All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
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Our next guest on the show is Jason Leopold.
He used to write for antiwar.com back a long time ago.
Some really good articles, actually.
I've used them for footnotes in the past.
And, uh, he wrote the book News Junkie and he's at truthout.org.
There's a dash in there, truth-out.org and, uh, article in question here.
Very important.
Paul Wolfowitz directive gave legal cover to detainee experimentation program by Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kay at truthout.
Welcome back to, or not back.
Welcome to the show, Jason.
How are you?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks so much for having me on.
I appreciate it.
It should be welcome back to the show.
I don't know why we haven't talked a million times, but anyway, we'll get to that in the next interview.
Um, okay.
So, uh, there's a lot of journalism in this piece.
Why don't you go ahead and outline it for us and I'll try to follow up.
Thanks for highlighting it.
You know, Jeff Kay and I, Jeff Kay is a, a psychologist who lives up in San Francisco, uh, who's written extensively about, uh, aspects of the torture program and, uh, the fact that largely, uh, it's truly an experimental program.
And, uh, Jeff and I spent about seven months, uh, investigating this.
And what happened was, is that about, uh, uh, a year ago, a little less than a year ago, we received a tip about a little known directive issued by Paul Wolfowitz on a very crucial date, March 25th, 2002.
He was the deputy secretary of defense.
Yes.
Yes.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense.
Paul Wolfowitz also involved of all questions regarding, uh, detainees at Guantanamo, this directive that he issued on March 25th, 2002, states that three days before the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the first high value detainee, this directive loosened, uh, rules, uh, weakened protections that, that were in place for decades, uh, regarding human subject research and experimentation.
And what it did was, is that it, it limited the protections to, um, uh, prisoners of war, uh, as opposed to, you know, the, uh, all encompassing detainees.
And as you know, um, in January and then in February, uh, January, George Bush received, uh, numerous memos from the likes of John Yu, William Haynes, former Pentagon general counsel, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, and basically advising Bush that, uh, the, uh, Taliban Al Qaeda, uh, war on terror, uh, detainees should not be afforded the, uh, uh, provisions of, uh, or, or should not be, uh, protected, uh, in accordance with, uh, Geneva conventions.
Uh, so with this directive, what's really important about it is that, uh, it left these loopholes in place.
It, uh, or, or it created these loopholes in terms of, uh, human subject research and experimentation.
And what this directive does is that, uh, it implements a, uh, a law that Congress had passed back in December, 2001.
Another crucial date that was the month, uh, or the crucial timeframe.
That was the month when William Haynes, the Pentagon general counsel, uh, and others started contacting the joint personnel recovery agency, uh, JPRA to basically try and get, uh, some information on quote detainee exploitation.
Uh, this is where the, uh, survival evasion resistance escape, also known as seer, uh, tactics came into play where they were reverse engineered.
Uh, these tactics, these techniques, these torture techniques have, were never tested.
Uh, and, uh, basically what we have established based on our, uh, uh, our reporting is that there was a special access program, uh, set up at Guantanamo.
That, uh, revolved around not only detainee exploitation, research, uh, detection, deception, uh, but it was to, uh, subjecting these, you know, some of these high value detainees through, uh, untested interrogation techniques, uh, that, um, would measure levels of stress basically to determine, you know, uh, how they would, you know, how this would get them to, you know, give up information.
So wait a minute.
What you're saying is when they're rewriting the rules for what all you can do to people and they, I guess, just pick out of a hat, the pain has to be equivalent to organ failure or death to count as torture.
Then they had to create a whole new program.
It's in a way kind of funny, ironic, funny, sorta that like these bureaucrats have to create a new little thing in order to run the experiments to test just how far can you torture someone before the pain is equivalent to the arbitrary thing they just picked out of a hat.
Yes, exactly.
And, you know, let me, let me just say that the, you know, the torture memo, the, uh, uh, John UJ by the former office of legal department of justice, uh, office of legal counsel attorneys, that memo was issued in, in August.
Um, but so this was actually put into place in March.
Uh, but subsequently right after that, uh, memo that you just discussed where, uh, the, um, you know, John, you twisted the law to redefine, uh, torch what torture is, uh, you know, that resulted in, you know, arguably, uh, and I think that we presented the evidence here, you know, the experimentation on one particular detainee, Al-Qahtani, um, Muhammad Al-Qahtani.
But if I could just go back, you know, quickly and say that, you know, in December with the passage of the defense, uh, appropriation, the defense authorization act, um, Congress changed the law known as 10 USC 980.
Uh, and this was something that has not been touched for three decades since 1972.
And that was a law that was put in place in 1972 after revelations of MKUltra, these, uh, various, uh, you know, experimental programs involving the CIA and the defense department.
Uh, so they changed this law and how they changed it was basically, uh, giving the secretary of defense authorization to waive, uh, informed consent.
