The Gitmo Shrinks Find Their Super Ego And Cowboy Up
As several of you have noted, there has been a rather significant event at the Gitmo Show Trials. Lt. Colonel Diane M. Zierhoffer, a US Army psychologist who ordered the illegal torture of a juvenile, Mohammad Jawad, invoked her right not to incriminate herself and refused to testify in the case of Mohammad Jawad. She took the Fifth.
Her testimony was sought by defense attorney Maj. David Frakt in a hearing on his motion to dismiss charges based upon government misconduct in using prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, and other torture techniques against his client in an attempt to make him more pliable in interrogations. Following a month-long isolation, apparently recommended by the military psychologist, Mr. Jawad – who entered Guantánamo as a teenager — attempted suicide.
The psychologist’s testimony would have marked the first time that a member of the secretive Behavioral Science Consultation Team (known as BSCT or “biscuits”) had been called to testify in a detainee hearing. The BSCT program has been highly controversial among psychologists and other health professionals. The psychologist invoked her rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military equivalent of the 5th amendment right against self-incrimination/right to remain silent.
“The fact that the BSCT Psychologist now apparently recognizes that her conduct was criminal in nature is very significant,” said Maj. Frakt. “We have alleged, based on classified government records that the BSCT psychologist’s recommendation led directly to the illegal abuse and inhumane treatment of Mohammad Jawad. This invocation of the right to remain silent seems to confirm that.”
“The evidence in this case confirms our worst fears, that military psychologists are working to break down detainee’s psyches,” said Dr. Stephen Soldz, an expert psychologist who had been called by Maj. Frakt to testify that the BSCT psychologist had violated the professional credo of “Do no harm.”
Zierhoffer’s, and her fellow colleagues in the BSCT biscuit brigade, apparently have an operational definition of "Do no harm" with which I am not familiar. It would appear that "Do no harm" is fully operational as to her own self interest, but not to the humane interests of the powerless vulnerable souls she, and they, are ethically and morally obligated to protect.
The relevant professional association, the American Psychological Association (APA), has been having a fairly interesting internal discussion on how stridently the group will disapprove and sanction the gross ethical failings of the biscuit brigade members. There is also a lot of excellent information and background at the blog Invictus (See: here and here for instance). Invictus is run by a chap known as Valtin, a practicing psychologist in Northern California who is very passionate and dedicated on these issues. It is about time that a professional group is serious about policing the lapses of their own; kudos to the APA members standing up on this issue.
For me though, the more germane interest is in what effect Zierhoffer’s, and others that will undoubtedly be following in her footsteps, invocation of the right against self incrimination will have on the Gitmo Show Trial Process, both as to Jawad and subsequent proceedings. i cannot discern that there is any reporting, as of yet, as to how the parties and court are going to deal with the substantial issue of a material fact witness, Zierhoffer, refusing to testify. It should create a profound commotion.
The traditional tried and true response from a competent criminal defense lawyer would be to immediately formally demand on the record that the prosecution provide the necessary level of immunity to negate the witness’s self incrimination potential (very much the same concept as has been seen in the Congressional hearings with Monica Goodling; remove their criminal exposure, and they no longer have grounds to refuse testimony). The standard prosecution response to this is "No". The next step is to then move the court to immunize the requisite witness and/or compel the prosecution to do so. The standard response from the court to this motion Is abject denial on the grounds that the court does not have that authority absent a request by the prosecution and, further, lacks the authority and discretion to order the prosecution to make such a request.
Having laid the prerequisite foundation described immediately above, the defense then moves the court to dismiss the charges against the defendant on the grounds that he has been denied his Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause right to confront and cross examine witnesses and right to compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. There is a fairly high burden for the defendant to prove that the denied testimony is sufficiently material and central to his defense that he cannot adequately defend himself without it. This is a very simplified explanation and description, but hopefully is sufficient to give an indication of what to expect. The other caveat I would make is that my vignette is taken from a traditional Federal or state criminal case and the "relaxed" rules of procedure and evidence in the Gitmo Show Trials may portend additional problems to the interjection of this type of dismissal motion tactic.
It will be fascinating to see what the full impact of Zierhoffer’s refusal to testify is, both as to Jawad and later cases.
One other tangential goody I am going to throw in here just for grins. This again comes from Valtin at Invictus.
The depth and depravity with which the Bush/Cheney neocon warhawk aggressor machine has co-opted and corrupted the institutions, associations and professions that compose the fabric of this nation is simply astounding. The DOJ, the judiciary, the regulatory and administrative agencies and framework, private enterprise. They literally consume and soil every thing they touch. Here at Emptywheel, we have focused mainly on the institutions and, lately, the professions as to lawyers and now doctors and psychologists/psychiatrists. How bad is it, and how far have they gone? Well, now they have swallowed up Indiana Jones too. Yep, the Bushco Borg collective has assimilated the anthropologists. From a report by Hugh Gusterson at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
The Pentagon plans 26 Human Terrain Teams–one for each combat brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan. The five-person teams include three military personnel. Each team also includes an anthropologist–or another social scientist–who will wear a military uniform and receive weapons training. Described as doing "armed social work" by David Kilcullen, an Australian expert in counterinsurgency who advises Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, the teams elicit information from villagers for Pentagon databases and provide cultural orientation to U.S. military leaders….
Last year, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) issued a statement condemning the use of anthropologists in Human Terrain Teams….
One cannot grasp AAA’s concerns without understanding that anthropologists have a unique research method that brings with it special ethical responsibilities: We engage in what one anthropologist has called "deep hanging out" with people, passing the time with them, often day after day for months, painstakingly earning their trust and getting them to tell us about their worlds. What distinguishes anthropology from espionage (apart from anthropologists’ impenetrable jargon) is that we seek the consent of our subjects, and we follow an injunction to do no harm to those we study. According to the anthropological code of ethics, our obligations to those we study trump all others–to colleagues, funders, and nation.
Marvelous. This ought to present a whole new level and meaning to the concept of rewriting history, even for accomplished rewriters like the Bush/Cheney pack of rats. As Valtin observes:
Meanwhile, U.S. Army personnel are showing up at meetings of anthropologists and taking down names and institutional affiliations of anthropologists who had signed a public pledge not to participate in "counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the ‘war on terror,’" believing that "anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat, be it through torture, interrogation, or tactical advice."
The U.S. ruling class’s mobilization of all layers of civil society for the fear-driven defense of the nation against "terror," is leading to the militarization of the society as a whole. We are already far down this path… too far, such that many sober observers would already call the United States "fascistic."
I would stop short of making that judgment, but we may be closer to it than anyone would like to think.
Our nation is in a world of hurt, and full public accountability for the malefactors that put us there is a large and necessary part of the cure. We need it now Ms. Pelosi; the sole substantive requirement of your sworn oath to office is to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States". Either quit being derelict in duty, and start honoring your oath and duty, or get out of the way for somebody that will.
Excellent post, BMAZ.
The recognition of fascism on our own shores is incremental, but it is becoming more evident to more people on a weekly basis.
We all have the obligation to call it by its name.
Valtin is my hero.
Let justice be done and be seen to done.
Torture is ALWAYS wrong, no matter who is doing it to whom.
For Dan,
Heather
BMAZ – a really great post in a brand new area of slime (at least for me) from the Bushies.
It confirms some of my long held fears of the military and investigative mindset. These individuals normally act pretty much OK when they have a structured set of rules, regulations, etc. However, when the shackles are removed (in this case by the GWOT, Bush lawyers like Arrington and Gonzo and by senior military leaders like Meyers who turns his eyes away), then these individuals let their baser instincts take over. They naturally justify this to themselves by taking the “we are patriots protecting our country and this a time of war against an unknown and terrorist enemy” line of self justification. Their basic moral structure tossed aside. And very bad things happen.
Keep up the great work!!
I suppose everybody has read Le Carre-acute’s “Absolute Friends” which came out a few years ago, but I just got around to it. The procedures which he describes the Soviets as using on Sasha in the book now sound familiar to us from descriptions of our very own procedures. In fact, the whole last part of the book sounds now as either prescient or very well informed: there’s even a Judith Miller-like ‘Sally’ working for the NYT thrown in at one point.
so one of georgie’s interrogators has sought protection under the Fifth Amendment ???
kinda sounds like we DO torture people
now the torturers have got some legal problems
let’s see who supports these criminal fucks
and who chooses HUMANITY
gonna be real easy to spot the true christians in the near future
if you support george bush and his criminal gang, you ain’t on the side of humanity
who would Jesus torture ???
Bmaz,
deserves to be an individual post. Certainly worthy of standing alone.
and Digg-able, too.
Bmaz you hit the ball out of the park. “our nation is in a world of hurt” (by unnecessarily putting so many others in a world of hurt (Iraqi people our soldiers). The only way out is full ACCOUNTABILITY.
We are demanding nothing less from our justice system and congress that they would apply to the peasants breaking laws.
Both you and Greenwald hit it out of the park today.
When Condi “mushroom cloud” Rice speaks who listens?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html
Forget about assistance to law or the Constitution from Pelosi or any of her ilk on The Hill. They cast their lot with Bushco in 2001, and would face many charges including Misprision of Felony or Misprision of Treason if the true depth and breadth of law breaking comes out in any meaningful way. If it did, the USofA would either have to build a multiplex of new prisons or empty current prisons of petty drug offenders in order to make room for the staggering number of military, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security personnel and legislators to be incarcerated.
Great work, BMAZ. In service to their corporatist masters, the Bushie/necocon/rethug nexus have beseiged all the values and instituions that protect our communities and civil society.
Thanks for shining the light on how far the rot has gone within the mental health community. From what I’ve read, individual psychatrists and physicians have forsworn our ancient Oath to do no harm and joined the dark side. May they all lose their licsenses, livelihoods, and – until release fromt he Hague – freedoms.
Again, thanks for this great post.
Hey Kirk
Did you see this?
California Becomes First State to Condemn Use of Torture in ‘War on Terror’
Yep – and I’m glad to see it mentioned here. I’m glad it has happened, also.
OTOH:
The state of CA (and the other states) have the power to explicitly regulate the practice of medicine (and psychology and the other healing arts) through their respective medical boards.
CA’s state legislature knows how to exercise that power: when a psychologist treating one of the Beach Boys was found to have (IIRC) moved in with his patient and to have had been included among those named as having credit for one of the patient’s musical creations, the Legislature acted. Or rather – enacted: a law now bans all us mental health folk in CA from substantial social contact with our patients.
Celebrity victims get the goods: the explicit statutes.
What disappoints me about SJR 19 is not only that it ain’t a statute but also that – so far as I know – there ain’t even a statute in the CA leg pipeline.
In other words, the CA leg (or Senate) used the old Cold War technique of condemming the human rights crimes occuring outside of its jurisdiction, while electing not to exercise the political and legislative power to legally proscribe human rights within its jurisdiction (the CA state med board can – and does – pull licenses for prorscibed behavior occuring outside of state lines).
So as things stand, the CA med board can pull the license of a CA doc who racks up drunk driving convictions South Carolina, but can’t pull the CA license of docs complicit in torture in the military brigs there..or anywhere else.
Which is why I’d rather see SJR 19 than nothing, but am still very disappointed in seeing no more than SJR 19.
Let us not forget the long and profound heritage of fascism of the Bush family.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on” — GHW Bush
“Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched.” — GHW Bush (in an interview with Sarah McClendon, 12/92)
Wonderful post, bmaz. If Zierhoffer’s taking of the Fifth isn’t a breakthrough, what would be?
Remember the climax of the film Witness? When the bad guy, the only guy left with a gun, looks around wildly, only to see a circle of unarmed Amish neighbours, all just staring at him in horror as he prepares to shoot Harrison Ford? And then he gives up, because he knows he can’t kill them all, even if he could kill them all.
Sooner or later, it hits at least the banality-of-evil ones that they have lost. About the truly powerful evil ones, I don’t know.
Nice post bmaz. Team EW has a pretty deep bench.
A lot of damage has been done. Who will have the courage to walk back the damage? How do you sell abstract concepts like the Fourth Amendment to people who won’t think – people who can’t/won’t put themselves in the place of the people who are actually harmed on the road to fascism?
bmaz, I’m probably missing something stupidly, but where did you find Lt-Col Zierhoffer’s name?
In a Meteor Blades post at Dkos linked and cited by Valtin here.
Thanks, and sorry. Memo to self: real ALL links before asking questions.
Thanks for the kind words and h/t.
I am pessimistic that much will happen in the way of political repurcussions re DZ’s 5th plea, except perhaps in how it affects internal politics in APA. Unfortunately for too long a time we have all witnessed the documentation of the worst atrocities with nary a smidgen of accountability, except for some jail time for the small fry, and a few demotions and early retirements.
I refer readers to my article on the torture timeline, as it refers to Bush administration solicitation of torture techniques from the SERE military program. Even when the former top administrator for that program admits that he was queried by top administration officials about coercive interrogation in December 2001 (same time Lindh was being tortured in Afghanistan), almost every other journalist and news source in the world continues to place that initial contact seven months later, in July 2002.
Readers may not understand that the dividing line between these two dates, January 2002, represents the Bush “finding” that “enemy combatants” don’t deserve Geneva protections when it comes to interrogations. Afterwards it was Yoo, Gonzales, etc., producing bogus legal opinions for the WH backing torture. Before Jan. 2002, I think you have pure undeniable war crimes charges, as in December 2001 they had not yet produced their “cover your ass” documents.
Anyway, thanks again, bmaz, for taking up this vital issue.
I don’t know if bmaz found it on my site or not, but I think Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos gets the credit in an article he wrote there a few days ago naming her. The mainstream press has seen fit not to publish her name, or in some cases, not her full name.
Meteor Blades does deserve credit for some very good work on that story.
And, again, so does Valtin, who very generously agreed in advance to let me totally rip off his work.
Hmmm. She seems awfully close to having a doctor-patient relationship with the defendant. I think that if your shrink takes the fifth with regards to her treatment of you, then your shrink should lose her medical license.
Interesting
not sure what you’re getting at here, frank.
if you mean the practitioner should be spanked because of breach of confidentiality, that really doesn’t hold in this instance.
the way the APA ethical code reads, one must always consider the higher principle in a situation of conflicting principles. doing no harm will just about always trump confidentiality, and i would think certainly in the case of torture v. revealing a patient’s identity.
but the issue is further clarified in this instance by the fact that this woman was subpoenaed by the defense; in other words, her ‘patient’ – and attempting to call her relationship with jawad ‘patient-client’ is really stretching it – is the one requesting the information. any breach is moot in such a case.
My thinking was almost entirely the opposite. The doctor/patient relationship protects the patient, not the doctor. In this case, the patient is specifically asking the doctor to disclose information about their relationship. The doctor has an ethical and professional obligation to comply with this request. If she had been a surgeon (rather than a psychologist) who had refused to reveal what she did to her patient after being requested to do so by the patient himself, she’d almost certainly lose her license. It shouldn’t be any different for her because she’s a psychologist.
ah, i see your point. we’re not in disagreement; confidentiality does protect the client, as in all aspects of the protection. but you’re saying that her REFUSAL to share information when he is the one asking for it places her at odds with that privilege.
excellent point. i wonder where she is licensed.
Maybe she could ask John Yoo for a legal opinion on her position.
Dugg, Bmaz.
Great work. Claus
I was a member of the first graduating class at Luther with a degree in Anthropology. I really appreciate your hard work and sacrifice and share your frustration accutely.
These last posts have all been big topic, lots of info, great analysis posts – thank you for them.
I think of Kilcullen as a pretty smart guy (technically, I think he is assigned now to Rice, from his earlier Petraeus assignment, so I feel sorry for the boy from Oz too) but jeezfreakinlouise – “armed social work”?
I noticed that Gusterson also points out the anthropos that they are collecting by and large have no language skills associated with the area and no background in the culture of the area. Isn’t that extra special? I also noticed that he didn’t mince words when talking about the Phoenix Project use of anthropological information to target villagers for assassination in Vietnam.
Thanks for the link backs to Valtin’s blog too – he is really one of the good guys.
I guess if you can’t get any good info from a detainee after abusing them in a nice hidden hole for years, the least you can do is make sure you leave them so crazy they can’t reliably testify against you later.
