democracynow.org
Stories:
Emails Show American Psychological Association Secretly Worked with Bush Admin to Enable Torture
New details have emerged on how the American Psychological Association, the world’s largest group of psychologists, aided government-sanctioned torture under President George W. Bush. A group of dissident psychologists have just published a 60-page report alleging the APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA, White House and the Pentagon to change the APA ethics policy to align it with the operational needs of the CIA’s torture program. Much of the report, "All the President’s Psychologists: The American Psychological Association’s Secret Complicity with the White House and US Intelligence Community in Support of the CIA’s 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program," is based on hundreds of newly released internal APA emails from 2003 to 2006 that show top officials were in direct communication with the CIA. The report also reveals Susan Brandon, a behavioral science researcher working for President Bush, secretly drafted language that the APA inserted into its ethics policy on interrogations. We are joined by two of the report’s co-authors: Dr. Steven Reisner, a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and member of the APA Council of Representatives, and Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: New details have emerged on how the American Psychological Association, the world’s largest group of psychologists, aided government-sanctioned torture under President George W. Bush. A group of dissident psychologists have just published a 60-page report alleging the APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA, White House and the Pentagon to change the APA ethics policy to align it with the operational needs of the CIA’s torture program. The report also reveals a behavioral science researcher working for President Bush secretly drafted language that the APA inserted into its ethics policy on interrogations.
Much of the report is based on hundreds of newly released internal APA emails from 2003 to 2006 that show top officials were in direct communication with the CIA. In 2004, for example, the APA secretly took part in a meeting with officials from the CIA and other intelligence agencies to discuss ethics and national security. In one email, the APA stated that the aim of the meeting was, quote, "to take a forward looking, positive approach, in which we convey a sensitivity to and appreciation of the important work mental health professionals are doing in the national security arena, and in a supportive way offer our assistance in helping them navigate through thorny ethical dilemmas," unquote.
One attendee was Kirk Hubbard, then the chief of operations for the CIA Operational Assessment Division. He would later leave the CIA to work for the private firm set up by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the psychologists who were hired as private contractors to set up the CIA interrogation program including the waterboarding of prisoners. In one 2003 email, Hubbard wrote to a top APA official, quote, "You won’t get any feedback from [Dr. James] Mitchell or Jessen. They are doing special things to special people in special places, and generally are not available," unquote. While the APA has attempted to distance itself from Mitchell and Jessen, the newly disclosed emails show the men attended a 2003 invite-only conference called "The Science of Deception," sponsored by the APA, the CIA and RAND Corporation, to discuss so-called enhanced interrogations.
We’re joined now by two of the co-authors of the new report, "All the President’s Psychologists: The American Psychological Association’s Secret Complicity with the White House and US Intelligence Community in Support of the CIA’s 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program." Steven Reisner is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. He’s a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and adviser on psychology and ethics for Physicians for Human Rights. He’s currently a member of the APA Council of Representatives. Nathaniel Raymond is director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
We did invite a representative from the APA to join us, as well, but they declined. Last year, the APA commissioned an outside attorney named David Hoffman to conduct a third-party, independent review of the allegations about the APA and the Bush administration torture program. Rhea Farberman, the APA’s executive director for Public and Member Communications, told Democracy Now! the APA won’t respond to the allegations in the "All the President’s Psychologists" report until Hoffman’s review is completed.
Steven Reisner and Nathaniel Raymond, welcome back to Democracy Now! OK, Nathaniel Raymond, why don’t you lay out the core findings in your 60-page report?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: There are four core findings. The first is that the American Psychological Association allowed, as you mentioned, Dr. Susan Brandon, it appears, who, three weeks before the APA engaged in its ethics process in 2005 on psychological ethics and national security, had been president Bush’s behavioral science adviser—she wrote what appears to be research language in the PENS report, the Psychological Ethics and National Security policy of the APA. That language, we now know because of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, directly aligns with the legal memos authorizing the enhanced interrogation program, and provided an ethical get-out-of-jail-free card that aligned with the then-classified legal get-of-jail-free card.
Secondly, we see clear deception by the APA, including some outright lies, including the assertion for many years that James Mitchell, the CIA torture psychologist you mentioned, had not been an APA member. We now know he was an APA member from 2001 to 2006. And the APA has also contended, according to Dr. Stephen Behnke, the ethics director, that they had had no contact on interrogations and interrogation techniques with Mitchell and Jessen. We now know that they discussed sensory overload and the use of psychopharmacological agents with Mitchell and Jessen in 2003.
The last two critical findings, Amy, are that the APA, as we see throughout the emails, expressed no concern about clear evidence of abuse that at that point, between 2004 in 2005, was public knowledge. And lastly, what we see in this report is a clear coordination that directly mirrors the timeline inside the Bush administration when Office of Medical Services personnel inside the CIA were raising concerns about human subjects research as part of the program. The APA, whether they knew it or not, allowed the administration to write a policy that basically helped put down that rebellion inside CIA.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: By allowing psychologists to play a critical monitoring and research role, that was at the heart of the newly—then newly authorized Bradbury Office of Legal Counsel memo. If psychologists couldn’t ethically play this role, if the APA had not engaged in this policy, it is highly likely that the interrogation program itself would have disintegrated.
AMY GOODMAN: You ran, Steven Reisner, for president of the American Psychological Association. Your main platform was speaking out against torture and APA’s involvement with the Bush administration. You didn’t win. Talk about what this means for the American Psychological Association.
