Psychologists on the Dark Side
(Originally posted at Daily Kos.)
Thursday=92s hearing in Afghan national Mohammed Jawad=92s case brought
stunning testimony on serious abuse he suffered at Bagram Air Base in
Afghanistan as a teenager, as well as military psychologists=92 role in
crafting abusive interrogation methods for use on Jawad and other
prisoners at Guant=E1namo Bay.
On Thursday Special Agent Angela Birt, an Army Criminal Investigation
Division (CID) investigator who investigated two homicides of
prisoners at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, took the stand. Her
investigation resulted in confessions from 18 military police for
their role in abusing prisoners and findings of probable cause to
charge 27 officers for the homicides. Birt=92s investigation led her to
Jawad because he had been imprisoned at Bagram at the time of the two
homicides. Her investigation also uncovered a widespread pattern of
abuse that corroborates Jawad=92s claims of mistreatment at Bagram
prison.
Birt testified that the types of abuse Jawad told her he suffered=97
being forced to stand for long periods of time in stress positions;
forced sleep deprivation; being hit, kicked and beaten; being shackled
to the door of his cell; and being hooded and shackled with hand
irons, leg irons and a waist chain while moved and in one case pushed
down the stairs=97mirrored other Bagram detainees=92 claims. She also said
that Jawad=92s claim that he heard the cries and screams of other
detainees was a =93fairly common=94 claim of other prisoners locked in
isolation who heard other prisoners =93crying for their parents and
begging for the beatings to stop=94 during interrogations nearby.
Birt testified that the period of time Jawad was at Bagram=97the same
period in which these two homicides occurred and the period chronicled
in the do***entary film Taxi to the Dark Side =97=93was the worst period
of abuse I=92ve ever seen=94 in the 2,000 cases she=92s investigated in
her
18-year career at CID.
The methods Birt uncovered at Bagram were part of a menu of abusive
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) interrogation
techniques also used on prisoners at Guant=E1namo Bay. Thursday=92s
hearing in Jawad=92s case brought attention to the role of military
psychologists belonging to Behavioral Science Consultation Teams
(BSCTs), known as =93Biscuit teams,=94 in developing and refining these
abusive techniques for use at Guant=E1namo Bay. Since 2002 BSCT
psychologists have evaluated prisoners=92 fears and psychological
weaknesses to craft individualized blueprints for torture and other
mistreatment, which they passed on to the interrogators. For instance,
a Guant=E1namo psychiatrist advised interrogators to exploit one
detainee=92s severe phobia of the dark by deliberately keeping him
almost totally in the dark.
Earlier media re****ts (see here, here, and here, and a New England
Journal of Medicine article revealed, and recent revelations from a
June Senate Armed Services Committee Investigation confirmed, that
military psychologists contributed to the development of these abusive
interrogation methods.
Sadly, Thursday=92s hearing did not add much to the public record on the
workings of the BSCT program at Guant=E1namo Bay. The BSCT psychologist,
=93Lt. Col. Z,=94 who was scheduled to testify for the defense today,
invoked her right to remain silent=97presumably because she feared
recounting her role could incriminate herself in criminal activity.
Her testimony would have been the first time a member of the BSCT team
had testified in a military commissions hearing.
What we already knew was that leaked Guant=E1namo Bay interrogation
logs=97
which must be read to be believed =97show that a BSCT psychologist was
present during the highly abusive interrogation of Guant=E1namo prisoner
Mohammed al-Qahtani. (Charges against al-Quatani were suddenly dropped
in May, some have speculated because a trial would have turned the
spotlight to the torture he endured at Guant=E1namo Bay.) And BSCT
psychologists=92 role in aiding torture has been the subject of much
controversy among the American Psychological Association (APA), which
is holding a referendum among its members to disallow psychologists to
participate in such mistreatment.
What we did learn Thursday was that, according to Jawad=92s defense
attorney Maj. Frakt, in September 2003, =93when an interrogator observed
Mohammad talking to posters on the wall of the interrogation room and
was concerned about his mental health,=94 instead of calling a mental
health professional to care for him, they summoned the BSCT team,
whose psychologist made a =93cruel and heartless *****sment and
recommendations.=94 Maj. Frakt called the BSCT psychologist=92s re****t,
which was classified secret and therefore not discussed in detail in
the open court session, =93the most chilling do***ent of all.=94
And on Wednesday, Dr. Bruce Menely, the chief medical officer at
Guant=E1namo Bay, testified that when Jawad tried to hang himself only
months later, on Christmas Day 2003, BSCT psychologists=97not regular
medical psychologists=97were notified of Jawad=92s suicide attempt. In
Omar Khadr=92s hearing Wednesday, Khadr=92s defense lawyer Lt. Cmdr.
William C. Kuebler noted that, much like in Jawad=92s case, military
psychologists have met with Khadr to manipulate him and extract more
information from him during interrogations.
During his emotional closing argument Thursday, Maj. Frakt asked,
=93What has this country come to when a licensed psychologist, a senior
officer in the U.S. Armed Forces, someone trained in the art of
healing broken hearts and mending broken minds, someone with a duty to
do no harm, turns her years of training and education to the art of
breaking people, to the intentional devastation of a lonely, homesick
teenage boy?=94
At the end of her examination of Birt, defense attorney Katharine
Doxakis asked Birt whether her resignation from the military was
because she had become disillusioned with the military after seeing
the results of her Bagram abuse investigation. The prosecution=92s
immediate objection was sustained, and Birt never got to answer the
question.
If, as implied by the defense, Birt=92s resignation from the military
was a stand against torture, why didn=92t Guant=E1namo=92s military=92s
psychologists do the same?
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