“Counterresistance techniques taught by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency [the agency responsible for SERE training] contributed to the development of interrogation policy at the U.S. Southern Command [i.e., Guanatanamo].” OIG Report, p. 24)
“[These] Counterresistance techniques were introduced because personnel believed that interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees.” (OIG Report, p. 24)
“JTF-170 [the command overseeing interrogations at Guantánamo] requested that Joint Personnel Recovery Agency instructors be sent to Guantánamo to instruct interrogators in SERE counterresistance interrogation techniques. SERE instructors from Fort Bragg responded to Guantánamo requests for instructors trained in the use of SERE interrogation resistance techniques” (OIG Report, p. 26).
Further, the OIG report clarifies the central role of military psychologists in this process:
“On September 16, 2002, the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency co-hosted a SERE psychologist conference at Fort Bragg for JTF-170 interrogation personnel. The Army’s Behavioral Science Consultation Team [BSCT] from Guantánamo Bay also attended the conference. Joint Personnel Recovery Agency personnel briefed JTF-170 representatives on the exploitation techniques and methods used in resistance (to interrogation) training at SERE schools. The JTF-170 personnel understood that they were to become familiar with SERE training and be capable of determining which SERE information and techniques might be useful in interrogations at Guantánamo. Guantánamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team personnel understood that they were to review documentation and standard operating procedures for SERE training in developing the standard operating procedure for the JTF-170, if the command approved those practices. The Army Special Operations Command was examining the role of interrogation support as a ‘SERE Psychologist competency area.’” (OIG Report, p. 25, emphasis added.)
Colonel James arrived at GTMO [Guantánamo] in January of 2003. The OIG report reveals the continued use of SERE-type “counterresistance” techniques well past this point:
“In response to Service-level concerns, a Working Group was formed to examine counterresistance techniques, leading to the Secretary of Defense, April 16, 2003, memorandum that approved counterresistance techniques for U.S. Southern Command.” (OIG Report, p. 26)
“Application of these interrogation techniques is subject to the following general safeguards: (i) limited to use only at strategic interrogation facilities; (ii) there is a good basis to believe that detainee possesses critical intelligence; (iii) the detainee is medically and operationally evaluated as suitable (considering all techniques to be used in combination); (iv) interrogators are specifically trained for the techniques; (v) a specific interrogation plan (including reasonable safeguards. limits on duration, intervals between applications, termination criteria and the presence or availability of qualified medical personnel) has been developed; (vi) there is appropriate supervision; and, (vii) there is appropriate, specified senior approval for use with any specific detainee(after considering the foregoing and receiving legal advice).”
(Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s “Memorandum for the Commander, US Southern Command. Subject: Counter-Resistance Techniques in the War on Terrorism (S). April 16, 2003, p. 5.)
Colonel James asserts that great progress was made against torture and abusive treatment during his tenure at Guantanamo, progress which, he assures us, is continuing. Why then, did two inspections of Guantanamo by International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) team in January 2003 and June 2004, at the beginning and end of Colonel James’ time as Chief Psychologist with the intelligence group, find that abuse ‘tantamount to torture” was occurring? [Neil Lewis: Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo, New York Times, November 30, 2004.] In January, 2003, the New York Times reports, the ICRC “raised questions of whether ‘psychological torture’ was taking place.”
While Colonel James claims progress against abuse, the ICRC in June 2004, as reported by the New York Times, “said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through ‘humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions.’ Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly ‘more refined and repressive’ than learned about on previous visits.” So, during Colonel James’ tenure as Chief Psychologist, the interrogations, rather than becoming more humane, became, as the ICRC alerted, “more refined and more repressive.”
This evidence in the public record clearly disputes Colonel James’ claims that abuses at Guantánamo ended by the time that he was there as Chief Psychologist with the interrogation group, including BSCT psychologists. If Colonel James wishes to dispute these facts, it would seem his most effective outlet would be the Office of the Inspector General, the Red Cross, and the press, all of which flatly contradict his unsupported claims.
The OIG report confirms what should have been apparent when the PENS task force report was written: that members of the PENS Task Force were in the chain of command precisely when abusive techniques were translated for use in detainee interrogations.
We do acknowledge one error of fact in the Open Letter. It was in the summer of 2003, while Colonel James was Chief Psychologist at Guantánamo, that General Geoffrey Miller was sent to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmoize” the prison, bringing the harsh SERE-type techniques from Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib. It was in 2004 that the same General Miller who brought the harsh techniques to Abu Ghraib returned to Iraq to “oversee the military’s prisons in Iraq” [Sewell Chan, Rage is on Display During Prison Tour, Washington Post, May 6, 2004].
The history of America’s abusive detentions in the War on Terror is a history of evasion and denial. Every government and military official states that he or she is “against torture.” We are well aware that this administration claims never to have engaged in “torture” or in “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” But we are aware, too, that to make this claim, this administration has undertaken a campaign to redefine these terms such that they are completely unrecognizable. Over and over again, every media article, every account by detainees or their attorneys, every report by a human rights organization claiming abuse or torture has been met by denial. Yet, repeatedly these articles, these reports, these accounts have proven true. A denial is not evidence.
It is long past time for Colonel James and all the other psychologists involved in interrogations at Guantánamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan to stop asserting what they “did not” do and start telling us what they did do and what they do know about what transpired in the interrogation rooms. It is time, too, for the APA to be working with governmental and non-governmental investigative organizations to facilitate the collection of such critical pieces of information.
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