Psychologists Shielded U.S. Torture Program, Report Finds
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Remember folks, this is only the torture that we know. There are dozens of CIA black-sites around the world about which we know next to nothing. It is not too hard to imagine a regime that can torture people via waterboarding can also torture people by, say, forced heroin withdrawal and then just kill them.
Just goes to show, the only morality is that of the victor.
Mengele was actually pursued, but Shiro Ishii is (in)famous precisely for getting away scot-free in the most nonchalant manner possible: simply by releasing the data.
Cholera causes diarea, but that is about it. It is only dangerous when you don't have access to clean drinking water. Also it spreads orally.
Why I Am Not a Member of the American Psychological Association - http://www.chalquist.com/apa.html
EMAILS REVEAL CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY GROUP AND CIA - https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/emails-show-cl...
* provided the intelligence quickly
* was 100% accurate
* and significant
Even then, it's not fucking worth it. There's simply no possible intelligence that can outweigh the disadvantages. We stop some roadside IED maybe... and what do we pay for that? We lose the moral high ground, we teach our enemies (not even sure that word is right) that they have nothing to lose by being suicidal in their attacks, that there's nothing to lose in torturing Americans that they themselves capture, and we create 10 more "terrorists" in all his cousins and brothers that arguably have an excuse for what they do.
That's not a sustainable model of terrorism reduction.
And that's supposing that the intelligence is good. So there's no point in asking whether it works or not.
Torture is very effective when you are certain the subject actually knows the target information and the information is easily verifiable.
For example, I have a copy of your encrypted hard drive (a copy to prevent self-destructs) and I beat you with a rubber hose until you give me a password that works. This is pretty simple and obviously effective. The ease of verification and quick consequences eliminates the value of lying. If I'm mistaken and it isn't your hard drive, this is treated as a separate failure.
I can even see (a very small number of) morally justifiable situations in which this is acceptable.
There's a difference when you can't be certain the subject knows the information you want – or if that information isn't easily verifiable. (Where's the leader of your cell going to be next Thursday?)
It's often the case that being nice to folks is a whole lot more effective. Especially with the "death to America" kinds of subjects. Kind words, a soft bed, and a hot meal given to a person who was raised in an environment where Americans were believably depicted as monsters can do a lot to make a person cooperative. Especially if you show it as an opportunity to 'get out'. You can hear compelling stories to this effect in many places.
And if you actually don't know the password? No organisation wants to be public about torturing a good person, so they get stuck in a black site for years because they can't be easily released / reported on anymore. (this is actually what's happening - not regarding passwords, but "terrorists with intel")
1. Is not helpful or useful even if, by chance, accurate information is given [1,2].
2. Hurts our national security [2].
3. Is unnecessary. Given that torture is one of the most harmful options to pick from, it's likely there are other, less harmful options available, and if so, the logical and ethical action is to pursue those instead.
On that third point I challenge you to prove me wrong. You won't be able to, however, because we have no meaningful oversight of these practices.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867266 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868400
But I am also practical. Looking at the big picture in the long term, I recognize that people in power will face very difficult decisions. I recognize that the world is an ugly complicated place and the best leaders making the best decisions will have to take morally reprehensible actions.
If you rally against it, make absolute laws against it, enforce them perfectly with the most terrible punishments – it's still going to happen. People are still going to make those choices.
But if you are capable of even the slightest sympathies to the realities of the world – you might be able to minimize the damages.
Moral absolutes and prohibitions don't work. You don't design bridges and airplanes not to fail, you design them to fail well.
It is not a defensive of horrible acts, but a recognition of the tiniest exceptions. The arts and literature are full of these topics probing questions about ethically wrong actions being the right decision, and they have a point. Rarely, but surely. There's a wide gulf between never and almost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff
The corollary is that if prisoners are being tortured, the aim is not to get information from them.
Edit: see Frontline (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-politics-and...) or The Black Banners by Ali Soufan
Edit 2: warning on the Frontline doc, it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful.
It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know.