STEVEN REISNER: Well, I think the issue is what this means for the entire profession of psychologists and the fact that we are represented by the American Psychological Association, because I think that what we’re finding is that psychologists are feeling betrayed by our association. What has happened is that the ethics code that we are all trained in, that we align ourselves with and that gives us our identity as health professionals dedicated to the public good, that ethics code and ethics policy was twisted to align—not only to align with what the government needed it to do, but in the service of torture. It is a betrayal of what I think we all are expecting from and try to identify with from our association. So, what has to happen right now is that we’ve got to—the membership, the council, any concerned American has to insist that we reclaim our association, put it back on an ethical track, and find a way to expose this, be accountable for it, be transparent about it and make significant change so that we can restore trust.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go into detail on what the APA knew and when they knew it with Dr. Steven Reisner and Nathaniel Raymond, co-authors of the new report, "All the President’s Psychologists," in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about a new report that has just come out on the American Psychological Association’s involvement with the Bush administration’s so-called enhanced interrogation program. In 2005, Stephen Behnke, the director of ethics at the American Psychological Association, then and now, appeared on Democracy Now!
STEPHEN BEHNKE: I don’t have firsthand knowledge of what went on at Guantánamo. I know that the APA very much wants the facts, and that when APA has the facts, we will act on those facts.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Behnke appeared on the show in a debate with Michael Wilks, chair of the medical ethics committee at the British Medical Association. Dr. Behnke went on to defend the APA’s actions.
STEPHEN BEHNKE: In all fairness, the American Psychological Association is very clear that under no circumstances is it in any manner permissible for a psychologist to engage in, to support, to facilitate, to direct or to advise torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association issued a joint statement against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in 1985. In 1986, the American Psychological Association issued another resolution against torture. So, to even suggest that that would in any manner be permissible is completely out of bounds.
MICHAEL WILKS: Might I ask a direct question, because I’m really interested to know? Could I ask why the APA’s presidential report then specifically recommends that psychologists should be involved in research into interrogation techniques?
STEPHEN BEHNKE: Well, as I have—as I have said, psychologists have been working together with law enforcement for many years domestically in information gathering and interrogation processes. We believe that as experts in human behavior, psychologists have valuable contributions to make to those activities.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dr. Stephen Behnke on Democracy Now! in 2005. Our guests now are Dr. Steven Reisner, a member of the American Psychological Association, and Nathaniel Raymond. They both co-authored the new report, "All the President’s Psychologists." Nathaniel Raymond, can you respond to what Dr. Behnke said?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Well, what we now know, by reading the American Psychological Association’s emails, is that Dr. Behnke’s assertion in 2005 of "bring us the facts, and we will respond" directly contradicts his own words to the Operational Assessment Division of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2004, where he basically says, "We are not going to investigate," in the context of the secret meeting they had, almost to the—basically, to the day that the White House was reauthorizing the enhanced interrogation program—"We’re not going to investigate any claims of abuse or any charges made at that meeting." That directly contradicts what he said on Democracy Now!
Second is his continued assertion that somehow the American Psychiatric Association, which endorsed in 2006 a clear ban on participation in all interrogations, direct participation by psychiatrists, is analogous to the APA position, is entirely specious. The fact of the matter is, is the American Psychological Association position in that PENS report, that we now know was the direct result of coordination with the intelligence community and, in some cases, elements of that community writing language in the report, critical research language, is—it is entirely different to look at the APA position and the American Psychological Association position for one reason. The American Psychological Association based its policy on U.S. definitions of torture at that time, which we now know from the declassified Office of Legal Counsel memos had an entirely different view of what constituted, quote, "torture" and what constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. So, saying that those positions are the same is just not the facts.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what changed.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: What changed is—there was two periods of change. The first is immediately after 9/11. We have evidence in the public record that the American Psychological Association changed a large portion of its ethics code related to research, and basically it wrote out international and domestic protections on consent for human subjects research. We know, by different names, some of those protections, such as the Nuremberg Code and the Common Rule. They allowed for the revocation of consent when consistent with a lawful order or regulation.
That then combined with the second set of changes, which is the 2005 PENS report. The Psychological Ethics and National Security Task Force report then not only allows, but exhorts psychologists to have a research role in not only interrogations, but—this is the key sentence, Amy—in determining what constitutes cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment. Now, last time I checked, psychologists were not lawyers. This is outside the professional competency of psychologists to make a legal determination based on research. The question is, why were they being asked to do that, in language that we now know from the emails appears to have been written by a White House—former White House official? The fact of the matter is, that’s exactly what the Bradbury memos, that were then protecting the Bush administration from potential torture charges, required. And that’s exactly the concern that was being raised by the Office of the Inspector General internally at CIA, we now know from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. So that one sentence about research into what constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment positioned psychologists to be the legal heat shield for the president of the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Reisner?
STEVEN REISNER: Well, we listened to Dr. Behnke say that the APA is opposed to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the very moment when they are writing into our ethics code a policy that permits psychologists’ very presence at those sites, researching, overseeing and monitoring, that the psychologists being there is what makes it fall outside the definition of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment concocted by the Justice Department in order to legally allow the torture. So what we have is a working together between the psychologists, the American Psychological Association, the CIA and the White House to create a cover story that says that torture is not torture, that it’s not legally torture under these rules. And while Dr. Behnke is claiming that psychologists don’t torture, psychologists are in fact torturing, and the APA seems to know it, according to these emails and according to what was in the press. But so what he’s doing is he’s parsing the facts and funneling it through a bent and distorted APA ethics code that has been changed simply to allow that program to continue.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read another one of the newly disclosed emails. This is from Dr. Geoff Mumford, director of science policy at the APA, to CIA psychologist Dr. Kirk Hubbard, who was then chief of operations for the CIA Operational Assessment Division. Dr. Mumford writes, quote, "I thought you and many of those copied here would be interested to know that APA grabbed the bull by the horns and released this [Psychological Ethics and National Security] Task Force Report today." The PENS Task Force. "I also wanted to semi-publicly acknowledge your personal contribution ... in getting this effort off the ground over a year ago. Your views were well represented by very carefully selected Task Force members," unquote.
