Community | June 08, 2010 | 78 comments

Shocking New Report: The CIA Performed Human Experiments on Prisoners Under Bush

source: http://www.alternet.org/rights/147121/shocking_new_report%3A_the_cia_performed_human_experim...

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Omnomynous
Over the last year there have been an increasing number of accounts suggesting that, along with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program, there was a related program experimenting with and researching the application of the torture.

For example, in the seven paragraphs released by a British court summarizing observations by British counterintelligence agents of the treatment of Binyan Mohamed by the CIA, the first two of these paragraphs

these paragraphs stated:

It was reported that a new series of interviews was conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2002 as part of a new strategy designed by an expert interviewer….

BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation. The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed. [emphasis added]

The suggestion was that a new strategy was being tested and the results carefully examined. Several detainees have provided similar accounts, expressing their belief that their interrogations were being carefully studied, apparently so that the techniques could be modified based on the results. Such research would violate established laws and ethical rules governing research.

Since Nazi doctors who experimented upon prisoners in the concentration camps were put on trial at Nuremberg, the U.S. and other countries have moved toward a high ethical standard for research on people. All but the most innocuous research requires the informed consent of those studied. Further, all research on people is subject to review by independent research ethics committees, known as Institutional Review Boards or IRBs.

In the U.S., there was a major push toward more stringent research ethics when the existence of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was publicly revealed in the early 1970s. In that study nearly 400 poor rural African-American men were denied existing treatment for their syphilis, and indeed, were never told they had syphilis by participating doctors. The study by the U.S. Public Health Service was intended to continue until the last of these men died of syphilis. When the study became public the resulting outcry helped cement evolving ethical standards mandating informed consent for any research with even a possibility of causing harm. These rules were codified in what has become known as the Common Rule, which applies to nearly all federally-funded research, including all research by the CIA.

Experiments in Torture

A new report of which I am a coauthor, Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program, just released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) confirms previous suspicions and provides the first strong evidence that the CIA was indeed engaged in illegal and unethical research on detainees in its custody. The report, the result of six months of detailed work, analyzes now-public documents, including the "torture memos" from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the CIA's Inspector General Report and the accompanying CIA Office of Medical Services (OMS) guidelines for monitoring of detainees.

The report points to several instances where medical personnel -- physicians and psychologists -- monitored the detailed administration of torture techniques and the effects upon those being abused. The resultant knowledge was then used both as a legal rationale for the use of the techniques and to refine these abusive techniques, allegedly in order to make them safer.

For example, the OMS guidelines contain this note emphasizing how important it is "that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented" by medical personnel, and clarifying the nature of this documentation:

"how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was applied (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment."

This type of documentation was not part of routine medical care as it was not being done in the interests of the person being waterboarded. Rather, the OMS made clear that this was being done

"[i]n order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations" [regarding how to torture people.]

The purpose of this systematic monitoring was to modify how these techniques were implemented, that is, to develop generalizable knowledge to be utilized in the future. As Renée Llanusa-Cestero demonstrated in a recent paper on CIA research in the peer-reviewed journal Accountability in Medicine, the medical personnel conducting these observations were primarily present as researchers to observe and monitor, not as treating doctors.

Other examples in the PHR report describe instances in which OMS staff investigated the degree to which severe pain that may meet the legal definition of torture arose from the applications of a specific technique (sleep deprivation) or from combinations of individual techniques. In the combined techniques example, they apparently experimented with different combinations of abusive techniques -- "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 an abdominal slap and water dousing" -- and studied the suffering that each combination created. The Office of Legal Counsel drew upon this research in one of the torture memos to argue that, because they claimed the individual "enhanced techniques" were not harmful, combining these varied techniques also would not cause interrogators to slip over the line allegedly separating legal techniques from illegal "torture."

It is hard not to conclude that the CIA was conducting research upon detainees. These observations and experiments were not conducted for the benefit of the individuals being brutally interrogated but for the purpose of creating generalizable knowledge and thus constituted research subject to the laws and ethical rules regulating research, including the Common Rule.

