Iacopino, Vincent - Interview master file
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Peter | Okay, good afternoon. | 0:06 |
- | Good afternoon. | 0:08 |
Peter | We are very grateful to you | 0:08 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo Project. | 0:10 | |
We invite you to speak of the experiences | 0:14 | |
and involvement with detainees and others | 0:16 | |
involving Guantanamo Bay Cuba. | 0:20 | |
We hope we provide you an opportunity | 0:23 | |
to tell your story in your own words. | 0:24 | |
We're creating an archive of stories | 0:28 | |
so that people in America and around the world | 0:31 | |
will have a better understanding | 0:33 | |
of what happened in Guantanamo. | 0:35 | |
And hopefully, your experience will help us understand that. | 0:37 | |
Future generations must know what happened, | 0:43 | |
and by telling this story, you're contributing to history. | 0:44 | |
And again, we appreciate your willingness | 0:47 | |
to speak with us today. | 0:49 | |
If there's any time you wanna take a break, | 0:51 | |
please let us know. | 0:53 | |
And if you say something you'd like us to remove, | 0:55 | |
we're happy to remove it if you let us know in time. | 0:57 | |
And we'd like to begin by asking you | 1:00 | |
some basic information about yourself, | 1:01 | |
beginning with your name and your education | 1:04 | |
and your date of birth and where you grew up. | 1:09 | |
A little bit of that. | 1:11 | |
- | Sure. | 1:13 |
Well, first I'm grateful to be here, | 1:14 | |
and I'm grateful for the project | 1:16 | |
because the history is critical | 1:17 | |
to righting what was wrong about Guantanamo | 1:20 | |
and the war on terror? | 1:24 | |
My name is Vincent Iacopino. | 1:26 | |
I am an internist and I have a PhD | 1:28 | |
in one of the medical sciences. | 1:33 | |
I was born January 1st, 1957. | 1:34 | |
So I'm 60 years old. | 1:37 | |
Peter | Where were you born? | 1:40 |
- | I was born in New Jersey, on the coast, | 1:41 |
in the central portion of the coast in a middle-class town. | 1:45 | |
I went to Villanova University undergraduate. | 1:49 | |
I did my medical and graduate school training | 1:54 | |
at Georgetown University. | 1:56 | |
I did my residency in internal medicine | 1:59 | |
and a chief residency at University of Minnesota. | 2:02 | |
I took some time off to do humanitarian assistance | 2:06 | |
working with the American Refugee Committee | 2:10 | |
on the Thai-Cambodian border in a war zone. | 2:13 | |
That was in 1986, '87. | 2:17 | |
Came back, finished my residency. | 2:20 | |
I then did a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, | 2:22 | |
the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program. | 2:26 | |
I became the medical director | 2:30 | |
of a treatment organization for survivors of torture | 2:31 | |
in San Francisco called Survivors International. | 2:35 | |
I started working with Physicians for Human Rights, | 2:39 | |
a human rights documentation organization back in 1992, | 2:41 | |
and I've been working with them ever since. | 2:46 | |
So it's been 25 years or so. | 2:48 | |
And I've held various positions | 2:51 | |
with Physicians for Human Rights | 2:53 | |
as their director of research and investigation, | 2:56 | |
senior medical advisor and so on. | 2:58 | |
And conducted all kinds of investigations | 3:01 | |
of human rights violations, | 3:05 | |
and torture being one of the most prominent ones. | 3:06 | |
- | I know you went to, or you've studied | 3:10 |
a number of countries and incidents | 3:13 | |
in other countries before Guantanamo. | 3:15 | |
Maybe give us a little background on that | 3:17 | |
before we go into Guantanamo. | 3:18 | |
- | Sure. | 3:20 |
Well, it's quite a few countries where I have traveled | 3:22 | |
and investigated and documented torture, | 3:25 | |
political killings, disappearances, | 3:29 | |
sexual assault, the conditions for refugees, | 3:31 | |
child labor problems, HIV/AIDS and human rights issues. | 3:35 | |
So a wide range of issues. | 3:39 | |
And some of the countries, India, Turkey, | 3:42 | |
South Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Macedonia. | 3:46 | |
A lot of my work now is in Central Asia. | 3:55 | |
In Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. | 3:58 | |
I've been to Thailand | 4:03 | |
for human rights investigations as well. | 4:04 | |
So suffice it to say, a number of countries, | 4:06 | |
usually countries where there are problems. | 4:09 | |
Peter | And how did you get called into Guantanamo issues? | 4:11 |
How did that happen? | 4:14 | |
- | So, I have a long history of working to document torture. | 4:15 |
I'm one of the old timers. | 4:23 | |
In fact, I was probably one of three people in the US | 4:24 | |
in the early '90s to be doing this sort of work | 4:28 | |
with Survivors International in San Francisco. | 4:31 | |
And I was recruited by Physicians for Human Rights | 4:34 | |
to do investigative work because of that skill. | 4:36 | |
And with the investigations that I did, | 4:41 | |
particularly in Turkey, | 4:45 | |
we had the idea of developing UN norms | 4:47 | |
for investigating and documenting torture. | 4:50 | |
And that effort which took three years, | 4:53 | |
culminated in the publication of UN guidelines, | 4:56 | |
the gold standard for investigation | 5:00 | |
and documentation of torture. | 5:02 | |
It's called the Istanbul Protocol. | 5:03 | |
I was the principal organizer | 5:05 | |
and author of that publication. | 5:07 | |
And so, many people look to me | 5:09 | |
because of my long history and my role in the norm setting | 5:11 | |
for investigation and documentation. | 5:16 | |
Peter | Before we go into Guantanamo, | 5:18 |
just so people that are watching, | 5:20 | |
can you tell us a bit about what the norms are | 5:22 | |
from the Istanbul Protocol? | 5:24 | |
- | Sure. | 5:26 |
Well, before the Istanbul Protocol, there were no norms. | 5:27 | |
And so the typical practice | 5:30 | |
was for official forensic doctors | 5:32 | |
not to really do anything, | 5:34 | |
just to say there's no sign of injury or lesion. | 5:36 | |
And the doctors and civil society | 5:39 | |
would do these fantastic reports, | 5:42 | |
but the judges would not allow them. | 5:47 | |
So the purpose, first of all, was to create a standard, | 5:49 | |
a framework that everybody could use | 5:53 | |
both in the government and in civil society | 5:56 | |
to enable that material medical evidence | 5:59 | |
to come to bear in courts of law. | 6:02 | |
And the actual content of the Istanbul Protocol | 6:04 | |
has the legal framework for the prohibition against torture, | 6:08 | |
information about conducting prompt, | 6:14 | |
impartial, legal investigation. | 6:17 | |
So it's also for lawyers and judges and prosecutors as well. | 6:19 | |
Some of those legal norms had already been established. | 6:22 | |
What was mostly new about the Istanbul Protocol | 6:25 | |
were the norms for the evaluation | 6:28 | |
of physical and psychological evidence of torture. | 6:31 | |
And just briefly, that consists of taking a history, | 6:35 | |
getting the information, | 6:40 | |
especially about the specific allegations of torture, | 6:41 | |
asking about one's past medical history, | 6:46 | |
about the symptoms that they had, any disabilities, | 6:51 | |
what happened in the torture, obviously in great detail. | 6:54 | |
And the psychological evaluation has a lot to do | 6:57 | |
with understanding who that person was | 7:00 | |
before the alleged abuse and what happened | 7:03 | |
and what the effects have been, their symptoms. | 7:06 | |
Do they fit into diagnostic categories or not? | 7:09 | |
But mostly it's the meaning of the experience | 7:12 | |
that the person has. | 7:14 | |
And we assess the veracity of that testimony | 7:15 | |
through the internal consistency | 7:19 | |
and the temporal relationships and so forth. | 7:21 | |
And then in the end, we make judgements | 7:23 | |
about the level of consistency between physical | 7:28 | |
and psychological evidence and the allegations. | 7:31 | |
And we might say that they're unrelated | 7:34 | |
or that they're consistent or highly consistent | 7:37 | |
or virtually diagnostic, that the physical | 7:39 | |
and psychological findings are virtually diagnostic | 7:42 | |
of the alleged abuse. | 7:44 | |
And there was a huge advance in our work | 7:47 | |
because it's a framework that everyone needs to follow. | 7:52 | |
And it basically was adopted by the UN General Assembly | 7:55 | |
and in regional human rights courts and so forth. | 8:00 | |
It is fortunately a standard | 8:02 | |
that we can all hang our hat on. | 8:05 | |
Peter | Does it require training | 8:07 |
of the investigator? | 8:08 | |
- | Absolutely. | 8:10 |
Especially in the case of the medical personnel | 8:11 | |
and forensic doctors, no one really learns this | 8:14 | |
in medical school. | 8:19 | |
Basic techniques of documentation perhaps. | 8:20 | |
But no, the physical and psychological consequences, | 8:23 | |
you have to learn how to conduct | 8:26 | |
an empathic and effective interview, | 8:28 | |
how to understand your own emotional reactions. | 8:31 | |
There are many considerations | 8:33 | |
that people really do need to learn. | 8:35 | |
And frankly at the beginning, no one is really great | 8:37 | |
at this kind of anamnesis. | 8:41 | |
This long interview and so forth | 8:43 | |
and putting it all together, and it takes a lot of practice. | 8:45 | |
So usually the way that people become competent | 8:48 | |
is to observe, you know, they learn the knowledge | 8:52 | |
and then they learn through observation | 8:55 | |
and then supervision. | 8:57 | |
Like most practices in medicine. | 8:59 | |
Peter | So, you were one of the first | 9:01 |
that people would observe you as you... | 9:02 | |
- | Yes. Yeah. | 9:05 |
Peter | Well, then we can go back | 9:08 |
to how that led you to Guantanamo. | 9:09 | |
- | Yeah, so because of my experience in documenting torture | 9:12 |
and in norm setting for the standards of investigating | 9:18 | |
and documenting medical evidence, | 9:22 | |
there were lawyers who found out about me | 9:25 | |
and contacted me to examine detainees | 9:29 | |
or to examine medical records | 9:33 | |
if the detainee could not be examined at Guantanamo. | 9:35 | |
And so I was involved in a number of cases | 9:37 | |
of either examining the medical records alone | 9:40 | |
or evaluating a detainee in Guantanamo. | 9:44 | |
I've testified in several cases. | 9:48 | |
Peter | Why couldn't a detainee be examined? | 9:51 |
- | Well, it just wasn't allowed. | 9:56 |
I can say that in the case | 10:04 | |
of the high value detainees especially, | 10:07 | |
even the observations of the detainee | 10:11 | |
or their descriptions of their alleged abuse was classified. | 10:14 | |
They couldn't say what happened to them. | 10:18 | |
Nevermind have an individual doctor travel to Guantanamo | 10:20 | |
and to meet with them and so forth. | 10:25 | |
And everything at Guantanamo is classified. | 10:27 | |
Any observation if you go there. | 10:29 | |
So, yeah, it was because of this problem of classification, | 10:32 | |
that has changed over time only recently. | 10:39 | |
And a lot of it had to do with testimony. | 10:44 | |
Some of the testimony I provided myself on the necessity | 10:46 | |
of to make any kind of evaluation, medical evaluation, | 10:50 | |
of being there, of having medical records | 10:55 | |
and frankly all relevant documents, | 10:57 | |
legal or otherwise, classified or not. | 11:01 | |
So, and then to travel to Guantanamo, | 11:03 | |
you do need to get your security clearance, | 11:06 | |
which can take months. | 11:08 | |
You need to be vetted by the FBI | 11:11 | |
and they have to come to your house | 11:15 | |
and talk to everyone you've known for the past, | 11:17 | |
I don't know, 20 years? | 11:20 | |
Peter | Even with that high security clearance, | 11:24 |
you still couldn't talk to the detainees? | 11:25 | |
- | Well, I was referring to some of the high value detainees | 11:29 |
and specifically referring to the case of al-Nashiri, | 11:32 | |
in whom they would not allow the medical records | 11:36 | |
to be reviewed, for a physician to evaluate, | 11:39 | |
