Exposed : Abu Ghraib - Sodomy And Humiliation

[Nur]

Exposed : Abu Ghraib - Sodomy And Humiliation

 

Seymour Hersh Reveals Rumsfeld Misled Congress over Abu Ghraib. How Gen. Taguba says the military has unpublished photographs and videos that show the abuse and torture was even worse than previously disclosed. That includes video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee, and information of the sexual humiliation of a father and his son

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

AMY GOODMAN: New details have emerged in the Abu Ghraib scandal and with them new questions that reach right to the top. In his first interview since leading the Pentagon's investigation into Abu Ghraib, Major General Antonio Taguba has revealed he disclosed key findings and photographs of the abuses as early as January 2004. That’s months before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush say they first learned of what went on at the Iraqi prison. Taguba also says he was forced to retire because his report was too critical of the US military.

 

He says the military has unpublished photographs and videos that show the abuse and torture was even worse than previously disclosed. That includes video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female prisoner and information of the sexual humiliation of a father and his son. Taguba says he was blocked from investigating who ordered the torture at Abu Ghraib.

 

In May 2004, he indicated where that may have led him, when he was questioned by Senator John Warner of Virginia and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.

 

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Within simple words, your own soldier’s language, how did this happen?

 

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down; lack of discipline; no training whatsoever; and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments.

 

AMY GOODMAN: That was General Taguba being questioned by Senators Warner and Levin in May of 2004. The new details of General Taguba’s story were revealed by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in this week’s issue of the New Yorker magazine. Hersh first exposed the Abu Ghraib scandal three years ago. His latest article is called "The General's Report: How Antonio Taguba, Who Investigated the Abu Ghraib Scandal, Became One of its Casualties." Seymour Hersh joins us now from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Sy.

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: Hello.

 

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. First of all, how did you end up speaking to General Taguba? Hasn’t spoken, since he left, publicly.

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, just the way that reporters do things. I had been making a lot of speeches across the country in which I was very praiseful of his report. Amy, you should understand there’s been, what, about officially a dozen reports made about Abu Ghraib. And his report, the first one, which perhaps was never meant to be public, as the others were, was spectacular. I’ve read a lot of reports in my life, and all of a sudden I’m reading a report by a general who’s actually criticizing his peers, his fellow two-star generals -- he was a major general, Taguba -- and in which he’s talking about systematic abuse, in which he’s clearly indicating that this was way beyond just a few MPs. He’s not saying it, per se, but the language of his -- the tone of his report -- and, of course, part of my thought was that he had been born in the Philippines, and getting from being a second lieutenant out of ROTC in Idaho, where he came from -- he and his family moved to Idaho, became a citizen, I think, when he was about twelve or thirteen -- making it from there to two-star is -- this is a remarkable guy.

 

And at some speech, I ran into somebody who went to school with him, who apparently forwarded some of my comments. And I think Taguba was always interested in how I got his report. If you remember, in the New Yorker we published his report before it was made available and before it was declassified -- and Rumsfeld, by the way, has said to Congress, even before he got to see it, or he chose to see it. And so, at some point, we just started talking, more than a year ago.

 

And he’s not interested in publicity. He’s getting inundated with calls, and, as far as I know, he hasn’t agreed to talk to anybody, and he’s not going to write a book, and he’s not looking to be famous. He’s just a tough guy. And I thought the most revelatory line about him was -- he was five-foot-six when he joined the Army and weighed 120 pounds. And he said to me one morning -- I would see him sometimes just for coffee, sometimes for lunch, sometimes just to talk -- well, months ago, years ago, a year ago, he said to me one day, without any bitterness, he said, “Let me tell you about discrimination. I was told as a young officer I had to repeat everything twice, because I couldn’t speak English well enough. I got three master’s degrees, and I paid for them myself, because the Army thought I was too dumb to finance me.” And he said, “It was rough, but I worked hard and I made it. And that’s what I always thought you had to do.”

 

And so, when he got the assignment by sheer circumstance -- it was just he happened to be in a headquarters in the war zone in Kuwait when they needed a two-star general -- there were only two -- and as the Army goes, somebody saw him first and said, “You’ve got it.” There was nothing more than that. It was absolutely by chance. He just thought, “I’m going to do the job the way I’ve done everything.” And it turned out that cost him his career.

 

AMY GOODMAN: You begin your piece by talking about that meeting on May 6, 2004, that General Taguba has when he’s summoned before Donald Rumsfeld, then the Secretary of Defense. Describe it.

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, actually, he had never been in Rummy’s office -- Rumsfeld’s office before. He had been in the outer office, but never has seen the Secretary of Defense. And he’s suddenly called, because on the next day -- this is about ten days after the stories that I did, and CBS, if you remember, also published, printed, aired photographs, some of the photographs, so there was a whirlwind of attention. This was a huge international issue and not very good for the United States. So Rumsfeld was supposed to testify on the 7th before two committees, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, so they summoned in Taguba.

 

And as he gets there, Rumsfeld's military aide, a general named Craddock, who, like everybody around Rumsfeld, everybody who participated in this, has been promoted, where those on the other side have not been -- in any case, Craddock -- his daughter had babysat for Taguba when they served together in an Army station in Georgia years earlier -- certainly very friendly -- and this time when Antonio, Tony, walked into the meeting, Craddock was very cold. “Wait here,” he said. Then they finally ushered him into the big room. And there’s the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld; there’s Wolfowitz, Paul Wolfowitz, then his deputy; there’s the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers; General Pace, then the deputy chairman; there’s a bunch of other senior generals. The whole major league cast was there.

 

And as Taguba walks in, Rumsfeld, who’s never met him, says in a word very ripe with mockery, he said -- his phrasing was, that is -- he said, “Here comes General Taguba” -- no, the “famous general” -- “Here comes the famous General Taguba.” And, look, Taguba’s not a violent man, but it’s good for Rumsfeld he wasn’t. He was really hot about that -- I mean, mocking him for doing his job.

 

And then, what they did is everybody played dumb. “My God! We didn’t know.” And Rumsfeld -- it was Wolfowitz at one point said, “Well, is this really torture what happened?” As you know, the government has made a big -- this government has made a big distinction between abuse and torture, with one legal definition of “torture” being when you actually break a bone, that could be construed as torture, but anything short of that, that kind of physical pain, is not. And they asked if it was just -- “Was this abuse?” And Tony, Antonio, recalled replying, “Well, you’ve got a naked guy in a wet cell and you’re shoving things up his rectum, and he’s not dressed -- I mean, he’s not been fed, and he’s not been treated -- you know, I don’t know what else you’d call that but torture.” And he said there was silence.

