The enemies of free speech are on the march--Part 6: forget Imus--you're next

The enemies of free speech are on the march--Part 6: forget Imus--you're next


Wes Vernon
Wes Vernon
April 16, 2007


The speech police — bereft of ideas they are willing to subject to open debate — want you to stop pestering your congressman and senators with letters, e-mails, and phone calls telling them what you think about important issues. Members of Congress are considering legislation aimed at making you shut up and leave them alone. Intimidation is the method. You need to fight back. More on that below.

A single source?

The speech police are coming at Americans from many different directions. It cannot be traced to one grand conspiracy, although some coordinated efforts are obvious on different levels. The closest one can come to nailing any one person is to note that George Soros money is behind some of the intimidation efforts. The forces at work here are clearly frightened by openness. They know that if they were to offer their real agenda to the "marketplace of ideas," they would be rejected.

This form of all-out psychological warfare has been going on for at least two decades, with campus speech codes starting in the eighties, and gravitating to other segments of the public square. As the opening shot in what could well be a long higher profile national drive, the perpetrators have landed like a ton of bricks on a weak link in the chain — always good strategy when you're plotting to bring down the less vulnerable.

Don Imus

Radio talkshow host Don Imus — supporter of John Kerry in 2004 and longtime purveyor of over-the-air trash — lost his job because of a vile insult he leveled against players on a women's basketball team.

No one can justify what he said. But why are the speech police jumping all over him now? He's been airing racist and other offensive comments for years. He referred to a media critic as "a beanie-wearing Jew boy," and when a black newswoman was assigned to the White House, he said "the cleaning lady" would be covering the administration.

But is one to believe that Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton — ordered by a court of law to pay $87,000 to the victim of one of his slanderous attacks — and Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson — a shakedown artist whose operations would make the Godfather blush — never noticed Imus until just a few days ago? Surely no one believes the gods of "political correctness" are unaware of the far worse things in rap music that is played over the radio all the time. Hillary Clinton has not returned the $800,000 she raked in at the mansion of a tycoon who traffics in rap hip-hop music. Supreme hypocrisy is at hand.

Celebs have often appeared on the Imus show, ignoring the racist and ethnic outrages as if that part of Imus were separate from the part of him that gives them entrée to the public square.

Where does it end?

No, there's more in play here. Imus is the Achilles heel. Going after a trash talker is an easy first step toward the real goal: They're really after the conservatives who dominate talk radio big time. Al Sharpton, who has used the "n" word in some of his rhetoric, says Imus is only the beginning. (And how do the speech police intend to muzzle you? Be patient. There is a pattern here.)

The Unfairness Doctrine

Now that Democrats have regained control of Congress, they have introduced legislation aimed at reviving the FCC's old "Fairness Doctrine," an Orwellian sounding policy the Federal Communications Commission enforced for years (until 1987) — requiring that if a conservative over-the-air host or commentator is on the air, a liberal would have to be given time to offset him.

On paper, that sounds reasonable. Here's the problem: Liberals, for the most part, have been unable to attract significant audiences on talk radio. Surprise, surprise. The liberal gospel is already in abundant supply on major networks and the editorial pages of the major newspapers, as well as many if not most of the smaller market papers.

To make a long story short, under (what should be called) the Unfairness Doctrine, if the broadcaster could not afford to carry a liberal who would drive listeners and thus advertisers or viewers away, well, too bad; he would have to dump the conservative host, as well. The so-called Fairness Doctrine was nothing but a muzzle on free speech.

At a Free Congress discussion Friday, the term "Freedom Doctrine" was coined by one of the panelists as a way of defining free and unfettered discussion of the issues. I suggested only public outrage would stop the effort to tear down the one media outlet where conservatives have become dominant — talk radio. The slogan could be "The Freedom Doctrine Versus the Unfairness Doctrine."

Another panelist noted that if a Democrat wins the White House, the new president could re-impose the unfairness doctrine by nominating an FCC chairman who is sympathetic to the idea. The only barrier would be a Senate rejection of the nominee, unlikely if the Dems retain control of the Senate.

Soft-pedaling the enemy

The taxpayer-supported Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has cancelled a documentary titled Islam vs. Islamist, Voices from the Muslim Center.

This documentary, co-produced by former Reagan Administration official Frank Gaffney, spotlights the ugly retaliation by Muslims against Muslim dissenters who protest Islamist violence or intolerance in the contemporary United States, Canada, and Western Europe. A Washington Times editorial described the film as "hard-hitting," but said, "The American people are grown up. They can handle it."