a non-governmental physician to evaluate him at Guantanamo. | 11:44 | |
And when I testified in court | 11:49 | |
that this is an absolute necessity, | 11:53 | |
in fact, some of my friends and I, | 11:55 | |
we belong to a group called | 11:57 | |
the Independent Forensic Expert Group, | 11:58 | |
where 33 forensic experts from around the world. | 12:00 | |
We wrote a statement about the relevance | 12:03 | |
of such information to an evaluation of torture. | 12:05 | |
And that was instrumental in another clinician, | 12:08 | |
Dr. Sondra Crosby, gaining access, | 12:12 | |
becoming the evaluator in the case of Mr. al-Nashiri. | 12:14 | |
Peter | I still don't understand. | 12:21 |
I think it's really important for history to understand, | 12:22 | |
how could the defense even defend any position | 12:24 | |
of their client | 12:30 | |
if you couldn't even visit with their client? | 12:31 | |
What was the justification the government gave | 12:35 | |
why you couldn't even talk to the client? | 12:37 | |
And why even if you got high security clearance, | 12:39 | |
you couldn't talk to the detainee? | 12:41 | |
- | Well, I think it's a little bit like expecting people | 12:45 |
to fight with two hands tied behind their back. | 12:47 | |
I mean, it was an unfair practice and ostensibly, | 12:50 | |
it was on the basis of national security. | 12:54 | |
That this is classified information. | 12:58 | |
In the case of allegations | 13:00 | |
of the abuse that happened to them, | 13:02 | |
that's sources and methods. | 13:06 | |
I mean, that's what said, but everyone knows | 13:08 | |
what the approved methods of interrogation were | 13:12 | |
from the Department of Defense and the CIA, | 13:17 | |
the documents that came out after 2004. | 13:21 | |
And so it's not a secret. | 13:24 | |
Obviously the illegal ones, | 13:25 | |
the ones that were not authorized, | 13:27 | |
of which there were many for each individual, | 13:29 | |
it's a question of liability to be frank. | 13:33 | |
It's a way to conceal the evidence of torture | 13:37 | |
that is so glaring once you see it from the inside. | 13:40 | |
Even from the outside, it's not hard to tell. | 13:44 | |
The Abu Ghraib photos that came out in 2004 | 13:47 | |
spoke volumes to the cruelty that was taking place, | 13:51 | |
but it was just the tip of the iceberg. | 13:56 | |
Peter | So, why are you permitted | 13:58 |
to review documents? | 14:00 | |
Wouldn't that be classified too? | 14:01 | |
What's the difference? | 14:03 | |
- | Well, in some cases, the medical records were released | 14:05 |
without the necessity of a security clearance. | 14:09 | |
And other cases, | 14:15 | |
I think depending upon the specific concerns | 14:16 | |
that the government had, a security clearance is required. | 14:21 | |
And so, in my case, before I went to Guantanamo, | 14:25 | |
I did apply for and receive my security clearance. | 14:30 | |
And that enabled me not only to go to Guantanamo | 14:33 | |
and examine the detainee, but also to visit | 14:36 | |
what was called the Secure Room in Crystal City, Virginia, | 14:40 | |
just across from Washington, D.C. for several days | 14:43 | |
to review relevant, secret information. | 14:47 | |
And then, pardon me. | 14:53 | |
When I testified in court, it was a closed court. | 14:55 | |
It was not an open court hearing. | 14:59 | |
And there were precautions with my own note taking. | 15:02 | |
I mean, the notes that I took | 15:06 | |
during the interview in Guantanamo are filed away | 15:07 | |
and I didn't get to see them | 15:11 | |
until my time, either in the Secure Room or in court. | 15:12 | |
Peter | And these are interviews | 15:17 |
you took in Guantanamo | 15:19 | |
and the court was the military commission | 15:20 | |
or was it another court? | 15:23 | |
- | The case I'm referring to in Guantanamo | 15:25 |
is the case of Muhammad al-Ould Slahi. | 15:27 | |
And it was a habeas case in federal, | 15:30 | |
closed federal court in Washington, D.C. | 15:34 | |
Not a military commissions case. | 15:36 | |
But I've reviewed information | 15:39 | |
in many military commission cases as well. | 15:43 | |
Peter | Were you surprised at what you did see? | 15:47 |
Did you expect to see what you saw? | 15:49 | |
Were you prepared for what you saw? | 15:55 | |
- | So, my observations at Guantanamo | 16:00 |
are technically classified. | 16:05 | |
So when I refer to that material, | 16:07 | |
it's only public source. | 16:11 | |
I don't refer to any personal observations | 16:12 | |
or case information that I personally documented. | 16:15 | |
It's prohibited. | 16:17 | |
So, but there is copious amounts of information | 16:20 | |
on the case of Mr. Slahi and other cases as well, | 16:24 | |
from these releases of the most recently, | 16:29 | |
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report in 2014, | 16:35 | |
and other reports from the Office of the Inspector General | 16:40 | |
for the CIA back in 2004 and 2008. | 16:46 | |
I believe it was the the Senate subcommittee | 16:49 | |
on something, intelligence, I believe. | 16:53 | |
So, we've had revelations about the practices at Guantanamo. | 16:56 | |
And of course, in the other theaters of operation | 17:02 | |
in Afghanistan and Iraq, based on the release | 17:04 | |
of those documents. | 17:08 | |
We've gathered additional information | 17:09 | |
by interviewing former detainees. | 17:13 | |
Physicians for Human Rights, | 17:16 | |
the organization I work for, examined 11 detainees | 17:17 | |
who had been released. | 17:21 | |
This is back in 2011, '13, I wanna say. | 17:22 | |
And they conducted medical examinations | 17:27 | |
for over a period of two days, | 17:31 | |
physical, psychological evidence assessments | 17:32 | |
in accordance with the international norms | 17:35 | |
that we established, the Istanbul Protocol. | 17:38 | |
And they concluded that there was, | 17:40 | |
that the physical and psychological evidence | 17:44 | |
was highly consistent with the specific allegations | 17:46 | |
of torture that the detainees have. | 17:50 | |
Peter | Could you elaborate on that? | 17:53 |
That's public information since the men were released. | 17:54 | |
Is there something that might be interesting | 17:58 | |
for us to know more specifically | 18:00 | |
as to what you gathered or what they report? | 18:04 | |
- | Yeah, the name of the report is Broken Laws, Broken Lives. | 18:07 |
and it is this detailed examination of the 11 detainees. | 18:10 | |
I believe seven were detained in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, | 18:16 | |
and four were detained in Afghanistan | 18:19 | |
and later transferred to Guantanamo. | 18:22 | |
They were under the authority of the DOD. | 18:24 | |
In some cases, there were CIA personnel involved | 18:30 | |
but these were not black site detainees. | 18:33 | |
And there were allegations of the typical | 18:36 | |
enhanced interrogation tactics | 18:43 | |
that were approved by the DOD. | 18:44 | |
Sensory, sleep deprivation for long periods of time, | 18:47 | |
exposure to cold. | 18:51 | |
There was loud music, sensory bombardment, | 18:53 | |
manipulation of diet. | 18:59 | |
There was shackling in uncomfortable positions | 19:01 | |
for a long period of time, | 19:04 | |
being placed in coffin sized boxes. | 19:06 | |
Peter | This is all documented? | 19:10 |
- | Well, this was all documented. Sure. | 19:12 |
And those were the ordinary approved tactics, | 19:14 | |
but it didn't stop there. | 19:17 | |
One was stabbed with a screwdriver. | 19:21 | |
There were all kinds of humiliations, | 19:23 | |
many of them sexual. | 19:25 | |
With sexual assault, with anal instrumentation, | 19:28 | |
with truncheons, forcing the men to perform sexual acts. | 19:32 | |
Having women touch them. | 19:42 | |
And one with menstrual blood, which is forbidden in Islam. | 19:46 | |
And another who was forced to drink urine. | 19:54 | |
Another that was peed on by the guards, | 19:57 | |
another who was used like a human sponge to wipe the floor. | 20:03 | |
A floor soaked with urine. | 20:08 | |
So there were offenses to the Koran. | 20:11 | |
Writing in, stepping on Korans and so on. | 20:14 | |
Putting a dog leash on someone who is naked. | 20:21 | |
And these are the kinds of things | 20:26 | |
that were done to these men. | 20:27 | |
And they had the physical scars | 20:29 | |
and psychological scars of the abuse that they alleged. | 20:32 | |
And broken bones, nerve injuries, | 20:37 | |
disabilities of their limbs that were broken. | 20:44 | |
And the vast majority of them | 20:47 | |
had post-traumatic stress disorder | 20:48 | |
and/or major depression related to their abuse. | 20:50 | |
Peter | I wanna just go back to Slahi for a minute | 20:58 |
and then I wanna talk about something else, | 21:00 | |
but did the Physicians for Human Rights interview Slahi | 21:01 | |
after his release? | 21:06 | |
- | Well, he was just released last year. | 21:09 |
And no, we haven't interviewed him. | 21:11 | |
I've interviewed him extensively in the past | 21:15 | |
and I've been in communication with him. | 21:18 | |
But the answer to that question is no. | 21:21 | |
I mean, I think it's pretty well known what was done to him | 21:24 | |
through the public source information | 21:30 | |
and the Senate Select Committee report, SSCI report. | 21:32 | |
And also in the 2008 report. | 21:37 | |
It goes into his torture in great detail. | 21:40 | |
And it's a tragedy. | 21:44 | |
It's a tragedy. | 21:47 | |
A man who did, admittedly fight for Al-Qaeda | 21:48 | |
up until '92, but then had, according to Judge Robertson | 21:53 | |
in the habeas case, nothing to do with jihad | 21:57 | |
or Al-Qaeda after '92. | 22:02 | |
But that didn't prevent him from being tortured | 22:06 | |
for several months and indefinitely detained. | 22:07 | |
It took quite an ordeal for them to release Mr. Slahi. | 22:12 | |
Some 88,000 signatures from ACLU, | 22:17 | |
15 or so members of parliament from the United Kingdom. | 22:21 | |
All kinds of public advocacy to release him. | 22:25 | |
He was touted as one of the most important | 22:32 | |
high-value detainees, and in the end, | 22:36 | |
there was no charge and he was tortured. | 22:43 | |
And remarkably, he bears no ill will. | 22:46 | |
And even, well, he does not bear ill will | 22:50 | |
against the guards, the torturers. | 22:53 | |
He's a real model of a human being. | 22:58 | |
Peter | And would it did help | 23:03 |
for Physicians for Human Rights to interview him | 23:04 | |
just so that information that is not public | 23:07 | |
can then go public? | 23:10 | |
- | I don't think so. | 23:13 |
As I said, I believe that the information | 23:14 | |
that was critical in his case has been published, | 23:18 | |
and what remains is additional and not essential | 23:21 | |
to the understanding of what went on | 23:28 | |
for him and for others like him. | 23:31 | |
Peter | So when you talk about torture, | 23:33 |
one of the things that we heard | 23:34 | |
from detainees that we interviewed, | 23:35 | |
and many of them told us that they thought | 23:37 | |
that Guantanamo was more a psychological prison | 23:39 | |
than a physical brutal, prison. | 23:42 | |
Had you heard that and can you talk to that? | 23:44 | |
The difference? | 23:48 | |
- | Yes, I can talk to the difference | 23:50 |
between Guantanamo and other places of detention. | 23:52 | |
And also the United States | 23:57 | |
versus a whole bunch of other countries | 23:58 | |
if you're interested. | 23:59 | |
But to the first question. | 24:01 | |
Yeah, at Guantanamo, it was staffed by the DOD by and large. | 24:04 | |
And so the practices, the torture methods and so forth | 24:11 | |
were the DOD approved techniques. | 24:16 | |
Waterboarding was not one of them. | 24:18 | |
And so waterboarding wasn't really performed, | 24:20 | |
to my knowledge, in Guantanamo. | 24:22 | |
The same with the coffin-sized boxes. | 24:26 | |
And I don't think it's fair to say | 24:30 | |
that the methods were psychological | 24:32 | |
as opposed to physical. | 24:35 | |
It's an artificial distinction in my mind. | 24:36 | |
When you manipulate someone's diet and starve them. | 24:39 | |
