Guantanamo Psychologist "Ban" Incomplete, Evidence of FBI Torture Ignored

While it is certainly a victory, or partial victory, to have psychologists removed from national security interrogations at Guantanamo, as James Risen reports in The New York Times, it turns out psychologists are not actually completely removed from that Cuban-based prison facility.

Note the careful wording of Risen's story (bold emphasis added):

The United States military has sharply curtailed the use of psychologists at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in response to strict new professional ethics rules of the American Psychological Association, Pentagon officials said.

Gen. John F. Kelly, the head of the United States Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, has ordered that psychologists be withdrawn from a wide range of activities dealing with detainees at the prison because of the new rules of the association, the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists. The group approved the rules this past summer.

Risen's article relates a statement by SOUTHCOM spokeswoman, Navy Cmdr. Karin Burzynski, which explains that the removal of psychologists was due to APA's new policy about psychologists and national security interrogations, and the military was concerned about possible licensing or ethics board charges for military psychologists.

Those new APA rules state: "in keeping with Principle A (Beneficence and Nonmaleficence) of the Ethics Code to 'take care to do no harm,' psychologists shall not conduct, supervise, be in the presence of, or otherwise assist any national security interrogations for any military or intelligence entities, including private contractors working on their behalf, nor advise on conditions of confinement insofar as these might facilitate such an interrogation. This prohibition does not apply to domestic law enforcement interrogations or detention settings that are unrelated to national security interrogations."

Hence, in my reading it seems as if psychologists could be allowed at Guantanamo, in order to advise on conditions of confinement insofar as such advice does not "facilitate" interrogation. Perhaps that is what General Kelly is referring to when Risen quotes him as ordering psychologists withdrawal from "a wide range of activities dealing with detainees," i.e., not from all activities dealing with detainees.

As almost a side note, Risen quotes DoD's Burzynski as saying that all interrogations have now ceased at Guantanamo, except so-called "voluntary interviews" detainees wish with make to officials. No one questions how, at a facility under total control by the military, with detainees kept under conditions of indefinite detention (which themselves constitute torture), such "voluntary interviews" can be offered.

According to Risen, APA officers will meet with administration officials from the Pentagon and the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) later this month. In Risen's article, APA's Senior Policy Adviser Ellen Garrison seems to stand up to the Pentagon, and tell them APA will not change its policy to please them.

But back in 2008, when the APA membership voted on a petition to ban psychologists from sites like Guantanamo, Ms. Garrison worked with now-resigned Ethics chair Stephen Behnke to craft a "con" statement calling for defeat of the petition. It will be interesting to see how the old guard APA bureaucracy, now working with some of its former opponents on the interrogation issue, will address outstanding issues surrounding implementation of the new "ban."

But, no one is arguing for a total "ban" of psychologists from Guantanamo. Furthermore, it remains to be seen how anyone will be able to tell if the Pentagon stands by its word, not to mention how anyone will monitor the CIA for adherence to APA's new policy.

"Banned" psychologists and paper opposition

Risen's NYT article states, "Psychologists will still provide mental health care for American military personnel who work at the prison, which is allowed under the association’s rules."

Such psychologists apparently will continue to serve in a clinical function for troops or other U.S. personnel serving at the base, and presumably, the prison. This is indeed in line with the letter and spirit of "Resolution 23B," which mandated the new association rules (PDF), including a provision that psychologists could remain "at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, 'black sites,' vessels in international waters, or sites where detainees are interrogated under foreign jurisdiction" if "providing treatment to military personnel."

That particular exception was a weakness with the resolution. Nevertheless, the resolution passed overwhelmingly by the APA's Council of Representatives last August was supported by anti-torture psychologists, such as those at Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR). But the resolution's "ban" still allows for Guantanamo to function, and for psychologists to work there if "providing treatment to military personnel." I believe that aspect was a compromise made to get support for the resolution as a whole, and has been a matter of compromise between pro-participation and anti-participation forces within APA for some years now. But with the new resolution passed changing rules on interrogations, there is no reason not to take up this broader issue now.

It is disturbing to see the responses to this development by press and anti-torture activists and not see any condemnation of the American Psychiatric Association (APsyA) or the American Medical Association (AMA) for their paper opposition to use of their membership in interrogations, as apparently psychiatrists (along with other nurses and technicians) are to replace psychologists in detainee interrogation, detention and/or detainee clinical matters.

Indeed, I've searched high and low to find any mainstream critic of U.S. interrogation policy or torture denounce the hypocrisy of APsyA or AMA in this matter. One partial exception is Stephen Miles, author of Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors. Miles has called out AMA for a lack of leadership on the question of doctors working for the CIA interrogation program, and in general has assailed the field for its silence on medical participation in or planning of torture. But I have not seen a similar criticism by anyone of APsyA's failure to enforce its own policy banning psychiatrists from work at Guantanamo.

The fact remains, to date, no U.S. medical professional has ever been held accountable for their role in the "war on terror" torture scandal.

FBI interrogations and torture

Nor does the new policy stated by DoD have any bearing on interrogations conducted by CIA, foreign intelligence services, or the FBI. Obama's 2009 reforms of the Bush-Cheney era torture interrogations meant shutting down CIA's long-term black sites, and resting interrogation policy on the relevant Army Field Manual and ongoing reliance on rendition of "terror" suspects to interrogation and detention by foreign intelligence services ("extraordinary rendition").

But the Army Field Manual has been condemned by the UN's Committee Against Torture as containing abusive forms of interrogation, even as Congress has enshrined it in U.S. law. And human rights groups and legal groups have assailed the empty "assurances" of foreign governments that renditioned prisoners will not be tortured or abused.

Meanwhile, the role of the FBI in coercive interrogations is something that has been completely passed over. Previously, there were reports of torture of renditioned prisoners in the aftermath of the 2010 World Cup bombing in Kampala, Uganda. The FBI's activity in the latter investigation was said to be the largest between that time and 9/11. A number of prisoners renditioned from Kenya and Tanzania have accused the FBI of torture under interrogation in Uganda, including death threats and physical abuse by FBI agents.

One such affidavit of torture in my possession, by Kenyan national Yahya Suleiman Mbuthia, details such alleged FBI torture. The claims are consistent with charges by other prisoners also interrogated in the Kampala bombing.

"... [FBI] officers said, "Don't lie to us -- we know everything about you. We will finish your family -- first your wife and then your two kids..."

"... one (1) FBI officer, with blue eyes, cocked his gun as if he were going to shoot me, saying that there was a bullet inside with my name on it.... the same officer told me he would kill me or leave me to rot in Luzira."

"... I was severely ill-treated during interrogation, including having an FBI officer standing behind me hitting me on the back of the head with his fist... when the FBI wanted to do their dirty work, they would ask the Ugandans to leave, and by dirty work I mean beating, forcing me to sign papers and threatening me...."

"... during interrogation, if I refused to do something, I would be hooded for 30 minutes to an hour, during which time FBI officers would cock their guns as if they were about to shoot me..."

In a separate affidavit, another Kenyan national, Idris Magondu, who also was renditioned to Uganda and interrogated by both Ugandan police and FBI, wrote, "after the Court appearance at which I was not represented by legal Counsel, I was ordered to be remanded to Luzira Upper Prison where the FBI officers interrogated me several times... during the interrogations, the FBI officers shouted and threatened me, telling me that President Museveni had ordered his army to kill me, and the officers were banging on the table and were very aggressive."

According to Magondu, "one of the FBI officers had a pistol which he kept drawing my attention to."

In November 2012, Open Society Justice Initiative released a report on human rights abuses by the FBI in the wake of the World Cup bombing. In June 2013, the FBI responded to the OSJI report: "The FBI has found these claims to be without merit, because no evidence was identified by the FBI or any other independent entity to support them. The type of abuse alleged is wholly contrary to the FBI’s policy on interrogating suspects in foreign countries. The FBI’s policy is consistent with internationally recognized standards of conduct such as those set forth in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions."

OSJI noted in its own response, "the FBI has not provided sufficient detail regarding its investigation of the allegations of detainee abuse by the FBI in Uganda or its basis for the conclusion that the allegations are without merit."

FBI and Mitchell-Jessen

FBI officials also figured prominently in the APA-initiated "independent" review of APA's activities around the interrogation-torture scandal. The report produced by Chicago attorney David H. Hoffman (large PDF), despite mainstream accolades, was a limited hangout on the torture issue, as it minimized or explained away for top U.S. psychologists collaboration with the CIA. Such minimization included the fact a former APA president had been part of the partnership of Mitchell-Jessen and Associates, contractors to the CIA's torture machine. Hoffman found this fact unworthy of further investigation in relation to APA's ethics.

But Hoffman and his investigators uncovered a wealth of new information which APA subsequently has posted on its website. This material shows what the report only covers tangentially, that is, that top FBI psychologists worked closely with APA, CIA and the military in discussing interrogation matters, including detection of deception that could affected by use of sensory overload or use of drugs in interrogation.

