UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
(HELSINKI
COMMISSION) HOLDS BRIEFING:
PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (PHR)
JULY 24,
2008
COMMISSIONERS:
REP. ALCEE L. HASTINGS,
D-FLA., CHAIRMAN
REP. LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER, D-N.Y.
REP. MIKE
MCINTYRE, D-N.C.
REP. HILDA L. SOLIS, D-CALIF.
REP. G.K.
BUTTERFIELD, D-N.C.
REP. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, R-N.J.
REP.
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, R-ALA.
REP. MIKE PENCE, R-IND.
REP. JOSEPH
R. PITTS, R-PENN.
SEN. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, D-MD., CO-CHAIRMAN
SEN. CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, D-CONN.
SEN. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, D-WIS.
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y.
SEN. JOHN F. KERRY, D-MASS.
SEN. SAM BROWNBACK, R-KAN.
SEN. GORDON H. SMITH, R-ORE.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, R-GA.
SEN. RICHARD BURR, R-N.C.
HON. DAVID
J. KRAMER, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
HON. DAVID BOHIGIAN, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
HON. MARY BETH LONG, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
WITNESSES/PANELISTS:
LEONARD RUBENSTEIN, JD,
PRESIDENT,
PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, (PHR)
ALLEN KELLER, M.D.,
BELLEVUE/NYU PROGRAM FOR SURVIVORS OF TORTURE
DR.
ALLEN (?), M.D.
The briefing was held at 2:00 p.m. in Room 311
Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C., Rep. Alcee Hastings, Chairman,
Helsinki Commission, moderating.
[*]
HASTINGS: Ladies and
gentlemen, I welcome you to the Helsinki Commission's briefing with
representatives for Physicians for Human Rights.
As chairman of the Helsinki
Commission, I know that raising human rights issues is a two-way street. As
Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov once observed, the Helsinki panel (ph) only has
meat if it is observed fully by all parties. I quote, "No country should evade
a discussion of its own domestic problems, nor should a country ignore
violations in other participating states."
The point of the Helsinki panel
(ph) is mutual observation, not mutual evasion.
Gentlemen, good doctors, I
have a full statement. I'm going to include it in the record. But I really am
more interested in hearing from you than I am from me.
So if we could
start with Dr. Rubenstein, I would appreciate it.
And I might add, ladies
and gentlemen, their biographies as well as their full statements and other
offerings are on our table outside.
So, Doctor, thank you all so very much
for being here.
RUBENSTEIN: Thank you, Congressman, and thank you for this
opportunity to participate in this hearing and -- and this briefing and thank
you for holding the briefing.
My colleagues and I will be discussing the
findings and recommendations of a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights
entitled "Broken Laws, Broken Lives, medical evidence of torture by U.S.
personnel and its impact.
We have copies on the table if you don't have one.
Physicians for Human Rights is an organization that for more than 20 years
has employed medical and scientific methods to document violations of human
rights so that truth can be determined and perpetrators held accountable.
For these two decades, we have engaged in these medical evaluations throughout
the world and led the process that led to international standards for such
examinations contained in the manual on effective investigation and
documentation of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or
punishment, which is known as the Istanbul Protocol.
And for the past five
years, we have been engaged in investigations and analysis concerning
interrogation methods used by the United States to determine whether the United
States itself engaged in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and
punishment.
"Broken Laws, Broken Lives" is the third report we have
released.
Let me begin by -- about the report by giving you a little bit of
context. Over the last four years, as a nation, we have increasingly learned
about the process by which extremely harsh interrogation methods, such as
isolation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, severe
humiliation and many more, were authorized and adopted, first, by the CIA and
then by the Department of Defense.
What ha been missing from this picture
though is an understanding of the consequences of the decisions made about the
interrogation methods on thousands -- and I emphasize -- thousands of human
beings who came into custody of the United States. Only a tiny handful of whom
have been charged with any crime.
And we're especially concerned with the
period before any public disclosure, which was 2001 to 2004.
Often this
discussion had an abstract quality, though torture and cruel treatment are
anything but abstract. They result in searing pain and suffering and rob people
of humanity.
So we decided we had to found out what happened to some of the
victims.
To do this, we identified 11 men who were formerly in U.S. custody
and who were willing to undergo intensive two-day medical and psychological
evaluations under the standards of the Istanbul Protocol, which I mentioned a
moment ago.
The sample was not random, but we did not exclude anyone who
agreed to participate.
Four of the men were arrested or brought to
Afghanistan and then sent on to Guantanamo. The other seven were held in Iraq,
most in Abu Ghraib. All were eventually released and none were charged with a
crime.
What we found across the board was the men experience a horrible stew
of methods of torture and ill treatment that brought about intense pain,
degradation and suffering. And it's suffering that endures to this day.
As
always happens when governments start down the road to torture, intelligence
gathering gave way to regime of cruelty that destroyed many of the men.
There were five major findings I'd like to summarize. And Dr. Keller will
describe the experiences of some of the men he, who was one of the evaluators,
examined.
First, in all the locations, almost all the men were subject to
combination of the kinds of techniques I mentioned a moment ago that were
authorized by the Defense Department at various times, including isolation,
stress positions, suspension, extremes of heat and cold, severe humiliation, use
of dog and threats.
In Iraq, almost all of the men were forced to be naked
for very long periods of time, often while isolated in cold, dark rooms and
cells.
In Guantanamo, three of the four men reported being shackled to the
floor for 18 to 20 hours at a time.
Also in Guantanamo, men were forced to
take drugs without being informed of what they were or why they were being
administered.
Second, all the men reported that the experience of being
subjected to these and other techniques were on an intense level of physical
pain and agony.
Former detainees describe the inability to move their
muscles for 18 hours or being suspended by their arms as excruciating. A
number of them loss consciousness during the process when they were being placed
and kept in this stress positions.
Psychological pain and suffering where
thought, if anything, worse. They experienced despair, fear and terror from
being kept alone, often naked in lightless, cold rooms, from being exposed to
excessive loud noise, from fear of dogs, from worrying about threats to their
families, from the constant degradation and humiliation, and from the very
disorientation and agony brought on by lack of sleep.
Seven of the men
contemplated suicide despite the Muslim prohibition on suicide. One of them
attempted suicide multiple times. Others simply wished for death.
For some,
the severity of the psychological abuse also led to physical symptoms, including
chronic headaches, chest pains and difficulty breathing.
Third, we found
that all the men's suffering lasted for years after release.