 

And, in general, the game was, as Rumsfeld testified the next day, the game was simply: “Oh, my god,” said the Secretary of Defense, “if I had only known. I had no idea about this. I didn’t look at the pictures until the day” -- he’s given various stories, but “until the day or night before I came to the Congress, and nobody ever gave me any information about this.” That was his testimony. That’s basically the President's position today.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He has gotten this first interview with General Taguba, revealing why he retired and what he knew about Donald Rumsfeld and -- well, we’ll look up the chain of command after this break.

 

[break]

 

AMY GOODMAN: Donald Rumsfeld’s defense is that he first learned of the extent of the abuse after the photographs were made public. This is what he told Congress after the scandal broke in May of 2004.

 

DONALD RUMSFELD: It breaks our hearts that, in fact, someone didn’t say, “Wait! Look! This is terrible!” We need to do something to manage the -- the legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know and you didn’t know and I didn’t know. And as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press. And there they are.

 

AMY GOODMAN: That was Donald Rumsfeld, May 7, 2004. Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New Yorker magazine, what did Rumsfeld know? When did he know it? What does General Taguba say?

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: I’m always amazed hearing that bit that one of his big complaints is that the report that Taguba wrote was leaked. But, anyway, look, actually what you said in the introduction was slightly wrong about -- just in terms of who was responsible for what. Taguba did not begin his job as investigator until the end of January. On January the 13th, I think, or perhaps a day or so -- give me a break on that, I’m not sure -- January the 13th, one of the guys in the military police unit at Abu Ghraib prison, one of the guys whose partners, whose pals, were in the photographs, the infamous photographs -- you know, the pyramids, etc. -- and everybody in the unit was circulating CDs and photographs -- all soldiers have these cell phones with cameras in them -- and he just had it, and he walked in with a CD to the Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Army cops. There was a unit there at Abu Ghraib at the prison.

 

And within two days after that, the back channel, which is, as you know, not surprisingly, generals talk to each other. They talk to each other in ways that they don’t want anybody to see. Sometimes it’s Monday and, I’m sure, about golf games, but a lot of times, it’s very important. These aren’t classified, per se, because they’re very private. You rarely get a chance to see the back channel.

 

What happened in Taguba’s case is, by the time he got on the job in late January and was given the assignment, the back channel had -- there had been five, six, seven messages already, very explicit messages. He was given copies of those messages. By the 15th, the military assistant to Rumsfeld, the three-star general, the military assistant to Wolfowitz, the director of the joint staff or the joint chiefs of staff, probably the most important position in the joint chiefs, various sorted other generals with direct ties to the leadership, -- and, of course, when you’re talking to Rumsfeld’s military assistant, a general then named Craddock -- I mentioned him earlier -- you’re talking to Rumsfeld; that’s how you communicate with him in this system -- they were given explicit memoranda and details, particularly very vivid, graphic descriptions of what the photographs show. As Taguba said, you didn’t need to “see” the photographs -- that is, quote/unquote “see” -- to know what was on them. So Rumsfeld’s defense that he didn’t see them ’til right before, therefore he didn’t realize how serious this was, is sort of shredded by these back-channel messages.

 

There were exchange after exchange. I quote some of them to some degree. It was in one of these messages there was something rather explicit about the actions against women, more than has been made public, that you mentioned earlier, too. So what you have is a body of evidence that shows that the senior leadership was extremely aware of how serious this was. By the 20th -- one of the memos on the 20th was simply saying -- one of the memos said, “Is this as real as it seems? YES” -- Y-E-S, in capital letters, you know -- “Are there photographs? YES. Is it pretty devastating? YES” And there was a lot of -- actually, I should say, honorable and direct chit-chat in the back channel about “Let’s deal with this correctly. This is huge. We’ve got to make sure we don’t mess this one up. Maybe we should make it public ourselves.” All of this was being done. General Myers, actually, in one of his appearances before Congress mentioned the back channel, but not quite by saying it. He said, “Well, we received a series of messages very earlier on with a lot of details, including accounts of the photographs.” He did say that at one point. So even he is contradicting Rumsfeld.

 

But it’s a position that I think if you’re Rumsfeld -- well, I’ll just tell you what happened to Taguba. Taguba finishes his report in late February, early March. Nobody wants to read it. He can’t get people to read his report. He’s trying to get the upper echelon. That’s part of his job, is to go to the command structure and inform them of what he’s found. His investigation is not criminal. At the same time, the Army investigators and the cops are doing a criminal investigation into the kids in the photographs. His investigation is really more about the politics of the event and the overall level of responsibility, not about, you know, what you’re going to do to each kid in the photographs. One three-star general refused to see the photographs and explicitly said to him, “Look, if I look at these, then I have knowledge of them, then I have to act. I don’t want knowledge.” Basically, that was the position. Only one general, the head of the Army, Pete Schoomaker, actually read it and later sent Taguba a very kind note and a gracious note about how competent it was. But the rest of them simply didn’t want to know.

 

And again, by March, you’ve got a chain of command, you’ve got a lot of generals working for a very tough guy, Rumsfeld. They know this incident went down. They know everybody knows a lot about it. Rumsfeld has testified differently about when he talked to the President on various occasions, either late January, early February, but certainly he and Myers both testified they spent time with Bush on this. And I have two things to say about that. One, of course, is, if nobody knew anything and we had no idea how serious it is and, as Rumsfeld has said repeatedly in testimony, 18,000 court-martials a year, why are they talking to the President about it? What do they have to tell the President for about it if it’s not -- if nothing anybody had any idea how serious it was?

 

And given the fact that they did talk to the President -- and what the President did is really the crux of what I see. That’s how I ended my story writing about this. Bush, at some point, whether it was in January, February or March, was made aware of the details, maybe not all the salient details, but many of them. And what did he do? Did he say, “Rummy, I want some generals heads”? Did he say, “I want an investigation”? Did he say, “We’ve got to stop this practice”? What he did was, Amy, was nada. So inside the chain, this very sensitive, you know, hummahumma instrument of the military, everybody knew by the spring of ’04 investigating detainee abuse is not a way to get a third star if you’re two-star and not a way to get ahead.

 

And certainly Taguba, by then, knew it. Among the things he told me was, from the moment he got the assignment, he isolated -- there were twenty-three people on his staff, including many career officers, colonels, etc. -- he isolated everybody. He was going to be the point man on this so nobody’s career could get hurt except his. He was the front guy, and he was aware, very aware, of the dangers.