Evidence Techniques Are Harmful

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78 comments // Shocking New Report: The CIA Performed Human Experiments on Prisoners Under Bush

  • controlusplease
    • +1
      controlusplease  

    • this isnt surprising to me
      korean and vietnamese POWs were used as live subjects to test the affects of a nuclear blast against the human body during the 50s and 60s
      the government does all sorts of terrible things we atent aware of
      just because its "officially" written down on paper doesn't mean its true or history

    • 1 year ago
  • Monkey_Films
  • curtisreed
  • galwayman
    • -3
      galwayman  

    • Am not surprised to hear this and it is what the Christian Right will do to all of us who refuse to convert once they are back in power! Be afraid America be very afraid because we face two enemies the Jihadists and the Christian right,and either one of them is just as bad,and represent the same evil! isn't it wonderful watching Obama screw around while the country burns,assuring the comeback of the Religious Right and fascism to follow!

    • 1 year ago
  • redvelvet1278
    • 0
      redvelvet1278  
    • galwayman:

      I don't disagree, however, blaming only one group all the time takes focus away from the larger picture. I don't see that helping at all. I'm not discounting the CR vote and influence as well as hands on influence, but there are A LOT OF PEOPLE INVOLVED in making this country both beautiful and horrible.

    • 1 year ago
  • Monkey_Films
  • futuregen
    • 0
      futuregen  

    • DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): "Overlooking a sidewalk in Queens, New York, a security camera records a woman walking along the street. Police say she's about to be the victim of a violent mugging. The attacker, wearing dark pants and a green hat, approaches her. He's armed with a knife.

      Police say a man comes to her aid. He is Hugo Alfredo Kaliax (ph), a homeless day laborer. The attacker turns on him and police say stabs him several times in the chest. Kaliax turns to chase the man who's just stabbed him. But after only a few steps, he collapses on the sidewalk.

      What happens next is difficult to comprehend. People walk by without stopping to help him. They come and go. More than 20 of them. Some glance over at the dying man. Others stare.

      These two men stop nearby. They stand there. Before one of the men takes out his cell phone and takes a picture. Another turns Kaliax over, presumably sees his wounds, but, like the others, walks away.

      For more than an hour, dozens of pedestrians and bystanders walk past this hero who saved a life, apparently without ever calling 911. Finally, firefighters respond to the scene, but it is too late. Hugo Alfredo Kaliax is dead."

      Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

      ____________________________________________________________________

      This is a how America really is. I am this man. I reached out to help the human race, to steer America on an appropriate energy future and I was Brutally shot down. I have been lying on that ground for over 16 years now. People have come by and laughed at me. Others purposely come by to keep shooting at me, making sure I will never recover. I have reached out to supposedly “good” people for help and found out they weren't “good ' at all. For a fact, the people who have tortured me have included the FBI, the military, the Catholic church clergy and parishioners, other “Christians”, police, the electric companies, nuclear industry, medical professionals including doctors, and US Post Office employees, and people involved in the logging and oil industries. I have been followed on all vacations including into Canada and my family and I have been tortured there. Our house presently includes frequencies to put us to sleep. mind control, fake dreams that are piped into our house, electric shocks, 24-hour surveillance. I am harassed whenever I leave the house. The past 16 years have been a nightmare and I finally realized that someone set me up to look like a terrorist, and I have been treated that way. (One of the government 9/11 “hijackers” was planted here in Peoria for some reason...). At first I thought they were experimenting on my family and I but it soon became clear that it was purposeful torture. Some of this has been performed by John McCain followers, remember him? The man who is supposed to be against torture? Well, that's another falsehood. Many of the things that happened to us were then done to the people of Iraq. America does not deserve to be a world leader. America is a very sick nation. Perhaps this has also involved the CIA. My sister works for the CIA and she has been purposely steered in the direction that has ensured my family and I have never received the justice we deserve.

    • 1 year ago
  • curtisreed
  • Miglue
  • good_stuff
    • +1
      good_stuff  

    • I would expect such work from the army/fbi/cia, but the fact that doctors obersed/participated certainly goes against his/her oath to "First, do no harm".

    • 1 year ago
  • MotherForTruth
  • PressCore
    • +1
      PressCore  
    • MotherForTruth:

      Once they became nazis they ceased pretending to be part of
      the profession of humanitarian healers, and became the monsters
      they were serving. Nothing can live in a vacuum. Them compromising
      the ethics of their profession provided the atmosphere for torture to
      fluorish. Were it not for them trying to put a velvet glove on an iron fist,
      the CIA's charade of pretending they too are still human, instead of the
      monstrous fiends they realy are, would not have persisted to this day.
      You'll pardon my being blunt. I loathe the hypocrisy those mala fide
      doctors employ to compromise themselves.