Anthropologists have an interesting history in this area, which I have heard about but don’t recall in detail. (Ms. Redshift is an anthropologist.) IIRC, the AAA code of ethics originated after anthropologists were recruited during WWII in a similar fashion, and did some hard thinking afterwards. It is my understanding that the chief concern was their obligation to the subjects of their study, rather than compromising personal safety and ability to work, which if true is admirable.
Especially in contrast to the despicable official positions of the APA leadership on psychologists participating in torture. I heard the apparently amoral past APA president recently claiming that a movement to ban APA members from participating in coercive interrogations because things psychologists do like conducting required psychological screenings for high-security jobs could be considered “coercive” if the subject doesn’t want to do it.
I followed up my earlier posting with a description of an episode from World War I, where two anthropologists were accused of using their professional positions for espionage for the U.S.
The resulting protest by leading anthropologist, Franz Boas, resulted in an AAA censure against him.
Very interesting; I didn’t know about that.
Boas was, of course, a German emigrant, and his personal and professional peers included many who were fluent in German. He is also regarded by many as the founding father of Anthropology in the U.S.
World War I must have been a conflicted issue for them.
Bob in HI
German culture before the First World War was considered the height of social and technological progress, an appreciation hard to grasp after the Shoah thirty years later.
Also plaguing Boaz, I think, was the Red Scare in America following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the associated crack down here on “dissent” and unconventional thinking of all kinds. Among other things, it led to the rise of J. Edgar Hoover.
A mind like Boaz’s — creative energetic and determined enough to invent a new intellectual discipline — did not support the overreaction to Russia’s change of government, a transition that “terrorized” monarchs, monopolists, corporatist politicians and war profiteers. The potential for improvement in the lot of the ordinary Russian was then lost for generations. Overreaction to it meant retarded improvements here, a dynamic that is repeating itself via overreaction to isolated acts of terrorism and under-reaction to the changes wrought by globalization.
Two points, bmaz. First, you correctly note the following as response to the dear BSCT’s refusal to testify:
The problems are not merely the prosecution saying “no” and the judge saying “no”, in their time-tested way. I can also hear the prosecution and the judge saying “We/I don’t have jurisdiction to grant immunity to a recalcitrant witness” and “We/I cannot effect the compulsion to make your Sixth Amendment rights to due process, compulsory process, cross-examination and fair trial worth more than the paper you wiped your behind with today.” The Kangaroo Court would say it does not have jurisdiction (1) because the dear Lieutenant Colonel invoking her privilege against self-incrimination is obviously not a[n alleged] terrist and is both a citizen and a military officer, so she could not be called to account before the Court granting her immunity. Further, a good argument could be made that, because the Gitmo Show Trials are not an Article III court but rather some weird hybrid, any order granting immunity would not necessarily be entitled to Full Faith and Credit – or even respect – from a criminal court in which she was (putatively) to be tried for her crimes. Nor does the Gitmo Show Trial court necessarily have the power to bind the United States to preclude later prosecution of the dear Lieutenant Colonel.
So, if I’m her lawyer, I’ll tell her: “regardless of whether the Court here in Gitmo gives you immunity, you continue to refuse. Tell them that your lawyer says their promise of immunity is worthless and you’ll continue to refuse to testify. Respectfully, of course.”
Then, if the court does not have jurisdiction and therefore one cannot compel the testimony of a witness whose scheming was instrumental in devising the torture program by which you were compelled to give a false/tortured “Confession”, then where is your right against self-incrimination, Mr. Captive?
Kinda worthless, no?
Point, the Second.
Then there are the Human Terrain Teams. They go a lot more deeply into ripping the heart out of democracy than you might think. Remember that woman who spied for the NRA against gun control groups? She’s pretty deeply involved in the Human Terrain Teams – two of her kids (who spied for/with her) are real machers in that area, and are also deeply tied in. From the Mother Jones article:
Ahh, that good old Bipartisan Policy Center. Howard Baker, Bob Dole, George Mitchell, and Tom Daschle. Contractors. Lobbying. Someone, yesterday, wrote a nice piece about it on one of the blogs, which I cannot find just now. But here’s an article about it from Harpers’.
Small world, eh? From torture, to destroying the Constitution, to spying on your fellow Americans to exploiting people through anthropology to pigs-in-a-blankey with Bob Dole and Tom Daschle. I know – some might say cocktail weenies with Dole and Daschle is torture, but I think the captives at Gitmo would be quite capable of correcting that misconception.
Crikey, I said it was a “very simplified explanation and description”. There were too many variables, some of which you hit on, and I am not exactly Mr. UCMJ expert anyway, so I just wanted to lay out the basic framework that you would normally expect. That said, even under your more detailed and multiple variable scenario (and I agree, none of them are particularly likely to lead to Zierhoffer actually testifying); you simply have to set up the play, to fail to do so would be ineffective assistance.
It also sets up several other things to plead just to screw with them such as a motion for determination of counsel conflict requesting evidentiary inquiry as to collusion/command influence/whatever in the form of the govt. suggesting Zierhoffer refuse testimony. “Gee your honor, if there is one thing that has been a constant here, it is command conflict problems, now I’m sure the fine folks over there at the government’s table would not be condoning any of that, but my client has questions and fairness and judicial economy suggests we ought to just make sure before we go any further on the merits”.
Human Terrain Teams. Yeah, that doesn’t sound at all like something they would spend a boatload of money on and still fuck up royally does it? The mind reels from all the possible ways they could make a hash out of that.
I think the Bushies have been in love with CIA and other spooky techniques for decades.
Think of all the efforts to infiltrate anti-war groups and how they try to turn one person against another. I even saw hints at it during the 2007 Democratic presidential primary. Destroying groups and relationships is devastating.
In a recent hearing on the process or lack thereof that would be followed at the gitmo show trials, it seemed agreed that the detainees (under the revised procedure) HAD no 6th amendment rights to confront his accuser, based on the ’state of war’ exigencies. The subject was summoning witnesses who may be on the front lines or off ‘Killing Hajis For Jesus’ somewhere and could not be recalled. I wonder if that specific ‘flexibility’ would be used to assert that a detainee would have no recourse in the case of a refusal to testify?
I am confused about Lt Col Zierhoffer taking the 5th. Doesn’t the military have an extensive list of interrogation procedures that can legally be used, which won’t violate the UCMJ, to elicit information from her?
Starting with kidnapping, isolating, stripping, hooding, placing in stress positions …
Mary’s point is very interesting. Why in this case would the Lt. Col. invoke her right against self-incrimination if everyone right up to the top of The Article II Department has pledged that nothing she was authorized to do was illegal, and even if any such acts are ever determined to have been illegal, she and those like her will never be prosecuted for those acts because they were done solely on the basis of DoJ legal assurances and analyses that they were legal, and as a result the guilt for any transgression would (in that hypothetical event) properly lie elsewhere?
(OT — That may, perhaps, be one of the longer questions I’ve ever written.)
Maybe other folks will find other and better answers, but I see three possibilities. 1. The Lt. Col. did (or failed to interfere to prevent) things not authorized by the approved guidelines, so this is simple self preservation. 2. The things the Lt. Col. did were within the scope of what was authorized, but she has been told by someone that details of what she did must not be allowed to come out at The Great Gitmo Show Trials, and now she is cooperating with that, perhaps I suppose even under threat/duress. 3. The Lt. Col. has information, suspicion, or concern that the DoJ theory of why she does not have any liability is headed for, or at least potentially headed for, a crash, and so this is again self-preservation — the belt might fail, so better get the ol’ suspenders on.
I prefer to hope for #3.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Acton’s famous aphorism applies to psychologists as much as to Dick Cheney or Pootey Poot.
I can see the poster now, George Bush in top hat, beard and Uncle Sam’s colorful clothing: “Join Our Crusade! Fight the Infidel!” The religious symbolism — ironic to Jews and Moslems alike (Rhenish Jews were used as “practice dummies” by medieval warriors en route to the “Holy” Land) — was intentional, if self-defeating, in the context of a purportedly limited counter-attack against foreign terrorists criminally acting out against the US for being antithetical to their extremist Islamic and nationalist beliefs.
Scurrying out from their proliferating consultancies to business (who today gets hired as a vice president or Borders cashier without a “psych profile”?) or regretfully leaving their high- or low-priced counseling practices, a handful of psychologists followed their ambitions and become handmaidens to George Bush. The only rule, observed in the breach, became, “Anything short of killing them: the fate of the universe is at stake!!”
No one seemed interested in understanding what the prisoners said (how many spoke the interrogee’s tongue?) or the social context from which the prisoner came. Rather like yanking Freud from 1900 Vienna and putting him in charge of a practice in modern Shanghai. “Lost in translation” doesn’t quite cover it. That might be because the point doesn’t appear to have been to get accurate information, but to break the victim without leaving too many traces.
Physical detention substituted for practical, legal and moral judgment, and justified all manner of actions short of death. Even there, Mr. Bush’s secret prisons have killed more than a hundred of their prisoners, many of whom may have been as guiltless as most of those held at Gitmo. The golden rule became not, “Do No Harm” but “Leave No Mark”.
It is past time for the APA to condemn participation by its members in government interrogations, certainly those performed by the Bush administration. The idea that they are lessening harm or safely speeding the process is willfully self-indulgent and as corrupting to them as the writing of Yoo-like opinions or hiding Bush’s crimes is to the DOJ.
You think Embargo Bob’s blockbuster book (first printing 900,000) will
shed light on Gitmo, and other criminal wrongdoing?
bmaz,
As a professional anthropologist, I am saddened by what is being done to corrupt professionals who should know better. This is an old problem, going back to the heyday of the British Empire and the Great Game. Some of the most famous British archaeologists of that era also did work for the British Intelligence service.
Unfortunately, as long as there are poor, unemployed anthropologists, there are government agencies who will be only too glad to help them rationalize illegal and unethical behavior. To counter this, the AmAnthroAssoc Newsletter used to run a regular column on “Ethical Dilemmas”, and such items are now commonplace, e.g. Wartime dilemmas of an ethical anthropology.
The problem is easily stated, but not easily solved.
Bob in HI
Also, this is the second time that Hartmann, who is supposed to be the Pentagon legal adviser to the tribunals, has been barred from participation in a trial. (Hamdan was the first.)
Really. How long does this nonsense go on?
A friend of mine published “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror” in 2006. Steven H. Miles is a Professor of Medicine at the U of Minnesota, and chair of the Department of Bioethics. He has a huge list of publications in Peer Reviewed Journals, and has been pushing the AMA to take action to strictly define the limits of orders to any MD or other supporting medical personnel that are considered legitimate. Miles first article on this was published in The Lancet in 2004, and his book is a massive expansion of that theme. Some months ago I ran into him on late night C-Span doing a seminar on the whole subject for Lawyers and Doctors — and I know he has been very busy organizing for a number of years on this. He is associated with the American Refugee Committee, and the Center for the Victims of Torture — a multi-nation treatment network that was founded in Denmark, but has a center here in Minnesota. He has also testified before Congress.
Anyhow, Google him, and you will find many of his papers, presentations, op-ed’s and all. His book will get you into the network of leading Medical Professionals and Organizations that have been working on this for some time. I suspect they would all appreciate some support on this. I take it what they want is for all the speciality and sub-speciality medical groups to collaborate on getting clarity as to what is a legitimate chain of command order, and what isn’t, to which someone in Military Medicine is subject, specific medical ethics training for all uniformed personnel subject to military discipline, all backed up by very clear professional organization support, including legal support should one decline an order.
ot (sorry bmaz)
But this is insane. Micheal “faster please” Ledeen not only thinks we should attack Iran he thinks we should go to war with Russia. Ledeen is insane. Would someone please lock this guy up
http://article.nationalreview……Q2NjhjOGI=
FYI – The American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Psychiatric Association have long denounced torture.
The American Psychological Association is the organization that has dragged its feet – in part because it’s membership includes many who participate in “3rd Party” assessment – i.e. working on “subjects” for their fee on behalf of a third party, rather for than patients or clients for their own benefit.
Then there’s this:
for the record, psychologists are not the only ones who engage in ‘third party’ relationships. physicians are quite often called upon to do IMEs (’independent’ medical exams) for insurance companies, and they do far more expert witnessing for attorneys than psychologists do, i’ll wager big time.
i assume this is the analogy you’re making here. my point is that physicians, or at least their professional organization, has been eager to keep this anti-torture position clear from the beginning despite their comparable participation in these kinds of relationships, as well as those in prisons, etc.
that said, your analogy between the psychologist-torturers issue and the psychiatrists-pharma issue is most excellent.
al75 @ 39 Interesting aticle.
Physicians do exponentially more expert witnessing, depositions, and reports requested by attorneys in PI cases–to be sure. There is also a cottage industry in which chiros have run a scam in droves for years where they do x amount of Mickey Mouse treatments until the insurance runs out. The treatments have no therapeutic efficacy. There are also schemes where accidents get staged, people hop in cars, then all run to their chiros and try to collect PI money but that has nothing to do with this.
The impact this has on you is that it drives your insurance rates, that are already relatively high and rising in many states, higher.
[There is a federal trial of chiros who billed a couple million plus for a modality that has no efficacy called Vax-D that is not reimbursed, that started this morning because they swapped CPT codes including some that were surgical that were false (services not performed) and hired MDs to front it.]
I did think while I read this, and some responses from docs here, about medical boards in some states and their relationships with doctors who have participated in botched executions and executions in general, with State AGs (stupidly arguing) in my medical opinion that they “didn’t feel a thing.”
The State AGs have always defended the MD executioners in suits brought against them, “Old Sparky” and lethal injection, and state legislatures have passed laws in several southern states to indemnify the physicians who use the cocktails that kill the people.
I have also had the pleasure of asking the Senior AG who is always the point guard for the death penalty cases at a meeting if she minded if I injected her with Pavulon that would paralyze her skeletal muscles, and her ability to move speak, or express pain, but not her cutaneous nerve conduction, or sensation of pain, and then seeing if she would feel it if I set her on fire, poured scalding water on her, or sent a high amp/high voltge charge through her body that would burn her internal organs as “Old Smokey” does in states that still use “the electric chair.”
I also asked her if she could explain precisely what the drugs did, and she didn’t really have a clue. It was helpful to let a lot of people know she didn’t.
She had argued to the state Supreme Court that the prisoners “feel no pain when electrocuted or when lethal injection is used.”
I also pointed out that KCL used to cause asystole or vfib leading to asystole (stop the heart) since they aren’t going to CPR the patient they’re trying to kill, often leaks out of the veins and burns the patient. Often they aren’t very good at getting veins in the first place, so they destroy the few they have available, and they never think about using the femoral vein that would be considerably more stable, larger, easier to immobilize, and easier to stick if they were trained–they usually aren’t. I want to be clear I am against capital punishment.
There is no effective monitoring as to whether there is anesthetic efficacy so that the KCL doesn’t burn, and the Pavulon or Pancoronium Bromide simply masks the pain.
The medicine has always been that using a short term, unpredicatble “ultra-shortacting barbituate” (like sodium penthathal that I have seen psychiatrist use to get information with largely unsuccessful results during a summer spent on psychiatry in med school) anesthetic is cruel and unusual.
Nazi Germany’s T-4 Euthanasia program used lethal injection.
I noted that the American Veterinary Medical Association was on record in opposition to neuromuscular blocking agents like Pavulon because they consider it inhumane for animals.