 

And there’s an amazing, I think, and astonishing moment in the article -- and to give you some idea of his integrity, the New Yorker has this very complicated and detailed fact-checking process, in which no matter how many times they sing and dance, somebody from the New Yorker fact-checking staff sits down with Taguba for a day and goes over everything very carefully. And this is his chance to opt out, say “I don’t remember it that way. That’s not right.” There’s a scene where in April General Abizaid, John Abizaid, not a bad guy, the commander who retired early this year, allegedly because he wanted to retire, but actually I think he was fired. But that’s another story. Abizaid is in Kuwait. He’s in the back seat. He’s driving with Tony Taguba. The report’s not published yet, but it’s done. It’s sitting there. And he says to Tony, as Taguba remembers it -- and we certainly gave Abizaid and everybody a chance with email messages and telephone calls and long summaries of what we’re doing, including to Rumsfeld; everybody got a chance to comment on this weeks before the story was published -- we are not trying to sandbag anybody -- Abizaid said to Taguba, “You know, Tony,” -- and the message was -- “the only victim of this, the only person that’s going to get hurt in this, is you, if you don’t watch it.” And Taguba said he remembered thinking then -- he said to me that “I had been in the Army then for thirty-two years, and it was the first time I thought I was in the Mafia.”

 

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who has just written a piece on his interview with General Taguba in the New Yorker magazine. Tell us who Colonel Jordan is.

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, what happened is -- now you’re getting to the part of the story that really is the most fascinating for me, that’s very -- the press hasn’t looked at this yet, and I hope they do. What happened to Taguba is -- very quickly, first of all, the first thing that happened is he right away instinctively knew that what these kids were doing, the major thing they were doing, the major abuse was this: the MP’s defense was, under the Army regulations, military policemen who run a prison -- and this was a reserve unit from West Virginia. These kids basically were trained to be traffic cops. They were given just a little bit of training about running a prison.

 

The way it works is -- the regulations are very clear. The people running the prison run the prison. They feed them, house them, take care of them. They don’t do anything else. They don’t get involved in interrogations, because otherwise you break up the trust, which you can only -- you know, you have to have a prison run -- it has to run orderly. The people have to assume that the MPs are not there to do anything but take care of them.

 

In this case, what happened is, the MPs were under instructions from the fall of ’03, when the games began, to soften up the prisoners for the military intelligence people, for the interrogators, because the insurgency was on -- it became very heavily the previous late summer -- and there was a lot of panic in the White House about not knowing much about the insurgency, hence the decision to increase the pressure and get more intelligence from the prison population, particularly the young males who were assumed to be, many of them, knowledgeable of the insurgency.

 

So the MP’s job was to do whatever they could -- keep them awake at night, the prisoners. They kept them unclothed. They kept them unfed. They mistreated them. All designed to soften them up for the intelligence process. Taguba understood that had to be a high order, but he was boxed in. The order which he was given was to investigate the MP brigade or battalion -- it’s a brigade -- and nothing more. He couldn’t go beyond that.

 

But inevitably, he ran into a Lieutenant Colonel Jordan, and he saw signs of very sophisticated intelligence activity inside the prison, certainly among some of the more valuable -- they call high-value targets. Jordan was listed as the executive officer of the military intelligence unit that was at Abu Ghraib, the interrogation unit, but he denied being that. They couldn’t find him for weeks. When they did find him, he showed up in civilian clothes, wanted to know if he had to shave off his beard. He apparently had grown a beard. He had to. And in general, his story was so riddled with untruths and mistruths. In any case, Taguba had his rights read to him. Jordan’s now the only officer facing charges out of this affair. Seven enlisted men had been charged and sentenced and convicted, but no officer. He’s the first officer facing charges. And so, Taguba began to realize there was something going on outside there.

 

He also knew, as he did his investigation and was given more access, and particularly as his investigation came to an end, he began to understand that there was a huge secret codicil going on, and about which I probably -- one of the things that interested him the most about me was I had written back in 2004, did three articles for the New Yorker, and the third one talked about the secret world, the world of JSOC, Joint Special Operation Command operations, military task force, high-level units that had no -- that reported to nobody but God, basically to the Secretary of Defense through a back channel.

 

And so, what he stumbled into, what he was really dealing with, was, as I wrote in the article, is the decision of the Secretary of Defense -- and I’m told with the concurrence of Cheney, one never knows where the President is on this, but I assume he had to be aware of what was going on, Cheney certainly was -- they decided in the fall of ’03 we were doing what they call “strategic interrogation” -- I’m not quite sure what that means -- strategic interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo. And it was decided to send a commander of Guantanamo, a major general named Geoff Miller, to Iraq to train the kids there, instruct them and set up rules and procedures for doing strategic interrogation. And so, you were bringing in some of the Special Forces, and some of the more high-level intelligence activity techniques into Abu Ghraib.

 

And it’s my belief -- so I’ve been told by my sources, not Taguba; the story is partly about Taguba and partly about this -- that what happened was, the White House, and basically Rumsfeld, was in a real problem when Abu Ghraib broke. If you have a full investigation into Abu Ghraib, you’re going to stumble into the very, very highly classified -- in fact, the most classified there -- most of the missions, the task forces, were put into what they called the SAP, the Special Access Program, the highest level of secrecy in the government -- the U-2 spy plane was built in a SAP, for example -- mostly used for technical stuff. But under Rumsfeld, after 9/11, it began being used for field operations.

 

These guys -- we now probably in as many as thirteen countries, the President of the United States has delegated a hundred killer teams, they call them, from the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC -- they have been given pre-delegation. When they find a high-value target, they can act against them, capture, or in most cases, kill. So you’re given a group of guys that are given the authority to kill in North Africa, the Middle East, obviously, also in other parts of Africa. They have been given the authority to kill or make contact on site. They go into a country without clearing it with the ambassador or the CIA station chief. This is going on now. And this technique -- some of their techniques were brought into Abu Ghraib. And so, if you do a full investigation into Abu Ghraib, you could unravel a lot of stuff nobody wanted to unravel then.

 

And the other aspect was -- sort of amazing -- was that there was another side to the photographs. As bad as they were, they did not show lethality. In other words, the MPs weren’t killing people. The killing was being done in task forces and other places, but you had a situation where you’ve got a bunch of kids, and so let them go face charges. It’s OK. Nobody could have assumed at that point that the photographs or the Taguba report would get out. Let them go face charges, because let some lower level kids be hung out to dry, which they were -- I mean, not that they didn’t do what they did. They were in the photographs. I’m talking about those -- Lynndie English or England, whatever her name was -- you remember the thumbs-up and thumbs-down lady. Certainly they deserve some time, but not the ten years they got.

