Well, He Was the First MBA President, So Maybe We Can Call this "Market Testing" Instead

by Eric Martin

Back in late March, I linked to a story that discussed some revelations gleaned from the diaries of Abu Zubaydah, and the surrounding events.  Among the more disturbing allegations was the claim that Zubaydah was experimented on to test the parameters of where to draw the line in terms of torture techniques.  From that piece:

For example, one current and three former CIA officials said some videotapes showed Zubaydah being sleep deprived for more than two weeks. Contractors hired by the CIA studied how he responded psychologically and physically to being kept awake for that amount of time. By looking at videotapes, they concluded that after the 11th consecutive day of being kept awake Zubaydah started to "severely break down." So, the torture memo concluded that 11 days of sleep deprivation was legal and did not meet the definition of torture.

"I would describe it this way," said one former National Security official. "[Zubaydah] was an experiment. A guinea pig. I'm sure you've heard that a lot. There were many enhanced interrogation [methods] tested on him that have never been discussed before we settled on the 10 [techniques]."

The Zubaydah story has recently received some corroboration, and the picture painted moves beyond merely ugly into outright vile:

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals' involvement in the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the "enhanced" interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture. [...]

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's Chief Executive Officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's core values." [...]

"In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to have committed another alleged war crime – illegal experimentation on prisoners," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture and lead report author. "Justice Department lawyers appear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the alleged research on detainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it appears to have been to their legal cover for torture." [...]

The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:

• Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water. The report observes: "'Waterboarding 2.0' was the product of the CIA's developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge."
• Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.
• Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combined applications of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, to determine whether one type of application over another would increase the subject's "susceptibility to severe pain." The alleged research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the "enhanced" interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.

Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program is the most in-depth expert review to date of the legal and medical ethics issues concerning health professionals' involvement in researching, designing and supervising the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program. The Experiments in Torture report is the result of six months of investigation and the review of thousands of pages of government documents. It has been peer-reviewed by outside experts in the medical, biomedical and research ethics fields, legal experts, health professionals and experts in the treatment of torture survivors.

As is consistent with the emergent pattern, the Obama administration is apparently perpetuating Bush era crimes and civil liberties abuses:

PHR's report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama's then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct "scientific research" to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.

PHR is calling for an investigation into these matters by the Justice Department, but given the Obama administration's ongoing involvement, such a probe remains extremely unlikely.  Which, it seems, should be considered as the primary motivation for Obama's repeated unwillingness to "look back" and investigate Bush era war crimes and other malfeasance: in doing so, the Obama administration would likely be building the case for its own prosecution.  And so the cycle of government overreach, and the concomitant erosion of individual liberties, is reinforced and unlikely to be broken in the near future. 

Quite the opposite: even though Obama has kept many, if not most, of the Bush era regime in place, Obama is being relentlessly attacked from the right for going soft on terror.  With an opposition party that is arguing for more and bigger bites out of civil rights and individual liberties, civli libertarian push back is exceedingly unlikely (assuming any will on the part of enough Democratic leaders in the first place).

On the other hand, Bush (and, by extension, Obama of course) might want to be extra careful about his choices of overseas travel destinations.  The rest of the world might not be so cowed by complicity.  Eventually. 

Comments

[efgoldman]

Even though I'm a liberal weenie that believes in constitutional and treaty protections, I get revenge fantasies.

Cheney on the rack...
Bush waterboarded...
Woo in the iron maiden...

Since apparently none of them are going to be penalized by any legitimate US court...

(Although it would be beyond delicious if one of them forgot their position vis a vis the European courts and some Spanish or Dutch judge had him arrested. Yummy!)

[cleek]

Which, it seems, should be considered as the primary motivation for Obama's repeated unwillingness to "look back" and investigate Bush era war crimes and other malfeasance: in doing so, the Obama administration would likely be building the case for its own prosecution.