In many of these court cases, the problem was that the defendant was human, and not an animal and this has been discussed many times.
what half-wit could argue that humans are not animals? we have the administration specimen to prove it!
you make excellent points, and i’m right there with you on the death penalty. in fact, the torture position taken by the ama and am. psychiatric assn (here and in canada and britain) should force them to take a much stronger position regarding assisting in the death penalty anywhere. but it’s ultimately up to the state boards to make licensing decisions, and if the AG – who ends up representing the boards – fights for protecting them, then there it is. which raises some interesting legal questions, given that most judges damn near refuse to question a board’s decision on a pracitioner’s license; how can they then turn around and reject the professionals’ position on an issue they don’t happen to like?
these problems with the apa actually run deeper than the torture issue. this is just a symptom of a far larger set of issues that runs rampant across the country and the profession because there has been such an astonishing lack of leadership on ethical issues. which makes the ethical code something of a joke, really; how can we pretend to invest ourselves in those principles when the damn organization that spells it out won’t even take a solid stand on torture?
there is something weird going on there and none of us is quite sure how to get our heads around it. assuming it’s quid pro quo for prescription privileges just does not cut it. the fact is, psychologists have been assisting in interrogations on many law enforcement levels for many years, and i suspect there may be some kind of contracts lurking about that don’t see the light of day for ‘national security’ reasons, and so forth. of course, the fact that a past president is now on the board of mitchell-jessen’s company raises some pretty serious eyebrows.
but i heard leonard rubinstein make an excellent point on democracynow! last week. he pointed out that interrogation officials (on the local law enforcement level) don’t want psychologists in on it. this law enforcement person made the key point: psychologists have to keep their professional roles in the community at large and in the public, and to assist with a process that can be harmful (even messing with someone’s mind with the good cop/bad cop script is not consistent with apa guidelines!) just runs completely orthogonal to that.
in other words, psychologists should have no part of that (just as no physician should have any part of executions). this argument of being involved historically with interrogations and prisons has been at the heart of the apa’s defense of their position (though it doesn’t follow that their stated position has to be an echo of the administration’s line), so it will be interesting to see what falls out from all this therapeutic reflection being forced on us as professionals.
i spoke briefly to steve reisner (up for apa pres.) saturday, and mentioned my concerns that this torture issue is only a symptom, the tip of an iceberg, and he wholeheartedly agreed. will keep you posted on any unfolding sense of where he goes with that, as we’ll be discussing it soon, i hope.
thanks for all this info; really insightful and helpful.
I spent a few hours yesterday studying the CV of Allan L. Levy M.D. C.I.M.E.
http://www.midatlanticpsychiatric.com/cv.html
(Mrs Panstreppon from TalkingPointMemo – scroll down to Latest Comments – spurred me on.)
I am surprised at the lack of interest online in Duley’s employer, Dr. Allen L. Levy, and his role in the Ivins investigation. Levy worked at the VA Hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia for several years.
Levy’s wife, Wendy A. Levy, has been a licensed therapist since 2001 and may have supervised Duley or partnered with her in group sessions when Ivins was a patient.
I am also surprised at how few people have considered the probable extent of the FBI’s involvement in Ivins’ psychiatric treatment. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that some special agents on the case signed up for group therapy earlier this year.
Posted at August 9, 2008 11:38 PM in response to Ivins’
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsme…..anstreppon
Look at his credentials and years of experience as a Certified Independent Medical Examiner. He was certified sometime in 2006.
He is also the Owner and Medical Director of Outpatient Psychiatric Practice with staff of Licensed Clinical Psychologists, Social Workers and Licensed Certified Counselors.
Questions: How did this man with, at most, two years of forensics experience end up supervising one of his least qualified counselors (Jean Duley was newly graduated with a BS in social work) in counseling Bruce Ivins? Is it possible that the FBI used Allan L. Levy, newly credentialed himself, to profile someone crafty enough to outwit Major General John Parker, the Commanding General of the United States Army Medical Research
and Material Command?
Major General John Parker spoke to reporters along with Gov. Ridge, Director of Homeland Security on October 25, 2001 from the White House.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news…..025-4.html
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Thank you, Governor Ridge. I represent some great scientists and engineers at Fort Detrick who are currently working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, processing samples and helping to define the characteristics of the compounds that are given us to take a look at.
I can say to you without question, this is anthrax, and the samples from New York, Washington and Florida are all from the same family or strain. That’s been documented by DNA testing. When we look at these spores underneath the microscope, they are uniform in size and highly concentrated, and highly pure. And these individual spores are very light, and if given some energy from, say, wind or clapping or motion of air in a room, they will drift in the air and fall to the ground.
snip
Prior to the above, Gov. Ridge had this to say:
Clearly we are up against a shadow enemy, shadow solders, people who have no regard for human life. They are determined to murder innocent people. President Bush is very proud of the federal, state and local health care officials whose quick actions have no doubt saved many lives in the face of a new and horrible threat. Our country has never experienced this type of terrorism. Tragically, we have lost lives, starting with those in New York City in the Towers, but also including those who wear the uniform overseas in this war, and those who wear the uniform of the Postal Service here at home.
Our government will continue to do everything we can to make our nation safe, stronger and more prepared. We will continue to provide the American people with as much accurate information as we can, as soon as we can, to protect them from future attacks.
snip
And in this same press conference, Gov. Ridge announced that it was the Ames strain of anthrax.
One last thing to think about: According to Meryl Nass (scroll to August 18th) It wasn’t just the Patriot Act that some in the executive branch were worrying about. Tom Daschle had also criticized the anthrax vaccine three months before the letters were sent.
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/
Let’s paint the picture a little bigger in the courtroom, bmaz.
The judge is this case has already thrown the book at Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann for acting in ways that “compromised the objectivity necessary to dispassionately and fairly evaluate the evidence and prepare the post-trial evaluation.” (quote from the judge’s ruling, per McClatchy). When you start with this kind of judgment against the government, it strikes me that this would add a bit more power to the defense’s arguments in your little scenario above.
“Look, judge, you’ve already ruled once against the government for how they stacked the deck against my client. By withholding immunity, the prosecution is trying to stack the deck once again. This lt col was there. She knows what went on. She knows the depths to which the govt tried to coerce and manipulate my client into saying whatever would make his captors happy. The prosecution knows this, and by denying her immunity, the prosecution is trying to subvert my client’s ability to defend himself. They are carrying out General Hartman’s desires (if not explicit orders), even after you’ve removed him from the case.”
IANAL, but I think that “fairly high burden” may not be as big a hurdle as you think. Given the ruling earlier against Gen Hartman, I think the defense is already on its way to reaching it.
compelling; thanks.
Pretty good Peter, your barrister skills are already better than those of Alberto Gonzales (okay, granted, that is a low threshold). Am kind of working my way down the thread, but I just mentioned something right up that alley in response to Scribe.
Thanks.
I do have a bit of practice in the whole “art of persuasive speaking” thing.
*g*
“Human Terrain Teams” in the Pentagon’s sense-corrupting jargon is about well-informed penetration and manipulation of the enemy. Something the Brits tried mightily to do during the Troubles (informers, traitors, became more reliable sources of intel), something under-cover cops of all stripes attempt in more mundane circumstances every day.
Soldiers are trained not to ask, but to do, whatever the order. It takes a strong character to ask when an order might be illegal, much less to challenge it without ending one’s career or worse. Much of the top talent that might have done so with the force of personality necessary to carry it off is not re-enlisting. Tomorrow’s top non-coms and generals will be drawn from what’s left. The mind boggles.
Integrating HTT’s so closely and obviously with front-line troops seems counterproductive (it too closely associates the intel team with its client) as well as an indication that the Army doesn’t expect to leave its imperial outposts anytime soon. Using HTT’s to monitor US professional associations is straight out domestic espionage. Another of those many “small changes” to intel practice that Bush is pushing through before he hands over the reign to Dick Cheney’s successor.
Judge Hellerstein to CIA: You got 10 days to come up with an reason why I shouldn’t find you in contempt.
Mukasey’s pick (which, unfortunately, says it all right there) Durham had told Hellerstein earlier that the Judge needed to hold off ruling on an ACLU request for civil contempt against CIA, saying that the Judge’s ruling on civil contempt (which might find that the CIA was guilty of violating his order not to destroy) would interfere with Durham’s “criminal investigation” into whether or not the CIA … had violated any orders.
So the Judge ruling that CIA had violated his order might interfere with Durham’s attempts to investigate whtehr the CIA had violated the Judge’s order. Ok then.
Now get that list of players. Counsel for CIA and DOD, who are trying to say that Durham is investigating their orgs for criminal activity, are attempting to block Hellerstein from ruling by saying that they can go get any kind of declaration they want from Durham, as and when needed. That’s pretty nifty.
Of more direct interest, Durham is telling the Judge that forcing the CIA to produce even a catalog of documents/info destroyed, including the number of tapes, would “enable witnesses to change or shape their stories before a grand jury”
Mucho thanks Mary for that link!
I’ve been most curious what the Judge actually said since Christy posted her scoop early today.
And I found this “cute”:
Is Durham saying that by just documenting what torture tapes existed, some folks who are lying about it now, would no longer lie about it before a grand jury?
Isn’t that what Turdblossom did with Fitz? When Fitz proved Turdblossom was lying before the grand jury, Turdblossom changed his story.
And we are to believe that Durham doesn’t want that to happen? Color me suspicious.
Seriously, this is bullshit. Hellerstein ought to bark right back at Bullshit Durham “well, why don’t you quit wasting time filing this crap in my court and go present to your GJ. What the hell exactly have you been doing all this time Mr. Durham? Are you telling me that with all the awesome resources of your office, you cant even get witness statements nailing your evidence down? Why don’t you come on back to my chambers with these other fine counsel here and lets have a little chat, without the stenographer, about where you stand and what is going on, eh”?
Prior Judge Hellerstein:
emph added
And now more on the NRA spy (and mother of the Human Terrain Teams bigwigs) – she’s tight with a senior operative on the McSame campaign.
Small world for torturers and their enablers, no?
Here’s an interesting take on torture:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..983/570573
McSame was never tortured. (not according to his own definition anyway…)
Kirk and others have responded well to Bmaz’s sharp analysis, and provided medical perspective, and if there is no way to force this psychologist, the Lt. Col. to testify, then one more weakness of these Gitmo trials is highlighted.
I think this case will interest everyone who has commented so ably on these last two threads, and other detainee/torture threads.
Speaking of Gitmo, and detention, there is another trial that’s the subject of Scotus Blog today, that involves a major constitutional showdown, where the governent’s claim that they can make up sentences on the fly if they don’t like them (I’m not sure what the best word is for an Executive Branch that thinks it’s all three or four when it speaks and that that the framers or anyone else didn’t try to set up a platform of checks and balances).
That case is the Parhat case.
Parhat is the first Gitmo witness attempting to take the stand in his defense in a civilian courtroom inside the US and there are a number of others in the wings. This has Mukasey gulping down anti-reflux meds and when Mukasey gets heartburn, I enjoy a cocktail.
Escalating Parhat
Reply Huzaifa Parhat to Goverment’s Opposition to Motions for Parole and Judgement Ordering Release
This is, as Lyle Dennison’s analysis illustrates, a Boumedien habeas as well as the first DTA Act of 2005 challenge.
The DC Circuit said:
OT but there are a lot of Rachel Madow fans and on Thursday she gets her own show on MSNBC–a TV one to follow KO and it will have as it subject, politics whatever that is, and she will stay on radio:
Rachel Maddow Comments On New Role
So, will Rachel’s new show replace Hardball?
I don’t think Chris Matthews will be too happy about that.
But I’d rather see Rachel than Chris any day of the week!
Bob in HI
No Bob, it’s going to replace Dan Abrams’ show on directly after KO’s show. I always thought Dan Abrams did a pretty good job considering his format, and brought his Harvard law background into play pretty well.
bmaz and/or our other legal eagles here, where does the immunity provisions provided under the DTA and MCA legislation fit into this Gitmo 5th Amendment shrinkage?
As a practicing non-lawyer, it would seem to me that Lt. Colonel Diane M. Zierhoffer would be one of those immunized, no?
And if the immunity provisions of the DTA/MCA legislation were in fact applicable to Lt. Colonel Diane M. Zierhoffer, then how could she be able to take the 5th?
In a way, this kind of reminds me of what we all wrote about here wrt Scooter getting pardoned. After receiving such a thing, Scooter would no longer have any 5th Amendment privilege if called before a body to testify.
So how is Lt. Colonel Diane M. Zierhoffer any different?
And if she does have immunity via the DTA/MCA legislation, then why can’t she be legally forced to testify?
And isn’t she, like Harriet Miers, bound to be sworn in and then refuse to answer (or not) each question separately? Sounds like she doesn’t want to fly down to Cuba in the summer heat.
From what I’ve read over at Kos, it sure sounds like Lt. Colonel Diane M. Zierhoffer was actually at the hearing and took the 5th then:
I was only fooling about the flying; but not about the notion of refusing to testify at all, rather than decline to answer specific questions, not unlike some who have refused to even appear.
Reading bmaz @ 74 maybe covers it better.
49 – I’d think since the Circuit found that Parhat was not and had not been an enemy combatant at all, legal or not, they should tack on an attainder claim.
Battlefield detention of combatants is one thing, but non-battlefield purchase of non-combatants in a human trafficking transaction, for the sole purpose of disappearing them into human experimentation at GITMO – – – I gotta think that a) the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing any kind of legislation that would allow such thing – punishment based on Executive fiat and codified by Congress is what the anti-attainder provisions were all about (something Scalia really sidesteps in his “you can torture before trial” analysis)
I’d add that to the habeas argument if it were me. Quite an interesting approach the loyal Bushies are taking – – a Republican frat boy President can go around purchasing and kidnapping humans who are not combatants and lie about them being combatants while using them for subhuman “interrogation” experimentation to see what it takes to destroy their minds and leave their families in despair. When a court proceeding reveals the lie, and a court rules they were never combatants, the depraved Executive can continue to hold them and experiment on them.
There’s a level of moral sickness that is hard to even fathom in all of this, but the worst part is that it has become an accepted element of the process now for Executive branch lawyers to battle against the application of any laws that prevent their frat boy from having his human experiments continue, unchecked. Even when it is revealed that they are being conducted, not on terrorists, but on non-combatants.
It’s such a sick use of the law.
Very well put Mary–it’s about as perverse as human nature can get and does nothing to defend this country while destroying people and their families.
When attorneys who are loyal Bushies spend large amounts of time plotting to keep them incarcerated and isolated and terrible conditions, you have to wonder how their mindset got so far away from a sense of justice they were supposed to pick up in law school.
They’ve also tried to avoid the issue by saying they’re not torturing, they’re just questioning and by saying it’s not torture, even if you use waterboarding, if your purpose is NOT to hurt or harm the detainee. Of course, none of the torturers knows the detainee and has any personal reason to harm or hurt the detainees, so that would seem to make them all immune from scrutiny. But, just try to rob a store and say it isn’t a crime unless your purpose is to take something for your personal use, but in this case you were just going to give it to the poor and not use it yourself. It doesn’t wash.
54 – drive by, but if I follow the timeline, Mukasey’s (isn’t it enough punishment if we all say tsk in someone’s general direction?) pick, Durham, told the Judge 8 mos ago that he needed the Judge to hold off for 6mos.
And I think the lesson we all learned from prior DOJ inhouse investigations is that it is aok for Bushieboys fib to the grandjury. Over and over and over, with no penalty.
OT – Related to WilliamOckham’s previous post, it seems that Senator Leahy is pushing again for the OLC opinions regarding interrogations (from TPMMuckraker).
And directly relevant to WilliamOckham’s previous post is this:
I’m still trying to figure out why Senator Leahy sent the letter to Fred Fielding (other than the DOJ including Mumbles Mukasey has been totally non-responsive), but perhaps the Senator has more reason than is apparent.
Probably because it’s simply fiction to pretend that their is a DOJ now and this AG who are independent of the White House. They are joined at the hip, and Mukasey has facilitated this dysfunctional WH and run interference for them. They know from Mukasey’s track record, that he is going to push this to the hilt, and as you know as well as anyone, Mukasey has been very successful in getting Congress to give him everything he’s asked for previously.
That’s the one I want to see. The definition of protected persons in article 4 of Convention IV is very broad:
How do they weasel their way around this rule?
Bmaz points out that the Bushies have corrupted the professions, but to me, this started years ago, under Saint Ronald. Whatever profesionalism there was in the 70’s dried up and blew away in the 80’s. Besides the greed is good infection, the process was helped by the influence of Rhenquist and Scalia, and their insistence that the words of a statute control. This led inexorably to the conclusion that if you could make up meanings for words that supported your position, then that must be the correct interpretation. Add to this, the sudden increase in the money in the professions, and you get crap instead of competent lawyering.