In another email from 2005, the APA’s Dr. Geoff Mumford admitted former White House adviser Susan Brandon, who was then at the National Institute of Mental Health, helped craft language for the PENS report. Mumford wrote, quote, "Susan serving as an Observer (note she has returned to NIMH, at least temporarily) helped craft some language related to research and I hope we can take advantage of the reorganization of the National Intelligence Program, with its new emphasis on human intelligence, to find a welcoming home for more psychological science."
OK, Nathaniel Raymond, talk about who Mumford is. Talk about also the significance of the Susan they are referring to, Susan Brandon, and her position today.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Well, Geoff Mumford, then and now, was executive director and is executive director of science policy at the American Psychological Association. And while he is one of the most prominent officials in these emails, I want to make clear he’s not the only one. We also see Rhea Farberman, the spokeswoman who denied any coordination between the APA and the Bush administration in James Risen’s New York Times story. We see Steve Behnke. And we also see—and this is new to our report—that the deputy CEO, Michael Honaker, deputy CEO of APA, was also CCed on one of the emails about the secret 2004 meeting.
Dr. Brandon, then, was, as you described, at NIMH. She served in a variety of roles.
AMY GOODMAN: National Institute of Mental Health.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Yeah, National Institutes of Mental Health. And she served in a variety of roles in the Department of Defense and elsewhere. But she also had been, during the time of the planning of the 2003 conference that Mitchell and Jessen attended, an APA employee, previously. Now she is the chief scientist of the High-Value Interrogation Group of the FBI. And in that role, she is basically the senior interrogation research scientist in the U.S. government. And thus, the High-Value Interrogation Group, which advises the National Security Council at the White House, is the leading interrogation group in the intelligence community. What we’ve seen in the—
AMY GOODMAN: She’s head of it now. She’s heading it now.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: She’s head of it right now. And I think that’s something that’s been missed in the coverage so far, is that this is not just about what happened five years ago. It is about a currently serving Obama administration official. And I want to say that Mark Fallon, the former assistant deputy director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, came out—
AMY GOODMAN: NCIS.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: NCIS—came out a few days ago calling for an independent prosecutor in these matters, including the issues raised in our report. He is serving as chair of an advisory group to the High-Value Interrogation Group. So I want to make a point here that we have master interrogators, people who are affiliated with the current interrogation group, who are raising real concerns about the allegations in our report and are saying this isn’t old news. This has direct implications for accountability on these matters, involving, in this case, a current administration official.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2007, psychologist Jean Maria Arrigo stood on the dais before a standing-room-only crowd at the annual American Psychological Association meeting in California. This came two years after she participated in an APA panel known as the PENS Task Force, that we’ve referred to today, that concluded psychologists working in interrogations play a, quote, "valuable and ethical role." Dr. Arrigo criticized the findings and makeup of the panel she was on.
JEAN MARIA ARRIGO: Six of the 10 members were highly placed in the Department of Defense, as contractors and military officers. For example, one was the commander of all military psychologists. Their positions on two key items of controversy in the PENS report were predetermined by their DOD employment, in spite of the apparent ambivalence of some. These key items were: (a) the permissive definition of torture in U.S. law versus the strict definition in international law, and, second, participation of military psychologists in interrogation settings versus nonparticipation. Those are the two principal issues. And because of their employment, they have to decide the way they do.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Jean Arrigo. Talk about the significance of what she was saying. Democracy Now! was there covering these meetings as the APA even tried to cut down public access to the public parts of the meeting. But, Dr. Steve Reisner, she served on the PENS committee.
STEVEN REISNER: That’s right. She served, believing that it was a committee that—of interested and knowledgeable psychologists to actually review ethics policy and national security. What she found was that the task force seemed to have a predetermined agenda, that the members of the task force were involved in the very commands that were implicated in the abuse, and that the majority of the conclusions seemed to have already been drawn before they began. It was a guided operation.
AMY GOODMAN: She attempted to take notes during the meeting, is that right?
STEVEN REISNER: That’s right, and she was asked not to, which is totally bizarre for a meeting that is trying to generate a new policy. She was taking notes. She was participating as if it was a regular meeting. It turned out that the meeting was a meeting of, as the emails reveal, carefully selected members. And that email was to Kirk Hubbard. The members were carefully selected in order, it seems, to guarantee what the CIA and the White House needed from that meeting. And that’s what Jean Maria realized and what she’s talking about in that—on that panel.
AMY GOODMAN: She talked about having a meeting for a few hours and then being handed the resolution of the committee—
STEVEN REISNER: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: —before she had even weighed in.
STEVEN REISNER: That’s right. The drafts came fast and furious. This meeting lasted two-and-a-half days. And then the very final draft, where they added the piece on research, that came between the end of the meeting and, I would—and just, you know, 12, 24 hours later. The final rewritten version was sent to the members for them to just give their OK. It was whirlwind. They were told that this had to go to the Pentagon, it had to go to the White House. It was hurried, and there was very little room for critique.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Nathaniel Raymond, who do we now know wrote these drafts?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Well, we know from the PENS listserv and from Jean Maria Arrigo herself and others that Dr. Stephen Behnke was responsible for being the keeper of the draft and, during lunch breaks and in the evenings, wrote the language in the report.