ObamaCo could stop continuing the policies, if it wanted to, without getting into investigations and prosecutions of BushCo. but it doesn't want to. and i think the reason it doesn't want to stop is because simple: if an attack occurred and Obama had canceled a program that maybe could have been able to get some kind of info from someone even tangentially related to the attack, the blame for failing to stop the attack would be Obama's forever - at least in popular mythology, and in the minds of voters, and definitely in the minds of his opponents. OBots would forever protest, sure; but nobody would believe them.

the pressure to prevent an attack far outweighs the pressure to conform to the law.

we are not strong enough for a law-based system of government. we demand that our presidents wield the power of tyrants - so long as the power is directed away from us, individually.

[John Thullen]

Well, efgoldman, the trouble is that President Obama might be the one arrested on a trip abroad, at this point.

By that time, however, we may have a Republican Congress and their howling minions in the media and blogosphere who will demand, not that the President of the United States be returned or we'll bomb them into the Stone Age, but rather that Barack Hussein Obama be extradicted back to the United States so he can tried and hung by the Republican Party for much larger crimes, to witless: fixing the problem of pre-existing conditions in healthcare insurance, saying "ass" on television, ending Jim Crow in Macon, Georgia, conducting the Census for the purpose of placing dumbasses in concentration camps (but with good libraries, which will go unused, maybe I wouldn't be amazed), raising taxes, and governing while moderately swarthy, especially the moderate part.

[Eric Martin]

...raising taxes...

Actually, cutting taxes for something like 95% of us, if we must be factual.

[John Thullen]

Well, the "raising taxes" bit came from a poll conducted among the dumbasses in the concentration camps, who really require maximum security, forced labor and solitary, and no access to pollsters, if we're going to do this right.

[Nell]

cleek: we are not strong enough for a law-based system of government. we demand that our presidents wield the power of tyrants - so long as the power is directed away from us, individually.

Do it to Julia!

[Hartmut]

Nell, excactly!

[Ugh]

Huh. True story, pre-9/11 the CIA actually seemed to think that the law applied to them (in this particular case, FISA), after 9/11, not so much it seems (so long as they had a memo from the DOJ).

Of course, the right-wing nuts will claim this report shows how careful and circumscribed the CIA's torture program was. Would a real torturer perform double-blind experiements across a scientifically random sample of ghost detainees? I don't think so! I mean, they substitued saline for real water in the new and improved saline-boarding-enhanced-interrogation-for-really-bad-people-only-(so we say)-technique (and can it really even be called "enhanced" interrogation if saline is used? sounds like plain old interrogation to me).

The CIA: Fncking Up Since Just After WWII

[Ugly Moe]

Obama should have to return his Nobel Peace prize.

[jonnybutter]

As is consistent with the emergent pattern, the Obama administration is apparently perpetuating Bush era crimes and civil liberties abuses

The CW explanation for this seems to be that Obama is just following popular sentiment, which is surely true. Ah, leadership.

You can kinda understand why people vote for Republicans of the modern sort: what the latter say and do are appalling, but at least they often mean what they say. Democrats in the Obama/Clinton mold, OTOH, tend to be glorified confidence men. Nice choice!

[Hogan]

The CIA: Fncking Up Since Just After WWII

Really? I thought it was "Assassinating Castro Since 1961."

[jonnybutter]

James Jesus Angleton! that made me laugh, Hogan!

[Nate]

*Facepalm*

Goddamint, what happened to our country? When did it become completely dominated by petty little cowards and sociopaths?

[Ugh]

When did it become completely dominated by petty little cowards and sociopaths?

After the Presidential election in 1968, though the process started just after WWII. Process was completed around noon on 9/11/01.

[russell]

I used to think they were beating the living crap out of Zubaydah to get him to cough up fake evidence that Saddam was behind 9/11.

Turns out they just wanted to try sh*t out on him to see what would happen.

This has become one chickensh*t country.

[Enlightened Layperson]

Of course, the right-wing nuts will claim this report shows how careful and circumscribed the CIA's torture program was.

Actually what right wingers will say is that this proves that torture is so indispensably necessary that even a "hard left" lunatic like Obama recognizes it.