When you keep them awake for very prolonged periods, | 24:43 | |
in the case of Mr. Slahi, it was weeks. | 24:48 | |
It was 70 days, | 24:51 | |
Peter | He was awake for 70 days? | 24:53 |
- | Well, they tried to keep him awake. | 24:54 |
Sensory deprivation, these are all physical methods | 24:57 | |
that break down an individual psychologically. | 25:00 | |
Near hypothermia. | 25:04 | |
These are all approved methods. | 25:06 | |
Marathon interrogations. | 25:08 | |
And the point of all of this was to create | 25:13 | |
this state of learned helplessness. | 25:16 | |
The psychologists, the infamous psychologists, | 25:20 | |
James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, | 25:22 | |
who designed and implemented the torture methods. | 25:25 | |
The so-called reverse engineering | 25:29 | |
of the SERE methods of torture. | 25:31 | |
Survival, evasion, resistance and escape. | 25:36 | |
The program that the United States built up | 25:39 | |
after the Korean War to help our soldiers resist torture. | 25:42 | |
They designed and implemented those methods. | 25:51 | |
And that was for the CIA. | 25:54 | |
And at Guantanamo, | 25:58 | |
the involvement of health professionals there | 26:02 | |
was different from that of the involvement at the CIA sites. | 26:06 | |
And basically, you had two groups of clinicians. | 26:11 | |
One that was supposed to take care of the medical concerns, | 26:16 | |
both physical and psychological care for the detainees. | 26:22 | |
And the other, | 26:25 | |
the so-called Behavioral Science Consultant Teams or BSCT, | 26:26 | |
psychologists and psychiatrists. | 26:30 | |
Their charge was to ensure | 26:32 | |
that the interrogations were safe, legal and effective. | 26:35 | |
And that wasn't true. | 26:41 | |
That was a lie. | 26:45 | |
That was a bedtime story that people told themselves | 26:46 | |
to obscure their own sort of moral agency | 26:49 | |
to help them disconnect. | 26:57 | |
And so, in reality, what the BSCT psychologists | 27:01 | |
and psychiatrists did, | 27:03 | |
was to identify psychological vulnerabilities, | 27:06 | |
monitor the interrogations, albeit from another room, | 27:10 | |
usually through a one way glass, | 27:15 | |
and to advise the interrogators on how to break down | 27:18 | |
the detainees to create this state of learned helplessness. | 27:22 | |
And you can see this in the BSCT logs. | 27:27 | |
There are very few of them that have been declassified, | 27:34 | |
but in some, you can see exactly what their intention was. | 27:38 | |
It was to create a state of debility, dependency and dread. | 27:43 | |
Those are the hallmarks of torture | 27:47 | |
that the CIA has recognized | 27:49 | |
in their KUBARK manual from the 1960s | 27:51 | |
and later in the 1980s. | 27:54 | |
They referred to them, of course, with euphemisms. | 27:55 | |
Like ego down, futility and fear up harsh. | 27:58 | |
And this was their goal. | 28:04 | |
And they would advise interrogators for months | 28:06 | |
to achieve this state of learned helplessness. | 28:13 | |
The debility, dependency, and dread. | 28:15 | |
- | And this was more common in Guantanamo? | 28:19 |
Is that what you're telling us, than in other- | 28:21 | |
- | Well, I'm saying that the regime, | 28:23 |
the torturing regime in Guantanamo | 28:25 | |
was one of using the DOD approved practices and more. | 28:27 | |
And that the health professionals facilitated this | 28:34 | |
in two different ways. | 28:40 | |
One through the BSCTs who had direct involvement | 28:41 | |
in the torture, and the other was the neglect | 28:43 | |
of evidence from the people charged | 28:46 | |
with their medical and mental health care. | 28:48 | |
And I'll talk about them for a moment. | 28:51 | |
Because let's take the medical people. | 28:54 | |
The doctors and nurses and so forth. | 28:57 | |
They did take care of ordinary medical conditions | 28:59 | |
like skin rashes, upper respiratory infections, | 29:02 | |
peptic ulcer disease. | 29:06 | |
Everything from ear wax removal to eyeglasses. | 29:07 | |
But when it came to instances | 29:11 | |
where there was intentional harm | 29:13 | |
and people presented to them with fractures, | 29:17 | |
bone fractures, contusions, lacerations, nerve injuries, | 29:20 | |
they never asked the question, "How did this happen?" | 29:26 | |
They missed the opportunity entirely | 29:29 | |
to document and to quite frankly | 29:32 | |
to complain of what had happened. | 29:34 | |
The mental health people, | 29:38 | |
the people in behavioral health services, | 29:42 | |
so-called BHS, who were responsible for psychological care, | 29:44 | |
they completely ignored | 29:48 | |
post traumatic stress disorder symptoms. | 29:51 | |
Nightmares, dissociation, problems with memory and so forth. | 29:54 | |
It was right there in their faces. | 29:59 | |
We know this because myself and others | 30:00 | |
like Dr. Steven Tsinokas, | 30:03 | |
retired Brigadier General for US Army, | 30:06 | |
we've reviewed medical records. | 30:10 | |
And we could see that the patients complained | 30:11 | |
of PTSD symptoms. | 30:14 | |
And mind you, post traumatic stress disorder | 30:15 | |
comes from severe trauma. | 30:18 | |
But they would not follow up with questions. | 30:23 | |
They would treat people who presented with PTSD symptoms | 30:25 | |
with anxiety medications. | 30:29 | |
And major depression, they would treat that as well | 30:34 | |
only with medications. | 30:37 | |
There was no attempt to establish | 30:40 | |
a therapeutic relationship. | 30:41 | |
They just completely neglected the cause | 30:45 | |
of the symptoms that they were seeing | 30:48 | |
and treated with medications. | 30:50 | |
And to some extent, it's understandable | 30:52 | |
that the detainees did not trust the BHS staff, | 30:55 | |
the Behavioral Health Services staff, | 30:58 | |
because they were viewed as associates | 31:00 | |
of the doctors who participated in their torture. | 31:04 | |
I should say the psychiatrists and psychologists. | 31:07 | |
As an example of this in one of the medical records | 31:11 | |
that I read, where the BHS staff entered a statement | 31:14 | |
that he told the detainee, someone who had presented | 31:21 | |
with PTSD symptoms and depression, | 31:24 | |
that you should try to relax. | 31:27 | |
You should try to relax | 31:29 | |
when the interrogators are using aggressive methods. | 31:31 | |
It was stunning. | 31:39 | |
The combination of direct involvement in the actual torture | 31:40 | |
and the concealment of that involvement | 31:45 | |
by the neglect of evidence of the clinicians | 31:48 | |
who were supposed to take care of the detainees. | 31:51 | |
Peter | So for you, when I asked you earlier | 31:55 |
if there's something that really surprised you, | 31:57 | |
it sounds like this might've surprised you | 31:59 | |
or were you expecting what you just described? | 32:01 | |
- | It was surprising. | 32:04 |
I mean, I'm not surprised by much. | 32:05 | |
I've been documenting evidence of torture for 25 years | 32:07 | |
and I've seen horrific brutality. | 32:11 | |
What's more particular about the US | 32:16 | |
is the calculated nature of it | 32:19 | |
and the systematic nature. | 32:23 | |
I mean, in most countries, torture is brutal | 32:24 | |
and it's not documented so much. | 32:29 | |
This went through the chain of command | 32:32 | |
and people kept notes. | 32:34 | |
And we know that the interrogators | 32:35 | |
would have to call back to officials, | 32:39 | |
national security officials back in Washington | 32:42 | |
to approve some of their methods of torture. | 32:46 | |
There was collusion up and down the chain of command. | 32:49 | |
This is not something you ordinarily see | 32:54 | |
in torture around the world. | 32:56 | |
And so it really makes it stunning, | 32:59 | |
the involvement of so many people and the effects | 33:01 | |
of the torture is as bad as anything you can imagine. | 33:04 | |
It doesn't matter whether or not | 33:09 | |
you are giving electric shocks or cigarette burns | 33:11 | |
or hypothermia and waterboarding. | 33:15 | |
The effect is the same. | 33:18 | |
And I can say that in one instance | 33:21 | |
of a man being peed on in Abu Ghraib, | 33:24 | |
it just destroyed, as he said, destroyed his life forever. | 33:31 | |
Peter | Do you think the US, | 33:40 |
what you're describing, consciously thought this thing | 33:42 | |
that they said they're going to treat the men this way | 33:45 | |
and psychologically damage them | 33:50 | |
in ways that are beyond the physical torture? | 33:52 | |
- | Well, that's a good question. | 33:56 |
The intent behind the systematic policy of torture. | 33:59 | |
Remember how it all began. | 34:04 | |
There was an attack on this country, September 11th. | 34:07 | |
And there were two very important elements to the response. | 34:13 | |
The rage that people felt from that attack | 34:17 | |
and the fear that people felt of another attack. | 34:21 | |
Fear, I think was an all encompassing phenomenon | 34:26 | |
for the policy makers who responded to 9/11. | 34:31 | |
It's not wrong to have feelings of rage | 34:35 | |
towards people who do outrageous things, | 34:37 | |
who murder senselessly, innocent people. | 34:40 | |
But the policy that was created was stupid | 34:45 | |
on a grand scale. | 34:50 | |
We've learned lessons of torture | 34:51 | |
over the years in the dirty wars | 34:53 | |
of Central and South America and elsewhere. | 34:54 | |
We know a lot about torture. | 34:57 | |
We know that it doesn't work. | 34:59 | |
In fact, there was pushback when the US | 35:02 | |
was beginning to authorize | 35:06 | |
previously recognized torture practices. | 35:10 | |
That, hey, look, this is unreliable information. | 35:12 | |
The CIA had disavowed torture saying, it's unreliable. | 35:15 | |
The Army Field Manual manual talks | 35:20 | |
about not engaging in torture because it's unreliable. | 35:22 | |
United States, by and large did not practice torture. | 35:27 | |
It certainly didn't authorize torture | 35:30 | |
in any of the wars it fought before. | 35:31 | |
It wasn't necessary. | 35:33 | |
And people who are experienced interrogators, | 35:35 | |
they know that rapport building | 35:37 | |
and strategies work better than causing people | 35:40 | |
so much pain that they're willing to say anything at all. | 35:45 | |
So initially what happened in the authorization of torture | 35:49 | |
was a redefinition. | 35:54 | |
A definition that frankly rendered | 35:58 | |
the definition of torture meaningless | 36:01 | |
by the Office of Legal Counsel, | 36:03 | |
specifically by John Yoo and Jay Bybee. | 36:07 | |
John Yoo is a professor of law | 36:10 | |
just two blocks away here | 36:12 | |
at the law school at University of California Berkeley. | 36:13 | |
Peter | Jay Bybee is in your neighborhood. | 36:19 |
- | Jay, is he? | 36:21 |
Peter | He's the Court of Appeals in Nevada. | 36:22 |
- | Oh, I didn't realize it was in Nevada. | 36:25 |
I knew he got promoted to a Court of Appeals, but... | 36:26 | |
So, look, before this was done, there were people | 36:31 | |
like Dick Cheney saying, we have to go to the dark side. | 36:35 | |
We have to use any and all means necessary | 36:38 | |
in order to get actionable intelligence. | 36:41 | |
No one can deny the importance of actionable intelligence, | 36:43 | |
but people should have known better than to torture | 36:46 | |
in order to gain that actionable intelligence. | 36:53 | |
And they were warned against reverse engineering | 36:56 | |
SERE tactics and so on. | 36:59 | |
But it didn't stop anyone. | 37:04 | |
Torture was redefined in a way that made it meaningless. | 37:06 | |
By that I'm referring to the two conditions. | 37:09 | |
One was to elevate the thresholds | 37:15 | |
for severe physical and mental pain. | 37:17 | |
Physical pain had to be akin to major injuries, | 37:19 | |
organ failure or death. | 37:25 | |
And by the way, organ failure by and large is not painful. | 37:27 | |
Maybe organ failure, if your heart is. | 37:32 | |
And that might be understandable to allow for more stress. | 37:35 | |
But the truth is the second condition | 37:41 | |
was that of specific intent. | 37:43 | |
That the perpetrator had to specifically intend | 37:46 | |