At the close of 2004 report on a July 2003 APA-CIA-RAND workshop, "The Science of Deception: Integration of Theory and Practice," there is a list of participants, and we can see that top FBI psychologists, such as then-FBI Behavioral Science Unit Chief Stephen Band and Anthony Pinizzotto, attended along with other academics and CIA officers, including psychologist Kirk Hubbard and psychiatrist Andy Morgan, and CIA contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

The report was marked "Not for distribution."

"Research challenges" discussed at the 2003 meeting included "What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?" and "How might we overload the system or overwhelm the sense and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?"

Participants also discussed how to manipulate or increase subjects's anxieties. They also proposed research to discover "how interrogators might take advantage of some of the transference and counter-transference strategies used by psychotherapists."

A fuller analysis of this document awaits, but who will attempt it?

Hoffman passed without comment over this material. APA anti-torture activists (including former APA members who quit over the APA's interrogation policy) have not seen fit to comment either on the documented collaboration of the APA with key FBI officials, or on the release of this document. Even when it was revealed that James Mitchell had been invited as an expert to February 2002 FBI conference at its Quantico headquarters, links between FBI and the CIA torture program have been ignored. (Mitchell's invite came almost two months before he went to the CIA black site in Thailand and helped initiate the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program.)

Part of the issue is that the mainstream narrative is that FBI agents, such as Ali Soufan, blew the whistle on CIA torture. While some FBI agents were queasy about torture techniques used by both the Department of Defense and the CIA, it seems there's a lot of house cleaning to do within the agency itself.

Even the story of Soufan's protest at Mitchell and Jessen's intervention in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah is more nuanced than normally reported. For instance, Soufan told a Senate panel in May 2009 that his interrogation techniques with Zubaydah were not compliant with Geneva Common Article 3. In fact, Soufan said none of the FBI's interrogations were so compliant after 9/11. (See video of back and forth between Soufan and Sen. Lindsey Graham, beginning at 2:17, downloadable at this link.)

Doctors who said "no"

During the Vietnam War, there were doctors who refused to serve a corrupt and evil military regime. Navy doctor, Captain Howard Levy was court-martialed, not because he refused to torture, but to even serve as a trainer for Special Forces personnel. According to a follow-up story from 2002 in the New York Times, Levy survived his court-martial to carve out a career in medicine.

How was Levy's refusal to serve the military fighting an imperialist war in Vietnam any different really from the question of whether or not doctors or psychologists or nurses should refuse to serve in Guantanamo or other black sites? Capt. Levy charged (according to a legal look at his case) "that had he trained the [Special Forces] aidmen he would have been complicitous in war crimes committed by Special Forces."

Nor was Levy alone. An essay from the book Military Medical Ethics documents that more than 300 U.S. medical students and young doctors signed a pledge not to serve in the Armed Forces in Vietnam during that conflict.

Will APA, which is rumored to be assembling a new ethics panel to consider future ethics policy, continue to allow psychologists to still serve military forces at Guantanamo or other interrogation sites? It would seem so, if one considers recent activities around reforming psychological ethics.

[Note on personal connection to this subject: I have at times been a member of PsySR, and remain active on their listserv.]

Déjà vu on Interrogation "Reform": McCain/Feinstein Amendment Won't Stop Torture

"There's truth that lives and truth that dies..." - Leonard Cohen

In a bizarre mixture of the sincere and the insincere, an amendment proposed by a bipartisan group of senators to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is being touted as all but ending torture by the U.S. -- if it passes.

According to an article in The Intercept, "Human rights and transparency organizations are applauding the effort." But is there really anything here to celebrate?

If you read The Intercept article all the way to the end, there's mention that a group of medical experts found the Army Field Manual "permits techniques that are 'recognized under international law as forms of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.'” So why is there applause?

Mark Fallon, the former deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo, and currently Chair of the Research Committee of President Obama's inter-departmental High-value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), told Jason Leopold at Vice News the amendment "mandates and advocates the use of science and evidence-based research so we can be more effective during interrogations." Furthermore, there would be "a review of the Army Field Manual [AFM] to ensure we are only using best and lawful techniques" during interrogation.

Constitutional scholar David Cole writes at the Just Security website that he supports the amendment, which is jointly sponsored by Senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, Jack Reed and Susan Collins. Cole adds that others support it, too, including "David Keene, former President of the National Rifle Association and editorial page editor of the Washington Times..."

Newsweek posted an article by Rupert Stone this week, titled "Beyond Torture: The New Science of Interrogating Terrorists," which includes a long discussion of the importance of putting interrogation on a science-centered base.

Stone's article goes into more detail than others about problems concerning "the current version of the Army Field Manual [which] still offers a back door to some of the brutal tactics authorized after 9/11." Stone is of course talking about Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, which allows theoretically indefinitely extended amounts of solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation on so-called "unlawful enemy combatants." The interrogation methods of Appendix M are so severe, they require at times physician and/or psychologist in attendance to implement (shades of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program!).

But problems with the Army Field Manual do not start or end with Appendix M. The main section of the manual includes coercive methods of interrogation, including psychological techniques to induce fear, to tear down the ego and self-esteem of prisoners, to tear down their resistance to interrogation by inducing "hopelessness and helplessness," and allowing use of drugs on prisoners, so long as the drugs don't cause "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage."

But Fallon and others, like veteran interrogator and Col. (ret.) Steven Kleinman, believe that the review mandated by the amendment will take care of the problems sometime in the future. Meanwhile, they urge passage of the amendment now. Kleinman told Newsweek, "Passing strongly worded legislation that would stand as a bulwark against torture... is the single most important step we must take.” (Both Fallon and Kleinman have impeccable anti-torture credentials.)

According to The Hill, this view is echoed by Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of Human Rights First, who said of the senators' amendment, “This is how a strong democracy deals with its mistakes — we examine what we did, and take the necessary steps to make it right.”

Meanwhile, in my email box, I have a plea from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. The mailing promises the "introduced legislation... could permanently end CIA torture." It asks I call my senators now, even as a group of seven human rights and civil liberties organizations, have released a statement, including ACLU and Physicians for Human Rights, supporting the amendment.

The entire campaign around the whole Feinstein-McCain amendment has an unreal quality. It arose all of a sudden. There's no real period of public discussion about it. The interpretation of the amendment itself is via sanitized sources we are supposed to trust. It's presented as a slam dunk issue for those who oppose torture. You'd have to be an ingrate to oppose such a good thing.

"Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday"

Where have I heard this all before? When the current Army Field Manual was released in September 2006, there was the same near-universal acclaim, the same pious intonations by human rights groups, the same spate of articles in the mainstream press. But nine years later -- though many news outlets still downplay or simply eliminate reference to it -- we know the 2006 version of the Army Field Manual contained forms of ill-treatment that the UN, reviewing torture policies by the United States, recently condemned.

I analyzed the PR campaign to sell the current version of the Army Field Manual in an article at Alternet in 2009. I pointed out how when the Army Field Manual was released in 2006, we had the same gushing praise and platitudes from the press.

The Washington Post bragged that the then-new Army Field Manual "repudiated the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Human rights groups chimed in. As reported by the Post, Tom Malinowski, then Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch (but previously a Senior Director of the Clinton White House National Security Council), stated, "This is the Pentagon coming full circle... This is very strong guidance."

Recently, Malinowski was tapped by the Obama administration to answer the United Nations in their questions about ill-treatment in Appendix M. In 2007, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he praised the AFM for using using "professional, humane interrogation methods."

Over and over I read how the Army Field Manual had "safeguards," "oversight," was a big "step-forward." Amnesty International's advocacy director called the AFM "an important return to the rule of law.... It is an important public statement."

But it was no such thing.

Similar misrepresentations take place today. In Cole's piece at Just Security, for instance, he claims that the Office of Legal Counsel memos authorizing torture memos, "written between 2002 and 2007, have all been rescinded and rejected."

But that's not true. One of them was not, and tellingly, it was the one dealing with the Army Field Manual and Appendix M.

"You know something is happening, but you don't know what it is"

Let's examine the text of the Feinstein-McCain amendment (download PDF) and see if the promises of its supporters holds any water.

"An individual... shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in the Army Field Manual 2-22.3"

Okay. We see that the existing Army Field Manual, including use of techniques and "approaches" such as "Fear Up," "Futility," "Ego Down", "False Flag" and "Separation" will continue to be the law of the land. The "Separation" or Appendix M approach is really an omnibus set of abusive techniques that includes use of solitary confinement, sleep and sensory deprivation, and environmental or dietary manipulation.

I asked via FOIA for DoD to produce examples of requests to use Appendix M, as is described by the Army Field Manual. DoD said it could not find any documents pertaining to that. So much for transparency and safeguards.