But that’s not the whole story. From what we see in the emails, as you mentioned, Dr. Brandon’s avowed role by Dr. Mumford in the research piece raises the broader question of: Who were the observers in the room, and how did they get there? What we see from the PENS listserv, the listserv of this task force that Jean Maria Arrigo has helped the world to see, that listserv shows that Dr. Gerald Koocher and Dr. Barry Anton, who is the current president right now of the APA, was responsible for approving the observers in the room. We now know that one of those observers was a senior administration official who had never— and still now never—been publicly acknowledged by the APA as having been in the room. So it’s not just who was writing the report, who was Dr. Behnke; it was who put those other people secretly in the room. And we now know it was Drs. Anton and Koocher, according to the listserv.
AMY GOODMAN: Why were psychologists so important to this whole process? I mean, what was happening with the psychiatrists of the United States? What was happening with other physicians?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: This is where it can get complicated sometimes, and I want to try to express this as clearly as possible. In the enhanced interrogation program, you had two roles for health professionals, and these roles were conjoined. Role one was actually designing and implementing the tactics. And that’s what James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen did. The second role is this monitoring and indemnification role, to say that we have not crossed this threshold of severe and long-lasting harm. Now, that role changes throughout the program. It begins with Yoo-Bybee making sure that a line hasn’t been crossed. But by the time we get to—
AMY GOODMAN: Bybee now being a federal judge. Explain his role.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Yeah, he was assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. And John Yoo worked for him in that office, and he was responsible for primarily crafting the first torture memo.
AMY GOODMAN: Now at the University of California, Berkeley, law school.
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Yes, at Boalt Hall. And now we move forward in time. And so, what we can see in these emails is that at the time the APA was really working hard—its engine was going overdrive on these issues between 2004 and 2005—in direct contact with the CIA, you have another process going on, which is the creation of that new legal authorization that we now know George Tenet asked for upon his resignation. And that’s what we call the Bradbury memo. In that memo, there is a significantly changed role for this second group of health professionals, putting Mitchell and Jessen aside: the monitors, the researchers. And it moves from them determining whether you crossed the line to determining the line. And to determine the line, that required research. And so, we see in the Bradbury memos very clearly, as we documented in the Physicians for Human Rights report, "Experiments in Torture," in 2010, is that they were having to look at the effect of the tactics to the whole detainee population over years and determine what the line was, because there was no clinical literature on torture.
AMY GOODMAN: Last December, psychologist James Mitchell, who was contracted by the CIA to design its interrogation program, appeared on Fox News to talk about his role in the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. He was interviewed by Megyn Kelly.
JAMES MITCHELL: Zubaydah shut down. And they asked me to come back to the campus. And it was clear to me, when I was at the campus listening to what people were saying, that there was so much pressure about trying to head off this second wave that was coming, that they were going to use some kind of physical coercion. And so, I have been—spent a lot of time in the Air Force SERE school, and I see what happens when people sort of make stuff up on the fly. And in the course of the conversations, I said, "If you’re going to use physical coercion—not that you should use physical coercion, but if you’re going to use physical coercion—then you should use physical coercion that has been demonstrated over 50 years not to produce the kinds of injuries we would like to avoid.
MEGYN KELLY: OK. So you—were you the one actually conducting the techniques on Abu Zubaydah, or were you in more of a sort of background role?
JAMES MITCHELL: It depends on when you’re talking about. Initially, I was in a background role. Then, after we shut down and the enhanced interrogations were approved, I was in an administration role.
MEGYN KELLY: OK, so did you personally waterboard him?
JAMES MITCHELL: Yes.
MEGYN KELLY: We’re going to get to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a minute, but sticking with Abu Zubaydah for now, were all of the methods that were cited in the Senate report employed, like nudity, standing sleep deprivation, the attention grab, the insult slap? Were those all used?
JAMES MITCHELL: The ones you mentioned were used.
MEGYN KELLY: The facial grab, the abdominal slap, the kneeling stress position, walling?
JAMES MITCHELL: Walling was used. The others—if they showed up on the list, they were used. We didn’t typically use a lot of those stress positions. We didn’t use any stress positions with Abu Zubaydah, because he had an injury.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s psychologist James Mitchell, who was in the APA from 2001 to 2006, admitting on Fox News that he waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, the prisoner. Dr. Steve Reisner, we are wrapping up right now. Your response to Mitchell?
STEVEN REISNER: Well, this was—this is chilling to listen to the description of a psychologist dedicated to the public good and individual well-being talking about destroying a prisoner’s mind and body. And it was chilling to the medical professionals in the CIA, who were pushing back. It was chilling to the inspector general, who was pushing back. The program was shut down. And just at that moment when the program was shut down, the Office of Legal Counsel, the White House, some members of the CIA and the American Psychological Association appear to have all worked together to revive that program and to find the rationale for psychologists to be able to help that program continue.
AMY GOODMAN: So what are you looking for now? What is the next step that’s taking place right now with the American Psychological Association, Nathaniel?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Well, as we heard from Senator Feinstein when James Risen’s article came out last week, there’s clear congressional interest in what happens next. And she said in her statement that she is looking forward to the results of the Hoffman investigation, the independent review of alleged collusion between—
AMY GOODMAN: Now, is this independent? He has been hired by the American Psychological Association?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Yes, it is called by the APA the independent review. Dr. Reisner and I and our co-authors have met extensively with David Hoffman, and obviously the proof will be in the pudding when the report is released. But right now, the next step—
AMY GOODMAN: Did the APA say they will release the report?