to create those elevated levels of physical and mental pain. | 37:51 | |
How can you possibly know? | 37:57 | |
I mean, you can say, | 37:59 | |
"My intent was to get actionable information." | 38:01 | |
Intelligence. | 38:04 | |
They further explained that you could do this in good faith. | 38:06 | |
And that you could honestly believe | 38:12 | |
that you are acting in good faith | 38:16 | |
without it being reasonable. | 38:18 | |
All you had to do, this is written in the memos. | 38:21 | |
The Yoo and Bybee memos. | 38:23 | |
All you had to do was review the literature | 38:25 | |
and consult an expert, | 38:28 | |
things like that would confer on you | 38:29 | |
this sense of good faith, what you were doing. | 38:33 | |
And it didn't matter anyway | 38:38 | |
because the person had to specifically intend | 38:39 | |
for the elevated thresholds of torture. | 38:42 | |
It was incredible to read this. | 38:45 | |
Peter | Was that the beginning? | 38:51 |
- | The OLC memos, which enabled the torture | 38:55 |
was the basis for the approval | 39:01 | |
by the Department of Defense and the CIA | 39:03 | |
for the actual methods. | 39:05 | |
They were the ones who authorized. | 39:06 | |
And they were the ones who created this complicity | 39:09 | |
of health professionals, which was different, | 39:12 | |
as I said, between the DOD and the CIA. | 39:15 | |
I'm gonna talk about the CIA for a second. | 39:17 | |
I know it's not Guantanamo related, | 39:19 | |
but I do wanna give the whole context here. | 39:21 | |
And how the methods and the practices were different | 39:24 | |
at Guantanamo versus Guantanamo. | 39:28 | |
Peter | And in that discussion, | 39:30 |
I wanna go back to the psychological aspect of it. | 39:32 | |
If that led to this psychological, | 39:36 | |
which apparently seems like a different approach to torture, | 39:38 | |
but maybe not. | 39:41 | |
- | Yeah, it is slightly different approach to torture. | 39:43 |
But in Guantanamo, as we said, | 39:46 | |
you had the DOD approved methods, | 39:49 | |
which didn't include waterboarding or coffins, | 39:53 | |
but all of the other ones that the CIA had. | 39:56 | |
And the health professionals were involved | 39:59 | |
in these two distinct groups | 40:01 | |
with direct involvement and neglecting evidence | 40:02 | |
of the clinicians responsible for care. | 40:05 | |
The CIA did it very differently. | 40:09 | |
The methods, the waterboarding obviously | 40:11 | |
was really very brutal. | 40:13 | |
And the detainees were kept in black sites, | 40:15 | |
undisclosed locations. | 40:20 | |
We didn't know about this until 2006. | 40:22 | |
It was denied until '14 of the some 120 or so | 40:24 | |
who were detained at these various sites | 40:28 | |
were transferred to Guantanamo. | 40:30 | |
And with the release of some of these classified reports, | 40:34 | |
we started to understand what the methods of torture were. | 40:38 | |
And as I said, they were like the DOD, but worse. | 40:42 | |
And the involvement of health professionals | 40:46 | |
was very different. | 40:47 | |
You didn't have BSCT psychiatrists and psychologists. | 40:48 | |
- | In the CIA program. | 40:52 |
- | In the CIA. No. | |
You had the contractors like Mitchell and Jessen | 40:54 | |
who designed and implemented the torture. | 40:57 | |
And then you had the health professionals | 40:59 | |
with the Office of Medical Service with the CIA, | 41:02 | |
the so-called, the OMS. | 41:06 | |
And they actually had guidelines to monitor, | 41:08 | |
that compelled the health professionals to monitor. | 41:12 | |
Again, presumably as a safety officer. | 41:14 | |
To physically be present during waterboarding | 41:17 | |
and to monitor the health condition. | 41:20 | |
Hypothermia, sensory deprivation, uncomfortable, | 41:23 | |
prolonged positions and so forth. | 41:28 | |
But what really took place was not just that. | 41:32 | |
We analyze, the Physicians for Human Rights staff analyze | 41:36 | |
the 2014 release of the Senate Select Committee | 41:40 | |
on Intelligence report, | 41:45 | |
the 500 pages of the exact summary | 41:47 | |
from which there were 6,700 pages | 41:51 | |
from the classified report, still not released. | 41:54 | |
And in that report, there are the guidelines | 41:57 | |
for the OMS medical personnel, | 42:00 | |
which shows that they were supposed | 42:04 | |
to monitor the interrogations. | 42:05 | |
We also know that they used medical procedures | 42:07 | |
to torture people. | 42:12 | |
The so-called rectal feeding. | 42:13 | |
There's no such thing as rectal feeding. | 42:16 | |
The large intestine absorbs water. | 42:18 | |
It does not digest food. | 42:21 | |
It doesn't absorb food nutrients. | 42:22 | |
And anyone who inserts a rectal tube into a person | 42:25 | |
without consent with no medical indication | 42:33 | |
is engaging in sexual assault and torture. | 42:38 | |
And this was done. | 42:42 | |
The reports show that it was done | 42:43 | |
to clear people's head to make them compliant. | 42:45 | |
So the OMS personnel were involved in torturing themselves. | 42:47 | |
They also withheld care. | 42:51 | |
Pain medicine. | 42:54 | |
They delayed surgical procedures | 42:55 | |
in the case of gunshot injuries in a couple of cases. | 42:58 | |
They treated people in order to get them back | 43:01 | |
to the interrogation room. | 43:03 | |
For example, they would treat leg swelling | 43:07 | |
from prolonged standing. | 43:09 | |
In some cases, they would try to prevent blood clots | 43:10 | |
by giving anti-coagulants. | 43:13 | |
They would treat the injuries | 43:17 | |
from tight shackles and things like this. | 43:20 | |
The medical doctors at Guantanamo, | 43:27 | |
they failed to document any injuries, any harm, any torture. | 43:29 | |
And they were expected to collect information. | 43:36 | |
Some of this information on the waterboard | 43:40 | |
and others made it back to Washington, D.C. | 43:42 | |
and it was touted as evidence of safety. | 43:45 | |
For the waterboard, you have somebody there. | 43:51 | |
If someone has a cardiac arrest, | 43:53 | |
they're gonna resuscitate them and so forth. | 43:55 | |
Oh, by the way, we shouldn't drown people | 43:57 | |
with regular water because it might dilute out | 44:00 | |
their electrolytes in their blood. | 44:02 | |
So we use normal saline, | 44:03 | |
the same electrolyte content as your body. | 44:04 | |
So actually the cover for the safety | 44:09 | |
of the CIA techniques was the collection | 44:13 | |
of information by OMS doctors. | 44:17 | |
When you collect information without people's consent, | 44:19 | |
there's a federal statute against that, | 44:24 | |
against unethical human research or experimentation. | 44:26 | |
Which is a crime against humanity | 44:31 | |
under some conditions. | 44:35 | |
With reference to Nuremberg. | 44:38 | |
Health professionals are not supposed | 44:40 | |
to engage in experimentation. | 44:41 | |
Peter | We interviewed, you might even know her, | 44:47 |
habeas attorneys representing one of the people, | 44:51 | |
one of the 14 you mentioned, | 44:53 | |
and he was allowed to release a few statements. | 44:55 | |
One of which said that when he was hanging by shackles. | 44:58 | |
A doctor would come in and measure | 45:01 | |
his leg to see whether it's swollen | 45:05 | |
to the point where he had to be released | 45:07 | |
or at least set down. | 45:09 | |
And doctor would come in and say, "It's not swollen enough. | 45:11 | |
You can keep him hanging." | 45:13 | |
- | Yeah. We've heard of this before. | 45:16 |
And this is such a corruption of the most basic ethics | 45:17 | |
that we have as health professionals for 2,500 years. | 45:24 | |
The Hippocratic Oath tells us to act | 45:29 | |
in the best interest of your patients and not to do harm. | 45:32 | |
Peter | How do they justify that? | 45:35 |
- | Well, that's a good question. | 45:38 |
There is no justification ethically. | 45:39 | |
And people do a lot of things. | 45:43 | |
There's a large body of literature | 45:45 | |
on how people justify inhumane acts. | 45:48 | |
And I do think that people make moral justifications. | 45:52 | |
We need this for our national security in defense. | 45:57 | |
They use euphemistic labels like ego down, | 46:01 | |
futility, fear up harsh and so on. | 46:04 | |
They don't see the consequences of their actions. | 46:09 | |
Well, I'm doing this, but it's not ultimately leading | 46:13 | |
to the torture. | 46:16 | |
- | They don't see it? | |
You think they don't see it? | 46:17 | |
- | Well, I'm saying this is how people morally disengage. | 46:18 |
These are mechanisms of moral disengagement. | 46:21 | |
I'm not making this up. | 46:24 | |
There's a study by Albert Bandura down at Stanford. | 46:26 | |
And I think they in large part helped to explain | 46:29 | |
how people escape self sanctions, the self criticism | 46:34 | |
of their immorality by psychologically tricking themselves, | 46:39 | |
if you will, into not seeing the consequences | 46:43 | |
of their actions, by diffusing responsibility, | 46:45 | |
not seeing the consequences of their action, | 46:49 | |
by blaming the victim. | 46:52 | |
It's their fault. | 46:54 | |
They wouldn't be in this situation | 46:56 | |
if they weren't the worst of the worst. | 46:58 | |
So people use psychological mechanisms | 47:02 | |
to disengage from their moral identity. | 47:05 | |
It's a well-known phenomenon how people disengage. | 47:11 | |
Peter | Can we go back, I'm sorry, | 47:16 |
but just, 'cause you're just so excellent | 47:18 | |
and it's so important to see how that evolved | 47:20 | |
into where like all these detainees told us | 47:23 | |
that they were psychologically tortured, | 47:26 | |
if in fact, I know you said perhaps | 47:28 | |
there's no real difference. | 47:31 | |
But the way you're describing it, I just wondered | 47:32 | |
if America or American officials did think | 47:35 | |
that maybe there was this new heightened way | 47:38 | |
to torture people with no scars on them. | 47:41 | |
And yet you get the intel like you're looking for. | 47:44 | |
- | Yeah. | 47:47 |
Well, I think that on this rational, conscious level, | 47:49 | |
people were thinking, well, it's so important | 47:54 | |
to get actionable intelligence. | 47:58 | |
Let's do everything up to the point of torture, | 47:59 | |
but not torture people. | 48:02 | |
But as you can see, | 48:04 | |
the Yoo-Bybee definition of torture was a joke. | 48:05 | |
You actually had to expressively intend | 48:09 | |
to create a psychological state | 48:13 | |
that would last for months or years? | 48:17 | |
That had to be your intent? | 48:19 | |
So there was a disconnect. | 48:21 | |
A disconnect that to me reveals a true intent, | 48:24 | |
not the intent to be more aggressive, | 48:27 | |
but the intent to actually do whatever you needed to do | 48:31 | |
to make someone talk. | 48:36 | |
And that's just what happened. | 48:38 | |
Not only did we have this regimen | 48:40 | |
of approved enhanced interrogation techniques, | 48:43 | |
which by the way, the US recognized as torture | 48:47 | |
before these reinterpretations of torture. | 48:50 | |
I know this because I've served | 48:55 | |
as a public member of human rights delegations | 48:57 | |
for the United States, with US delegates, | 48:59 | |
and have criticized other countries | 49:03 | |
of these very same techniques. | 49:04 | |
Extremely ironic for me to be in this position. | 49:06 | |
It was an attempt to commit and conceal | 49:14 | |
whatever acts they wanted to. | 49:17 | |
And there's a really good example of this | 49:19 | |
with extraordinary consequences. | 49:22 | |
And I don't think many people really know | 49:24 | |
about the case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi. | 49:26 | |
The chief of staff for Colin Powell, | 49:31 | |
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson could tell you about this. | 49:33 | |
This was a Libyan paramilitary who was with Al-Qaeda, | 49:37 | |
picked up on the battlefield, rendered to Egypt in 2002. | 49:42 | |
And it was his false confession under waterboarding | 49:46 | |
of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq | 49:51 | |