No one wants to talk about the duty of professionals to society as a whole, even under the guise of noblesse oblige. Our insistence on individual success comes at the expense of community. There is also a real loss to the individual lawyer, accountant or psychologist of a sense of our place in the world, as people who can help others and society.
You are in luck!!! I happen to to have that text right here for you!
Your thoughts on the degradation of the professions are, sadly, so true. It is analogous to the way corporations and business entities have become driven solely by dissociated shareholder value and executive compensation with no concern left for employee, community, and societal benefit and improvement. All greed, all the time. It’s the American way. For a while anyway…..
there not their is a DOJ now–sorry
“The depth and depravity with which the Bush/Cheney neocon warhawk aggressor machine has co-opted and corrupted the institutions, associations and professions that compose the fabric of this nation is simply astounding.”
There is nothing that these idiots have not corrupted or pushed to the edge. It is amazing how they manage to walk a line and throw money or power at things to achieve what they want.
I have been particularly distressed about the Bush Library slated to go in at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Obviously, SMU is affiliated with the United Methodist Church (UMC). I am not a particularly religious person, but it is an institution that has been a major part of my life. By throwing the library at SMU, Bush has managed to force the church to take a political stand by permitting it. It has caused considerable controversy within the Methodist church, to say the least. I was highly amused at the points used to push this through the Methodist hierarchy, including the fact that the library would be an economic boon to Dallas.
The UMC has its own rules and laws — but it appears that they have been overridden for expediency. Bush strikes once again!
i attended the rally in boston saturday (could not bring myself to attend the general conference), and it was mighty inspiring. and i could have sworn steve soldz said that the lt col had resigned. i may have assumed he said that, as he talked about how sad it was that no one was allowed to talk to her about this, or anything else. but it was noisy and there was a mike echo off the walls to the convention center, so i may well be mistaken. i also believe (same caveat applies here) that steve said he participated as an expert witness for the defense and was present. but again, that may be an error.
in any case, i would guess about two to three hundred people attended. the program was very well organized (the raging grannies were a hoot), and it was a good group, but few young people, and a pretty sad percentage of the 14,000 total in attendance.
years ago when this issue first reared its ugly head, i ran across it on democracynow! amy goodman interviewed steve behnke, director of the apa ethics committee, and i was outraged beyond containment. so i contacted a member of the apa board at the time, someone i know, and expressed my fury. to my even greater shock, this board member actually responded that he thought it was a good interview except that behnke could have spoken more strongly. (i had to just beg off and suggest we agree to disagree; i was stunned.)
the board member went on to be elected president of the apa, and we have never spoken of these things again. his tenure was notable for maintaining the vapid policy we as concerned psychologists are battling now, and he was interviewed by amy via phone. that would have been a couple of years ago.
now, i have to say, that this man, this board member and president of the apa, is actually a very good person. a good man, through and through. and, as someone once described him to me, “not afraid to be a contrarian.” so you can see why i was stunned by this. our relationship is not close, so i don’t feel at liberty to confront him on a personal level. he’ll have to live with himself, though i sense from the things he has said that he has it pretty well justified and rationalized.
i honestly don’t know what to make of this apa position on torture. one that has been discussed is a quid pro quo for prescription privileges (only psychiatrist can do this now). brad olson brought up several other possible reasons, most suggesting a long history of such partnerships between psychologists and the military in the past. regardless, it is all very disturbing.
so thanks for highlighting this, bmaz. we can only hope the apa membership – which, i have to say, is as wildly similar to the democratic party on the ‘herding cats’ dimension as any out there – will vote wisely, for president and for the referendum.
So how would an immunity grant work with Lt.Col Zierhoffer with regards to the CAT? The CAT requires torturers to be prosecuted and punished, without exception. Granting immunity by a nation (in this case the U.S.) to its own nationals is an international version of a white wash.
I am not sure that an immunity grant would or could work for a whole bunch of possible reasons, some of which Scribe touched on up thread a bit. Quite frankly, the defense makes some amount of headway whether she gets the immunity and takes the chair or not. If Zeirhoffer testifies, she clearly is going to have damning testimony about the craven torture that has the potential to blow the case up; if she doesn’t get immunity, and does not testify (and this is about a 99% probability for the direction it goes), the defendant gets to plead the motion/argument I sketched out in the post. And, although the MCA/DTA, as someone above was asking, does not guarantee right to confrontation, the judges down there, starting with Allred, have been entering trial orders that material/critical witnesses must be subject to some form of confrontation. There is a lot of havoc to wreak out of this, where exactly it gets you, who knows, but that is the way you defend people. Just pound the government with anything and everything you can; and if none of the arguments are individually compelling, you then whine that the cumulative effect is too great. Just keep wailing; they will fuck something up sooner or later.
This thread and WO’s previous are excellent. Really heightening my appreciation of the evolved genius of the many mutually reinforcing moving parts of the US justice system when it’s working properly, as contrasted to the beyond embarrassing spectacle of the wholesale cascading failures of the ad hoc GWOT faux justice system that the show trials are now triggering. I wonder what percentage of the Bushies have in the end come to realize there really were any number of truly good and practical reasons for sticking with the old/right way. And that they should have realized that if they couldn’t do what they wanted to do in the old/right framework, that right there was the flashing red indicator that the fault was in themselves and not in the system.
In the Hamdan case, Judge Allred suppressed some statements of the defendant. One ground is MRCE 304(d)(3). It permits the military judge to permit “the defense to make a general motion to suppress or general objection: when “despite the exercise of due diligence, [the defense] has been unable to interview adequately those persons involved in the taking of a statement”. By refusing to testify, the Lt. Colonel has opened the door to suppression of any statements Jawad may have made at GTMO.
And while I’m playing lawyer, get a load of MCRE 304(c):
The difference is that statements before 12/31/2005 can be admitted even if they amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
I note that Judge Allred refused to admit statements made before that date on the grounds that the coercion itself made the statements not reliable or possessing sufficient probative value.
Don’t we have a bit of a chicken vs. egg problem there, to the extent that the veracity of the statement itself is what’s in question? I.e. without knowing whether the statement is a false statement produced only because of coercion, how can any decision be made as to whether the interests of justice would best be served by its admission vs. by its exclusion?
Shorter me: Doesn’t this just say “Verdict first, trial after!”
Any psychologist involved in torture should have their head examined.
– Tom
The “patient” in this case is really a client, the US Government. Mental health care professionals counseling the government on how best to interrogate a prisoner are not concerned with the prisoner’s welfare, unless they stick around to see whether their recommendations are the minimum or maximum techniques used, and if the minimum, they try to stop techniques that go beyond their recommendations.
Failing that, or failing the institutional authority to issue orders that must be obeyed, they are being abused professionally as badly as their purported patient is being abused physically and mentally. They are, however, in a position to stop, to say no, to leave, and to recommend that others not fall into the same trap they did.
Easier said than done, however. The government can not only affect an individual’s career – it can give them “poor marks” for not being with the program, to being fired from government posts, denied clearances for others or outside advising. The government can, for those playing high enough stakes, for being willing to blow the whistle or testify in public, also take away federal funding to their home institutions or would be employers.
That’s why Congressional intervention is necessary, to establish “rules of engagement”, levels of authority and reporting, statutory protections with private rights of action that limit payback for disclosing illegal behavior. Until then, the wiser course for true mental health care professionals would be to stay home.
The fact that the client, the US Government, is willing to use death and death threats as retaliation against those who while doing their jobs come into conflict with the US Government cannot be underestimated.
Kill-game.
At a lesser level, personal ruination is also effective. Threatening it has kept people from even thinking of whistleblowing.
CIA agent outed. Other agents died (stars appeared at memorial).
Assistant US Attorneys murdered. Others forced out.
Tillman shot in the head. In my own neck of the woods, a young woman working in the finance department of the military in Afghanistan told her family she’d found something that people didn’t like. Shot in the head.
I get alarmed and irked by the common behavior of equating invocation of the right against self-incrimination with evidence of guilt, even if the person invoking the right is arguably the most reprehensible person on earth. I was pleased to find that bmaz in his main post did not make any such equation, but got into implications of the invocation of the right by a material witness, and into likely conduct of the prosecution, defense, and court. I certainly did not know all that.
In fairness, there is a dichotomy there though. You cannot infer nor impute guilt against a defendant invoking the right against self-incrimination; however, it is usually a fair implication as to a fact witness in a case at bar that is not a defendant in the case. In fact there are sometimes jury instructions, that differ in form as to the situation, expressly permitting such inferences. If I was Jawad’s attorney, I would be imputing guilt on Zierhoffer’s part for about everything in the world up to and including the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
Maybe my analogy is not going to make much sense, but I heard Bill Maher say something on King tonight about a different reaction at the Saddlebrook Church to a question I thought was a bit ridiculous as was the response.
Maher made the point that Rick Warren asked two questions about “evil.” “What is evil?” and then presupposing it exists as an entity that a President can confront “What do we do about evil?”
Obama gave a nuanced answer and pointed out that evil is all around us and Obama could have said “and Marcy blogs about it hour after hour and day after day” [and now Bmaz and William admirably]. It didn’t register with the Saddlebrookies.
McCain said: “I will defeat evil” which to me was ridiculous bullshit, since McCain is such a doddering fool he plans to perpetuate much of the evil as what Maher aptly termed a synthesis of a doddering, not very bright Raegan and Bush. And the Saddlebrookies slurped it up. Big reaction from those particular evangelicals. “Defeat evil” as if it’s what your kid dresses like on Halloween if he/she is a devil.
Evil is the devil to them and McCain is going after it. Evil is the stuff that Marcy, Bmaz, and William of O have been blogging about and electing McCain is to make damn sure there is a lot more of it.
And while this is hardly a bright or original insight, basically all of these people think the greater good has been to “defeat evil” aka the devil. I love thinking about the nuances of court strategy and motion strategy and watching it play out on these threads. It’s smart; it’s hard work, but basically this platform that requires all this strategy has come about this way.
On 911 without going into detail, a lot of people were asleep at the switch, and innocent lives were destroyed–thousands of them in a horrific way. To make it worse, the EMS system in New York was disorganized, and a lot of firemen were killed as a result while trying to save people.
As a result, all of these horror stories that are the subject of blogs here have begun to happen and are being inflicted upon people because the reptilian brain of these inflictors whether they are OLC people who later become ensconsed at Harvard Law like Goldsmith, or former Assistant AG Jay Bybee now ensconsed in the palatial halls of the Ninth Circuit or at Sun Valley Idaho “pontificating on the the divergence of views on the law between the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court,” via a power point presentation according to the WSJ Law blog.
And to me it boils down to this: All of these purportedly well educated people in office or on the bench or at Gitmo as Judges, and at DOJ (and some not so well educated) are thinking with their Reptilian brains in the goofy way as the people at Saddlebrook. And please no lectures about Evangelicals. I’m not indicting Evangelicals.
I’m talking about why all this ridiculous trashing of the Constitution and civil rights and basic human rights has occurred. It’s because all of these people are trying to “defeat evil” with their Reptilian brains–and they don’t care what they do to get it done–even though they are in fact manufacturing unbridled evil themselves.
So we have the torture and the kangaroo courts and a whole lot of expense and legal talent trying to deal with it. All because these Reptilian brains in Bush, Bybee, Yoo, and a long cast of others at OLC and DOJ, and in Congress want to “defeat evil” and have exponentially multiplied it in trying.
How many people at Gitmo are actually guilty of anything. That’s a hard figure to come by. I’m sure studies will be done, but I know this. A whole lot of them aren’t terrorists and haven’t thought about doing a thing to people in the US–at least in the beginning. How many people in how many countries now have been recruited because of Gitmo is yet another discussion.
I should point out that Obama gave the answer that evil is all around us and we perpetuate a lot of it and he pointed at the prison system for one, and many things that the Bush administration has helped perpetuate.
That didn’t register well with the Saddlebrookies, but McCain’s “Defeat evil” (by his first term before Leiberman would take over? or someone equally bad) made them feel all warm and fuzzy.
Very nice comment; and that is all about right. But, and I mean no harm nor to step on any toes here, but a lot of the people in those settings, and I suspect that the percentage is very high in these huge mega-churches like Warren’s, are group mentality followers. They are looking to be, and need to be, led. Leadership counts, and it fills a vacuum. The Democrats/progressives/moralists/actual righteous thought people have left such a vacuum, and the radical neocon corporatist rapacious right has filled it. They have a patently false and fraudulent ethos, evil may not be all that unfair, but they hawk it with an emotional dogwhistle simplicity and subconscious messaging, and with no effective contra-messaging, it sells. Big time.
It need not be that way though. The principles and words necessary to sell our side and win the leadership and messaging battle have already been written. They are right there in our history. The Magna Carta, the Declaration, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the wisdom and writings of Ben Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Washington and Lincoln. It is all there. Heck, let’s be honest, the Bible isn’t a partisan document, but if you really want to follow the spirit and soaring intent of it’s constructs, it sure matches up a lot better with the policies and conduct of the left than it does the right. But our leadership doesn’t lead; they have forgotten what they are there to do; if in fact they ever knew or cared.
And you know, I really like Obama, have since I saw that convention speech in 2004, he is truly gifted. But I have been concerned since the start of this election that as talented and inspiring as he is, that there is some real truth to the argument that he is problematic in that he is a blank slate cipher. But the one thing that I never had a doubt about, in spite of my other concerns, was his ability to project some freshness, passion, and common purpose; in short, all the things we are discussing this instant about not having. I had trepidation where, even if he knew where, about where he would lead us; but none about his magnetic ability to lead. I have lost more than a nominal amount of that over the past three months or so though, and I want it back. Let Obama be Obama. Instead he has turned into a DLC centrist politician. If JFK had run Obama’s campaign in 1960, Richard Nixon would have been elected. This shit has got to stop; he need to take on McCain head on and prove him to be the snake oil fraud he really is, and tell people that things are tough out there. It ain’t all rosy. And anybody like McCain and the Goopers that are telling you everything is groovy and they are lying, cheating and stealing you. We are going to pull the country out of this and get back on that plane of prosperity, but every one of you is going to have to sacrifice. Real sacrifice. Going shopping at the mall like Bush ignorantly told you ain’t gonna cut it. Lets get to work.
That is what he needs to say. That is what all of the Dems need to be saying. People are tired. They are ready for real leadership, and they are ready to be led. None of our guys, including Obama, are doing it.
I couldn’t agree with you more, but without media as an honest broker, how is that to be done? How can an honest message cut through the sound bite culture? Would that not hand the right a bucket load of talking points with which they would use THEIR media to hammer Obama into the ground with?
It’s not a matter of what is the truth. It’s sadly more a matter of how can one keep the hounds of media from ripping you to shreds.
I mean, STILL no one has given me a good political calculus for Obama’s FISA vote. The only logical reason for it I can see is that he knew what the message machine would do with a diffent vote.
I hope Obama can win, and I hope the first fucking thing he does is tear down these media empires.
it can be done; but it is a long term, hard uphill slog. It is boring and rote. It is exactly what the right did in response to FDR/Truman. They figured out the fighting from your heels, scattershot pitch, even if you have a superior message, doesn’t cut it. You have to build for the long haul. Build the ground game, build the party apparatus, refine the messages, build think tanks and media programs. You have to groom people and subsidize them. If Marcy were a Gooper, she would be sponsored, subsidized, and set up to not only succeed personally and be extremely well compensated doing it and constantly put into ever better and wider positions and projects so she and they could maximize the potential. And there are hundreds, if not thousands, like her that also are not getting that. We just don’t do that, at least not to any type of even remotely competitive scale. Look at the impact this blog makes as it is; then think about what kind of power the devious wingers would wring out of it. Fuck, they turn Jonah Goldberg and Tucker Carlson into media and opinion leaders; think of the the damage that could be done with a Wheeler instead of a Goldberg. But we don’t do that.
They can’t give you a good calculus because you’re dead on as to FISA–Greg Craig, his Chicago team, and others made that calculation and it’s epically wrong.
I share your frustration with the media failure in part due to their extreme laziness–the WaPo anthrax articles parroting DOJ’s ridiculously disingenuous lack of evidence is a prime example.