I think people have very strong convictions (maybe even inborn in us) about how the society should be organized, that contradict empirical evidence.
One example is emphasis on punishment, rather than on consensus or other form of persuasion. There is just another article on HN about how psychotherapy may be a better tool for young criminals than putting them into jail. Torture falls into a similar category, IMHO.
From evolutionary standpoint, this is perhaps understandable. Punishment is good enough strategy and evolution probably didn't have time/resources to come up with something better, such as more complicated systems of therapy and intelligence gathering and whatnot. Huge societies of today can however afford such advances and don't have to rely on these crude methods.
Because they're thugs.
Do "bad guys" come with special markings so that you can distinguish them from "good guys"?
> millions of lives
Please give on example where torture has saved millions of lives.
> It is one thing to torture bad guys to save millions of lives. It is quite another to accept that you have crushed the testicels of five year old boys for no reason.
I asked when torture has ever saved "millions of lives"? It hasn't. Ever. Period.
I also questioned your simplistic view of the world with "good guys" and "bad guys". I ask do the "good guys" not become "bad guys" the moment they torture the "bad guys"? Or do they have some inherent "good" that prevents them becoming "bad guys".
Some people really are sadists and derive pleasure from the suffering of others. Others are fools or are too apathetic or cowardly to do anything about it. This may very well be the reality of our government. Signs seem to point in that direction.
No, of course not.
The thing that governments find desirable about torture is that you can make anybody say anything.
That way you can get 'proof' to support your systematic (and highly profitable) murder of people around the world.
USA's various drone program is ~4000 lives and counting!
We are now having entire generations of people across the world whose sole experience of the USA is the image they seen on a regular basis as children is USA drones terrorizing their country. Not through television or images on reddit, but in the skies above their home towns.
Even if torture yielded absolutely vital information, it would still not be OK.
The fact that we still wonder about this question may indeed prove that it's wrong from a utilitarian point of view.
Also given the fact that you can't know whether the person you're torturing for intelligence actually knows anything, they might (and probably will) eventually tell you "something" you want to hear, just in order for the torture to stop. At this point though, you'll don't know whether the information is actually viable, you still have to confirm it somehow, which might be difficult depending on what kind of information it is. In case of "The weapons are hidden at X" this is relatively easy to do, you send some agents to check that place out. In the case of "Who do we need to drone strike?" it's not as easy, because you can either kill them or not.
Clinical trials of torture?
I'm willing to grant that torture will get you some mix of true and false utterances, and then I'd very much like to get into the immorality of torture.
Maybe he should survey those who were tortured?
"I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering."
— John McCain
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/John-Mcc...
What do you want? Some twins studies where one is tortured and the other isn't? Maybe look in Mengele's papers. And why do you want to know? Would it be okay if torture "worked"? It's an immoral question if the answer is Yes, let's torture people. Because it does "work". People will tell their secrets, the practical problem is that people who don't have anything to tell will do their best to make up a convincing lie in the hope that the torture will stop.
Rebecca West - under torture admitted she had 'carnal copulation with the Devil'.
> The APA official who led this behind-the-scenes coordination with the DoD officials was the Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke, and the key DoD official he partnered with was Morgan Banks, the chief of psychological operations for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the head of the Army SERE Training program at Ft. Bragg. During the task force’s premeeting communications, during its three-day meetings, and in preparing the task force report, Behnke and Banks closely collaborated to emphasize points that followed then-existing DoD guidance (which used high-level concepts and did not prohibit techniques such as stress positions and sleep deprivation), to suppress contrary points, and to keep the task force’s ethical statements at a very general level in order to avoid creating additional constraints on DoD. They were aided in that regard by the other DoD members of the task force (who, for the most part, also did not want ethical guidance that was more restrictive than existing DoD guidance), and by high-level APA officials who participated in the meeting.