For 14 months I have had an outstanding FOIA requesting materials related to review of Appendix M by the Office of Secretary of Defense. I asked because the Army Field Manual itself states, "The Office of the Secretary of Defense will review these activities periodically in accordance with DOD Directive 3115.09." That FOIA is still pending. But if the partisans of the Feinstein-McCain amendment believe that DoD or the government will do any better in producing oversight material upon request to the public or press, I have a fine bridge in Brooklyn to sell them.

The Feinstein-McCain amendment states that "a thorough review" of the AFM is to be conducted at least one year after the enactment of the Authorization Act, and then every subsequent three years "to ensure that Army Field Manual 2-22.3 complies with the legal obligations of the United States and reflects current, evidence-based, best practices for interrogation that are designed to elicit reliable and voluntary statements and do not involve the use of threat of force."

The "thorough review" is to be conducted by "the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of National Intelligence." In other words, the Executive Branch is to have total control over assessments of compliance of Army Field Manual practice with so-called "evidence-based, best practices for interrogation." What that really means is that there will be no "checks and balances" oversight here.

The model for such review would be DoD's 2009 Review of Department Compliance with President's Executive Order on Detainee Conditions of Confinement (PDF), which produced a wildly unrealistic picture of Guantanamo as consistent with Geneva norms of humane treatment. At the time there were continuing hunger strikes, as prisoners were savagely beaten by teams of guards. By June 2009, yet another detainee was found dead in a cell in the GTMO Behavioral Health Unit, where prisoners were observed every three minutes, supposedly dead by his own hand, having been driven insane by what the autopsy report called "conditions of confinement."

The highly-regarded researcher of the Guantanamo camp, Andy Worthington, called the 2009 review "a bitter joke." There's no reason not to expect the same from the Feinstein-McCain Amendment's proposed AFM reviews.

Interestingly, however, it's worth noting that the the Central Intelligence Agency appears to be frozen out of the proposed review process.

"People writing songs that voices never share"

"Not less than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the interagency body established... shall submit to the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, and other appropriate officials [could this be the CIA?] a report on current, evidence-based, best practices for interrogation that are designed to elicit reliable and voluntary statements and do not involve the use of force.... The report required... may include recommendations for revisions to Army Field Manual 2-22.3 based on the body of research commissioned by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group."

While HIG experts like Fallon and Kleinman may take umbrage in such verbiage -- indeed, it's flattering to see your own research touted as something of governmental importance -- there is nothing mandated in this language, at least as regards any updating or change in techniques or approaches in the Army Field Manual.

"The report... may include recommendations," and nothing is said about any recommendations being enforced. Indeed, we already have public members of the HIG on record as being against some of the abuse in the Army Field Manual, and still nothing changes.

One of those associated, Col. Kleinman, was on record as recently as 2011 as stating in an article, "The Obama Administration has made a good-faith attempt to bring standards to American interrogation practices by issuing an Executive Order that extended the relevant U.S. Army Field Manual’s directives to all government-wide interrogation efforts." That "good-faith attempt" included making via Executive Order Appendix M the law of the land.

Kleinman is on-record as criticizing the current AFM as being unscientific. He wrote a paper that supposedly elaborates on that with another current HIG official, psychologist Susan Brandon, and two other researchers. But according to Stone's Newsweek article, the 2010 review of AFM techniques was not publicly released for fear it "could have jeopardized the HIG’s relationship with the military." If releasing a critical article is too dicey for critics of DoD's Army Field Manual, what can one expect from any future reviews led by the Secretary of Defense?

Meanwhile, Brandon is under a cloud of controversy recently for her participation in activities with the American Psychological Association in regards to allegedly facilitating torture.

Brandon helped organize a workshop with the APA, CIA and Rand Corporation back in 2003 that looked at, among other things, "what pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior," and "sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors." One of her workshop discussion questions asked, "How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?"

In 2005, Brandon was an "observer" at an APA meeting that met to consider ongoing use of psychologists in national security investigations. She reportedly helped write the part of the report from the meeting that spoke to issues bearing on national security research, just the sort of research, it seems, that the HIG is either doing or proposing when it comes to interrogations. One of those research projects on "false confessions," as recently reported at Bloomberg, left some participants "angry," and one woman who "dissolves into tears."

Hence, there are ethical questions about the kinds of research being done, what can be accomplished in such research, and the fact that even if some kind of "evidence-based" interrogation protocols that don't involve "force" are suggested by research and then DoD-led review, there's no mandate or promise in the new legislation that it will ever be implemented.

Indeed, there is nothing in the new legislation that calls for the removal of Appendix M.

"Into the night, shadows fall"

A most interesting section of the amendment, unique in its hypocrisy and unstated cover for torture, concerns the FBI and other Federal law enforcement agencies:

"Nothing in this subsection shall preclude an officer, employee, or other agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other Federal law enforcement agency from continuing to use authorized, non-coercive techniques of interrogation that are designed to elicit voluntary statements and do not involve the use of force, threats, or promises."

Anyone familiar with the work of the FBI, or other Federal agencies will find this presentation of "non-coercive" agents never threatening suspects something of a fairy tale.

A few years ago, I reported the case of Petty Officer Daniel King, who the Naval Criminal Investigative Service coerced into a false confession of treason, and with the assistance of a Navy psychologist, drove to such a degree of desperation he tried to kill himself. (See here and here.)

But the FBI probably has a lot more charges of abuse than most other Federal law enforcement agencies. None of these charges have been bigger than those surrounding the massive FBI investigation into the July 2010 World Cup bombings in Kampala, Uganda.

The FBI interrogated a number of prisoners from Kenya and other East African countries who were renditioned to Uganda. It was the largest foreign FBI investigation since the USS Cole attack in 2000. A 2011 report by Ian Cobain at The Guardian detailed accusations of abuse by FBI agents involved in the investigation.

A more recent case of FBI malfeasance and complicity in torture is the case of Yonas Fikre, a 36-year-old Eritrean-born American who charges the FBI had pressured him to collaborate with them, and when placing him on a no-fly list failed, had him "arrested, interrogated and tortured for 106 days in the United Arab Emirates," according to a report in The Guardian.

The issue of FBI torture deserves a lot more public examination, and in a subsequent article I plan to go into much more detail on the World Cup bombing case.

"Always something happening and nothing going on"

The issue of torture by proxy or liaison-country cover is also important, and was a major factor in the scandal surrounding extraordinary rendition, where CIA and DoD prisoners were turned over to U.S.-friendly intelligence agencies in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and other nations, where they were terribly tortured.

More recently, there are similar charges surrounding the World Cup bombing case, but better reported in the U.S. was Jeremy Scahill's 2011 report at The Nation concerning CIA-run black sites in Somalia. Ostensibly under the control of Somalia's National Security Agency, the sites were used to train Somali intelligence agents, while CIA interrogators are given direct access to prisoners held in the Somali secret detention sites.

In fact, as a recent FOIA release of a 1963 CIA interrogation manual shows, use of "liaison" or "host' countries as cover for torture is very old practice, honed during the Cold War.

It is a fact that the CIA chief of interrogations in the early years of its post-9/11 rendition and torture program was previously known (and supposedly chastised) for using a 1983 torture instruction manual -- "Human Resource Exploitation" -- the U.S. had distributed to Latin American police and intelligence forces for the purposes of instruction in torture. Nothing could better illustrate how the use of proxy or "host" countries for torture is on a continuum with the worst of the CIA's torture program.

But it is not the CIA or FBI alone who act this way. During the U.S.-instigated Iraq War, the Department of Defense notoriously issued a "Fragmentary Order" (FRAGO 242) that had U.S. armed forces turn prisoners over to Iraq security forces, even though they knew they would be tortured. In many cases, the Iraq security forces themselves had been trained by the U.S.

Nothing in the Feinstein-McCain amendment speaks to this long-practiced method of torture by proxy used by U.S. intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies.

"Everybody knows the deal is rotten"

It is highly unlikely that most Americans will hear anything negative about the Feinstein-McCain Amendment, except perhaps from right-wing types who lust for the good old days of CIA's "enhanced" torture brutality. But for the record, this amendment does nothing to stop torture.

Despite all the caveats and evidence I've gathered here, the truth is almost none of it will reach the ears or eyes of American citizens. But then, only the simulacrum of a reasonable debate on this policy is expected. The Establishment of respectable citizens, who make up human rights organizations and government-academic merry-go-round that employs them, has already spoken. The consensus has already been drawn.

But that doesn't mean the amendment is worth a damn. While no one is held accountable for disgusting and barbaric forms of torture, from driving people insane with music and bright lights, to holding them in solitary for years, to waterboarding or water immersion, to injecting blood thinner drugs into them so they can be forced to maintain body positions for hours on end, and much more worse ("rectal feedings"? no, anal rape)... while no one is held accountable for this, an anemic and mostly window-dressing reform is dressed up as something significant and sold by hucksters. Backing them are those sincerely anti-torture individuals and groups who still trust the usual authorities to do the right thing.

But none of that can hide what this amendment is: fraud, trickery, deception, the most meretricious sort of sham. The fact that some of those supporting the amendment are sincere and good individuals doesn't change a thing.