They haven’t tied Ivins to the mailboxes and they haven’t prooved a thing about how their genetic methods have nailed him to the anthrax strains mailed yet.
WaPo’s Carrie Johnson and Joby Warrick are functioning as Jeff Taylor’s private puppets and making fools of themselves in doing so. They are hardly the first people at WaPo or other media outlets to serve that function. CNN performed it well during the Hatfill fiasco.
After the little conference yesterday, if you ask me, I don’t even think they have him effectively connected to the freaking anthrax sample anymore. You have to read between the lines and think, but they didn’t help their case yesterday, they materially weakened it.
bmaz,
This post and WO’s are wonderful. Thank you for maintaining quality and providing thoughtful investigation.
An additional thanks for the great comments in both posts. I am challenged time-wise to do my own research and think about the content of the posts so, it has been nice to read comments and questions which echo my own.
IRT the conference yesterday…are you planning to delve further into it with a post? If not should I post comments/questions here?
This comment is extremely well written, and very compelling, and I belive awfully accurate. I am far from a campaign strategist, although that doesn’t stop me from trying to call plays in my own mind all the time where there aren’t a lot of consequences for giving the wrong advice to my candidate.
I don’t think Obama is anywhere near a blank slate, and I probably expressed myself in entirely the wrong tone toward LHP when she called him “just another Chicago pol” because I disagreed with some of her criticisms or thought they weren’t true or were misinterpreted. But I do think I understand (without trying to speak for LHP or many people who have not been huge fans of Obama some of what worries them), and it’s something real that Obama is going to have to deal with and he’s going to have to turn that corner now–and quickly.
The Republican attack that is gelling is to paint Obama as extremely elite, out of touch, and tentative to the max.
Obama is coming across as tentative writ large. Their may be large plus in his calm, relaxed approach and it may be a real advantage in crisis situations for which he is yet untested. But, and it’s a big one, whether you analyze it demographically as to why he failed to win a lot of people in states where Hillary edged him out in the popular vote but didn’t get the bang out of her gains because of the DNC’s prior rules Obama has yet to project leadership for many many people that they can sink their teeth into.
Nuance is admirable, and imagination is part of that. Education helps nurture it. We all understand that. But to many people, Obama is coming across as too tentative, and that’s translating for them as “not a leader” and then they probably go on to extrapolate that ergo he’s “not a steady wise old hand” and McCain seems to them more of one.
Bill Maher who is very politically prescient put h but is finger on this tonight very well.
I railed and railed angrily that Hillary Clinton didn’t have substantive experience. I felt that with a passion. But I begin to see that what has attracted many women from different educational background (and men) in addition to the obvious dynamic that many women admired Hillary and thought it was her time. I’m not presuming to speak speak for anyone, but I think one of the common demonimators in someone who is a very well educated lawyer like LHP or a secretary who is die hard Clinton, aside from all the other positives they might cite, is that Hillary seemed more decisive or more of a leader or more able to project that answer that McCain gave to the question Warren asked about evil.
This is not buyer’s remorse for me by any means. I never thought that Obama walked on water, and I was profoundly disappointed when he didn’t denounce the FISA fiasco with ferocious intensity and out Feingold Feingold when it came to calling it what it was. I would have been tickled pink if he had pointed out as you did very well that all of the alarm bells that were being rung by the Republicans and people like Rockerfeller were huge shams as to what would happen if it weren’t passed with all its horros.
Teddy Partridge posted this at FDL Sunday in one of his best blogs and I thought he was dead on, and expressed the need for Obama to execute perfectly, and what he said is central to what Obama has to do right now:
I think what you have posted just now is an equally terrific message for Obama and it is also dead on:
I want him to pick Biden. I think Biden knows how to help him. I read Jane Hamshire’s post this morning, and I don’t doubt Jane knows much more about the short list than I ever could, but I think Biden can overcome his negatives to be a very constructive candidate.
If Obama cannot do what you and Teddy exhorted him to do, and very sharply contrast himself with McCain and project impassioned leadership (this soft nuanced approach is going to fail (he needs to save nuance for when he has the job) and clearly get away from the DNC centrist crap that is extrapolating into bland/bland/bland slowly but surely, he has a real chance of losing, and it would be just tragic.
There is a lot of potential for the “principles and words necessary to sell our side and win the leadership and messaging battle [that]have already been written to be applied,” but if Obama does not grasp what you and Teddy hae asked him to grasp, he may well lose it all and slip no matter how much more money he is able to raise.
“But, and I mean no harm nor to step on any toes here, but a lot of the people in those settings, and I suspect that the percentage is very high in these huge mega-churches like Warren’s, are group mentality followers. They are looking to be, and need to be, led. Leadership counts, and it fills a vacuum.”
I think this, while close, is a little off. In the main, my impression is that those people are looking for answers. Yes, that can make it look like they are looking to be led, and are led somewhat in the short run, but as they are following, they are also evaluating, and learning about the consequences. Those mega-churches try to provide support groups to reinforce the leader’s messages, and you are right that a certain percentages like the cocoon they find themselves in, and stay there. However, from the long view, it is better to view such people as on a journey rather than at a destination.
Bob in HI
Saddlebrook types don’t believe in real evil. Just the storybook kind. These are people who are very good at believing what they want to, evidence doesn’t enter into the equation. I’m more than willing to bet 9 out of 10 of them wouldn’t be willing to read more than a paragraph of any post on this blog without rejecting it outright. What doesn’t fit their world view is simply rejected. Remember, belief creates reality to these people. Damn dumb place for Obama to debate. They rope-a-doped him and rubbed it in his face as McCain came on the stage. And these are the “defenders of morality” in this country? Sad. Poor sad, people. But as an old wise friend of mine once said, “If the Lord hadn’t meant for them to be sheered, he wouldn’t have made them sheep!”
You can’t wake the sheep. There’s no point in even trying.
i respectfully disagree. For better or worse, the sheep are equal citizens too. If you are running for President, you are running to be their President too. If you are not willing to try, then you are not fit for the job. That has been a big chunk of the problem the last eight years.
“Saddlebrook types don’t believe in real evil. Just the storybook kind. These are people who are very good at believing what they want to, evidence doesn’t enter into the equation. I’m more than willing to bet 9 out of 10 of them wouldn’t be willing to read more than a paragraph of any post on this blog without rejecting it outright. What doesn’t fit their world view is simply rejected. Remember, belief creates reality to these people. Damn dumb place for Obama to debate. They rope-a-doped him and rubbed it in his face as McCain came on the stage. And these are the “defenders of morality” in this country? Sad. Poor sad, people. But as an old wise friend of mine once said, “If the Lord hadn’t meant for them to be sheered, he wouldn’t have made them sheep!”
You can’t wake the sheep. There’s no point in even trying.”
In the language of Fundamentalists this question about Evil is really about whether you believe in the existance of the Devil. The simple theology is that “Evil in the World” is the evidence that the Devil exists and is at work — it is the proof. You can cognate all of Bush’s speeches about “evil” and if you recognize Fundi Speak, you can recognize all the theology that is hung around the term. I think Obama did fine on this question, you can interpret his answer recognizing evil as supporting the Devil’s work explanation if you want, or you can see it otherwise. I don’t know how many American Voters depend on Devil Theology to explain events, but I know that one survey I saw had it going way up after 9/11.
But yes, it is very much a trick question with hidden meanings.
From the Petition the APA FAQ comes this:
Professionals who violate the law and professional ethics should be held to account (however unlikely that may be), but if some actually are, convenient a-few-bad-apples reductionism should not be allowed to misinform.
Honestly, BMAS. Have you ever tried to wake one of these people? Those that will listen stare at you like cows at an opera!
They are followers. You have to get to their leadership, and their leadership is filled with about as perverse and dishonest a bunch of megalomaniacs as has ever existed. I’m not sure an honest man stands a chance with them.
I agree with you in principle, but in practice time is far better spent trying to get open minded, perhaps unaffiliated people to the polls. Sure, there are opportunities out there with the fundis, but generally greater return on effort is likely to be found elsewhere.
By the way. Damn fine post. On my top 5 list, and I’ve read every single one since day one or TNH.
And while I am a bit jaded about the fundis. I do agree that their “stated” principles are way more in line with ours than the right’s. I just think their environment has been terribly twisted, and it’s going to be a long time righting, if ever. I admire Obama for trying, but we can all see the thanks he got for it.
That evangelical movement is a snakepit of spectacle. One better have high thick boots on if he dares wade in.
I am really not much for the big time organized religion scene, so I am probably the wrong guy to be commenting on this; but it strikes me that there was no way for him to “win”, but by going, holding some semblance of his own and not losing badly he could at least shift the line on the specious religion discussion and framing that has been going on in this election. Just quieting, or putting a healthy dent in, the “Holy crap he’s Osama bin Muslim” shit would be a major and worthwhile result. And I will have to say, I have heard little to none of that in relation to Saddleback deal since the event. Time may prove that gig more valuable than we readily see right now. That is my hope anyway.
Nearly everybody that has posted on this thread has an education and expertise that is above my pay-grade, so I’ll ask a question and propose an action oriented response to what this layman finds despicable:
Q.. can this woman lose her license to practice her chosen profession. And if so………
Proposition: Is there now or does anyone plan to form an organization that monitors this woman and the other doctors in question, in regards to their further employment and the chance that we can see to it they never work again in the field of mental health? In short, can these people be harassed out of their chosen professions?
The question you raised was explored in a front page article in the NYT Saturday 8/15/08:
Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations
I haven’t had a chance to dig and see how the psychologist’s election came out. Maybe one of the psychiatrists here gets throw away journals or newsletters that are more keyed into that than my controlled circulation which generally doesn’t cover this or there is follow up in context of this Gitmo situation. I’ll try to check later.
I searched around for that and discovered somewhere that the election itself doesn’t actually happen until sometime in the fall (October?) — it didn’t happen at the annual meeting. I found that odd, but it would explain why there have been no further news stories. What do they do — mail in ballots?
yes, mail-in. we’ll be receiving them in the mail this week and next, and i believe the deadline for mailing them in is the middle of next month.
i’ll certainly let you know as soon as i do what the result is.
I don’t know without digging or calling a psychologist much about how they do it. I also should have added that regulation of psychologists is individualized in degrees by states here–some more than others. My sense from what I read here is that the APA (psychiatrists through their organizations as was posted early on in this thread have been a lot more sensitive to these issues of torture/or harsh interrogation methods–but they are also MDs.
Also what’s sometimes lost because of so many egregious far flung measures the government takes to incarcerate some of these people, particularly when they have no clue as to what they did–the Canadian who is getting a rehearing en banc in the Second Circuit is one clear example, is that if you’re at Gitmo, and thousands of people in the US federal prison system, you’re locked down in a small cell with next to nothing in it–with maybe an hour out if they’re lucky to stroll around a parking lot type setup.
It’s not the environment that Republican congressmen who would wet their pants if they got locked in the bathroom for 3 minutes fantasize when they describe “good conditions and good meals” and the “food they get” is rotgut roadkill bug infested crap.
It does appear that their election is by mail:
APA Election Bylaws Article X
The Torture Election: Fighting for the Soul of the American Psychological Association
This may be a bit confusing, but psychologists sometimes get psychoanalytic training and certified as pyschoanalyists as well as psychiatrists and much of the skill as always depends on the program where they trained and the individual.
yes, the vote is by mail, as i’ve said. my ballot did not arrive in today’s post.
not to pick nits, but psychoanalytic training has all but been taken over by psychology, leaving medication dispensing to the psychiatrists. i have been around a while, and it is rarer and rarer that i encounter a psychiatrist who was fully trained in any viable talk therapies, and most of those are much older. many psychiatrists actually completely eschew any talk therapy beyond empathic listening to answers to the question, ‘how is this med working for you.’ forgive me, but many of my psychology colleagues refer to psychiatrists these days as glorified druggists. (and just for the record, the stats have shown over and over and over again for years and years that the best and most effective treatment for depression is a combo of meds and cognitive behavioral therapy, which gets at what i call the inevitable depression that arises from unrealistic self-flagellation and unrealistic expectations. and then again, the stats have also shown just as abundantly that most episodes of depression spontaneously resolve within three to four months. pick your poison.)
aargh. enough pontificating. but you are correct that a lot depends on where folks train. which raises in itself a lot of issues about the overall coherence regarding mental health as a practice compared to physicians. it’s a pet topic of mine, in that the mental health professions, most especially psychiatry, have insisted on relying on the medical model to understand and categorize the symptoms into ‘disorders’. but the evidence is overwhelming that the mind simply will not conform to such machinations. we need a better model.
oops. right. no more pontificating. i promise.
I sure don’t keep up with the nuances of psych programs. But some tertiary medical centers, at least the local medical center are psychoanalytic programs and all residents are forced into analysis there.
There are of course lots of schemes of “talk therapy” besides fairly expensive psychoanalysis. Tony Soprano had a lot of prn sources of income.
Most phsychiatrists I know use psychotropic therapy in combo with seeing their patients x times a month. Ecomonic measures and reimbursement have been tougher on them the last several years.
Kirk Murphy is one of the experts on psychiatry around here.
I used to get Frank Ayd’s newsletter to help keep up with the drugs that is pretty good, even though Frank is no longer alive.
If you look at the spectrum since psychotropic therapy first started back when Solomon Snyder cranked up at Hopkins, to me, there haven ‘t been all that many changes as to neuroleptics that are big game changers.
i agree; i’m intrigued with the fact that they just keep coming up with little tweeks on old meds, despite the fact that it’s pretty clear that none of them will be THE panacea, none of them will be without side effects, and none of them will avoid the inevitable habituation. from where i stand, there is now abundant evidence that the excitement about meds was overblown and we need to regroup. that, and the fact that drug companies have become pushers.
it is true that most programs require psychoanalysis as part of training, but i’m still not running into new psychiatrists who invest too much in it. sort of, as i said, enough empathy to discover how the drugs are doing. and of course, to diagnose.
sorry, murphy, if i’m stepping on toes here. truly. cynicism inevitably offends, so i should tone it down. and also mention the many psychiatrists i’ve worked with whom i deeply admired. they are out there.
I doubt Murph minds. He’s glad to have some company.
I have always had the simplistic theory that has some truth in it, that one of the reasons that we haven’t had significant game changers as meds since Snyder and other’s pioneered psychotropics and made so many contributions after, is because visualizing/studying/getting access to the areas of the brain that are most impacted isextremely difficult while people are alive without harming them.
They come up with tweaks because so many research centers are working hard to minimize the side effects and maximize the efficacy, and it’s more difficult to make significant breakthroughs in this area. As you know some of the latest antipsychotics are significantly expensive (thousands a year) and have significant percentages of major side effects, both short term and long term like white cell depletion, renal damage, etc.
I am optimistic though that there will be game changing breakthoughs and as with most meds, there are zig zags, and much of the research doesn’t pan out, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been done or that it doesn’t advance towards the goal.
pete, i fear i don’t share you optimism about meds. i don’t even have a comparable fantasy about meds for physical issues. in fact, i have a hard time keeping the body and mind separated when i speak of someone’s difficulties on either front. i’m much more influenced by an eastern perspective that treats the whole body, aligns and balances energy, and works with the psyche along with the physical. to my mind, medications – except in the rare cases of immediate need, like penicillin – with all their side effects and the powerful impact it has on the body’s system, have brought not that great a result in the long haul. it’s given us this false assumption that we can actually conquer disease. such folly.
what we need to be directing our energies toward instead, in my mind, is the working of the mind to grasp and own the fact of death in life, and how our imbalances of mind contribute to (if not cause) our physical problems. it may seem outlandish to some, but having been in this business as long as i have, i can’t see it any other way.
boy, can’t seem to shake this pontification. apologies, but this is my field.
I feel I have unwittingly led you on a wild goose chase.
I’m sorry.
I took my cue from an August 9th post at TPMcafe:
(Mrs Panstreppon from TalkingPointMemo – scroll down to Latest Comments – spurred me on.)
I am surprised at the lack of interest online in Duley’s employer, Dr. Allen L. Levy, and his role in the Ivins investigation. Levy worked at the VA Hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia for several years.
Levy’s wife, Wendy A. Levy, has been a licensed therapist since 2001 and may have supervised Duley or partnered with her in group sessions when Ivins was a patient.
I am also surprised at how few people have considered the probable extent of the FBI’s involvement in Ivins’ psychiatric treatment. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that some special agents on the case signed up for group therapy earlier this year.
Posted at August 9, 2008 11:38 PM in response to Ivins’
——————————————
I found it surprisingly hard to find information on Dr Levy. After finding his CV, it did not state that he owned Comprehensive Counseling Services. It said he owned an outpatient center. I found the addresses listing Levy, Comprehensive Counseling and one other all at the same office. I still haven’t found anything about his wife.
Someone, other than Jean Duley, made decisions about Ivins’ care. I am using logic here. The FBI has closed in on him. They have reportedly declared him a mass murderer to his family and who knows who else. Ivins is, indeed, cracking under the pressure. And somehow he ends up with an addiction counselor (her dead father possibly CIA) with two DUI’s and a new BS in counseling. (I don’t rule out that the second DUI was set up for her.)
She HAD to be supervised (her employer, his wife, the FBI or all).
Allan L. Levy, M.D., C.I.M.E. could well have been setting himself up for a lucrative business in testifying concerning Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Again, that is my logic based on his VA experience, his 2006 court credentials and something else that I’ll go back and check.
The following is pure speculation: Dr. Levy’s “weakness” might have been that he was promised enormous business from the US government if he would allow whatever subsequently went on in his offices. Pure speculation.
I do know this. Under Dr. Allan L. Levy’s watch, an extremely vulnerable, newly minted counselor with two scary DUI’s was photgraphed and written about in the local paper, was counseling a purported mass murderer, and was allowed to make a fool out of herself with those spelling errors while bringing about a peace order against a man she thought was going to kill her.
The buck stops at the Owner and Medical Director of Comprehensive Counseling. I agree with Mrs Panstreppon. Why isn’t there more information about this?
Gee, I wonder if Dr. Levy will never be able to prove that the “order” came from the highest levels of the government?
i promised, but this is not pontificating. i promise.
with regard to the issue of this distinction between the ama and psychiatry taking the high road on torture, compared to the apa. and please understand, this is not a defense of the apa position, believe me.
but there is a long history of psychologists helping law enforcement and evidently the military in interrogations. on the one hand, the reason is obvious: why would we need a physician to assist in just asking someone questions? well, now that has become an issue too, but you see where i’m going with this.
so there is this background, and the field of psychology has gained its reputation for this work, and i’m sure there is a desire to maintain that. and i also feel there is likely a genuine sense that it is important.
but as i noted above (118), psychologists can’t work for an agency that is not equally concerned for avoiding harm of the vulnerable and expect to maintain any sense of public integrity. there is an interesting rejoinder to the apa’s position, in that – despite this history with interrogations – it does not appear to have ever been consistent with the ethical code and principles of the profession to participate in ANY of these interrogations, however harmless. certainly NOT as an advocate for the officials doing the interrogating. as an advocate for the accused, yes maybe so; i can certainly see that it would be important for a professional to be present to preserve the rights and integrity of the vulnerable party. and i think this is the position the apa is trying to uphold, but it depends on whether or not the integrity of that role is maintained, and there are actually no specific guidelines for that, though there are certainly clear guidelines in the generic (e.g., do no harm, do not participate in any unethical activity when part of an organization that condones it, etc.).
the problem is, it has become so abundantly clear that this role of interrogation psychologists as advocates for the vulnerable has been usurped by – or given over to – officials. and i would say that is possibly true for local law enforcement situations as well as the torture situation. perhaps this torture scandal will force the profession to re-examine its approach to the whole situation with more of an eye toward the higher principles and less of a pull for the particular situations such as the role in interrogations.
sorry to belabor all this, but i have for my own personal and professional reasons, been so embroiled in the whole apa/psychology ethical issue i cannot begin to tell you. ethics in general are not that easy to parse; the code establishes high-minded principles and then sets about excruciating specifics that are not at all specific (i know, mind-bending). but there it is, and it’s not at all unlike the many picayune laws and regs that have emerged despite the clarity of the constitution. to my mind, it comes down to human nature being what it is, which is too often self-serving. you can establish glowing and inspiring principles that seem self-evident, but there is a vast majority of those out there who will work things to their own advantage.
sheez. it’s an obsession, i admit it! pontificating as nail-biting! apologies. hope some of this angst from the inside can help some of you get something of an idea of just how non-trivial and non-simple all this is for us psychologists. though at least to me the torture question is, flat out, simple.
I appreciate your insights as to psychologists–I don’t have much experience as to their national or state policies in matters like this. The issue of responsibility in the context of being cooped to torture has been an interesting and important issue this thread helped highlight.
We don’t do that, and there is a pretty simple reason why. Our motive is not profit. At the root of everything those people do are the robber barrons. They know who is enabling them, and they work the multiples on investment.
A fine example is preservation, and I’ve sat in on more that a few of those fights. Every time you save a pristine piece of land it costs a lot of money, and the financial benefits while present are often indirect and hard to quantify. YET the immediate profit to be made by development remains and in fact grows as time passes (almost always), thus there is always another willing to come along and take another stab at development. They spread wide and have a hit percentage that works. The poor preservationists fight and fight and it cost money every time, but when they win, they don’t get stronger, but when the development community wins they get stronger every single time.
We don’t “do that” because it’s not so easy for our side to afford to do that. Most of our core principles are not private profit motivated.
Government, is of course, supposed to be the counterbalance to private interest, but today we live in a perfect storm where private interest have finally co-opted government. They’ve been grinding away at it for some time, but the recent improvements in media distribution have greatly tipped the scale. Without the internet, I’m afraid there would be no turning back. It’d be over for good. It might be anyway, but we’ll see.
That is true to an extent, and thankfully and rightfully so. But the Democrats have big money people. Gates, Soros, Hollywood, etc. Look at all the money that has been raised by Obama in small donations and whatnot over the net. It doesn’t have to be for profit; trusts could be set up that have continuity for funding. But just because it isn’t for profit doesn’t mean that it is not lucrative. Pay well, get the prime talent, and work them. I tell you what, I could pick off 5-10 select people off the progressive blogosphere, get them in a working collaboration (and there is already a fair amount of contact between most of these folks) and if they were all well paid, and had the ability for proper staffing with paralegals, research assistants, data tools and necessary expense provisions, there would be the capability for some extremely serious damage being done. A prime group like that would have the ability to fight straight up with the institutions on the other side that are funded with 10, 20, maybe more times the level of funding There are a couple of things along this line for the progressives, like the EFF, CCR, CREW etc. But there needs to be more and better.
And think of the exponential difference in brain power and the ability to write when you compare Marcy with Tucker Carlson, or Jonah Goldberg or any number of their hacks, including the current best seller Corsi on Obama whose book is replete with a cascade of lies page after page and the ridiculous MO of footnoting none other than himself often.
I am glad Rachel Madow got a TV show, and I know she will do well, (Dan Abrams isn’t being diminished–he is very much a part of their future and will do Today, daytime MSNBC and a number of other jobs.
But as good as Rachel is, and has been on her radio show, she doesn’t hold a candle to Marcy and the point you just made is a very strong index of why they are able to succeed with the message they project, when it represents such terrible reality on the ground.
I share Dismayed’s frustration that the media is never going to do their job properly, and I think you had the right take on what can/should have been accomplished at Saddlebrook–and considering their beliefs and conditioning, Obama did about as well as he could with that audience and Warren’s questions steeped in religious metaphors that they were conditioned to be receptive to.
Your idea about a coalition of the best and brightest of the liberal blogosphere is a very good one–Jane/Marcy/Ariana and several others could pool and forge their efforts if they were funded to get the help you suggested, pull this off, and still run their blogs.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be a very sound investment for Team Obama to fund–much more powerful than their websites and the emails they pop in my inbox three times a day IMHO.
I’ll hope with you.
We’ll see what the next e-mail from my grandmother’s holy roller circle has to say. I’ll be glad to forward them to you if you like — For the followers of the champion of truth, peace and love they sure do send around some hateful and dishonest garbage. Clearly, they don’t take that bearing false witness commandment very seriously.
Bed time for bonzo. Always a pleasure.
Just one more nod to how good these posts have been bmaz and WO. And while the blog world moves at the speed of light, I have appreciated the fact that such meaty topics haven’t fallen off the front page quickly. (I’ve really enjoyed the Bates thread too – can’t a judge issue mandamus for a ministerial act like service?)
71 – If I understand the situation, the thing Goldsmith did do correctly was to agree with the breadth of the “protected persons” labelling in Iraq. IOW, I think he found that Rashul and others were all protected persons in Iraq -he just then played God with reinterpreting what the US could do to protected persons and said that the Article 49 prohibition on taking them out of country was not a prohibition on taking them out of country (unless the military was going to try them), more just a suggestion that they not be disappeared permanently.
To give the devil playing God his due, I do think that he used his endorsement of the Conventions broad definition of protected persons to put on some pressure for the torture front. While he did condone and agree to provide cover for pulling protected persons out of country, he didn’t say other anti-abuse provisions in favor of protected persons could be ignored. Which pretty much made for problems and had to have forced some people to draw in their horns a bit – luckily, horns were all the fashion among the loyal bushies so there were still plenty left.
Is there anyway to get access to All of the OLC opinions since 2000?
From MadDog @ 57: that latest letter (pdf) from Leahy and Specter to Fielding has a very handy list of what I gather are all the OLC opinions and memos since 9/11 that Leahy and Specter know about. (I assume that qualification is necessary.)
Like MadDog, I also am wondering why that letter went to Fielding rather than Mumbles.
If there is, Patrick Leahy would love know about it. He’s been trying to get even a list of OLC opinions, but thus far has been stonewalled.
103 – marginally related to this – there was a story I saw linked yesterday somewhere about an Iraqi (or Pakistani perhaps? I remember his mother was in Pakistan)national in the US who also got roped into the anthrax investigation. We (the US) ended up hiring him to do work in Iraq for us while at the same time raiding his home, putting him on all kinds of watch lists here, booting his brother, nixing his citizenship applications and, at one point when he was travelling with his mother, putting her into isolation detention as well as him and threatening to keep her if he didn’t leave voluntarily and instead pursued hearings.
Apparently and oddly enough, it was Leahy’s office that got involved with helping him. Leahy has to have been an agnostic on some of the FBI work for a long time.
Awesome posts, great discussion. I just get physically ill at the thought of any intelligent educated person, making the choice to participate in torture in any way shape or form.
My life work is trying to figure out the mechanism that allows for this. There is a big difference between the way “we” on this site process information and how “they” (the right wing neo con) process information about life.
I believe the invariant is that the “they” side confuses judgment with fact. My theory would be that the right winger cannot say “I don’t know the answer to that”. I believe most of us are capable of distinguishing between theory and fact. It’s that mechanism that fascinates me and confounds me. What is the mechanism that allows intelligent educated people to participate in these crimes?
Hi, my 108 comment has been in moderation for about a half hour. Is there anything I need to do to get it published?
Regarding my work on 108, I want add this: Why weren’t these psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and licensed counselors more concerned with Bruce Ivins as a suicide risk?
I hope you will read what Ken Pope PhD, APBB and Melba J.T. Vasquez PhD, APBB have to say about “Responding to Suicide Risk”.
http://kspope.com/suicide/index.php
Bruce Ivins met many of the risks for suicide. I have not seen those mentioned by his counselor.
first off, there appears to be a number of folks here from the boston area, as am i. any chance of setting up a connection?
on your points re: duley and levy. i made similar points on the threads about the ivins tragedy, though i never got levy’s cv. in looking it over, the fact that he is only recently certified as an IME means nothing, really; i’ve never been certified and have done volumes of such exams. just being licensed is all you need (though that group will likely now lobby to see to it that only certified professionals can do it, but that’s OT).
what struck me on his cv most, tho, was his advertisement for doing exams for “dangerousness.” when i discovered back in the ivins stories that his specialty was forensics, it made sense that he might be contacted by the feds to look into him. i don’t know that there is any reason here to assume that levy had any connection to duley. there may have been one, but the assumption may come from duley’s claim that dr. levy had said all those things about how dangerous he was. i think instead, despite her protestations otherwise, that the fbi told her those things to make her even more scared and convince her to file the restraining order. but i’m not sure we have enough info to know at this point.
as far as duley’s failing in her professional demands re: suicide, first that’s not clear. if he was threatening to do so, sure. but i haven’t seen assertions he was doing much more than threatening harm to others. she should have acted immediately on that, and it appears that she did. second, though, i’m not at all convinced this was a suicide. as i said in a previous ivins thread, this guy was seriously obsessed with writing, letters to the editor, etc., and for him not to leave a note is just too weird for words. the method of overdose is so easily accidental that i’m shocked there’s not been more question about it. i saw somewhere that the fbi was forbidding an autopsy, though not sure how they could get away with that. if i were the family’s attorney, i’d be all over that, and a zillion other problems with the case. as EW deftly pointed out earlier, the fbi keeps trying to adjust their story to whatever the public will buy. sort of reminds me of that jon lovitz bit where he plays the shyster who keeps saying ‘don’t like that one? how about this one?” with each new story.
If I understand it correctly, Allan L. Levy is Jean Duley’s boss.
Check the listing for Allan L. Levy.
Check the listing for Comprehensive Counseling Associates.
http://local.times-news.com/Fr…..ts.zq.html
Psychiatry Center of Frederick Map 4.68 miles
(301) 663-8343
172 Thomas Johnson Dr Suite 204, Frederick, MD 21702
Doctors & Physicians: Family & General Practice
Comprehensive Counseling Associates Map 4.68 miles
(301) 663-8343
172 Thomas Johnson Dr Suite 204, Frederick, MD 21702
Doctors & Physicians: Family & General Practice
Allan L Levy, MD Map 4.68 miles
(301) 663-8343
172 Thomas Johnson Dr Suite 204, Frederick, MD 21702
Doctors & Physicians: Family & General Practice
—————–
It says in Levy’s CV that he’s Owner and Medical Director of an Outpatient Psychiatric Practice
ah. well then. (though your link did not work; may be my end here.)
the thought plickens.
i had only seen duley as employed at comprehensive counseling, but did not find the levy connection there.
the interesting thing is that levy is somewhat protected – in contrast to frankprobst’s point @ 114 – by the confidentiality rule here. because he was involved in ivins’s care, he is bound not to speak of it. because duley took out a restraining order, that piece went public, subjecting her to direct questioning. she has not been the best at keeping quiet, but then she has not been a complete fountain of info either.
either way, levy’s role is curious at best, and would require some exposition. i’d say a deposition in a lawsuit brought by the ivins family is in order.
At the risk of underwhelming you, it might be good to meet people around here. I once went to something at BC where Marcy was part of a panel. I couldn’t bring myself to go up and meet her.
Mary at 132: How did it ever come to this?
earlofhuntingdon at 134: I brought up Allan Levy and Jean Duley as part of this thread on questionable therapeutic practices and the American government. Who holds these people accountable?
I think the two tie together nicely: the superficially questionable mental health care recently given to Dr. Ivins and the voluntary assistance given Cheney’s military and intelligence interrogators by so-called mental health professionals.
The government can certainly recruit or send its own staff for training in psychiatry and psychology with the express purpose of devising the most bruising, the fastest, the most brutal, or the most “efficient” interrogation techniques imaginable. That doesn’t mean the academic and professional communities that trained them must allow such perversions of their work to be lauded or deemed acceptable behavior. It doesn’t mean that there should be no political consequences for that choice.
There is a legitimate use of such disciplines in devising effective interrogation techniques, whether it be training a police detective to interpret the psychology of body language or researching the effects of sleep deprivation on a soldier’s ability to fight or resist interrogation.
