protect us.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: The Pentagon’s former general counsel William Haynes was repeatedly questioned at Tuesday’s hearing about his role in authorizing the interrogation techniques. During two hours of testimony, Haynes responded to dozens of questions by saying he could not recall or remember details about the process of approving the interrogation techniques. Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island blasted Haynes’s role in authorizing torture.
SEN. JACK REED: You said the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply, and they honestly ask, “What does apply?” And the only thing you sent them was: these techniques apply—no conditions, nothing. So don’t go around with this attitude of you’re protecting the integrity of the military. You degraded the integrity of the United States military.
JUAN GONZALEZ: A major McClatchy newspaper series investigating the detention of terrorist suspects names Haynes as one of a group of five lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and Justice Department who called themselves the “War Council” and reinterpreted US and international laws about accountability and the treatment of prisoners. Other members of the War Council included Vice President Cheney’s former legal adviser and current chief of staff, David Addington; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo; and former deputy to Gonzales, Timothy Flanigan.
Despite the new revelations of systematic prisoner abuse sanctioned at the highest level of government, White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto insisted Tuesday that the administration does not abuse detainees.
TONY FRATTO: I can tell you it’s always been the policy of this government to treat these detainees humanely and in line with the laws and our legal obligations.
REPORTER: Along those lines, another memo came out suggesting that a senior CIA lawyer, while you were debating this in 2002, said the only short test for torture is if a detainee dies or not and said, quote, “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” Does that fit into the guidelines—
TONY FRATTO: I don’t—I don’t know who that is or who that came from. I’m telling you that abuse of detainees has never been, is not, and will never be the policy of this government.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, we spend the hour on torture. We begin with Mark Benjamin, national correspondent for Salon.com. He covered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. He joins us from Washington, D.C.
Welcome, Mark, to Democracy Now!
MARK BENJAMIN: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the revelations that have come out over these two days of hearings from the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday to yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee?
MARK BENJAMIN: Yes. I think particularly the hearing in the Senate, for me—and I’ve been covering Washington for over a decade—was one of the most incredible hearings I think I’ve ever been to. And the reason why, you had a quote from General Taguba in the lead up to this discussion that it was patently clear that there was an organized effort to torture and that it was against the law, and the only question left is whether anyone will be prosecuted. I have to say—it’s sort of amazing to say this, but I think he’s right.
What became painfully clear, I think, in the Senate hearing were two things. One is that soon after 9/11—and there was testimony and documents showing this—officials from Washington, not interrogators out there in the field, were calling—you mentioned the military SERE school—officials from Washington were calling SERE school—we’re talking about CIA officials—[no audio]
AMY GOODMAN: We have just lost that feed for a minute, but he’s back. Go ahead, Mark. Continue.
MARK BENJAMIN: OK. What the hearing showed in the Senate was that officials from Washington, from the CIA, from the Department of Defense, were calling the military SERE school, asking for how we train at SERE school, the Search, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school, how we train elite soldiers at SERE school and whether those techniques could be reverse-engineered into interrogation techniques.
Now, that’s important, and the reason why it’s important is because at SERE school, what we do with the elite soldiers is we—in some cases, they go through waterboarding, they go through sensory deprivation, hooding, forced nudity, humiliation, slapping, that kind of stuff—the same things you saw at Abu Ghraib. That school is designed to train soldiers in case they are captured by an enemy who violates the Geneva Conventions. The reason why that’s important is because at that time, violating Geneva Conventions was against the law. So you have high-level officials from Washington asking about techniques that are designed to help people in case they’re tortured by somebody who violates the Geneva Conventions. So that was one thing that came out in the hearing that was just incredibly shocking.
The other thing that came out that I thought was sort of amazing was that as the Pentagon, for example, started putting together its first formal protocols of these—using these techniques to interrogate people—in other words, the first memos from Secretary Rumsfeld in late 2002 saying this is what we’re going to do to people, we’re going to do hooding, we’re going to do forced nudity, so on and so forth, sensory deprivation—before that memo was even signed, all of the branches of the military—the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force and Army—all wrote memos, before that was even signed, saying this looks like a problem, because it’s against the law. And I’ve just never seen that or never heard that. And what it suggests, obviously, is that high-level—very, very high-level people in the government knew or should have known that what they were doing was against the law. It was sort of an amazing, amazing hearing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And also, about the role of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers, in terms of his response to the criticism he was getting from down the ranks and how he dealt with the Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on this issue?
MARK BENJAMIN: Yeah, that was also an amazing part of the hearing. What happened was, in late 2002, while the military was preparing to formally embrace these techniques, in memos saying this is how we’re going to interrogate people at Guantanamo and elsewhere, as I said, the military services were saying, “Don’t do this. It’s a bad idea. It won’t work, and it’s against the law.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, has his own attorney, Admiral Dalton, and Admiral Dalton began a legal review, said, “Wait a minute. Let’s do a legal review. The services are having a problem,” and started a formal legal review of this process. Because of a request from Jim Haynes, who’s the Department of Defense general counsel, worked directly for Rumsfeld—Haynes went to Dalton and said, “Stop the review”—in other words, put a halt to it, muzzle the services. And what was sort of amazing, which came out in the hearing, is Richard Myers agreed and told his own lawyer, Admiral Dalton, to stop the review. And, you know, it looked pretty awful in the hearing, because you could certainly make an argument that if Richard Myers hadn’t done that, maybe this all wouldn’t have happened.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break, then come back to this discussion. We’re also going to be joined by the head of the NYU Center for Torture Survivors, victims of torture, just come out with a remarkable report that Major General Taguba introduced, called “Broken Laws, Broken Lives.” We’re also going to be talking with the editor at McClatchy newspapers about their eight-month investigation interviewing more than sixty former prisoners, prisoners of the US, and what happened to them. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: At Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora blasted the Bush administration’s abusive detention practices.
ALBERTO MORA: To use so-called “harsh” interrogation techniques during the war on terror was a mistake of massive proportions. It damaged and continues to damage our nation. This policy, which may be aptly a “policy of cruelty,” violated our founding values, our constitutional system and the fabric of our laws, our overarching foreign policy interests and our national security. The net effect of this policy of cruelty has been to weaken our defenses, not to strengthen them.
Before examining the damage, it may be useful to draw some basic legal distinctions. The choice of the adjectives “harsh” or “enhanced” to describe these interrogation techniques is euphemistic and misleading. The legally correct adjective is “cruel.” Many of the counter-resistance techniques authorized for use at Guantanamo in December 2002 constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that could, depending on their application, easily rise to the level of torture.
Many Americans are unaware that there is a legal distinction between cruelty and torture, cruelty being the less severe level of abuse. This has tended to obscure important elements of the interrogation debate. For example, the public may be largely unaware that the government could evasively, if truthfully, claim, and did claim, that it was not “torturing,” even as it was simultaneously applying cruelly. Yet Americans should know that there is little or no moral distinction between cruelty and torture, for cruelty can be as effective as torture in savaging human flesh and spirit and in violating human dignity. Our efforts should be focused not merely on banning torture, but on banning cruelty.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora, blasting the Bush administration. We turn to Mark Benjamin, who is with Salon.com. The significance of Mora’s statement?
