Today's Stories

June 25, 2008

David H. Price
The Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness

June 24, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Obama: the Big Let Down

P. Sainath
They've Got the World by the Belly

Nikolas Kozloff
Charlie Black's Play Book: McCain Needs Another 9/11

Gregory Kafoury
Obama's Rightward Lurch

Betty Shamieh
Fear of Flailing: Erica Jong's "Arabs and Other Animals"

Mike Whitney
Gas Price Gouging: Don't Blame the Saudis

Andy Worthington
Italy's Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo

Bill Christison
Towards a World Parliament

Philippe Marlière
Spoiling Sarko's Euro-Show

Website of the Day
Who Owns You?

June 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
How Should the Middle East Invest Its Oil Profits?

John Ross
Killing Farmers with Killer Seeds

Peter Montague
Environmental Enron: the Clean Coal Con

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's Dying Children

Robert Fantina
McCain, Racism and the Supreme Court

Robert Weitzel
A MAD Foreign Policy: America's Irrational Defense of Israel

David Macaray
The Supreme Court's Hostility to Organized Labor

Howard Lisnoff
Where's the Anger?

Richard Rhames
Grieving Mr. Gotcha: Russert, GE and Neutron Jack

Gail Dines
Penn, Porn and Me

Tim Matson
Bright Ideas for Storms and Blackouts

June 21 / 22, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Russert Send-Off

Jeffrey St. Clair
Adventures in the Endangered Skin Trade

Pam Martens
A Secret Oil Gusher Inside Citigroup

Mike Whitney
The Game is Over: an Interview with Michael Hudson on the Economy

Chris Floyd
Torturegate

Tim Wise
The Ugly Side of Disaster: Katrina and the Midwest Floods

Paul Craig Roberts
A Totally Lawless Regime

Michael Winship
How Countrywide Leveraged Washington

Ron Jacobs
Vietnam Blues

Ramzy Baroud
Palestine in the American Imagination

Alan Farago
The Off-Shore Drilling Scam

Michael Yates
Paul Krugman on Race: Ignorant and Disingenuous

Dave Lindorff
Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists

Bernard Chazelle
Why Israel Won't Accept a Two-State Solution

Linda Mamoun
Mearsheimer and Walt in Tel Aviv

Jo-Shing Yang
Dying of Hunger, Dying of Thirst

Robert Jensen
Fear and Hope on a Runaway Train

Website of the Weekend
Slavery By Another Name

June 20, 2008

Robert Oscar Lopez
Brownout in Black Camelot: Obama and Latino Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
John Yoo, Totalitarian

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Real Arab AIPAC

Bill Quigley
The Big Lock-Up

Moshe Adler
Is Cuba Done With Equality?

Patrick Cockburn
An End to Iraq Contractor Immunity?

Andy Worthington
John McCain, Torture Puppet

Norman Solomon
Health Care and the Ghosts of War

Martha Rosenberg
Can Wyeth Fool American Women Twice?

June 19, 2008

Ralph Nader
Why Won't Corporations Take On Big Oil?

Chellis Glendinning
Techno-Fascism: Every Move You Make

Neve Gordon
Learning to Drive in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Killing the News in Iraq

Sheldon Richman
Habeas Corpus Saved--Barely

George Bisharat
Obama's Missteps

Jackie Corr
Dear Mr. Kilowatt

Farzana Versey
Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality?

Website of the Day
Trouble on the Range

June 18, 2008

Nicole Colson
Hunger and Humiliation in the Belt-Tightening Economy

Rev. William E. Alberts
The "F" Word and the White Press

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Genuflections to the Swing Lobby

Parvez Ahmed
Oil Prices, Market Regulation and the Election

Bob Moss
Judicial Warfare in Boumediene

Dave Lindorff
The Elephant in the Room

David Wilson
Bush in London

June 17, 2008

Conn Hallinan
The Brain Trauma Vets

Wajahat Ali
Chomsky Speaks: On Iran and Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
Reviving Habeas Corpus

Uri Avnery
Two Professors: Mearsheimer and Walt in Israel

David Macaray
Adversarial Relationship

Rannie Amiri
Forgotten Lives in a Forgotten War

Website of the Day
Pentagon Money

June 16, 2008

Uri Avnery
An Apology

Corey D. B. Walker
The Racial Politics of Symbols

Howard Lisnoff
Files Upon Files

Dennis Loo
2008 Elections: Of Whales and Worms

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny

June 13 / 15, 2008

Douglas Valentine
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

Alexander Cockburn
Change, What Change?

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft

Peter Linebaugh
On Wat Tyler Day

Ishmael Reed
The Colossus: Sonny Rollins, Take One

Joe Bageant
Old Dogs and Hard Time

Harry Browne
Ireland Shows the Way!

Andy Worthington
The Supreme Court's Gitmo Decision: What Does It Mean?