 

In any case, this is all also going down as Taguba is sort of running around trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s real machinations at work. And right now, we’re still very much in the hunter-killer business. It’s basically -- my friends on the inside know these units. This is not disrespecting the men who serve in them, mostly men, because they’re competent soldiers, Delta Force, Navy Seals, CIA paramilitary. They’re very competent. If they had different orders, they would probably behave differently. But they’re there now. They’re on the border with Iran right now. We have units right now that are dying for permission to go across the border and start whacking away at the Iranians. And that is the situation today. And that has not changed. A lot of hunter-killer teams are at work fighting the alleged al-Qaeda in Iraq, many of whom, as I’m sure you’re aware, many in your audience are aware, are really Sunni insurgents -- they’re not really al-Qaeda. The foreign element in Iraq is very minor. But nonetheless, it’s good publicity.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, what about General Miller, Geoffrey Miller, who was sent from Guantanamo to, well, as they say, “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib in September of 2003?

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: You know, the Senate, in its interrogation -- I read the hearings quite a bit again, I hadn’t read them in years -- the Senate Armed Services, Carl Levin of Michigan, who’s now the chairman of the committee, this full Senate Armed Services Committee -- Democrats are in control -- he asked that question: was he there to Gitmoize. He smelled the issue. And, of course, everybody denies everything.

 

What they have to do -- Miller was just an artillery officer who -- competent, smart, smart enough, and willing to do what they wanted -- went to Guantanamo. They treated the prisoners the way they wanted. There was a huge back channel. He was always on the phone. So the subsequent testimony developed, either with Rumsfeld, on occasion, and certainly with Steve Cambone, Rumsfeld’s Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Steve Cambone was Rummy’s gofer, in the sense that somebody once described Cambone, in terms of his relationship with Rummy, he’s like the little three-year-old kid in the backseat who has got a steering wheel, and when daddy turns the car, he thinks he’s actually doing it. You know, he thinks he’s driving it, but really it’s the control was at a higher level. But he’s the action officer for Rumsfeld and for others.

 

And what happened is Miller was sent, did what they wanted to in Guantanamo, went up to Iraq, did what they wanted there. When everything hit the fan in the next spring, they tried to protect him. They could not. He retired early, definitely was very bitter about it, is not going to talk. I tried again this time. He feels he was totally left out to hang by Rumsfeld and Cambone for doing their bidding, sort of like Taguba, but in the other way. He did their bidding and got -- he feels sort of screwed. Taguba didn’t do their bidding.

 

And I don’t think there’s any question that -- you know, what happened was there was an investigation by the Army, a useless investigation. What happened was that after Abu Ghraib, all of their various reports that had been made by groups like the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as you know, have done fantastic jobs and really have been with great -- I have great admiration for what they’ve done. Human Rights Watch has been all over this stuff, in particular.

 

And after the Abu Ghraib, the government began to respond, and the Army had a bunch of investigations into some of the various allegations of abuses, including very serious allegations by FBI agents in Guantanamo, who had been complaining since ’02 about what was going on there. And at some point they began an investigation, and because they needed a high-ranking general -- as I mentioned, Taguba was a two-star -- you needed a high-ranking general. They needed a three-star to investigate Miller, because he was a two-star. And they didn’t have many. And they ran into an Air Force fighter jockey named Mark Schmidt out of -- he now lives in Boise, Idaho, or near Boise, Idaho. And Mark Schmidt is just one of these pilots who flies for a living, and, you know, that’s a building, it’s a building -- you know, no playing around. And he looked at what happened, and he wrote a report in which he accused General Miller of not doing his job right. There were a lot of malfeasance, certainly.

 

And his recommendation was overruled by the four-star general in charge of the Southern Command at that time that was responsible for Guantanamo. The Southern Command then was headed by General Craddock, who had been Rummy’s military aide, went to the Southern Command. He’s now commander at NATO. All these people seem to have great career tracks. Craddock overruled it. That had never happened before, that a recommendation that somebody be looked at, you know, for possible prosecution gets overruled by the convening authority. And so, there was an investigation into why they overruled this, which of course absolved Craddock.

 

And Schmidt, in his investigation, in his testimony, said the most amazing thing. He repeated it to me when I talked to him by phone a couple months ago. He said -- basically what he said, “You know, if you really think about Guantanamo, but for a camera,” he said, “it was Abu Ghraib.” There were times then with some of the prisoners, with the dogs, and the women sexually abusing them in certain ways, you know, flaunting themselves, menstrual blood being poured on them, these Muslim men, nakedness, twenty hours of music a day. As he said, “but for a camera, it would be Abu Graib.” So, look, the Senate right now has got a group of guys, Carl Levin, looking into this, and let’s just wish them well.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, a quick question before our satellite window closes, and that’s about this secret prison in Mauritania. The coup takes place in 2005, leading to a government that is friendlier to the United States. The Washington Post has revealed that there are these secret CIA prisons around Europe. Tell us about Mauritania.

 

SEYMOUR HERSH: What happened was there was a junta. We helped them, certainly. Our CIA and our military were deeply involved in this junta. Whether we were totally responsible or if we’re not is another story. Once the new government was put in place, Mauritania became the prison. What the President was forced to do -- Dana Priest, who’s got a very good series going right now in the Washington Post on healthcare for veterans, Dana Priest had written a terrific story in the fall of ’05 for the Washington Post about the secret prison system. So Bush, as you know, eventually shut it down.

 

But the fact is they then made Mauritania into another prison, where I would guess -- I think Human Rights Watch or other groups have identified thirty-seven or thirty-nine people who they’ve lost -- we can’t find them anywhere -- where in the American prison system we can’t find them. Some of the tougher high-value targets are there. I’m sure what we call renditions -- that is, night flights by people -- are still going on. I don’t have specific -- that’s just a rational assumption by me. I don’t know that specifically.

 

And Mauritania is a place where there is a secret holding pen, because it’s a place where you can fly in and out. There’s a very friendly government. Our soldiers don’t need visas. There was an election just the other week there. But for two years, a military junta that we helped put into power, certainly, was there. Yes, it’s -- I’ve been wanting to -- I’ve known that for quite a while. I’m glad I got finally a chance to write it. That there is a prison there, no question. All the details, I really don’t know. It’s very hard to get information about such places. But that became the prison of choice after they had to shut down the other operations in Europe and elsewhere.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His latest piece appears in the New Yorker magazine, based on his interview with General Taguba, called "The General's Report: How Antonio Taguba, Who Investigated the Abu Ghraib Scandal, Became one of its Casualties."

 

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[Warrior of Light]

Im glad to see people like Taguba exist in the sytem, willing to sacrifice their careers for the truth.

 

Aaachaye kweli huirudia : He who leaves behind truth, returns to it.(Swahili proverb)

[Nur]

WOL

 

 

America may re-invent itself, the following video makes one very proud of the American Peace Movement , enjoy the Video.