> Other leading APA officials intimately involved in the coordinated effort to align APA actions with DoD preferences at the time of PENS were then-APA President Ron Levant, then APA President-Elect Gerald Koocher, and then-APA Practice Directorate chief Russ Newman. Then-APA Board member Barry Anton participated in the selection of the task force members along with Levant, Koocher, and Behnke and in the task force meeting, but was involved substantially less than the others. Other members of the APA executive management group—namely, CEO Norman Anderson, Deputy CEO Michael Honaker, General Counsel Nathalie Gilfoyle, and communications director Rhea Farberman were involved in relevant communications, as described below.
> The other DoD official who was significantly involved in the confidential coordination effort was Debra Dunivin, the lead psychologist supporting interrogation operations at Guantanamo Bay at the time who worked closely with Banks on the issue of psychologist involvement in interrogations. At times, they were coordinating their activities with the Army Surgeon General’s Office. There is evidence that Banks was consulting with other military leaders, likely in the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Task Force – Guantanamo, although this was not the focus of our investigation, in part because of our limited ability to access DoD documents and personnel. Another important DoD official involved in some coordination with Behnke was PENS task force member Scott Shumate, a former CIA official who was head of behavioral sciences for a newly-created counter intelligence unit (CIFA) within DoD, which reported to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
> For Banks, Dunivin, and others at DoD, the attention on the abusive treatment of detainees as a result of the media disclosures of Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, the DoD working group report, and other related events created uncertainty and worry about whether the involvement of psychologists in interrogations would be deemed unethical. Some in DoD, such as civilians Shumate and Kirk Kennedy at CIFA, were pushing APA to move forward with action that would show support for national security psychologists and help end the uncertainty by declaring that psychologists’ participation in interrogations (with some then-undefined limits) was ethical. Others, like military officers Banks and Dunivin, reacted to APA’s movement toward the creation of the task force with concern that APA could head in a negative direction if the task force was not properly set up and controlled, and with awareness that this was an opportunity for DoD.
Stephen Behnke. Morgan Banks. Ron Levant. Gerald Koocher. Russ Newman. Barry Anton. Norman Anderson. Michael Honaker. Nathalie Gilfoyle. Rhea Farberman. Debra Dunivin. Scott Shumate. Kirk Kennedy.
Fuck, sometimes it feels like it's all falling apart.
For example, the Declaration says "In medical practice and in medical research, most interventions involve risks and burdens." That is not the same as "do no harm."
Also, "While the primary purpose of medical research is to generate new knowledge, this goal can never take precedence over the rights and interests of individual research subjects." and "Appropriate compensation and treatment for subjects who are harmed as a result of participating in research must be ensured." and "No national, ethical, legal or regulatory requirement should be allowed to reduce or eliminate any of the protections for human subjects set forth in this declaration."
On the specific topic of the medical ethics of live donor transplants, see http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/1089.full .
"Im not going to the prom with you, cause your father/grandfather was a torturer" - sounds like something that could hit home. And goverment seems to have escaped all (self)controll otherwise.
Now how about we make a family tree of all the anti gay marridge activists so we can punish thier great-grandchildren in 80 years time. That will teach them not to be born share DNA with thier great-grandparents.
Extending such social ostracism to descendants is ridiculous though. It wouldn't deter the torturers (many of whom probably believe they are doing what is necessary) and would just lead to witch hunts. You'd have better luck with "I'm not going to the prom with you, cause you support torture, so I have no idea what other perverse ideas you think are ok".
Stephen Behnke has a PhD and a JD, and he used this amazing education to enable and excuse torture and torturers, and to be besmirch America. Shouldn't he be infamous?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-whistleblower-who-won...
It's because of people like him that we know about this at all.
He put his life on the line for us. Only he was imprisoned. The torturers [1,2] are still free.
Until there are consequences to torture it will continue to happen, and Kiriakou's sacrifice will be in vain.
Think about what the pizza delivery man has done for you, and compare that to what Kiriakou did for us all.
Consider sending him a monetary thank you for his service to you, to our country, and to humanity. I did.
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/who-cia-torture-report-george-tenet-h...
[2] http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/12/15221/whos-respons...
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news...