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Well, this is a big issue, Amy, is the APA has said that the board will review it and, after it reviews it, will release it. And as we’ve been calling for, they need to release it to the public right now. When you have Senator Feinstein saying she wants to see this report, there cannot be a half-step before it goes to the public. The key issue now is to put pressure on the American Psychological Association to release the report to the public as soon as it is completed.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to what Kirk Hubbard said, the former CIA psychologist, who in a 2012 interview with the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment said that "Detainees are not patients, nor are they being 'treated' by the psychologists. Therefore the ethical guidelines for clinicians do not apply, in my opinion. Psychologists can play many different roles and should not be forced into a narrow doctor-patient role."
NATHANIEL RAYMOND: The Declaration of Helsinki and the Declaration of Tokyo, the Nuremberg Code, U.S. law, the Geneva Conventions are not based on whether someone’s a patient. It’s based on whether someone’s a human being. And the fact of the matter is that those codes were mangled and, in some cases, written out of what the APA did. So the issue is not about doctor-patient relationship here. It is about war crimes and about crimes against humanity, which are not contingent on someone being your patient.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Nathaniel Raymond and Dr. Steven Reisner are co-authors of the new report, "All the President’s Psychologists." We will link to it at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
Human Rights Watch: Saudi-Led Coalition Bombing Yemen with Banned U.S.-Made Cluster Munitions
Human Rights Watch is accusing the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of dropping banned cluster bombs manufactured and supplied by the U.S. on civilian areas in Yemen. Cluster bombs contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller munitions designed to fan out over a wide area, often the size of a football field. They are banned under a 2008 treaty for the high civilian toll they can cause. The treaty was adopted by 116 countries — although not by Saudi Arabia, Yemen or the United States. According to Human Rights Watch, the U.S.-supplied cluster bombs have landed near rebel-held villages in northern Yemen, putting residents in danger. On Monday, the State Department said it is "looking into" the report’s allegations, adding it takes "all accounts of civilian deaths in the ongoing hostilities in Yemen very seriously." We are joined by Stephen Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division and chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, and Belkis Wille, Yemen and Kuwait researcher at Human Rights Watch.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Yemen. More than a thousand people have died since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began in late March. More than half the victims are civilian, including 115 children. The precise toll from the airstrikes is not known, because many areas are hard to reach. But the U.N. and several major human rights groups have raised the possibility of war crimes in the scores of documented bombings so far. The U.S. has played a key role in the campaign, expediting weapons shipments and providing intelligence to Saudi Arabia, including "direct targeting support" for the coalition’s strikes.
Now Human Rights Watch has accused the Saudi-led coalition of dropping banned cluster bombs manufactured and supplied by the United States. Cluster bombs contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller munitions designed to fan out over a wide area, often the size of a football field. They are banned under a 2008 treaty for the high civilian toll they can cause. The treaty was adopted by 116 countries, although not by Saudi Arabia, Yemen or the United States. According to Human Rights Watch, the U.S.-supplied cluster bombs have landed near rebel-held villages in northern Yemen, putting residents in danger. On Monday, the State Department said it’s looking into the report’s allegations, adding it takes all accounts of civilian deaths in the ongoing hostilities in Yemen very seriously.
For more, we go to Washington to Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, involved in the preparations and formal negotiations of the 2008 convention banning cluster munitions. He’s also chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition.
Can you talk about what you understand is happening right now in Yemen?
STEPHEN GOOSE: Well, we documented airstrikes involving cluster munitions on April 17th and likely on April 27th, as well. We don’t know if ongoing strikes are occurring right now, because, as you say, it’s very difficult to get fresh information out of many of the areas. But Saudi Arabia has, in fact, acknowledged—this is not an accusation—Saudi Arabia has acknowledged that they are using these weapons. They want to claim that they’re only using them against armored vehicles. But the treaty that bans these things doesn’t ban them only in certain circumstances. It’s in all circumstances, whether you think you’re only attacking armored vehicles or civilians, because in the long run they’re going to affect civilians. That’s been proven by their use in so many other countries prior to this ban treaty.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the role of the United States here, Steve?
STEPHEN GOOSE: With respect to the cluster munitions, the U.S. supplied these CBU-105 sensor-fused weapons. They’re a more advanced type of cluster munition, but they are banned under the treaty. The U.S.—U.S.'s closest military allies, its NATO allies, almost all are part of this ban treaty, and they all agreed that these weapons, that perhaps have a lower failure rate than some other cluster munitions, also need to be banned, because they pose unacceptable dangers to civilians. The U.S. supplied them to Saudi Arabia. They've supplied them also to the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the coalition that’s conducting the airstrikes now.
AMY GOODMAN: Belkis Wille is also with us, Yemen and Kuwait researcher at Human Rights Watch. She has been based in Sana’a for the last two years, but she’s joining us from Istanbul, Turkey. Can you talk about when you came to suspect that Saudi Arabia was using cluster munitions in Yemen, Belkis?
BELKIS WILLE: Thank you for having—
AMY GOODMAN: Belkis, I’m sorry, we’re not hearing you.