There is an implication here that PBS was either intimidated or it censored itself for fear of outrage on the part of pressure groups such as the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose antics we described in Part 1 of this ongoing series on the enemies of free speech. (See column August 22, 2005.) At that time, they had put in motion a series of events that led to the firing of a local Washington, D.C. talkshow host.

Now the threat is getting up close and personal

The would-be tyrants do not stop at going after radio and TV personalities. They are also after you.

Congressman Henry Waxman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (and also some Republicans) want to shut you up.

Not if you happen to be one of Waxman's celebrity Hollywood constituents in Beverly Hills.

Not if you're a boss of some powerful liberal foundation.

Not if you're part of the mainstream media.

And certainly not if you're a powerful congressional committee chairman.

You're singled out

No, no. Ordinary citizens, especially those with conservative non-establishment views — are to be muzzled.

Two bills are involved, and congressmen who are tired of pesky constituents nagging the government about mere issues want to let you know that Big Brother is watching.

The House leadership is backing legislation (yet untitled) that would require registration and reporting by some individuals and groups who try to persuade their members — or non-members — to communicate with congressmen and senators regarding pending legislation.

The second bill is bipartisan mischief, the handiwork of Reps. Waxman, a California Democrat and Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia. That Davis would go along with this is troubling and lends credence to the saying that while the Democrats are the evil party, the Republicans are the stupid party. Davis — representing Virginia's Washington D.C. suburbs — is marked for political extinction by Democrats whose strength in his district is on the rise. Maybe the man has a political death wish.

H.R. 984 — (should that be 1984?) — would require thousands of officials — high and low, big wheels and faceless bureaucrats — to file quarterly reports listing every letter, e-mail, fax, and verbal communication received from any "private party" that "seeks to influence official action by any officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States."

Here's where you come in: "Private party" is defined as any person other than another government official or staff person. That means you.

This is "ethics reform"?

Oh, but it's okay, you see, because it's "ethics reform."

In other words, in the land of the free, your communication with anyone in government can be considered "unethical." See why 23 years after 1984, the spirit of George Orwell lives?

Against abortion? You're on the watch-list

Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) says either of the two measures "would seriously interfere with the activities of groups that keep the public informed about what is going on in Congress and with ability of citizen groups" to represent effectively "the views of their membership to government officials."

The Senate has said no — so far

In January, the Senate rejected — on a 55-43 — an amendment to regulate grassroots lobbying.

The good guys

For that blow for freedom, you can thank NRLC, the Family Research Council, the National Rifle Association, the American Center for Law and Justice, the Free Speech Coalition, and the American Civil Liberties Union. The latter — usually on the wrong side of issues — would have looked silly if it had not opposed this government muzzle.

The bad guys

Supporters of the muzzle are some longtime liberal so-called "public interest" groups who long for the good old days of the seventies post-Watergate era when conservatism was all but outlawed. They include Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, Democracy 21, OMB Watch, and other usual suspects. They don't like it when grassroots citizens sass them back in Washington.

Tell Congress you won't shut up

Those Americans whose tax dollars pay the salaries of their public servants, and who consider it their right to communicate with those officials — elected or appointed — need to telephone their congressmen and senators now (no time for letters, lawmakers may sneak this through) and demand that they reject these schemes to restrain your basic First Amendment right to petition your government. (Capitol switchboard number 202-224-3121.)

The end of America as we know it?

Don Imus makes an easy target. But the enemies of free speech see his firing as the opening wedge to attack conservative talkshow hosts, to ban films that alert us to our enemies foreign and domestic, and ultimately to intimidate you into silence. You don't have to take it lying down. Public outrage is needed while there is still time to prevent America from morphing into a police state.

Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.

© Copyright 2007 by Wes Vernon
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/070416

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Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective

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Counterpunch
April 13, 2007

Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective

Aid and Comfort for Torturers

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

On January 24, 2003, National Guardsman Sean Baker, stationed as a military policeman at Guantanamo detention center, volunteered to be a mock prisoner, donning an orange suit and refusing to leave his cell as part of a training exercise. As planned, an Immediate Reaction Force team of MPs attempted to extract him from the cell. When he uttered the code word, "red," indicating that this was a drill and that he'd had enough, one of the MPs "forced my head down against the steel floor and was sort of just grinding it into the floor. The individual then, when I picked up my head and said, 'Red,' slammed my head down against the floor," says Baker. "I was so afraid, I groaned out, 'I'm a U.S. soldier.' And when I said that, he slammed my head again, one more time against the floor. And I groaned out one more time, I said, 'I'm a U.S. soldier.' And I heard them say, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa,' ". Even though, unlike if Baker had been a real prisoner, the "extraction" was called off part-way through, he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and was left with permanent injuries, including frequent epileptic-style seizures.