>Months after the ABC interview, a reporter working on a book about the CIA’s rendition practices asked Kiriakou to confirm the name of a covert officer. The book was never published, but the reporter passed the name to an investigator who worked for lawyers defending Guantánamo detainees. Radack maintains that the operative’s name was already an open secret among journalists and human-rights advocates.
Revealing the name of a covert agent can jeopardize their life and the lives of others. The claim that it's an "open secret" doesn't exactly hold water (being an oxymoron and all).
>John. A. Rizzo, a former lawyer at the Agency, says: “My sense is [Kiriakou] is not a bad man. But he did a bad thing and a stupid thing. The bad thing is that he disclosed the name of at least one covert CIA operative to a reporter via e-mail. The stupid thing is that he lied to the FBI about having done so. These are not trivial criminal offenses.”
Kiriakou alleges that his prosecution was retaliation for his leaking of the CIA's waterboarding tactics. And that's certainly possible. Waterboarding is wrong, and I do think he was in the right for admitting that the CIA used waterboarding. But if you reveal the name of someone undercover, you should be aware of the consequences. He served 23 months for leaking the name and for perjuring himself, which doesn't seem unreasonable.
1) High-level officials disclose classified information with no or little consequence. For example, someone in the Bush administration outed CIA agent Valarie Plame for political reasons, and General Patraeus disclosed classified information and got a slap on the wrist. And they leak it to the media regularly.
2) It could be that they didn't care about the leak but wanted to prosecute him and found a reason, found in his years of service and in his actions something they could charge him with.
My point is, I wouldn't take it at face value.
The soldier commits a Federal crime. The junior officer displays a marked lack of integrity. The senior officer delivers an off the record briefing to the favoured reporter.
The Plame case is a bit different, because the person who originally leaked the name was not actually aware she was covert.
He did not leak the name of just any random agent, but the name of an agent directly involved in the torture program:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/us/ex-officer-for-cia-is-s...
> In October, Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty to one charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act when he disclosed to a reporter the name of an agency officer who had been involved in the C.I.A.’s program to hold and interrogate detainees.
Edward Snowden knowingly intentionally leaked thousands/millions of classified intelligence documents to reporters.
What do both of these men have in common?
They both worked for a government that refused to hold its own criminals accountable.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/us/former-cia-officer-plea...
> In 2010, Justice Department officials overruled a recommendation by its ethics office to sanction for professional misconduct the Bush-era lawyers who wrote those memos, and decided not to charge C.I.A. officials for destroying interrogation videotapes. Then in August, Mr. Holder announced that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility of criminal charges by officials who carried out brutal interrogations in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
And let me check http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com .... still showing "NO". And that's for a man who is taped on YouTube as having committed perjury before congress!
When the government refuses to obey the law it is saying that there are two laws: one for them, and one for us.
Under these circumstances what are you supposed to do?
The definition of a whistleblower is someone who finds themselves in such circumstances. Ethically responsible government employees have no choice but to go outside the system so that the criminals within the system have some shred of a chance of being held accountable. Without names there is no accountability, and without accountability the government will continue to commit crimes with impunity.
Note that Snowden (and presumably some of the people he worked with) went to great lengths to redact names and other personally identifying information in the documents he leaked.
Behavior like his should be rewarded, and the behavior of those he outed should be punished.
How else are we going to stop torture?
To send Kiriakou $USD is to take real, meaningful action against torture.
There is something to be said for doing good for goodness sake, but wouldn't it be great if people knew that honorable behavior could also be rewarding in both senses of the word?
The reason for all this is the NSA and CIA and DCI, etc can only brute force break 5% of the Elliptical keys used to encrypt messages.
No I will not explain the math behind this as it is very long and long-winded, suffice it to say that instead of the RSA style prime key being the one-way function some characteristics of the curve also become the the one-way function which is why its harder to brute force Elliptical keys than RSA keys..
That being said when dealing with real hard bad guys and gals its often the ugly parts of military that are used to meet the treat.
This 'torture' processes were approved under Reagan, including using black sites some what 40 years ago just after a brief rise in terrorism in the 1970s.