BELKIS WILLE: Sorry. I was saying, we have had concerns about the use of cluster munitions in this war because of the fact that Saudi Arabia actually used cluster munitions in 2009, when it participated in a war in northern Yemen. On the first day of the war, we issued a press release calling on the Saudi-led coalition to state on the record that it would not be using cluster munitions in this war. A press conference the next day led to a Saudi spokesman saying they were not using cluster munitions. However, several days later, we received video footage that looked very much like cluster munitions were being dropped by coalition airstrikes in northern Yemen. And several days later, we received photo evidence that showed the actual munitions, including unexploded cluster munitions on the ground in a location 36 kilometers away. We were able to match, through satellite imagery, the exact location from where the film was done, so we were able to verify that this was indeed a film made in Yemen showing the landing of cluster munitions. Unfortunately—
AMY GOODMAN: Unfortunately, yes? We’re going to have to go back to Steve—
BELKIS WILLE: Whether—
AMY GOODMAN: Belkis, go ahead. We’re having trouble with her again. Her audio stream is coming from Istanbul, Turkey. Steve, if you could take over from there. You both work with the same organization, Human Rights Watch. What has been the U.S. and Saudi response to the allegations that they’re violating a treaty, not that they’re signatories to—the U.S., Yemen and Saudi Arabia are not part of that 2008 cluster bomb treaty.
STEPHEN GOOSE: Yes, Saudi Arabia, initially—well, before we presented this evidence, they said they weren’t using cluster bombs. And then when they first saw our report, they tried to deny that these were cluster munitions, cluster bombs. But in fact, these weapons clearly are captured by the definition of a cluster munition in the 2008 ban treaty. Then, the following day, they in fact started saying, "Yes, we’re using these particular weapons, called the CBU-105, but that we’re only using them against armored vehicles." That is still a violation of the convention. They have not signed up, but this convention is creating a new international standard of behavior which rejects any use under any circumstance, because one of the big problems with cluster munitions is not only that they spread out over a huge area during strikes and oftentimes kill and injure civilians during strikes, but many of the munitions don’t explode when they’re supposed to and end up laying on the ground and acting as landmines. And we’ve seen this kind of failure with these CBU-105s, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Steve Goose, what about the civilian casualties? And what do you think needs to be done right now?
STEPHEN GOOSE: We don’t know what kind of casualties these weapons have caused. As Belkis was mentioning, we’ve got photographic evidence and video evidence of the attacks themselves, but we’ve not been able to get to this area on the ground to do interviews and identify potential casualties. But you can bet on it that there will be civilian casualties. If they didn’t occur during the attacks, they will occur at a later date from the so-called duds that lay on the ground and act like landmines.
AMY GOODMAN: What are—
STEPHEN GOOSE: The U.S.—I’m sorry, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead. Go ahead.
STEPHEN GOOSE: The U.S. has had a very muted response so far, saying they’re going to look into it. The U.S. shouldn’t be exporting any kind of cluster munition to anybody, but it does have a ban in place on export of almost all U.S. cluster munitions except this particular type, the CBU-105, because it’s one of the latest versions that, in theory, has a lower failure rate than others. We think the U.S. should abandon this loophole in its export prohibition.
AMY GOODMAN: Steve Goose, I want to thank you for being with us, director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, involved in the preparations and formal negotiations of the 2008 convention banning cluster munitions, also chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition. I also want to thank Belkis Wille for joining us from Istanbul, Turkey, a Yemen and Kuwait researcher at Human Rights Watch, speaking to us from Istanbul.
Headlines:
Syria: U.S.-Led Coalition Accused of Killing 64 Civilians
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has accused the U.S.-led coalition of killing 64 civilians in airstrikes on a Syrian village controlled by the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The group said 31 children were among those killed late last week near the northern city of Kobani in Aleppo province, marking what it called the worst civilian loss from a single attack since the United States launched its campaign against ISIL. The Pentagon says it is still assessing whether it should open an investigation, but denied there was any information to suggest civilians were killed. This comes as Amnesty International has released a new report saying Syrian civilians in Aleppo province are "being subjected to appalling human rights violations" by both the Syrian government and many opposition groups.
Nepal Earthquake Toll Tops 7,500; Bodies Found in Langtang
In Nepal, the death toll from a 7.8-magnitude earthquake has topped 7,500. Scores of bodies have been discovered in the remote village of Langtang along a popular Himalayan trekking route. It’s believed the entire village was wiped out. Nepali foreign minister Mahendra Bahadur Pandey said the death toll could still reach 10,000.
Mahendra Bahadur Pandey: "There may be 10,000 people to be dead, it is supposed. But we wish it not have to be in that number. But the final number will be at the time when we’ll complete to remove the debris and find out what is the result of it."
Burundi: 4 Protesters Killed as Court Backs President’s Re-election Bid
In Burundi, the constitutional court has ruled President Pierre Nkurunziza can run for a third term, as deadly protests against his bid continue into their second week. Secretary of State John Kerry has called the re-election bid unconstitutional. Burundi’s constitution allows presidents to serve only two terms, but Nkurunziza was appointed to his first term by Parliament. The court’s decision to allow his re-election bid comes after the vice president of the court fled the country, telling Agence France-Presse a majority of the court believed the bid was unconstitutional, but the judges had faced "enormous pressure and even death threats" to side with the president. Police reportedly shot four protesters dead on Monday, bringing the death toll to at least 13.
Dozens Reported Drowned in New Migrant Disaster
The aid group Save the Children has reported dozens of migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea after their boat sank. More than 1,750 people from Africa and the Middle East have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterrean to Europe. Italy says it has rescued thousands of people in recent days.