    • 1 year ago
  • versasrev
  • treewolf39
  • diode
  • curtisreed
    • -1
      curtisreed  
    • diode:

      OMG! are you KIDDING! they deprived the captive terrorist of his sleep and DOCUMENTED the results?!?!?!? to learn how to do it more effectively...

      oh shit, the HUMANITY

      I'd like to see how all these bleeding heart liberals would "interrogate" a prisoner.

      "Hi, I'm Dr Elaine Dershowitz...yes, I'm american, but I'm a Liberal american, and I love Muslims I hate Israel, so we can be friends.
      Now, they would like for you to tell us who helped you build that bomb--not that you have to admit you were involved, even tho we did find it in your apartment and it had your fingerprints all over it...what's that? you were framed? by the Jews? Oh, well I can sympathize, because I'm a liberal, so I believe that Israel might have framed you.
      Look, can I get you something to drink? A coffee? Some milk? Celestial Seasonings tea? I'm sorry, I'd like to heat it, but since you're being interrogated, you'll have to drink it cold. Oh, is that too cruel? Well...maybe I'll get it heated for you.
      I can see you are wearing sandals and your feet are really looking rough. Would you tell me who blew up the school today if I got you a pedicure? Hmm?
      I could arrange for a massage with a happy ending? Why won't you talk?

      Boy you are a hard case!!!"

    • 1 year ago
  • HsIV
  • Buster_Bluth
  • HsIV
  • HsIV
  • acontradiction
  • flyingkick
    • +3
      flyingkick  
    • acontradiction:

      This is a pretty straight forward article about CIA torture research, which somehow inspired you to write 3 passionate comments on how much liberals suck?
      I think you have some unresolved issues you need to work through, lol.

    • 1 year ago
  • curtisreed
    • 0
      curtisreed  
    • flyingkick:

      it's a PISS POOR article of mostly innuendo

      "oooh, the cia monitored sleep deprivation to see how to improve the technique"

      ah run screaming for the doors!

      Liberal interrogation technique "Would you tell who's involved if I give you a blowjob?"

    • 1 year ago
  • TypeMemeHere
  • acontradiction
  • Juas
  • redvelvet1278
  • acontradiction
  • curtisreed
  • curtisreed
    • 0
      curtisreed  
    • acontradiction:

      actually, that's not true. I hear that obama is personally bowing to each of the terrorists and the results are IN! the terrorists appreciate it so much they have opened up and told us ALL THEIR SECRETS

      it was so obvious all along, just bow to your enemy, maybe offer a blowjob or a handjob or let them rape your sister, and voila! they spill their guts

    • 1 year ago
  • Haley35
  • redvelvet1278
  • Omnomynous
    • +2
      Omnomynous  

    • Torture is one thing (I'm not defending) and it's no secret it was going on, it was also pretty common knowledge that some people (even within the military) felt any form of torture was ineffective.

      What get's me is how do you improve upon simulated drowning, and what would basically amount to molestation, rape, sexual assault however you want to put it?

      The things we know about are horrible, the fact they were trying to improve upon their brutality only suggests those seeking to do so were seriously mentally ill.

      There was nothing more to gain by discovering the "magical" sequence in toenail removal. And quite a few people would not respond well to torture, would consider themselves already dead, and would take secrets to the grave.

    • 1 year ago
  • bike10
  • MotherForTruth
    • +4
      MotherForTruth  

    • Not shocking at all. Majority of Americans are desensitized and worse convinced that our government is in the right for "our safety". Or is it?

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • Nothing shocking about this at all. And if we aren't going to do anything about it now, why report on it? I don't see masses of people in the streets up in arms over these criminals. Let's face it, we as Americans on the whole have lost our collective souls which then makes us accomplices. WE also allowed these abuses to happen and continue and did not take it upon ourselves to demand justice when it was necessary. Al Gore once stated that he accepted the USSC decision to place Bush in power over us in 2000 because the next step was revolution. At this point I actually believe we should have taken that step. We will never get back what was lost.

