Health professionals have crafted abusive tactics and falsely legitimized their use.

On the discredited theory that “breaking” prisoners would yield valuable intelligence, psychologists designed torture methods that mirrored the torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans to elicit false confessions from American prisoners of war.  Psychologists took techniques like suffocation by water, confinement in a coffin-like box, severe isolation, and prolonged sleep deprivation, used by the U.S. military on its own soldiers as preparation for torture by enemy forces, and reverse-engineered them into offensive interrogation techniques to be used against our own prisoners.

Health professionals have advised interrogators on methods of abuse that would exploit prisoners’ vulnerabilities.

In their roles as members of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), psychologists and psychiatrists observed abusive interrogations and advised interrogators on how to exploit their phobias and other psychological and physical vulnerabilities, sometimes using information culled from the prisoners’ own medical records.

Health professionals have used medical procedures to harm prisoners.

Numerous prisoners have reported receiving forced and medically unnecessary “treatment” or procedures for interrogation or punishment.  Examples include forced enemas, unwarranted surgery and unknown psychotropic drugs.  A Guantánamo prison guard reported that a medic charged with giving physical therapy purposefully caused a prisoner severe pain for his own enjoyment, and that a Navy doctor, under the guise of conducting “cavity searches” for security purposes, forcefully penetrated his patients’ rectums with intent to hurt and degrade them.  Even today, under President Obama’s watch, Guantánamo physicians, nurses and prison guards continue to forcibly feed hunger strikers through the use of a 6-point restraint chair and the brutal forceful insertion and removal of thick nasogastric tubes.

Health professionals have calibrated pain and monitored interrogations that risked leaving prisoners in need of treatment.

I was stripped naked and remained naked through the month of July[,]…kept for several days in a standing position with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal ring in the ceiling. …  My lower leg was examined on a daily basis by a doctor using a tape measure for signs of swelling.  I do not remember…how many days I was kept standing….

Walid Bin Attash (ICRC Report, 2007)
(Attash had a prosthetic leg at the time)

I would be strapped to a special bed….A cloth would be placed over my face.  Cold water…was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe.…[A]s I struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe.….a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind the head of bed, but I saw him when [sic] came to fix a clip to my finger which was connected to a machine.  I think it was to measure my pulse and oxygen content in my blood.  So they could take me to the breaking point.

Khalid Shaik Mohammed, as told to the (ICRC Report, 2007)

As we understand it, when the waterboard is used, the subject’s body responds as if the subject were drowning, even though the subject may be well aware that he is in fact not drowning. You have informed us that this procedure does not inflict actual physical harm. Thus, although the subject may experience the fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain.

…  as we discussed above, you have informed us that in determining which procedures to use and how you use them, you have selected techniques that will not harm Zubaydah’s wound. You have also indicated that numerous steps will be taken to ensure that none of these procedures in any way interferes with the proper healing of Zubaydah’s wound.  You have also indicated that, should it appear at any time that Zuhaydah is experiencing severe pain or suffering, the medical personnel on hand will stop the use of any technique.

Jay Bybee, OLC Memo to CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo (2002)

We recognize the theoretical possibility that the use of one or more techniques would make a detainee more susceptible to severe pain or that the techniques, in combination, would operate differently from the way they would individually and thus cause severe pain.  But as we understand the experience involving the combination of various techniques, the OMS medical and psychological personnel have not observed any such increase in susceptibility. Other than the waterboard, the specific techniques under consideration in this memorandum–including sleep deprivation–have been applied to more than 25 detainees. … No apparent increase in susceptibility to severe pain has been observed either when techniques are used sequentially or when they are used simultaneously-for example, when an insult slap is simultaneously combined with water dousing or a kneeling stress position, or when wall standing is simultaneously combined with abdominal slap and water dousing. Nor does experience show that, even apart from changes in susceptibility to pain, combinations of these techniques cause the techniques to operate differently so as to cause severe pain. OMS doctors and psychologists, moreover, confirm that they expect that the techniques, when combined as described … would not operate in a different manner from the way they do individually so as to cause severe pain.

Steven Bradbury, OLC Memo to CIA Senior Deputy General Counsel John Rizzo (2005)

Health professionals have checked prisoners to certify that they were capable of surviving additional abuse.

Health personnel conducted medical exams for non-therapeutic purposes, including the vetting of prisoners for interrogations designed to be harmful to the prisoners’ physical and mental health.  Medics intervened in abusive interrogations to lower blood pressure, administer fluids and medication and to allow rest so that abusive treatment could proceed.

Health professionals have shared confidential patient information that was used to harm patients.

Physicians failed to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of their patients’ information by turning over medical records to interrogators or BSCT personnel for exploitative purposes.

Health professionals have covered up evidence of torture and abuse.

Medical personnel left out signs of torture from medical reports, altered medical reports written by others to destroy evidence of torture, failed to properly examine prisoners upon arrival into prisons and then after interrogations to guard against abuse, and facilitated the concealment of injuries suggesting abuse by not filing existing pre- and post-interrogation exams with the prisoners’ medical records.  Medical examiners have falsified, delayed or improperly withheld autopsies and death certificates, failed to report injuries that were clearly caused by abuse, and released death certificates that do not comply with the Geneva Conventions and accepted medical practice.

Health professionals have turned a blind eye to cruel treatment.

Medical personnel routinely permitted their clinical findings to be used to inflict torture, walked away from abuse occurring in their presence and systematically failed to report incidents of abuse.

Selected Sources

• Steven Miles: Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors (2009)
• CCR Report on Current Conditions of Confinement at Guantánamo (February 2009)
• ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody (February 2007)
• Torture memoranda of the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice (2002, 2005)
• Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody (November 2008)
• JTF-Guantánamo BSCT: Standard Operation Procedures (2002-2005)
• DoD: Interrogation Log, Detainee 063, SECRET ORCON (November 2002-January 2003)
• Testimony of Spc. Brandon Neeley (February 2009)
• NY Times: China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo (July 2, 2008)
• NY Times: In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use (April 21, 2009)
• NY Times: Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83 (May 8, 2009)