As I mentioned,
these men were in custody between -- most of them, between 2001 and 2004, though
some were released later.
But they continue to suffer physical pain in
joints, limbs and muscles.
And the horror most of all lives on in their
minds. They can't sleep. They experience nightmares. They're severely
hampered in their social and family relationships and in their work. They feel
like their lives have been shattered.
And from a medical standpoint, the
diagnosis of severe depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder were
common.
Fourth, we found that the authorized techniques, many of them
themselves amount torture, begot yet additional forms of torture, proving once
again that once torture starts, it cannot be contained. What I mean by this is
that beatings became intense and common.
Particularly in Afghanistan, but
also in Iraq, one man lost multiple teeth. Another had to be hospitalized.
Two and possibly three men in Iraq were sodomized. Two men in Iraq were
subjected to electric shock. And a third was shocked when pushed into a
generator.
And in Iraq particularly, there was an environment of gratuitous
cruelty.
One man was suspended by a winch, another stabbed in the check with
a screwdriver.
Fifth and finally among our findings or key findings, medical
personnel played a very problematic role.
Now some of the detainees reported
receiving good medical care. And sometimes medical personnel intervened to stop
abuse.
But others reported instances where medical personnel became cogs in
the system of abuse, sometimes by sharing medical information, sometimes by
turning a blind eye to abuse, and sometimes by patching up people so abuse could
continue.
The medical record which we obtained in one case shows that the
medical personnel saw a man severely decompensation become psychotic and
suicidal. It was very clear that this treatment to which he was being
subjected, including isolation, contributed to his decompensation. But they
didn't address that cause. And, in fact, told the man at one point, when he
begged to be removed from isolation, that that's a decision the interrogators
could make. There was no evidence that the doctors or medics reported abuse.
Now, in 2006, the Army reputed most of these forms of torture, although the new
Army interrogation manual continues to allow isolation and sleep deprivation,
limited -- sleep limited to four hours for certain detainees. So they -- these
methods have not completed been eliminated by the department of defense. And of
course the CIA has eliminated -- hasn't eliminated any of these.
So our
first recommendation is for a firm prohibition on torture and ill treatment,
including all the techniques and methods we found.
Second, we think there
has to be accountability. As elsewhere in the world, we need to have the truth.
Despite the investigations and hearings and many reports, we still have
only a small glimpse of what thousands of men experienced. So we are calling
for a full, independent, nonpartisan commission with subpoena powers to get
access to documents and to personnel's testimony. And this also should include
the role of medical personnel.
And I should add that for the past three
years, Physicians for Human Rights has asked the Defense Department for an
internal investigation of the role of medical personnel and abuse. And we've
never had a response.
Of course, accountability must also include
prosecutions for war crimes.
As General Taguba said in the preface in our
report, "those who committed these crimes should be held responsible."
Finally, we believe the government owes the victim. That begins with apology
but also compensation and also access to rehabilitative services that torture
victims deserve.
And finally, in setting future policy, we have to talk not
just about ticking bombs, but about what happens to human beings when a regime
of torture unfolds.
HASTINGS: Thank you.
Dr. Keller?
KELLER: Thank
you, Congressman. Thank you so much for holding this briefing today, which
clearly has relevance to our interactions with other countries and diplomatic
relations and other things. And I believe nobody gets that better than this
commission. So I thank you for holding this hearing today.
I was one of the
medical evaluators in this study. And the 11 evaluations of former Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo detainees that my colleagues and I conducted, we fond clear
physical and psychological evidence or torture and abuse, often causing lasting
suffering.
As a physician with over 15 years of experience in caring for
victims of torture and evaluating them from all over the world, I can tell you
that -- the torture and abuse that these men endured tragically is second to
none.
Let me share with you two examples.
Fist, a gentleman identified
as Yusuf. He is in his early 30s and unable to find work in his homeland, he
went to Afghanistan. Subsequently, he tried to go home and as he was trying to
go home, he was detained at the Afghan-Pakistan border, then transferred to the
detention facility, the U.S. detention facility in Kandahar. There he was
immediately interrogated, beaten. He was stripped. The first night, he wasn't
allowed to sleep because guards would hit the detainees and throw sand at them.
While at Kandahar, he endured forced nakedness, intimidation by dogs,
hooding, repeatedly being thrown against the wall. And he was subjected to
electric shocks from a -- from a generator, as Len had alluded to.
Subsequently, he was transferred to Guantanamo where, during the long flight, he
was shackled to the floor of the plane. And the tight cuffs caused his wrists
to swell.
Upon arrival at Guantanamo, he initially kept at Camp X-Ray,
where he described the conditions of confinement as horrific. They were
extremely hot outdoor cages with only a bucket for a toilet.
Lengthy
interrogations, accompanied by sleep deprivations. Small infractions, such as
speaking with other detainees, led to beatings. And a person who he believed
was a physician checked the injuries of the detainees after the beatings.
Three months later, he was transferred to Camp Delta where he said the
conditions at least in the prison cells were better. However, the
interrogations and being held in the interrogation rooms, which happened every
other day, were quite brutal.
Although he denied being beaten while held in
the interrogation room -- again, this speaks to how we assess creditability.
You know, you're -- you're looking -- when an individual was candid with you
when they were treated well and when they weren't treated well, what physical
symptoms they do and what they don't have. So it's from that overall
impression. And I should say, on average, we took close to one, one and a half
to two days per individual to conduct these detailed physical, psychological
evaluations.
So back to Yusuf. While he was held in this interrogation, he
was chained to the floor and forced to assume stressful positions. Ice water as
poured on him. At other times, loud music was played. Sometimes they would
make the temperature in the room very hot, other times very cold. There was
someone, again, who he thought was a physician that would come and monitor his
vital signs, clearly a violation of medical ethics. And on no occasion did the
hot or cold stop after the good doctor paid his visit.
Demands for
confessions were constant and they were accompanied by the interrogator's
threatening him.
For example, his brother suffered leukemia and the
interrogators told him, "Your brother's been arrested." And the soldiers also
threatened to shoot him.
Humiliation was a routine part of the
interrogations. He was forced to watch pornography. Soldiers tore the Koran
apart in front of him.
And he described an incident in which a naked woman
entered the interrogation room and smeared what he believed to menstrual blood
on him.
At one point while at Camp Delta in Guantanamo, Yusuf asked to speak
to a psychologist because of the sadness that he was feeling from separation
from his family. He believes the psychologist shared this information with his
interrogators, who exploited it by threatening him with spending the rest of his
life in Guantanamo.