    • 1 year ago
  • Omnomynous
    • +3
      Omnomynous  
    • JanforGore:

      I agree collectively we've been soulless, then again personally many of us have ended relationships, sacrificed plenty of our own time and effort in attempts to shed more light on and bring an end to this kind of injustice.

      Vigilance, to help end complacency, that's why I submitted this. Because there is a large segment of the American population I couldn't stomach to be in the same room with over their violent, brainwashed ideologies, and I'd like to think one day they'll change.

      Oh and Al Gore messed up, by being complicit in allowing the USSC to "appoint" Bush, IF he would've stood up and continued the fight way back when, the people would have supported him.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  
    • Omnomynous:

      "IF he would've stood up and continued the fight way back when, the people would have supported him."

      Ahh, so you can only muster up what is needed to support your constitutional rights when led by the hand and not based on principle? And as I recall he did fight for quite some time. Where we you during that time? Waiting for a phone call? Sorry, I find that to be too convenient of a cop out to place it all on him.

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +1
      PressCore  
    • Omnomynous:

      Your avatar's silouette is very familiar. Unless I'm mistaken it was
      one of the most graphicly horrid photos of all time. During the war
      in Vietnam a S. Vietnanese army officer publicly executed a Viet
      Cong guerilla by shooting him in the temple while his hands were
      bound behind his back. I saw the scene as the man winced in
      extreme agony, fell to the ground, and his artery pumped the blood
      out of his punctured temple. It was a terrorist act. And it wasn't
      committed to save the world from Communism. It was done to
      make sure the world Big Oil Monopoly could farm out Vietnam
      for Exxon,. Mobil et al. Easier to steal the resources of a country
      when you use public tax dollars supported Government military
      aggression. Why shoud they pay for anything they can more
      easily steal ? Since they're going to hell anyway, they may as well
      enjoy the ride while they still breathe. Even in the Oil Corporations'
      extreme greed, and all the evil their diseased damned spread, they
      knew they couldn't take it with them to the other side, when the great
      equalizer brought them down too.They failed. But the USA's wounds
      never healed.Thank you for reminding those of us who don't yet know
      the score.

    • 1 year ago
  • greywrld
  • Darevalo
  • greywrld
  • acontradiction
  • Darevalo
  • artemis6
  • NiceN
    • +4
      NiceN  

    • Is it shocking that I don't find this shocking? I also wouldn't be surprised if this was a C.I.A. monitored post. Maybe if you said that the C.I.A. released oxy to destroy trailer trash, I might have let out a gasp.

    • 1 year ago
  • zichi
    • zichi [removed]  
    • This comment was removed as a violation of community guidelines.
  • QuestionGeek
  • Incredulous
    • +2
      Incredulous  
    • zichi:

      We don't need an investigation. We know who was responsible, we have always known, and no amount of Facebook paging or sending your daughter out there to make demands of the American public is going to change the fact that the guilty have been in plain site all along, living as if they had the right to do what they did, issuing statements that they would do it again. We don't need a paper trail. We know who the Commander in Chief was during this horrendous period of American history, we know who his chief side kick and mouthpiece were as well. We know who to hold accountable, we just don't do it. Some things even the CIA can't erase.

    • 1 year ago
  • zichi
  • Miglue
  • zichi
  • Miglue
    • 0
      Miglue  
    • zichi:

      ok, u think there is justice anywhere??
      "I am defending the Justice of Law, because we don't have anything else".
      where is that "justice" you defend? only when the top criminals is that scrutiny nedded? fuck bush and cheney and the cia they all should be in jail but there all rich white men so their all liven the good life... just like the mexican cartels that make money in mexico or any other big time rich criminal!

    • 1 year ago
  • artemis6
  • common_sense_please
    • +5
      common_sense_please  

    • Sadly this is really not shocking--and yes technically this torture and unethical treatment took place while George W. was the President (and he should be held accountable for letting this happen) --- in the end, Dick Cheney was the hands on dungeon master and the real leader of the experiments and he is the one who deserves to be exposed, called out, and strung up for violating just about every article of the Nuremberg code.

    • 1 year ago
  • Buster_Bluth
  • common_sense_please
    • +3
      common_sense_please  
    • Buster_Bluth:

      I agree the title is stupid--but George W. passively and George H. W. and Dick Cheney for sure--knew what the CIA was doing and at the very least condoned it by "requesting" lawyers re-write the torture laws and find loopholes (and write and pass the Patriot Act) that allowed the CIA to "justify" torture.