MARK BENJAMIN: I think it’s very significant, and I think we’re going to hear more and more very smart attorneys looking at the memos that came out that we were talking about from the Senate hearing, which are incredible, which show high-level Bush administration officials using techniques that were clearly, many military officials thought were, illegal, and developing them into interrogation protocol.
And I just wanted to note that Mora is a fascinating figure in this whole story. Mora is one of the people—he was general counsel of the Navy, and in late 2002, as Secretary Rumsfeld, at least on the military side, was implementing these interrogation protocols, which a lot of attorneys think are illegal, he literally was threatening Rumsfeld’s counsel Jim Haynes to rescind that order and in fact essentially threatened to go public. He succeeded in getting at least the paper pulled back. Rumsfeld did rescind it. But by that time, the memo had already been sent to Afghanistan and on to Iraq.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the inability of Haynes to recall, so many of the questions he was asked about, the specifics? What was the reaction to his faulty memory?
MARK BENJAMIN: I think the lawmakers were incredulous. I don’t think they believe him. I think that they believe he was trying not to incriminate himself. A lot of the people around Haynes during that period of time remember him aggressively pursuing this agenda on behalf of his boss. And by “this agenda,” I mean taking these tactics where we train, you know, soldiers to withstand an interrogation by whoever who would violate the Geneva Conventions and turn that into our own interrogation tactics. As I mentioned before, one of the things he did, for example, was he told the military to stop reviewing this decision, because the military—as I said, the services had real problems with it, because they thought it would be ineffective and they thought it would be illegal.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/cong...ds_new_light_on
QUOTE(Jan Klimkowski @ Jun 19 2008, 09:46 PM) 
This article is at least wandering along the correct corridors, with its brief mention of MK-ULTRA and out-sourcing:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=9382
QUOTE
A Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials had assembled lists of harsh torture techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on prisoners in America's Guantánamo Bay prison gulag.
The Senate's findings strongly refute claims by top Bush administration officials that their approval of such techniques were in response to requests from field commanders "far down the chain of command," The Washington Post reports. According to Joby Warrick,
The sources said that memos and other evidence obtained during the inquiry show that officials in the office of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld started to research the use of waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices in July 2002, months before memos from commanders at the detention facility in Cuba requested permission to use those measures on suspected terrorists. ("Report Questions Pentagon Accounts," The Washington Post, June 17, 2008)
During hearings Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, it was revealed that the CIA played a larger role in the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" policies than previously acknowledged. Torture, according to minutes of an October 2, 2002 meeting at Guantánamo Bay, "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," The Washington Post reports.
The hearings, and supporting documents released by the SASC, revealed that Fredman, whose Agency handlers had been granted virtual carte blanche by the Justice Department to torture suspected "terrorists," discussed
the pros and cons of videotaping, talked about how to avoid interference by the International Committee of the Red Cross and offered a strong defense of waterboarding.
"If a well-trained individual is used to perform this technique, it can feel like you're drowning," he said, according to the meeting's minutes, which do not provide a verbatim transcript.
Fredman said medical experts should monitor detainees. "If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of the cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental," he was quoted as saying. (Joby Warrick, "CIA Played Larger Role in Advising Pentagon," The Washington Post, June 18, 2008)
While Fredman's "expertise" on abusing prisoners recommends placing physicians, psychiatrists and other trained medical personnel in American torture chambers, in itself a clear breech of international norms and the military's own procedures, his callous disregard for human rights hardly absolve high-level administration officials.
As ABC News reported in April, during dozens of top-secret talks and meetings at the White House, the National Security Council Principals Committee, which included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, "discussed and approved specific details" of how "high-value" prisoners would be interrogated.
Indeed, so explicit were these discussions that one source told ABC News, "the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed." One top official reported Ashcroft as having said, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
In a statement released Tuesday, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote:
...how did it come about that American military personnel stripped detainees naked, put them in stress positions, used dogs to scare them, put leashes around their necks to humiliate them, hooded them, deprived them of sleep, and blasted music at them. Were these actions the result of "a few bad apples" acting on their own? It would be a lot easier to accept if it were. But that's not the case. The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. ("The Origins of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques," Carl Levin, United States Senator, June 17, 2008)
As Philippe Sands' investigative piece in last month's Vanity Fair revealed, after the Principals Committee reached a decision to torture, Bush administration "little Eichmanns" provided the necessary "legal" gloss to implement these criminal policies:
The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. [David] Addington, [Jay] Bybee, [Alberto] Gonzales, [Jim] Haynes, and [John] Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse. ("The Green Light," Vanity Fair, May 2008)
But as The Washington Post reported Tuesday, the new evidence presented by the Armed Services Committee challenged previous statements by
William J. "Jim" Haynes II, who served as Defense Department general counsel under Rumsfeld and is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at today's hearing. Haynes, who resigned in February, suggested to a Senate panel in 2006 that the request for tougher interrogation methods originated in October 2002, when Guantanamo Bay commanders began asking for help in ratcheting up the pressure on suspected terrorists who had stopped cooperating. A memo from the prison's top military lawyer that same month had suggested specific techniques and declared them legal.
However, "memos and e-mails" obtained by Senate investigators suggest otherwise. In July 2002, Haynes and other top Defense Department officials "were soliciting ideas for harsh interrogations from military experts in survival training." By late July, despite strenuous objections by military lawyers who viewed such methods as patently illegal breeches of the Geneva Convention, a list was compiled that included many of the torture techniques that infamously became synonymous with the Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram airbase repertoire.
Indeed, military criminal investigators, "attempting to develop evidence to prosecute suspected terrorists, objected strenuously to techniques they considered illegal and likely to damage chances of a conviction," The Wall Street Journal reports. Journal reporter Jess Bravin reveals that,
In an October 2002 email to a colleague, Special Agent Mark Fallon of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said that comments like those of Col. Beaver and Mr. Fredman could "shock the conscience of any legal body" looking into interrogation methods. "This looks like the kinds of stuff Congressional hearings are made of," he wrote. ("Ex-Pentagon Lawyers Challenged on Torture," The Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2008)
In a major breakthrough that demolish the mendacious claims of the Bush regime, the Senate report provides irrefutable evidence that top Pentagon and CIA officials sought out military and "outsourced" mercenary personnel, including psychologists, to reverse-engineer U.S. military Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) tactics taught pilots and Special Operations Commandos caught behind enemy lines for use on prisoners designated "enemy combatants" by the administration.
According to Levin, in July 2002, Richard Shiffrin, a Pentagon Deputy General Counsel called Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Baumgartner, the Chief of Staff at the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), the DoD bureau that oversees SERE training "and asked for information on SERE techniques."
