The Torture of Jose Padilla: Part One

by hilzoy

Some stories are hard for me to write about. One appeared last month, and then again last week: the story of the torture of Jose Padilla. Much of the description of his treatment comes from a brief (pdf) filed by Padilla's attorneys last October. I've transcribed the part of the brief that describes Padilla's treatment below the fold, along with some further remarks.

From the brief:

"In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla’s "dependency and trust," he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live. The base ingredient in Mr. Padilla’s torture was stark isolation for a substantial portion of his captivity. For nearly two years – from June 9, 2002 until March 2, 2004, when the Department of Defense permitted Mr. Padilla to have contact with his lawyers – Mr. Padilla was in complete isolation. Even after he was permitted contact with counsel, his conditions of confinement remained essentially the same.
He was kept in a unit comprising sixteen individual cells, eight on the upper level and eight on the lower level, where Mr. Padilla’s cell was located. No other cells in the unit were occupied. His cell was electronically monitored twenty-four hours a day, eliminating the need for a guard to patrol his unit. His only contact with another person was when a guard would deliver and retrieve trays of food and when the government desired to interrogate him.

His isolation, furthermore, was aggravated by the efforts of his captors to maintain complete sensory deprivation. His tiny cell – nine feet by seven feet – had no view to the outside world. The door to his cell had a window, however, it was covered by a magnetic sticker, depriving Mr. Padilla of even a view into the hallway and adjacent common areas of his unit. He was not given a clock or a watch and for most of the time of his captivity, he was unaware whether it was day or night, or what time of year or day it was.

In addition to his extreme isolation, Mr. Padilla was also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr. Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress. The pain and discomfort of sleeping on a cold, steel bunk made it impossible for him to sleep. Mr. Padilla was not given a mattress until the tail end of his captivity. Mr. Padilla's captors did not solely rely on the inhumane conditions of his living arrangements to deprive him of regular sleep. A number of ruses were employed to keep Mr. Padilla from getting necessary sleep and rest. One of the tactics his captors employed was the creation of loud noises near and around his cell to interrupt any rest Mr. Padilla could manage on his steel bunk. As Mr. Padilla was attempting to sleep, the cell doors adjacent to his cell would be electronically opened, resulting in a loud clank, only to be immediately slammed shut. Other times, his captors would bang the walls and cell bars creating loud startling noises. These disruptions would occur throughout the night and cease only in the morning, when Mr. Padilla's interrogations would begin.

Efforts to manipulate Mr. Padilla and break his will also took the form of the denial of the few benefits he possessed in his cell. For a long time Mr. Padilla had no reading materials, access to any media, radio or television, and the only thing he possessed in his room was a mirror. The mirror was abruptly taken away, leaving Mr. Padilla with even less sensory stimulus. Also, at different points in his confinement Mr. Padilla would be given some comforts, like a pillow or a sheet, only to have them taken away arbitrarily. He was never given any regular recreation time. Often, when he was brought outside for some exercise, it was done at night, depriving Mr. Padilla of sunlight for many months at a time. The disorientation Mr. Padilla experienced due to not seeing the sun and having no view on the outside world was exacerbated by his captors= practice of turning on extremely bright lights in his cell or imposing complete darkness for durations of twenty-four hours, or more.

Mr. Padilla's dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

A substantial quantum of torture endured by Mr. Padilla came at the hands of his interrogators. In an effort to disorient Mr. Padilla, his captors would deceive him about his location and who his interrogators actually were. Mr. Padilla was threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country, including U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was threatened his fate would be even worse than in the Naval Brig. He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time. He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla. Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations. (...)