Following this interrogation, he was then moved to the
worst section of Camp Delta where he wasn't allowed to have a blanket or a
mattress.
He was later released after he signed a -- a form of -- of what he
said was a false confession. And this was in the fall of 2003.
So while
Yusuf acknowledged to us that he experienced symptoms of depression before his
detention, the symptoms that he described afterwards were far more disabling and
chronic.
He also now suffers from post traumatic stress. He has described
difficulty functioning and has not found steady employment since his -- his
detention. In short, he's a shell of who he was.
The next individual I'd
like to tell you about is a man referred to in the report as Amir, who was
detained in Abu Ghraib. He is in his late 20s. He was a salesman before being
arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003.
After his arrest, he was shackled,
forced to stand naked for over five hours. For the next three days, he and
other detainees were deprived of sleep and they were forced to run for long
periods, during which time he injured his foot. When he pointed out this injury
to a soldier, the soldier pushed him up against a wall and he lost
consciousness.
Later, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib. And at first, he
acknowledged that his wasn't mistreated, but then the abuse began. He was
subjected to religious and sexual humiliations, hooding, sleep deprivation,
restraints for hours while naked and dousing with cold water.
The most
horrific incident that Amir recalled was that he was placed in a foul-smelling
room, forced to lay down in urine and then was sodomized with a broomstick and
forced to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him. After a soldier
stepped on his genitals, he fainted.
In July 2004, he was transferred to
Camp Buka where he said he wasn't abuse and then subsequently released.
And
it was really striking, in all of these evaluations, that the points the
individuals became almost the closest to tears wasn't necessarily when they were
describing the physical abuse, but the sexual humiliations -- was where, you
know, they would hang their head and often become quite emotion, that, and the
uncertainty of when and if they would be released.
And so Amir continues to
experience physical symptoms, including significant pain consistent with what he
reported.
On physical, he had multiple scars on his body, including on his
head, his legs and his penis. This is consistent with what he described.
Psychologically, he suffers debilitating symptoms of post traumatic stress,
disturbed sleep, anxiety, sexual dysfunction.
He's changed from a stable
provider for his family to an unemployed man. Though the stressors related to
the war in Iraq may well exacerbate his symptoms, he clearly understands that
his most debilitating symptoms are attributable to his torture and sexual
violations. And as he put it, quite emphatically, quote, "No sorrow can be
compared to my torture experience in jail. That is the reason for my sadness."
The individuals evaluated for this study were subjected to a variety of
dangerous and harmful forms of abuse, often simultaneously. And these are
referred to in the benign of, quote, "enhanced interrogation techniques," such
as stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliations.
From a medical
and a scientific perspective, there is nothing benign about these methods and
they should be seen for what they are, gruesome, dehumanizing, dangerous. They
are torture and they cause lasting physical and psychological harm.
So in
conclusion, I would say this. We must ensure that torture and mistreatment, no
matter what you call it, are neither condoned, nor take place under our
country's watch.
Though perhaps invoked, albeit misguidedly, in the name of
national security, the abuses committed by the United States have undermined our
integrity and, I believe, have made the world a much more dangerous place.
We must take responsibility for what has happened, as Len alluded to, and see
that it never happens again.
Thank you.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much.
Dr. Allen, I think you heard that bell, but I'm going to try to stay to hear
your testimony if I can.
ALLEN: Well, thank you Congressman. And I will
make an extra effort to make my comments particularly brief.
My colleagues
both made reference to the issue or health professional participation in
torture. As a former correction physician, or in common parlance, prison
doctor, these issues are of great concern to me. And I just want to make some
brief remarks regarding them.
Now, there's a number of ways health
professionals can participate in abuse and torture. They can design techniques,
as shocking as that sounds. They have done that. They can monitor of those
techniques. They can participate directly. They can fail to intervene to stop
it. They can fail to document a report up the chain of command or outside the
chain of command. And they can treat and return a victim to the setting of
torture.
Perhaps the most perplexing and worrisome is this idea of direct
participation of health professionals, physicians and psychiatrists in
particular.
And I just want to bring out two examples that are slightly
beyond the scope of this report, but I want us to keep them in mind.
The
first is the setting of hunger strike. And the issue there, of course, is the
use of force feeding.
And the second related issue is the use in various
settings of forced medication.
The central ethical issue that -- that is at
play in both force feeding of hunger strikers against their wishes and forced
medication of detainees against their wishes is violation of the issue of
informed consent.
Informed consent is that process whereby a patient is
informed of the risks and benefits of procedure understands why it's in their
best interest or can help them either diagnostically or therapeutically.
Unless it sounds like a mere formality, think of any examine that you have
undergone yourself, whether it's a dental examine, whether it's a pelvic exam,
whether it's a prostate examine, and think of the difference between giving your
informed consent for that process to continue, in which case it's uncomfortable,
but it's either therapeutic and diagnostic and minimally traumatizing. Imagine
any of those procedures progressing without your consent.
So the very fact
that physicians have been placed in positions where they've been asked to engage
in invasive procedures against the consent or against the express rejection by
the patient is deeply disturbing and of concern to be as a physician. We should
not be asking our -- our uniformed professionals to engage in such activity.
So I'm just going to make those very brief comments now to put those issues on
the table and turn it back over.
Thank you.
HASTINGS: I can't really
thank you enough for the piercing testimony and your report.
Several
questions come to mind. Regrettably, I won't be able to put them. But Ms.
Slaughter will be here and will ask the questions that I would have asked.
Just for your references, if you would -- first, your recommendations are
outstanding. I will scour the legislative terrain to see if any of it is
already a part of legislation or is in draft to be.
And the one thing, the
Independent Commission Study, I certainly would -- if it -- if it does not
exist, then I will talk with Senator Cardin and other members of the commission,
particularly Congressman Smith. And I think that we would file such a request.
Additionally, you had access to medical records. And that's something in an
ongoing trail that seems to be an issue of the one person who has been tried.
And I would be curious if you can share with us how you accessed those records.
And if you cannot, then I certainly understand that as well.
I and Senator
Cardin and Representative Smith have spent a considerable amount of time on this
subject. We began Helsinki around this year at CSCE with an unusual kind of
hearing in that we had not done much domestically. And we went to the
University of Maryland and the subject was torture. And we had colleagues of
yours, mostly from academia -- not to suggest that all of you are not from
academia -- but they were more oriented from that standpoint.