Jeff Sharlet
The F-Word

Binoy Kampmark
They Gassed Us: Agent Orange in OZ

Alan Farago
His Little Piece of the Pie

Brian Cloughley
America the Detested: the Pakistan Airstrikes

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
How to Stretch Gasoline

Reza Fiyouzat
Oil and Racism

Patrick Bond /
Richard Kamidza
How Europe Underdevelops Africa

David Yearsley
Music in the Rubble

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!

Ronnie Cummins
Don't Panic; Go Organic

Dan Bacher
Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds

Michael Dickinson
Jesus in Megiddo Prison

Seth Sandronsky
My Father's World

Poets' Basement
Tu Fu / Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Torture and the American Psyche

June 12, 2008

Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die

Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases

Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal

Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling: Government by Crony

Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy

Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?

Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate

Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?

Website of the Day
Fire in Watts

June 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High

Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers

Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama

Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"

Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly

Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black

Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word

Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women? My Bill Clinton ... and Ours

Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall

June 10, 2008

Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps

James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut

John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People

Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism

Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks

Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation

Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?

Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start

Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?

June 9, 2008

Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"

Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry

Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"

Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed

Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation

Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley

James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?

Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.

Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty

Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War

Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death

Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security

Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House

Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing

David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question

Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana

David Yearsley
Disaster Music

James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat

Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy

P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur

David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?

B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One

Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)

Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines

Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!

Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

Subscribe Online

How Psychologists Have Abetted the CIA

The Torture Trainers and the American Psychological Association

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

The CIA’s Torture Teachers, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen [see Eban and Mayer for a reminder of their work], are in the news again. In a front page New York Times article on the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, it is mentioned that the subject of the story, Deuce Martinez is now employed by the dynamic torture firm:

His life today is quiet by comparison with the secret interrogations of 2002 and 2003. But Mr. Martinez has not turned away entirely from his old world. He now works for Mitchell & Jessen Associates, a consulting company run by former military psychologists who advised the C.I.A. on the use of harsh tactics in the secret program.

His new employer sent Mr. Martinez right back to the agency. For now, the unlikely interrogator of the man perhaps most responsible for the horrors of 9/11 teaches other C.I.A. analysts the arcane art of tracking terrorists.

As Katherine Eban explaines what was so distinctive about this firm:

Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on sere trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror, according to psychologists and others with direct knowledge of their activities. The C.I.A. put them in charge of training interrogators in the brutal techniques, including “waterboarding,” at its network of “black sites.”

They exemplified the CIA’s humane treatment of detainees:

Mitchell had a tougher approach in mind. The C.I.A. interrogators explained that they were going to become Zubaydah’s “God.” If he refused to cooperate, he would lose his clothes and his comforts one by one. At the safe house, the interrogators isolated him. They would enter his room just once a day to say, “You know what I want,” then leave again.

As Zubaydah clammed up, Mitchell seemed to conclude that Zubaydah would talk only when he had been reduced to complete helplessness and dependence. With that goal in mind, the C.I.A. team began building a coffin in which they planned to bury the detainee alive.

It seems that the coffin may not in the end have been used.

So Deuce Martinez, so according to the Times followed torture sessions with “rapport-based” session, getting KSM to talk. They report that he turned down a CIA offer of specialized training in the “enhanced interrogation techniques,”  aka torture, not because he objected but because he believed his talents lay elsewhere. As Eban explains, that training would have been with the torture duo:

Interrogators who were sent for classified training inevitably wound up in a Mitchell-Jessen “shop,” and some balked at their methods. Instead of the careful training touted by President Bush, some recruits allegedly received on-the-job training during brutal interrogations that effectively unfolded as live demonstrations.

The very fact that he accepted employment with the nation’s premier torture firm indicates that he had no ethical qualms about the Mitchell-Jessen approach.

The American Psychological Association has a long relationship with Mitchell and Jessen. Their firm was authorized to give APA Continuing Education credits, though rumor indicates that may no longer be the case:

Mitchell, Jessen, and Associates, LLC (MJA) is an executive consulting firm specializing in the area of understanding, predicting, and improving performance in high-risk and extreme situations. MJA develops specialized assessment and selection programs for high-risk occupations, devises and conducts tailored training for related, high-risk programs, and is additionally approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing professional education for psychologists.

After the Mitchell-Jessen directed torture of Abu Zubaydah resulted in numerous false leads that wasted thousands of hours of law enforcement time, the CIA together with the APA and the Rand Corporation conducted an invitation-only workshop on the Science of Deception, Mitchell, Jessen, and their likely CIA supervisor, Kirk Hubbard, were invited. Many APA leaders were likely also there, so it strains credulity that they are not intimately aware of Mitchell and Jessen’s work. Interestingly, the APA leadership has conveniently “lost” the attendance list.

As a further indication of APA’s connection to the CIA’s torture firm, one of the five “governing people” on the torture firm’s Board is former American Psychological Association President, Joseph Matarazzo. The APA is intensely disturbed by President Matzrazzo’s possible involvement in torture as can be gleamed from these ethically-principled quotes from APA leadership when Matzrazzo’s involvement was revealed last summer.

Then APA President Sharon Brehm: “No comment.”