 

 

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DEMOCRACY NOW! EXCLUSIVE

 

An Inside Look at How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

 

In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty speaks for the first time about her experience interviewing Jose Padilla for 22 hours to determine the state of his mental health.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: A jury began deliberations on Wednesday in Miami in the case of Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born man accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a dirty bomb inside the United States. The FBI initially arrested him secretly in Chicago in 2002, after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement: the US government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.

 

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he was held in extreme isolation for forty-three months. The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over... He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live. His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as sort of truth serums during his interrogations.

 

Up until last year, the Bush administration maintained that it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever, but when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padilla out of military custody to face criminal charges.

 

AMY GOODMAN: On January 3, 2006, the government charged him and two others with criminal conspiracy. The government claims Padilla, along with his mentor Adham Amin Hassoun and Hassoun’s colleague Kifah Wael Jayyousi, conspired to commit murder abroad and to provide material support toward that goal. Since May, the men have been on trial in Miami.

 

According to the Miami Herald, the overall case against Padilla is riddled with circumstantial evidence. Much of the case is built around an alleged form Padilla filled out to attend an al-Qaeda training camp. Prosecutors have introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any violent acts. There is no mention of Padilla plotting to set off a dirty bomb. Despite this, prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Padilla.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he’s become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation for so long.

 

Today, we’re joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent twenty-two hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that he lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant profession of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. She joins us today in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Thank you.

 

AMY GOODMAN: And thank you for joining us for this first national interview, broadcast interview, that you are doing. How did you get involved in Jose Padilla's case?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, his attorneys called me up. For many years, I have worked -- I had an interest in working with religious fundamentalists of all stripes, actually. And over the years, I had worked with lawyers in Miami, as well as elsewhere in the country, and I guess they heard about me that way. And they called me up, because essentially he wasn't really talking to them, and it was clear to them that something was very wrong, but they didn't know quite what it was at this point. And the initial goal was for me to come down and see if I could help build a rapport with him, help him really begin to act, you know, with his lawyers to advocate for himself to help them defend his case. He wasn't doing that. And so, I came down to spend some time with him.

 

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find? Where did you first meet Jose Padilla?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I first met Mr. Padilla in the Miami detention center, where he is held under special conditions in a conference room with a double mirror. And we spent twenty-two hours in that room together.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how did he react to you initially, because obviously after being in isolation and then with -- he has not had a good relationship with his lawyers, as I understand, for quite a while, but how did he react to you?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, he really didn't want to talk to a psychiatrist at all. He didn’t want to be evaluated at all. He was incredibly anxious. I remember the first day, after about the first hour, he smiled for a moment and said, you know, this really isn't as bad as he thought it would be. He obviously was very, very anxious.

 

And in the course of the interview, he revealed to me that he essentially had been told that if he relayed any of what had happened to him, his experiences, people would quote/unquote “know he was crazy.” And he was very upset by this and very disturbed by it, and it’s just that his level of being so disturbed suggested to me that there was something more, but, you know, asking further questions, he wouldn't reveal it to me.

 

He was resentful of his lawyers. He had left the brig thinking he was about to be released. He told me that he had been given regular clothing and was actually surprised to find himself incarcerated. He was very angry at his lawyers that they hadn’t gotten him out and that, in fact, his conditions in the Miami detention center under the special conditions in which he was held were actually somewhat more restrictive and more isolating than they had been in the later stages of his detention at the brig. So he was angry with them. He also felt that everything had been established, you know, that the government knew everything and that essentially they would -- there was no need for him to be revealing things to his lawyers. And he was very uncomfortable.

 

AMY GOODMAN: What was the effect of over three-and-a-half years of isolation on Jose Padilla?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: I think there’s two things, really. Number one, his family, more than anything, and his friends, who had a chance to see him by the time I spoke with them, said he was changed. There was something wrong. There was something very “weird” -- was the word one of his siblings used -- something weird about him. There was something not right. He was a different man. And the second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness, largely. It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like -- perhaps like a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would, as I said earlier, he would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened. So I think those would be the two main things.

 

Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: In the affidavit you submitted to the court summarizing your examination of him, you also talk about the things he did say that happened to him, the sleeping on a steel bed with no mattress for all that time that he was isolated?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes. In the darkness or in the light -- in the cells, the light would be all dark for a long time or all light for a long time. And for a very long part of his detention he had no mattress at all. And sometimes he would try to sleep on the pallet, if you will, the hard steel pallet, or other times he would be in essentially stress positions where he's got shackles and a belt and is in an awkward and uncomfortable position for long periods at a time.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: What other things did he say, tell you, were done to him?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I think one of the things you have to realize is he was adamant that he would not reveal any quote/unquote “classified information.” He in fact refused to provide a narrative of his account. He essentially -- on the second day, after spending four hours on the Monday and we developed some rapport, on the second day I brought him in a list of materials and interrogation tactics that had been already -- you know, they were in the public record. And I asked him just merely to say yes or no to some of these things. And this included slapping, exposure to heat or cold for long periods of time, forcible showering. He was terrified, actually, about being taken to a thing called the “cage.” This was supposedly “recreation” -- I’d like to put that in quotes. He spoke about the lack of sleep, the relentless clicking and then banging of the doors of other cells that would wake him up.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. Wasn't he alone in the Naval brig?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes, he was. In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically. And between what Mr. Padilla told us and other sources, essentially it’s possible to open and close these doors electronically. And he would hear the click of the door opening, which is a loud click that sort of echoed, and then a very loud bang over and over and over again for hours at a time, possibly days. He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn't see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Did he recognize you when you returned the next day?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Oh, yes. Yes, he did. But he did have some memory problems, in that by about the fourth day, I asked him, “Can you just give me” -- he had been very clear that there was a particularly bad time, and then there was a somewhat better time, and then after he had access to counsel things improved somewhat. And he really was unable to give me any kind of -- beyond the most broadest brush strokes, he was unable to put anything in any kind of a chronological narrative at all. He was very, what we would call it in psychiatry, “concrete.” You would ask him, you know, how did you feel about something, or what have you, and he would generally resort to cliches. He seemed to have a great deal of difficulty recalling precise personal details about the interrogations or the experiences or particular incidents. He wouldn't know when they happened or how long they lasted, and so forth.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and then we’re going to come back. We’re talking to Dr. Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist, spent twenty-two hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. This is the first time she is speaking out on a national broadcast about her assessment of Jose Padilla. His case is now before a jury in Florida. Stay with us.

 

[break]

 

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist who spent more than twenty-two hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year. She’s an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. Jose Padilla's case is before a Florida jury right now. Juan?