As a lawyer, I
can just share with you that I'm personally disappointed that you would even
have to examine 11 individuals.
I certainly am mindful that 11 persons is
not a comprehensive enough study. I would be curious to know if you extrapolate
that, what it would look like, in your opinion, with the thousands of other
people that have likely been subjected, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We know the precise numbers in Guantanamo. We don't know the precise numbers
that have been skirted off to -- to unidentified locations and countries that we
know that do commit torture. And yet, we subjected those persons to that kind
of undertaking and black sites and stuff.
I served on the Intelligence
Committee and oversight is of no use because nobody will tell you the truth.
When I got to Guantanamo, all I got was a dog and a pony show. And I'm
absolutely certain, just as an observer and a person that did an awful lot of
work in prisons as a judge and then as a lawyer representing prisoners and
fighting against this kind of thing domestically that takes place long before
many of our laws did improve it considerably.
That's just a long way of
saying to you what my short feeling is -- is that I appreciate your courage. I
appreciate your insight. And indeed, all of -- of -- of the recommendations
that you offer in this report will be taken seriously by this commission. And I
can assure you that we can manifest it in some form of legislative undertaken.
And I believe, without speaking for him -- which I would never speak for a
member of the other body -- but I do believe that Senator Cardin would share
much of my sympathies that I've express.
Gentlemen, I thank you.
I'm
fond of saying -- staff that works with me gets tired of hearing me say it, but
the truth is it's hard to apologize for working. So I have to go and vote.
And I thank you.
And if you would stay, Ms. Slaughter will continue the
briefing.
RUBENSTEIN: We can begin by answering some of Congressman
Hastings' questions. I'll speak and then Allen can join me.
On the question
of medical records, we -- (OFF MIKE) -- on the question of medical records,
these were all released detainees. And one of the lawyers -- the lawyer for one
of the detainees succeeded in getting the record through the Freedom of
Information Act. And then the detainee consented to share those records with
us.
For current detainee, getting access to medical records is far more
difficult, really impossible. And the Defense Department has to date denied any
request for any independent medical evaluations.
We actually suggested to
the Defense Department a joint evaluation in which Defense Department physicians
and independent physicians jointly do examinations so there was consensus about
what the finding was. But that has not been allowed.
We think it really is
important that these records see the light of day because they shed a lot of
light on what happened to people.
On the question of extrapolation, the
report states that we can't generalize from 11 cases. And the 11 cases weren't
random.
What we can't say is what we found was quite consistent both with
many of the policies related to interrogation and related to detention methods
and reports of other observers, including the FBI, including reports from
General Church and others. So we think that that consistency allows us to draw
some conclusion that -- that it would not be a surprise to find that other
detainees suffered similar conditions.
You want to add?
KELLER: Sure.
So first, I agree wholeheartedly with what Len said in terms of the need to
evaluate the medical records. And there have been some very disturbing
examples. And Dr. Allen can speak to this better than I of clear falsification
of medical records, covering up deaths, for example.
In terms of how many
people were arrested, for example, in Iraq, I -- I think we don't know the
answer to that. What we do know is that, often, individuals were arrested in
these sweeps where basically everybody within a certain radius was just
arrested.
And perhaps there were some, you know, very bad individuals
among those. But there were an awful lot of people who were just in the wrong
place. And that was a theme that seems to recur, even through these -- many of
these individuals whom we spoke with. So we really don't know the answer to
that. But it's chilling.
And I actually have recently heard --
interviewed one of the military who was involved in these sweeps and voicing his
own concerns about how many people they wrongfully arrested, putting them in a
system where there was absolutely no mechanism for, you know, a fair process,
let alone the hellacious conditions under which they were held.
And just one
aside with Abu Ghraib, I think it's naive, at best, malicious, at worst, to
think that this was, quote, "a couple of bad apples on the night shift."
So
with regards to extrapolating what we learned from these 11 individuals, what
does this tell us about a -- a larger pattern of U.S. behavior of the
individuals. Clearly, it's not a random sample and it's a small one.
I will
say, it's frankly very, very difficult accessing former detainees. And
certainly, I would welcome the opportunity to go and do an independent, random
study of detainees at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib if we were ever given such
access. But given that we're not, this was the best that we could do.
That
said, these individuals were detained in multiple place -- Kandahar, Abu Ghraib,
Guantanamo, at least two or three other prisons. And so the patterns of abuse,
of the sexual humiliations, of the forced standing, these -- again, this
ridiculous term, quote, "enhanced interrogation techniques," a sanitized word
for torture -- were methods that we heard, you know, over and over, be it at
Kandahar, at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
Now clearly, in Abu Ghraib, in terms
of the conditions of the cells, you know, being filthy with feces and urine, you
know, that, you know, was a whole other -- other -- other level.
But I think
from this report one can at a minimum say this does support the hypothesis that
these abuses were not random, were not isolated and that seems methodical and
part of a pattern.
And I think that's why, as Len said, it's crucial --
crucial -- that we have a clear accountability.
I'll just say, as a doctor
who cares for torture survivors from around the world, I am really worried that
we have made this world so much more dangerous for the student activist in
Africa or the Tibetan monk by what we have done. And I think it's going to take
us years to undo the damage we've done. So we better get started.
SLAUGHTER: Thank you.
I'd like to ask a follow-up question, again, bearing
in mind that this is a limited sample -- and I'm sorry, we'll come back, Dr.
Allen, with several questions. But I'd like to stick with this for just one
second.
Do you have a sense to what extent abusive treatment was directly
related to information or intelligence gathering and to what extent it had a
life of its own?
RUBENSTEIN: It's both. There -- There is no question that
in the development and approval process for methods that were designed to
disorient and create dependence, techniques like sleep deprivation, isolation
and other psychological methods, those were clearly related to interrogations.
In fact, the standard operation procedure manual for Guantanamo, which was
leaked back last fall, which was 2004, it basically says -- it says in black in
white, in the first 30 days, people will be kept in isolation for the purpose of
creating disorientation and dependence. So many of these methods were quite
deliberate. And then, they do take on a life of their own.
When abuse and
dehumanization is tolerated, it inevitably leads to worse. And that's what we
say. That's how you end up with beatings and worse.
That the lack of
control and the sense on the ground -- the soldiers on the ground, that they --
that they were supposed to break these people down, does end up removing
restraint and so a whole new dimension begins. That's what we think the dynamic
was.
KELLER: I would add to that, that, yes, I think it did start with a
misguided assumption that this was an important part of intelligence gathering.