Crossposted at Firedoglake.com

Before the EITs: James Mitchell's Special Invite to FBI/APA Conference at Quantico on "Combatting Terrorism"

The narrative is in place. James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen made millions of dollars having convinced the CIA to construct a torture program via reverse-engineering brutal methods of interrogation used in their previous employment in a military program meant to prepare U.S. military and intelligence personnel for torture by a foreign power or terrorist group.

According to numerous accounts, from Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair in July 2007 all the way to the release earlier this month of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Executive Summary (large PDF) of their report on the CIA interrogation/torture program, Mitchell and Jessen are described as "inexperienced." Numerous "experienced" interrogators are often quoted to condemn the former Air Force psychologists for use of torture, which is not, we're told, "effective" in eliciting information from prisoners or detainees. (These same people usually have nothing to say about the use of abusive techniques amounting to torture in the Army's Field Manual on interrogations, recently condemned by a UN oversight committee.)

The SSCI Summary specifically stated, "Neither psychologist had experience as an interrogator, nor did either have specialized knowledge of al-Qa'ida, a background in terrorism, or any relevant regional, cultural, or linguistic expertise" (p. 21).

A December 17, 2014 editorial in the New York Times mirrored this language, without specifically quoting the SSCI report: "The two psychologists who were hired in an atmosphere of panic in the months after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, had no experience as interrogators, no specialized knowledge of Al Qaeda, no background in counterterrorism, and no relevant cultural or linguistic expertise."

But contradicting this account, new evidence shows Mitchell was on a selective list of experts sent to a conference at the FBI's Academy in Quantico, Virginia a full month before he was said to have proposed his "enhanced interrogation" techniques to the CIA. Mitchell was apparently chosen as one of 60 experts in counterterrorism, according to a list of participants for a conference, "Combatting Terrorism: Integration of Practice and Theory" (PDF), held on February 28, 2002.

"James Mitchell: CIA, Langley, VA" was one of only two CIA participants named at the event, which was supposed to bring together "highly qualified law enforcement officers with various terrorism experts and academics."

"An Invitational Conference"

The conference report includes appendices on "Information Management and Evaluation," "Psychology of Deception," and "Data Mining," among other topics. Its participants were said to be "at the forefront of counter-terrorism efforts." The conference itself was written up in APA's house organ, Monitor.

The conference was billed as "invitational," and sponsored by the Behavioral Science Unit, FBI Academy; the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association (APA); the School of Arts & Sciences and the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania; and the Decade of Behavior Initiative.

The Decade of Behavior Initiative was really a campaign run by the APA, not an organization. The Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict was, according to a U of Penn press release, "the brainchild of two men: Martin Seligman, a Penn psychology professor and former American Psychological Association president, and former Canadian Psychological Association President Peter Suedfeld." Both Decade and the Solomon Asch Center were christened in 1998.

Seligman has been linked to James Mitchell on a number of occasions, while Suedfeld has a history of research in sensory deprivation, and has worked as a consultant to the Canadian Department of National Defence. In April 2006, APA published a letter from Suedfeld in Monitor, where he condemned those who connected the work of some psychologists with the use of torture as "groundless attacks" that "recur without any factual basis."

By "Happenstance" or Other Means

If Mitchell was really a nobody, why was he tasked by the CIA's Office of Technical Services in December 2001 to write up, with his partner John "Bruce" Jessen, an analysis of supposed Al Qaeda resistance techniques to interrogation? Why was he picked -- by "happenstance," according to New York Times reporter Matt Apuzzo -- to join the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah? And to the point of this article, why was he selected to attend a conference that was billed as "invitational" and meant to consist of experts in their fields?

It seems a lot of thought went into the decision of whom to invite. According to the report's preface, "The practical decisions of whom to invite, what to discuss, where and when to convene were difficult to make.... restricting the list of invitees to only sixty individuals from among the numerous experts in law enforcement and civilian populations was most formidable.... Time, space and availability restricted the number of invitations."

The report's preface was written by Anthony J. Pinizzotto, PhD, then Senior Scientist at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) (now retired); Susan E. Brandon, Ph.D., then-Senior Scientist at APA; and Geoffrey K. Mumford, PhD, APA's then-Director of Science Policy. Presumably they were also the organizers of the conference, and responsible for who was invited.

Brandon and Mumford have been named in a recent book by James Risen as primary actors in the APA's courting of national security agencies. They were both involved in the organization of a 2003 workshop sponsored by APA, CIA and Rand Corporation on the "Science of Deception," that discussed the use of "sensory overload" and "pharmacological agents... known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior" during interrogation.

Both are likely targets of a supposed "independent" investigation into actions of APA in relation to the use of torture by the CIA and Department of Defense, an investigation, moreover, led by a former associate of George Tenet.

Susan Brandon is a today a primary figure in the Obama Administration's High-value Detainee or HIG program, where she is Chief of Research.

An Unravelling Narrative

The FBI/APA conference was held approximately a month before James Mitchell was sent to the CIA's black site prison in Thailand to join in and ultimately reportedly to lead the interrogation of supposed Al Qaeda high-value detainee, Abu Zubaydah. The story of how that happened has been described in two Congressional investigations and numerous articles by investigative reporters.

The latest account, by the Senate's SSCI, describes Mitchell as working for the CIA's Office of Technical Services (OTS) at the time he was chosen for the Zubaydah interrogation. While the New York Times account by Risen and Apuzzo reduces OTS, cutely, to "the arm of the C.I.A. that creates disguises and builds James Bond-like spy gadgets," OTS had a long history of researching human behavior under stress, and exploiting human assets via drugs, hypnosis and other mind control techniques.

In a more pertinent understanding of the role of OTS, my recent article at Al Jazeera America describes the history of OTS in regards to illegal human experimentation and MKULTRA research that led directly to the propagation of a CIA torture program in the 1960s and thereafter.

Slowly but surely, the false narrative, meant to pin much of the blame for the hideous torture program on James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen -- who certainly deserve a good deal of blame, and also prosecution for their role in the torture -- is fraying at the edges. Last week, I showed that the knowledge of what the CIA was doing, at least during the years the SSCI was headed by GOP Senator Pat Roberts and Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, was greater than what the SSCI has admitted thus far. SSCI staffers had toured the CIA's "Dark Prison" (aka "Salt Pit") in Afghanistan in late 2003. Perhaps this happened around or at the same time that U.S. Bureau of Prison members toured the same facility, according to the SSCI report.

It is my firm belief that there are some people in the Intelligence Community, and also those who follow and even critique, from time to time, the IC, who know that Mitchell played a bigger role before his interrogation of Abu Zubaydah than is generally acknowledged. In general, the knowledge of what the CIA and DoD was doing back in the early 2000's was not something that was spoken of publicly, but was known by a number of academics, psychologists and medical professionals, military officers and interrogators, and in particular, by Special Forces operators and... APA officials. How much was known by Congressional oversight officials is a matter of some contention, though it's obvious many, if not most, were frozen out, while others preferred not to know.

There will be no real accountability for these crimes under our current political structure. I'm not sure what it will take to get there. Some put their hope in universal jurisdiction prosecution. Some despair of any accountability happening at all. I believe that if there will be an accounting, it will be part of more general political overhaul of the U.S. political system and culture.

The revelation that Mitchell was part of the IC "experts" crowd, and then covered up as same for years, speaks to the corruption of large swathes of the Establishment. Remember, the information in the article you are reading has been available on the Internet for seven years!

All I can ask as an activist is that people speak up, don't respect any authority, even those of the "left" or "progressive" crowd, and demand a passion and commitment for the truth from those whose job it is to report the truth.

Epilogue: Looking back through my materials, I see that I wrote about the 2/28/02 conference when I blogged as "Valtin" at Daily Kos back in 2006-07. On January 7, 2007 I wrote the diary, "FBI & American Psych. Association Attack Patient Confidentiality." In that article, I concentrated on recommendations by the joint FBI/APA conference to convince psychologists to become informants on their patients and their families and acquaintances.

I pointed out the relevant sections of the report for readers (bold emphases from original article):

There is a need for the American Psychological Association and state psychological associations to develop an ethical code for practitioners for instances where a client may have information relevant to terrorism (similar to other mandates that already exist, such as those for instances of abuse of children and the elderly and a client’s intention to harm himself or another person). Such instances are peculiar because they involve third-party harm. Psychologists need to be trained for what behaviors to look for, and how to report information to law enforcement while protecting the client and their family and community. This may include some kinds of cross-cultural training. The APA may have to work with legislatures and licensing boards regarding some of these issues. Similar training and issues of confidentiality need to be considered for the training of clergy, teachers, and physicians....

It was suggested that the APA might develop guidelines for such reporting, and offer these to other agencies (school systems, social services), where appropriate.

I wish I had noticed then the presence of Mitchell on the list of participants at this conference. But seeing it there now, it all fits together.