In sum, many of the conditions Mr. Padilla experienced were inhumane and caused him great physical and psychological pain and anguish. Other deprivations experienced by Mr. Padilla, taken in isolation, are merely cruel and some, merely petty. However, it is important to recognize that all of the deprivations and assaults recounted above were employed in concert in a calculated manner to cause him maximum anguish. It is also extremely important to note that the torturous acts visited upon Mr. Padilla were done over the course almost the entire three years and seven months of his captivity in the Naval Brig. For most of one thousand three hundred and seven days, Mr. Padilla was tortured by the United States government without cause or justification. Mr. Padilla’s treatment at the hands of the United States government is shocking to even the most hardened conscience, and such outrageous conduct on the part of the government divests it of jurisdiction, under the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, to prosecute Mr. Padilla in the instant matter."

***

Back in December, when the NYT story came out, LizardBreath wrote an excellent post, in which she asked: why are we doing this? I couldn't really bring myself to write an answer at the time, but I think there is an explanation of why we have treated Padilla, the Guantanamo detainees, and other "unlawful combatants" we have in custody the way we have, and it can be found in Joseph Margulies' excellent book Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power. I'm drawing on Margulies in what follows.

The Mosaic Theory: The purpose of this treatment is interrogation. But it's interrogation motivated not by the hope that a detainee will know all about some dastardly plot and be induced to tell all, although that would be nice. Rather, interrogators operate on what Margulies calls the mosaic theory: the theory that intelligence works by gleaning little tidbits of knowledge from a variety of people, knowledge that the people who have it may not know is in any way important, and putting this together into a coherent picture. Even an unimportant person might have a tiny bit of useful knowledge; and the point of interrogation is to find it.

Here's an affadavit that Margulies quotes. It's by an FBI agent, Michael Rolince, from 2002, and according to Margulies it was submitted in "scores of proceedings" (p. 22) to justify the preventive detention of people who had violated immigration laws:

"The business of counterterrorism intelligence gathering in the United States is akin to the construction of a mosaic. At this stage of the investigation, the FBI is gathering and processing thousands of bits and pieces of information that may seem innocuous at first glance. We must analyze all that information, however, to see if it can be fit into a picture that will reveal how the unseen whole operates. The significance of one item of information may frequently depend on knowledge of many other items of information. What may seem trivial to some may appear of great moment to those within the FBI or the intelligence community who have a broader context within which to consider a questioned item or isolated piece of information. At the present stage of this vast investigation, the FBI is gathering and culling information that may corroborate or diminish our current suspicions of the individuals who have been detained. The Bureau is approaching that task with unprecedented resources and a nationwide urgency. In the meantime, the FBI has been unable to rule out the possibility that respondent is somehow linked to, or possesses knowledge of, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To protect the public, the FBI must exhaust all avenues of investigation while ensuring the crucial information does not evaporate pending further investigation."

As Margulies points out, this affadavit implies that suspects will be in custody for a very long time. "Thousands of bits and pieces of information that may seem innocuous at first glance" need to be collected and sorted through, and until that process is completed, "all avenues of investigation" exhausted, and the suspect cleared, the suspect cannot be released, lest he and his information "evaporate".

It also implies that useful information can be obtained even from people who have no idea that they know anything of importance, and are not affiliated with any terrorist group: such individuals might have noticed something whose significance is apparent only "to those within the FBI or the intelligence community who have a broader context within which to consider a questioned item or isolated piece of information."

The mosaic theory makes sense to me: of course counterterrorism agents should try to discover as many little bits of knowledge as possible and try to fit them together into a broader picture. But it is also an invitation to abuse: to incarcerating people who might have done nothing wrong, and holding them indefinitely on the off chance that some tiny useful fact of whose existence they are completely unaware might emerge during the millionth round of questioning. It therefore stands in desperate need of some countervailing restrictions on how long people can be kept on the off chance that they might produce a tiny fragment piece of the mosaic, and whether they can be held at all absent any reason to suspect them of a crime.

Needless to say, the Bush administration is not very big on checks and safeguards. It is one of the hallmarks of this administration that it always considers only the possible advantages it can draw from someone's incarceration, and never the costs to that person, to our society, or to the rule of law.