Actually, in the film by the same name as the manual, documentary standard
operating procedures where a number of the soldiers who were in Abu Ghraib, you
know, they commented how they would be specifically told by the interrogators,
"OK, this prisoner should have a bad night. Make sure they have a bad night,"
which meant they wouldn't sleep or they'd be subjected to horrific -- horrific
things.
And, you know, what was clear in Abu Ghraib is you had -- and I
believe in Guantanamo as well -- this phenomena of what I call moral
disengagement, that individuals may somehow contextualize what they're doing as
part of a greater good. And they rationalize what they're doing, such as the
psychologist who is in the room monitoring the interrogation and misguidedly
thinks, "Well, I'll serve as a buffer," whereas really they probably serve more
as an enabler. And so the abuse, as Len said, I think intensifies.
And
it's really -- the ironic things is, you know, and again, what we've learned,
where did this procedures come from? We, you know, learned from the best, from,
you know, a manual from the Chinese that I believe was entitled, "How to Extract
False Confessions." So these methods were never intended for getting at the
truth. What they were intended was getting confessions.
You can get -- you
know, and one interesting things, having spent a lot of time over the past year
talking with professional interrogators, you know, there was something I found
in common with science is saying, "Garbage in, garbage out," that they would
say, "Look, we can get anybody to say whatever -- whatever they want."
And
then I also think that this language is so important. That somebody may say,
well, as our former secretary of defense said, "Well, gee, I stand for, you
know, I stand for four hours a day. What's so wrong with that? Have them stand
for eight hours." Well, there's a profound difference between somebody standing
by choice, who is actually moving around, versus somebody standing in one place
for several hours, where the blood begins to pool. The legs swell. You can
develop clots, which can go to the lungs and potentially be life -- life
threatening.
Sleep deprivation, another of our presidential candidates
said, "Hey, I'm sleep deprived. I don't think this is torture." Again, a
difference between a presidential candidate with lots of comforts, I'm sure,
although I don't doubt they're fatigue, versus somebody who has no idea when
they're going to sleep again.
And after being deprived of sleep, you
become paranoid. You develop symptomatic symptoms, headaches, dizziness. You
have delusions. Not a -- not a good recipe for useful information.
So it
does start as information gathering perhaps, but then I think it takes on a life
of its own.
But it came -- it's important to realize it wasn't random. It
was manualized.
ALLEN: If I could just add again from my perspective of
seven years working full time in a prison, there's an old study that we all
point back to, and every one should be reminded of, the Stanford Prison
Experiment. And it described the tendency of good people to do bad things when
put in a setting when they have absolute power and control over another
population. That phenomena is only enhanced when the population is demonized
across a cultural barrier or a language and then certainly in a war situation.
So from our perspective, we see these settings as tremendously high risk for
abuse, which is why is all the more important to have operating procedures that
go out of their way to draw a bright line and -- and make it clear that human
dignity must be preserved.
Now, in this case, as my colleagues have already
made blatantly clear, it was from the top level that said, "No, we're not going
to do that. We might have our reasons why we're not going to do that." But
that opened the door. And once that door is open, these tendencies of abuse,
which are deeply ingrained unfortunately, are allowed to come forth.
SLAUGHTER: Dr. Allen, I'd like to stay with you for a minute and go back to one
of the issues that you touched upon, and that is the question of forced feeding.
There -- there was a period of time after Guantanamo that Guantanamo
Detention Facility was opened that there were no deaths at that facility. And
this was something that was sometimes mentioned by U.S. officials at briefings.
And I think they pointed to that as evidence of some level of care that was
afforded to the detainees, that there had been no deaths at Guantanamo.
However, in 2006, two Saudi detainees and one Umani (ph) detainee hang
themselves.
And in 2007, a Saudi detainee was found dead in his cell. To my
knowledge, there are no details about that particular case. But there have been
four -- at least four deaths.
At one point, we also know or believe from
reports, that there was a very large number of hunger strikers. One report in
May 2006 suggested as many as 75 detainees, which out of the -- the prison
population of several hundred is quite a large percentage, maybe 75, were on
hunger strikes.
Subsequent to that, we started to get reports that the
procedures used to engage in force feeding were quite harsh.
And I'm
wondering if you can tell us something about the norms that apply for medical
professionals? I do understand that the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia allowed one detainee to be force fed, one detainee before the
court who was refusing to eat.
So what's the norm that's at play? And then,
beyond the specific norm, when that norm is being implemented, is there
something about the way that -- are there different methods of force feeding and
some are more humane than others or some are less humane? Thank you.
ALLEN:
Well, there's a lot in that. And I'll try to address all your points. Feel
free to redirect me if -- if I don't.
The history of the use of force
feeding at Guantanamo and its possible relationship to subsequent suicides is a
very provocative question, something I've wondered about. And it speaks more to
the context in which hunger striking occurs.
Remember, and in particularly,
if you wanted to design an environment that would increase the risk that there
would be hunger strikes, they could not have done a better job than Guantanamo.
The standard on how to manage hunger strikes, the ethical standard, has been
articulated and recently updated for the World Medical Association. And that
position is -- has been adopted by the American Medical Association. And that
guideline is explicitly clear that under no circumstances would you force feed a
competent and informed detained who is refusing nourishment after having been,
you know, informed of the potential consequences.
Now, that seems like an
odd thing for a medical, ethical group -- physician to take because obviously it
could be at the odds with the duty to preserve life. But it is a position that
has been formed by years and years of looking at an experience -- having
experience and talking to people who have managed hunger strike situations.
That it realizes that these really true-to-the-end hunger strikes generally only
occur in situations where there are no other mechanism for the individual to
protest their conditions of confinement or to assert their autonomy over their
own body and their own health. So that's a very important value to be
preserved.
And again, medical bodies have recognized that even thought duty
to preserve life is a preeminent medical value, it does not trump a competent
individual's right to make an autonomous decision about their own health.
So
a couple of things appear to have happened over the course of management of
hunger strikes at Guantanamo. One, as you note, they started to happen with
increasing frequency and with larger numbers of individuals.
You know, this
-- at one point, one of the camp commanders refers to this as asymmetrical
warfare. This is a situation where you have a -- a -- a group of detainees who
are so disempowered -- it seems like an absurd notion. Clinically, speaking
that's entirely absurd. To me, it said there's increasing desperation among the
detainees and that was a reflection of it.