When asked what would have happened if he had been a real detainee, Baker told CBS's 60 Minutes: "I think they would have busted him up. I've seen detainees come outta there with blood on 'em. If there wasn't someone to say, 'I'm a U.S. soldier,' if you were speaking Arabic or Pashto or Urdu or some other language in the camp, we may never know what would have happened to that individual."

This detention facility is one of the environments in which psychologists serve as consultants to interrogations. The American Psychological Association sees no ethical problems with psychologists serving there.

We psychoanalysts know that understanding requires a historical perspective. The abuses being perpetrated on America's detainees in the War of Terror, and psychologists' roles in those abuses have a long history.

About 60 years ago, as the Cold War shifted into high gear, people in the American government, most notably the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), became concerned that the Communist enemies had developed specialized techniques for mind control. They observed senior Soviet officials and others confessing to crimes they likely had not committed. They were shocked by the number of American Korean War soldiers who collaborated with their captors and denounced the United States. At first defensively, and then as an offensive tool, the CIA undertook what became a 25-year program of research into mind control techniques under a variety of names, including, most notoriously MKULTRA. While time precludes an extensive review of this program, [the December 1977 APA Monitor contains an account of some of these activities] two components are of special relevance to today's topic. 1) For years the Agency, as the CIA is known, searched for a magic "truth serum" that would allow them to get captives to reveal their secrets; and 2) the CIA and the military funded extensive research into potentially effective interrogation techniques, including the possible use of hypnosis, of drugs, of isolation and extreme sensory deprivation, of brain stimulation, etc..

Some of the knowledge developed during MKULTRA and related programs were incorporated into the CIA's KUBARK interrogation Manual in 1963. Similar techniques were contained in CIA training manuals distributed throughout Latin America in the 1970's and 80's. The only one of these manuals which became public is one used to train in Honduras in 1983, as was revealed in a January 1997 Baltimore Sun article entitled: "Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted"

The manual advises an interrogator to "manipulate the subject's environment, to create unpleasant or intolerable situations."
From this Baltimore Sun article:

""While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use them," the manual's introduction states. The manual says such methods are justified when subjects have been trained to resist noncoercive measures.

Forms of coercion explained in the interrogation manual include: Inflicting pain or the threat of pain: "The threat to inflict pain may trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain."

A later section states: "The pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance. "

Those who have examined practices at US detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo have identified, as a 2005 126 page report from Physicians for Human Rights entitled Break Them Down describes in its subtitle: "Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces."

The practice of Psychological Torture in US facilities includes:

Prolonged Isolation for months, even years.

Sleep Deprivation, sometimes allowing as little as two hours a night, for prolonged periods

Sensory Distortion including sensory deprivation (masks, goggles, etc.), very loud music; and hypothermia (turning air conditioning on high)

Sexual and Cultural Humiliation -- forced urination on self; forced nakedness; sexual humiliation; religious humiliation (Koran's being thrown around); being led naked on a leash. Being forced to bark like a dog. [As regards religious humiliation, former Guantanamo Chaplain James Yee was quoted as stating in a recent lecture: " 'Guantanamo Bay's secret weapon,' is 'the use of Islam against prisoners to break them.' He said prisoners were forced to prostrate in the center of a circle inscribed with a pentagram by a guard who yelled, 'Satan is your God now, not Allah.' He said female interrogators 'exploit(ed) conservative Islamic etiquette" by undressing before interrogating detainees and "giving lap dances" to unnerve them.

Yee said the Quran, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God, was 'desecrated in many different ways,' such as being urinated upon and 'tossed on the floor.' "]

These purely psychological techniques are often combined with another component:

Self-inflicted pain--the infamous "stress positions", including chaining in positions for hours on end and the infamous Abu Ghraib picture of a detainee balancing on a box with arms outstretched and electrodes attached (this technique is referred to in the torture literature as the "Vietnam") [Remember, from the Honduras interrogation manual: 'On the other hand, pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance.']