ISIL Claims Responsibility for Texas Attack as Gunmen Identified
The self-proclaimed Islamic State has claimed responsibility for this weekend’s attack in Texas on an anti-Islam event which included a contest for drawing the Prophet Muhammad. It’s unclear whether ISIL actually coordinated the attack. The two gunmen were shot dead outside the event in Garland, Texas. No one else was killed. The gunmen have been identified as Phoenix, Arizona, roommates Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. Simpson, a U.S.-born convert to Islam, had been under FBI surveillance since 2006 and was convicted in 2011 of lying to FBI agents about plans to travel to Somalia. He was sentenced to probation after a judge found federal prosecutors had not proved their argument he planned the trip for the purposes of "violent jihad." The FBI and Phoenix police had reportedly been monitoring Simpson’s posts about ISIL on social media. The event targeted by the attack was organized by anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller. It came just months after gunmen in Paris, France, attacked Charlie Hebdo newspaper, known for its satirical drawings of the Prophet Muhammad. Alia Salem, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in North Texas, condemned the violence but criticized the event.
Alia Salem: "The Muslim community at large in DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) made a collective decision not to attend or even protest Sunday’s events, in an effort to ignore the hateful actions intended to incite the Muslim community but also to give an unchallenged space for them to have their event. While we in no way condone the behavior of these criminals that opened fire and, as Americans, we absolutely uphold the right to freedom of expression, we must ask ourselves at what point does free speech become hate speech, especially when the intention is so clearly to incite a violent response."
Report: Israeli "Policy of Indiscriminate Fire" Fueled Civilian Deaths in Gaza
A new report based on the testimonies of Israeli soldiers has concluded the massive civilian death toll from last summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza resulted from a "policy of indiscriminate fire." The Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence released testimonies of more than 60 Israeli officers and soldiers which it says illustrate a "broad ethical failure" that "comes from the top of the chain of command." More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the assault, the vast majority civilians, while in Israel 73 people were killed, all but six of them soldiers. In a video made by Breaking the Silence, a first sergeant, his voice distorted, describes how a commander told him, "There are no innocent civilians," and to assume anyone within 200 or 400 meters of the Israeli Defense Forces was an enemy.
Israeli first sergeant: "And I quote: 'The rules are: Any person at a distance that could put you at risk, you kill him with no need for clearance.' Meaning, anyone at a distance of 200, 300, 400 meters from us, isn’t an ordinary civilian. According to IDF logic, he must be there for a reason, because an ordinary civilian would flee the area, and so, we must kill him with no need for clearance. For me, it was just spine-tingling."
New York State Senate Leader and Son Arrested for Soliciting Bribes
The Republican leader of the New York State Senate has been arrested along with his son on accusations of extortion, fraud and soliticing bribes. Federal prosecutors have accused State Senator Dean Skelos of soliciting payments for his son from a developer and an environmental company in exchange for political favors. In a recorded conversation, his son, Adam Skelos, acknowledges getting a job as a consultant to the environmental firm, AbTech, which sells stormwater filters, even though he "literally knew nothing about water, or, you know, any of that stuff." Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, unveiled the charges.
Preet Bharara: "And the complaint in multiple places alleges that Dean Skelos’s support for certain infrastructure projects and legislation was often based not on what was good for his constituents or good for New York, but rather on what was good for his son’s bank accounts. By now, two things should be abundantly clear. First, public corruption is a deep-seated problem in New York state. It is a problem in both chambers. It is a problem on both sides of the aisle. And second, we are deadly serious about tackling that problem."
Tamir Rice’s Mother in Shelter 5 Months After Police Killed Son
The mother of a 12-year-old boy fatally shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio, has moved into a homeless shelter and remains unable to bury her son, five-and-a-half months after he was killed. Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun when police pulled up and fatally shot him within two seconds of their arrival at a park. They failed to provide medical help and tackled Tamir’s sister to the ground as she tried to run to help him. Now, his family has asked a judge to reject the officers’ bid to delay their civil rights lawsuit, pending an investigation by the sheriff’s department. The motion says Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, is living with Tamir’s sister in a homeless shelter "because she could no longer live next door to the killing field of her son." The family has also waited to bury Tamir, in case more evidence is needed from his body. Samaria Rice and her uncle Mike spoke at a news conference Monday.
Samaria Rice: "Less than a second, my son is gone. And I want to know how long I’ve got to wait for justice."
Mike Petty: "My niece here has been displaced out of her home as a result of this, had to get emergency shelter as a result of this injustice. What I’m here to do is support her, and we do want to know how long. All of us have seen the video. In less than .78 seconds, two shots was fired. They said that they told him to put his hands up three times. That could not have happened, from what we saw in the video."
Peaceful protests continue in Baltimore, Maryland, over the death of Freddie Gray of spinal injuries in police custody. During a solidarity protest over Gray’s death in New York last week, a restaurant patron accosted protesters, shouting "White Lives Matter" and telling activist and student Betty Yu he hoped she got raped. The man, Sam Pugliese, was the president of the company which makes Jala brand Greek yogurt. His company said he has resigned "as a result of our core values."
Former Afghan War Commander Tapped to Lead Joint Chiefs of Staff
President Obama is set to nominate Marine Corps commandant General Joseph Dunford to become the next chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing General Martin Dempsey, who is retiring. Dunford led the U.S.-NATO occupation force in Afghanistan for 18 months starting in 2013, overseeing the drawdown of U.S. troops and purported transfer of security control to Afghanistan. He also led a regiment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, earning the nickname "Fighting Joe."