What they started doing is
increasingly using force feeding and very possibly, although we have yet to nail
this down, intervened with force feeding before it was clinically indicated.
Now, to the extent that there's some controversy about WMA and preservation of
life versus autonomy, there is no controversy about the idea of forcing the
feeding tube down someone's nose, through their esophagus, strapping them down
to a chair or a table and pouring nutritional supplements through that tube when
it is not medically necessary. So there is some question whether that has been
done at the direction of a camp commander directing medical staff to intervene
before it would be medically indicated. And if that happened, that's just such
a clear violation that -- that's not even in the same category.
SLAUGHTER:
Thank you.
I'd like to go back to Dr. Keller with a different question.
When you're interviewing or -- I'm not sure what the proper term is for when
you're examining these individuals and you're trying to determine what's
happened to them, it seems that some of the medical or psychological problems
they may suffer now could potentially have been caused by preexisting
conditions. And it seems that that must be a very difficult thing to sift
through. And I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little more on how you
figure out what was caused -- even when you find real problems, how do you
determine what was caused by the conditions they experienced during their
detention and what came before that?
KELLER: Right. Well, so first, we
have, as Len alluded to, an invaluable roadmap, arguably the gold standard with
which to conduct these evaluations, specifically the Istanbul Protocol, a
document recognized by the United Nations, which was the product of, I think,
over 30 or may even 50 experts in the field of torture working for several years
on developing standards on how such evaluations should be done.
So first, it
all starts, you know, with a very detailed history. And, you know, one, we had
the good fortunate of having time. As I said, for each of these evaluations we
had both a medical and a mental health professional conducting the interviews.
And it was often over the course of two days so that you had the opportunity if
there was something, you know, that hadn't made sense or what have you that you,
you know, can go back to them. And like everything else, the longer you spend
with someone, the more of a sense you get about what they have.
And one
thing that I was very struck by with everyone I interviewed frankly was their
candor. You know, that individuals were very clear about what mental health
problems, for example, that they had, which is nothing something necessarily
even that, you know, the Muslim population would be forthcoming in talking
about. But that there was, you know, one individual who had told us about, yes,
in fact, had some suicide attempts before he was arrested. And this one
individual I described describes some feelings of sadness. So similarly with
scars with -- and I would do these -- we would do these detailed histories and
then do a very detailed review of physical symptoms, a review of psychological
symptoms, a review of -- you know, then a lengthy physical examine.
And
individuals were quite candid that, "Oh, yeah, well, this scar, you know, I got
from when I was playing soccer as a young boys. This one I'm actually not sure
about. This one I'm sure came from, you know, XYZ."
So it's frankly --
it's contextual in that it's the overall picture from which one makes their
assessment, you know, based on the consistency, based on their candor, their
affect, and then what -- does it make sense?
You now, my wife, who is a
former prosecutor, said that's always the important question, you know, does
what they're saying make sense. And, you know, is it consistent with what
you're finding.
I mean, if somebody pointed, as I have had in some cases,
you know, to where it's clearly a vaccination scar and said, "Well, you know, I
got this, you know, from where they burned me with a cigarette," that, you know,
is problematic.
But I just was struck by the candor, struck by the affect,
struck by the fact, again, that, you know, I think arguably the least likely
population I could think of, based on my years of work with torture survivors
before this, of being candid about sexual humiliations is a Muslim male
population. So it was -- and actually, it was really -- really the most
difficult part.
And I must say, you know, as we -- the -- the hundred pound
or five hundred pound gorilla in the room was that there were Americans sitting
across the table. And so, you know, there -- took some time for some reporte
building. And frankly, good interrogators will tell you that that's what it's
all about, you know, frankly, whether you're doing an interrogation or whether
you're doing a medical evaluation, in terms of reporte building.
So I don't
know if that...?
SLAUGHTER: It does. And I would like to ask a follow-up
question. Your testimony indicated that some of these individuals really needed
to be referred for additional treatment afterwards, after -- based on what you
observed.
And as you know, the former chairman of this commission,
Congressman Smith, was the original author of the Torture Victim's Relief Act.
And many of the commissioners have support that as well and supported funding
for torture treatment centers in the United States and around the globe.
And
I'm wondering if you have any observations on the adequacy of care that's
available to these individuals now.
ALLEN: Well, first, I must start by
really just acknowledging Congressman Smith's and the late Congressman Lantos'
and other's extraordinary leadership on what really was a bipartisan movement to
-- to sponsor the Torture Victim's Relief Act, which provides for funding for
torture treatment centers in the United States, such as our own. And there's a
consortium now of more than 20 centers around the country, the National
Consortium of Torture Centers, many of whom are funding through this.
And
it's estimated that there are over 400,000 torture survivors here in the United
States. And tragically, the world being the way it is, we're very busy. We
have, I think, right now, 70 people on our waiting list.
The Torture
Victim's Relief Act also provides for international funding, one directly and
then also through the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victim's of Torture.
So I actually think that both on the -- the good news is that there is funding
out there. The unfortunate thing is it's clearly been inadequate.
The
Torture Victim's Relief Act is funded right -- it's been pretty much steadily
funded at around $10 million a year. And now, it's at the point where I believe
it -- it's authorized, you know, for, you know, being up to $20 million. But
what gets allocated is consistently $10 million. And that's woefully
inadequate.
And so I think being true to the spirit of the Torture Victim's
Relief Act, that, yes, now being in the uncomfortable position of having been
the perpetrators of this abuse, we have a moral responsibility, as Len stated,
to acknowledge this, to investigate this, to apologize and to make sure that
individuals have access.
I mean, pretty much all the individuals that I saw
-- there was one individual who frankly had had, you know, quote, "the least
benign treatment," who was emotionally in tact, I would say. Pretty much
everybody else that I evaluated, you know, as I said, were shells of who they
were and really needed physical and psychological services.
Some individuals
that we evaluated, we actually were able to refer to centers and others we were
sending back into an abyss where there were no services, so in Iraq, the former
Guantanamo detainees. Unfortunately we have created a lot of need for torture
treatment programs.
SLAUGHTER: Thank you.
I -- I'd like to throw this
next question open. Clearly, your report suggests that there are medical
personnel that did not report on mistreatment that they witnessed, and there may
have been medical personnel and went beyond that and, in some way, played a role
in the mistreatment. And related issue of particular import, I think, are the
reports on the waterboarding of three detainees. Some of those public reports
have suggested there may have been medical personnel waiting in the wings.
