CIA Psychologist’s Notes Reveal True Purpose Behind Bush’s Torture Program

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Psychologist’s Notes Reveal True Purpose Behind Bush’s Torture Program  22 March 2011 Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

Dr. Bruce Jessen’s handwritten notes describe some of the torture techniques that were used to “exploit” “war on terror” detainees in custody of the CIA and Department of Defense.

Bush administration officials have long asserted that the torture techniques used on “war on terror” detainees were utilized as a last resort in an effort to gain actionable intelligence to thwart pending terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests abroad.

But the handwritten notes obtained exclusively by Truthout drafted two decades ago by Dr. John Bruce Jessen, the psychologist who was under contract to the CIA and credited as being one of the architects of the government’s top-secret torture program, tell a dramatically different story about the reasons detainees were brutalized and it was not just about obtaining intelligence. Rather, as Jessen’s notes explain, torture was used to “exploit” detainees, that is, to break them down physically and mentally, in order to get them to “collaborate” with government authorities. Jessen’s notes emphasize how a “detainer” uses the stresses of detention to produce the appearance of compliance in a prisoner.

….However, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee report “SERE resistance training … was used to inform” Yoo and Bybee’s torture memo, specifically, nearly a dozen of the brutal techniques detainees were subjected to, which included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, wall slamming and placing detainees in a confined space, such as a container, where his movement is restricted.
http://www.truth-out.org/cia-psychologists-notes-reveal-bushs-torture-program68542

Statement of Senator Carl Levin on Senate Armed Services Committee Report of its Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 11, 2008

Contact: Senator Levin’s Office….
“On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.”
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=305734

SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY ….The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.

….On February 7, 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or the legal protections afforded by the Third Geneva Convention. The President’s order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. While the President’s order stated that, as “a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions,” the decision to replace well established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf

Bush Admin’s Torture Program, Italian bishop, priest child porn conviction

BBC – Children victims of half of all sex offences

Human Experimentation at the Heart of Bush Administration’s Torture Program
6 June 2010 by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
High-value detainees captured during the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” who were subjected to brutal torture techniques, were used as “guinea pigs” to gauge the effectiveness of various torture techniques, a practice that has raised troubling comparisons to Nazi-era human experimentation. according to a disturbing new report released by Physicians for Human Rights, an international doctors’ organization….”Health professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the results of [the] interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations,” said the 27-page report, entitled “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program.” “Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation by health professionals on prisoners, which could violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic and international law. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.” http://www.truthout.org/human-experimentation-heart-bush-administrations-torture-program60199

Italian bishop accused of sex abuse cover-up Agence France-Presse May 31, 2010
ROME – The alleged victim of an Italian priest who is on trial for sex abuse has pressed charges against the bishop overseeing the accused’s diocese at a court in Rome, his lawyer said Monday. Bishop Gino Reali of Porto San Rufina outside Rome is charged with complicity in the abuse crimes of Ruggero Conti, who was arrested in June 2008 and is being tried on charges of sexually abusing children in his parish. Reali “should have told Italian judicial authorities” as well as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Vatican body that deals with sex abuse allegations — about the case, lawyer Farbrizio Gallo told AFP.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Italian+bishop+accused+abuse+cover/3093270/story.html

Church remained silent about child porn conviction 04 June 2010 BJS News
The Catholic Church took no action against priest convicted of downloading child pornography – Despite being convicted of possessing child pornography in 2005, the Catholic Church in Denmark allowed a Catholic priest to continue carrying out his duties including teaching children and young people. In this latest scandal to rock the Danish Catholic Church, it was announced that the priest had recently been suspended, but the church did not mention the reason. The priest was convicted of paying for and downloading 38 movies involving minors. He was sentenced to pay 6,000 kroner and his computer was confiscated. Bishop Czeslaw Kozlon, who is head of the Catholic Church in Denmark, did not inform the chair of the parish council in question why the priest had been relieved of his duties.
http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/49157-church-remained-silent-about-child-porn-conviction.html

Children victims of half of all sex offences 7 June 2010 Almost half of all sex offences are committed against children, despite them making up just 21% of the population, the BBC has learned….A similar survey conducted by the NSPCC in January suggested more than 21,618 sex offences – or 60 a day – had been committed against children in 2008/9. The charity found that one in seven victims were younger than 10, while 1,000 cases involved children aged five or under, with some so young they did not understand what had happened to them.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/10254922.stm