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Showing posts with label Enhanced Interrogation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enhanced Interrogation. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Gaslighting, betrayal and the boogeyman: Personal reflections on the American Psychological Association, PENS and the involvement of psychologists in torture

Nina Thomas
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

Abstract

The American Psychological Association's (APA's) sanctioning psychologists' involvement in “enhanced interrogations,” aka torture, authorized by the closely parsed re-interpretation of relevant law by the Bush administration, has roiled the association since it appointed a task force in 2005. The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force, its composition, methods and outcomes have brought public shame to the profession, the association and its members. Having served on the task force and been involved in the aftermath, I offer reflections on my role to provide an insider's look at the struggle I experienced over loyalty to principle, profession, colleagues, and the association. Situating what occurred in the course of the PENS process and its aftermath within the framework of Freyd's and her collaborators ‘theory of “betrayal trauma,” in particular “institutional trauma,” I suggest that others too share similar feelings of profound betrayal by an organization with which so many of us have been identified over the course of many years. I explore the ways in which attachments have been challenged and undermined by what occurred. Among the questions I have grappled with are: Was I the betrayed or betrayer, or both? How can similar self-reflection usefully be undertaken both by the association itself and other members about their actions or inactions?

The article is here.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Lawsuit Aims to Hold 2 Contractors Accountable for C.I.A. Torture

By Sheri Fink and James Risen
The New York Times
Originally posted on November 27, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Dr. Mitchell was first publicly identified as one of the architects of the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation” program nearly a decade ago, and has given some news media interviews, but is now providing a more detailed account of his involvement. His book, “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America” (Crown Forum), was written with Bill Harlow, a former C.I.A. spokesman. It was reviewed by the agency before release. (The New York Times obtained a copy of the book before its publication date.)

In the book, Dr. Mitchell alleges that harsh interrogation techniques he devised and carried out, based on those he used as an Air Force trainer in survival schools to prepare airmen if they became prisoners of war, protected the detainees from even worse abuse by the C.I.A.

Dr. Mitchell wrote that he and Dr. Jessen sequestered prisoners in closed boxes, forced them to hold painful positions for hours and prevented them from sleeping for days. He also takes credit for suggesting and implementing waterboarding — covering a detainee’s face with a cloth and pouring water over it to simulate the sensation of drowning — among other now-banned techniques. “Although they were unpleasant, their use protected detainees from being subjected to unproven and perhaps harsher techniques made up on the fly that could have been much worse,” he wrote. C.I.A. officers, he added, “had already decided to get rough.”

The article is here.

Editor's note: If you think torture works, please read: Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation, by Shane O'Mara.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds

by Matt Apuzzo, Sheri Fink, and James Risen
The New York Times
Originally published October 10, 2016

Before the United States permitted a terrifying way of interrogating prisoners, government lawyers and intelligence officials assured themselves of one crucial outcome. They knew that the methods inflicted on terrorism suspects would be painful, shocking and far beyond what the country had ever accepted. But none of it, they concluded, would cause long lasting psychological harm.

Fifteen years later, it is clear they were wrong.

Today in Slovakia, Hussein al-Marfadi describes permanent headaches and disturbed sleep, plagued by memories of dogs inside a blackened jail. In Kazakhstan, Lutfi bin Ali is haunted by nightmares of suffocating at the bottom of a well. In Libya, the radio from a passing car spurs rage in Majid Mokhtar Sasy al-Maghrebi, reminding him of the C.I.A. prison where earsplitting music was just one assault to his senses.

And then there is the despair of men who say they are no longer themselves. "I am living this kind of depression," said Younous Chekkouri, a Moroccan, who fears going outside because he sees faces in crowds as Guantanamo Bay guards. "I'm not normal anymore."

The article is here.

Friday, July 15, 2016

CIA Psychologists Admit Role In ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program In Court Filing

Jessica Schulberg
The Huffington Post
Originally posted June 22, 2016

Two psychologists who helped the CIA develop and execute its now-defunct “enhanced interrogation” program partially admitted for the first time to roles in what is broadly acknowledged to have been torture.

In a 30-page court filing posted Tuesday evening, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen responded to nearly 200 allegations and legal justifications put forth by the American Civil Liberties Union in a complaint filed in October. The psychologists broadly denied allegations that “they committed torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, non-consensual human experimentation and/or war crimes” — but admitted to a series of actions that can only be described as such.

“Defendants admit that over a period of time, they administered to [Abu] Zubaydah walling, facial and abdominal slaps, facial holds, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, and placed Zubaydah in cramped confinement,” the filing says.

The article is here.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Psychologists admit harsh treatment of CIA prisoners but deny torture

By Nicholas K. Geranios
The Associated Press
Originally published June 22, 2016

Two former Air Force psychologists who helped design the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects acknowledge using waterboarding and other harsh tactics but deny allegations of torture and war crimes leveled by a civil-liberties group, according to new court records.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued consultants James E. Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen of Washington state last October on behalf of three former CIA prisoners, including one who died, creating a closely watched case that will likely include classified information.

