Psychologists shaped detainee interrogations

WASHINGTON — When the CIA began what it called an "increased pressure phase" with captured terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in summer 2002, its first step was to limit the detainee's human contact to two people. One was the CIA interrogator, the other a psychologist.

During the weeks that followed, it was the psychologist who apparently played the more critical role. According to Justice Department documents released last week, the psychologist provided ideas, practical advice and legal justification for interrogation methods that would break Zubaydah, physically and mentally.

Methods approved

Extreme sleep deprivation, waterboarding, the use of insects to provoke fear, all were deemed acceptable, in part, because the psychologist said so.

"No severe mental pain or suffering would have been inflicted," a Justice Department lawyer said in a 2002 memo explaining why waterboarding, or simulated drowning, should not be considered torture.

The role of health professionals as described in the documents has prompted a renewed outcry from ethicists who say the conduct of psychologists and supervising physicians violated basic standards of their professions.

Their names are among the few details censored in the long-concealed Bush administration memos released Thursday, but the documents show a steady stream of psychologists, physicians and other health-care practitioners who kept detainees alive and participated in designing the interrogation program and monitoring its implementation.

Their presence also enabled the government to argue the interrogations did not include torture.

CIA contractors

Most of the psychologists were CIA contract employees, according to intelligence officials.

"The health professionals involved in the CIA program broke the law and shame the bedrock ethical traditions of medicine and psychology," said Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights, an international group made up of physicians opposing torture.

"All psychologists and physicians found to be involved in the torture of detainees must lose their license and never be allowed to practice again," he said.

The CIA declined to comment on the role played by health professionals in the agency's self-described "enhanced interrogation program," which operated from 2002 to 2006 in secret prisons overseas.

"The fact remains that CIA's detention and interrogation effort was authorized and approved by our government," CIA Director Leon Panetta said Thursday. The Obama administration and its top intelligence leaders have banned harsh interrogations while strongly opposing investigations or penalties for employees who were following government orders.

The CIA sent personnel from its Office of Medical Services to each secret prison and evaluated medical professionals involved in interrogations "to make sure they could stand up, psychologically handle it," according to a former CIA official.

The reported actions of medical professionals are viewed as particularly troubling by an array of groups, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Profession's stance

AMA policies state physicians "must not be present when torture is used or threatened."

The guidelines allow doctors to treat detainees only "if doing so is in their (detainees') best interest" and not merely to monitor their health "so that torture can begin or continue."

The American Psychological Association has condemned any participation by its members in interrogations involving torture, but critics of the organization faulted it for failing to censure members involved in harsh interrogation.

The ICRC, which conducted the first independent interviews of CIA detainees in 2006, said the prisoners were told they would not be killed during interrogations, though one was warned he would be brought to "the verge of death and back again," according to a confidential ICRC report leaked to the New York Review of Books last month.

"The interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics," the ICRC report concluded.

The Justice Department memos place medical officials at the scene of the earliest CIA interrogations.

At least one psychologist was present — and others were frequently consulted — during the interrogation of Zubaydah, the nom de guerre of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, a Palestinian captured by CIA and Pakistani intelligence officers in March 2002, the Justice documents state.

An Aug. 1, 2002, memo said the CIA relied on its "on-site psychologists" for help in designing an interrogation program for Zubaydah and ultimately came up with a list of 10 methods drawn from a U.S. military-training program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE.

That program, used to help prepare pilots endure torture in the event they are captured, is loosely based on techniques used by the Communist Chinese to torture U.S. prisoners of war during the Korean conflict.

The role played by psychologists in adapting SERE methods for interrogation has been described in books and news articles, including some in The Washington Post.

Spokane psychologists

Author Jane Mayer and journalist Katherine Eban separately identified as key figures James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two Spokane psychologists who worked as CIA contractors after 2001 and had extensive experience in SERE training. Mitchell, reached by telephone, declined to comment, and Jessen could not be reached Friday.

The CIA psychologists had personal experience with SERE and helped convince CIA officials that harsh tactics would coerce confessions from Zubaydah without inflicting permanent harm.

Waterboarding was touted as particularly useful because it was "reported to be almost 100 percent effective in producing cooperation," the memo said.

The agency then used a psychological assessment of Zubaydah to find his vulnerable points. One of them, it turns out, was a severe aversion to bugs.

"He appears to have a fear of insects," states the memo, which described a plan to place a caterpillar or similar creature inside a tiny wooden crate in which Zubaydah was confined. CIA officials said the plan was never carried out.

Former intelligence officials said Zubaydah was found to have played a less important role in al-Qaida than initially believed and that under harsh interrogation, he provided little useful information.

Ethical dilemma

The memos acknowledge the presence of medical professionals posed an ethical dilemma. But they contend the CIA's use of doctors in interrogations was morally distinct from the practices of other countries that the United States has accused of committing torture.

One memo notes that doctors who observed interrogations were empowered to stop them "if in their professional judgment the detainee may suffer severe physical or mental pain or suffering." In one instance, the CIA chose not to subject a detainee to waterboarding due to a "medical contraindication," according to a May 10, 2005, memo.

Washington Post staff writers R. Jeffrey Smith and Dana Priest and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Information from The Spokesman-Review is included in this report.