that was the smoking gun, the irrefutable evidence | 49:54 | |
that Colin Powell took to the General Assembly, | 49:57 | |
that was the last step in authorizing action in Iraq. | 49:59 | |
He recanted. | 50:06 | |
al-Libi recanted his testimony, | 50:09 | |
it's well-documented. | 50:10 | |
But it didn't stop us from going to Iraq. | 50:12 | |
And what were the consequences of this false testimony | 50:15 | |
based on torture? | 50:18 | |
4,000 US casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, | 50:20 | |
a trillion dollars in US treasure on that war. | 50:26 | |
And it destabilized the country and created, | 50:30 | |
to some extent, the conditions | 50:34 | |
for ISIS to come into the country. | 50:35 | |
Torture is a senseless act | 50:39 | |
that can have extraordinary consequences. | 50:43 | |
And did it help us at all? | 50:45 | |
Did we get actionable intelligence? | 50:48 | |
Well, I think we have | 50:50 | |
the most grandiose experiment ever in history. | 50:52 | |
The US torture between say 2002 and 2005 or six. | 50:57 | |
It's hard to tell when it stopped. | 51:04 | |
In three theaters of operation | 51:06 | |
and an unknown number of CIA black sites, | 51:08 | |
it was performed in all those countries | 51:13 | |
with the help of medical professionals. | 51:15 | |
And in the end, Diane Feinstein | 51:17 | |
said of the Senate Select Committee report | 51:19 | |
on Intelligence in 2014, | 51:22 | |
she said that we did not obtain any actionable intelligence | 51:26 | |
that was otherwise obtainable from those coercive methods. | 51:31 | |
Peter | One of the people we interviewed told us | 51:38 |
about being in a dark site | 51:40 | |
where it was pitch black in Kabul. | 51:46 | |
Do you know about that? | 51:48 | |
And does that resonate with you | 51:49 | |
in terms of the kind of a different kind of torture | 51:53 | |
where he wasn't beaten physically, | 51:57 | |
he was just kept in pitch black dark | 51:59 | |
for three to four weeks. | 52:00 | |
- | Yeah, well, I think there is a great deal | 52:03 |
of variability in individual experiences. | 52:06 | |
And I would imagine that a lot of it | 52:09 | |
depended upon the perception | 52:11 | |
of the information that an individual might have. | 52:13 | |
Keep in mind that there were bounties for people. | 52:16 | |
The United States paid the Northern Alliance, | 52:19 | |
General Dostum's forces 2000, up to $5,000 | 52:22 | |
for someone who was with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. | 52:27 | |
But in large part that created a demand | 52:31 | |
for fingering people to be suspected terrorists. | 52:35 | |
And so hundreds, thousands of people | 52:41 | |
were picked up in Afghanistan, in Iraq, | 52:44 | |
with the presumption of them being terrorists | 52:49 | |
when in fact they were just caught up. | 52:53 | |
There were thousands of detainees | 52:58 | |
at the detention sites in Afghanistan and Iraq. | 53:01 | |
Only 780 eventually went to Guantanamo, | 53:06 | |
but they were tortured to varying degrees at those sites. | 53:09 | |
I can say, there's a book by... | 53:15 | |
What's his name? | 53:17 | |
Josh, I've forgotten his last name. | 53:18 | |
The name of the book is | 53:20 | |
"None of Us Were Like This Before." | 53:21 | |
And he writes about what it was like to be a soldier | 53:24 | |
in these forward operating bases. | 53:30 | |
And they were instructed to use similar methods, | 53:34 | |
to rough people up, to soften them up. | 53:38 | |
That was the term that they used. | 53:41 | |
And so there were many more people, | 53:43 | |
who were ill treated in that scenario as well. | 53:45 | |
Peter | Could you tell us a little bit | 53:51 |
about medical professionals in Guantanamo specifically | 53:52 | |
in terms of force feeding | 53:55 | |
and then maybe ERF-ing too. | 53:57 | |
But let's start with force feeding. | 54:00 | |
Again, I assume it's the same kind | 54:02 | |
of justification you've described earlier, | 54:03 | |
but maybe you could talk about it. | 54:05 | |
- | Yeah, well, force feeding is a medical procedure. | 54:08 |
And whether you use a tube that goes through the nose | 54:14 | |
or a nasal gastric tube which is thick or a feeding tube, | 54:19 | |
which also goes through the nose, which is smaller, | 54:25 | |
you need a medical person to do that. | 54:28 | |
Whether it's a doctor or a nurse or a technician. | 54:30 | |
And so the medical personnel were involved. | 54:32 | |
They were involved in developing a policy. | 54:36 | |
There's a 30-page document | 54:39 | |
that was leaked through to Al Jazeera. | 54:41 | |
That's in the public domain. | 54:43 | |
The standard operating procedure for force-feeding. | 54:46 | |
I'm sure that health professionals were involved | 54:49 | |
in that 30-page document. | 54:51 | |
And they were involved in the implementation. | 54:54 | |
Doctors, nurses, and so on. | 54:57 | |
And what is it? | 54:59 | |
What is force-feeding? | 55:01 | |
Well, the DOD would have you believe | 55:04 | |
that the detainees were engaging | 55:06 | |
in what they called asymmetric warfare. | 55:09 | |
That this was what they called culture bound syndrome, | 55:12 | |
that they were trying to commit suicide | 55:15 | |
because that's all they could do | 55:17 | |
in their warfare against the United States. | 55:20 | |
In reality, these are men who let's say in 2013, | 55:24 | |
I think it was close to the peak, May 2013. | 55:29 | |
Of the 160 detainees who were still in Guantanamo, | 55:32 | |
100 of them were on hunger strikes. | 55:36 | |
Some 86 of them had already been cleared for release | 55:40 | |
to repatriate to other countries. | 55:47 | |
40 plus were being force fed. | 55:50 | |
It was extremely common. | 55:53 | |
Why? | 55:55 | |
Because these are men who had been picked up, | 55:56 | |
tortured, transferred to Guantanamo, tortured again | 55:58 | |
and indefinitely detained. | 56:02 | |
It had been since 2002 or three, | 56:04 | |
when most of them got there, until 2013, at least 10 years. | 56:06 | |
No charges, no criminal charge, no charges whatsoever. | 56:11 | |
And so a hunger strike is not about suicide. | 56:15 | |
That's not how people commit suicide. | 56:19 | |
We know. | 56:20 | |
There's a lot of information about hunger strikes. | 56:21 | |
It's a protest. | 56:24 | |
People use their bodies | 56:25 | |
and take some risks with their bodies | 56:28 | |
in order to gain attention to their situation. | 56:30 | |
And that may be a sort of a just thing to do | 56:36 | |
or maybe just because they want better prison conditions. | 56:41 | |
In this case, they were protesting indefinite detention. | 56:44 | |
I think most people can imagine | 56:48 | |
that if they were in that situation of being tortured, | 56:50 | |
not charged, approved for release, | 56:53 | |
that they would want to express themselves | 56:56 | |
in any way possible. | 56:58 | |
They would be so desperate to do that. | 56:59 | |
In fact, many people were so desperate | 57:01 | |
that suicide was extremely common in Guantanamo. | 57:02 | |
There's like 600 cases of documented suicidal thoughts, | 57:06 | |
more than 100 attempts. | 57:11 | |
Nine people who committed suicide as according to the DOD. | 57:13 | |
Force-feeding is... | 57:24 | |
Health professionals should know better. | 57:26 | |
They know that it's a medical procedure. | 57:29 | |
The World Medical Association, | 57:31 | |
the American Medical Association, unequivocal. | 57:33 | |
Force feeding a competent adult constitutes | 57:37 | |
inhuman and degrading treatment. | 57:43 | |
And in some cases it may, in my opinion, constitute torture. | 57:45 | |
There was variability and whether or not people | 57:51 | |
accepted some form of food orally, and the degree | 57:53 | |
to which the detainees resisted force-feeding | 57:58 | |
as you mentioned with ERF-ing, the emergency reaction force | 58:01 | |
or the forced cell extractions that took place | 58:05 | |
for the ones who were the detainees who were resistant. | 58:08 | |
It was like a police force in full riot gear, | 58:12 | |
who physically forcibly removed the detainee from his cell | 58:16 | |
and strapped them into a six point restraint chair | 58:21 | |
which was developed just for Guantanamo. | 58:24 | |
And they were forcibly fed. | 58:28 | |
And there was no opposition to this. | 58:34 | |
This is the really sad thing, except for one bright spot. | 58:37 | |
One Navy nurse who refused to do this, | 58:40 | |
and said it was something he just couldn't do. | 58:44 | |
What was the response of the military? | 58:49 | |
He was near his retirement and they started | 58:54 | |
to a dishonorable discharge for him. | 58:59 | |
Thanks to the American Nurses Association, | 59:03 | |
the American Medical Association | 59:07 | |
and Physicians for Human Rights who supported his case, | 59:09 | |
he spoke to the ethics, | 59:13 | |
the need to respect medical ethics. | 59:16 | |
And by the way, this happens to be torture anyway. | 59:18 | |
They stopped those proceedings | 59:22 | |
and he was able to retire honorably | 59:24 | |
or to be just discharged honorably. | 59:27 | |
Peter | Detainees also told us | 59:31 |
that if they wanted any medical treatment at all, | 59:32 | |
they had to go through their interrogators. | 59:35 | |
They couldn't go directly to a medical personnel. | 59:37 | |
And in fact if they did go to some medical personnel | 59:41 | |
or some technician, the technician would say, | 59:44 | |
you have to go back to your interrogator | 59:47 | |
for permission for us to see you. | 59:50 | |
Had you heard that? | 59:52 | |
Is that... | 59:53 | |
- | Well, I don't know too many examples of this | 59:54 |
but I do know that medical practice | 59:57 | |
and medical ethics were subservient to military imperatives. | 1:00:00 | |
The force-feeding is a perfect example of this. | 1:00:04 | |
That wouldn't have happened | 1:00:08 | |
had the DOD not called it asymmetric warfare | 1:00:09 | |
and insisted that everybody be force fed. | 1:00:13 | |
So yes, it's true. | 1:00:18 | |
The detainees were kept in cells | 1:00:21 | |
and their first point of contact | 1:00:23 | |
was not health professionals. | 1:00:24 | |
They couldn't simply request it on their own. | 1:00:26 | |
They had to speak to the guards | 1:00:29 | |
and that had to go up the chain of command, I'm sure. | 1:00:33 | |
I know from review of medical records | 1:00:38 | |
that some people who had medical problems | 1:00:40 | |
and they had, let's say back pain and so forth | 1:00:43 | |
and there was a medical regimen prescribed for that person, | 1:00:46 | |
it was overrided when people would go back and be tortured. | 1:00:50 | |
So I don't think it takes much imagination | 1:00:56 | |
to understand who was in control at Guantanamo. | 1:01:00 | |
It was the interrogators, it was the guards, | 1:01:04 | |
it was the military. | 1:01:07 | |
And the health professionals, some of them I know tried | 1:01:10 | |
or may have wanted to try, | 1:01:14 | |
but their very presence was problematic at Guantanamo. | 1:01:16 | |
It conferred this sense of legitimacy | 1:01:21 | |
of what was going on, that it was safely when effective, | 1:01:25 | |
that people were being taken care of there. | 1:01:28 | |
Peter | There is one person we interviewed | 1:01:33 |
who told us that they try to get consent, | 1:01:35 | |
or they did get consent forms signed | 1:01:39 | |
by detainees for any surgeries. | 1:01:41 | |
They didn't get consent forms when they gave them | 1:01:44 | |
certain medications early in the early years. | 1:01:46 | |
Do you know anything about that? | 1:01:50 | |
Can you speak to that? | 1:01:52 | |
- | I can, of course, my review of a dozen | 1:01:53 |
or so medical records doesn't speak | 1:01:55 | |
to 780 detainees who were there, | 1:01:57 | |
but from all of what I've learned at Guantanamo, | 1:02:00 | |
I agree with that. | 1:02:06 | |
That initially when detainees were arriving at Guantanamo, | 1:02:07 | |
they did preventive things, | 1:02:12 | |
treatment for presumed intestinal parasites. | 1:02:16 | |
For malaria that may have been residual in them, | 1:02:20 | |
tested them to see if they were exposed | 1:02:23 | |