Cross-posted at The Dissenter/FDL

Judicial Ignorance and Bias Doom Ahmed Abu Ali to Decades in Isolation in Key "War on Terror" Case

Even as a desperate hunger strike by detainees at Guantanamo prison camp continues, with dozens in medical peril, preferring death to the lawless existence of indefinite detention and ongoing planned (or some might say, capricious) abuse, human rights and civil liberties activists often point to the Article III courts as an alternative in the prosecution of "war on terror" crimes. But an examination of actual cases prosecuted in the criminal courts shows that use of accepted rules and appeal procedures merely produce their own version of unfairness and arbitrary injustice.

Ahmed Abu Ali is a young man in his early 30s, who at this point in his life should be coming into his career prime, consolidating his family, and making his mark upon the world. Instead, he is held in the extremely onerous conditions of government-imposed Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) at the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, held "in 23-hour lockdown, in a 7x12 cell", out of all practical reach to anyone, essentially buried alive.

Notoriously, Ahmed was framed up by the notorious torturing security forces of Saudi Arabia. A confession, including incredible assertions he was a member of Al Qaeda, was planning another 9/11-type terrorist plot, and planning to assassinate former President George W. Bush, was coerced out of him via use of physical and psychological torture. But the evidence for this torture was contested in court. As often happens, there was a disagreement between government and defense experts, even as to the meaning of the scars on Ahmed's back.

Determining Evidence of Torture

The main forensic difficulty in determining that torture took place is providing convincing evidence of an event that happens understandably behind closed doors, in secret. The perpetuators of torture will not admit the act. If you are experts in torturing -- and according to human rights groups, the Saudi Mabahith al-Amma, or secret police of the Ministry of the Interior, are such experts -- physical evidence of torture is kept to a minimum. Much of the primary evidence of torture must come from the victim him or herself. Hence, from a judicial standpoint, the judge's assessment of the credibility of the victim's testimony in court is paramount.

I personally know this as I have stood as a defense expert witness in a number of asylum cases brought in the U.S. immigration courts, and have conducted psychological assessments of dozens of torture victims. Hence, it was with alarm and dismay that I read Judge Gerald Bruce Lee's opinion on the defense suppression motion regarding Ahmed Abu Ali's confession while in Saudi Arabian custody. (The FBI had garnered some sort of confession from Ahmed when interviewing him some three months into his incarceration by the Saudis, but that confession was never used in court because Ahmed was not read his Miranda rights.)

It is with my training and expertise that I turned to my examination of the public records on the Ali case. What I found was egregious ignorance displayed by the judge in his decision, who relied on his own arbitrary subjective experience of Ahmed's testimony in court, and discounted the testimony of expert witnesses. Instead, he showed a notable deference to those in power and to even foreign police testimony, accepting the credibility of key officials from the Mabahith, and in allowing the torture-produced testimony to stand and deny Ali's motion to suppress, dismiss the Ahmed's story of his torture as "non-credible."

Here is what Judge Lee wrote in his decision (bold emphasis added):

Mr. Abu Ali’s own testimony and his demeanor cause the Court some reservations. It is not uncommon for the victim of such horrors to have difficulty recalling details of the event, or to put them out of their mind. However, while Mr. Abu Ali dramatically recounted a brutal beating and humiliating treatment, it is noteworthy that Mr. Abu Ali could not recall, even by texture, shape, or dimension, what hit him. Was it a cylinder? Belt? Whip? Stick? Baseball bat? Of course, he was blindfolded and chained to the floor when the beating allegedly occurred so he may not know the exact item used to hit him. However, it seems to the Court that he could, at the very least, provide some basic description of what the item might have been based on how it felt to him.....

The Court has already said that it finds that Mr. Abu Ali is intelligent, capable, and articulate. The Court cannot discern whether Mr. Abu Ali is sincere or just cunning.

This was followed by appellate review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which noted:

... the district court found itself "left with lingering questions concerning the credibility of Mr. Abu Ali and his claim that he was tortured," id. at 378. The court credited the testimony of the Saudi Arresting Officer and the Lieutenant Colonel (the Warden at the Medina detention facility where Abu Ali was held for two days following his arrest) that no Saudi official used coercive interrogation techniques on Abu Ali. The court found that the Lieutenant Colonel’s testimony that Abu Ali was never abused was believable while Abu Ali’s contrary testimony "raise[d] questions that bear on the defendant’s credibility." Id. at 373.

It was the testimony of two defense experts, Dr. Allan Keller from the NYU School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital, and psychiatrist Lynne Gaby from George Washington University Medical Center and the Program for Survivors of Torture and Severe Trauma in Falls Church, Virginia, that Ahmed suffered PTSD, and that his testimony regarding his torture was credible. See the written reports of Drs. Keller and Gaby here and here, respectively.

Judge Lee obviously decided to rely on the government experts (more on that down below), FBI testimony, and the word of the Saudi security officials. He did not, however, allow testimony pertaining to Saudi Arabia's human rights record, evidence that would have corroborated Ahmed's claims, and thrown doubt on the testimony of the Saudis.

From Amnesty International's December 2005 special report on their observations of the Ali trial:

Amnesty International is particularly concerned that during the trial, defence lawyers for Ahmed Abu Ali were not allowed to present any evidence pertaining to Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, its record on torture and even particularly on the record of the Mabahith al-Amma. Judge Lee ruled that only evidence which related directly to Ahmed Abu Ali’s interrogation would be admissible, thus denying the defence the opportunity to present relevant evidence, including from two UK nationals who were held in al-Ha’ir prison at the same time as Ahmed Abu Ali and claim to have been tortured into confessing to terrorist offences. One of the men, William Sampson, described in detail to Amnesty International the use of torture and torture techniques during his detention in Saudi Arabia similar to Ahmed Abu Ali’s allegations.

Memory, Trauma, and Judicial Assessment of Credibility

Most egregious from my point of view was Judge Lee turning his back on psychiatric testimony to base his assessment of Ahmed's credibility on whether or not Ahmed could remember or identify the instrument of torture used on his back, even though he was blindfolded and chained to the floor at the time, and was undergoing extreme duress.

Yet, the fact is such forgetting of elements of the trauma is a prime criterion of the PTSD diagnosis. To use such forgetting as evidence against someone who was tortured is to turn the entire clinical literature and experience of PTSD and torture on its head.

According to a governmental website, which describes the modern psychiatric diagnosis of PTSD, using criteria from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic Manual, version IV, Criterion C of the diagnosis pertains to "avoidant/numbing." It describes what this means (bold emphasis added):

Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by at least three of the following:

Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma

Judge Lee pondered whether this inability to remember what kind of instrument (to which he was blinded anyway) hit his back was due to "cunning." In fact, Lee was either ignorant of or refused to consider mainstream findings in PTSD research.

Here's just a few examples of what are widespread findings on memory and PTSD. In the 1996 book Trauma and Memory (Sage Publications), Linda Williams writes, "Numerous studies have found that a significant proportion of adults who report a trauma histroy also describe a period of time when they did not recall the experience."

In a 2007 article in the British Journal of Psychiatry, "Asylum claims and memory of trauma: sharing our knowledge," Drs. Jane Herlihy and Stuart Turner wrote, "When it comes to memories of personal experiences, we also know that emotion plays a big part both in what is encoded at the time and what is recalled later. The Yerkes–Dodson inverted-U model of performance and emotional arousal (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908; see Deffenbacher, 1983) reminds us that high levels of emotion may impair encoding of any memory, not just traumatic memories."

In a 1998 article in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences by one of the most notable of all PTSD experts, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. van der Kolk discussed in depth issues with "Trauma and Memory":

While the vivid intrusions of traumatic images and sensations are the most dramatic expressions of PTSD, the loss of recollections for traumatic experiences is well documented....

Amnesia of traumatic experiences, with delayed recall for all or parts of the trauma, has been noted following natural disasters and accidents... war-related trauma... kidnapping, torture and concentration camp experiences... physical and sexual abuse... and after committing murder....

Christianson described how, when people feel threatened, they experience a significant narrowing of consciousness, and remain merely focused on the central perceptual details. As people are being traumatized this narrowing of consciousness seems to sometimes evolve into a complete amnesia of the experience. More than 80 years ago, Janet claimed:

"Forgetting the event which precipitated the emotion... has frequently been found to accompany intense emotional experiences in the form of continuous and retrograde amnesia.... They are an exaggerated form of a general disturbance of memory which is characteristic of all emotions".

He claimed that when people become too upset, memories cannot be transformed into a neutral narrative; a person is 'unable to make the recital which we call narrative memory, and yet he remains confronted by (the) difficult situation'. This results in 'a phobia of memory' that prevents the integration ('synthesis') of traumatic events and splits off the traumatic memories from ordinary consciousness.....

Similar observations have been made by other clinicians treating traumatized individuals.

One could go on and on, but the point is well-made, and if Judge Lee were an honorable man, he would come forward now to admit his mistake and help initiate a re-hearing on Ahmed's behalf.