This is how I imagine it all started: after 9/11, the government was operating on this theory, which can be used to justify almost anyone indefinitely. Moreover, they had thrown aside all restraints in the name of protecting the country against future terrorist attacks, and among the restrictions they discarded was anything that might have served as a check on holding people indefinitely. I don't imagine anyone thought that people like Jose Padilla or the Guantanamo detainees would be held forever, but I don't find much evidence that they gave any thought to the question when they would be released, and what would happen to them afterwards.

In the next part(s) of this, I'll try to answer the question: why did they treat Padilla the way they did? Why the isolation, sleep deprivation, and all the rest?

Comments

[Katherine]

Definitely an excellent book! :)

I'm glad you're writing about this. I have wanted for a long time to write about the interplay between the mosaic theory and KUBARK's theories on how they reinforce each other's worst qualities--a subject I wished he'd had time or space to explore further in the book, and which I always vaguely wanted to write about on my own. But there was just so much to explain that I never knew where to start.

I should be quiet for now and not get ahead of your posts, though.

Sort of off topic, sort of not:

new evidence in support of suspicions about CIA prisons in Poland. And everyone interested in rendition should set up a Google News alert or run periodic searches for John Crewsdon's stories in the Chicago Tribune on the rendition of Osama Moustafa Nasr to Egypt.

[a]

All captured Islamists will, as a matter of course, claim to have been tortured. Hence Padilla's brief contains no information.

The only interesting question which comes out of this is why an American Leftist would accept, without question, 100% of the accusations which an Islamist makes against the USA?

[Nombrilisme Vide]

All claims of torture submitted against the US will, as a matter of course, be rejected out of hand by a segment of the American public. Hence your reply to Hilzoy's post contains no information.

The only interesting question which comes out of this is why an American Rightist would reject, without question, 100% of the accusations which a possible torture victim makes against the USA?

(...or why I'm feeding the trolls...)

[Mark Johnston]

So, a, you don't believe Padilla's attorney's brief to be accurate, but you also imply that you aren't at all interested in the question of whether or not a fellow citizen detained by your government has been tortured (or that question is vastly less interesting than the question of why Hilzoy would believe Padilla's attorney's brief to be substantially true).

That's mildly interesting.

I'm interested in the question of what has been happening to Jose Padilla partly because it might give some clues about the very interesting (to me) question of has been done by your government to my fellow citizen, David Hicks.

It's interesting what folks find interesting.

[cleek]

The only interesting question which comes out of this is why an American Leftist would accept, without question, 100% of the accusations which an Islamist makes against the USA?

i think Dinesh D'Souza would probably have an opinion on this. after all, he did title his latest book: The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11

to which, i think, the only reasonable reply is a swift kick in the ass.

[Ugh]

Have they given Padilla his medical records yet? And does anyone know if Congress is or is going to investigate his treatment?

[john miller]

If his/her comment is edited a little bit, a's point is somewhat legitimate.

Change "all" to "many"; change "as a matter of course" to "at sometime during their defense", and he's actually correct.

However, that does not change the possibility/probability of their claims being correct. And in this case, it probably wouldn't be too hard to confirm the claims.

When a says "claim", I think what he really means is "falsely claim" which is something else entirely. If I am wrong in that perception, I am sure he/she will correct me.

However, I prefer to state that rather than reject the claims outright, they do need to be taken with a grain of salt. It is not uncommon for some accused people to exaggerate the trreatment they have received. That doesn't meant that none of it occured.

[Katherine]

This is backed up by affidavits from Padilla's previous counsel, medical records, to say nothing of that sensory deprivation video. It's also perfectly consistent with the guy being imprisoned without charge, and with interrogation practices used elsewhere. It's also notable that he is primarily alleging psychological rather than physical mistreatment.

If you've been following this closely you know this already, and might not feel the need to re-post the corroborating evidence every time you write about it. I mean, Padilla's gotten *a lot* of press.