Additionally, there have been repeated claims by detainees that they were subjected to drugging. [Remember that developing drugs for use in interrogations was a key element of the CIA's MKULTRA research.] Thus, as one example out of many, on March 2, 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald contained an account of Australian detainee David Hicks in US custody. In addition to the beatings, the isolation, the cultural assaults, the self-inflicted pain, there was this line: "He was also injected with a substance that 'made my head feel strange.' "

Many of these techniques, in reduced form, were used in the military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program to teach American officers counter-resistance training. According to several journalists, these methods were "reverse-engineered" and exported to Guantanamo and elsewhere through training in SERE techniques. Thus Salon's Mark Benjamin, in an article entitled "Torture Teachers" documents that SERE techniques were indeed taught to interrogators at Guantanamo. Benjamin goes on to state:

"There are striking similarities between the reported detainee abuse at both Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and the techniques used on soldiers going through SERE school, including forced nudity, stress positions, isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and exhaustion from exercise. The unnamed interrogation chief from Guantánamo notes in his statement that on his watch detainees were exposed to loud music and yelling. 'The rule on volume," he said, "was that it should not be so loud that it would blow the detainees' ears out.' The chief claimed interrogators would crank up the air conditioning to make detainees cold, and that one prisoner was also given a "lap dance" by a female interrogator 'to use sexual tension in an attempt to break a detainee.' "

While the role of psychologists at Guantanamo and elsewhere is still murky, due to the extreme secrecy surrounding it, more and more evidence is dribbling out. It increasingly looks like key agents in this were psychologists and, initially, psychiatrists, in so-called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) that participated in selected interrogations.

Mohammed al-Qahtani was interrogated over many months at Guantanamo. BSCT Psychologist Major John Leso was present during this interrogation.

During al-Qahtani's interrogation he was subjected to extreme cold to the point where his heart slowed and he was hospitalized (he was then warmed up and again subjected to extreme cold), he was injected with several bags of saline solution while being strapped to a table until he urinated on himself, and he was forced to bark like a dog; we are not told what was done to him to get him to bark. He required cardiac monitoring after 60 days in a cell flooded with artificial light, being questioned for 48 out of 54 days for 20 hours at a time. He was briefly hospitalized and immediately returned for continued interrogation.

By the way, the US government insists that al-Qahtani was treated "humanely," as are, it claims, all the Guantanamo detainees. And the American Psychological Association leadership has repeatedly claimed that the BSCT psychologists participate in interrogations to prevent abuse, to ensure "that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants". They have never commented publicly on the interrogation involvement of Major Leso, an APA member, not have they taken any steps whatsoever to investigate the repeated claims that BSCT psychologists are in Guantanamo to teach torture techniques, not to prevent their use.

In July 2005, the New Yorker published an article by Jane Mayer entitled The Experiment. In it she presents the evidence available at that time on SERE and its role in the interrogation process at Guantanamo. She quotes Baher Azmy, an attorney for one of the detainees whose client reported physical brutality, sexual humiliation, and being injected with debilitating drugs:

Attorney Azmy told Mayer:

"These psychological gambits are obviously not isolated events. They're prevalent and systematic. They're tried, measured, and charted. These are ways to humiliate and disorient the detainees. The whole place appears to be one giant human experiment."

The prominent Middle East scholar Juan Cole, on his Informed Comment blog posted an email from a former military officer:

"I'm a former US [military officer], and had the 'pleasure' of attending SERE school.

The course I attended . . . [had] a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners for 2-3 days. The camp is also used as a training tool for CI [counter-intelligence], interrogators, etc.

I'm sure you must also realize that Gitmo must be being used as a "laboratory" for all these psychological manipulation techniques by the CI guys. Absolutely sickening . ..

1. My gut feeling tells me that the SERE camps were 'laboratories' and part of the training program for military counter-intelligence and interrogator personnel. I heard this anecdotally as far as the training goes.

2. Looking at Gitmo in the 'big picture', you have to wonder why it is still in operation though they know so many are innocent of major charges. A look through history at the various 'experimentation' programs of the DOD gives a ready answer. The camp provides a major opportunity to expose a population to various psychological control techniques. Look at some of the stuff that has become public, and this becomes even more apparent. Especially the sensory deprivation--not only sleep, but there are the photos of inmates in gas masks or sight/hearing/smell deprivation setups. There has already been voluminous research into sensory deprivation, and it seems this is another good opportunity for more."

PENS Task Force

As word spread about the involvement of health professionals, psychologists included, in abusive interrogations, pressure built on professional associations to do something about the situation. The American Psychological Association decided to form a Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). Strangely, the APA did not release the names of PEN task force to the APA membership, nor were the names included in the report. The PENS membership was first published in the press in full by Mark Benjamin of Salon last July, more than a year after the PENS report was released; Benjamin got the names from a Congressional source, not the APA.

