Beaver interjected: "We will need documentation to protect us."
"Yes, if someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of cause of death, the backlash of attention would be extremely detrimental. Everything must be approved and documented," Fredman said.
Last year, during testimony before the Armed Services Committee, Beaver said she didn't recall her comments about stopping the harsh treatment of detainees when ICRC officials were present. In its legal arguments, the Bush administration insisted that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to suspected terrorists.
Medical Complicity
Another disclosure from the ICRC report, which was obtained by journalist Mark Danner, was the participation of medical officers in monitoring the torture of the "high-value" detainees, presumably to make sure they didn't die before the interrogations were completed.
"The alleged participation of health personnel in the interrogation process and, either directly or indirectly, in the infliction of ill-treatment constituted a gross breach of medical ethics and, in some cases, amounted to participation in torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," the ICRC report said
According to the minutes of the Oct. 2, 2002, discussion, the Bush administration also involved psychologists in the preparation of the "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Psychologists Maj. John Leso and Maj. Burney of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team discussed use of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program for interrogating detainees. SERE was meant to prepare U.S. soldiers for abuse they might suffer if captured by an outlaw regime. Instead, it was reverse-engineered to provide interrogation tactics for the Bush administration.
Burney and Leso led a presentation on "SERE Psych Training," the minutes showed.
When Beaver asked whether SERE employs the "wet towel technique," otherwise known as waterboarding, Fredman, the CIA attorney, responded with a meticulous description of how the human body would react.
"If a well-trained individual is used to perform [sic] this technique it can feel like you're drowning," Fredman said. "The lymphatic system will react as if you're suffocating, but your body will not cease to function. It is very effective to identify phobias and use them (i.e., insects, snakes, claustrophobia). The level of resistance is directly related to person's experience."
Burney, the psychologist, then weighed in with a brief analysis of the psychological impact to the person subjected to the torture techniques. "Whether or not significant stress occurs lies in the eye of the beholder," Burney said.
When the minutes were sent to Mark Fallon, Deputy Commander at the Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), he remarked to a colleague that the Beaver-Fredman discussion "looks like the kinds of stuff Congressional hearings are made of."
"Quotes from LTC Beaver regarding things that are not being reported give the appearance of impropriety," Fallon wrote in an e-mail obtained by the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Talk of 'wet towel treatments' which results in the lymphatic gland reacting as if you are suffocating, would in my opinion shock the conscience of any legal body looking at using the results of the interrogations or possibly even the interrogators. Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this."
The ICRC report essentially vindicates Fallon's concern, depicting an ugly process in which the Bush administration subjected detainees to both pain and humiliation, from the waterboarding that created the panicked gag reflex of drowning to keeping the prisoners naked for long periods of time and causing them to soil themselves.
After questioning the "high-value" detainees separately, the ICRC wrote that "the allegations of the fourteen include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques--singly or in combination--that amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."