The defense experts are not without criticism either, but their mistakes, primarily of omission -- they should have, for instance, conducted assessments for other posttraumatic responses besides PTSD, such as depression -- are not in the same league as the concerted bias and willful ignorance of the prosecution and the judge in this case. Notwithstanding the terrible injustice of the use of SAMs, and solitary confinement of US prisoners like Ali (see this most recent report by Physicians for Human Rights on the torture that is solitary confinement), the capricious application of judicial assessment of credibility in this case merits widespread outrage.

According to the American Bar Association Publication, "Judging Credibility," by John L. Kane (Litigation Magazine, Volume 33, Number 3, Spring 2007), "There is no law on judging credibility. Judges and jurors receive guidelines and elementary observations in the form of stock instructions but are essentially free to decide for themselves."

An examination of Kane's recommendations helps us better understand the trap Lee, even if he were without bias, and other judges may fall into when it comes to complex mental health considerations surrounding PTSD. Kane discusses, for instance, the issue of memory as a matter of assessing credibility:

The standard credibility instruction tells the fact-finder to consider the witness’s strength of memory, ability in the described circumstances to see and hear, and the clarity with which he is able to recall events. Tone of voice, shades of expression, and gestures are also to be considered. Motive and interest are said to create bias. The natural and acquired experience that an observant person uses to form an opinion of whether to trust the veracity of someone in the important transactions of his own life is said to be the most important qualification of all....

....internal coherence is critical in evaluating credibility. When the actions of the persons involved are shown to be in accordance with their nature or characters, when they do the kinds of things people will do (consistent with probability or necessity), credibility is enhanced....

Persuasion is determined by the strength, not the volume, of the evidence. If what the lawyer seeks to prove is suspect or differs from ordinary experience, it must be broken down into constituent parts that do reflect normality. For a statement to be believed it must fit; the story in which it takes place must be coherent and plausible. What the fact-finder believes is what resonates with his understanding of life. More than analytical rigor, judging credibility requires imagination and empathy for the human condition.

Is it "coherent and plausible" that a man chained to the floor, blindfolded, undergoing physical abuse and threat, with the concordant physiological and psychological consequences of such abuse on a person's sensorium, will have no difficulty in recalling all aspects of his abuse?

Bias and Government "Experts"

A final word about the use of government "experts" in this case should not go unnoted.

Judge Lee's bias in the Ali case could be determined from the very moment that he allowed the prosecution to use Dr. Gregory Saathoff as a psychiatric expert. As Judge Lee himself noted, Dr. Saathoff is "a consultant to the FBI." Given the prominence of FBI testimony in the case, one would think that the presence of potential bias by use of someone paid by the FBI would eliminate him from consideration as an expert. Sadly, I am told by someone with some knowledge of federal court procedures that while a definite conflict of interest, this kind of use of government-linked professionals as "experts" in national security case is not unknown. That doesn't make it right, however.

Dr. Saathoff was, by the way, the government expert used in the recent prosecution of Mansour Arbabsiar. He was also provided psychiatric evaluations and testimony in the cases of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and former Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Dr. Saathoff has indulged in conflict-of-interest examinations in the past. In late 2009, U.S. District Court for D.C. Judge Royce C. Lamberth tagged Saathoff to write a postmortem psych eval on purported anthrax terrorist Bruce Ivins. According to the L.A. Times, Saathoff, who headed up Lamberth’s ersatz Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel on Ivins, “served as an FBI consultant during the anthrax investigation,” raising basic conflict-of-interest questions. It was no surprise that Saathoff and his partners found Ivins to be as mentally disturbed as the FBI portrayed him.

Nor am I the first to raise issues about Saathoff's conflict-of-interest problems, as this article in Clinical Psychiatry News relates.

The case of Ahmed Abu Ali represents an abomination of justice in a variety of different ways, and was in the past a subject of intense media scrutiny. See here and here for examples. When it comes down to issues of credibility, it is not Mr. Ali who is not credible, but the actions of the justice system itself. In the name of prosecuting the "war on terror," the government has revealed itself as cloaked in ignorance, addicted to unfair procedures, and allied to torturing states, even as the innocent are left to fates worse than death itself.

Cross-posted from The Dissenter/FDL

DHS says FBI "possibly funded" Terrorist Group

It was most surprising to come across the following entry at the website for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses for Terrorism (known by the acronym START), which is run by the Department of Homeland Security out of the University of Maryland. According to DHS, START is one of their "centers of excellence," an academic center sponsored by the DHS's Science and Technology Directorate.

The webpage concerns the "Terrorist Organization Profile" for the Secret Army Organization, a right-wing terrorist group in the early 1970s, a group START writes was "possibly funded by the FBI." [You may have to go through a menu and look up SAO by name to get to the appropriate webpage.]

According to START, "The Secret Army Organization (SAO), a right-wing militant group based in San Diego, was active from 1969 to 1972. They targeted individuals and groups who spoke out against the Vietnam War, especially those who organized public demonstrations and distributed anti-war literature."

Indeed, if we could turn the clock back to June 1975, we would read an article in the New York Times, "A.C.L.U. Says F.B.I. Funded 'Army' to Terrorize Antiwar Protesters."

According to the Times, the ACLU compiled a 5,000 page report on the SAO, a group of former Minutemen and other right-wingers and violent home-grown fascists, for the benefit of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "alleging the Federal Bureau of Intelligence recruited a band of right-wing terrorists and supplied them with money and weapons to attack young antiwar demonstrators."

But that's not all, the SAO engaged in bombing and attempted assassination, and guess whose house the weapons turned up in? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's let the DHS's "Center of Excellence" inform us of this important episode in our history, which came, by the way, after the FBI claimed they had stopped their Cointelpro program of disruption of the Left.

Assassination Attempt, FBI Agent Hides the Weapon

From START's SAO webpage:

The report also stated that the SAO planned to kidnap and murder protestors of the 1972 Republican National Convention, which was to be held in San Diego before being relocated to Miami Beach. An assassination attempt of Dr. Peter Bohmer, professor at San Diego State University, and Paula Tharp, reporter for the San Diego Street Journal, brought about the arrests of several SAO members who later acknowledge an FBI connection. During the investigation, the gun used in the assassination attempt was found in the home of FBI agent Steven Christiansen, who was subsequently identified as a SAO contact. In 1973, Godfrey, testifying as an FBI informant, claimed he received up to $20,000 in weapons and a $250 per month income from the FBI to recruit new SAO members and provide information to agents. He also testified to the criminal acts of several SAO operatives, including fellow leader Jerry Lynn Davis. Official statements from the FBI claimed no involvement with the SAO, and no agents were prosecuted.

The story of the SAO is a forgotten piece of contemporary history that is directly relevant to a number of current issues, including the prosecution of the bogus "war on terror," and the FBI's role in it; the debates about government participation in and legalization of assassination of its own citizens; and government surveillance of and attacks upon dissent in this country.

It also could be considered a prime example of the historical amnesia that plagues our times, an amnesia hastened by disinterest by the major media, cheered on by government agencies none too interested in accountability for government overreach or even criminality.

Links to the President

According to the Ann Arbor Sun at the time, the ACLU tagged the SAO as "an interagency apparatus organized 'at the direction of Richard M. Nixon.'"

Reportedly the link to Nixon came via Watergate burglar White House "plumbers" operative Donald Segretti, who affidavits claimed had given funds and military hardware to SAO to disrupt the 1972 GOP convention in San Diego. (The convention was subsequently moved to Miami Beach.)

But it was the FBI who seems to have been operationally in charge.

From the Sun: "SAO operative Jerry Lynn Davis, who once participated in the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion, revealed that [admitted FBI informant Howard Barry] Godfrey had regularly supplied the SAO with money and weapons on behalf of the FBI."

A newspaper office was attacked. A car firebombed. Informants infiltrated, while meetings were monitored. There were plans to poison the punch at antiwar meetings. A theater was bombed. Bulletins were published on "how to make booby traps, how to use ammonium nitrate in high explosives," And then, there was the assassination plot, or rather plots, as the SAO bungled one assassination attempt after another to kill a left-wing professor at San Diego State.

How It Went Down, and the Cover-up

A 1973 article by Richard Popkin at Ramparts described the threats and the attack, when an SAO hitman with a FBI-paid driver tried to kill an American college professor on January 6, 1972, solely because of his political views and activism.

But first, we should realize this was not the first of the assassination plans. An Associated Press article at the time described another failed plot that had yet another FBI informant, Gilbert Romero, and a San Diego undercover cop kidnapping Peter Bohmer and taking him to Tijuana, and setting him up to be killed by Mexican police. The New York Times wrote that the ACLU report included testimony from a FBI informant, John Raspberry, who said in the winter of 1971-72, the FBI approached him to kill Bohmer. For some reason, the attack never took place.

According to Popkin, Godfrey "was assigned to [FBI] agent Steve Christianson, to whom he reported verbally every day, Godfrey was to work on the militant right wing, and was paid two hundred fifty dollars per month by the FBI."