APA Director of the Ethics Office and APA point man  on torture and interrogations: “No comment.”

But one official did have a comment, which says everything one needs to knopw about the ethics of APA leadership.

“Dr. Matarazzo was president of APA 18 years ago,” Rhea Farberman, the organization’s director of public affairs, said in a prepared statement.

“Since that time, he has had no active role in APA governance but has been actively involved in the American Psychological Foundation (APF), the charitable giving arm of APA. Dr. Matarazzo currently holds no governance positions in either APA or APF,” the statement said.

Matarazzo’s “professional activities are outside and independent of any role he has played within APA and APF,” the statement said. “We have no direct knowledge about the business dealing of Mitchell’s and Jessen’s company; however, APA’s position is clear – torture or other forms of cruel or inhuman treatment are always unethical.”

Notice the deep concern for Mitchell and Jessen’s and, potentially, Matarazzo’s, actions expressed in this statement. Notice the (missing) promise to investigate and, if confirmed, discipline this former APA President. After all, while “torture is unethical", this former President's “professional activities” are no concern of the APA.

Meanwhile, the Times article informs us that Mitchell & Jessen  Associates is still in the CIA’s good graces. Most likely they still have the torture contract. And as for the APA, they will most likely continue to forget about the firm’s connection to them. Coincidentally, the morning before the new New York Times article appeared, a member of the APA’s Board sent out to various listserv’s an odd statement:

Colleagues,

I wanted to share the fact that APA is aware of the concerns that two Washington state psychologists were employed by the Department of Defense to reverse-engineer survival and resistance training (which is designed to help U.S. military personnel in the event they are captured) for use in interrogations. These two psychologists are not APA members so are out of the reach of the APA’s ethics enforcement process but, nevertheless, APA’s position on inappropriate interrogations techniques is very clear.

In August of 2007, the APA Council of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the use of 19 interrogation techniques because they were unethical, abusive and constituted torture. These condemned techniques included waterboarding, forced nakedness, sexual humiliation, stress positions and the use of dogs to intimidate.

In terms of active duty military psychologists being used as trainers of harsh interrogation techniques, the media reports that I have seen suggest this was not the case. Rather, these reports have singled out military psychologists as raising concerns about aggressive interrogation techniques including waterboarding, forced nakedness and sleep depravation.

Notice that this esteemed APA board member cannot distinguish between the Defense Department, the subject of this week’s Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearings, and the CIA that employed Mitchell and Jessen. Notice too that she conveniently ignores former APA President Matarazzo’s possible involvement in Mitchell and Jessens's activities and also ignores the fact that APA invited Mitchell and Jessen to the APA-CIA-Rand conference.

One also may wonder what “media reports” this Board member read which featured military psychologists protesting abuse as the main story. After all, the Associated Press began its first story on the SASC investigation by stating:

"Military psychologists were enlisted to help develop more aggressive interrogation methods, including snarling dogs, forced nudity and long periods of standing, against terrorism suspects, according to a Senate investigation."

Further, SASC Chair Carl Levin described in his opening statement how:

"a… senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s CounterTerrorism Center, went to GTMO, attended a meeting of GTMO staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from GTMO who, a couple of weeks earlier, had attended the training given at Fort Bragg by instructors from the JPRA SERE school.

While the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes (TAB 7) clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees."

If this esteemed Board member had paid greater attention to these SASC hearings she would have discovered that they revealed the direct involvement of several psychologists in planning Guantanamo torture. Col. Morgan Banks, who had been appointed a member of the APA’s PENS (Psychological Ethics and National Security ethics task force) was described by one of the SASC witnesses as requesting training in “exploitation… of detainees” from the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, resistance, an Escape) program, which administered torture  to US military personnel in case they were captured by a force that doesn’t respect the Geneva Conventions.

But, most chillingly, at the SASC  hearings, 63 pages of documents were released, including the minutes of an October 2, 2002 meeting at Guantanamo to develop torture strategy and techniques. Psychologist Maj. John Leso, a member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, and the psychologist described by Levin in the quote above, attended the meeting.

According to these minutes, the BSCT proposed an approach to detainees based upon the following principles:

What’s more effective than fear based strategies are camp-wide environmental strategies designed to disrupt cohesion and communication among detainees

The environment should foster dependence and compliance

Psychological stress = extremely effective (i.e., sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time)…

Disrupting the normal camp operations is vital, We need to create an environment of “controlled chaos”

Evidently, according to this esteemed APA Board member, creating an environment of “controlled  chaos” designed to “foster dependence and compliance” and utilizing “sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time” constitutes objecting to torture. I’m sure most who paid attention to the evidence might conclude otherwise.

Unfortunately, to this date the APA has ignored multiple ethics complaints extending back several years against Maj. Leso based upon his documented participation in the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani, Guantanamo prisoner 063. Perhaps this esteemed colleague, rather than making unsubstantiated claims about supposed anti-torture activities, will push the organization to discipline this military psychologist who is documented to have participated in abuse.

Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations leading the struggle to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations.

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