5 Tufts University Students on Hunger Strike to Save Janitors’ Jobs
Five students at Tufts University in Medford, Massachuetts, have launched a hunger strike to protest the university’s plans to cut 17 percent of its janitorial workforce in June. The students began their strike on Sunday in a bid to save the janitors’ jobs. Fellow students are camping out in solidarity outside Tufts’ main administration building.
Folk Singer Guy Carawan, Who Introduced "We Shall Overcome" to Civil Rights Activists, Dies at 87
And the folk singer Guy Carawan, who popularized the song "We Shall Overcome" for activists in the civil rights movement, has died at the age of 87. Carawan became music director of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee in 1959. In a 2004 interview on Democracy Now!, Carawan’s friend, the late, great Pete Seeger, recalled how Carawan helped make the song "We Shall Overcome" a rallying cry.
Pete Seeger: "It was a friend of mine, Guy Carawan, who made it famous. He picked up my way of singing it, 'We Shall Overcome,' although Septima—there was another teacher there, Septima Clark, a black woman. She felt that ’shall’—like me, she felt it opened up the mouth better than 'will,' so that’s the way she sang it. Anyway, Guy Carawan in 1960 taught it to the young people at the founding convention of SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC for short. And a month later, it wasn’t a song, it was the song, throughout the South."
Guy Carawan died in his sleep at home after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday, one day before what would have been Pete Seeger’s 96th birthday. Pete Seeger died last January.
Follow
WORK WITH DN!
Social Media Producer
WEB EXCLUSIVE
WATCH: Baltimore Prosecutor Charges Six Police Officers, Calls Freddie Gray's Death a "Homicide"
COLUMN
"A Century of Women Working for Peace" by Amy Goodman
THE HAGUE, Netherlands—One hundred years ago, more than 1,000 women gathered here in The Hague during World War I, demanding peace. Britain denied passports to more than 120 women, forbidding them from making the trip to suppress their peaceful dissent. Now, a century later, in these very violent times, nearly 1,000 women have gathered here again, this time from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as Europe and North America, saying “No” to wars from Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen to Syria, not to mention the wars in our streets at home. They were marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of WILPF, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Dr. Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch suffragist who co-founded the group a century ago, said the purpose of the original gathering in 1915 was to empower women “to protest against war and to suggest steps which may lead to warfare being an impossibility.”
Among the women here were four Nobel Peace Prize winners. Shirin Ebadi was awarded the prize in 2003 for advocating for human rights for Iranian women, children and political prisoners. She was the first Muslim woman, and the first Iranian, to receive a Nobel. Nevertheless, she has lived in exile since 2009, and has only seen her husband once since then. “Had books been thrown at people, at the Taliban, instead of bombs, and had schools been built in Afghanistan,” Ebadi said in her keynote address to the WILPF conference this week, “3,000 schools could have been built in memory of the 3,000 people who died on 9/11—at this time, we wouldn’t have had ISIS. Let’s not forget that the roots of the ISIS rest in the Taliban.” She was joined by her sister laureates Leymah Gbowee, who helped achieve a negotiated peace during the civil wars in Liberia; Mairead Maguire, who won the peace prize in 1976 at the age of 32 for advancing an end to the conflict in her native Northern Ireland; and Jody Williams, a Vermonter who led the global campaign to ban land mines, and who now is organizing to ban “killer robots,” weapons that kill automatically, without the active participation of a human controller.
These four world-renowned Nobel laureates were joined by nearly a thousand deeply committed peace activists from around the globe. Madeleine Rees, the secretary-general of WILPF, recalled the history of the first gathering in 1915, and how it was organized: “It wouldn’t have happened, but for the suffrage movement,” she told me, “because you don’t just start a mass movement. You actually have to have an organizational structure to make that happen. That had started with the suffragette movement. ... Every single one of those women who went to The Hague ... were demanding the right to vote. They saw, quite rightly, that the absence of women in making decisions in government meant a greater likelihood of war.”
Kozue Akibayashi is WILPF’s new president. After World War II, the U.S. required that Japan’s Constitution explicitly forbid it from pursuing war to settle disputes with foreign states. “The majority of people in Japan support the peace constitution,” Akibayashi explained. President Barack Obama, however, like George W. Bush before him, is pressuring Japan to eliminate the pacifistic Article Nine from the Japanese Constitution. He hosted Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in Washington this week, celebrating Abe as he works to restore Japan’s military to its former offensive capacity. Akibayashi and thousands of others also are protesting the planned expansion of the U.S. military presence on Okinawa.
Africa activist Hakima Abbas was also in The Hague. I interviewed her hours after mass graves were reported in Nigeria, containing victims of the militant group Boko Haram. The story of Boko Haram, she told me, “is an intersection with violent Islamist fundamentalisms, with global capitalism and with militarization ... fundamentalisms, though, don’t start and end with Islamic fundamentalisms in Africa. We’ve seen Christian fundamentalisms in Uganda, and the persecution of LGBTQI people.” She then made a connection to the street protests in Baltimore this week: “In your own country,” she told me, “the white supremacist and Christian right fundamentalisms are exacerbated by the gun culture and the promotion of an armed police force, which is killing black women, men, trans people and children. ... So fundamentalisms is really something that we have to address globally.”
I asked Shirin Ebadi if she had advice for the people of the world. She replied with a simple yet powerful prescription for peace, laying out the work for WILPF as it enters its second century: “Treat the people of Afghanistan the same as you treat your own people. Look at Iraqi children the same as you look at your own children. Then you will see that the solution is there.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
(c) 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
207 West 25th Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
____________________________
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment