Torture Is Counterproductive To Interrogation Results!

/123 Comments/in , /by

As Fatster noted, there is a new report out from Pamela Hess of the AP relating the conclusions of a paper, published in the scientific journal Trends in Cognitive Science: Science and Society, by Irish professor and researcher Shane O’Mara, on the deleterious effects of the procedures employed by the Bush Administration torture program:

The CIA’s harsh interrogation program likely damaged the brain and memory functions of terrorist suspects, diminishing their physical ability to provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.

The paper scrutinizes the harsh techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology. Researchers concluded that the harsh methods were biologically counterproductive to eliciting quality information because prolonged stress harms the brain’s ability to retain and recall information.

Gee, who could have expected? Read the whole article, it is worth it and not that long. I applaud Professor O’Mara for doing the work and publishing the paper (if anyone is able to find a copy on the net, please leave a link in comments). But the basic conclusions have been known maxims in the interrogation field for a very long time in one form or another. Take this quote from the article for instance:

He warned that this could lead to brain lobe disorders, making the prisoners vulnerable to confabulation – in this case, the pathological production of false memories based on suggestions from an interrogator. Those false memories mix with true information in the interrogation, making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated.

This root concept and knowledge as to suggestibility and contamination of information gleaned from subjects has been around for a couple of decades as anybody familiar with the work of Dr. Gisli Gudjonsson is aware. Heck the very basics of suggestibility, and problems associated therewith, are even alluded to in the seminal law enforcement interrogation treatises of Inbau, Reid and Buckley Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, the first volume of which was published in the 60s.

And therein lies the problem. Where has the media been on this? Dr. O’Mara’s paper, again to be heavily applauded for apparently specifically addressing the Bush torture modalities and resultant physiological effects, may be new; but the insanity of the use by the Bush Administration of those modalities, for the purpose claimed, has been crystal clear all along. The people advocating these programs had to be willfully, wantonly and intentionally ignorant of the science and knowledge base in the interrogation community. That is but another reason the claim of "good faith" by the torturers is laughable.

image_print
123 replies
  1. BoxTurtle says:

    Torture was successful. It got more than one AQ operative to admit to connections between Iraq and AQ, thus helping to justify the war.

    You’re operating on the assumption that the torture had some other purpose, like aquiring actionable intelligence.

    Boxturtle (Do I really need to add the /s?)

    • OldFatGuy says:

      Did you mean “Buzzed” it up??

      I just did that, thanks for the suggestion, but wondering if that’s what you meant or not.

      You have to understand, with all things intertubes, I’m an idiot. So just want to be extra sure that’s what you meant.

  3. filipiak says:

    Just posted Marcy’s interview about torture, with Lynn Rivers, up to iTunes. You can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/emu-on-itunesu . Look for the Lynn Rivers Show, then down to today’s show. (Requires iTunes on your computer. Not trying to SPAM the list, just thought it appropriate.)

    Brian

  4. Gitcheegumee says:

    Where has the media been?

    Well, it could be argued that Faux Noise has been torturing viewers for years now-with basically the same results…they are incapable of thinking cognitively and have limited capacity for memory.

    Faux and Beck and Limbaugh have created and manipulated an entire group into becoming addicted to their OWN adrenaline.

    Get your fix at Fox!

  6. perris says:

    even if it weren’t for cognitive problems once you use torture, they very principle of torture is literally asking for information you have no clue is accurate or viable;

    a person being tortured will say anything to stop said torture, they will lie, they will fabricate, they will do and say anything it takes

    so what you are left with is what you started with, nothing but the rants of someone who wants to stop the pain

    the real thing that needs to be addressed though is this;

    the administration knew this already and they also knew the only reason to have a program for torture is to promote unrest, to make certain you are not a benevolent presence, to ask for an insurgency

    as we’ve been told by the cia themselves, they knew there was no al-qaeda link and they told cheney just that, he said “so?” and told them to torture these people until someone makes believe there was a link

    they used the program to get the only thing it’s good for, false information and unending insurgency

  7. earlofhuntingdon says:

    If a lawyer blogger from Arizona can enlighten the public this much, think how many more resources were available to the masters of the US Government. One suspects that the Bushie neocons concluded there wasn’t enough money or power in using valid research, just as there wasn’t enough PR benefit to instituting effective inspection of sea and air cargo when spying on e-mails was so much more politically rewarding.

    It also suggests that the law enforcement types at the DoJ and FBI – like Arab-speakers – some of whom would we be well-versed in such things, were ostracized precisely because they were competent.

    Only Ross Douthat could conclude that presiding over such an administration was the work of a great president, rather than one doing no work at all.

    • perris says:

      One suspects that the Bushie neocons concluded there wasn’t enough money or power in using valid research

      my feelings are far less charitable

      I believe they intended on destroying any hope for valid data gathering, I believe they wanted unending war and they wanted their occupation to be as conquerers not as guests

      thus, and only thus, torture

    • jayt says:

      Only Ross Douthat could conclude that presiding over such an administration was the work of a great president,…

      ummm, which one?

      …rather than one doing no work at all.

      oh – you’re talking about Georgie.

      I dispute the inference that he was running that administration.

  8. Garrett says:

    The log of Muhammed al-Qahtani’s long sleep deprivation treatment is very sad about this.

    With day after day of sleep deprivation treatment, his primary reaction to questioning is “unresponsive”. And his refusal to answer questions would be the justification for the treatment.

    All of the “high value detainees” seem to have been driven outright insane by torture.

  10. JimWhite says:

    the pathological production of false memories based on suggestions from an interrogator

    There are arguments against this in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. Selections from page 47:

    Cameron’s theories were based on the idea that shocking his patients into a chaotic regressed state would create the preconditions for him to “rebirth” healthy model citizens.

    /snip/

    On this front Cameron was a spectacular failure.

    /snip/

    The problem, obvious in retrospect, was the premise on which his entire theory rested: the idea that before healing can happen, everything that existed before needs to be wiped out. Cameron was sure that if he blasted away at the habits, patterns and memories of his patients, he would eventually arrive at that pristine blank slate. But no matter how doggedly he shocked, drugged and disoriented, he never got there. The opposite proved true: the more he blasted, the more shattered his patients became. Their minds weren’t “clean”; rather they were a mess, their memories fractured, their trust betrayed.

    I guarantee you that if an independent, competent psychologist evaluated any of the prisoners who have been subjected to the full list OLC-approved torture techniques, you will find that each of them has a mind that has been shattered as Cameron found in his work. That is not coincidence, since these techniques are patterned after his work (via Kubark and School of the Americas).

    • skdadl says:

      Donald Ewen Cameron, a very strange fellow. His experiments on the CIA’s behalf became well known here in the eighties (?) partly because one of his subjects victims was the wife of an MP, who with others pursued the offences and eventually won compensation for Cameron’s victims.

      And yet look at this part of his history:

      … Cameron became known worldwide, serving as the second President of the World Psychiatric Association, as well as president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. He was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal a decade earlier, where he accused German medics of things he himself did between 1934–60 or later, though his scientific work during World War II for the OSS has never been a secret.

  12. Gitcheegumee says:

    @7
    I don’t have to watch drug peddlers either,but I see the result.

    Nor do I listen to Limbaugh,Hannity,or any other propogandisits whose purpose is to intentionally incite irrationality with adrenaline inducing screeds…doled out daily to the “adrenaline addicts “.

    But their Machivellian imprint is unmistakeable,nonetheless.

    They would make Bernays proud,indeed.

  14. AngelsAwake says:

    I love Science. It proves so many things that we already knew about people to be true. Next they’ll tell us that shooting people kills them!

  15. ART45 says:

    The people we put in power are really smart and know what to do.
    ,,
    Know what?

    Any 100 persons picked off the streets in Peoria, Illinois could lead this country more effectively because (a) they would have common sense, and (b) would not be corrupted by corporate money.

    Think about this next you vote for (a) better Dem A, or (b) smiling Repub B.

  16. Teddy Partridge says:

    Torture has always been used to produce false confession to support and advance the political aims of the authoritarians who order it.

    It was ever thus.

    Nothing has changed except for America’s acceptance of it.

    • Twain says:

      Makes we wonder what would happen if we found out one of our soldiers was tortured. Would we say “oh, well, he/she volunteered”? We just might in this nutty climate today.

      • prostratedragon says:

        Didn’t the rw bloggers jump all over some soldier that got ambushed and captured a couple of months ago, Afghanistan I think? I seem to recall that they accused him of having deserted even before anything was known about the case. I don’t recall whether he’s been returned yet.

  17. earlofhuntingdon says:

    I agree that the Bush administration – and to an unknown and therefore troubling degree, the Blue Dog ‘Bama administration – admired wanton cruelty as a method of governance. It’s demonstrated by their torture and spying, their endless and profitable wars, and their denigration of the needs (eg, health care) and security of average Americans.

    As regards health care reform, Obama and his cohort keep referring to the “votes not being there”, as if they were a lost pencil or sweater. That phraseology implies a desire (that appears fictitious) that is being frustrated by faulty process. It avoids the speaker having to admit that s/he doesn’t want to implement health care or any other reform that would empower people at the expense of themselves or their client corporations.

    That phraseology is distracting dishonesty, not a discussion of the limits of process. It is as dishonest, I would say, as George Bush claiming that he kept us safe because no major domestic terrorist incident – besides 9/11 – occurred on his watch (or any other president’s).

  18. TalkingStick says:

    I agree that for a civil society the issue is not if torture works but is it morally permissible? No.

    That said, it is my view that the government is quite aware that torture produces false information. That is why governments including ours use torture. They intend to force their victims to tell lies.

  19. decora says:

    The problem is that numerous first hand accounts of POWs from multiple wars state that being tortured has made people reveal information. Maybe most of the information is gibberish, but not always. For this argument to really stick, the scientists have to explain that historical anomaly.

    But I dont understand why we need to somehow prove ‘it doesnt work’, why can’t we just ban it because it is immoral? If you try to ‘persuade’ people using logic that might not hold up, you are weakning your case not strengthening it.

    Besides, there will always be some jerk who thinks that it doesnt work ‘because you arent doing it right’ and will try to come up with new methods. But if you just ban it because it is immoral, you nip that problem in the bud.

    Then again….. if you can prove that certain types of torture do not work… it might help the movement to ban it, because you can say such and such method is proven to be worthless, therefore it is banned because it is a waste of time and money. That argument will always convince some amoral bureaucrat to stop doing something.

    • perris says:

      The problem is that numerous first hand accounts of POWs from multiple wars state that being tortured has made people reveal information. Maybe most of the information is gibberish, but not always. For this argument to really stick, the scientists have to explain that historical anomaly.

      excuse me

      there’s no anamoly, we know as a fact we get more information with the alternative methods

      what you are talking about are the few grains of accurate information you might get through torture which is dwarfed by the amount of actionable information you would get without said torture

      which is mentioned in the piece by the way, that there was more information obtained before torture and got progressively worse as they went forward

      simple stuff here and there is no anamoly what so ever

  20. foothillsmike says:

    Seems that this would constitute long term physical damage to the brain – another violation of the Geneva conventions.

  21. Gasman says:

    Yet another reason why we should not torture – as if we needed any others.

    Aside from the glaring inhumanity of torture, how do torturers know when they have gotten “correct” information? I suspect that they just keep torturing until they get the information that buttresses their assumptions. What if their assumptions are wrong? How are we served by basing our actions upon faulty intelligence? Isn’t that what President Cheney/Bush alleged happened in Iraq?

    There is simply no logical rationale for torture. It is immoral, it is counterproductive, it is illegal, and now we know that it turns brains to mush. Yet, I’m sure some imbecilic buffoons on the right will still contend that it works.

    Honestly, when I read “vulnerable to confabulation” and “difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated” I thought the article was talking about Republicans.

  22. earlofhuntingdon says:

    In partial response, the CIA resorts to typically too finely-parsed legalisms. From the Hess article:

    “The CIA’s former interrogation program was conducted pursuant to legal guidance from the Department of Justice. It produced intelligence on which our government acted to disrupt terrorist operations. Those are facts. The author of this study did not, to my knowledge, have direct contact with individuals who had been part of the agency’s high-value detainee program,” said CIA spokesman George Little.

    We all remember Alberto Gonzales’ Bushian abuse of the English language during his Congressional testimony. He implied that his limited description of one program applied to other, undisclosed program(s) when he knew that was not true.

    With that in mind, how much was changed between the current and prior “interrogation programs” to justify the CIA describing their torture as a “former” program?

    Given its patently faulty character, how much comfort ought we to take that the CIA’s program was implemented pursuant to “legal guidance” from the DoJ?

    Given the predictably false trail of information emanating from a pattern of torture interrogations, how secure should we be that the Bush (and Obama?) interrogation regimes produced the information, “on which our government acted to disrupt [sic] terrorist operations”?

    The CIA’s use of the passive voice may yield factually correct statements, but how useful are they? They omit agency, just as they omit commenting on the quality of the DoJ’s legal advice or that of the “intelligence” produced by torture interrogations, and omit commenting on the effectiveness of the disruption of terrorist actions that relied on such “intelligence”.

    Lastly, it would be useful, but not it is not necessary when criticizing torture as an interrogation technique to have interviewed the tortured. Forensic pathologists rarely interview the bodies on their slabs. But they have confidence in their knowledge of and research into the instrumentalities of death, natural and unnatural.

    • prostratedragon says:

      That paragraph you quoted is messed up in so many ways it’s hard to know how to attack it. They had psychologists who told them all kinds of american boys’ adventure tales about what they could do to these prisoners, and those people were just purportedly offering professional advice based on their experience.

      Leaving aside for the moment what that experience was, how is the nature of Mitchell and Jessup consulting with the other creeps before hand —that kind of professional interaction— any different from what O’Mara is offering through the medium of a journal article? If the reports of the article are accurate, O’Mara is not trying to diagnose anyone remotely, he is stating the kinds of results and effects that certain actions could be expected to have on any old body, based on a great deal of case study and neurological research; had he been asked at one of the several “planning” stages this thing had, the article seems to be what he would have replied. That is altogether different from asserting sight unseen that specific person(s) X appears to have suffered condition Q as a result of repeated application of bestiality Beta.

      (O’Mara might also be taking into account the various USGov reports concluding that little of use was learned from any of these sessions; the material he offers seems to provide reasons why that was so, and why it could have been known in advance that little would be forthcoming.)

      And of course, the “legal guidance” is so unpertinent in this discussion that one could wonder if Little had been subject to some stress that has caused him to confabulate, or at least conflate.

  23. pdaly says:

    From that AP article (are we allowed to quote AP?):

    “The fact that the detrimental effects of these techniques on the brain are not visible to the naked eye makes them no less real,” [Shane O’Mara] wrote.

    [my bold]

    As we’ve noted previously, I’d say that is a feature, not a bug.

  24. arcadesproject says:

    OK, so torture torture is illegal, immoral, degrading to the person on whom it is inflicted and to the person who inflicts it. Also, it doesn’t work. But so what? We must preserve the prerogative to torture, fail to call torturers to account, and allow the brutalities being committed at Bagram and elsewhere to continue.

    I fear that those who object to torture are just a bunch of DFH & civil liberties absolutists. Because torturing people proves that we can torture them, that we can exert brute force because we feel like it.

    Isn’t that what makes a nation great?

  25. Jeff Kaye says:

    It’s good that new articles and research are coming out on the effects of torture upon the brain and nervous system. One can really see that psychological torture is an assault on the sensorium, mediated by the individual’s personality and character structure.

    It’s all about breaking down individuals, and that necessitates breaking their nervous systems as well.

    But as you point out, this was all known a long, long time ago. Including by psychiatrists and psychologists and neurologists.

    I wrote about some of this not too long ago in an article: Top U.S. Behavioral Scientists Studied Survival Schools to Create Torture Program Over 50 Years Ago. More recently, I’ve documented that they are doing so still.

    From the U.S. Scientists article linked above:

    In 1956, in the pages of an obscure academic journal, Sociometry, I.E. Farber, Harry F. Harlow, and psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West published a classic work on interrogation, Brainwashing, Conditioning, and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread) (BCD). It was based on a report for the Study Group on Survival Training, paid for by the U.S. Air Force. (See West LJ., Medical and psychiatric considerations in survival training. In: Report of the Special Study Group on Survival Training (AFR 190 16). Lackland Air Force Base, Tex: Air Force Personnel and Training Research Centers; 1956.) This research linked Air Force “Survival” training, later called SERE, with torture techniques, and as we will see, use of such techniques by the CIA, something we would see again decades later in the Mitchell-Jessen “exploitation” plan.

    BCD examined the various types of stress undergone by prisoners, and narrowed them down to “three important elements: debility, dependency, and dread”.

    Debility was a condition caused by “semi-starvation, fatigue, and disease”. It induced “a sense of terrible weariness”.

    Dependency on the captors for some relief from their agony was something “produced by the prolonged deprivation of many of the factors, such as sleep and food… [and] was made more poignant by occasional unpredictable brief respites.” The use of prolonged isolation of the prisoner, depriving an individual of expected social intercourse and stimulation, “markedly strengthened the dependency”.

    Dread probably needs no explanation, but BCD described it as “chronic fear…. Fear of death, fear of pain, fear of nonrepatriation, fear of deformity of permanent disability…. even fear of one’s own inability to satisfy the demands of insatiable interrogators.”

    The bulk of BCD explains the effects of DDD in terms of Pavlovian conditioning and the learning theories of American psychologist Edward Thorndike. The consequence of the resulting “collapse of ego functions” is described as similar to “postlobotomy syndrome”.

    By disorganizing the perception of those experiential continuities constituting the self-concept and impoverishing the basis for judging self-consistency, DDD affects one’s habitual ways of looking at and dealing with oneself. [p. 275]

    BCD explains aspects of the U.S. torture program that otherwise to our eyes appear insane….

    This form of… torture may not seem that sophisticated, but it is the use of basic nervous system functioning and human instinctual need that makes it “scientific”. The need for sensory stimulation and social interaction, the need to eat, to sleep, to reduce fear, all of these are used to build dependencies upon the captor, using the fact that “the strengthening effects of rewards — in this instance the alleviation of an intensely unpleasant emotional state — are fundamentally automatic” [p. 278]. This impairment of higher cognitive states and disruption and disorganization of the prisoner’s self-concept, producing something like “a pathological organic state”, was subsequently modified and used by the CIA in its interrogations of countless individuals. If more brutal forms of torture sometimes were used, especially by over-eager foreign agents or governments, DDD remained the gold standard, the programmatic core of counterintelligence interrogation at the heart of the CIA’s own intelligence manuals.

    • stryder says:

      I’ve never been able to rationalize the ethical and legal issues in war.

      How torture is any less ethically acceptable than poisoning,maiming,starving or outright murdering,is irrational.
      It’s ok to starve the people of Irac for a decade or so with economic sanctions after propping up a dictator that didn’t have any moral or ethical issues with the manufactured lies used to attack Iran or gassing Iraci civilians or any of the other horrble things we’ve been involved with but TORTURE IS AN ISSUE.I’m glad to know their are limits.If I’m stuck in some shithole jungle or desert,I’m gonna kill everthing and everyone I have to in order to stay alive.Fuck the morality or legality.
      It’s about being in a position like that to begin with.This whole rationality has to be changed.It’s all bullshit.I don’t believe it’s the nature of man to slaughter each other

      This isn’t about torture it’s about the ability of our government to circumvent the laws they choose to for whatever purposes they choose.To assemble a group of hack lawyers to overide congressional authority to implement a coup that has shredded our laws and values.They have a road map and will do it again as soon as they find a way to twist the informtion around to their advantage.How to stop them is the issue.
      Eight years ago it was wiretapping.Two years ago it was the looting of wall streeet.Today it’s torture

      Show me someone who knows how to fight a “good war”

  27. JasonLeopold says:

    I recently interviewed Jack Cloonan, former FBI special agent attached to the Bin Laden unit, and he made these very points:

    “We know and the science tells us that people cannot recall details accurately, they can’t look at pictures, they will make things up if deprived of the bare essentials of life over the course of time. I don’t understand how you could sleep deprive somebody for 11 days and now expect this person to provide you with accurate information.

    “Even if they wanted to they’re probably so debilitated at this point they need to be rehabilitated before they ever give you anything.”

    Of course, there is no place for science when you have Cheney and Addington micromanaging torture.

    • Leen says:

      “they will make things up if deprived of the bare essentials of life over the course of time”

      And that seems like it was more or less what Cheney and the torture team were after. Some made up connections between Iraq and Al queda

  28. pdaly says:

    bmaz, I checked behind the firewall, but I don’t see O’Mara’s article in the September 2009 edition of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 13, No. 9, pages 367-410.

    Maybe today was the publication date of October 2009 and his article is in that one? October 2009 is not yet available to me online.

  29. skdadl says:

    An aside: I wish to state that I knew fatster when she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and I hope she won’t forget us little people now that she’s famous.

    • fatster says:

      Aw, shucks, skdadl. Yes, I’ve enjoyed my few minutes, but resting on one’s laurels is just not all it’s cracked up to be. The leaves smell just fine, of course, but the stems are all braided together so it’s actually a bit uncomfortable to try to rest one’s head anywhere.

      Here’s one for you (it’s almost 100 degs here, hence my interest in this). It’s got some French lettering in it, too

      • skdadl says:

        That is simply magnificent. And how did you know? I love Brittany, although I’ve never seen it like that. You do realize, though, as you’re attempting to cross the Channel from Brittany in a ferry boat, that you are actually out on the North Atlantic. It is humbling.

    • Loo Hoo. says:

      I wish to state that I knew fatster when she was knee-high to a grasshopper

      SHE? I always supposed fatster was a male.

  31. Gitcheegumee says:

    “He warned that this could lead to brain lobe disorders, making the prisoners vulnerable to confabulation – in this case, the pathological production of false memories based on suggestions from an interrogator. Those false memories mix with true information in the interrogation, making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Well, that gives us insight into John McCain ,doesn’t it? He WAS tortured…wasn’t he?

    How else could he vote to ALLOW torture to continue?

  32. Jeff Kaye says:

    Here’s a link to Shane O’Mara’s article, Torturing the Brain: On the folk psychology and folk neurobiology motivating ‘enhanced and coercive interrogation techniques’. She notes some of the same research as in my recent article on CIA torture, without, perhaps, realizing it was conducted by a CIA psychiatrist, as reported in my article — see her footnote 9. (My bad for not yet regurgitating it in shorter form yet for FDL.)

    A small snippet from O’Hara’s article:

    From reading the memos, the neuropsychobiological model seems to be the following: a person possesses information (by definition, this information is in their long-term memory – the enduring personal register of experience, events, and facts that lasts at least for minutes and may extend to decades); they intentionally withhold this information under questioning; applying certain non-verbal techniques (Box 1) over prolonged periods of time (press and other reports indicate up to six months or more) will facilitate release of this information from long-term memory by the captive. The memos do not fully articulate the mechanisms by which coercion makes captives reveal information they hold in memory. Nevertheless, they seem based on the idea that repeatedly inducing shock, stress, anxiety, disorientation and lack of control is more effective than standard interrogatory techniques in making suspects reveal information. Information retrieved from memory in this way is assumed to be reliable and veridical, as suspects will be motivated to end the interrogation by revealing this information. No supporting data for this model are provided; in fact, the model is utterly unsupported by scientific evidence.

      • Jeff Kaye says:

        Well, I glad you were there backing me up!

        I’ve given the article a quick read, and it an excellent brief review of the relevant literature on stress, as it pertains to the kinds of torture conducted by the CIA. Some of the conclusions may even surprise you (who would have thought that exposing prisoners to insects may inoculate you to fear of such things?… actually, this is the one item I disagree with O’Hara about, as there’s no data to support that “flooding” therapy on phobias like this will produce therapeutic results under these conditions). In general, the author makes a devastating critique of the thesis that these kinds of torture techniques could ever be thought effective in producing information.

        • pdaly says:

          In general, the author makes a devastating critique of the thesis that these kinds of torture techniques could ever be thought effective in producing information.

          Agreed. I like your point about the author (Morgan) of footnote 9. O’Mara could also have mentioned the damaging effects of combined techniques.

          ondelette @ 96 : I would agree. If someone is confabulating, then you would have to take anything they say with a grain of salt–if obtaining truthful information was the goal.

          Something about O’Mara’s phrase ‘folk psychology’ made me think of TV culture. I remembered an episode of West Wing (5th Season, Episode 20 “No Exit”) in which Leo McGarry confronts the First Lady Dr. Abigail Bartlett about her use of anti-anxiety pills. Her excuse for using the pills was “stress.” Airdate for the show was 4/28/2004:

          First Lady Dr. Bartlett (to Leo): I’m not going to tell you it’s a cold medicine.
          [snip]

          First Lady Dr. Bartlett (defensively to Leo): It’s not a daily dose.

          [snip]

          and then her soliloquy at 36:35

          First Lady Dr. Bartlett (to Leo): You know what this lifestyle does to the body?
          The minute your system senses stress it releases a hormone that constricts blood vessels, contracts the heart muscles, stimulates the adrenal gland. You stay in this state for about a hundredth of the time you and I have existed like this, and the vessels begin to shred.

          The heart permanently constricts. The intestines, the immune system shut down. Relieving those conditions is the one responsible course of action I can take. I am sorry it is not a course of action available to you.

          She doesn’t mention the deleterious effect of stress on one’s memory; however, at least by 2004 (if not before) people watching TV were exposed to the theory that stress causes permanent damage to the body. I assume Washington insiders watched West Wing as avidly as 24 given that West Wing was a looking glass of sorts for politicians and newspeople alike.

    • JimWhite says:

      Thanks for the link, Jeff. The concluding paragraph matches with the passage I quoted above about the damage these techniques produce:

      In sum, coercive interrogations involving extreme stress are unlikely, given our current cognitive neurobiological knowledge, to facilitate the release of veridical information from long-term memory. On the contrary, these techniques cause severe, repeated and prolonged stress, which compromises brain tissue supporting memory and executive function. The fact that the detrimental effects of these techniques on the brain are not visible to the naked eye makes them no less real.

      Our “EIT’s” are all about destroying brains.

  33. TheraP says:

    Wonderful post bmaz!

    Re:

    This root concept and knowledge as to suggestibility and contamination of information

    Simply think of Stockholm Syndrome: Where a person begins to think and act as “suggested” by captors via identifying with them. Multiply that by torture, resulting in severe mental stress and confusion.

    Seems to me the researchers have provided neurobiological explanations for a new and enhanced form of Stockholm Syndrome. Clearly, torture does not yield a subject able to freely and willingly divulge info, simply folks who assent to “suggestions”. And thus, the US paid big bucks to get the “disinformation“.

  34. Mary says:

    The other point is that becoming a torturer also is counterproductive to interrogation results.

    If you were told that it was only OK to be a torturer if the person you tortured was a high value al=Qaeda operative with significant and material information about an imminent threat, then you pretty much have a vested interest in making sure that your torture reveals that the person you tortured was a …

    • TheraP says:

      So much circular reasoning was displayed here. By those who tortured. Those who designed it. Those who justified it. Etc. And even now, by those rationalizing it ex post facto. To me it seems to be the 3-ring circus of circular (tortured) reasoning. It would be laughable, if it were not so horrendous.

      • Jeff Kaye says:

        You are assuming that there was no “rational” reason for what they did. But while I am a great believer in the power of the irrational, I also seek for cause and effect. PHR, Steven Miles (and myself) have questioned whether the CIA program wasn’t, in part, an experimental program, albeit an evil, immoral and illegal program, to run experiments on human beings under conditions of truly “uncontrollable stress”. I think there’s a good prima facie case this is so.

        Follow the links I’ve given above, and I promise to post at FDL precisely on this very, very soon.

        • tjbs says:

          NO question experimentation just like the Germans. Wall banging,crucifying (Really that hasn’t been tried before), the blaring music and the strobe sent a strong message to the population as word seeps out how insane crazy these Americans really are. To some this was their only contact with Americans.
          This is sickening to think the Chief Torturer Enabler was on the tube enjoying those Cowboys last night,just like himself. Of to Abu Ghraib with him.

    • bmaz says:

      In a word, yes. As you might recall from the old TNH days, there was a rather large false confession case I described, and a lot of these factors were present there and that was standard abusive law enforcement conduct (well, not standard, but certainly didn’t involve the EITs). The bottom line though is that this is not just torture, the weakness of the information, falseness of the information and blending of the two, which results in a net of forensically unusable information, has been long noted in even coercive situations short of torture. The absurdity of having gone to the degree of torture modalities they did is beyond credulity and the information, studies and conclusions have long been out there, even for levels of interrogation and detention below that conducted by the Bush Administration torture program.

  35. fatster says:

    O/T, but Yay!

    CBS fails to end Rather suit; Redstone may testify
    By Jonathan Stempel – 48 mins ago

    NEW YORK (Reuters) – “A New York judge on Monday rejected CBS Corp’s bid to dismiss former TV news anchor Dan Rather’s $70 million lawsuit claiming he was fired over a controversial election-year report on former President George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-era military service.”

    More.

    • bmaz says:

      I love how no matter how much they get the shit kicked out of them, the CBS lawyer always gives a quote about what a victory it is for CBS. Seriously, he and his client (CBS) may ultimately win, who knows, but to say you have won a battle after having taken a direct broadside is absurd. I bet he bills a grand for creating that bogus statement.

    • airmaster2 says:

      In spite of what ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN says George Bush was a lot smarter and more accomplished them anyone on the site, received a BA from Yale and MBA at Harvard completed fighter training in some of the most dangerous supersonic aircraft ever built. His Mama wasn’t on board when he passed his night time, in the clouds, military check ride. The F-102s he flew required the pilot to explode a load of dynamite under the seat if the engine flames out. Over 1/3 of the 102 built were lost in accidents. Flying these airplanes was on par as dangerous as a point man in the VN jungle. Bush stayed in the states to deter Russian nuclear bombers in the height of the cold war. He volunteered to serve in Vietnam but was turned down due to his lack of flight hours at the time. Bush risked his life repeatedly serving his country and is a true war hero. Dan Blather met every definition of a traitor. He intentionally and falsely attacked the president during a time of war while our own kids were being killed. Blather aided and abated the enemy for his own personal gain. Others not so powerful would have been punished or at least executed.

      • Gasman says:

        You are indeed full of shit. Bush’s prowess as an bad-ass pilot has been disputed many times. The contention that he “volunteered” to fight in Viet Nam is also a load of bullshit, despite the continued wingnut claims to the contrary. Don’t believe me, how about Bush’s own writing and his own words.

        First, check out Bush’s documentation for “Appointment of a Reserve Officer in the Air Force” dated 7 October 1968.

        http://www.usatoday.com/news/b…..nation.pdf

        On page 22, under the section titled “AREA ASSIGNMENT PREFERENCES” the box “DO NOT VOLUNTEER FOR OVERSEAS” was checked by W himself.

        That not enough? How about W’s own words?:
        In a Meet The Press with Tim Russert on February 8, 2004, Russert stated: “. . . you didn’t volunteer or enlist to go [to Vietnam]”, to which Bush replied “No, I didn’t. You’re right.”

        He was subjected to the harrowing duty of flying cool jets while nobody was shooting at him, and then did nothing but drink and chase skirts? Damn, that is nearly as dangerous as combat!

        Then he went AWOL. That chickenshit got bored with flying cool jets in the safety of the States, so he took a powder and Daddy and Grandpa let him get away with it. If you contend – as I’m sure you will – that he did not go AWOL, then how come there is not a single living person that remembers serving with him in the Alabama National Air Guard? Not one.

        As to Bush’s intellectual “achievements,” he was a legacy student at Yale. He would have been admitted as long as he had a pulse. As to his degrees, I would be willing to bet money that much of “his” work was done by others who were paid to do so.

        Spare me the “W is a war hero” crap, because he is a sniveling little shit coward. He is also thick as a brick. The dumbass couldn’t say the word “subliminal” and you claim he is some kind of genius. Unfamiliar three syllable words made him woozy. He is an imbecilic buffoon and he was the worst president our country ever had, and I hope to God, the worst we will ever have.

        • airmaster2 says:

          Your hate undermines your thoughts and reasoning, nothing you said changes the fact he risked his life in a major way. National guard pilots routinely went into combat and are in combat today, in 1968 how would he know where Johnson would send him. Bush served and received and honorable discharge., Clinton received two induction notices and managed to get someone else to go in his place goes, heads to Moscow Dec. 69 to aid the enemy. Current president friends bomb the pentagon. Other then playing a violin, what was your military service duty. Easy to tell when facts confuse some posters, the four letter writing prevails.

        • tjbs says:

          My constitution calls for congress to declare war. Hasn”t happened in my lifetime. Without a declaration of war people can be talked into invading and occupying a country for corporate profits but not defending the freedom of the entire United States.
          What’s your constitution say?

        • airmaster2 says:

          Seems to say whatever BO wants it to say, Send troops to Afghanistan, seize the countries banking system, automobile industry, freedom and health care, Forced health care payments (at the point of a gun) forcing an entire country to depend on it’s big brother to exist. Obama now predicts that it will need to confiscate 100% of the income of one Million Millionaires and multiply that times 9 to cover the deficits now projected, That’s only if you raise taxes and believe everything the Government tells you. Got to go to work for one of those —–ing capitalist.

        • Leen says:

          If you actually read the opinions of many of the folks here at FDL Few stand behind the BO administration no matter what they do. In fact just the opposite. From my vantage there are no die hard obamabots at EW’s

          I really do not get what you are attempting to say. Our country is in deep doo doo and many Republicans, Democrats and Independents lay a large percentage of our present state of affairs on the Bush administration. Granted I do not think Bushco was an example of what the bulk of Republicans are about.

          AM2 there is just no way around that Bushco ignored Richard Clarke’s warnings, 9/11 happened on their watch, they lied and lied about WMD’s in Iraq, they sent young men and women into an unnecessary war based on a “pack of lies”, hundreds of thousands of people are dead, injured, millions are displaced, they took their eyes off of Afghanistan, the Taliban regained a great deal of territory in AFghanistan, tortured, tortured, they undermined the DOJ, they purposely outed a CIA undercover agent, gave the fat cats their promised tax cuts etc etc., There is just no way around this no matter how hard you try

          Now here we are 8 months into the Obama administration..it was a clear win.
          Had so hoped that the people in the U.S. could pause and give the Obama administration a chance…We could all benefit the world could benefit

        • bmaz says:

          Hi there. If you have something constructive and on point to say, that is fine; but just coming in here to disrupt with a bunch of generalized crap to hear yourself type and annoy people here is not going to cut it. Your statements are material misrepresentations and wild jabber. And make no mistake, I went back and checked, this is all you have ever done in the way of contribution in your brief time here. Be constructive, or be gone; the choice is yours.

          To the rest of you, leave this guy alone; he has got nothing.

        • Gasman says:

          Aside from engaging in an ad hominem attack on me personally, you dodged all of the factual content of my post. Now you compare mighty warrior Bush to Clinton? That is a pathetic strawman argument. I notice that almost no wingnut dares try and compare Bush’s illustrious combat record to John Kerry’s. Kerry was a bona fide hero, but you assholes place lockstep party loyalty ahead of genuine honor and valor. How many Purple Hearts, Silver Stars, and Bronze Stars did W earn?

          It is common knowledge that Bush’s unit was top heavy with the son’s of privilege who wanted to dodge both combat and the charge of cowardice. There were Republican AND Democrats in that unit, along with several Dallas Cowboys players. It was safe stateside duty for well connected draft age men. Bush is a pussy that lacked the stones to fight in a war he said he believed in. If he had wanted to fight in Viet Nam, they would have sent him.

          Why are there NO members of the Alabama Air National Guard who remember serving with Bush? Hell, by his own admission, at that time he was a drunken skirt chaser who was the life of the party. Surely, at least ONE person would remember serving with him? The little fucker went AWOL and because his daddy and grandpa had political clout, he got away with it. Bush was, is, and always will be a coward.

          The reason you dodge the questions is because you know you’ve got zero factual evidence to back up your claims. So, you change the subject or launch hyperbolic attacks to avoid the issues at hand.

          The next time you engage in a battle wits, don’t come unarmed. If you can’t cite any facts or evidence to back up your imbecilic claims, the STFU.

      • Loo Hoo. says:

        What would the punishment be if he was at least executed?

        You’re not making any sense.

        Others not so powerful would have been punished or at least executed.

  36. Leen says:

    Bmaz “Torture Is Counterproductive To Interrogation Results!”

    Unless this is what you are after in the first place
    “they will make things up if deprived of the bare essentials of life over the course of time”

  37. Andersonblogs says:

    The problem is that numerous first hand accounts of POWs from multiple wars state that being tortured has made people reveal information. Maybe most of the information is gibberish, but not always. For this argument to really stick, the scientists have to explain that historical anomaly.

    Well, sure, some people do yield good intel under torture. Those same people may have yielded the same intel under interrogation. And some people won’t talk, no matter what you do.

    Interrogating, you don’t create the antagonism that makes it difficult to obtain intel. And you don’t risk, long-term, the kinds of psychic damage described by O’Mara.

    The simple fact is this: we deliberately adopted methods that we *knew* were designed by the Communists to elicit false confessions.

    So, either the higher ups were (1) stupid or (2) desirous of false confessions (such as “Saddam helped with 9/11″). We don’t yet know which it was. We may never know.

  38. dotmafia says:

    “Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” ~ Orwell, 1984

    They didn’t torture to gain intelligence or for any other reason.

    They did it because they could.

  40. fatster says:

    Judge grants US delay in alleged 9/11 plotters case
    Published: Monday September 21, 2009

    “A military judge here granted a US administration request Monday to delay for 60 days the hearings in the case against five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks.

    . . .

    “Three of the five — self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali — were also calling Monday to fire their legal team.”

    More.

  41. airmaster2 says:

    BO has kids that are thoroughly protected from terrorist, most of the congress and probably no one on this site have their children in Afghanistan or in harms way. How easy it is to criticize the CIA for torture in the comfort of your home . Perfectly fine if other folks children get killed and maimed for BO’s own distorted personal political gain. We are at war, what bunch of —— USA hating Hypocrites.

    • GregB says:

      To use a Republican tactic back in your face.

      You can’t find torture in the US Constitution.

      Torture is big government at its worst most and uncontrolled best.

      You are the America hater.

      -G

    • airmaster2 says:

      Saw what he wrote, guess this McGovern idiot knows more of what is going on in the CIA and what is best for the country then 7 former Dem and Repub CIA directors. Seen the news?

  43. GregB says:

    Torture makes a statement about those who use torture, not about those who are tortured.

    It makes the statement that they are perverts who enjoy abusing humans.

    -G

  44. JasonLeopold says:

    Bmaz,
    Belated kudos for a great post.

    Also, did you happen to catch Obama on Face the Nation yesterday commenting on the Durham investigation? He made it clear that it wasn’t even a “criminal” review, which is the point you have been making.

    I’ve seen some news reports saying Obama defended torture probe, but it actually looked like he played it down quite a bit in the interview. Obama’s response was in reference to a question about the ex-CIA directors letters he received.

    It was very disappointing to watch, more so now after reading this article.

    • bmaz says:

      To the extent you can believe what you read, it appears they have narrowed the “review” down to three, maybe four, cases from the 10-12 originally placed within Durham’s ambit. As much as people hate to hear it though, it is no joke that there are evidentiary problems attendant to trying these in a Federal Criminal courtroom. Couple that with all the affirmative and other defenses that can be asserted (including the one in the MCA), I still have a hard time seeing how a trial AUSA is going to say that there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury (which is the charging standard). The targets that are convictable are the higher ups that created and implemented the program and acts; if you rule out going there before you even start, it is simply an insincere and ineffective effort by design. It is not that the purported targets cannot be charged, I just am not convinced they can be convicted, irrespective of their ultimate guilt.

  46. ondelette says:

    Excuse me for asking this, but doesn’t confabulation preclude deducing that a victim’s memory is valid at all? More to the point, and my reason for asking, if someone is tortured sufficiently to cause the kind of damage that would lead to confabulation, and then subsequently is interrogated “nicely” by a proper, rapport building, team from the non-torturing TLA departments, say, the FBI, would her statements to the latter interrogators necessarily reflect fact on which she could be discredited or found guilty at trial?

    Hmmm.
    http://www.psychiatrictimes.co…..geNumber=1

    • skdadl says:

      A related question, for the psychologists and others experienced in counselling:

      Would people who are debriefing torture survivors (for legal or research reasons or in the course of therapy) run into the problem of confabulation too? That is, if the torturers can’t know how to assess the information they’re extracting from victims, do lawyers or therapists who interview victims later to find out what was done to them run into the same problem? Does the different context make a difference?

  47. Palli says:

    RE: airmaster2 and his flock

    Clear and present evidence of the insidious and enduring harm to our culture that was perpetrated by the unelected Cheney/Bush administration by their opportunistic political reaction to the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
    The fabrication & acceptance of hypocritical myths to mask institutionalized human horror enacted by individuals on individuals will continue to flourish: Nationhood trumps Humanity for the weak of soul.

  48. klynn says:

    Great post bmaz.

    Just a reminder Wheelers. Do not feed. Scroll and make calls or scroll and make a donation each time.

    Andersonblogs @ 72

    So, either the higher ups were (1) stupid or (2) desirous of false confessions (such as “Saddam helped with 9/11″). We don’t yet know which it was. We may never know.

    I would like to add a #3.

    Or, there was a higher up that understood this was the way to destroy the US’s “historical diplomatic trump card,” human rights.

    Destroying our human rights record and the rule of law all at the same, is a sure way to destroy a democracy.

    Add a costly war that drains the economy and you have perhaps a “mole based” trifecta of destroying the US and controlling the US.

    Destroyed national security through bad policy. Destroyed economy through bad policy. Destroyed rule of law through bad policy. Just seems an amazing outcome to get “so much” out of one war.

    Sure, I know, tin foil on too tight.

  49. Leen says:

    ot
    Bmaz I believe I have read you say that what Sibel Edmonds allegedly knows has been blown out of proportion. But thought folks might be interested

    Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?
    “GIRALDI: ISI—Pakistani intelligence—has been linked to the Pakistani nuclear proliferation program as well as to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

    So the FBI was monitoring these connections going from a congressman to a congressman’s assistant to a foreign individual who is connected with intelligence to other intelligence people who are located at different embassies in Washington. And all of this information is in an FBI file somewhere?

    EDMONDS: Two sets of FBI files, but the AIPAC-related files and the Turkish files ended up converging in one. The FBI agents believed that they were looking at the same operation. It didn’t start with AIPAC originally. It started with the Israeli Embassy. The original targets were intelligence officers under diplomatic cover in the Turkish Embassy and the Israeli Embassy. It was those contacts that led to the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations and then to AIPAC fronting for the Israelis. It moved forward from there.

    GIRALDI: So the FBI was monitoring people from the Israeli Embassy and the Turkish Embassy and one, might presume, the Pakistani Embassy as well?

    http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/

  50. Leen says:

    if what Edmonds is saying is true more doo doo is going to hit the fan. That is if the MSM even touches what she is saying

    “EDMONDS: They were the secondary target. They got leftovers from the Turks and Israelis. The FBI would intercept communications to try to identify who the diplomatic target’s intelligence chief was, but then, in addition to that, there are individuals there, maybe the military attaché, who had their own contacts who were operating independently of others in the embassy.

    GIRALDI: So the network starts with a person like Grossman in the State Department providing information that enables Turkish and Israeli intelligence officers to have access to people in Congress, who then provide classified information that winds up in the foreign embassies?

    EDMONDS: Absolutely. And we also had Pentagon officials doing the same thing. We were looking at Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. They had a list of individuals in the Pentagon broken down by access to certain types of information. Some of them would be policy related, some of them would be weapons-technology related, some of them would be nuclear-related. Perle and Feith would provide the names of those Americans, officials in the Pentagon, to Grossman, together with highly sensitive personal information: this person is a closet gay; this person has a chronic gambling issue; this person is an alcoholic. The files on the American targets would contain things like the size of their mortgages or whether they were going through divorces. One Air Force major I remember was going through a really nasty divorce and a child custody fight. They detailed all different kinds of vulnerabilities.”

  51. earlofhuntingdon says:

    I think the projection in some of these bridge trolls is funny. It describes the Cheney-Bush administration to a T. The banks and IT “security” firms and mercenary industries and much of automotive could not survive without the government teat. Let’s not forget every business, from shopping mall to mega-factory, that extorts tax and other concessions from government in exchange for a few jobs and the ability to leave behind an environmental and social mess when they walk away.

    Bush accumulated a deficit bigger than all his predecessor’s combined, etc. But it’s Obama’s fault. Right. Same meme, different name. Not very original.

    As for working for a capitalist, I imagine that means you have fully-funded health care and retirement packages, a safe workplace, and fair daily compensation. Or doesn’t Karl believe in providing his staff with such things?

  52. Hmmm says:

    Real shame to see bmaz’ excellent post sidetracked by the underbridger. FWIW, its line “Forced health care payments (at the point of a gun)…” is a dead giveaway it’s a Rand devotee, and has there ever, in the history of ever, been any human subtype more pitifully corrupted that that? Why no. No there hasn’t been.

  53. lysias says:

    So the torture didn’t just produce the false confessions the torturers wanted, it also destroyed the victims’ memories of what really happened.

    Is it any wonder the authorities at Guantanamo and the other torture prisons wouldn’t allow staffers of the 9/11 Commission to have access to the torture victims?

  54. lysias says:

    Who revealed that the congresswoman was bisexual?

    Is it just a coincidence that Jan Schakowsky and Denny Hastert were members of the same congressional delegation?

Comments are closed.