The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article on American citizen Jose Padilla’s psychological breakdown at the hands of the US government. How did the US government learn their techniques? From Soviet-era “internal security” organizations such as the KGB and the Stasi.
How a Cold War program inspired terror war interrogationsMany of the harsh interrogation techniques now used in the war on terror bear a striking resemblance to tactics of the former Soviet KGB.
There is a reason. After the 9/11 attacks, US forces put a premium on getting actionable intelligence from suspected terrorists. But most of them refused to talk. Some interrogators complained that traditional techniques that complied fully with the Geneva Conventions weren’t working.
So the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency reached back to a military training program with roots in the cold war. The program was originally designed to prepare downed American pilots and special-operations soldiers for capture during a war with the Soviet Union. The Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school mimicked the anticipated Soviet interrogation techniques. According to former SERE instructors, the grueling program subjects trainees to aggressive questioning, isolation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and simulated drowning (water-boarding). Soon, the coercive techniques were being used on detainees in Afghanistan; Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C.
Salon reports that meanwhile, at the annual American Psychological Association convention in San Francisco, the “last group of medical professionals willing to support the interrogation of ‘high value’ detainees” is poised to formally condemn the Torture Program. It’s not clear how much of an effect an APA resolution would have on steering psychologists away from aiding torture programs.
Theoretically, a psychologist could lose his state-issued license for violating an APA resolution, regardless of APA membership, which might plant a seed of doubt in a psychologist’s mind when he steps into a CIA interrogation booth. Military psychologists, for example, are required to maintain a state license.But the CIA might not be so strict. When asked a series of questions on whether the CIA requires psychologists working with that agency to maintain a state license, CIA spokesman George Little responded, “On these questions, I decline to comment.”
Still, psychologists predict that their colleagues — even those employed by the CIA — will be less inclined in the future to participate in harsh interrogations that have been explicitly condemned by the APA. “These are our rules and our professional ethics,” said Brad Olson, president of the Divisions for Social Justice within the APA. “What this whole group of professionals believes does matter. What psychologists say they are willing to do and not willing to do does matter.”
More here and here at Balkinization.
