By Cliff Montgomery – Apr. 26th, 2013
The other day, The American Spark pointed out a truth the Pentagon has known for years: “Prohibited techniques” like torture or brutal interrogations “are not needed to gain the cooperation of detainees – [in fact] their use leads to unreliable information that may damage subsequent collection efforts,” according to a telling evaluation performed in 2006 by the Pentagon’s Inspector General.
“The Constitution Project brings together policy experts and legal practitioners from across the political spectrum to foster consensus-based solutions to the most difficult constitutional challenges of our time,” according to the watchdog group’s mission statement.
“The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment is an independent, bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel charged with examining the federal government’s policies and actions related to the capture, detention and treatment of suspected terrorists during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations,” states the introduction to the Project’s report.
“The project was undertaken with the belief that it was important to provide an account as authoritative and accurate as possible of how the United States treated, and continues to treat, people held in our custody as the nation mobilized to deal with a global terrorist threat,” it added.
The American Spark will quote for our readers the Constitution Project’s twenty-four essential findings. Numbers one through sixteen will be quoted today – we’ll quote numbers seventeen through twenty-four tomorrow. Or one may read the entire report straight from The Constitution Project itself.
General Findings
Finding #1
U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.
Finding #2
The nation’s most senior officials, through some of their actions and failures to act in the months and years immediately following the September 11 attacks, bear ultimate responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of illegal and improper interrogation techniques used by some U.S. personnel on detainees in several theaters. Responsibility also falls on other government officials and certain military leaders.
Finding #3
There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.
Finding #4
The continued indefinite detention of many prisoners at Guantánamo should be addressed.
Finding #5
The United States has not sufficiently followed the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to “engage its friends to develop a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists.”
Legal Findings
Finding #6
Lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) repeatedly gave erroneous legal sanction to certain activities that amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in violation of U.S. and international law, and in doing so, did not properly serve their clients: the president and the American people.
Finding #7
Since September 11, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) failed, at times, to give sufficient weight to the input of many at the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the State Department with extensive and relevant expertise on legal matters pertaining to detainee treatment.
Finding #8
Since the Carter administration, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has published some opinions, a practice that continues to this day. Transparency is vital to the effective functioning of a democracy. It is also vital that the president, during his or her presidency, be able to rely on confidential legal advice.
Extraordinary Rendition Findings
Finding #9
It is the view of the Task Force that the United States has violated its international legal obligations in its practice of the enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention of terror suspects in secret prisons abroad.
Finding #10
The Task Force finds that “diplomatic assurances” that suspects would not be tortured by the receiving countries proved unreliable in several notable rendition cases, although the full extent of diplomatic assurances obtained is still unknown. The Task Force believes that ample evidence existed regarding the practices of the receiving countries that rendered individuals were “more likely than not” to be tortured.
Finding #11
The Task Force finds that U.S. officials involved with detention in the black sites committed acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Medical Findings
Finding #12
After September 11, 2001, psychologists affiliated with U.S. intelligence agencies helped create interrogation techniques for use in questioning detainees. The methods were judged to be legal by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), but the Task Force has found that many of them constituted torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Finding #13
Medical professionals, including physicians and psychologists, in accordance with Department of Defense and intelligence agency operating policies, participated variously in interrogations by monitoring certain interrogations, providing or allowing to be provided medical information on detainees to interrogators, and not reporting abuses.
Finding #14
Prior to September 11, 2001, ethical principles and standards of conduct for U.S. physicians regarding military detainees included prohibition against involvement in torture, monitoring or being present during torture, or providing medical care to facilitate torture. From 2006 to 2008, after information was available on the treatment of detainees, additional medical professional ethical principles and guidance were established by medical associations, including the duty to report abuses and prohibitions against conducting or participating in or being present during interrogations, and providing detainees’ medical information to interrogators.
Finding #15
After September 11, 2001, military psychologists and physicians were instructed that they were relieved of the obligation to comply with non-military ethical principles, and in some cases their military roles were redefined as non-health professional combatants.
Finding #16
For detainee hunger strikers, DOD [Department of Defense] operating procedures called for practices and actions by medical professionals that were contrary to established medical and professional ethical standards, including improper coercive involuntary feedings early in the course of hunger strikes that, when resisted, were accomplished by physically forced nasogastric tube feedings of detainees who were completely restrained.