Baumgartner responded by drafting a memo with three attachments. According to Levin's statement and supporting documentation released by the SASC,
One of those attachments (TAB 3) listed physical and psychological pressures used in SERE resistance training including sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions, waterboarding, and slapping. It also made reference to a section of the JPRA instructor manual that talks about "coercive pressures" like keeping the lights at all times, and treating a person like an animal. Another attachment (TAB 4), written by Dr. Ogrisseg, also a witness today, assessed the long-term psychological effects of SERE resistance training on students and the effects of the waterboard.
Scarcely a week after Baumgartner's memo, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued two opinions drafted by Jay Bybee and John C. Yoo addressed to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. These are the infamous Torture Memos, one of which still remains classified.
As current Assistant Attorney General of the OLC Steven Bradbury testified earlier this year before the House Judiciary Committee, the "CIA's use of the waterboarding procedure was adapted from the SERE training program."
At this point, JPRA staff were "finalizing plans" to conduct training for interrogation staff from U.S. Southern Command's Joint Task Force 170 at Guantánamo Bay.
In mid-September 2002, a group from Guantánamo, "including interrogators and behavioral scientists, travelled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and attended training conducted by instructors from the JPRA SERE school. None of the three JPRA personnel who provided the training was a trained interrogator," Levin reveals.
As I wrote in April, those who committed these unspeakable atrocities "were acting out scenes from a CIA 'masterwork' composed decades earlier: KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation."
The July 1963 CIA torture manual describes a fear-cloaked shadow world of hooding, isolation, sensory deprivation, drugging, sexual humiliation and other unseemly interrogation techniques, many of which were "perfected" by "outsourced" psychiatrists on their patients during the 1950s and 1960s during the Agency's criminal MKULTRA "mind-control" experiments.
Fast-forward 50 years, and the fruit of these Nazi-like experiments in psychological torment are all-too-discernible in the hollowed-out eyes and shattered minds of America's "war on terror" prisoners. As former Pentagon lawyer Richard Shiffrin told The New York Times, the Rumsfeld's Defense Department turned to SERE out of "great frustration" at the nature of the intelligence obtained from prisoners through lawful means.
As Salon investigative journalist Mark Benjamin, a reporter who broke many stories on the reverse-engineering of SERE tactics as a torture tool, writes,
But as more and more documents from inside the Bush government come to light, it is increasingly clear that the administration sought from early on to implement interrogation techniques whose basis was torture. Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the CIA began an orchestrated effort to tap expertise from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school, for use in the interrogation of terrorist suspects. ...
SERE training has nothing to do with effective interrogation, according to military experts. Trained interrogators don't work in the program. Skilled, experienced interrogators, in fact, say that only a fool would think that the training could somehow be reverse-engineered into effective interrogation techniques.
But that's exactly what the Bush government sought to do. As the plan rolled forward, military and law enforcement officials consistently sent up red flags that the SERE-based interrogation program wasn't just wrongheaded, it was probably illegal. ("A Timeline to Bush Government Torture," Salon, June 18, 2008)
What were the results obtained by Shiffrin and others into the efficacy of reverse-engineered SERE tactics? "It was real 'Manchurian Candidate' stuff," Shiffrin told the Times.
An apt description if ever there were one, of the post-Constitutional order created by the Bush administration and their corporatist masters. Why then, do top Democratic party leaders, including Carl Levin, continue to insist "impeachment is off the table"?
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
The Senate's findings strongly refute claims by top Bush administration officials that their approval of such techniques were in response to requests from field commanders "far down the chain of command," The Washington Post reports. According to Joby Warrick,
The sources said that memos and other evidence obtained during the inquiry show that officials in the office of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld started to research the use of waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices in July 2002, months before memos from commanders at the detention facility in Cuba requested permission to use those measures on suspected terrorists. ("Report Questions Pentagon Accounts," The Washington Post, June 17, 2008)
During hearings Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, it was revealed that the CIA played a larger role in the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" policies than previously acknowledged. Torture, according to minutes of an October 2, 2002 meeting at Guantánamo Bay, "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," The Washington Post reports.
The hearings, and supporting documents released by the SASC, revealed that Fredman, whose Agency handlers had been granted virtual carte blanche by the Justice Department to torture suspected "terrorists," discussed
the pros and cons of videotaping, talked about how to avoid interference by the International Committee of the Red Cross and offered a strong defense of waterboarding.
"If a well-trained individual is used to perform this technique, it can feel like you're drowning," he said, according to the meeting's minutes, which do not provide a verbatim transcript.
Fredman said medical experts should monitor detainees. "If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of the cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental," he was quoted as saying. (Joby Warrick, "CIA Played Larger Role in Advising Pentagon," The Washington Post, June 18, 2008)
While Fredman's "expertise" on abusing prisoners recommends placing physicians, psychiatrists and other trained medical personnel in American torture chambers, in itself a clear breech of international norms and the military's own procedures, his callous disregard for human rights hardly absolve high-level administration officials.
As ABC News reported in April, during dozens of top-secret talks and meetings at the White House, the National Security Council Principals Committee, which included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, "discussed and approved specific details" of how "high-value" prisoners would be interrogated.
Indeed, so explicit were these discussions that one source told ABC News, "the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed." One top official reported Ashcroft as having said, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
In a statement released Tuesday, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote:
...how did it come about that American military personnel stripped detainees naked, put them in stress positions, used dogs to scare them, put leashes around their necks to humiliate them, hooded them, deprived them of sleep, and blasted music at them. Were these actions the result of "a few bad apples" acting on their own? It would be a lot easier to accept if it were. But that's not the case. The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. ("The Origins of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques," Carl Levin, United States Senator, June 17, 2008)
As Philippe Sands' investigative piece in last month's Vanity Fair revealed, after the Principals Committee reached a decision to torture, Bush administration "little Eichmanns" provided the necessary "legal" gloss to implement these criminal policies:
The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. [David] Addington, [Jay] Bybee, [Alberto] Gonzales, [Jim] Haynes, and [John] Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse. ("The Green Light," Vanity Fair, May 2008)
But as The Washington Post reported Tuesday, the new evidence presented by the Armed Services Committee challenged previous statements by
William J. "Jim" Haynes II, who served as Defense Department general counsel under Rumsfeld and is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at today's hearing. Haynes, who resigned in February, suggested to a Senate panel in 2006 that the request for tougher interrogation methods originated in October 2002, when Guantanamo Bay commanders began asking for help in ratcheting up the pressure on suspected terrorists who had stopped cooperating. A memo from the prison's top military lawyer that same month had suggested specific techniques and declared them legal.
However, "memos and e-mails" obtained by Senate investigators suggest otherwise. In July 2002, Haynes and other top Defense Department officials "were soliciting ideas for harsh interrogations from military experts in survival training." By late July, despite strenuous objections by military lawyers who viewed such methods as patently illegal breeches of the Geneva Convention, a list was compiled that included many of the torture techniques that infamously became synonymous with the Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram airbase repertoire.