Let's look at a few of the members, as described in their official APA biographical statements:

Colonel Morgan Banks is currently the Command Psychologist and Chief of the Psychological Applications Directorate of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). " He is the senior Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) Psychologist, responsible for the training and oversight of all Army SERE Psychologists, who include those involved in SERE training. He provides technical support and consultation to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support, and his office currently provides the only Army training for psychologists in repatriation planning and execution, interrogation support, and behavioral profiling."

Robert A. Fein is currently a consultant to the Directorate for Behavioral Sciences of the Department of Defense Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the DOD Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF), and the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center. He also serves as a member of the Intelligence Science Board.

Colonel Larry C. James In 2003, he was the Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba, and in 2004 he was the Director, Behavioral Science Unit, Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Col. James was assigned to Iraq to develop legal and ethical policies consistent with the Geneva Convention Guidelines and the APA Ethics Code in response to the abuse scandal.

Captain Bryce E. Lefever as assigned to the Navy's Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) School from 1990 to 1993. He served with Navy Special Forces from 1998 to 2003 and was deployed as the Joint Special Forces Task Force psychologist to Afghanistan in 2002, where he lectured to interrogators and was consulted on various interrogation techniques. Capt. Lefever has been deployed to many parts of the world during his career including Haiti, Panama, Israel, Afghanistan, Italy, Bahrain, Crete, Puerto Rico, Iceland, Antarctica, and Spain where he has lectured on Brainwashing: The Method of Forceful Interrogation.

R. Scott Shumate has worked for the federal government in highly classified positions that have required him to travel extensively and live overseas. He has performed many of his duties under highly stressful and difficult circumstances. In May of 2003, Dr. Shumate accepted a senior position in the Department of Defense as the Director of Behavioral Science for the Counterintelligence Field Activity. DOD/CIFA is responsible for support to offensive and defensive counterintelligence (CI) efforts. His team of renowned forensic psychologists are engaged in risk assessments of the Guantanamo Bay Detainees.

Also on the PENS taskforce was Michael Gelles. Dr. Gelles was the chief psychologist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Dr. Gelles was at Guantanamo in order to develop evidence for potential criminal prosecution of detainees. As he witnessed the treatment of detainees, he was outraged and became a whistleblower. According to a Boston Globe article "Dr. Michael Gelles, completed a study of Guantánamo interrogations in December 2003 that included extracts of detainee interrogation logs. Gelles reported to the service director, David Brant, that interrogators were using 'abusive techniques and coercive psychological procedures.'" As such, Dr. Gelles is one of the true heroes of this rather sordid tale. At the same time, however, it is at least debateable for two reasons whether he should have been on the PENS taskforce. First, as a member of the military hierarchy he was subject to military discipline, rather than being a free agent; like the other PENS members from the military and intelligence services, his career could be directly affected by the outcome of the PENS process. [Just ask the heroic Navy JAG attorney, Lt. Commander Charles Swift who won a landmark Supreme Court victory against the Guantanamo military tribunals in the Hamdan case, only to be forced to retire after over 20 years of sevice.] Further, as a psychologist and military interrogator, Dr. Gelles was in no position to seriously consider the view that involvement in interrogations was, in itself, unethical.

Not surprisingly, given its composition, the PENS report concluded:

"The Task Force stated that it is consistent with the APA Ethics Code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national security-related purposes."

In handling this report, the APA did not follow normal procedures and did not present it to the elected Council of Representatives for discussion and approval. Rather, within days it was presented to and approved by the APA Board, circumventing Council.

Other Professional Associations

In contrast, the American Medical Association, in June 2006 adopted: "Physicians must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation, because a role as physician-interrogator undermines the physician's role as healer and thereby erodes trust in the individual physician-interrogator and in the medical profession."

In June, 2005, the American Psychiatric Association expressed concern over the reports of psychiatrist involvement in abuses at Guantanamo:

"The American Psychiatric Association is troubled by recent reports regarding alleged violations of professional medical ethics by psychiatrists at Guantanamo Bay. APA is reviewing issues related to psychiatry and interrogation procedures and plans to develop a specific policy statement in the near future."

I have been unable to find one mention of concern regarding reports of involvement of psychologists in Guantanamo abuses by the American Psychological Association or any of its recent leadership. Rather, in February 2006, then President Gerald Koocher wrote:

"A number of opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars have continued to report on alleged abuses by mental health professionals."

