Over the last three years there has been a continuous outcry against the Administration's interrogation policies, including among the military and intelligence communities. A recently declassified Pentagon report sheds light on the origin of these policies, showing that the interrogation techniques used by the military were developed in collaboration with psychologists. The Department of Defense (DoD) has developed clearer guidelines prohibiting most abusive practices but it still continues to involve mental health professionals in the interrogation of detainees, making them active members of the "Behavioral Science Consultation Teams" (BSCTs). Ambiguities in the DoD guidelines and weaker standards for the CIA leave room for continued abuse and not enough accountability.

Please join PHR’s Campaign Against Torture in urging Congress to fully investigate the techniques used in CIA and Department of Defense interrogations, those who authorized them, and the involvement of health professional in these abusive practices. 

Medics, physicians and psychologists played direct roles in the severe abuse of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th 9/11 hijacker" and others.
Government documents reveal that at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and 2003, while under clinical supervision, monitoring and treatment, Qahtani was subjected to over 40 days of interrogation involving dogs, prolonged sleep deprivation, humiliation, forcible restraint, hypothermia and compulsory intravenous infusions. As Steven Miles, MD, recently pointed out in The American Journal of Bioethics, health professionals who treated Qahtani prolonged harsh interrogations and used their training as behavioral scientists to break him down.

The public record now shows that the abusive interrogation techniques used against Mohammad al-Qahtani and many others at multiple sites may have originated with the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) military training program at Fort Bragg, NC.
Evidence shows that SERE psychologists were instrumental in creating the techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Revelations from the declassified report, “Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse,” by the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General, confirm that SERE psychologists developed torturous techniques used at Guantanamo and elsewhere. In collaboration with the Guantanamo interrogation command and the Army Special Operations Command, these SERE psychologists transformed torture methods used in “resistance training” for US personnel into procedures for interrogations at Guantanamo.

Military psychologists – senior officers in SERE – helped write guidelines that allow psychologists to continue participating in interrogations.
Growing concerns over the roles of psychologists in abusive interrogations prompted the American Psychological Association to create a blue-ribbon task force to make policy recommendations about psychologist involvement in interrogations, which were later adopted by the association’s board. The task force endorsed participation by psychologists in national security-related interrogations. Mark Benjamin has reported in Salon.com that "6 of the 10 psychologists on the task force have close ties to the military.... 4 of the psychologists who crafted the permissive policy were involved with the handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or served with the military in Afghanistan..."

In the three years since the Abu Ghraib scandal, the evidence supporting PHR's strong advocacy for a ban on all health professional participation in interrogations has increased substantially. Yet much more needs to be known about what has happened in the past and what continues to occur.

Please join the Campaign Against Torture in calling for a full Congressional investigation into the role of SERE techniques in CIA and Department of Defense interrogations, and the involvement of psychologists and other health professionals.

Sources
Steven Miles, MD, “Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo 063”
Mark Benjamin, “Psychological warfare”
Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, “Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse”

Related reading
Physicians for Human Rights, Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by U.S. Forces
Jane Mayer, “The Experiment”
Steven Miles, MD, Oath Betrayed
Philip Zimbardo, MD, The Lucifer Effect