Indeed, military criminal investigators, "attempting to develop evidence to prosecute suspected terrorists, objected strenuously to techniques they considered illegal and likely to damage chances of a conviction," The Wall Street Journal reports. Journal reporter Jess Bravin reveals that,
In an October 2002 email to a colleague, Special Agent Mark Fallon of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said that comments like those of Col. Beaver and Mr. Fredman could "shock the conscience of any legal body" looking into interrogation methods. "This looks like the kinds of stuff Congressional hearings are made of," he wrote. ("Ex-Pentagon Lawyers Challenged on Torture," The Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2008)
In a major breakthrough that demolish the mendacious claims of the Bush regime, the Senate report provides irrefutable evidence that top Pentagon and CIA officials sought out military and "outsourced" mercenary personnel, including psychologists, to reverse-engineer U.S. military Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) tactics taught pilots and Special Operations Commandos caught behind enemy lines for use on prisoners designated "enemy combatants" by the administration.
According to Levin, in July 2002, Richard Shiffrin, a Pentagon Deputy General Counsel called Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Baumgartner, the Chief of Staff at the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), the DoD bureau that oversees SERE training "and asked for information on SERE techniques."
Baumgartner responded by drafting a memo with three attachments. According to Levin's statement and supporting documentation released by the SASC,
One of those attachments (TAB 3) listed physical and psychological pressures used in SERE resistance training including sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions, waterboarding, and slapping. It also made reference to a section of the JPRA instructor manual that talks about "coercive pressures" like keeping the lights at all times, and treating a person like an animal. Another attachment (TAB 4), written by Dr. Ogrisseg, also a witness today, assessed the long-term psychological effects of SERE resistance training on students and the effects of the waterboard.
Scarcely a week after Baumgartner's memo, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued two opinions drafted by Jay Bybee and John C. Yoo addressed to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. These are the infamous Torture Memos, one of which still remains classified.
As current Assistant Attorney General of the OLC Steven Bradbury testified earlier this year before the House Judiciary Committee, the "CIA's use of the waterboarding procedure was adapted from the SERE training program."
At this point, JPRA staff were "finalizing plans" to conduct training for interrogation staff from U.S. Southern Command's Joint Task Force 170 at Guantánamo Bay.
In mid-September 2002, a group from Guantánamo, "including interrogators and behavioral scientists, travelled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and attended training conducted by instructors from the JPRA SERE school. None of the three JPRA personnel who provided the training was a trained interrogator," Levin reveals.
As I wrote in April, those who committed these unspeakable atrocities "were acting out scenes from a CIA 'masterwork' composed decades earlier: KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation."
The July 1963 CIA torture manual describes a fear-cloaked shadow world of hooding, isolation, sensory deprivation, drugging, sexual humiliation and other unseemly interrogation techniques, many of which were "perfected" by "outsourced" psychiatrists on their patients during the 1950s and 1960s during the Agency's criminal MKULTRA "mind-control" experiments.
Fast-forward 50 years, and the fruit of these Nazi-like experiments in psychological torment are all-too-discernible in the hollowed-out eyes and shattered minds of America's "war on terror" prisoners. As former Pentagon lawyer Richard Shiffrin told The New York Times, the Rumsfeld's Defense Department turned to SERE out of "great frustration" at the nature of the intelligence obtained from prisoners through lawful means.
As Salon investigative journalist Mark Benjamin, a reporter who broke many stories on the reverse-engineering of SERE tactics as a torture tool, writes,
But as more and more documents from inside the Bush government come to light, it is increasingly clear that the administration sought from early on to implement interrogation techniques whose basis was torture. Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the CIA began an orchestrated effort to tap expertise from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school, for use in the interrogation of terrorist suspects. ...
SERE training has nothing to do with effective interrogation, according to military experts. Trained interrogators don't work in the program. Skilled, experienced interrogators, in fact, say that only a fool would think that the training could somehow be reverse-engineered into effective interrogation techniques.
But that's exactly what the Bush government sought to do. As the plan rolled forward, military and law enforcement officials consistently sent up red flags that the SERE-based interrogation program wasn't just wrongheaded, it was probably illegal. ("A Timeline to Bush Government Torture," Salon, June 18, 2008)
What were the results obtained by Shiffrin and others into the efficacy of reverse-engineered SERE tactics? "It was real 'Manchurian Candidate' stuff," Shiffrin told the Times.
An apt description if ever there were one, of the post-Constitutional order created by the Bush administration and their corporatist masters. Why then, do top Democratic party leaders, including Carl Levin, continue to insist "impeachment is off the table"?
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=9382
Good article, and wonderful turn of phrase: post-Constitutional order created by the Bush administration.
And, they had a little help from 'friends' in the Psychological Community....
JUAN GONZALEZ: The Senate investigation confirmed the Pentagon sought the help of military psychologists as early as 2002 to devise so-called aggressive interrogation techniques. According to the Senate report, the Pentagon’s then-general counsel William Haynes sent a memo in June 2002 inquiring about a military program known as SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. The program was originally designed to train Army soldiers how to survive enemy interrogations, but the US military reverse-engineered the program and used it on prisoners held overseas.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Steven Reisner is a psychoanalyst and a leading critic of the American Psychological Association’s policy governing the role of psychologists in interrogations. He is running for president of the American Psychological Association and has received more nominating votes than any other candidate. The actual vote will take place in October. He joins us now in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dr. Steven Reisner. What did you learn?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, what I learned is that—what we had suspected. We had suspected—we had had bits of evidence coming from many different sources that the psychologists, military psychologists, intelligence psychologists, had been intimately and integrally involved in the government’s program of abuse of prisoners and detainees.
And what Carl Levin and the committee was able to do was to bring all of those bits of data together and expose the role of psychologists in justifying the techniques, by having health professionals present, so the legal rationale was—the cover rationale was supported, that it’s not torture if you have a health professional present; the training process, by using psychologists trained in SERE techniques to reverse-engineer processes that were originally created to protect our own soldiers as part of the processes of abuse, that psychologists were supervising and training. And unfortunately—unfortunately for the profession of psychology, Senator Levin laid it all out so clearly and so tragically.
AMY GOODMAN: So what’s happening right now in the APA? I mean, this is a raging battle. You were one of the chief dissidents, and now you’re running for president. You got the most nominating votes. How significant is this hearing in this? And is this a debate that’s happening among the top five candidates that are running?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, I haven’t seen any literature, or very little literature, from the other candidates about this issue. The APA leadership and the other candidates are hoping that what the APA has done thus far will make a significant change in the perception of psychologists and the actual behavior of psychologists in these areas. But I believe and the psychologists that support me believe that the APA has not yet gone far enough and that given these revelations, it shows how much further the APA and psychology has to go.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You know, to me, one of the heartening results of all of these investigations of torture is the number of military, career military people, both in the legal areas of the military, as well as officers, who raised questions or objected to these developments. Did you find any kind of—any examples of psychologists who were employed by the military, who stood up and said, “Hey, this is wrong”?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Yes, there’s one. I mean, I’m glad to say there was at least one, and that was Michael Gelles, who worked with Alberto Mora, and he spoke out against these techniques. He was not a part of the biscuit interrogation—he wasn’t part of their command; he was working for the Navy. He’s a civilian employed by the military.