In response, the pair’s attorneys filed documents this week in which Mitchell and Jessen acknowledge using waterboarding, loud music, confinement, slapping and other harsh methods but refute that they were torture.

“Defendants deny that they committed torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, nonconsensual human experimentation and/or war crimes,” their lawyers wrote, asking a federal judge in Spokane to throw out the lawsuit and award them court costs.

The article is here.

Monday, July 4, 2016

Newly released CIA files expose grim details of agency interrogation program

by Greg Miller, Karen Deyoung And Julie Tate
The Washington Post
Originally posted June 14, 2016

The CIA released dozens of previously classified documents Tuesday that expose disturbing new details of the agency’s treatment of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including one who died in Afghanistan in 2002 after being doused with water and chained to a concrete floor as temperatures plunged below freezing.

The files include granular descriptions of the inner workings of the CIA’s “black site” prisons, messages sent to CIA headquarters from field officers who expressed deep misgivings with how detainees were being treated and secret memos raising objections to the roles played by doctors and psychologists in the administration of treatment later condemned as torture.

But the collection also includes documents that were drafted by senior CIA officials to defend the interrogation program as it came under growing scrutiny, including a lengthy memo asserting that the use of often brutal methods had saved thousands of civilian lives.

The 50 documents included in the release were all drawn from records turned over to the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its multi-year probe of the interrogation program.

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Will These 2 Court Cases Finally Hold Our Torturers Accountable?

By David Cole
The Nation
Originally posted May 9, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, by contrast, are not committed to the political branches’ discretion. As the district court in Washington recognized, the very fact that Congress has made torture a crime and, under the Torture Victim Protection Act, grounds for a civil action for damages, refutes the notion that it is an inappropriate subject for courts. The fact that at the margins it may be difficult to decide whether particular actions constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment does not make them “political questions.” Courts every day must decide whether particular conduct meets statutory definitions; that is what they do.

The district court in the CACI case ruled that because the military supervised the contractors at Abu Ghraib, the case must be dismissed as political because it would necessitate judicial intrusion on sensitive military judgments. But in doing so, it relied on cases that alleged only negligent action by contractors engaged in otherwise lawful and authorized military operations.

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Judge Grants Torture Victims Their First Chance to Pursue Justice

Jenna McLaughlin
The Intercept
Originally published April 22, 2016

A civil suit against the architects of the CIA’s torture program, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, will be allowed to proceed, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington, decided on Friday.

District Judge Justin Quackenbush denied the pair’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit launched against them on behalf of three victims, one dead, of the brutal tactics they designed.

“This is amazing, this is unprecedented,” Steven Watt, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union representing the plaintiffs, told The Intercept after the hearing. “This is the first step towards accountability.”

The article is here.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Pentagon Wants Psychologists to End Ban on Interrogation Role

By James Risen
The New York Times
Originally posted on January 24, 2016

The Pentagon has asked the American Psychological Association to reconsider its ban on the involvement of psychologists in national security interrogations at the Guantánamo Bay prison and other facilities.

The Defense Department reduced its use of psychologists at Guantánamo in late 2015 in response to the policy approved by the association last summer.

But in a letter and accompanying memo to association officials this month, Brad Carson, the acting principal deputy secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, asked that the group, the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists, revisit its “blanket prohibition.”

Although “the Department of Defense understands the desire of the American psychology profession to make a strong statement regarding reports about the role of former military psychologists more than a dozen years ago, the issue now is to apply the lessons learned to guide future conduct,” Mr. Carson wrote.

The article is here.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Cruel and Unuseful Punishment

Book review by Richard J. McNally
Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation
Shane O'Mara Harvard University Press, 2015.
Science 16 October 2015:
Vol. 350 no. 6258 p. 284
DOI: 10.1126/science.aad2340

Here is an excerpt:

While denying that these practices qualified as torture, the Administration and its allies also invoked the "ticking time bomb" defense to justify their efforts. In this thought experiment, law enforcement officers have seized a suspected terrorist who harbors information about an imminent attack on American soil. Should interrogators torture the detainee, forcing him to disclose details of the attack? Or should their moral aversion to inflicting temporary pain cost the lives of countless innocent civilians? Advocates of enhanced interrogation argue that, although torture is abhorrent, we must do whatever we can to prevent acts of terrorism.

Legal scholars have published persuasive moral rebuttals to the ticking time bomb defense for torture (1). Yet does torture actually work? To be sure, it can compel people to confess to crimes and to repudiate their religious and political beliefs. But there is a world of difference between compelling someone to speak and compelling them to tell the truth. As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said, "During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop." Yet the assumption underlying the ticking time bomb defense is that abusive questioning reliably causes people to reveal truthful information that they would otherwise refuse to disclose. Few scholars have scrutinized this assumption--and none with the rigor, depth, and clarity of Shane O'Mara in his excellent book, Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation.

The entire book review is here.