The defining characteristic of this administration, however, on this as other matters, is that it crossed the line. It intentionally steered a course into the reprehensible, the illegal, the ineffective, the incompetent. It did so secretly, in a manner intended to avoid political and legal liability. Its leadership has a date with Scylla and Charybdis, which President Obama should not defer out of misguided compassion; because it is not Mr. Obama who would suffer the consequences, it is their once and future victims.
would love to try and gather like minds in the area. i’m further north on cape ann, but would make the schlep.
but how would we do this? and how to get a boston crew together?
oops, forgot your most important question here. who holds these people accountable?
as it happens, i’ve been fretting in a huge way about this accountability issue for several years now. the answer is not at all satisfying. the state professional boards hold these people accountable. i cannot speak very well for the medical boards, but i do know generally that medical boards do not fuss much with small stuff like upsetting a client or using the wrong needle for an injection. they tend to stick to the truly egregious offenses like using and/or stealing drugs or defrauding insurance companies. fair enough.
on the other hand, psychology boards are another matter entirely. first of all, bear in mind that training for clinical psychology varies wildly, though the damn test for licensure is a total bear. going to a good school and getting extensive and comprehensive training is not as scrutinized as the test result, which is required. medical training has more controls over fundamentals and experience, it’s more extensive in many cases (though from undergrad through internship and post-doc, i was in it for 11 years), and the ama keeps some controls on how many doctors get admitted to med schools and thus graduated into the practicing population. not sure this does anything than keep income up on a supply/demand logic, but there it is. on the other hand, there is an absolute glut of practicing clinical psychologists out there, yet never seems to be enough.
second, the psychology boards themselves are just bizarre. as far as i’ve been able to discern, they are almost without exception across the country voluntary. in other words, any joe schmoe with a hankering to fluff his or her cv can sign up. of course, they are then appointed by the acting governor, which also suggests some sort of connection, shall we say. it’s a thankless job, requires a good bit of work, and really cannot be fun, except for those out there who want to exercise some authority.
my experience has been that these boards have for a while now (though, importantly, not always the case) been populated by grossly incompetent pencil sharpeners. and pencil sharpeners who are so myopic they just cannot see the big picture. and who are so starved for validation of their own importance that they seem to thrive on punitive actions for even the smallest detail that reasonable people would definitely disagree on. i’ve seen it endless times. i will not bore you with the many stories of unbelievable ineptitude in applying the ethical code in order to just nail somebody, anybody, EVERYbody, but trust me; it is so completely out of hand it’s become an epidemic around the country.
and that answers your question as to accountability. these inept, draconian, myopic boards are holding us all accountable. now, that said, it will be most interesting to see just how these boards respond when complaints start getting filed against these interrogators. you’d think these guys would be salivating to nail such criminals. however, more consistent with the personality type i’ve described, my guess is that they’ll balk and waffle and conform to the apa position. ten to one odds on that one. place your bets.
and again, what i want to know is, where is lt. col. zierfhofer licensed?
bmaz, Sorry for the fourth post in a row, but I have to say that I admire your work. This post is sickening to my soul because there is so much sad truth in it.
Just these four sentences of yours…
The depth and depravity with which the Bush/Cheney neocon warhawk aggressor machine has co-opted and corrupted the institutions, associations and professions that compose the fabric of this nation is simply astounding. The DOJ, the judiciary, the regulatory and administrative agencies and framework, private enterprise. They literally consume and soil every thing they touch. Here at Emptywheel, we have focused mainly on the institutions and, lately, the professions as to lawyers and now doctors and psychologists/psychiatrists.
Oh, my heart.
I agree with the post’s invocation of the professions’ various standards, having sampled some of several in my own research and formally in education. It is always interesting to see the nuances in the seemingly blunt facade of what is the modern military, similarly. For me, one of the important early posts showing how the gaolers were proceeding was a Scott Horton article at Balkin regarding a mere translator, SH’s imputation being she might have suicided*. CCR has published links to four new complaints on the torcha issue adding to the infobase. On the expert witness aspect, defense’s April 4 2008 ‘motion to suppress out of court statements of the accused based on coercive interrogation practices’ contains some germane appendices and attachments toward the end of that 85pp filing in re USA v SAHamdan. I continue to look for the guidlines document from the sho Trials regarding the gossamer parallel to the declared extent of defendant 6th amendment rights; UCMJ really is written for different situations, not for stateless actors in executive detention for 6 years sequestered briglike from even the US. But Boumediene and Parhat opened some of congress’ seams in DTA. I think Mary’s remarks take that thought to near its origin; the TLasseter series at McClatchyDC which began June 15 2008 reached that same terminus quickly, regarding what was discoverable for a determined news organization with respect to 66 detainees.
____
*Greg Mitchell on same incident
The ”patient” in this case is really a client, the US Government. Mental health care professionals counseling the government on how best to interrogate a prisoner are not concerned with the prisoner’s welfare, unless they stick around to see whether their recommendations are the minimum or maximum techniques used, and if the minimum, they try to stop techniques that go beyond their recommendations.
Failing that, or failing the institutional authority to issue orders that must be obeyed, they are being abused professionally as badly as their purported patient is being abused physically and mentally. They are, however, in a position to stop, to say no, to leave, and to recommend that others not fall into the same trap they did.
Easier said than done, however. The government can not only affect an individual’s career – it can give them ”poor marks” for not being with the program, to being fired from government posts, denied clearances for others or outside advising. The government can, for those playing high enough stakes, for being willing to blow the whistle or testify in public, also take away federal funding to their home institutions or would be employers.
That’s why Congressional intervention is necessary, to establish ”rules of engagement”, levels of authority and reporting, statutory protections with private rights of action that limit payback for disclosing illegal behavior. Until then, the wiser course for true mental health care professionals would be to stay home.
It is amazing that a certified medical examiner, a qualification I associate with performing autopsies for legal purposes, has a “mental health” practice. Perhaps it was his years with the VA. What did he do for them, exactly? With all due respect to its many talented and stout-hearted staff, they have a very high patient load, limited resources and work under trying conditions.
All employers are reluctant to acknowledged mental health issues. The problems remained stigmatized, no matter how widespread they are, treatment is lengthy and costly. No employer is perhaps more reluctant to admit them than the testosterone-driven US military. Psychiatric care in the VA is at best problematic, at worst, a mechanical, by the numbers “diagnosis” and limited treatment that lowers the government’s liability.
Dr. Levy’s association with the VA and his unusual training for operating a mental health practice open a new can of worms. This investigation already has shelves of them.
this case has libraries of problems, actually.
as i commented above, levy is certified as an “independent medical examiner;” he’s not a coroner, nor does he pretend to be. there is evidently an organization of physicians who certify each other to do independent medical exams, typically for insurance companies to make sure they don’t give their money away to those lying cheats out there who might need their policies to actually pay up. (i’m smirking loudly here because i’ve done a few myself, and i know i didn’t make any friends of the insurance companies. i was trained to advocate for the patient, and even doing these things seems, well, unseemly to me. suffice it to say i don’t do them anymore; they stopped calling, evidently the word got out.)
employers are hard pressed to acknowledge mental health problems largely because they are ignorant of the facts, which include the fact that there is a law against stigmatizing. another fact, though, is that whenever mental health problems are treated early and aggressively, the cost is actually pretty low compared to physical problems, and the number of physical complaints is actually reduced and productivity rises. these stats have been available for years, but insurance companies still resist payment to phd’s because we’re not physicians and mental health problems are somehow not ‘real.’ at least, that’s the only logic you can take away from their position.
as for the VA, there are actually few of us health professionals who have missed the almost requisite brush with the VA. because there is so little money and so few staff, they are dying to teach trainees who are willing to work for next to nothing and get good experience. i actually interned at the boston VA, and it was a good experience, as it is the birthplace and haven for my field (neuropsychology). so trying to necessarily make a governmental connection for dr. levy because he was at a VA for what looks like three years is a bit of a stretch. i think he’s simply suspect because he is involved at all. he likely got a call from the fbi to do an evaluation of ‘dangerousness’ and could not resist the thrill of intrigue and being that close to power.
wonder how he’s feeling about that stuff now.
Apologies to all expecting further comment on mental health professionals taking the Fifth at Gitmo trials. We seem to have veered off onto the Ivins case, perhaps thanks to today’s NYT OpEd.
If Dr. Levy’s association with the VA was tangential, I agree, it doesn’t impact this case, unless he was required there to obtain a security clearance, presumably needed to treat a whole class of patients in Metro DC. I wonder though, whether the Boston VA and your experiences there represent a stellar outlier, untypical of the VA’s mental health system.
If Dr. Levy’s recent medical training is in “adversarial diagnoses”, that is, he examines patients on behalf of someone who has a monetary interest in disagreeing with the patient’s own physician’s diagnosis, it makes one wonder why Ivins would have gone to Levy’s practice. More basically, what’s Levy’s training in psychiatry or psychology? His listing offers very little information beyond his business address.
my VA experience was far from stellar. i left the music business for academics thinking surely to god the egos would be tamer. NOT. they’re just smarter and thus more destructive.
still, it was long enough ago that the funding was actually good, and there were a lot of big names on staff. in fact, the program director at the time was the man who did the early research on and coined the phrase ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ or PTSD, terry keane.
i had also meant to point out earlier wrt levy and ivins that levy’s counseling center was ‘comprehensive’, and it advertises itself as such, including all manner of needs such as family counseling and drug and alcohol counseling. so it is not that odd that ivins was there, or that he was directed to a d&a therapy group that duley was heading. what is odd is the fact that this sort of lower professional pass-off is so common.
“It is amazing that…”.
I beg to differ. First let me say that we should be gratefull for Boston1775’s effort in his comment. I’ve been wondering about some of these holes in our knowledge. A look at Levy’s CV shows an extensive history as a psychiatrist, both as a 4 year resident at a hospital/clinic in Chicago, and several years as a staff psychiatrist at Fredrick Memorial Hospital, including promotion to head of the Dept. of Psychiatry there.
Also of interest (and especially so in light of all the swooning by commenters here regarding the lack of therapist-patient commitment in both the Ivins case, and the Rashul case in the current posting), is the extensive history Levy presents in the field of forensic psychiatry. This designation first came across my radar in regards to the mysterious Dr. Irwin in the Ivins case. Lacking sophistocation with the internets, I did (and recommend to others interested) a Google search of the term, which offered up a Wikipedia entry. This clearly shows that not all Psychiatrists (and I extrapolate to Psychologists) are concerned with the well being, cure, or therapy of the individuals they examine. Like a Coroner (for any Davinci’s Inquest fans), the individual’s therapy or cure is not a concern, only the state of being dead, and the question as to possible causation. A forensic psychiatrist is said to be be expert in knowledge of both Psychiatry and the Law. They perform the fuction of advising their client (the one who pays) as to the nature and likely behavior of their target. These professionals advise investigators, legal counsel (plaintiff and defense), and offer expert witness testimony in court on that borderland between the legal and the psychological.
Now with regard to Rashul case, the Psychologists are clearly not there to provide therapy for the detainees, nor it seems to advise “interviewers” on how to conduct themselves in a therapuetic role (as most consulting practioners do), but to advise on how to more effectivly carry out assigned their role. If held to the standards of therapeutic practioners, these people would be candidates for tar and feathers. But as forensic advisors, well, they only have their pocketbooks and their conscience to factor in. And like Dr Levy, one can wear different hats on different days.
Now with regard to the Ivins case, the question of how Ivins came to be at that counselling center could be important. He may have simply been a coincidental walk-in, or he may have been referred; and if so by whom, and why would be interestig questions to pursure.
Ivins in this thread? Then I’ll make the following uninformed comment:
I’ve been wondering who framed Ivins. Did the FBI frame him? Or, did someone else set him up, and is the FBI just unable to get the wool off their eyes?
With my apologies to the person’s CV I’m about to post, this might be the caliber of forensic training I might expect for someone working on one of the most important cases in the country.
I found this with teh google:
http://www.forensicpsychologyexpert.com/bio.html
Now go back and look at Dr. Levy’s training. Does this add up?
115 – thanks for those links and the related info, JL. The CCR link (about Abu Ghraib origin complaints against contractors) mentions at least one incident that comes near to things Hersh references – with allegations of a minor being held down and raped with an object. Although very abbreviated, the allegations make your flesh crawl and would indicate why Taguba has been so adamant about the need to investigate MI and what was done by them, by their contractors, ordered by the command structure, etc. And all the destruction of info – the contractors have certainly taken their cues from the misfeasance and failed ethics of their government counterparts.
117, 123 – um, if the client is the US gov, then what about the rules to report the client if it is about to engage in harmful acts against someone? For that matter, shouldn’t they have recommended involuntary commitment of that client a long long time ago? ; )
Trenchant observation. I was speaking practically when I claimed that the USG was the client for the military’s mental health professionals [sic] giving advice on how best to interrogate prisoners. Define “best” according to your priorities rather than solely, “in the best interests of the patient”, the prisoner. I wonder which prisoner was No. 6?
Um, did some kind of space aliens that I didn’t hear about come down and steal or abrogate common master-servant/agency law? Cause I don’t think so. I am tired of these rubes hiring some third party thug, telling them exactly what acts to do, and then claiming they have no responsibility for the direct desired results from those acts. The Bush/Cheney criminal enterprise are Skinner rats in that they will keep gorging themselves on the food of criminality as long as we keep hand feeding them the opportunity to do so.
These people would outsource their own bowel movements so they don’t have to be liable for the diarrhea
mary, i’ve noted above the ethical dilemma of taking on clients who do NOT have the best interests of a vulnerable party in mind (e.g., 146). the more mundane daily situation of seeing a patient for an insurance company is a case in point. the third party payer clearly has only the payment in mind, not the patient. so it is a problem for psychologists who advocate for the vulnerable. i have done this more often than i like to admit, but i have to say, the insurance companies did not come flocking to get my advice on other cases, because in all my years of practice i can honestly say i only found maybe three cases that were not deserving of the payout. no, make that two, but really just one. see?
at the time, i justified what i was doing by saying hey, i’ll call it as i see it, with all the empathy and sensibility for the patient as my highest purpose, and let the chips fall where they may. i did what i had to do, it paid well enough though not great, but it dried up because the ‘client’ had a different agenda.
compared to being asked to advise on an interrogation, this was ethically easy. for a military psychologist, it’s more of a slippery slope; they signed up to do national security business, and as long as their efforts are couched in that verbage, the justification becomes easier and easier. i suppose. mind you, i’m trying to see how this could happen, and why the apa has been so resistant to taking the principled stand, so some of my sentiments are really just playing devil’s advocate with my own head.
i grew up a military brat. i watched a lot of people have to suck up to unimaginably offensive people and orders just to exist. there’s that piece. however, what these psychologists actually did and participated in while under the auspices of ‘protecting our country’ is a whole lot easier for me to grasp than the apa’s intransigence on this principled point.
for us here on the outside, it seems such a clearly simple thing. for the military psychologists, not so much. for the apa, though, there are mysterious variables in play; it should be simpler. just as simple as it has been for the ama and others.
Also, this article that appeared in The Frederick News on June 29, 2008 is so well timed.
http://www.fredericknewspost.c…..ryID=76901
I’m wondering if someone has the dates of her house arrest for DUI? Was she being rehabilitated?
How did this article talking about the accidental deaths in Frederick County due to narcotic pain killers come about?
Why were Jean Duley’s picture and her credentials put there?
I’m still hard at work on Part 2 of my work, but here are a couple of comments on this topic.
While looking for something else on wikileaks, I came across an article that is relevant to the anthropology discussion. Buying a Piece of Anthropology discusses the CIA’s covert funding of stress research.
stryder @ 127, Sen. Leahy is trying. He sent another letter today to Fielding. Specter even signed on to this one.
Thanks for the follow-up!
Bob in HI
ADVISORY:
WO will probably have his Rashul Part II ready for tomorrow morning. I was going to work on a couple of things this morning, but got tied up with something. So, I will have something to put up in a little bit and, hopefully, a more extended piece late afternoon. In the meantime, we are well along on this thread, go ahead and consider it open season for whatever. Heh heh, I kind of feel like John Yoo giving authorization for mass ongoing activity. Carry on!
It is obvious that mental health professionals [sic] advising the government on how to interrogate prisoners are not acting in the best interests of the prisoner. They are advising the interrogator, but that does not mean they have no duty to the prisoner, who is still alive and to be treated in a manner recommended by that professional.