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, I’d like to ask you about some of the assessments by folks other than you in his case. I understand there was a Bureau of Prisons medical person who interviewed him and also concluded that he had mental problems, but that they really were not severe. And I think the judge, as well, in the case at one point acknowledged that he had some mental problems, but said that they should not be considered, the causes of them, as part of the process of the trial. Your sense of some of these other assessments?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Certainly. Well, first of all, there’s a big distinction between the diagnosis of a psychiatric or mental illness, on the one hand, and finding of legal incapacity to proceed with trial. That’s a legal term, and there are legal standards based on case law. And, of course, the judge relied on the legal standards and concluded that the defense had not met its burden in proving that he lacked capacity.

 

Now, of course, each interview that different people have is incredibly sensitive to a number of factors: the context, who the person is, their style, their interviewing techniques, their experience, and also, most importantly, who they are to the interviewee or the defendant, in this case. And, of course, from reading Dr. Buigas's report it’s clear that --

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: He’s from the Bureau of Prisons.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: That's right. It was clear that he saw perhaps a different side of the defendant. Perhaps the defendant, Mr. Padilla, reacted somewhat differently to him. He was a government doctor. Dr. Buigas actually interviewed him in his own office, whereas defense experts had to use this conference room with the double mirror. So the whole interview occurred in a very different context. And that’s why we have adversarial hearings, where one group of experts will go and put their case and then the other group of experts, and then the finder of fact or the judge, in this case, decides.

 

But, yes, he agreed that he did have some psychiatric or psychological problems, but that they weren't as severe as those the defense had seen. Part of the problem, though, with that -- and I want to add this -- is that Mr. Padilla was really very reluctant to cooperate. In fact, he refused to finish the psychological testing that I was administering and also what Dr. Zapf administered, because -- so essentially he wasn't exactly the easiest person to elicit the kind of clinical information we need.

 

AMY GOODMAN: What about the findings that he was, well, the equivalent, after his experience of three-and-a-half years in severe isolation and what happened to him during that period, of brain-damaged?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, during my time with him, some of his reasoning seemed somewhat impaired, some of his thinking seemed impaired, his memory certainly, his ability to pay attention seemed very impaired. I developed a differential diagnosis from this: severe anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder can do that. But also, we know from really basic neuroscience studies that extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time -- and I’m talking, you know, the studies are on maybe days or weeks, and he had extreme isolation for years -- really do, in fact, impair higher brain function. And I recommended that we get some neuropsychological testing. And, unfortunately, he wasn't able to fully cooperate with that. However, the testing we did do was consistent with brain damage, yes.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Brain damage.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: And have you dealt with someone who had been in isolation for such a long period of time before?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: No. This was the first time I ever met anybody who had been isolated for such an extraordinarily long period of time. I mean, the sensory deprivation studies, for example, tell us that without sleep, especially, people will develop psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, suicidality within days. And here we had a man who had been in this situation, utterly dependent on his interrogators, who didn't treat him all that nicely, for years. And apart from -- the only people I ever met who had such a protracted experience were people who were in detention camps overseas, that would come close, but even then they weren't subjected to the sensory deprivation. So, yes, he was somewhat of a unique case in that regard.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m thinking -- at one point in your affidavit, you talk about how he said that he felt at one point that a huge weight was crushing down on his chest. Did he --

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Explain that a little bit.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, he thought he was having a heart attack, and he’s a young, healthy man. Now, one possibility is, yes, he was having a heart attack. Certainly with the kind of adrenaline that would be surging through his body, whether from what we call internal stimuli -- hallucinations, panic, paranoia, and so forth -- or as a result of what else was going on, it’s not unreasonable. However, more likely, he also felt his life was slipping away, he was going to die, and this actually is almost a textbook description of a major panic attack, which, if anybody has had one, the word “panic” doesn't quite capture how terrible it is. You really feel like you’re dying.

 

And so, his perceptions of what was happening to him and himself, which is one of the most terrifying aspects, was really difficult to assess. For example, he reported very clearly that he had been given mind-altering drugs. And again, that is realistically, unfortunately, one serious hypothesis. However, another serious hypothesis --

 

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? Given by who?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: By the government.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Drugged.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Drugged, yes. And clearly he had some terrible frightening experience to which he attributed these drugs. However, again, his -- given what sensory deprivation and isolation of this scale does, it’s also entirely possible that he wasn't given drugs, and it’s just the psychiatric effects of the isolation and the sensory deprivation, because the hallucinations can be incredibly vivid. People feel like they’re losing their minds, that they’re coming apart. It’s absolutely terrifying.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We’re interviewing Dr. Angela Hegarty, who is a forensic psychiatrist who saw Jose Padilla for more than twenty-two hours. The new Army Field Manual bars the use of isolation to achieve psychological disorientation through sensory deprivation. The manual states, “Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, as well as bizarre thoughts, depression, anti-social behavior. Detainees will not be subject to sensory deprivation.” But you say he was.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Without question.

 

AMY GOODMAN: How afraid was Jose Padilla?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: How to capture that in an apt metaphor? He was terrified. For him, the government was all-powerful. The government knew everything. The government knew everything that he was doing. His interrogators would find out every little detail that he revealed. And he would be punished for it.

 

He was convinced that -- I mean, I think in words he endorsed -- even if he won his case, he lost, because he was going back to the brig if he managed to prevail at trial. And essentially, if hypothetically one were to offer him a really long prison sentence versus -- with a guarantee that he wouldn't go back to the brig -- versus risking going back to the brig, the chance that he might go back to the brig, he would take the prison sentence for a very long period of time. I think he would take almost anything rather than go back to that brig.

 

AMY GOODMAN: What happened in the brig?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed.

 

And essentially, like many abuse victims, whether it’s torture survivors or battered women or even children who are abused by parents, as long as the parents or the abuser is in control in their minds, essentially they identify with the primary aims of the abuser. And all abusers, whoever they are, have one absolute requirement, and that is that you keep their secret. I mean, it’s common knowledge that people who abuse children or women will say, “Look at what you made me do,” putting the blame on the victim, trying to instill guilt. “People will judge you. People will think you’re crazy if you tell them about this. You will be an enemy. You will be seen as an enemy. You will be seen as a bad person if this comes out. There will be dire and terrible consequences, not only for you.” Jose was very, very concerned that if torture allegations were made on his behalf, that somehow it would it interfere with the government's ability to detain people at Guantanamo, and this was something he couldn't sign onto. He was very identified with the goals of the government.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Did he talk at all with you about his family and his concerns about what might happen to his family?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes. Essentially, when Mr. Padilla would talk about emotionally meaningful events or feelings, it would always be almost by accident. And he worried that his mother would be -- her life would be somehow derailed by this. He told people that his family had been threatened. His family was terrified. So, again, always the tip of the iceberg with Mr. Padilla. He was very afraid for his family.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Jacoby statement, declaration, and why the Bush administration did not want him to see attorneys?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, there was a quote in the Jacoby declaration that caught my attention as a forensic psychiatrist. And that -- essentially it says that the purpose of keeping Mr. Padilla isolated was to foster a sense of dependence on his interrogators and to essentially foreclose in his mind utterly any hope of rescue. And it makes reference to the fact that, given that people who have had contact with the criminal justice system will expect to see an attorney and be rescued by an attorney, they want to essentially disabuse him of the notion that he will ever be rescued. They want him to believe that he is in their power forever. And I believe, in a sense, they succeeded.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: What does all of this do to our notions or expectation of how the criminal justice system is supposed to operate in this country?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, essentially, based on the Jacoby memorandum, it’s -- you know, almost it’s a cultural cliche. You know, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. Essentially, what happened to Mr. Padilla was designed to reassure him that this was not in fact the case. The things we take for granted as American citizens, that we will not get off a plane and be spirited away for years at the hands of harsh interrogators, that that can happen in America.