    • 1 year ago
  • Buster_Bluth
  • common_sense_please
    • +3
      common_sense_please  
    • Buster_Bluth:

      Is your post an example of sarcasm or irony? Because first off you just wasted your time reading and responding to comments on an article you thought was pointless. That and nothing like calling people out for being haters for pointing out George H.W. was actually in charge of the CIA before he became President and that George W. sat with his thumb up his ass while Dick Cheney essentially opened his own private terrorist camp in Guantanamo Bay--but no really people are interested in bashing Bush because they don't want to admit that Obama sucks.

    • 1 year ago
  • Monkey_Films
  • common_sense_please
    • 0
      common_sense_please  
    • Monkey_Films:

      Oh I agree--this article is pointless and not very shocking--and I agree that President Obama for all his "bluster" about change really hasn't done much to actually change things with regard to Guantanamo Bay and torture. I also agree it's not a partisan issue--in that both political parties are equally guilty of trotting out their efforts to "fight the war on terror" when it makes for good campaign commercial soundbites. My problem is I am beginning to think Buster_Bluth is channeling JJ-Jammer in that he likes to argue even when people are agreeing with him :P

    • 1 year ago
  • Monkey_Films
  • rodstradamus
  • Monkey_Films
  • PressCore
    • +3
      PressCore  
    • rodstradamus:

      Being a Psyche student ( with expressed interests in the paranormal
      of which " rermote viewing " was also one of the CIA's programs ) at
      the S.U. of N. Y. in the 1960s, I was one of the 5 targeted populations
      of surreptitiously unlawful experimentation by the CIA with LSD, which
      also involved my being the victim of 2nd degree Felony Assault. Of course
      they couldn't get anyone's informed consent. And of course, they didn't
      want anyone opening up the floodgates of lawsuits that wopuld follow.
      The idea they'd ever recognize that 5th Amendment clause requiring
      compensation is something those evil fiends would laugh at. I have hard
      evidence to prove that the scar on my neck is from a surgery performed
      in November 1979 done to remove the remnants of a foreign object one
      of their operatives stabbed into the back of my neck as she mugged me.
      She was a nurse, working for a doctor, both of whom fled the scene of
      their crime to escape being criminaly prosecuted. I still intend to take my case
      to the Congressional committee responsible for oversight of those nazi
      vermin. I'm still owed under the 5th Amendment. And Sicilians aren't the
      kind to take no for an answer. I know the names of my assailants. They
      know the name of the CIA agent who Stalked me to have me Assaulted.
      The chances they're dead and/or unavailable to be subpoaened are low.
      The chances the dominos will fall as they should, and the truth will come out
      are very high. You will read about it in the New York Times by and by.
      I mean to push it until I eliminate all resistance to the CIA's coverup.

    • 1 year ago
  • Monkey_Films
    • +3
      Monkey_Films  
    • PressCore:

      Thank you for speaking out on your experience. So many people ignore the truth and dismiss stories such as yours even when coming from first hand experience. Power corrupts no matter the colors of the flag you fly.

    • 1 year ago
  • Buster_Bluth
  • ezrierin
    • +5
      ezrierin  
    • Buster_Bluth:

      George Bush was the Commander in Chief. It was his responsibility in the end. The buck stoped at his desk. He is responsible. He committed war crimes, he should be tried at home, or he should be tried in the international court in the Hague. The United States has not joined the international court system, but that does not stop a member country from issuing legal proceedings for war criminals, in non signatory countries. The embarrassment for the United States as 111 countries demand they be given George Bush, Dick Cheney, and all their cadre, for investigation, possibly sapina and even arrest. We would have to ask ourselves, do we as Americans believe in justice for all or not?

    • 1 year ago
  • Buster_Bluth
  • Monkey_Films
    • +2
      Monkey_Films  
    • ezrierin:

      Yes, Bush should be sentenced to death for his part in this. However, nothing has changed, the CIA is still doing this so Obama is just as dirty. This is not partisan, this is an American issue.

    • 1 year ago
  • Incredulous
  • Confucius
  • Monkey_Films
  • Stoneyroad
  • Omnomynous
  • hunzedog
  • suzane
  • treewolf39
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