In May, 2006 the American Psychiatric Association went on to ban all direct participation in interrogations by psychiatrists:

"No psychiatrist should participate directly in the interrogation of person[s] held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere."

American Psychiatric Association President Steven S. Sharfstein devoted a significant portion of his 2006 Presidential Address to this issue:

"We must exercise vigilance over our other core values. When I read in the New England Journal of Medicine about psychiatrists participating in the interrogation of Guantanamo detainees, I wrote to the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Defense expressing serious concern about this practice. In mid-October I found myself on a Navy jet out of Andrews Air Force Base on a 3-hour trip to Guantanamo Bay. We were briefed thoroughly on interrogation methods and the involvement of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams in the process.

After returning to Andrews, we began a spirited 3-hour discussion over dinner. I found myself looking eye to eye with top Pentagon brass -- they are much taller than I am, but we were sitting down. I told the generals that psychiatrists will not participate in the interrogation of persons held in custody. Psychologists, by contrast, had issued a position statement allowing consultations in interrogations.

If you were ever wondering what makes us different from psychologists, here it is. This is a paramount challenge to our ethics and our Hippocratic training. Judging from the record of the actual treatment of detainees, it is the thinnest of thin lines that separates such consultation from involvement in facilitating deception and cruel and degrading treatment. Innocent people being released from Guantanamo-people who never were our enemies and had no useful information in the War on Terror-are returning to their homes and families bearing terrible internal scars. Our profession is lost if we play any role in inflicting these wounds."

As President Sharfstein looked eye to eye with Pentagon brass, then American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant was along for the trip to Guantanamo. While the psychiatrists' President told the brass "that psychiatrists will not participate in the interrogation of persons held in custody," here is what the psychologists' President had to say upon return:

I accepted this offer to visit Guantanamo because I saw the invitation as an important opportunity to continue to provide our expertise and guidance for how psychologists can play an appropriate and ethical role in national security investigations. Our goals are to ensure that psychologists add value and safeguards to such investigations and that they are done in an ethical and effective manner that protects the safety of all involved."

As a psychologist, it deeply saddens me to admit that Psychiatric Association President Sharfstein has it correct. What distinguishes the two professions is that psychiatrists have taken a moral position, at the cost of a potential loss of access to top military decision-makers and funding-providers, while the leadership of psychologists, in contrast, have put access and, potentially, funding, above taking a moral stand on the perversions of the War on Terror. In the process of protecting this access, the psychological association has regularly used deception and bad faith, trying to argue that participation in interrogations is, indeed, ethical.

The Association leadership has worked persistently to protect the ability of psychologists to participate in "national security" interrogations, even, at times, claiming an ethical obligation to do so to prevent harm to society, presumably from the "terrorists" imprisoned there for the last five years. [See also Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter's report on the PENS Task Force she chaired: "as experts in human behavior, psychologists contribute to effective interrogations."]

These efforts have paid off: On June 7, 2006 the New York Times reported:

"Pentagon officials said Tuesday that they would try to use only psychologists, and not psychiatrists, to help interrogators devise strategies to get information from detainees at places like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The new policy follows by little more than two weeks an overwhelming vote by the American Psychiatric Association discouraging its members from participating in those efforts.

Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told reporters that the new policy favoring the use of psychologists over psychiatrists was a recognition of differing positions taken by their respective professional groups."

Thus did psychologist score a major victory over their ancient enemy, the psychiatrists.

On January 8, 2007, British attorney Brent Mickum wrote of his two clients, Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, in Guantánamo's lost souls on the website of the British newspaper the Guardian. These two men are known from extensive evidence almost certainly to be innocent:

Bisher al-Rawi is, slowly but surely, slipping into madness.

The diminution of Bisher's mental faculties has not taken place all at once. Gradually, over time, Bisher simply has worn down. He no longer has the power to withstand the ravages of psychological isolation and the constant abuse he suffers. To be sure, Bisher is not the only affected prisoner; attorneys representing other prisoners at Guantánamo report that clients who are being kept in isolation are going insane..

Bisher's world is a 6 by 8-foot cell in Camp V, where alleged "non-compliant" prisoners are incarcerated. After years and hundreds of interrogations, Bisher finally refused to be interrogated further. Despite the fact that Guantánamo officials have publicly proclaimed that prisoners are no longer required to participate in interrogations, Bisher is deemed non-compliant and tortured daily.