Popkin continued, "Apparently, Godfrey himself was among the more dangerous elements in the SAO, and [FBI] agent Christianson among the more dangerous eminences grises of the operation.... Godfrey admitted that he had driven the car from which another SAO member, George Hoover, had fired into Bohmer's house, wounding Paula Tharp. Subsequently, he had taken the weapon to Christianson, who had hidden it for six months. (This was evidently insufficient grounds for the FBI to take disciplinary action against agent Christianson. He continued as Godfrey's contact until the bombing of the Guild Theatre, at which point he was removed by L. Patrick Gray himself...)"

The START page on SAO commented dryly on the aftermath of the botched assassination. "The SAO became inactive after the assassination case drew much public attention to the group's operations," DHS's Center for Excellence reports. "The testimony of Godfrey against SAO members resulted in prison terms for a significant portion of the San Diego group. Of course, if the SAO was actually FBI-run, the notoriety drawn to the case would have been the impetus to dissolve the group."

No kidding?

Bohmer's Story

I think it's appropriate to give the last words here to Peter Bohmer himself, who survived the attack and while he lost his job at San Diego State, the victim of a witchhunt, went on to join the faculty at Evergreen at Evergreen State College in Washington.

A few words about CoIntelpro before I come back to my story. It is short for counterintelligence program. Cointlepro was/is a program coordinated by the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” individuals and groups.... Although Cointelpro officially ended in 1971, it has continued although in a somewhat less extreme form without the name up to September 11th 2001. Since then we are going backwards towards more police powers, infiltration and framing of activists....

Although no group I worked in San Diego planned or carried out any violent actions, and many groups were purely educational; 20 people I knew in these groups turned out to be police or FBI agents or informers, many worked for both. They worked hard to cause divisions among individuals and groups. Some but not all were provocateurs.... the FBI visited my employer, SDSU to get me fired, they visited landlords where I lived to get us evicted. They opened my mail, and monitored my checking accounts. We got anonymous phone calls about people being agents who I am sure weren’t....

FBI sponsored groups did firebombings, slashed tires of my cars, continual death threats, put out a wanted poster on me distributed in San Diego in 1971. The Secret Army Organization or (SAO) a group financed from FBI funds and led by an FBI informant, shot into a collective I lived in with the bullet permanently injuring a member of the collective, Paula Tharp in January 1972.

Howard Barry Godfrey, a well-paid FBI informant and head of the Secret Army Organization (SAO) admitted almost a year later in court to driving the car the night of the shooting but claimed another SAO member did the actual shooting. After the shooting into my house, other FBI agents in San Diego covered up the crime and hid the evidence such as the gun used in the shooting. The head of the FBI in LA, working with SD FBI, at this time was Richard W. Held who has been involved in the cases against many activists and political prisoners such as Judi Bari, Leonard Peltier and Geronimo Pratt.

After the shooting, threats and harassment continued. After the Secret Army Organization began threatening liberals as well as radicals and bombed a pornography theater where some police were present, the San Diego police demanded that the FBI reveal their informants in the SAO and the SAO were arrested in the summer of 1972 on numerous charges. Government lawyers hired by the FBI claimed various privileges such as not having to reveal much of the behavior because of security concerns. The full FBI involvement in this attempted murder didn’t come out although one FBI agent was forced to resign. Godfrey, the FBI informant and provocateur in the Secret Army Organization (SAO) didn’t go to prison although two other members of the SAO did.

Amnesia?

As I read this many thoughts come to mind: about the Occupy protests last year, the monitoring of antiwar and peace groups, arrests of activists at the political conventions, the legitimization of state assassination by President Obama, the consolidation of ever-greater power in the hands of the FBI.

What came to mind for you? Will this important episode from history simply drop back into the abyss of forgotten American memories?

I'd like to know what happened to that ACLU report and what action (if any) the Senate Intelligence Committee took on it. I intend to find out.

Cross-posted from Firedoglake/MyFDL

Report: Serious Allegations of Abuse by FBI and Other Agencies in World Cup Bombing Investigation

Originally posted at Truthout.org

A new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative finds allegations that US officials - possibly including FBI officials - abused World Cup bombing suspects in Uganda credible enough to require "independent, impartial and transparent investigation."

The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) on November 27 released a new report on their investigation into allegations of human rights abuses, including torture and illegal rendition, by counterterrorism forces in Kenya and Uganda following the 2010 World Cup bombing in Kampala, Uganda.

The report, which also looks at allegations of abuse by the FBI and UK security officials in Kampala, concludes "counterterrorism actions that followed the bombing were characterized by human rights violations, including allegations of arbitrary detention, unlawful renditions, physical abuse and denial of due process rights."

East Africa is a major focus of US and UK counterterrorism efforts. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on "counterterrorism assistance" to countries in the area. Laws in the United States prohibit the use of such funds in countries with security forces that have committed gross violations of human rights. But as the OSJI report points out, this prohibition does "not apply to assistance funded out of US government intelligence budgets."

OSJI recommendations include demands that "Kenya, Uganda and the Western countries that support them thoroughly investigate the alleged abuses, and must pursue counterterrorism activities that do not entail human rights violations." In addition, both the US and the UK are encouraged to be more transparent on counterterrorism funding, especially with regard to rules and procedures for cooperating with foreign security forces.

The report was written by human rights investigator and OSJI Associate Legal Officer Jonathan Horowitz, in cooperation with the East Africa Law Society, the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists, and the Pan African Lawyers Union.

Back on July 11, 2010, there were two bombings at sites in Kampala, Uganda where people had gathered to watch the final game of the soccer World Cup, killing 76 people. One of those killed was US aid worker Nate Henn, who worked with the non-profit Invisible Children, a charity that went on to produce a wildly popular video on Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army.

Somalia's Al Shabab publicly claimed responsibility for the bombings, and said it was a response to Uganda's participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). According to the OSJI report, "Kenyan and Ugandan security forces cast a wide net" in the weeks after the bombing, "rounding up dozens of people."

The hunt for suspects spread from Uganda to Kenya, and included Tanzania and Somalia.

Approximately 20 suspects were illegally rendered to Uganda, some of whom were later released. US investigators, including a three-person FBI team, were dispatched quickly to the scene. New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives attached to the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) also were sent to be part of the investigation.

In all, upwards of 30 people from various countries were held in relation to the bombing. To date, some have been released, while two have pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.

But 12 prisoners are still in Luzira Maximum Security Prison in Kampala awaiting trial. And according to OSJI, "serious questions remain about the human rights abuses they were allegedly subjected to, and the roles of Kenyan, Ugandan, US and UK security forces in those alleged abuses."

As reported by Truthout in an August 2011 story about Omar Awadh Omar, one of the Kenyan prisoners rendered to Uganda, Don Borelli was the FBI agent in charge of a team that grew to about 60 agents. It was "the largest FBI deployment since the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen," according to a web page describing Borelli for his current employer, The Soufan Group.

OSJI report author Horowitz told Truthout in a telephone interview that he believed teams of agents circulated in and out of the area during the investigation, and the "60 agents" figure might reflect that fact.

In addition, a third government agency may have been involved in the US effort. The OSJI report describes allegations by Omar Awadh Omar that he was "punched" and "slapped" by men who said they were FBI agents. In addition, Omar "provided the name of an alleged US 'security officer' who struck him in the knee with a hard object."

An affidavit from Mohammed Hamid Suleiman, a Kenyan national rendered to Uganda in August 2010 and still held in prison there, mentions the same "security officer," but identifies him as an FBI agent. (The OSJI report studiously does not report any of the names of security personnel it may have gathered.)

According to the report, both Omar and Suleiman's affidavits describe this officer "as an older man who had long hair in a ponytail, wore a blazer, shirt, and khaki trousers."

"Omar alleged that two other Americans involved in the interrogations saluted this man when he entered the room," the report states. "This is not a common practice of FBI or NYPD officials and raises questions as to whether other government agencies were involved in the investigation and interrogations."

Citing a Time magazine article by Mark Benjamin in May 2011, Horowitz speculated that this other government agency could be the secretive High-Value Interrogation Group (HIG), supposedly formed by President Obama in August 2009.

Asked if they could confirm the participation of the HIG in the World Cup bombing interrogations, FBI spokeswoman Kathleen Wright told Truthout, "As it pertains to the HIG, the FBI does not discuss when the HIG was or was not deployed."

The Associated Press (AP) wrote about OSJI's report upon its release. The news agency quoted an FBI spokesperson who denied claims of abuse or mistreatment of detainees by FBI employees.

"When investigating cases overseas, all FBI personnel operate within the guidelines established by the Attorney General as well as all other applicable laws, policies and regulations," the spokesman, Paul Bresson, told AP.

US and Uganda at Odds on Rendition Story

Ten of the 12 awaiting trial in Kampala were rendered to Uganda by either the Kenyan or Tanzanian governments.