What do they advise the interrogator to do? How to get a prisoner to talk, whether what they say is reliable or not? How to break their personality, to make them malleable to suggestion? Is that role significant? Or, is it a screen to hide what boils down to visceral, brutal acting out? It is that role, as perceived from the extreme priorities of the OVP, that is being questioned.
If mental health or other medical professionals are to participate in interrogations, as opposed to advising on other aspects of dealing with the stresses of combat, it seems clear that that role needs better definition and a regulatory or statutory framework that can’t be tossed at will and without consequence by an errant executive, as this chief executive does with every rule or law he doesn’t like.
me @ 132 – snark without clarity is like champagne without bubbles.
I didn’t really think anyone was going to involuntarily commit The United States Gov or Military, or even take steps to prevent their client from commiting a criminal act of violence, and I’m not all that sure where the patient relationship exists – just wanted to toss out there the fiction of tossing Bush, Cheney, Myers, Graham, Lieberman et al in straightjackets to cheer myself up. *g*
A little something to tide you all over. Because I know you are suffering withdrawal symptoms from a lack of malicious BS from your government. Hot off the press at the Washington Post:
This is truly shocking. Really, who could have predicted such mendacious obstructionistic crap from the Bush/Cheney Administration? If the DC District Court can hold Toni Locy in contempt, perhaps they can find some maximum hurt contempt provisions for a few of the White House Mafiosi too.
This looks like another intentional “go slow”. Since when does this administration solicit bids on work it wants done? Since when does it send it out for legitimate open bidding, rather than direct it to a favored client on a de facto no-bid basis?
What are the accomplishments of the stellar WH telecoms team, assembled over the past several years? Its purported goals included solving this and other problems in the publicly acknowledged White House telecoms system they’ve built and operated. Although let’s not forget the additional telecoms systems the WH did or does use that they do not publicly acknowledge, eg, the mysterious, multi-faceted RNC system.
I hope that Sen. Obama’s has already assembled a dedicated team to design and implement a whole new WH telecoms system. Because whatever Bush’s IT-political gurus leave behind manifestly won’t work as described and will be loaded with back door keys and bugs. Without it, Obama’s team will have their hamstrings and Achilles tendons slashed before getting into the starting blocks. They will also be in violation of the PRO from day one.
The cost of a competent new WH telecoms system will be considerable, I would guess at least $100 million, which the Democrats should clearly label as another legacy of George W. Bush.
If it’s possible at all
You’d have to sequester all the engineering contractors and protect them from the intel agencies.
Yikes!! the beast has arisen.
This is beyond absurd
Calling all techies
Don’t forget that the IT guy who (it has been argued) did all the election fraud also did the Congressional system. So, it’s all but certain they’re already listening to every Dem e-mail and phone call and database/notes entry.
Excellent reminder, which suggests the bugs and back doors in the Congressional computer system lead to Langley and the OVP, too. I noticed that when I first read that Dennis Hastert had broken two hundred years of precedent and awarded The Barnacle a cushy office on the House side of the Capitol. He had to move a high-ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee to do it. Before Cheney, that would have brought tar and feathers to Capitol Heights, which says a lot about the unheard of reach Cheney claims. BTW, I hear that he never wears gloves; ask Junior.
“I wonder which prisoner was No. 6?”
Bubbles.
Then who is No. 1?
More seriously on the Lt Col front, I think the issue from a legal, rather than ethical, standpoint is not so much the existence of any Dr/Patient relationship, with either the detainee or someone else in Gov or gov, but rather the existence of a co-conspirator relationship in the planning and authorizations and approvals of what is being done TO the detainee. Although I do kind of think someone ought to be asking APA et al for a position on the duties when an entity a psychologist is consulting for has the same kinds of likelihood of doing harm to a person as a patient who is in therapy expresses about a third party.
wow, the generic way you frame this issue could apply to both the torture and the ivins case.
as i’ve noted above, the apa ethical code is ultimately equivocal about how a practitioner handles a situation in which the organization they work for is doing something illegal or unethical, or requiring such actions from them:
1.02 Conflicts Between Ethics and Law, Regulations, or Other Governing Legal Authority
If psychologists’ ethical responsibilities conflict with law, regulations, or other governing legal authority, psychologists
make known their commitment to the Ethics Code and take steps to resolve the conflict. If the conflict is unresolvable via
such means, psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority.
it seems to me this is a very weak link in the code and requires overhaul.
I’m getting at the same thing for Dr. Ivins.
Was therapy done for him or TO him. If you know what I mean.
And who reviews this and decides?
It’s time for a glass of wine.
lllphd: I’m not a natural one to organize this, but I might work up the courage to meet some of you.
I am not a conspiracy theory kind of guy by nature, and I am not certainly not suggesting I believe this is what happened; but….If Ivins is really involved, I have wondered if the necessary investigative gumshoe work ought not be done just to eliminate any thought of the scenario that Ivins was involved, but did not act alone and was suckered into it as kind of a Manchurian rube by some very high government officials that, at least at first, convinced Ivins that he was doing it to help the government. Some very high officials along the lines of the Germ Boy and the occupants and associates of that unique branch of government office he used to work in. Since the Feds can’t find diddly squat to link Ivins with the transport and mailing of the anthrax; maybe, you know, he just made it for someone else that did the rest.
They use the weak.
They use the naive.
They use those schooled by the Jesuits.
They use those fooled by Fundamentalism.
And then…
they never knew.
Salon Radio: Glenn Greenwald interviews Senator Charles Grassley on the anthrax investigation
If someone from the highest offices of the land demanded access or product in the name of national security, a person might feel obliged.
A person with a conscience might feel he or she must do his or her duty for the sake of the country.
And that person might go over the edge when finding out that he was being hung out to dry.
————————-
I see a pattern of finding people, credentialing them, using them to carry out a plan, and then there’s no paperwork, no phone record, no meeting notes, nothing to verify that the “order” came from the highest offices in the land. (Goodling didn’t come up with those loyalty questions by herself. And the rest of the sorry bunch.)
The savvy ones figure out what has happened to them and get help, back away, have kept enough records, whatever to keep themselves alive and able to continue working somewhere. (Ari Fleischer comes to mind.)
Others who have figured it out and stood up to the pressure have gone to jail (Siegelman, a couple of judges still in jail), had their lives and reputations attacked (the Wilsons, Jill Simpson) and were threatened (Jill Simpson was run off the road, her house was burgled and burned down.)
Some lost their livelihoods (US Attorneys); others lost their lives (four Assistant US Attorneys – Thelma Quince Colbert, Shannon Ross (who were prosecuting Texas companies Novation and Tenet in an 80 billion dollar tax fraud case), Jonathan Luna (declared a suicide until it was found out that he was stabbed in the back, testicles mutilated and hands shredded) and Tom Wales (gun control advocate who was shot in the head in his home office).
Pat Tillman had figured out the war was a sham and was headed home to talk about it. Ciara Durkin worked on a secure base in Afghanistan in the finance department, found something not right, told her family to look into it if anything happened to her. Both were shot in the head.
Bruce Ivins’ experience cost him his livelihood, his peace of mind and his life. His family was pressured (threatened?) and he will never tell us what happened. Or if he did, the note is gone.
i doubt seriously that the govt had much to do with selecting ms. duley for ivins’s therapy. if they had some manipulating in mind, she would not be the one to do it.
i’m also realizing that i had confabulated drs. levy and irwin, and so admit now that i am not sure at all how levy got involved here. can someone help me out? you dug up this info; what took you there? just that he was the director of where duley worked? of so, then i don’t see much to render him suspicious. dr. irwin was also a forensic psychiatrist, but i was unable to connect him to the counseling center. i understand there is evidence irwin saw ivins, but i didn’t know about levy. irwin can’t talk because of confidentiality, and i imagine the same would hold for levy, even if he was the director and not directly involved with ivins’s care.
i’m not the best either for a group meet, but perhaps if we keep making noises in that general direction something will happen?
NEW POST ALERT
Okay, in anticipation of a salivating MadDog, I made the email comment above into a new post, because I would like to know where we really stand on that story, and I am working away on something already. So, I humbly draft the hardest working crew in all of show business to treat it as a quick working thread to let us all know where we’re at. Thanks.
Sprinting To Teh Finish: Missing Email Edition
I would suggest the CME IME specifics are worth understanding from many perspectives. Those two acronyms convey little regarding the pervasiveness of the effects those titles generate in healthcare service delivery and compensation. I have had close association with literature produced in many fora by, for, and about professionals who have done CME or IME work, or who eschewed it or advocated against its manifestations as seen in the cycles of actuarial science as insurers practice it, much of it specific to each state’s legal climate, but also with corelatives visible in national overarching ambience.
I’m not sure what this means, but CME to us is much the same as CLE. Some of it is high quality and some of it isn’t, but it can be easily done via the web. Some meetings are great for content/scenery one or both and some aren’t.
Last year, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) issued a statement condemning the use of anthropologists in Human Terrain Teams….
“One cannot grasp AAA’s concerns without understanding that anthropologists have a unique research method that brings with it special ethical responsibilities: We engage in what one anthropologist has called “deep hanging out” with people, passing the time with them, often day after day for months, painstakingly earning their trust and getting them to tell us about their worlds. What distinguishes anthropology from espionage (apart from anthropologists’ impenetrable jargon) is that we seek the consent of our subjects, and we follow an injunction to do no harm to those we study. According to the anthropological code of ethics, our obligations to those we study trump all others–to colleagues, funders, and nation.”
I have absolutely no doubt this is being done, probably even within America and that it absolutely damages individuals in the sense that their privacy is violated and their relationships to other people are unnatural. This could lead to unnatural paranoia and dysfunctional life. It’s not bloody carnage, but it’s really bad.
For those who understand ‘opposition research’, just apply the above to political ‘research’ of opponents. It ain’t pretty.
158 – Wonder if we’ll see any of this
http://images.google.com/image…..#038;gbv=2
at the Dem convention?
Using this EPU land as a space for allthingsconsidered – I’m going to link a couple of interviews from The Talking Dog, some from 2006, that go to things that have been discussed here.
Back in 2006, The TDog interviewed Dr. Steven Miles,
http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/000657.html
author of a book called Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror. This book went beyond the use of psychological and other medical information for abusive and torture based interrogations, and also examined situations of delayed, incomplete or falsified death records and other issues of care of detainees in general.
All the interviews are good reads in their entirety, but I thought this from Dr. Miles on torture was very thought provoking:
This, from almost 2 years ago now.
From 2007, TDog interviewed Michael Otterman, author of American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/000876.html
He makes some very compelling comments about just a few of the non-habeas problems with the MCA, and also describes his first hand dealings with a victim of American torture, Mamdou Habib, and the effect it had on him.
Back in 2006, TDog also had a very good interview with a former GITMO translator Erik Saar, who had authored (with Viveca Novak, but don’t hold that against him) Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo
Hopefully I won’t overquote from this interview. The TDog asked about public assertions in the book, by Saar (again – we’re talking 2006) that at most a few dozen of the 600 or so at GITMO were terrorists.
Saar’s book also described the creation of a Potemkin Village setting for members of Congress and VIPs who visited GITMO, with prior interrogations re-staged to run smoothly and neatly through, to order so to speak.
Then we come to two overlapping questions, which I have to quote together here for them to make sense, but as to the first question and response, imagine what this ex-soldier, who thought we were misled about who was at GITMO, must think now that the information has come out that Addington was briefed thoroughly on the fact that many at GITMO were completely innocent – – – and yet said the President did not choose to revisit the issue of their status determination. God, aka W, had spaketh, and he spake that they were terrorists, and so should they stay, forevermore, as none may unspeak that which was spoke by The One.
TD: OK, let me use that a segue into a question I wanted to ask later, but I think applies to this. And that is my supposition that the higher ups simply didn’t care whether they got any useful intelligence, i.e., they knew they by and large had people with no connection to Al Qaeda, but simply wanted to ”look tough” for political or other ”non-military” reasons?
Saar: …
One part of me wants to answer ”Maybe”. But my answer is I don’t think so, and here’s why. To the point of complete ignorance, a lot of our leaders thought that Guantanamo was full of bad people– actual terrorists, all with useful intelligence if we could get it out of them.
The initial process of how detainees got to Guantanamo was what was most flawed. The mistakes just unfolded and compounded from there.
TDog: And, of course, no one would admit that any mistakes were made…
Saar: No, and that’s critically important. … The original concept was an effort– or at least a belief–that the people sent to Gitmo only were hardened al Qaeda members. However I believe there were both practical and political reasons that detainees often left Afghanistan and found themselves in Guantanamo’s legal black hole. Eventually detainees were sent so rapidly that who was who in an intelligence sense became hopelessly convoluted.
Even if you put aside any moral problems with the possibility of detaining men who shouldn’t be there, you’re left with a hopeless problem of how can I– a junior NCO– figure out who is who? Some of these guys were trained terrorists; others were sheep herders in the wrong place. You’re putting junior soldiers in a position of trying to sort this out, and you are asking for a disaster.
The Talking Dog has lots of interesting interviews, sans Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson and Boy Stephanapolous questions.
Thanks for this commentary. I read your entries with keen interest, partly because you are good at teaching the concepts of your expertise (like bills of attainder, which we should have learned in high school, but have forgotten). You also bring a sharp wit, high intelligence, and a wild and passionate heart to our discussions. I, for one , am thankful for it. (Glad it’s EPUville.)
173 – the attainder prohibition in the Constitution doesn’t rely on a determination of torture. It goes to any penalties, pains or punishments being exacted without trial.
And all the intent nonsense they gobbled about is nuts too – it is the intent to do the act that is important as to specific intent, not the intent for the outcome (which could almost never be “proven” bc someone could always say “I didn’t intend for the bullet I put in his brain to kill him, I just was wondering what would happen”)
They really have reached into places where an ungloved hand should never go.
hm. lots to ponder here, though not sure anyone is still on this thread.
first, i don’t think that ivins’s ‘peace of mind’ was exactly that; he had quite a history of questionable behaviors in his past, and then again apparently in his recent past. but i’ll give you that the fbi seems to have exploited that fact to make him their fall guy.
second, i don’t think you sent me on a wild goose chase, as the info on irwin i was confabulating with levy i had dug up during the heat of ivins’s suicide a couple of weeks ago.
i’m still not entirely clear on how you got to levy’s ownership of duley’s workplace. if it was just curiosity about who was ultimately responsible, that’s a decent hunch. however, there is not a strong likelihood that he actually oversaw her work in any way. that would not be that unusual. and though yes, he would have some level of responsibility for her work product as her employer, the way that typically goes is, her license is her own responsibility. if someone goes after it, there may be something in their contract that says the center will provide legal assistance, but that’s not necessarily the case either, as they typically only require malpractice insurance, which covers it.
in other words, most clinics that employ non-med’s require a staff md to sign off on numbers of things. that’s fairly standard. but direct contact between that md and rank and file? not necessarily much if any. direct interaction between the psychiatrist and rank and file counselors is the exception; i’ll put it that way. rare.
in any event, the only way i can see that levy would be called to the carpet here is if there were a civil suit in which he was named, and named for just being the owner and ultimate employer of this woman who was his ‘caregiver’ (i apply that phrase loosely with ms. duley).
and finally, for now, your speculations about levy’s involvement with the fbi’s decision. i don’t really see enough her to go in that direction. all of it so circumstantial, and hindered by the fact that most other psychiatrists have cv’s that look a lot like his. most have worked at a va at some point, and who wouldn’t get experience with ptsd in this day and age, given the war and all? just not enough to raise my red flags on him. and trust me, i had red flags flying in parade flurries when this was all coming out. my sniffer was very suspicious of dr. irwin and his eval. i’m still not entirely clear just when that occurred in the timeline, but i think there is a guess in there.
in any event, i do agree that this all stinks to high heaven and the fbi exploited ivins in order to cover their sorry asses after these were handed to them by hatfill.
now. for anyone who is still with this thread, i’ll be hoping to comment at some point this evening on a conversation i just had with a forensic psychologist about (a) the ethical concerns at that apa – his take is interesting, and (b) how his contact from the fbi about gitmo detainees fits into it all.
but, if no one pipes up, i’ll save it for another day when another post returns us to this topic.