Solitary confinement is but a single aspect of the torture that Bisher endures on a daily basis. While in isolation, Bisher has been constantly subjected to severe temperature extremes and other sensory torments, many of which are part of a sleep deprivation program that never abates. Frequently, Bisher's cell is unbearably cold because the air conditioning is turned up to the maximum. Sometimes, his captors take his orange jumpsuit and sheet, leaving him only in his shorts. For a week at a time, Bisher constantly shivers and is unable to sleep because of the extreme cold. Once, when Bisher attempted to warm himself by covering himself with his prayer rug, one of the few "comfort items" permitted to him, his guards removed it for "misuse". On other occasions, the heat is allowed to become so unbearable that breathing is difficult and labored. For a week at a time, all Bisher can do is lie completely still, sweat pouring off his body during the day when the Cuban heat can reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature inside Camp V is even higher.

Bisher is allowed no contact with fellow prisoners. Bright lights are kept on 24 hours a day. Bisher is given 15 sheets of toilet paper per day, but because he used his sheets to cover his eyes to help him to sleep, his toilet paper - considered another comfort itemhas been removed for "misuse".

Accordingly, he is no longer receives his daily ration of 15 sheets of toilet paper. Imagine being in the position of having to make a choice between using your tiny allotment of toilet paper for the purpose for which it was intended or using it to sleep, and then having it removed altogether.
Dinner never arrives before 9.30pm and sometimes comes as late as 12.00am. It is almost always cold. Changes of clothing take place at midnight when prisoners are given a single, thin cotton sheet for sleeping. Thereafter, a noisy library cart is dragged through the corridors; Bisher has been denied library privileges for some time, but the library cart and the noise are constant reminders that he is afforded no intellectual stimulation. Prisoners are unable to sleep until close to 1.00am. They are awakened at 5.00am, when each is required to return his sheet. All of Bisher's legal documents and family photographs were seized in June and have never been returned."

About the other prisoner he represents, Jamil el-Banna, this attorney reports:

" I have see[n] letters from Jamil's youngest children on my visits to Guantánamo, one-page letters that are heavily redacted by military censors. What is the offending language that the military has seen fit to redact? Language like "Daddy, I love you" and "Daddy, I miss you." How do I know? Because on my instructions, Jamil's wife has saved copies of the letters her children sent."

Guantanamo and other US detention facilities are illegal and immoral institutions. They appear to be designed to break people down, to destroy them, whether they are innocent or guilty, whether they have any intelligence value or not. It is possible that they are intentional experimental facilities designed to develop and test new behavior manipulation techniques. In any case, they clearly constitute a hell on earth, the "gulag of out time" as Amnesty International described Guantanamo. It is well past time that the United States start respecting those lofty human rights sentiments spouted by our leaders and enshrined in our laws and binding international treaties.

It is also long past time that psychology as a profession, along with the other health professions, starts contributing to the building of respect for humanity rather than aiding the creation of hell. As Harry Stack Sullivan clearly stated long ago: " We are all much more simply human than otherwise." Surely we, as psychologists and psychoanalysts, should be leaders in recognizing the humanity of all, even those identified as alleged "terrorists." Surely, carrying out our duties as psychologists, as citizens, and as human beings is of far greater importance than is maintaining our professional access to the levers of power. If not, then humanity has no need of our profession.

Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.

This essay is the text of a talk delivered, March 17, 2007 at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) conference: UNFREE ASSOCIATION: The Politics and Psychology of Torture in a Time of Terror


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A Combat Mission Two Decades In The Making

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Washington Post
April 14, 2007
Pg. D1

A Combat Mission Two Decades In The Making

By Renae Merle, Washington Post Staff Writer

After more than 20 years in development at a cost of billions of dollars, the long-troubled V-22 Osprey will head to Iraq in September for its first combat missions, the Marine Corps said yesterday.

The tilt-rotor Osprey, a helicopter-airplane hybrid, has survived attempts by the Pentagon leadership to cancel it, criticism of its rising cost and unique design, and three fatal accidents since 1992. The aircraft, made by Bell Helicopter and Boeing, can take off, land and hover like a helicopter, then turn its rotors to fly straight ahead like a conventional plane. It will operate out of al-Asad air base in central Iraq for seven months.

"The story of how we got here is a long one," Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, said at a morning news conference at the Pentagon. "I'll just say that the quantum leap in technology that this aircraft will bring to the fight has been a road marked by some setbacks, lots of sacrifices and the success of these Marines standing before you today."