But to date, I have yet to hear of a single intelligence or interrogating psychologist who spoke out against these techniques and against the rationale for these techniques and tried to change that. During the time they were being used or even now, there is not yet one who calls for an investigation of the use of psychology for abusive purposes.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, to be clear, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association both ban their members for participating in coercive interrogations?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: APA?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: APA has continued to this day to assert that psychologists have an important role to play in military and intelligence interrogations, even if those interrogations take place at sites where the Geneva Conventions don’t apply, where international human rights laws don’t apply, where—black sites, where even the names of the detainees are not released, cite the—American Psychological Association’s position so far is that psychologists should be able to [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: We wanted to have a debate among the five of you presidential candidates, the American Psychological Association. We asked the other four candidates to come on today. Dr. Jack Kitaeff, one of the five, said, “I see this as an internal APA policy matter, not the subject of a radio show, but thanks for thinking of me.” We asked Dr. Ronald Rozensky to join us; he declined. Dr. Robert McGrath, he declined.
But I wanted to ask you about Dr. Carol Goodheart’s position. She sent this statement to us, though she didn’t come on. She said, “I support the recent APA Council of Representatives’ amendment that strengthens APA’s ‘no torture, no exceptions’ policy. The amended resolution makes it clear all harsh interrogation techniques, including so-called ‘enhanced’ methods or ‘no touch’ torture or ‘torture lite,’ constitute torture and are always prohibited.” Dr. Reisner?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, I agree with Dr. Goodheart. I think that the resolution—actually, it was an amended resolution that was passed by the council. It amended the resolution passed last summer, which didn’t really have any teeth in it and had tremendous loopholes. But this one did absolutely prohibit the use of nineteen interrogation techniques in any interrogation.
It doesn’t clearly prohibit such techniques as part of the conditions of confinement. It doesn’t prohibit psychologists from overseeing and supervising the conditions of confinement in sites that are considered illegal internationally. It doesn’t prohibit psychologists from instituting behavior modification programs for detainees. It doesn’t—you know, reward-and-punishment programs, which psychologists have been doing.
So there is a—it was a very good step, but I think Dr. Goodheart—and I wish the other candidates would speak to how far we still have to go. BUt so far, they have not been willing to engage in a debate about that issue.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And if it is eventually judged that these were war crimes that occurred in some of these torture incidents throughout—under American jurisdiction and there were psychologists that were present at the time, would it be your view that they also participated in these war crimes?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: I actually spoke with the UN rapporteur on torture about that very question. And he said that being part of an operation where the operation commits a war crime makes the person part of the operation guilty of the war crime. One of the reasons that I’m running for president of the APA and one of the reasons we support changes in the APA policy is to protect our psychologists from being brought up on war criminal charges. And it’s one of the reasons that we want to change the APA ethics code, which at this moment permits a psychologist to follow the law or military regulations even when those regulations violate our own ethics code.
AMY GOODMAN: I should also say that the candidate for president, Robert McGrath, said, “I’m categorically opposed to the use of degrading and threatening techniques in interrogation,” and went on from there.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/as_s...s_helped_devise
JUAN GONZALEZ: As Congress convened hearings this week on the Bush administration’s use of controversial interrogation techniques, a new human rights report released yesterday has for the first time found medical evidence corroborating the claims of former prisoners who say they were tortured while in US custody.
The 130-page report, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” was published by the group Physicians for Human Rights. It is based on the evaluation of eleven men formerly held in US prison camps overseas between 2001 and 2004. Four of the men were captured in Afghanistan and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, and seven were held in Iraq. All were released in recent years, and none was charged with a crime. Teams of medical specialists conducted physical and psychological tests on the former prisoners, including exams intended to assess if they were lying.
AMY GOODMAN: In a statement accompanying the report, retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the Army’s first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a “systematic regime of torture” inside US-run prison camps.
Dr. Allen Keller is a medical expert for the Physicians for Human Rights study. He evaluated five of the prisoners, co-wrote the report. He’s director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, joining us also here in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Keller, tell us about the five people you interviewed. What did you find?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Well, I can even speak to the broader all eleven. So, my colleagues and I—and in each evaluation we did, we had both a medical and a mental health professional conduct detailed evaluations over the course of two days. And what we found was clear evidence of physical and psychological abuse and with devastating health consequences. Individuals reported being exposed to a variety of torture and abusive methods, including beatings, prolonged exposure to extremes of cold and heat, sexual humiliations, forced isolation, standing for extended periods, and with devastating health consequences.
And I think, as was alluded to earlier, there is a profound disconnect between these sanitized terms, such as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” “torture lite”—whatever you want to call it, it’s torture, and we shouldn’t be doing it. And when we examined these individuals, we found clear evidence, both physical and psychological, of what they endured. And as a result of what they endured, they had lasting physical and psychological scars.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you examine them?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: So we conducted, first, detailed interviews, including a past medical and psychological history, trying to assess what their baseline was prior to their imprisonment, then a detailed history of the reports of abuse that they described. Subsequently, psychological evacuations were conducted, and then physical examinations were done. And then, when needed, radiographic studies were done. So very intensive evaluations done in accordance with international protocols, particularly the Istanbul Protocol.
And so, the evidence that we found was clear, whether it was scars consistent with having been shackled in painful positions or descriptions of nightmares, of continued profound feelings of humiliation. So the pain and suffering continues long after the abuse stopped.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The report—some of the men you mention, portions of what they have suffered have come out in different reports in the past, but I don’t think the detail and the extent that you have. I just wanted to read a couple of graphs of some of the individuals you mention.
One was Amir, a salesman in the Middle East who was captured in Iraq in 2003. Besides the sleep deprivation and the other things you also mention, I want to read this part. It says, “At first, he was not mistreated but then was subjected to religious and sexual humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, restraint,” so on. He says Amir recalled experiencing—he was placed in a foul-smelling room and forced to lay down in urine, and while he was hit and kicked on his back and side, Amir was then sodomized with a broomstick and forced to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him. After a soldier stepped on his genitals, he fainted. In July 2004, he was transferred to the prison at Camp Bucca, where he reported no abuse. And then, this was at Abu Ghraib that this happened.
Another prisoner, Yussef, who was captured in Afghanistan, talked about being subjected to electric shock from a generator, feeling, quote, "as if my veins were being pulled out.” So this was really not only borderline examples of torture; this was actual physical torture that was occurring here against some of these men.
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Absolutely. And it’s important, though, to note, you don’t necessarily have to lay a glove on someone for it to be torture. Sleep deprivation, all of these, quote, “enhanced” interrogation methods have devastating health consequences.
And regarding the testimony of those individuals in the information we got, I think several things also speak to their credibility. They were very forthcoming with us about when they were treated well, when they were not, what physical and psychological symptoms they did have and did not, and were forthcoming about even, you know, scars, of saying, “Oh, this was unrelated to my abuse.” You also assess their affect during the evaluations, and then based on the physical and psychological evaluations, you make an assessment.