Dean Boyd, spokesman for the National Security Division at the US Department of Justice, told Truthout last April, "Mr. Omar Awadh Omar was detained in Kenya and handed over from there to the Ugandan authorities. There was no US government involvement in his detention or transfer of custody. We refer you to the Governments of Uganda and Kenya regarding the bilateral or multilateral agreements under which this transfer occurred."

But according to a UK court document, the Ugandan government denies it ever received Omar via rendition, claiming he was arrested in Kampala on September 10, 2010.

Similarly, while admitting that five Kenyan prisoners were "transferred" to Uganda, Ugandan officials also deny that Habib Suleiman Njoroge was rendered from Kenya as well. The Anti-Terrorism Police Unit of Kenya (ATPU) also denies involvement in the rendition of Omar and Njoroge.

Yet OSJI's report states outright that the Kenyan government did not follow legal procedures in its rendition of suspects to Uganda.

"Procedures for a lawful transfer to another country are spelled out in Kenya's 1968 Extradition Act," the OSJI report states, "including the requirements to issue an arrest warrant and bring the detainee to a court prior to extradition.... In the aftermath of the World Cup bombing, Kenyan authorities ignored these rules."

OSJI also criticized the Tanzanian government because prisoners were rendered to Uganda before they had exhausted their appeal rights.

The issue of the illegal rendition of Omar and the others from Kenya to Uganda is a matter of legal appeal in the East African Court of Justice (EACJ). According to an EACJ December 2011 ruling, which ruled in favor of Omar and the others pursuing their appeal, the question of whether the prisoners were "abducted and surrendered to Uganda illegally and whether or not the Republic of Uganda failed to provide a remedy are matters for the merits of the case."

Torture Claims

Recent legal decisions in both Uganda and Kenya have curtailed some of the antiterror laws passed since the World Cup bombing, laws that OSJI and others said were overly broad and punitive, targeting political opponents and minority ethnic or national groups. But the abuses detailed in the OSJI report predate these recent legal changes.

A number of ATPU prisoners said they were held incommunicado and not allowed contact with family or attorneys. Some also alleged Kenyan authorities told them prior to rendition they would be tortured by Ugandan officials.

According to OSJI's report, Kenyan national Idris Magondu stated in a court affidavit, "The ATPU officers threatened to hand me over to the Ugandan Army, who would subsequently torture, shoot and kill me and they also told me that I would never see my family again and that they would kill members of my family."

Prisoners alleged abuse or torture by members of Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan security forces, and also from FBI and UK anti-terror agents. For instance, in regard to Kenyan security, according to OSJI, Njoroge named "a high level ATPU official who allegedly took a gun, placed it against Njoroge's neck as if he was going to shoot him, and accused Njoroge of being an Islamic fundamentalist."

The Guardian UK described Njoroge's rendition and torture in an April 24, 2012 article. According to the Guardian, Njoroge alleged being hooded and shackled by Kenyan police and driven to Uganda, where he was transferred to Uganda's Rapid Response Unit (RRU).

According to the Guardian, "While in RRU custody, Njoroge says he was kept naked, beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to sign a statement in which he confessed to being involved in the bombings."
Njoroge claimed, "Among the officials interrogating him ... were men with American and British accents."

FBI in Charge?

A number of detainees have alleged abuse by FBI officers, including physical threats, hitting, hooding and threat of further rendition to Guantanamo. One prisoner alleged an FBI officer threatened him with a gun, telling him, "There are no human rights here. We are in charge of the police and the courts, and you will spend your life in prison and will not see your family again."

OSJI detailed the allegations of Kenyan national Yahya Suleiman Mbuthia. Mbuthia said that in his first interrogation "a blue-eyed man who identified himself as an FBI officer" threatened him. He "cocked his gun as if he were going to shoot me, saying that there was a bullet inside with my name on it and showing me a photo of dead people from the Kampala bombing, accusing me of being the person who did it."

Mbuthia has also alleged physical abuse by FBI officers, writing in an affidavit that he was "repeatedly beaten, punched in the stomach, had my mouth squeezed, and was almost suffocated with a dirty hood."

OSJI reported that Mbuthia "said there were Ugandans present during the interrogations but it was clear to him throughout the interrogations that the FBI was firmly in charge."

One purported FBI officer, who one detainee described merely as a "security officer," was described "as an older man who had long hair in a ponytail, wore a blazer, shirt and khaki trousers." As noted above, OSJI had reasons to believe this was possibly not an FBI agent.

In a telephone interview with Truthout, OSJI report author Horowitz wondered about possible misdirection regarding the identity of interrogators.

Horowitz said, "There is a history of other parts of the US government involved in a clandestine manner more than the FBI." He noted there have been allegations elsewhere, as at Guantanamo, where other officials or agents falsely identified themselves as FBI. The FBI, said Horowitz, is known for "a cleaner record" on detainee abuse than some other government agencies.

Indeed, the OSJI report states that "a former US government official with knowledge of the investigation" said that FBI involvement "had successfully reduced human rights violations" by security forces in the region. FBI agents supposedly "persuaded Ugandan authorities to conduct a more focused investigation rather than mass round-ups."

But OSJI was dubious about such claims. Their report describes how human rights workers in the area who investigated the abuses were themselves jailed, or deported from the country.

The OSJI report states that civil rights groups in Kenya and Uganda have been critical of both the United States and the United Kingdom "for blindly supporting domestic security forces that violate human rights and the rule of law, including their close partnership with the now disbanded Ugandan Rapid Response Unit."

In a review of instructions given to FBI agents for interrogations in foreign detention centers, Truthout found that interrogators are to supposed follow certain "non-coercive" rapport-building techniques, as well as the 18 "approach" techniques approved by Army Field Manual 2-22.3 (Human Intelligence Collector Operations). Such "approaches" include the use of "Fear Up," "Emotional Pride and Ego Down" and "Emotional Futility."

There is a 19th technique in the Army Field Manual, involving the use of isolation on a prisoner (Appendix M of the AFM). While not formally placed in the FBI's list of techniques, the Agency's manual does recommend "isolation of the detainee," stating, "In order to create the optimum conditions for productive interview, if the policy of the facility permits, consider having your detainee placed in an individual cell several days before you begin interrogation."

Asked to respond to the varied abuse allegations, Wright, the FBI's spokeswoman, told Truthout in an email exchange, "The FBI demands strict adherence to both the letter and the spirit of all applicable laws, regulations, and policies. Each employee has the responsibility to uphold the FBI's core values of integrity and accountability so that the Bureau maintains the public's trust."

Wright said the Bureau's Inspection Division (INSD) reviews all allegations of misconduct, and "the facts generated by INSD during the investigation are turned over to the Office of Public Responsibility (OPR) for adjudication based on those facts."

Asked if there had been an investigation by either INSD or OPR into the allegations surrounding FBI abuse during the World Cup bombing interrogations, or whether FBI agents had documented the condition of those it interviewed, as required by FBI manual procedures Special Agent Wright said, "The FBI cannot comment on investigations or on reports related to a particular investigation."

Wright said that the FBI had taken "considerable care and consideration" and made "an accurate and appropriate response," when they told AP abuse charges were "without merit."

She referenced a statement by FBI Director Robert Mueller to the Senate Judiciary Committee last May.

Mueller told the committee, "Every FBI employee takes an oath promising to uphold the rule of law and the United States Constitution. I emphasize that it is not enough to catch the criminal; we must do so while upholding civil rights.... In the end, we will be judged not only by our ability to keep Americans safe from crime and terrorism, but also by whether we safeguard the liberties for which we are fighting and maintain the trust of the American people."

Wright further said FBI policy "forbids abuse, threat of abuse to the interviewee or any third party, or imposing severe physical conditions on the interviewee. Agents may not participate in a circumstance in which the agent knows or suspects that a co-interrogator or the detaining authority has used a method that is not in compliance with FBI policy, even if the method is in compliance with the co-interviewer's or detaining authority's guidelines. "

But according to the FBI's Cross Cultural Rapport-Based Interrogation manual, revised in February 2011, FBI agents working in a "foreign detention facility" have "limited or no authority" over how detainees are treated.

The manual tells agents [bold in original], "You have no control over the detention conditions of your subject so you need to document his condition every time you interview him."

As the FBI says it will not comment "on investigations or on reports related to a particular investigation," we do not know what the FBI found regarding the condition of detainees held in Uganda, or rendered from Kenya and Tanzania. Nor do we know what was found on any internal investigation related to the charges, or if indeed such an internal investigation ever took place.

Horowitz labels much of the FBI's response to press questions as "stock language," and noted that the FBI refused multiple times to respond to official requests for comment or questions from OSJI.

Horowitz told Truthout the allegations of FBI mistreatment of prisoners "certainly require a serious, detailed, comprehensive public response."

Regarding allegations that US officials abused World Cup bombing suspects in Uganda, the OSJI report itself concludes, "If an independent, impartial and transparent investigation" into these allegations did not take place, [the US should] conduct one as a matter of urgency."

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission