As someone who has conducted evaluations of torture victims, the “evaluation” of Abu Zubaydah is a fascinating, if sickening, look at how the CIA goes about their kind of business. In the course of this two-part article, we’ll learn more about why the report was written, when it was written, and the unprofessional ways the report was produced. One includes in such unprofessionalism the fact its drafting represents an unethical and illegal violation for a psychologist of the highest order. We’ll end with a look at the turf war that shaped the evolution of the torture program, of which this report represented just one episode.
Spencer Ackerman has looked at the possibility that former SERE psychologist James Mitchell wrote the report, and the conflict of interest that arises from having the interrogator/torturer write the report upon which the approach to the subject will be based. While it’s a reasonable guess that Mitchell wrote the evaluation, I’m going to proceed as if I don’t know who wrote it.
Marcy Wheeler wrote a piece examining questions regarding the date of the evaluation (the copy we have was sent to John Yoo on July 24, 2002), the failure to mention Abu Zubaydah’s head injury, and the report’s claims that he allegedly wrote the Al Qaeda interrogation resistance manual. Hopefully, this article will contribute some plausible answers.
Why Was the Evaluation Written?
Every psychological evaluation has a presenting problem or reason for referral, e.g., does this child have a learning disability? is this patient psychotic? etc.
Regarding Abu Zubaydah, one would presume the presenting question most likely was, what psychological strengths or weaknesses does this person have that we can exploit in our interrogation cum torture plan? Unfortunately, numerous parts of the released assessment have been redacted, including its closing paragraphs, which is where one would find the concluding recommendations. In any case, we’ll see that the report appears to lack a presenting question, and that the recommendation is a foregone conclusion.
From internal and convergent evidence, it appears the recommendations included higher levels of coercive interrogation, including waterboarding. The date on the cover sheet of the report, addressed to John Yoo, July 24, 2002, is the same date that the Office of Legal Council gave oral approval for use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT), including waterboarding (H/T Marcy Wheeler). The OLC memo of August 1 states that CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo had said that Zubaydah had become "accustomed to a certain level of treatment," and CIA wanted to enter an "increased pressure phase." (We’ll see that CIA had been pushing this line since at least mid-May.)
In any case, it was around late July or early August that the waterboarding of Zubaydah began in earnest, partial drowning, or waterboarding Abu Zubaydah 83 times. Towards the end of the psychological evaluation, less its last redacted paragraphs, the author — and it was an Agency or Agency contract psychologist, since only psychologists write these reports (and it was likely either James Mitchell or Bruce Jessen, who arrived in Thailand in July) — notes the following, allowing that Zubaydah is "well-versed" in Al Qaeda resistance techniques (emphasis added):
[redacted] subject believes in [sic] the ultimate destiny of Islam is to dominate the world. He believes that global victory is inevitable. Thus, there is the chance he could rationalize that providing information will harm current efforts but will represent only a temporary setback.
The remaining page or so of the report is redacted, but likely represents the work’s loaded conclusion, i.e., that Zubaydah may yet give up more information or cooperation if the amount of coercion is increased. The likely recommendation: waterboarding. And in fact, the legal memo authorizing the latter followed within a week after the evaluation landed on Yoo’s desk; the oral approval for it came on the same day.
It is clear the evaluation was written specifically to get permission for waterboarding, and not to undertake a serious psychological evaluation of the prisoner. The report lacks details related to relevant past history that any psychologist would find important in a psychological evaluation, e.g., the quality of his family relationships, the existence of prior traumas, his actual work and school history, etc. Hell, the report never even mentions the "subject’s" age. [Correction: it does; it reports he's 31 years old. - JK]
The man presented in the report, in a most amateurish fashion, cannot be in fact a real person. They present him as a superman-terrorist (he wrote the Al Qaeda resistance manual, ran the Al Qaeda training camps, was their "coordinator" of foreign communications, was their chief of counterintelligence, “no one came in and out of Peshawar, Afghanistan without his knowledge and approval,” but still had time to be involved in every major Al Qaeda operation, and still had time to direct the start-up of an Al Qaeda cell in Jordan!). Additionally, he was supposed to have developed the Al Qaeda interrogation resistance techniques (a claim later contradicted in the report — see below), and taught them to many others. A real busy guy.
The discussion of his personality at times sounds like it was cribbed from a printout of a computerized personality assessment. There are also a number of contradictions in the portrayal, e.g., Zubaydah “wrestles” with idea of killing civilians, but “celebrated” 9/11; he has the discipline, drive, creativity and pragmatism of a good leader, but is private and vigilant of others’ intentions, and doesn’t trust people, and oh, yes, wants to be one of the guys. Supposedly he felt anything outside of jihad was "silly." But at the same time he chafed against the constrictions of "radical salafist environments" and was very independent minded.
Only for a moment does what is probably the real Abu Zubaydah emerge from the report: a man who wanted to go to college, become a computer expert or engineer, who felt homesick, who wanted a traditional career and family life.
More to come: When was the report written? What is the relationship of Abu Zubaydah to the Al Qaeda resistance manual? Turf wars!
Related posts:
- Experiment in Terror: The Psychological Evaluation of Abu Zubaydah and Its Role in Designing Torture
- NYT Misses Full Story on Mitchell-Jessen
- The July 2002 Torture Training Session
- CIA IG Report to be Released June 19; More Torture Revelations Coming?
- CIA/SERE Experiments Evidence of Attempt to Mislead on OLC Torture Memos
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Thanks for this, Jeff!
Back to read…maybe after Rachel?
Can’t read and watch at the same time for some reason…I miss too much!
FunnyWheelieDiva
This is very timely. Today’s Morning Edition on NPR featured an interview with Tim Weiner, the author of the CIA history Legacy of Ashes, in connection with the fact that the Obama administration has taken responsibility for interrogation away from the CIA, where Bush/Cheney had placed it seven years ago (shortly after Zubaydah’s capture), and put it back with the FBI.
Per Weiner, the FBI, who had got Zubaydah first, and had done pretty well at getting information out of him without resorting to brutality of any sort, much less torture such as waterboarding. But as Jeff Kaye mentions, that wasn’t good enough for the CIA — or Bush/Cheney.
Good read, Jeff. But I have what might seem like a trivial question.
Did they have a competent interpreter translating the English questions into Abu Zaubaydah’s native language or was he fluent enough in English to answer directly.
I raise this because not having a competent interpreter would be a signal of information not being the intent of the torture.
I’m not good with this terminology
as powell’s chief of staff, (wilkerson) said unequivically, 90 percent of the cia were NOT on board with this program, like the fbi they walked away from it
this “10 percent” IF it’s even that high represent cheney’s team b, the team HE organzied when the cia refused giving him made up crap
he started this team b under ford when he and rumsfeld conspired to undermine nixon’s treaty of detante, they just made crap up and since the real cia told everyone cheney and rumsfeld were full of crap this sociopaths came up with their “team b”
ten percent of the cia is NOT “the cia” it should be framed like thus;
look at how
the CIAthe sickos recruited by cheney and rumsfeld and given cover of the cia goe about their kind of business.THAT’S more accurate
Hi Jeff. Here’s a little nugget I saw on Twitter that I thought would interest you:
Now to read the post…
completely OT, but something is happening to the servers on WOW. they seem to have major issues with the computer side of house. interesting, it is affecting a lot of different people and places. sorry, vision of cyberwar dancing through head…need sleep, been a very long week…
Very good argument, perris. It’s the few who were acting on orders from their ‘real’ bosses, in the VP office.
It is clear the evaluation was written specifically to get permission for waterboarding, and not to undertake a serious psychological evaluation of the prisoner.
Maybe we need a psychological evaluation of the person who wrote the evaluation of Zubaydah.
I really appreciate you smart folks dissecting these craptastic excuses for work. Thanks, Jeff.
I’m pretty sure Wilkerson said 1%, perris.
Ha! And maybe that person(s) needs to be committed!
If Perris’ theory is correct the CIA has no control of what it’s people are doing is someone from the office of the VP can go inside their and get 10% or anything like that it would more than 100 to over 1000 people on Team B. And this team B would have to NOT being doing whatever assignments the NORMAL operations demanded including reports and accounting for their time and the budgets.
This doesn’t ring true to me.
If the intel community DID participate as it seems they did, it was done with the full knowledge and awareness of the director, who like set aside a group which were assigned to the GWOT intel mission to gather intel to be used for military ops and report to the white house or something.
I just can’t see how so many in the CIA could operate in such a rogue manner with the knowledge of the CIA since this was such an important mission. Geez Louise isn’t this what the CIA was supposed to be doing? Why would they not be involved and knowledgeable and “read” into what the “team B” was doing.
Makes no sense.
Log and short of this. The CIA was in on it.
The CIA is out of control, and the CIA needs to be taken apart. It’s harming the nation not helping things.
I know a lot about psych eval’s, and this reads more like a reference for a job – listing his supposed strengths that qualify him for the job of being further tortured. It also reminds me of an ancient manual that I have seen which was written for those who tortured witches. It says witches have a remarkable ability to resist pain, which in turn is further proof of their guilt and a reason to inflict more torture. I agree that it looks like a one-sided sham made to order for Yoo and Cheney.
I would have thought they would have used a psychiatrist to make such an evaluation regarding an individuals capacity to cope with a set of “treatments” without psychological damage. But the Inspector General’s report specifically says that Yoo was sent an assessment by the “psychologist/interrogator”. Unless there is a missing, unreported party involved, that pretty much means Jessen or Mitchell.
IMO The OMS would have likely sent a psychiatrist…an MD trained in psychopathology, to do such an assessment. The fact that the OMS was cut out of the process until well after the torture was initiated suggests they were intentionally excluded by some higher up(s).
Good evening ,Jeff.
What has not been discussed is WHY was Zubaydah considered so important-so important that he was so mercilessly tortured.
In doing research on the background of Zubaydah, I came across this recent UK article written by Zubaydah’s attorney.
QUITE a thought provoking read,and a side of the story I had not heard before.
Brent Mickum: The Bush administration’s false claim that Abu …Mar 30, 2009 … For many years, Abu Zubaydah’s name has been synonymous with the war on ….. http://www.guardian.co.uk/…/gua…..ah-torture – Cached – Similar
Outstanding Jeff!
One wonders if other “evaluations” of other captives, not covered or “protected” by the Geneva Conventions, might show a similar, almost “one size fits all” approach?
When the conclusion is foregone, as we must suspect that in most (all?) cases it would have been, why would it be incumbent upon the “psychologist(s)” to have even bothered with tailoring the “evaluation” to specific individuals.
Having no real interest in their subjects, their subject’s lives, ages, family life or aspirations and doing only the most cursory of examinations, we would likely find a similar “not-a-real-person” aspect to be characteristic of the “work” of these “practitioners”.
Charitably, one might consider that the “psychologists” were disassociating themselves from what they were doing, subconsciously “understanding” that what they were doing was wrong …
More likely, they saw NOTHING at all improper, unethical, or even destructive in what they did.
One suspects that they still see nothing wrong.
Considering the appalling behavior of the APA, during the time frame with which we are concerned, coupled with the continuing silence from universities with reputable (?) departments of psychology, we must conclude that many of their colleagues remain untroubled and unconcerned.
I sincerely hope that I am wrong in this assessment, but I remain convinced that the profession MUST address these issues. Soon.
Thank you, once again, Jeff.
I await the second installment of your post.
DW
Is there a link to the psych eval? It would be interesting to get Kirk Murphy’s opinion on this. Psychiatric, not psychological, evals by MDs are done I think on the basis of 5 axes: mood disorders, personality disorders, medical conditions, social condition, and global assessment. I don’t know how a psychological assessment compares to this. From an ethical point of view, any evaluation of Zubaydah by a phsycian or other healthcare professional would be highly problematic since it would almost certainly involve facilitation of torture. So it would be far more surprising if a legit psych eval had been done on Zubaydah.
That’s an excellent question to which I do not have the answer. Maybe someone else reading this can clue us in.
@4 – You’re onto something with this, and I go into it in part two. Definitely, the part of the CIA not tied to Bush-Cheney were aghast at the whole SERE experiment
@8 – Now that’s something I’d like to see. In fact, before they are sent into the field, these guys are supposed to have some kind of psych work-up. Some intelligence people have told me that such work-ups were not happening in the Bush years. Put that together with the 2-week training of interrogators and we have an extremely amateurish enterprise, sotted with a lust to make money and wreak revenge.
@10 – Wilkerson surely underestimates. We tend to give Wilkerson a lot of leeway because he came out against Bush-Cheney, but a lot of what he says is nonsense and self-serving (or Powell-serving).
@12 – Of course the CIA tops knew. But Tenet was a careerist more than an intelligence professional. Then there were all those Bush-Cheney types, and especially the CIA people heavily invested in Special Ops, and it is that nexus where you will find the major nexus of where all this had the operational support and constituency. And that includes all those contracting companies staffed with ex-SO types.
Link to the psych eval?
How could I have been so careless?? Here it is (and I’ll go back and put in the article… my apologies):
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoi…..04olc4.pdf
As for your points: a psych eval, whether done by a psychiatrist or a psychologist basically follow the same format. The reason psychologists are often used is because they’re cheaper, and because they have more expertise in psychological testing, which is often used in assessments.
As for the ethics of doing such an eval for the purpose of torture, it goes without saying that even a professionally done evaluation would have been unethical, and the participation illegal (as being part of the torture process).
@15 – Yes, it was probably Jessen or Mitchell, and yes, OMS was cut out at the beginning. But don’t think too highly of them. Read the last appendix to the IG report, by OMS, and you’ll want to throw up in your mouth.
@16 – Much thanks for the link, which in full is http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm…..ah-torture
I meant to put in something about AZ not being what the report claimed at all, and the info therefore must have been BS, even that from FBI (think “the dirty bomb”). Brent’s point about other AZ’s I had not read before. Is AZ really Goldstein? (Orwell ref.)
@17 – DW, unfortunately there are too many psychologists that are not concerned, e.g., in leadership of APA. On the other hand, there are many pscyhologists who have been very, very active in protesting torture, and leaders in that fight. So the field is split, with the middle, like a majority of U.S. society, somewhat inert, passively against torture, but unsure, afraid, or lazy about doing something about it.
@5 – Thanks, Jim for the reference to PHR. I mention them at the end of the next article.
Well technically they could have done one very early on…when the FBI was still using standard interrogation procedures. Zubaydah had head injuries, and such an evaluation would have been well within the Geneva protocols to determine if he needed treatment.
I’m unsure when his diaries were obtained and translated but they clearly showed signs of severe psychiatric problem.
Doctors should have been involved early, and often, but it seems that they were replaced by the SERE psychologists as the “medical experts”. Of course, if MD’s had been brought into the picture at any point they would have protested…perhaps they did? Someone within the CIA was sounding the alarm, both initially to lead to the YOO “authorities” [and note that the OMS was excluded from providing input on the EIT’s before they were implemented…and were not involved in the psychological evaluations]. I think either the doctors were the ones complaining abut the abuse…or folks wanting to torture KNEW that the professional MD’s would declre the EIT’s as risking permanent physical and mental harm.
Yes…what we see is pretty damning…but most of this overt stuff is simply stating what the procedures were…lots of what appear to be caveats, as well as the final conclusions as to whether most of the methods might cause hrm is redacted. Take, for example, the loud noise issue. They suggest that below 84dbs would not produce permanent hearing loss…but when they start what must be discussion of the potentil psychological effects…it’s redacted…as is any final recommendation.
And this is a “draft”…who drafted it. Was it someone selected by the “B Team” or even on the pro-torture group? Why wasn’t the final draft presented? Did the OMS refuse to accept the “draft”?
A correction. The psych eval does specify AZ’s age as 31 in the second paragraph of the report. It does make him, as you say, sound like some kind of super-terrorist. There is a lot of contradictory mishmash, as you again point out. He’s introverted and suspicious of others. He’s outgoing, a leader, who at the same time wants to be one of the guys. He is supposed to be both in control of himself and fearful. The eval relies on his self-reports but elsewhere mentions how AZ lies, lies, lies. So which is it?
I found this part interesting which I transcribe in part:
First off from what we know of them his diaries paint a very different picture of AZ. I have read that it is as if different people were writing them. I am not going to get into a discussion of multiple personalities but such content would strongly suggest some kind of Axis II personality disorder. He is also described as “perfectionistic” and other behavior suggests OCD type traits. As the old medical saw goes personality disorders are refractory unlike mood disorders (depression, schizophrenia, etc.): Mood disorders are what you have, personality disorders are who you are. You can treat and medicate mood disorders but not personality ones, or at least not very well.
Finally, there are at least 3 references in this fairly short, heavily redacted eval that AZ is resistant to current interrogation methods, at least two that he still has “actionable” intelligence that he might give up, and all through the report any pathology is played down and the distinct impression is conveyed that this is a strong, mentally healthy individual that further enhanced interrogation techniques will do no lasting damage to. So I would agree too that from start to finish the eval is nothing but a series of lies and misrepresentations made in order to get permission for his further torture.
Great comments, Hugh, and thanks for the catch on age. I swear I read through that report a number of times and didn’t see that.
Re Axis I (anxiety/mood disorders) vs. Axis II (personality disorders). I’ll never forget when the Gitmo nurses came to speak at APA in 2007. They made a big deal that there were very few PTSD cases. Instead, according to them, the medical ward was filled with personality disorders.
Your point about the diaries is well-taken. I stayed away from that material because I have not seen the diaries. I could rely on what others have said, who are reliable and respectable journalists, and if I had space for even a longer diary, I’m sure I would have added it.
I love your point about the “lies lies lies”. The psychologist/interrogator writing the report is so clueless, he doesn’t even get it. Which reminds me, in KUBARK, much is made about the deception issue, and it’s surprising there is no discussion around it in the report. Perhaps it is in the redacted section.
But then, this is not a real report anyway, IMHO, but a doc produced for purpose of furthering the torture experiment. Of course, a real report still would have been unethical, and I am part of a group of psychologists who believe that no psychologist should even be involved in any way in national security interrogations. The purpose of an authentic report would have been to tailor the torture techniques specifically to this prisoner. In sum, the whole science is perverted when taken under this aim.
Jeff, I think you will find this link MOST interesting,re: Noise torture.
Truly amazing info .
Torture and democracy – Google Books Resultby Darius M. Rejali – 2007 – Political Science – 849 pages
… Noise In this chapter, I discuss the place of unbearable noise in torture. First, I survey historical uses of noise, distinguishing unbearable noise …
books.google.com/books?isbn=0691114226…
Amazon.com: Torture and Democracy (9780691114224): Darius Rejali …Darius Rejali’s Torture and Democracy, a decade in the making, will be the canonical source text for information on, and the historical confirmation of, …
http://www.amazon.com/Torture-Democra…..0691114226 – Cached – Similar
Rejali, D.: Torture and Democracy.Jun 24, 2009 … Torture and Democracy Darius Rejali. Winner of the 2008 Best Book, Human Rights Section, American Political Science Association …
press.princeton.edu/titles/8490.html – Cached – Similar
Acoustic Weapons – Death by Cortisol? – BlackListed NewsAcoustic Weapons – Death by Cortisol? Published on 08-28-2009, Email To Friend Print Version. AddThis Social Bookmark Button. Source: Bad Experiment …
http://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=5359 – 4 hours ago – Similar