And I guess I'd like to hear you all speak a little bit more to the question of
what those medical professionals should have been doing. I think, at one point,
it's indicated in the report that it -- it -- there's no evidence in the cases
that you looked at that any of these medical professionals reported anything to
anybody.
At what point should they have done that? At what point is it --
do medical personnel say, "I can't. I have to remove myself"?
RUBENSTEIN:
First, to clarify on the reporting, we didn't have access to -- to whatever
abuse reported were filed. What we did have access to in the medical record was
there was no evidence in the medical record that you would have thought would be
found there if they had reported it.
So it was like one case that we -- we
are confident that it wasn't reported.
The standard is very clear that --
that physicians and other medical personnel cannot play any role whatsoever in
torture, including being present. And that -- that's included because -- or two
reasons. One, not to be able to help interrogators calibrate the amount of harm
that's being imposed. And that's the problem with the behavioral science
consultation teams, where the role is to calibrate harm.
And the second
reason is they're not supposed to patch people up so they can be tortured some
more. And that's what we think happened.
House professionals were in a
difficult, conflicted position in these facilities because they were working in
an environment where people were being subjected to torture and ill treatment.
And you do have a responsibility as a physician to -- and other medical
personnel, to provide are, but you can't be in a position of providing care so
that torture can continue.
There was the case of a man who's should, I
think, was dislocated. And it was put back and then back in a stressed
position.
So that is where they were in the worst possible position.
Now, there were some who may actually have played a more extensive role, like in
waterboarding, where they are really part of the apparatus of making the torture
take place.
But I think, far more common, it was that they were on the scene
to patch people up and they had no support. And they thought of themselves, we
think, as to be expected to provide care.
And so the only thing they can do
is report, protest and -- and demand -- protest the treatment and demand it stop
and that they will not have anything to do with patching people up. And that is
a point of leverage.
And health professionals in the military have a little
more autonomy than other soldiers, so that they could have spoken up. But it's
not -- it's taking themselves out of the apparatus, which is the key.
And
you may want to comment as well.
ALLEN: Well, I think what I'd like to add
to that is this issue of -- the role of health professionals does go beyond what
Len was just talking about. We do have evidence now, particularly psychologists
who helped design and -- and develop these techniques. And so, you know, that
was going far beyond failing to stop and intervene. So I just do want to
mention that the scope of participation was broader.
And the way that was
achieved bureaucratically, so to speak, was that the certain health
professionals were assigned outside the care domain and then were told, "You
don't have to answer to traditional medical ethics. The guidelines, even in the
Defense Department, but more likely in the CIA, created this new domain of
health professional that, if not assigned to direct care, was not answerable to
medical ethics. So I do want to make mentioned of that.
But back to the
issue of the health professionals assigned to the care teams, my -- my concern
is -- well, first of all, a big caveat. We don't know the full story of whether
some health professionals did actually intervene. If so, we're not aware of a
single episode.
Interestingly enough, although this is all very shrouded in
secrecy, we are aware of non-professional soldiers intervening to stop torture
and some -- and, in some cases, some lawyers. So it seems to me that after
years of the profession expressing dismay that no doctors or medics of
psychologists, or, you know, psychiatrists intervened, it seems to me, if there
was a case, by now, it would have been trumpeted out and then talked about and
then, you know, used as an example of good behavior. So I'm concerned that that
has not come to light.
But the caveat is we don't have a full record.
The last thing I'd like to say about that is to go back to Congressman Hastings'
point about trying to have oversight when you can't get a straight answer and
tie it back to the use of medical records.
You know, a lot of what we do is
sort of forensic medical work. The medical record, if it can be obtained in a
proper manner, such that there's proper consent and confidentiality is
protected, might be one of the best pieces of information, as it's a standardly
written, chronological record of what happened to these individuals. So that's
something -- the answers to exactly what health professionals did are recorded
somewhere. And at some point, that should be looked at.
KELLER: I'd just
like to add a couple of things from some of the individuals whom I interviewed
that speaks to the question of, OK, what does medical participation mean.
So
first, as was alluded to, developing techniques. And, you know, there -- there
are a group of psychologists who, quote, "developed or used these methods had
been used, you know, in the Sear (ph) training methods and then misapplied them.
Arguably, they pilfered, plagiarized, whatever term you want to use, from the
Chinese manual.
And apparently, these individuals, my understanding of the
psychologists that were involved in that, were not really not individuals who
had particular expertise in this area, but suddenly were put in this area of
having authority and kind of went with it.
Among the individuals I evaluated
-- I mentioned one, this very chilling example of the -- a Guantanamo detainee
who had described several ways that doctors were involved. One, you know, when
he was in Camp X-Ray, he described what he called robo cops on parade, you know,
when there would be some -- they would do something wrong. Someone would be
having their hands under the blanket or whatever and that the -- you know, the
military guards, you know, in their armor, would march out and beat them up.
And at the end of the parade was somebody they believed was a physician with a
gurney there, you know, just to -- you know, just in case, and kind of check
things out.
But -- and I asked the question, "Well, you know, did they ever
hear that individual speak up." And they said no.
And the same thing I
heard from Abu Ghraib detainees. There was one individual who I interviewed,
who had been detained in a dark cell and who was claustrophobic and terrified.
And he was, actually, as a punishment, forced to stand outside of his cell naked
for several hours. And you know it's bad when that becomes your respite period
because, when they went to put him back in the cell, he actually pleaded with a
physician who was walking by. He said, "Please don't have them put me back in
the cell." And the physician, I guess, asked a guard. But then said, "Oh,
sorry, you know, you've got to go back."
That case of the physician
monitoring the vital signs of the individual in this room where it's very hot or
very cold -- that's similar to what's been documented with waterboarding, for
example, in Argentina. I'm not so sure about the medical participation in
waterboarding here. None of the individuals we evaluated reported
waterboarding.
But, you know, there again, not in a therapeutic setting, but
really, you know, kind of to measure or, you know, whatever, push to the limit,
but not -- but not kill them.
And then the violations of confidentiality.
There have been clear reports of sharing information, you know, so that weak
spots could be extrapolated. And I, first hand, heard an example of that from
this psychologist -- from this individual who reported that when he'd asked to
speak to a psychologist, he'd spoke to somebody who identified themselves as a
psychologist. There name, I believe, was taped over. But, you know, and talked
about how lonely, and how much he missed his family. And he said, you know,
he'd been interrogated like everyday, every other day, and they asked the same
questions. And the next day after he spoke with that psychologist, the
questioning took a totally different, you know, turn, zeroing in, as it hadn't
before, on that issue of him missing his family. And, you know, that's what
they kept at. And then they moved him to this -- this -- this area where it was
even worse.