to tuberculosis and things like that. | 1:02:25 | |
I saw no evidence in the medical chart | 1:02:27 | |
that they were consented for this, | 1:02:29 | |
but it's not the biggest problem. | 1:02:34 | |
That was not the biggest problem at Guantanamo, | 1:02:37 | |
because soon after all of that happened, | 1:02:39 | |
the torture began. | 1:02:43 | |
And as far as surgeries are concerned, | 1:02:44 | |
I did see informed consent in some cases. | 1:02:48 | |
I don't suspect that surgery was ever done | 1:02:51 | |
as a form of torture. | 1:02:55 | |
I have no reason to believe that to be the case. | 1:02:58 | |
I've never heard of it. | 1:02:59 | |
I certainly didn't see it. | 1:03:00 | |
And I think the opposite was true, | 1:03:02 | |
that a delay in care, getting access to care | 1:03:05 | |
in a timely way was problematic and still is quite frankly. | 1:03:08 | |
And there's a case. | 1:03:14 | |
Unfortunately, I can't refer to it right now, | 1:03:15 | |
but of people who need emergency medical procedures | 1:03:17 | |
and they either don't exist at Guantanamo | 1:03:25 | |
or it can't be done in a timely way, | 1:03:28 | |
because people need to be flown down there. | 1:03:31 | |
And the attorneys don't have effective communication | 1:03:34 | |
with their clients in order to know | 1:03:38 | |
what's going on with them | 1:03:41 | |
and then to take that information | 1:03:43 | |
to a third party like myself, a non-governmental person | 1:03:44 | |
to render an opinion, how serious is this? | 1:03:48 | |
What do they need and so forth? | 1:03:50 | |
Peter | Since you said you've never heard of it, | 1:03:54 |
we had two people we interviewed who told us | 1:03:56 | |
they were interrogated during surgery, | 1:03:58 | |
not in Guantanamo, before they came to Guantanamo. | 1:04:01 | |
I mean, their shoulder that was operated upon | 1:04:08 | |
and he was interrogated and was kept partially awake. | 1:04:10 | |
You've heard of that? | 1:04:14 | |
- | Absolutely. | |
I know about that case. | 1:04:15 | |
And, well, I was referring simply to Guantanamo. | 1:04:16 | |
Yeah. | 1:04:19 | |
Peter | And that was not untypical. | 1:04:20 |
Was that untypical? | 1:04:21 | |
I mean, we know two situations. | 1:04:23 | |
- | I think there are two or three cases | 1:04:25 |
where I've heard that, | 1:04:26 | |
where there was a gunshot wound and it was delayed, | 1:04:28 | |
the shoulder injury and another gunshot wound | 1:04:32 | |
where they wanted to interrogate first. | 1:04:36 | |
That was the first priority. | 1:04:39 | |
Peter | But was it done during the surgery? | 1:04:40 |
Is that what you're referring to? | 1:04:43 | |
- | No, I don't recall that. | 1:04:44 |
It was during the emergency period, | 1:04:48 | |
sort of like in the equivalent of an emergency room | 1:04:50 | |
prior to, not in the surgical suite. | 1:04:55 | |
Peter | I have a few more questions, | 1:04:59 |
but Ruth, do you have some questions. | 1:04:59 | |
Ruth | I have a few questions. | 1:05:01 |
One is the role of the International Red Cross, | 1:05:03 | |
and just, I know they came, I know not much happened. | 1:05:06 | |
Have you spoken to them? | 1:05:13 | |
What is your assessment of their role | 1:05:15 | |
or non role in Guantanamo? | 1:05:18 | |
Johnny | When you answer, please look at Peter. | 1:05:21 |
- | I will. | 1:05:23 |
So the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC | 1:05:27 | |
is supposed to have access to prisons. | 1:05:33 | |
And the ICRC did have access to Guantanamo. | 1:05:35 | |
We know this because their report, which is always | 1:05:41 | |
supposed to be kept confidential to governments was leaked. | 1:05:44 | |
And that report is in the public domain. | 1:05:50 | |
The ICRC report, I believe it's from 2004. | 1:05:53 | |
And the ICRC report refers to some of the torture methods. | 1:05:57 | |
I believe they referred to exposure | 1:06:07 | |
to cold temperatures, to the shackling | 1:06:10 | |
and prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, | 1:06:13 | |
sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, hooding, | 1:06:19 | |
dietary manipulation and so forth. | 1:06:23 | |
Essentially, the approved DOD methods. | 1:06:26 | |
Their conclusion, they of course interviewed | 1:06:31 | |
a number of detainees as they always do. | 1:06:34 | |
And I don't know whether they had access to medical records. | 1:06:36 | |
Typically they ask for and usually get access | 1:06:39 | |
to medical records. | 1:06:43 | |
And their conclusion was that the ill treatment | 1:06:45 | |
at Guantanamo was tantamount to torture, quote. | 1:06:49 | |
And that was very helpful. | 1:06:52 | |
I mean, the ICRC plays a very critical role | 1:06:56 | |
in helping a country, a state to know | 1:06:59 | |
when it's abusing its prisoners. | 1:07:04 | |
And it's not the end of the process | 1:07:07 | |
because it's pretty easy to conceal that | 1:07:10 | |
or to steer the ICRC representatives to certain places. | 1:07:12 | |
So there's a shell game that goes on | 1:07:18 | |
between states and the ICRC. | 1:07:21 | |
And as I said, the reports are generally kept confidential. | 1:07:22 | |
In this case, fortunately, the report was leaked. | 1:07:27 | |
So it was helpful in bringing attention | 1:07:30 | |
at a very critical time in 2004 | 1:07:33 | |
to the practice of torture by the US. | 1:07:37 | |
Ruth | Could you also confirm on camera | 1:07:43 |
that the Istanbul Protocol | 1:07:46 | |
that UN protocol that you described, | 1:07:49 | |
that the US was approving of this- | 1:07:52 | |
Peter | A signatory? | 1:07:55 |
Ruth | Yeah. Yeah. | 1:07:56 |
Whatever route countries bought into this | 1:07:58 | |
that we did as a country. | 1:08:03 | |
- | So one thing I should add about the Istanbul Protocol | 1:08:05 |
is that it is not a convention | 1:08:08 | |
that countries sign on to. | 1:08:11 | |
These are guidelines that are created for states. | 1:08:13 | |
The General Assembly signed on to the principles | 1:08:20 | |
of investigation and documentation, | 1:08:24 | |
which is an appendix at the end of these guidelines. | 1:08:27 | |
It's only about five pages, the principles. | 1:08:30 | |
That's what has been approved of | 1:08:33 | |
when it comes to the United Nations. | 1:08:37 | |
Individual countries like the United States | 1:08:39 | |
do not sign onto the Istanbul Protocol. | 1:08:41 | |
So to the extent that the US recognizes | 1:08:44 | |
the international documentation standards, | 1:08:48 | |
they haven't formally recognized them. | 1:08:52 | |
I can tell you that since it is the standard | 1:08:54 | |
that health professionals, medical doctors, | 1:08:58 | |
psychologists and psychiatrists use | 1:09:01 | |
for their asylum evaluations in the United States, | 1:09:04 | |
that in that context of asylum, | 1:09:07 | |
the courts, the asylum courts are quite familiar | 1:09:12 | |
with the Istanbul Protocol. | 1:09:14 | |
In fact, I've been asked to train the judges | 1:09:15 | |
from the Executive Immigration Office, EOIR. | 1:09:18 | |
The judges who are responsible | 1:09:25 | |
for adjudicating political asylum cases. | 1:09:26 | |
They've asked us to train them on the Istanbul Protocol. | 1:09:29 | |
But there is no official recognition per se | 1:09:32 | |
by the United States. | 1:09:35 | |
Ruth | Another, just a point of clarification. | 1:09:38 |
When you were talking about describing | 1:09:42 | |
the different kinds of torture, | 1:09:44 | |
were you describing just Guantanamo | 1:09:46 | |
or were you describing, your descriptions | 1:09:49 | |
included the black holes and bog room | 1:09:52 | |
in other sites as well | 1:09:53 | |
when you were talking about the various kinds of torture, | 1:09:55 | |
or did you find that in Guantanamo, | 1:09:59 | |
some of those harsher techniques | 1:10:02 | |
were not practiced? | 1:10:04 | |
Did you find that it was not as overt in Guantanamo? | 1:10:08 | |
Or am I wrong? | 1:10:13 | |
- | Yeah, so the difference between the... | 1:10:15 |
There was a difference in the interrogation tactics | 1:10:19 | |
that were approved by the Department of Defense and the CIA. | 1:10:24 | |
Both entities approved of sensory deprivation, | 1:10:29 | |
isolation, diet manipulation. | 1:10:38 | |
They approved of forced positions. | 1:10:43 | |
In the case of the CIA, they went further | 1:10:48 | |
with abdominal slaps and facial slaps | 1:10:50 | |
and so-called walling where you throw someone | 1:10:55 | |
up against a wall, and also waterboarding. | 1:10:58 | |
So there was a difference in what was authorized. | 1:11:02 | |
In both settings, both the DOD and the CIA, | 1:11:07 | |
what happened in reality was not only the approved methods | 1:11:11 | |
but additional unauthorized methods, | 1:11:14 | |
both in Guantanamo and in the CIA black sites | 1:11:17 | |
or the other places of detention in Afghanistan and Iraq. | 1:11:22 | |
Obviously with waterboarding which is more harsh, | 1:11:27 | |
you can say that the the techniques used by the CIA | 1:11:30 | |
were definitely more harsh | 1:11:33 | |
than they were in secret facilities | 1:11:34 | |
where there was little oversight. | 1:11:36 | |
And so, yeah, by and large | 1:11:38 | |
the torture that was practiced by the CIA was more brutal. | 1:11:41 | |
I already mentioned how health professionals | 1:11:45 | |
were using rectal feeding as a method of torture. | 1:11:47 | |
So there were differences. | 1:11:53 | |
In the end, as a physician who examines people | 1:11:54 | |
who have been tortured, the physical pain | 1:11:59 | |
and the mental pain and subsequent symptoms | 1:12:03 | |
are really quite similar. | 1:12:06 | |
And the methods don't necessarily matter as much | 1:12:09 | |
when you inflict physical and mental harm over time | 1:12:15 | |
and detain people for indeterminate periods of time. | 1:12:20 | |
They are profoundly affected. | 1:12:25 | |
And so the consequences, it's not so much what was done | 1:12:27 | |
as the consequences in my mind | 1:12:32 | |
of which there were little difference. | 1:12:35 | |
Ruth | One of the things that we're trying to distinguish | 1:12:38 |
is when somebody was interrogated, | 1:12:40 | |
there was enhanced interrogation | 1:12:46 | |
from the Department of Defense versus the CIA, | 1:12:48 | |
'cause sometimes they didn't know who it was. | 1:12:51 | |
And were the techniques different in Guantanamo itself, | 1:12:54 | |
depending on who was interrogating them? | 1:12:59 | |
- | That's a good question, | 1:13:04 |
because you don't always know who's interrogating. | 1:13:05 | |
And sometimes in Guantanamo, the CIA was what was there. | 1:13:10 | |
We know that they were there. | 1:13:15 | |
We just don't know when. | 1:13:16 | |
The detainees don't know when. | 1:13:17 | |
And so they don't necessarily say this was the CIA | 1:13:18 | |
or FBI or a military interrogator. | 1:13:22 | |
So it's unclear, but people like Mr. Slahi | 1:13:27 | |
who was exposed to the authorized DOD techniques, | 1:13:31 | |
he also had these other experiences | 1:13:35 | |
of a mock disappearance where he was taken on a boat | 1:13:37 | |
for several hours and told that he was going to be brought | 1:13:44 | |
to some other place where he wouldn't be protected. | 1:13:47 | |
And they beat him and broke his ribs. | 1:13:50 | |
And they didn't use a water board, but they forced water | 1:13:54 | |
and tried to suffocate him with water. | 1:13:58 | |
After that, he was told that his mother, | 1:14:02 | |
this was the thing that flipped his switch. | 1:14:05 | |
And he became completely compliant, | 1:14:08 | |
said whatever thing he wanted, | 1:14:11 | |
whatever the people wanted to know | 1:14:13 | |
whether it was true or not. | 1:14:14 | |
They threatened him with implicitly | 1:14:16 | |
with torturing his mother, | 1:14:19 | |
saying that his mother was on her way, | 1:14:21 | |
that they couldn't protect her when she got here. | 1:14:24 | |
She'd be the only female detainee. | 1:14:26 | |
And this was on official stationery | 1:14:28 | |
of the joint task force | 1:14:30 | |
or perhaps the state department, I forget. | 1:14:31 | |
But there was an official statement that they showed him. | 1:14:34 | |
And so while there were official differences | 1:14:39 | |