 

And as a citizen myself, I find it very disturbing, especially in the light of the mistakes that have been made over the years. I recall a case of an attorney who was misidentified from the West Coast, and he had had a very tough experience as a result. And so, the possibility that an innocent -- that this could happen to an innocent person, a person perhaps who is merely known to somebody who themselves perhaps are being tortured -- you know, their name might come up in such a circumstance -- could actually be spirited away and entirely deprived of their human rights, their rights as human beings, their ordinary dignity, is disturbing.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Angela Hegarty, we are headed to San Francisco today. Today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, Monday is the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. You’re a psychiatrist. But that’s the group of 150,000 psychologists. And they are having a showdown right now. A vote will happen on Sunday, whether the APA will take a position against the involvement of its members, of psychologists, in coercive interrogations, in, what many psychologists are saying, torture. There is a massive protest taking place tomorrow at 4:00 outside the Moscone Center. There will be a track of debates inside the conference. Unfortunately, we wanted to record these debates, and the APA is now saying that there will be no video recording of discussions between the psychologists, public discussions, where military psychologists debate others around the issue of whether psychologists should be involved in these interrogations. What are your thoughts? And what position has your organization, the American Psychiatric Association, taken?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, the American Psychiatric Association principles of ethics essentially follow the AMA’s, which is --

 

AMY GOODMAN: American Medical Association.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: American Medical Association, yes -- is, no psychiatrist is involved in torture ever under any circumstances. Period. Torture -- there is no caveat that opens up the possibility by mentioning the Bush administration's qualifications on the definition of “torture.”

 

That the psychologists are protesting and debating this is great news. Clinicians -- our entire professional identity is clinicians. And if psychologists -- psychologists certainly see themselves as clinicians, people who care for people. Our entire professional identity as people who help people is obviated by such involvement. And I entirely disagree with any caveat that would allow a clinician to be involved in torture at any time.

 

AMY GOODMAN: What about the argument that those who don't want the moratorium are making, and especially high-level staff of the American Psychological Association, that for psychologists to be there is to bring ethics to the situation, to explain what is going too far?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, you know, I asked Mr. Padilla about that. He’d said that there were some decent people that he had come in contact with, you know, over the -- especially in the latter part of his stay at the brig. And I asked him, I said, “You know, if I were in a situation like this as a clinician and I abhor what’s being done to you, would you want me to stay, knowing that there’s somebody who cares about you, who’s ideally, hopefully, ethical? Or would you -- albeit powerless -- or would you want me to leave?” And he actually gave me one of the first and only immediate and straightforward and direct answers: he would want me to leave. He would not want me there, because for him my presence endorses what’s going on, even though, as I said, in my scenario I would be powerless to do anything to change it.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: And did he talk about having interactions with medical people, either doctors, psychiatrists or psychologists, while in custody?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: No, he just mentioned staff, in general. He had some interactions with some kind of clinical staff around medication and evaluations, but it’s unclear to me what their credentials were.

 

AMY GOODMAN: So you don't know if psychiatrists or psychologists were involved.

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Oh, I know that some mental health professionals were involved, but -- by the way this was designed -- the sensory deprivation, especially, the leaving and taking of stimuli from his environment. For example, there was a mirror that was there, and then that was taken away abruptly, or he’d have a pillow or a sheet or something that made him a little more comfortable, and that would be taken away. One of the things that came out in the course of my evaluation was, he was required to sign his name John Doe. This kind of thing and the whole notion of dependency and the cultivation of dependency, the impact of sleep deprivation, stress positions, all of that was so coordinated it’s impossible for me to imagine that at least at some phase there wasn't some mental health professionals involved.

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what was the reason for wanting to have him sign his name John Doe?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: He’s no longer a person. He’s no longer an individual. There will be no record that he was ever there, that the interrogators -- this is from my knowledge of torture around the world -- that the interrogators essentially will be absolutely immune to any accountability.

 

AMY GOODMAN: After having met with him for twenty-two hours, as we wrap up, Dr. Hegarty, your conclusions about his case, Jose Padilla’s case, as it stands now before a jury in a Florida court?

 

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: You know, I don't know if he’s guilty or not of the charges that they brought against him, but he has certainly paid -- already, before he was ever found guilty, he has already paid a tremendous price for his trip to the Middle East.

 

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, one of the forensic psychiatrists who met Jose Padilla, one of the very few, speaking out now for the first time. Twenty-two hours she interviewed him.

[Sharmarkee]

Salaam, Brother Nur,

 

Matterof factly I cannot read all the above reports and inside stories not to mention also how its not fair to my daily job reading such anaysis, my question ya Shiekh Nur, did you see the Uited of America or USA as they call it, is a typicaly on same path and road like their predecessor of Roman Empire - the end game is near, the end game is near ,,,, "Wa Lilahi fi Khalqihi Shuun"

 

Your quite good insight is much apperciated,and till you deliver we remain, Lol

[Nur]

Britain: Foreign Office colludes with US to cover-up torture of Binyam Mohamed

 

By Robert Stevens

 

February 07, 2009 "WSWS" -- A High Court ruling by two British judges regarding the torture of a Guantánamo detainee has unleashed a major political crisis.

 

The judges have stated that they have been pressured by the United States into concealing evidence that should be made available in any country governed by the rule of law. This took the form of threats to withdraw security cooperation, instigated under the Bush administration and continued under Barak Obama's presidency.

 

Binyam Mohamed, 30, is currently in Guantánamo Bay but is reportedly being prepared for a return to the UK. He states that he was tortured by US agents in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, and that Britain's security agencies were complicit.