So, and then finally, you know -- all -- as has been pointed
out, it's a clear violation of medical ethics to, in any way, practice or
condone any torture and that health professionals have a positive responsibility
to report this.
There's debate with interrogations and being present. The
out wire is the American Psychologist Association. All the other professional
societies have said, "Health professionals don't have a place in an
interrogation." Whereas, the American Psychology Association, although there's
a lot of debate and argument - their meeting, I think, is at the end of August,
so I think it will be a pretty interesting one about that. But they, so far, as
an organization said, "No, there is a place."
And from my understating of
what's happened in Guantanamo, for example, they really aren't -- you know, they
think maybe, you know, we're there as containing the situation. But I think
what happens is the -- the health professional there is like, well -- you know,
they're there at the behest of the military so they're like, "Well, maybe I can
wait a little longer." And the interrogator or whoever is thinking, "Well, if I
cross the line, they'll stop me." And so the two enable.
And then the last
thing I'll say is, having actually spoken to some health professionals whom I've
known who've worked in Guantanamo, I remember there was one thing someone told
me that I was really struck by, which is that he said, "You know, in Guantanamo,
we learned that everybody stays in their lane." And to me, that almost became
-- you know, what I was hearing was hear no evil, see no evil, you know? And
so, and I asked, you know, "Well, did you find any evidence of torture." He
said no. I said, "Well, did you look for it? Did you ask"? And, you know,
there was kind of a shrug.
SLAUGHTER: Before I bring this briefing to a
close, I'd like to ask you if you have any final comments to make. And then I'd
like to make two observations of my own. But if you -- if you have any final
thoughts you'd like to share...
RUBENSTEIN: Well, I would first like to
thank the commission again for -- and Congressman Hastings for holding this
briefing.
I think it's really important to recognize that these issues have
not been sufficiently explored.
And in particular, it struck me as we're
having this conversation that this is the first discussion in any official
congressional activity of the medical participation issues.
So when people
say we've looked into this enough, we haven't at all.
And so I'm both
appreciative of this hearing, want to emphasize that there's much, much more we
need to know.
KELLER: What I'd like to add to that, yes, also is
extraordinary gratitude for holding this briefing.
And, you know, I came
initially scratching my head a little bit about, OK, why is the Helsinki
Commission doing this? And, you know, I really get it because they -- they
understand it. I mean, what have we wrought by what we've done?
Ultimately, we've violated the Golden Rule. You know, for years, we told the
Turks, we told the Soviets, we told whoever not to do this, not to do that, not
to, you know, extrajudicially arrest someone, not to torture.
and so what we
did was, we said, well, it's not torture, it's enhanced interrogation, you know,
and all these other ridiculous things that, at the end of the day, one, in
addition to making, you know, it more dangerous for those, you know, innocent
civilians -- and it's important to know, most torture victims aren't terrorists
or terrorist suspects. They're, you know, student advocates. And it's never
really about -- or, you know, people seeking freedom. It's never about
information. It's about quieting and intimidating. So we've made the world
more dangerous for them.
But I also think in terms of the international
policy level, which, you know, clearly the Helsinki Commission understands, it's
made a much more difficult row for us to hoe.
How can we hold others
accountable? How can we possibly done this when we have done these things? And
so that's why it's so crucial that, you know, better late than never that we
take the high road and that we say, OK, these things happen. We're going to
investigate it. We're going -- there's going to be accountability. It's not
just a whitewashing of, well, a few bad apples on the -- on the night shift.
So accountability is -- is -- is crucial. It's not as simple as, well, let's
just put this behind us. Because unless we really examine this and document and
-- to have accountability, it will never be behind us.
And then, I am left
with thinking that tragically there is, I fear, going to be an even greater
epidemic of torture. It's documented to occur in 100 countries now. I think
what we have done has empower -- emboldened -- not that Robert Mugabe, for
example, needed any excuses. But I think I have -- he has been quoted as
saying, "Well, you know, look, the U.S. does this." And so on and so forth.
National security is what's always or often invoked in the name of torture. So
I think we've made it a lot easier for despots to do what they want to do. So I
fear we're going to see a lot more torture survivors.
And again, that goes
back to an issue that Congressman Smith and others have led on, which is that I
think there's going to be a much greater need for increased funding to care for
torture survivors, one, who have suffered at our hands and, two, who were
victims because, you know, there's more torture probably going on now because of
these emboldened depot regimes.
ALLEN: I had the opportunity, with DHR,
earlier this year, to travel to Libya to examine one of their leading dissidents
and political prisoners to verify, A, that he was still and alive. And our goal
was to try to protest his treatment and conditions. And we had to confront the
officials of Khadafy's government about his treatment. And we were immediately
told in response, "Who are you to say anything about how we treat somebody in
our custody? We haven't done any of the things that you have been alleged to do
as part of official policy."
You know, I think that it's obvious to all of
us that we've done great damage to ourselves.
As a physician, it disturbs me
that we've done potentially great damage to our profession and our standing.
And medicine is based on the practice of trust. And when detainees can no
longer trust their physicians, providing medical care in detention settings will
be and is impossible.
So I think the important thing is to thank you for
allowing us to talk about this issue.
I think there's an understandable
denial on the part of the American government and the American people to not
want to think about the fact that we've done bad things. But the only way to
repair this damage that we have done is to have an open discussion about what
has happened, look at why it's happened, document explicitly what's happened,
and -- and make some revisions on our policies and move forward and correct our
path.
Thank you.
SLAUGHTER: Thank you.
I'd like to conclude, first,
by thanking each of you for coming down today and participating in this
briefing. You bring singular areas of expertise with you. And we have
benefited enormously from -- from your being here today and sharing that with
us.
But secondly, I'd also like to commend to anyone who has not yet done so
the preface to this report written by Major General Antonio Taguba. General
Taguba, as my colleagues here remember, was one of the high-ranking officials
tasked with investigating the abuse at Abu Ghraib. And his report -- his
preface to the report describes this as the largely untold human story of what
happened.
His preface is short, but very compelling. So with that, and
the recommendations, it's a great book end for this report.
And I want to
thank all of you for being with us here today. Thank you so much.
The
briefing is adjourned.
[Whereupon the hearing ended at
3:20 p.m.]
END
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