My colleagues and I who conducted these evaluations have years of experience in doing such evaluations. And so, we were highly confident of the credibility of these individuals and the pain and suffering that resulted from their torture and abuse.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Allen Keller, how did it compare—you’ve treated people from eighty countries for torture. How did these prisoners compare who were tortured in US custody?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: The forms of abuse that we learned of, that we documented, are as bad, if not worse, than any I’ve heard from anywhere around the world. We arguably, tragically, are second to none in these techniques that have been used. It doesn’t mean that in countries it’s not used with much greater frequency, but I think this has actually really important ramifications.
It’s important to note that most torture survivors around the world are not terror suspects. They’re civilians. They’re Tibetan monks, speaking out for freedom in Tibet. They’re African student activists peacefully promoting democracy. And we have made the world a much more dangerous place for these individuals by condoning these methods.
AMY GOODMAN: And the role of the American Psychological Association, how important do you think it is that they haven’t banned members for participation?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Right. Well, first, I’m a member of the American College of Physicians as a general [inaudible] and proud that they’ve taken a strong stance on this. I believe it’s crucial that the American Psychological Association do so, as well. The notion that a health professional in the room somehow lends protection is ridiculous. And in fact, to the contrary, I think it makes it more dangerous. It enables the interrogator to think, well, maybe they can go a little further. And I think there are pressures on the health professional, that like, well, should I really be speaking out? And, by the way, in our study, we did find several very disturbing reports of participation of health professionals, including mental health professionals, in the abuse.
AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. I want to thank you both very much for being with us. Dr. Allen Keller is director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. He is speaking about the report that he and his colleagues did, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact,” a report by Physicians for Human Rights. We will link to it at our website. Also, Dr. Steven Reisner, presidential candidate to head the American Psychological Association. That final vote will take place in October, after the annual meeting of the APA that will take place in Boston this summer.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. When we come back, we’re going to speak to an editor at McClatchy Newspapers about a report they did: "Guantanamo: Beyond the Law.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Before we move to McClatchy Newspapers, I wanted to ask Dr. Allen Keller one last question. You did say that there was participation by health professionals in some of the torture, that former prisoners revealed this to you. Who revealed it? Who was involved?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Well, we heard very disturbing examples. For example, one individual detained in Guantanamo reported that, for example, while he was held in a room exposed to extremes of heat and cold, a health professional who he believed was a doctor would come and monitor his vital signs, never stopping the abuse—clearly a violation of medical ethics and participation in torture. This same individual also described how he spoke to a psychologist about his feelings of sadness and loneliness and worry about never seeing his family again. And subsequently, the interrogations that immediately ensued entirely changed their tones and focused in on that vulnerability, leading him to believe, and I believe as well, that this individual shared that information with the interrogators—again, clearly a violation of professional ethics.
AMY GOODMAN: Did he name the psychologist?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: He didn’t know who the psychologist was. I believe they had their names covered with tape, if I’m not mistaken, but he did not know who that was.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Allen Keller, thank you, and we will continue, of course, to follow this story.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/brok...s_medical_study
JUAN GONZALEZ: The Senate investigation confirmed the Pentagon sought the help of military psychologists as early as 2002 to devise so-called aggressive interrogation techniques. According to the Senate report, the Pentagon’s then-general counsel William Haynes sent a memo in June 2002 inquiring about a military program known as SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. The program was originally designed to train Army soldiers how to survive enemy interrogations, but the US military reverse-engineered the program and used it on prisoners held overseas.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Steven Reisner is a psychoanalyst and a leading critic of the American Psychological Association’s policy governing the role of psychologists in interrogations. He is running for president of the American Psychological Association and has received more nominating votes than any other candidate. The actual vote will take place in October. He joins us now in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dr. Steven Reisner. What did you learn?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, what I learned is that—what we had suspected. We had suspected—we had had bits of evidence coming from many different sources that the psychologists, military psychologists, intelligence psychologists, had been intimately and integrally involved in the government’s program of abuse of prisoners and detainees.
And what Carl Levin and the committee was able to do was to bring all of those bits of data together and expose the role of psychologists in justifying the techniques, by having health professionals present, so the legal rationale was—the cover rationale was supported, that it’s not torture if you have a health professional present; the training process, by using psychologists trained in SERE techniques to reverse-engineer processes that were originally created to protect our own soldiers as part of the processes of abuse, that psychologists were supervising and training. And unfortunately—unfortunately for the profession of psychology, Senator Levin laid it all out so clearly and so tragically.
AMY GOODMAN: So what’s happening right now in the APA? I mean, this is a raging battle. You were one of the chief dissidents, and now you’re running for president. You got the most nominating votes. How significant is this hearing in this? And is this a debate that’s happening among the top five candidates that are running?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, I haven’t seen any literature, or very little literature, from the other candidates about this issue. The APA leadership and the other candidates are hoping that what the APA has done thus far will make a significant change in the perception of psychologists and the actual behavior of psychologists in these areas. But I believe and the psychologists that support me believe that the APA has not yet gone far enough and that given these revelations, it shows how much further the APA and psychology has to go.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You know, to me, one of the heartening results of all of these investigations of torture is the number of military, career military people, both in the legal areas of the military, as well as officers, who raised questions or objected to these developments. Did you find any kind of—any examples of psychologists who were employed by the military, who stood up and said, “Hey, this is wrong”?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Yes, there’s one. I mean, I’m glad to say there was at least one, and that was Michael Gelles, who worked with Alberto Mora, and he spoke out against these techniques. He was not a part of the biscuit interrogation—he wasn’t part of their command; he was working for the Navy. He’s a civilian employed by the military.
But to date, I have yet to hear of a single intelligence or interrogating psychologist who spoke out against these techniques and against the rationale for these techniques and tried to change that. During the time they were being used or even now, there is not yet one who calls for an investigation of the use of psychology for abusive purposes.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, to be clear, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association both ban their members for participating in coercive interrogations?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: APA?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: APA has continued to this day to assert that psychologists have an important role to play in military and intelligence interrogations, even if those interrogations take place at sites where the Geneva Conventions don’t apply, where international human rights laws don’t apply, where—black sites, where even the names of the detainees are not released, cite the—American Psychological Association’s position so far is that psychologists should be able to [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: We wanted to have a debate among the five of you presidential candidates, the American Psychological Association. We asked the other four candidates to come on today. Dr. Jack Kitaeff, one of the five, said, “I see this as an internal APA policy matter, not the subject of a radio show, but thanks for thinking of me.” We asked Dr. Ronald Rozensky to join us; he declined. Dr. Robert McGrath, he declined.
But I wanted to ask you about Dr. Carol Goodheart’s position. She sent this statement to us, though she didn’t come on. She said, “I support the recent APA Council of Representatives’ amendment that strengthens APA’s ‘no torture, no exceptions’ policy. The amended resolution makes it clear all harsh interrogation techniques, including so-called ‘enhanced’ methods or ‘no touch’ torture or ‘torture lite,’ constitute torture and are always prohibited.” Dr. Reisner?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, I agree with Dr. Goodheart. I think that the resolution—actually, it was an amended resolution that was passed by the council. It amended the resolution passed last summer, which didn’t really have any teeth in it and had tremendous loopholes. But this one did absolutely prohibit the use of nineteen interrogation techniques in any interrogation.