in the techniques, it was a license to do | 1:14:46 | |
whatever people wanted. | 1:14:49 | |
And so degrees of brutality in my opinion | 1:14:51 | |
count for very little. | 1:14:55 | |
I'm sorry, I... | 1:14:58 | |
Ruth | That is totally fine, | 1:14:59 |
- | Is that okay? | 1:15:01 |
- | Yes. | |
And another question is about the employees at Guantanamo. | 1:15:01 | |
So there were the interrogators, and then there was the CIA. | 1:15:06 | |
- | And Initially FBI, but they bugged out. | 1:15:10 |
Ruth | And some FBI who apparently didn't generally do | 1:15:12 |
the same techniques as what we were told. | 1:15:16 | |
- | Well, they condemned and left. | 1:15:18 |
Ruth | Yes, exactly. | 1:15:19 |
Employees like guards and interpreters | 1:15:22 | |
saw some of the stuff that was going on | 1:15:26 | |
and continue to have feelings of guilt, | 1:15:29 | |
inadequacy, have had long-term repercussions. | 1:15:33 | |
If a guard was torturing, | 1:15:37 | |
was that considered to be rogue or was that allowed? | 1:15:39 | |
Was it okay for these guards | 1:15:44 | |
to belittle, berate, harass, | 1:15:46 | |
physically beat up these detainees? | 1:15:50 | |
Or did people look the other way | 1:15:55 | |
or what was the relationship there? | 1:15:57 | |
- | Yeah, so it wasn't only the interrogators | 1:15:59 |
who practiced torture | 1:16:04 | |
and the BSCT psychiatrists, psychologists | 1:16:05 | |
who facilitated that. | 1:16:07 | |
The guards were expected to soften up the detainees, | 1:16:09 | |
to treat them poorly. | 1:16:13 | |
They were the ones who were pouring water | 1:16:14 | |
on the detainees at night | 1:16:16 | |
and keeping them from sleeping at night | 1:16:17 | |
in their cells. | 1:16:19 | |
So they were an instrumental part of the actual torture, | 1:16:21 | |
softening them up before treating them badly, | 1:16:24 | |
humiliating and actually doing | 1:16:27 | |
some of the torture themselves. | 1:16:31 | |
I don't know of any policy that specifically prescribed | 1:16:33 | |
that role for guards, but it certainly | 1:16:39 | |
was the case in practice. | 1:16:42 | |
And other people who were there as interpreters, | 1:16:43 | |
I can't say that I've heard testimony about them, | 1:16:48 | |
but as bystanders, one, you bear some responsibility | 1:16:52 | |
and two, you suffer the trauma of that experience. | 1:16:56 | |
Ruth | And Peter will probably ask you this, | 1:17:04 |
but were you... | 1:17:09 | |
What was your feeling about your country | 1:17:13 | |
when you saw this happening? | 1:17:15 | |
- | So, this is a difficult question. | 1:17:20 |
Peter | You kinda said that before, | 1:17:25 |
when you kinda said that you were on both sides. | 1:17:26 | |
- | Well, my job is to protect and promote human rights | 1:17:29 |
and to promote people's health. | 1:17:35 | |
And this is why I've devoted my career to human rights work, | 1:17:37 | |
because I want to prevent human suffering | 1:17:43 | |
by protecting people's human rights. | 1:17:45 | |
Stopping torture, stopping genocide and so forth. | 1:17:47 | |
So, to some extent as a health professional, | 1:17:52 | |
it's always disturbing to see intentional harm to people. | 1:17:57 | |
Was I surprised that the US government was doing this? | 1:18:05 | |
I wasn't that surprised. | 1:18:10 | |
We participated in the training of the torturers | 1:18:14 | |
in Central and South America, the school of the Americas. | 1:18:17 | |
I think when any country is challenged in this way, | 1:18:21 | |
there is this thin veneer of civilization | 1:18:25 | |
in law and democracy and respect | 1:18:28 | |
for the rule of law that can disappear in an instant. | 1:18:30 | |
I know this from my experience working in other countries. | 1:18:35 | |
The US is not exceptional to that. | 1:18:38 | |
But at the same time, seeing it happen, | 1:18:41 | |
examining people, it happened to and being an American, | 1:18:44 | |
it was extremely saddening | 1:18:53 | |
that it was not just the case of some people | 1:18:59 | |
going outside the bounds of what was legal. | 1:19:04 | |
This was a systematic policy of torture | 1:19:08 | |
in three theaters of operation. | 1:19:12 | |
It was a policy that with the help of health professionals | 1:19:14 | |
who played a central role, | 1:19:18 | |
it was a policy that was hell bent | 1:19:19 | |
on committing torture and concealing it after the fact. | 1:19:22 | |
And it's still concealed. | 1:19:27 | |
We have some reports that have been declassified | 1:19:29 | |
to some extent. | 1:19:31 | |
There's a mountain of information | 1:19:32 | |
that has not been released, | 1:19:34 | |
that needs to be released in order to have a full account. | 1:19:36 | |
Peter | Did you ever interview al-Qahtani? | 1:19:44 |
He was considered the 20th hijacker. | 1:19:47 | |
And some of the things you told us | 1:19:50 | |
did actually happen to him. | 1:19:51 | |
So I just wondered if you were involved in his case | 1:19:53 | |
so you could... | 1:19:55 | |
- | No, I did not. | 1:19:56 |
Peter | One detainee told us that when he was ERF-ed, | 1:20:01 |
they pulled him aside and they put a hose into his mouth | 1:20:04 | |
and then they put something into his nose | 1:20:07 | |
and that kind of blocked his breathing, I guess. | 1:20:10 | |
And you kind of just touched on that just now | 1:20:13 | |
when you said there were other forms | 1:20:16 | |
of water torture besides waterboarding. | 1:20:17 | |
Is that something that was done | 1:20:19 | |
systematically in Guantanamo, | 1:20:24 | |
or you heard that kind of thing? | 1:20:26 | |
- | Well, can you clarify, was this part of the forced feeding | 1:20:27 |
or was this something- | 1:20:30 | |
- | No! | |
He was ERF-ed. | 1:20:31 | |
- | Can you explain what you mean | 1:20:32 |
by something was placed in the mouth? | 1:20:33 | |
And so he was forcibly extracted | 1:20:35 | |
from his cell in a violent way, | 1:20:39 | |
and then what happened? | 1:20:40 | |
Peter | And then a hose is put it in his mouth? | 1:20:41 |
- | A hose, water hose, yeah? | 1:20:42 |
Peter | And then something was put | 1:20:44 |
I think either in his mouth or his nose, | 1:20:47 | |
I couldn't quite understand | 1:20:48 | |
that blocked some of the breathing. | 1:20:50 | |
- | So this is essentially what happens | 1:20:52 |
without the waterboard. | 1:20:58 | |
It's waterboarding without the technology | 1:20:59 | |
of the special table and all the procedures | 1:21:03 | |
involved in waterboarding. | 1:21:07 | |
I suspect that it was a cloth that covered the nose | 1:21:10 | |
and the mouth, which serves to suffocate | 1:21:12 | |
in and of itself. | 1:21:17 | |
And then when you add water onto that cloth, | 1:21:18 | |
when the victim tries to inspire, to get air, | 1:21:21 | |
the air comes in through the mouth and nose normally, | 1:21:26 | |
if it's not obstructed. | 1:21:29 | |
And they would be choking. | 1:21:29 | |
The water would be going into their lungs. | 1:21:34 | |
And so it's a low-tech way, if you will, | 1:21:36 | |
of doing waterboarding. | 1:21:39 | |
And I've heard of this being done in different instances. | 1:21:41 | |
Peter | I don't have too many questions left. | 1:21:47 |
One thing, I've a couple of questions. | 1:21:50 | |
One is small and one is large is, | 1:21:52 | |
the medical records you talked | 1:21:54 | |
about them earlier, you had some access to them. | 1:21:56 | |
A lawyer told us that she wanted to get medical records | 1:21:58 | |
of her own client, and they did not allow her to access it. | 1:22:01 | |
Is that something that you are used to? | 1:22:07 | |
- | Well, I think it's a question for the lawyers | 1:22:11 |
because they're the ones trying to get them. | 1:22:13 | |
I'm usually consulted on a case | 1:22:15 | |
where they already have the records | 1:22:16 | |
or they know they can get them. | 1:22:18 | |
I've heard that getting the records | 1:22:19 | |
was difficult in cases. | 1:22:23 | |
And so that's something that they would know more about. | 1:22:25 | |
I can say this in the case of al-Nashiri, | 1:22:29 | |
which we've already discussed, | 1:22:32 | |
that the records, I mean the records are just part | 1:22:34 | |
of what happened to an individual. | 1:22:37 | |
It's examining someone and having the relevant information | 1:22:40 | |
that might corroborate the allegations | 1:22:45 | |
that are client attorney notes, that are secret documents, | 1:22:48 | |
interrogation logs and so forth. | 1:22:53 | |
All of that is in relevant information, | 1:22:55 | |
not just the medical record for allegations of torture. | 1:22:57 | |
And I'll say this. | 1:23:00 | |
I referred once or twice to BSCT logs. | 1:23:02 | |
There are only a handful of those | 1:23:06 | |
that have come out unredacted. | 1:23:09 | |
And it is clear that they were expected to keep logs | 1:23:12 | |
of what they were doing and the outcome of their efforts. | 1:23:18 | |
And so there's a treasure trove of logs | 1:23:22 | |
that would speak volumes to what was actually done | 1:23:26 | |
and what the effects were, should they be released. | 1:23:29 | |
Peter | Did you ever do any work with Jose Padilla | 1:23:33 |
who was in a military grade? | 1:23:36 | |
- | Yeah, no. | 1:23:39 |
- | And John Walker Lindh? | |
- | No, no, no. Those were not my cases. | 1:23:41 |
Peter | And so could you just address once more, | 1:23:43 |
'cause to me that's really fascinating | 1:23:44 | |
and I have one more question after this, | 1:23:46 | |
but this is really important. | 1:23:48 | |
When you said the mental harm and physical pain | 1:23:50 | |
aren't all that different at the end. | 1:23:53 | |
When we spoke to people who've been isolated | 1:23:57 | |
for long periods of time, seemed like that didn't go away. | 1:24:00 | |
I think that in fact, even the rapporteur for UN | 1:24:05 | |
and rapporteur for torture said 15 days of isolation | 1:24:09 | |
and your mind might not return to what it was before. | 1:24:11 | |
That experience. | 1:24:15 | |
So it's hard for me to imagine that mental harm, | 1:24:16 | |
physical pain at the end | 1:24:20 | |
aren't all that much different | 1:24:23 | |
given what I heard about isolation and... | 1:24:24 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:24:27 |
Well, first of all, the psychological consequences | 1:24:28 | |
of torture are variable because people are different. | 1:24:32 | |
They have different resiliencies. | 1:24:36 | |
There are different meanings attached | 1:24:39 | |
to their torture experiences. | 1:24:41 | |
And the methods themselves, | 1:24:44 | |
you might expect something to be horrific and long lasting | 1:24:46 | |
in terms of psychological consequences | 1:24:49 | |
whereas others might be less so, | 1:24:51 | |
and that might not be the case for an individual. | 1:24:53 | |
The only way to really know is to talk to someone, | 1:24:55 | |
to examine them. | 1:24:58 | |
And by and large, we know from, | 1:25:00 | |
there's a lot of literature | 1:25:03 | |
on psychological consequences of torture. | 1:25:04 | |
The things that generally are most disturbing to people | 1:25:09 | |
and last the longest is well, sexual humiliations | 1:25:13 | |
and assault, things that really get at people's identity. | 1:25:20 | |
It's some of the humiliations. | 1:25:25 | |
Sometimes it's betrayal, | 1:25:30 | |
if you're forced to betray someone else. | 1:25:32 | |
It wasn't so much the case in Guantanamo or elsewhere. | 1:25:34 | |
Physical torture isn't always as psychologically damaging | 1:25:40 | |
as some of the other things of, | 1:25:49 | |
as I said before, this individual who was peed on. | 1:25:53 | |
Peter | And so isolation, | 1:26:01 |
you don't have any particular sense | 1:26:02 | |
that isolation in itself is more long-lasting | 1:26:05 | |
or more impactful. | 1:26:09 | |
You're saying it depends on the individual? | 1:26:10 | |
- | Well, I mean, we can talk about each of the techniques. | 1:26:13 |
I mean, isolation is, human beings are social animals | 1:26:17 | |
and we need contact, human contact. | 1:26:21 | |
And sometimes this can be the hardest thing for people, | 1:26:25 | |
is being isolated. | 1:26:27 | |
And the amount of time that it takes, that's unreasonable. | 1:26:29 | |
Juan Menezes has spoken to this. | 1:26:31 | |