 

The High Court judgment on February 4 refused to order the disclosure of the CIA dossier said to contain evidence of his abuse. The document is a report by the US government to the British security services. The ruling followed a submission by the UK Foreign Office.

 

While calling for the document to be made public, the judges stated that it was not presently in the public interest to publish it, as the US government could "inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains".

 

The joint judgment by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones registered its concern that the document remained secret. "In the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States it was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported, as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters".

 

The judgment continued, "Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials...relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be".

 

The ruling stated that the High Court had been informed by lawyers for the Foreign Secretary David Miliband that a threat to withdraw security cooperation remained under the Obama administration. The court said of the Foreign Office submissions, "We have however been informed by counsel for the foreign secretary that the position has not changed. Our current understanding is therefore that the position remains the same even after the making of executive orders by President Obama on 22 January 2009".

 

This refers to the recent executive orders signed by Obama to close down the Guantánamo Bay prison camp within a year and to review the military trials for alleged terrorist suspects.

 

The British government has denied that the US government threatened to break off security intelligence cooperation. Miliband said that he would not demand that Obama intervene in the case, stating, "I am not going to join a lobbying campaign against the American government for this decision".

 

Miliband's account has been flatly contradicted by BBC reporter Jonathan Beale, who said that he had been informed in Washington by a former Bush administration official who dealt with Guantánamo Bay that US intelligence agencies did tell the UK that they opposed the release of certain US intelligence without their consent.

 

On February 5, Channel 4 News documented the contents of confidential letters from the US State Department to the UK Foreign Office. One of the letters was dated August 21, 2008, and read, "The public disclosure of these documents or of the information contained therein is likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence information-gathering arrangements between our two countries".

 

A further letter sent a week later said, "Ordering the disclosure of the US intelligence information now would have only the marginal effects of serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence sharing relationship, and thus the national security of the United Kingdom".

 

Opposition politicians have demanded a full explanation from government ministers regarding the allegations that Britain was complicit in torture. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader said, "If British ministers were complicit in any way in the use of torture, or helped the US authorities to cover it up, they could face consequences in the International Criminal Court".

 

David Davis, a Conservative Party opposition MP who has projected himself as a champion of democratic rights said, "The judge rules that there is a strong public interest that this information is put in the public domain even though it is politically embarrassing".

 

Davis said US interference in the judicial process in Britain "is completely beyond the rule of law.... All the rumours are that it actually does show some degree of complicity by the UK and US governments. The question has come about that one of our agencies—MI5, MI6, whoever—have known about torture being used against people like that, has used information arising from torture, all of those sorts of issues".

 

Mohamed, an Ethiopian national resident in the UK for seven years, was arrested in Pakistan as he was about to board a flight to Britain in April 2002. Mohamed said that he had gone to Afghanistan to attempt to escape from and deal with a drug problem. He was accused by the United States of travelling to Afghanistan in May 2001 and attending "terror training camps".

 

He became a victim of the US government's notorious policy of "extraordinary rendition" and was forcibly transferred from one country to another on three occasions, without reference to a court of law. He was questioned in Pakistan and subjected to torture there and in Morocco and Afghanistan. In Morocco he was subjected to prolonged torture for a period of 18 months. The American Civil Liberties Union website reports that "his interrogators routinely beat him, sometimes to the point of losing consciousness, and he suffered multiple broken bones. During one incident, Mohamed was cut 20 to 30 times on his genitals. On another occasion, a hot stinging liquid was poured into open wounds on his penis as he was being cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death. He was forced to listen to loud music day and night, placed in a room with open sewage for a month at a time and drugged repeatedly".

 

The Bagram Theater Internment Facility is a US detention facility located at an air base in Afghanistan. At Bagram, Mohamed was forced to write a 20-page statement that detailed his relationship with alleged terrorist Jose Padilla. Included in the document were details of how he and Padilla went to Afghanistan together, and how they planned to go to the United States to detonate a "dirty bomb". Mohamed has always maintained that these "confessions" were extracted on the basis of torture.

 

He was taken from Bagram on September 19, 2004, and moved to Guantánamo, where he has spent more than four years. Mohamed was charged under President Bush's military order and was told he would face trial by a military commission. In November 2005 he was charged with conspiracy on the basis of his confessions. Mohamedmade a statement denouncing the commission as illegitimate. Following a ruling by the US Supreme Court that the president lacked the constitutional authority to create military commissions, proceedings against Mohamed were halted. He could have faced the death penalty.

 

Mohamed's lawyer had said that that all a trial by military commission would produce "is evidence not of terrorism, but of torture.... I have seen not one shred of evidence against him that was not tortured out of him. We know the British talked to Binyam [Mohamed] in Pakistan, told him he was to be rendered and gave information to the US that was used in his torture in Morocco".

 

Last July his lawyers filed a petition in a UK court declaring that the Foreign Office should be compelled to turn over the evidence of his abuse. In August the High Court concluded that the British security services had facilitated the original interrogation of Mohamed in Pakistan and that he was seen by British agents whilst in detention. The court established that British security service provided information about Mohamed and interrogation questions having full knowledge of the conditions of his detention and treatment.

 

The court stated that much of the case against Mohamed was believed to have been based on confessions made in Bagram between May and September 2004, and in Guantánamo Bay before November 2004. Judges ruled that the Foreign Office should disclose this material as "not only necessary but essential for his defence".

 

In August 2007, Foreign Secretary Miliband requested that the US government release Mohamed and four other UK residents at Guantánamo. The US released three of the men, but refused to release Mohamed and Saudi-born Shaker Aamer. In June last year the US military announced they were formally charging Mohamed. These charges were dropped in October.

 

In the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has brought a case against a subsidiary of the Boeing Company, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the firm of aiding in rendition flights that carried Mohamed and others to torture. The case was dismissed in a San Francisco court last year after the Bush administration asserted its "state secrets privilege". An appeal to this decision is expected to come before the court next week.

 

Supporters of Mohamed in Britain have demanded that he is moved immediately from the maximum security prison Camp 5 in Guantánamo due to the risk to his mental and physical health. He is said to have smeared faeces over his cell walls and spent days in the cell with his water supply cut off. His lawyer states he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

 

The case of Binyam Mohamed reveals the extent to which basic democratic and legal norms have been overturned in the name of the "war on terror". There is a growing body of evidence revealing collusion between the UK and US governments in the suppression and erosion of democratic rights, using criminal practises including humiliation, abuse, torture and extraordinary rendition. It has been used as a pretext for waging illegal wars abroad and for attacking established constitutional rights at home.

 

It also demonstrates that while signing the order to close Guantánamo and promising to review the ongoing military trials, the Obama regime intends to preserve the essential elements of the "war on terror", including the suppression of evidence of torture and other nefarious activity.