The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a series of infamous “Torture Memoranda” redefining the criminal prohibition against torture as defined in 18 USC 2340A-2340B, which “is the controlling legal constraint on interrogations of detainees outside the United States. Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and…
Alberto Gonzales Counsel to the President, David Addington, Counsel to the Vice President, Jim Haynes DoD General Counsel, John Rizzo Acting CIA General Counsel, Michael Chertoff Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, and other senior administration officials travelled to Guantanamo Bay and were briefed on future plans for detention…
According to the Senate Armed Services Committee Report (2009), several witnesses expressed concerns about using the term “Battle Lab” to describe Guantanamo prison (GTMO). The Commander of the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF), Col. Britt Mallow testified: “While [“Battle Lab”] was logical in terms of learning lessons, I personally objected…
The stated purpose of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center (GTMO), opened in Jan. 2002, was to house the most dangerous detainees, the “worst of the worst” captured in the course of the Global War on Terrorism. However, an analysis of the numerous declassified government documents including Executive Order, JTF-170, Senate…
Without collaborating doctors & psychologists there would have been no U.S. torture of prisoners of the War on Terror. A defining feature of Nazi Germany’s vast murderous apparatus was the collaboration of medical doctors who provided the regime with a patina of professional legitimacy for its murderous policies; beginning with…
Collaborating health professionals assessed the ability of detainees to endure severe pain; they calibrated the level of pain caused by certain techniques; they assessed the effects of sleep deprivation; and they determined the advisability and effectiveness of using simultaneous combinations of torture techniques. Their professional judgment was used to escalate…
Some of the inhumane methods were atrocious in ways that are scarcely imaginable. One prisoner was subjected to forced ‘rectal feeding’. Another was chained to a wall for 17 days. A third was subjected to sensory and sleep deprivation and chained to a concrete floor; he died of hypothermia. “Water-boarding, electric…
On April 28, 2004, CBS-60 Minutes broadcast the first of a horrific series of excruciatingly graphic Abu Ghraib prison photographs documenting atrocities. The American public was shocked by the depraved sadistic cruelty documented in photographs from Abu Ghraib prison showing Iraqi prisoners stripped naked, with bags over their heads, forced…
Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) – primarily psychologists and psychiatrists – were integral to CIA’s brutal interrogations using torture. In June 2002, upon their arrival at GTMO, psychiatrist Maj. Paul Burney, psychologist John Leso and a psychiatric technician had expected to help U.S. soldiers cope with extremely stressful deployment. Instead,…
The memo was written by psychiatrist Major Paul Burney and psychologist Major John Leso, is still classified but was reviewed and cited in the Senate Armed Services Committee Report. The memo describes three interrogation technique categories intended to “develop rapport, promote cooperation, and counter resistance.” Some techniques were drawn from…
As pertinent U.S. government documents slowly emerge from the dark, a record of criminal violence, subterfuge and suppression of evidence is shown to run very deep. The main purpose of torture was not, as the American people had been led to believe, to prevent a ticking bomb from detonating and…
David Cole, a leading constitutional scholar (Georgetown University) who co-authored Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (2007) noted in a recent 2015 OpEd: “Responsibility for the program lies not with the C.I.A. alone, but also with everyone else, up to the highest levels of…