What was it? 15 days? | 1:26:33 | |
But that's somewhat arbitrary. | 1:26:35 | |
Peter | One year, two years, we've been- | 1:26:38 |
- | And that's extraordinary. | 1:26:39 |
Even sleep deprivation. | 1:26:44 | |
There are studies that show | 1:26:46 | |
that if animals are not permitted to sleep, | 1:26:47 | |
they actually die. | 1:26:51 | |
Each of these so-called enhanced interrogation tactics | 1:26:54 | |
can be profound in their long-term physical | 1:26:58 | |
and or psychological effects. | 1:27:03 | |
Ruth | Well, I have a more general question, | 1:27:07 |
if you've completed that. | 1:27:09 | |
How can we prevent this from happening again? | 1:27:15 | |
Would it be useful to prosecute the John Yoos | 1:27:18 | |
or the other folks who orchestrated this | 1:27:21 | |
or the political leaders who implemented this? | 1:27:27 | |
Or do you see any other viable ways | 1:27:31 | |
of avoiding this again part of this country? | 1:27:34 | |
- | Well, I do think that in the absence of accountability, | 1:27:39 |
there has been no accountability. | 1:27:44 | |
This history will likely be repeated | 1:27:47 | |
as frequently as we are challenged | 1:27:50 | |
by events like September 11th. | 1:27:52 | |
It's important for us to understand what happened, | 1:27:58 | |
to speak the truth of what happened and not conceal it. | 1:28:00 | |
This country, our identity | 1:28:04 | |
is about the respect for the rule of law. | 1:28:07 | |
It's not about people. | 1:28:09 | |
It's about the law, our constitution. | 1:28:10 | |
That's what's enduring about this country | 1:28:13 | |
and what's different about it. | 1:28:16 | |
And systematic torture | 1:28:18 | |
and the continued concealment of it | 1:28:23 | |
and the lack of accountability for it, | 1:28:26 | |
it's a shame. | 1:28:29 | |
The extent to which the government respects the rule of law | 1:28:32 | |
is its source of legitimacy. | 1:28:34 | |
And so we don't have the same sense of legitimacy | 1:28:36 | |
as a government when you systematically torture | 1:28:39 | |
and you hold no one accountable. | 1:28:42 | |
And so we have to do this. | 1:28:45 | |
We have to do this for the United States, | 1:28:47 | |
for any country to be a country that's legitimate. | 1:28:52 | |
To claim sort of a moral sense about oneself. | 1:28:59 | |
I mean, John McCain was right. | 1:29:04 | |
This is not about the enemy, it's about us. | 1:29:05 | |
We lose our morality when we do this | 1:29:10 | |
and we sweep it under the rug. | 1:29:14 | |
What needs to happen? | 1:29:17 | |
Well, accountability. | 1:29:20 | |
Virtually nothing has happened. | 1:29:22 | |
The architects, the people in the OLC | 1:29:25 | |
like John Yoo and Jay Bybee and Addington | 1:29:27 | |
and Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, President Bush, | 1:29:30 | |
there needs to be an accounting. | 1:29:38 | |
And that can only come | 1:29:40 | |
with the declassification of information. | 1:29:42 | |
We know from other countries that years past troubled times, | 1:29:44 | |
that truth commissions and investigations | 1:29:50 | |
have helped to sort of right the ship | 1:29:53 | |
of morality in a country. | 1:29:56 | |
Take South Africa and other countries. | 1:29:58 | |
We need that release of information. | 1:30:02 | |
We need investigations. | 1:30:04 | |
We need a federal commission to investigate | 1:30:06 | |
and people need to be prosecuted. | 1:30:10 | |
The health professionals included. | 1:30:12 | |
They were central to committing and concealing torture. | 1:30:15 | |
And there have been six cases brought up | 1:30:19 | |
to licensing boards for health professionals, | 1:30:23 | |
all of which have failed usually on the basis of not... | 1:30:26 | |
They would say that they don't have the jurisdiction | 1:30:30 | |
and that's sad. | 1:30:33 | |
The medical profession, this is the biggest scandal | 1:30:34 | |
in medical ethics in the United States' history. | 1:30:38 | |
And health professionals have not been held to account. | 1:30:41 | |
I think in order to restore trust in health professionals, | 1:30:47 | |
we need to have that kind | 1:30:50 | |
of investigation and accountability. | 1:30:51 | |
Obviously there's still remnants of the policies of torture. | 1:30:54 | |
The Army Field Manual has been revised, | 1:30:58 | |
but still contains the tactics | 1:31:02 | |
of sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation, | 1:31:05 | |
which can constitute ill treatment and possibly torture. | 1:31:07 | |
It's called appendix M in the Army Field Manual. | 1:31:11 | |
That should be deleted. | 1:31:14 | |
Fortunately, the American Psychological Association, | 1:31:19 | |
which colluded with the Department of Defense and the CIA | 1:31:24 | |
and basically allowed the CIA and the DOD | 1:31:28 | |
to write their ethics policy | 1:31:31 | |
to accommodate torture practices. | 1:31:34 | |
Fortunately, the APA has reversed that history, | 1:31:38 | |
thanks to my organization, Physicians for Human Rights, | 1:31:42 | |
people like Stephen Tsoltz and Steven Reisner, | 1:31:45 | |
and a very courageous whistleblower | 1:31:48 | |
who was on the PENS taskforce. | 1:31:50 | |
The Psychological Ethics and National Security task force. | 1:31:53 | |
Jean Maria Arrigo, who blew the whistle on this collusion. | 1:31:58 | |
So fortunately there are no more BSCT | 1:32:04 | |
psychologists, psychiatrists at Guantanamo. | 1:32:08 | |
In fact, the APA has prohibited any psychologist | 1:32:10 | |
from being there, even for the purposes of care. | 1:32:14 | |
Psychologists, psychiatrist from civil society | 1:32:19 | |
or non-governmental can visit and treat and so forth. | 1:32:21 | |
And this is a very positive development, | 1:32:24 | |
but there should never be an accommodation in the future | 1:32:27 | |
for torture policies, for assisting in interrogations. | 1:32:31 | |
And something else that should happen | 1:32:36 | |
is that the Istanbul Protocol | 1:32:39 | |
and the standards for documentation | 1:32:40 | |
should be a part of all the health professionals knowledge | 1:32:43 | |
and practice, who work with detainees, | 1:32:47 | |
national security or otherwise. | 1:32:49 | |
Johnny | Seven minutes. | 1:32:52 |
Peter | Well, you've made me think of one more question. | 1:32:55 |
I have one more. | 1:32:56 | |
Why do you think the APA did participate | 1:32:58 | |
for the same reasons you gave earlier? | 1:33:00 | |
- | Well, after the Abu Ghraib photos came out in 2004, | 1:33:03 |
the American Psychological Association, | 1:33:08 | |
which is the largest association of psychologists | 1:33:11 | |
in the world, put together this task force, | 1:33:13 | |
the Psychological, Ethics and National Security task force. | 1:33:16 | |
Six of the nine members of the PENS task force | 1:33:20 | |
were employed by the Department of Defense or the CIA. | 1:33:24 | |
Some of them were BSCT psychologists. | 1:33:28 | |
Some of them participated | 1:33:29 | |
in the torture of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. | 1:33:31 | |
And there wasn't even a question at the beginning, | 1:33:36 | |
whether or not psychologists | 1:33:41 | |
should be involved in interrogation. | 1:33:44 | |
And as I said, there were these secret meetings | 1:33:48 | |
and this committee, this bias committee | 1:33:50 | |
that allowed the CIA and the DOD | 1:33:56 | |
to write its policy, to accommodate the design | 1:33:58 | |
and implementation of torture, meaning BSCT practices. | 1:34:01 | |
The standard operating practices of the BSCTs. | 1:34:05 | |
That SOP, that standard operating procedure | 1:34:09 | |
was brought to the PENS task force | 1:34:13 | |
and they used that physically to accommodate, | 1:34:15 | |
to develop their policy, | 1:34:19 | |
allowing physicians to be involved in interrogations. | 1:34:21 | |
There was another memo | 1:34:24 | |
from the assistant secretary of defense, Winkenwerder, | 1:34:26 | |
the Winkenwerder memo, | 1:34:32 | |
which actually in 2005 partitioned the ethics of clinicians. | 1:34:34 | |
They said that the typical ethics of beneficence | 1:34:39 | |
and non-maleficence of doing good | 1:34:44 | |
and not doing harm and confidential medical information, | 1:34:46 | |
all of that applied to the clinicians | 1:34:49 | |
who are taking care of the detainees, | 1:34:51 | |
with medically, psychologically and so forth. | 1:34:54 | |
But there's another group of clinicians | 1:34:57 | |
engaged in nonclinical activities, i.e. the BSCTs, | 1:35:00 | |
who were involved in interrogations | 1:35:04 | |
and those ethical duties did not apply. | 1:35:05 | |
Peter | The SOP said that? | 1:35:11 |
- | This was a Winkenwerder... | 1:35:13 |
This is the assistant secretary of defense. | 1:35:14 | |
I forgot his first name, but Winkenwerder is his last name. | 1:35:17 | |
It was a memo to the clinicians in Guantanamo. | 1:35:21 | |
And it helped to provide cover ethically | 1:35:26 | |
at the time for them. | 1:35:29 | |
And it was no surprise. | 1:35:31 | |
It was consistent with the PENS task force policy | 1:35:33 | |
that came out for the psychologists. | 1:35:38 | |
- | Well, my last question is, | 1:35:40 |
is there something I didn't ask you | 1:35:42 | |
that when you came here, you were thinking- | 1:35:43 | |
- | That's a good question. | 1:35:46 |
Yeah, yeah. | 1:35:46 | |
Peter | If we can put another card in, | 1:35:47 |
so if you wanna take a break and... | 1:35:50 | |
- | No, I don't... | 1:35:52 |
No, I don't need a break. | 1:35:53 | |
So I do need a time check. | 1:35:53 | |
Oh, we got that plenty of time. | 1:35:56 | |
So I have dinner with some colleagues of mine | 1:35:57 | |
in San Francisco. | 1:35:59 | |
May I just briefly rifle through | 1:36:02 | |
and see if there's something big? | 1:36:04 | |
Peter | Do you wanna stop the tape? | 1:36:07 |
Okay. | 1:36:08 | |
- | We're rolling. | |
- | 20 seconds. | 1:36:09 |
- | Okay, good. | |
Let's talk about that. | 1:36:10 | |
- | Well, one of the most important things | 1:36:11 |
that needs to happen | 1:36:12 | |
in the aftermath of systematic torture | 1:36:13 | |
is the closing of Guantanamo. | 1:36:18 | |
There's no need for Guantanamo. | 1:36:20 | |
It's an extremely expensive place to keep open, | 1:36:23 | |
and its functions can be replaced by services in the US. | 1:36:26 | |
And it is a place where it is hard to see what's going on. | 1:36:29 | |
The only reason to keep Guantanamo open | 1:36:35 | |
is if you intend to use it as it was used before. | 1:36:37 | |
And recently, there was an account in the media | 1:36:41 | |
that said that the Trump administration | 1:36:45 | |
actually has plans to expand the population at Guantanamo, | 1:36:46 | |
up to 13,000 so-called migrants. | 1:36:52 | |
It needs to be closed. | 1:36:56 | |
Primarily because it represents all that was done there. | 1:36:58 | |
The torture that was done there | 1:37:04 | |
in the name of all Americans. | 1:37:06 | |
It's a symbol of our disrespect for our own rule of law. | 1:37:08 | |
And when it's closed, | 1:37:16 | |
we'll be that much closer to regaining it. | 1:37:17 | |
Peter | As long as we're starting to, | 1:37:22 |
did you think Obama was gonna close Guantanamo? | 1:37:23 | |
- | Yeah, I thought Obama would close Guantanamo | 1:37:27 |
and as I believe I'm correct in this, | 1:37:30 | |
there was a presidential order to close Guantanamo. | 1:37:35 | |
The only reason it did not close | 1:37:38 | |
is because Congress wouldn't approve the funds | 1:37:40 | |
that were necessary to transfer detainees | 1:37:43 | |
to the United States. | 1:37:45 | |
This was a political decision by Congress. | 1:37:46 | |
Peter | I think we're done unless there's anything else | 1:37:55 |
you wanna say, Ruth. | 1:37:56 | |
- | No, thank you. | |
Peter | Okay. That was great. | 1:37:58 |
It was really great and we need- | 1:37:59 | |
- | I really enjoyed it. | 1:38:00 |
Peter | Thank you, we need 20 seconds | 1:38:01 |
of room tone where we just sit here quietly | 1:38:03 | |
and Johnny has to do that before we can turn off the mic. | 1:38:06 | |
- | Sure. | 1:38:08 |
- | Okay. | |
Johnny | Okay, begin room tone. | 1:38:11 |
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