It doesn’t clearly prohibit such techniques as part of the conditions of confinement. It doesn’t prohibit psychologists from overseeing and supervising the conditions of confinement in sites that are considered illegal internationally. It doesn’t prohibit psychologists from instituting behavior modification programs for detainees. It doesn’t—you know, reward-and-punishment programs, which psychologists have been doing.
So there is a—it was a very good step, but I think Dr. Goodheart—and I wish the other candidates would speak to how far we still have to go. BUt so far, they have not been willing to engage in a debate about that issue.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And if it is eventually judged that these were war crimes that occurred in some of these torture incidents throughout—under American jurisdiction and there were psychologists that were present at the time, would it be your view that they also participated in these war crimes?
DR. STEVEN REISNER: I actually spoke with the UN rapporteur on torture about that very question. And he said that being part of an operation where the operation commits a war crime makes the person part of the operation guilty of the war crime. One of the reasons that I’m running for president of the APA and one of the reasons we support changes in the APA policy is to protect our psychologists from being brought up on war criminal charges. And it’s one of the reasons that we want to change the APA ethics code, which at this moment permits a psychologist to follow the law or military regulations even when those regulations violate our own ethics code.
AMY GOODMAN: I should also say that the candidate for president, Robert McGrath, said, “I’m categorically opposed to the use of degrading and threatening techniques in interrogation,” and went on from there.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/as_s...s_helped_devise
JUAN GONZALEZ: As Congress convened hearings this week on the Bush administration’s use of controversial interrogation techniques, a new human rights report released yesterday has for the first time found medical evidence corroborating the claims of former prisoners who say they were tortured while in US custody.
The 130-page report, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” was published by the group Physicians for Human Rights. It is based on the evaluation of eleven men formerly held in US prison camps overseas between 2001 and 2004. Four of the men were captured in Afghanistan and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, and seven were held in Iraq. All were released in recent years, and none was charged with a crime. Teams of medical specialists conducted physical and psychological tests on the former prisoners, including exams intended to assess if they were lying.
AMY GOODMAN: In a statement accompanying the report, retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the Army’s first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a “systematic regime of torture” inside US-run prison camps.
Dr. Allen Keller is a medical expert for the Physicians for Human Rights study. He evaluated five of the prisoners, co-wrote the report. He’s director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, joining us also here in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Keller, tell us about the five people you interviewed. What did you find?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Well, I can even speak to the broader all eleven. So, my colleagues and I—and in each evaluation we did, we had both a medical and a mental health professional conduct detailed evaluations over the course of two days. And what we found was clear evidence of physical and psychological abuse and with devastating health consequences. Individuals reported being exposed to a variety of torture and abusive methods, including beatings, prolonged exposure to extremes of cold and heat, sexual humiliations, forced isolation, standing for extended periods, and with devastating health consequences.
And I think, as was alluded to earlier, there is a profound disconnect between these sanitized terms, such as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” “torture lite”—whatever you want to call it, it’s torture, and we shouldn’t be doing it. And when we examined these individuals, we found clear evidence, both physical and psychological, of what they endured. And as a result of what they endured, they had lasting physical and psychological scars.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you examine them?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: So we conducted, first, detailed interviews, including a past medical and psychological history, trying to assess what their baseline was prior to their imprisonment, then a detailed history of the reports of abuse that they described. Subsequently, psychological evacuations were conducted, and then physical examinations were done. And then, when needed, radiographic studies were done. So very intensive evaluations done in accordance with international protocols, particularly the Istanbul Protocol.
And so, the evidence that we found was clear, whether it was scars consistent with having been shackled in painful positions or descriptions of nightmares, of continued profound feelings of humiliation. So the pain and suffering continues long after the abuse stopped.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The report—some of the men you mention, portions of what they have suffered have come out in different reports in the past, but I don’t think the detail and the extent that you have. I just wanted to read a couple of graphs of some of the individuals you mention.
One was Amir, a salesman in the Middle East who was captured in Iraq in 2003. Besides the sleep deprivation and the other things you also mention, I want to read this part. It says, “At first, he was not mistreated but then was subjected to religious and sexual humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, restraint,” so on. He says Amir recalled experiencing—he was placed in a foul-smelling room and forced to lay down in urine, and while he was hit and kicked on his back and side, Amir was then sodomized with a broomstick and forced to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him. After a soldier stepped on his genitals, he fainted. In July 2004, he was transferred to the prison at Camp Bucca, where he reported no abuse. And then, this was at Abu Ghraib that this happened.
Another prisoner, Yussef, who was captured in Afghanistan, talked about being subjected to electric shock from a generator, feeling, quote, "as if my veins were being pulled out.” So this was really not only borderline examples of torture; this was actual physical torture that was occurring here against some of these men.
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Absolutely. And it’s important, though, to note, you don’t necessarily have to lay a glove on someone for it to be torture. Sleep deprivation, all of these, quote, “enhanced” interrogation methods have devastating health consequences.
And regarding the testimony of those individuals in the information we got, I think several things also speak to their credibility. They were very forthcoming with us about when they were treated well, when they were not, what physical and psychological symptoms they did have and did not, and were forthcoming about even, you know, scars, of saying, “Oh, this was unrelated to my abuse.” You also assess their affect during the evaluations, and then based on the physical and psychological evaluations, you make an assessment.
My colleagues and I who conducted these evaluations have years of experience in doing such evaluations. And so, we were highly confident of the credibility of these individuals and the pain and suffering that resulted from their torture and abuse.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Allen Keller, how did it compare—you’ve treated people from eighty countries for torture. How did these prisoners compare who were tortured in US custody?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: The forms of abuse that we learned of, that we documented, are as bad, if not worse, than any I’ve heard from anywhere around the world. We arguably, tragically, are second to none in these techniques that have been used. It doesn’t mean that in countries it’s not used with much greater frequency, but I think this has actually really important ramifications.
It’s important to note that most torture survivors around the world are not terror suspects. They’re civilians. They’re Tibetan monks, speaking out for freedom in Tibet. They’re African student activists peacefully promoting democracy. And we have made the world a much more dangerous place for these individuals by condoning these methods.
AMY GOODMAN: And the role of the American Psychological Association, how important do you think it is that they haven’t banned members for participation?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Right. Well, first, I’m a member of the American College of Physicians as a general [inaudible] and proud that they’ve taken a strong stance on this. I believe it’s crucial that the American Psychological Association do so, as well. The notion that a health professional in the room somehow lends protection is ridiculous. And in fact, to the contrary, I think it makes it more dangerous. It enables the interrogator to think, well, maybe they can go a little further. And I think there are pressures on the health professional, that like, well, should I really be speaking out? And, by the way, in our study, we did find several very disturbing reports of participation of health professionals, including mental health professionals, in the abuse.
AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. I want to thank you both very much for being with us. Dr. Allen Keller is director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. He is speaking about the report that he and his colleagues did, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact,” a report by Physicians for Human Rights. We will link to it at our website. Also, Dr. Steven Reisner, presidential candidate to head the American Psychological Association. That final vote will take place in October, after the annual meeting of the APA that will take place in Boston this summer.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. When we come back, we’re going to speak to an editor at McClatchy Newspapers about a report they did: "Guantanamo: Beyond the Law.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Before we move to McClatchy Newspapers, I wanted to ask Dr. Allen Keller one last question. You did say that there was participation by health professionals in some of the torture, that former prisoners revealed this to you. Who revealed it? Who was involved?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: Well, we heard very disturbing examples. For example, one individual detained in Guantanamo reported that, for example, while he was held in a room exposed to extremes of heat and cold, a health professional who he believed was a doctor would come and monitor his vital signs, never stopping the abuse—clearly a violation of medical ethics and participation in torture. This same individual also described how he spoke to a psychologist about his feelings of sadness and loneliness and worry about never seeing his family again. And subsequently, the interrogations that immediately ensued entirely changed their tones and focused in on that vulnerability, leading him to believe, and I believe as well, that this individual shared that information with the interrogators—again, clearly a violation of professional ethics.
AMY GOODMAN: Did he name the psychologist?
DR. ALLEN KELLER: He didn’t know who the psychologist was. I believe they had their names covered with tape, if I’m not mistaken, but he did not know who that was.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Allen Keller, thank you, and we will continue, of course, to follow this story.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/brok...s_medical_study
QUOTE
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Indeed. Not being "held to account" is the outcome I absolutely anticipate.
When US government agencies, military and huge corporations are active in, or have a finger in, the global drugs business, the kidnapping of innocents for indenture in the sex business, world-wide gun running, turning a blind eye to, and thus encouraging, the forced harvesting of human body parts/organs and many other abhorrent activities, torture simply slots in to the jigsaw picture without even a whimper. Outright lying, as in the statement made by WH Presssec Tony Fratto: "I can tell you it’s always been the policy of this government to treat these detainees humanely and in line with the laws and our legal obligations," doesn't even really merit mention.
How low the US has sunk.
QUOTE(David Guyatt @ Jun 20 2008, 12:32 PM)
QUOTE
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
Indeed. Not being "held to account" is the outcome I absolutely anticipate.
When US government agencies, military and huge corporations are active in, or have a finger in, the global drugs business, the kidnapping of innocents for indenture in the sex business, world-wide gun running, turning a blind eye to, and thus encouraging, the forced harvesting of human body parts/organs and many other abhorrent activities, torture simply slots in to the jigsaw picture without even a whimper. Outright lying, as in the statement made by WH Presssec Tony Fratto: "I can tell you it's always been the policy of this government to treat these detainees humanely and in line with the laws and our legal obligations," doesn't even really merit mention.
How low the US has sunk.
Lower than a snakes belly, for sure! "Not being "held to account" is the outcome I absolutely anticipate" You can take that to the 'Bank'!.....pun intended.
QUOTE(Jan Klimkowski @ Jun 20 2008, 12:25 PM)
Now a Major General (retired) is spilling the beans. With typical cowardice, MSM are trying to frame these incidents of torture as "aberrations" and "exceptional", when in fact the Bush/Cheney regime took the horrific techniques used and developed under MK-ULTRA and in South and Central America (& under the Phoenix Program), and declared these techniques both legal and desirable in the so-called "War on Terror".
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=9378
QUOTE
US General Accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes
by Matt Renner and Maya Schenwar
Global Research, June 19, 2008
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (now retired) served as the deputy commanding general for support for the Third Army for ten months in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq occupation. In a statement released today, he bluntly accuses the Bush administration of war crimes and lays down a challenge for prosecution.
In 2004, Taguba released a classified report detailing abuses committed at Abu Ghraib Prison. The "Taguba Report" (executive summary) urged Pentagon officials to follow up on its findings by enforcing adherence to the Geneva Conventions in interrogations.
Taguba retired in January 2007, later alleging that Pentagon officials had ordered him to retire for being "overzealous" in his criticisms of the military.
In light of ongoing Congressional investigations into so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and on the heels of Congressman Dennis Kucinich recently issuing articles of impeachment accusing President Bush of, among other offenses, authorizing torture, we present Taguba's latest statement for your consideration.
The full Physicians for Human Rights report outlining the medical evidence of torture perpetrated by the United States can be read at their website.
Preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives By Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, USA (Retired)
Maj. Gen. Taguba led the US Army's official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in May 2004.
This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals' lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.
The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted - both on America's institutions and our nation's founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The former detainees in this report - each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life - require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.
But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.
And so do the American people.
by Matt Renner and Maya Schenwar
Global Research, June 19, 2008
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (now retired) served as the deputy commanding general for support for the Third Army for ten months in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq occupation. In a statement released today, he bluntly accuses the Bush administration of war crimes and lays down a challenge for prosecution.
In 2004, Taguba released a classified report detailing abuses committed at Abu Ghraib Prison. The "Taguba Report" (executive summary) urged Pentagon officials to follow up on its findings by enforcing adherence to the Geneva Conventions in interrogations.
Taguba retired in January 2007, later alleging that Pentagon officials had ordered him to retire for being "overzealous" in his criticisms of the military.
In light of ongoing Congressional investigations into so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and on the heels of Congressman Dennis Kucinich recently issuing articles of impeachment accusing President Bush of, among other offenses, authorizing torture, we present Taguba's latest statement for your consideration.
The full Physicians for Human Rights report outlining the medical evidence of torture perpetrated by the United States can be read at their website.
Preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives By Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, USA (Retired)
Maj. Gen. Taguba led the US Army's official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in May 2004.
This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals' lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.
The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted - both on America's institutions and our nation's founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The former detainees in this report - each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life - require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.
But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.
And so do the American people.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=9378
Jan, your forgoing post brought to mind Levanda's closing remarks in his Sinster Forces trilogy:
QUOTE
Alien abductees speak of the sinister agenda of the aliens, the horrors to which they have been subjected. If these are truly alien beings, then they are adept at using the Manson Secret on their subjects; if they are not alien beings, but military or intelligence officers in the midst of a experimental program, then the Manson Secret is already in their hands, and MK-ULTRA was a decoy
I don't quite agree with his either/or analysis however, and consider the Manson Secret to very much associated with the MK-ULTRA program -- sinister peas in a long sinister pod if you will -- of which the latest irruption is the Gitmo torture.
As you know, Levanda describes the Manson Secret as follows:
QUOTE
The Manson Secret is black magic, and it was back magic that informed the CIA's mind-control programs as well
This description ( a rather more accurate analysis imo) goes a long way towards explaining various harrowing irruptions of inhumanity that we have dealt with in this forum over recent weeks - briefly summated in post No. 5 above.
Having now spoken the forbidden ad politically incorrect words, I am now off to gather matchsticks off historical pavements.
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