A report in 1983 by the Pentagon's office of program analysis and evaluation concluded that the plane's concept was flawed. In the late 1980s and early '90s, Dick Cheney, the Defense secretary at the time, tried to cancel it. The aircraft's three fatal crashes -- one in 1992 and two in 2000 -- killed 26 Marines and four civilians. In 2001, allegations emerged that maintenance records for the aircraft had been falsified, which the commander of the Osprey's maintenance squadron later admitted was done to make the aircraft appear more serviceable than it was. The Osprey fleet was briefly grounded this year after the military found a glitch in a computer chip that could cause the aircraft to lose control.

Despite the project's problems, the Marine Corps has stayed loyal to the aircraft, arguing that the Osprey was now safe and needed in combat. "The Marine Corps has built its entire future concept of warfare around the V-22," said Loren Thompson, a defense industry analyst.

The Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, which is based in Jacksonville, N.C., will deploy to Iraq with 10 Ospreys after more training, including time in the desert in Yuma, Ariz.

The Osprey's main mission in Iraq will be to transport troops and perform rescue missions. Marine Corps officials promote its ability to go farther and carry a bigger load than any of the helicopters it will replace, including the CH-46 Sea Knight, a Vietnam-era chopper that has crashed several times in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, the deputy Marine commandant for aviation, said the CH-46 "is old in the tooth, and its capability in terms of range and payload is not what we want."

The V-22 would be able to survive the kind of attacks that have brought down helicopters in Iraq, Marine Corps officials said. "By the time you see us and we're past you, the best you're going to do is one of those revenge shoots," Lt. Col. Paul Rock, commander of Squadron 263, said yesterday in a clearing near Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, where two dozen reporters had been flown to watch the Ospreys in action. As Rock spoke, two Ospreys kicked up wind for about 100 yards around.

Bell Helicopter and Boeing have produced 54 Ospreys -- 46 for the Marines and eight for the Air Force. About $20 billion has been spent on the program, and the military is expected to ultimately pay $50.5 billion for the 458 aircraft it wants, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

In March, the Government Accountability Office estimated the cost of each aircraft at about $109 million, up from the $40 million that each was projected to cost when development started in the 1980s.

Skeptics argue that the Osprey is too expensive to be used widely or put in risky situations. It may be suitable for specialty missions such as long-range rescue or special-operations deployments, but "those relatively few missions don't justify putting all of the Marines' chips behind the V-22," said Jennifer Gore, spokeswoman for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. The Marine Corps could buy fewer Ospreys -- 50 or so -- and make a larger purchase of a cheaper helicopter, she said.



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Army Knew Of Letter On Shooting Refugees

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Washington Post
April 14, 2007
Pg. 16

Army Knew Of Letter On Shooting Refugees

Korean War Document Was Omitted From Report on No Gun Ri

By Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza, Associated Press

Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was "not deliberate," the Army has acknowledged that it found but did not divulge that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.

The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed.

Exclusion of the letter from the Army's 2001 investigative report is the most significant among numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugees out of concern that North Korean soldiers were using them as cover. The undisclosed evidence was uncovered by Associated Press research in archives and Freedom of Information Act requests.

South Korean petitioners say hundreds more died later in 1950 as a result of the U.S. practice. The Seoul government is investigating one such large-scale killing, of refugees on a beach, newly confirmed by documents in U.S. archives.

No Gun Ri survivors, who call the Army's 2001 investigation a "whitewash," are demanding a reopened investigation, compensation and a U.S. apology.

Harvard historian Sahr Conway-Lanz first disclosed the existence of Ambassador John J. Muccio's 1950 letter in a scholarly article and a 2006 book, "Collateral Damage." He uncovered the declassified document at the U.S. National Archives.

"If refugees do appear from north of U.S. lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," the ambassador told Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk, cautioning that these shootings might cause "repercussions in the United States." Deliberately attacking noncombatants is a war crime.

No Gun Ri survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment near No Gun Ri, a village in central South Korea. Troops of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter in twin underpasses of a concrete railroad bridge.

Another incident, on Sept. 1, 1950, has been confirmed by the declassified official diary of the USS DeHaven, which says that the Navy destroyer, at Army insistence, fired on a seaside refugee encampment at Pohang, South Korea. Survivors say 100 to 200 people were killed. South Korean officials announced in February they would investigate.

More than a dozen documents -- in which high-ranking U.S. officers tell troops that refugees are "fair game," for example, and order them to "shoot all refugees coming across river" -- were found by the AP in the investigators' own archived files after the 2001 inquiry. None of those documents was disclosed in the Army's 300-page public report.



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