“What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings.” — General David Petraeus, May 10, 2007
“Two images — Guantanamo on the one hand and Abu Ghraib on the other — are the images for which, unfortunately, the U.S. is probably better known around the world today than for the Statue of Liberty.” — David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center, Feb. 18, 2008
“Medical ethicists say that the Bush era torture program architected and overseen by psychologists will go down as one of the greatest scandals in the history of medical ethics, on a par with the Tuskegee experiments of the mid twentieth century… an incalculable large stain has been left on the profession of psychology.” –Geoff Gray, Weaponizing Psychology, 2014
The Washington Post report, Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake, details the case of Khaled Masri, a German citizen who had been wrongly imprisoned for five months by the CIA “largely because the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center’s Al Qaeda unit “believed he was someone else… She just…
Under the updated American Medical Association Code of Ethics, (2006) Physicians have five ethical obligations To perform physical and mental assessments of detainees only to determine if there is a need for medical care and provide this care Not to participate in interrogations Not to monitor interrogations Not to participate in…
“Educing Information” a report issued by the Intelligence Science Board (ISB, 2006) is a comprehensive compilation about the scientific knowledge base of interrogation techniques since WWII that sought to address the question “What works?” methods that work in interrogations. It was a collaborative effort by U.S. interrogation experts from the…
In June 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (548 U.S. 557) that Al Qaeda prisoners were entitled to the Geneva Conventions’ protections against humiliating and degrading treatment, and “outrages on personal dignity.” And the Court ruled that the original military commission system for Guantanamo…
The Instruction memo, (3900.39D) titled “Human Research Protection Program” was issued by Secretary of the Navy, Donald Winter. While explicitly prohibiting the use of prisoners – including “unlawful enemy combatants” – for research, the memo states that waivers of informed consent for research, and suspension of protections are possible under…
The DoD Inspector General Review of Investigations of Detainee Abuse focuses on “reports, investigations, and reviews of matters involving persons who were in custody of the U.S. military, without regard to the status of the person in custody… As of February 27, 2006, DoD Components opened 842 criminal investigations or…
Since the 1980s the American Psychological Association (APA) has had a unique relationship with Senator Daniel Inouye’s office. For nearly twenty five years, psychologist Patrick Deleon, Sen. Inouye’s top assistant was APA’s man on Capitol Hill who effectively lobbied on behalf of the APA for increased funding for research, training…
A 10-year Timeline “Psychology, Torture, and the APA” is posted on the website of the Coalition for Ethical Psychology documenting the active participation of psychologists, and the American Psychological Association (APA) with the CIA and pentagon in devising and testing torture techniques on suspected Al Qaeda detainees; and helping the government to…
“For more than two years, White House officials had been creating a counterterrorism infrastructure that stretched the bounds of American law, and they had relied on a junior attorney in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, to provide them with the legal backing needed for their…
The “strictly confidential” International Red Cross (ICRC) Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody follows several other reports: Nov. 2004 and April 2006. The detainees had been transferred in 2006 from undisclosed CIA detention facilities to DoD Guantanamo prison where the ICRC was granted access…
Katherine Eban reports in Vanity Fair that the military, which has championed modern-day psychology since World War II, continues to be one of the largest single employers of psychologists through its network of veterans’ hospitals. The military also funded a prescription-drug training program for military psychologists in the early 1990s,…
Judge Susan Crawford, the Convening Authority for GTMO Military Commissions (Feb. 2007 – Jan. 2010), ordered the war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. In June 2005, Time magazine obtained 83 pages of Qahtani’s interrogation log and published excerpts…