And to the newspapers of course, everything is "allegedly" when the torture allegations first come out, and when the corroborating information slowly drips out and confirms all those allegations, well--it's old news. So most of the press keeps using the word "allegedly" in stories that have been corroborated in every way possible, and has no idea what follow up questions to ask at press conference.

It's all very frustrating.

Now, if you've been following this closely you also know that the administration's denials about mistreating prisoners are utterly, utterly, utterly untrustworthy. But it remains possible that they are true in a given case, and prisoners aren't always honest either. So prisoners' claims *should* be taken with a grain of salt at first. But I'm afraid a lot of those allegations have been confirmed, or corroborated as much is reasonably possible given how much of the evidence the gov't has seen fit to classify.

[Katherine]

(when I say "interrogation practices used elsewhere" I mean by the U.S. military over the past 4 years, btw.)

[LizardBreath]

The mosaic theory, though, justifies much more than we're doing. If it were permissible to harshly interrogate innocent people for years because they might drop the occasional useful bit of information that could be assembled into something important, why haven't we swept up everyone who's ever known our identified Al Qaeda members -- whole congregations, entire families -- and interrogated them like Padilla? What gets me is that it's simultaneously too much and not enough -- the arguments that justify Padilla's treatment justify much, much broader detention and interrogation, that we don't appear to be doing.

[Ugh]

the arguments that justify Padilla's treatment justify much, much broader detention and interrogation, that we don't appear to be doing.

And note that all the torture apologists and enthusiasts who insisted that we needed to have available and use these techniques are the ones that are insisting that Padilla cannot be believed because, gosh, we would never to that to someone.

[Katherine]

Right. The mosaic theory, as a description of how you gather intelligence, is not a terrible thing. (Turning it around--it's not a bad description about how I learned about rendition, GTMO, etc. Basically every single thing I know is public information--news stories, human rights reports, gov't documents--it's just a question of reading and remembering them and putting them together.) But as a justification for indefinite detention for anyone who *might* know anything about al Qaeda--you have to weigh the value of the intelligence against the very high costs of locking people up and throwing the key. They didn't. They used this like the "one percent doctrine": you don't actually lock up indefinitely *everyone* who might or might not know *anything*. You don't actually act as if every 1% possibility of catastrophe is a certainty, that's impossible. It's just an excuse for arbitrary power.

I think it helps, btw, to understand the mosaic theory as the justification/motivation for indefinite imprisonment without trial & based on very little evidence. The rationale for the psychological torture techniques they used on Padilla is something different--they seem to come from the CIA's cold war interrogation manuals (that was the reference to "KUBARK" above).

[hilzoy]

LB: I think the mosaic theory is fine in itself, and moreover it normally doesn't operate without check. The affidavit I quoted is from an FBI officer, and the FBI normally has to operate within the US legal system, and thus is limited in what it can do. So the mosaic theory provides a rationale that would, unchecked, justify indefinite detention of (basically) everyone, and normal checks provide a structure that keeps it within bounds.

It's the combination of the mosaic theory with the business of detaining people as enemy combatants, or in some other way that involves being utterly beyond the law and its checks, that's the problem; and it's compounded by the interrogation methods, which are, as K. said, a separate issue.

[LizardBreath]

Exactly -- it's a perfectly reasonable model of intelligence gathering. I can see that hanging around relevant mosques, buying people coffee, and chatting them up endlessly could be very effective. But if you use it as a sufficient justification for detaining people, then it justifies mindboggling levels of detention.

[Bruce Baugh]

The mosaic theory would, of course, justify the indefinite detention and torture of random members of the House of Saud, given bin Laden's background.

[GreenDreams]

The one responsible for this outrage should be prosecuted and imprisoned for life. And the one responsible, of course is GW Bush, war criminal. http://greendreams.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/cia-acknowledges-bush-signed-secret-directive-on-interrogating-terror-suspect/
I hope the Democrats get a copy of that torture directive. I want everyone to know the exact contents.

[GreenDreams]

That link didn't work, try this
http://tinyurl.com/yxx9ph

[janinsanfran]

It seems to me the "mosaic theory" is a confession by our "intelligence" guys that they cannot understand or infiltrate potential terrorist cells. That is, they are incompetent at normal police work, so let's throw up a pseudo-science theory of "intelligence" and make a few people pay for our impotence.

[Bruce Baugh]

Janinsanfran: Yes, it is, and it's not a new problem. There's a 1992 book called Informing Statecraft by Angelo Codevilla, who was part of Reagan's transitional team, very much experienced with intel in practice. It's brutal. He articulately and ruthlessly lays into the human intelligence deficiencies of American intel, with a brilliant passage early on about all the things a typical Ivy League graduate has never done or even seen done by anyone he knows, that would be important in infiltrating terrorist organizations just like Al Qaeda.

He's also wonderful on the extent to which policy made in secret is likely to be stupider than policy made in public. (He uses Iran-Contra as an example at several points, too; he's conservative but not blindly partisan.) At one point he remarks that almost everything that sounds too wise and cunning to tell others about is actually too stupid, and that on some level those who want to keep it secret almost always know it, that secrecy is an excuse to avoid honesty to themselves.

And sure enough, here we are.

[J. Dunn]

Yikes. This whole thing strikes me as creepily hermetic. First thing that popped into my head was Foucault's Pendulum. A closed circle of initiates enthralled by a fixed idea who will grab on to any bit of information they can, by any means necessary, to perpetuate it. The idea shapes the information instead of t'other way around.

Maybe after 9-11, everyone in FBI/intelligence was (justifiably) panicked and at sea. People don't like to be in that state, and in the absence of any real substantial human intelligence or infrastructure/competence to get the sort of information they would need to feel less scared and lost, they needed some sort of solid ground to work from. So, a theory. The Mosaic, the comforting promise of emergent order from the terrifying disorder and uncertainty they faced.

But, the purported existence of a Mosaic bestows an immediate and disproportionate illusion of meaning on vast amounts of otherwise meaningless information. This ends with all information being equally meaningful, precious, worth even what they did to Padilla, in their eyes anyway. I have a hint that this impulse might be the driving force behind persistent and pernicious ideas like Total Information Awareness as well. What they never really spell out is what practical use they could possibly make of all that information. It's a hubristic attempt to control reality and prevent uncertainty which predictably and tragically multiplies the confusion, chaos, and suffering it is conceived to prevent.

It doesn't strike me as much of a rational, stepwise process at all, or anything like how normal police and intelligence work has operated in the past(which to me means systematically eliminating irrelevant information and false leads until you arrive at the truth, or the best approximation thereof you can get.) It's more like group magical thinking, which we've of course seen plenty of in lots of other areas of our government and society over the past few years.

[russell]

All captured Islamists will, as a matter of course, claim to have been tortured.

No doubt. So, I guess we can all just forget about it, right?

Some of them have been tortured. And some who have been tortured were not Islamists.

Padilla's particular torture was to have been deliberately and systematically driven insane. In a nutshell, his sense of self and reality were annihilated through a program of total isolation. Kind of fiendish, but it does work.

If there is still enough of Jose Padilla left to actually have preferences, which may not be so, my guess is that would have preferred to just have the crap beaten out of him.

Thanks -

[Noumenon]

with a brilliant passage early on about all the things a typical Ivy League graduate has never done or even seen done by anyone he knows, that would be important in infiltrating terrorist organizations just like Al Qaeda.

I think I found this by Searching Inside for "Maronite" at Amazon, but it didn't seem as good as I was expecting.

[Comrade O'Brien]

Attention Comrades,
Please visit http://ministryoflove.wordpress.com to learn about our creative protest of the Military Commissions Act.
Regards,
O'Brien

[Sommerset]

War is Peace, Love is Hate, Slavery is Freedom