So for example, Scott, uh, if you were going to be the subject of a DOD department of defense funded research program, you know, you would have to give me your informed consent and what like the Unabomber.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
You know, so, you know, you have to more or less say that, uh, yes, I agree to, uh, you know, I agree to this, uh, in this instance, what the, the, the change to the law is severely weakened, you know, these protections because it gave the department, it gave the secretary of defense, the authority to waive informed consent by the time Wolfowitz issued the memo, it then, it even changed it further and it basically said the, the directive said that department of defense component heads could have the authority to waive informed consent.
Uh, and how this, um, you know, in addition to that, the Wolfowitz directive, you know, it further weakened protections by saying that, uh, you know, after the atrocities of a World War II Nazi, uh, atrocities became apparent and, uh, memorandums and laws were put into place that advised researchers to adhere, strictly adhere to, uh, the Nuremberg code.
Um, what Wolfowitz did is he changed the word, you know, you must comply with the Nuremberg code and to, you must be familiar, familiar with the Nuremberg code.
Does that put him in violation of the Nuremberg code?
You know, it's, it's a very good question.
And, um, much like that memo that you mentioned about John Yu, uh, you know, what they did here again is they, they twisted the law, they changed the law.
They did things to sort of legalize, uh, some of these horrific acts that they, uh, uh, you know, that they put into place.
All right.
Well, they're right there.
Uh, we got to take this break.
Everybody it's Jason Leopold from truthout.org and the article is special report detainee experimentation program revealed.
It's got the link to the report too.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
We're talking with Jason Leopold.
About American war criminals, torturing people to death.
Um, simple, honest, direct language.
I was taught that by professor Carlin.
Uh, so here's the thing, uh, in the beginning of the terror war, you had all the lawyers for all the political appointees and the president come up with all these rationales to say that the detained on the battlefield anywhere in Afghanistan.
And then for a while, they're in Iraq as well.
They're not prisoners of war.
They're enemy combatants, a brand new made up word with, you know, so it's not the law, something brand new and we can do what we want with them.
They're not suspects.
Uh, they're not, uh, accused and they're not, um, prisoners of war.
And so none of the rules apply and we can make up our own new rules.
And now I'm trying to think back, Jason to a torture team.
And, you know, the timeline of all of this and, you know, perhaps it's worth, uh, differentiating between what the CIA was doing and what the department of defense was doing, um, at Guantanamo, what they did to Jose Padilla, the Gitmo Ising of the Abu Ghraib prison and, and how, uh, the, the resistance in Iraq was called terrorists too, and thrown in basically the same category of the law doesn't apply to them in some form.
Anyway, maybe you can help clarify that.
Um, and, uh, but we know that, uh, well, according to Tony Lugaranis, for example, who is a sergeant there, uh, they tortured thousands of people across Iraq.
Nevermind Abu Ghraib.
You should have seen what we did to these people in their own homes.
He said, yeah, I think that that is, you know, that's a very important to keep reminding people of that because it's certainly a fact, you know, in terms of what the D uh, department of defense and what the CIA did, it's really not that much different.
Certainly the, the techniques that, uh, specifically, uh, that were specifically identified in the torture memo, uh, are, you know, those were, uh, identified for one specific detainee.
Okay.
That's Abu Zubaydah, first high value detainee.
I think it's really important, uh, that I emphasize that, uh, you know, a few months back I had a, I had a story, uh, regarding Abu Zubaydah and based on the justice department's own documents, no one has even, you know, uh, uh, truly picked up on it that the justice department walked back every major claim they made about Abu Zubaydah.
Uh, uh, when he was first captured every claim, they first said that he was, uh, you know, one of the planners of nine 11, uh, involved in every major terrorist, uh, attack, uh, throughout the nineties, uh, they since have recanted that.
So the techniques in that memo were developed for, uh, for him specifically he's identified.
However, overall the, um, uh, you know, the, the, uh, torture, uh, techniques that there's such as shackling, uh, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, which the CIA also used on, you know, on, on high value detainees was also used by the department of defense.
And the reason for that, uh, you know, that some of these, uh, techniques are, are, are, are similar is because you had the same people, the same people advising, uh, both the CIA and the department of defense, Bruce Jessen, the psychologist, uh, and James Mitchell, uh, another psychologist who's his partner, who are identified as, you know, to the architects of the program.
We're also working for the department of defense.
And, and might I add that, uh, in our, uh, reports on, um, on this Wolfowitz directive, we, we show that just a few weeks before this directive was issued, as a matter of fact, uh, Bruce Jessen had, uh, uh, given a PowerPoint presentation, uh, to the department of defense, uh, on, uh, you know, detainee exploitation and exploitation is a really important word here.
And this is why the, you know, when you start really, you know, paying close attention to what these memos say, what the, you know, what, what, what was done to the detainees, it, it becomes a, you know, a matter of, you know, experimentation, not so much about intelligence.
Okay.
Because, uh, you know, we know that they did not get, uh, you know, the, the, the type of intelligence that, uh, you know, that they were looking for.
Uh-huh.
They got 10,000 orange alerts out of that guy.
Right.
They had him say anything they wanted, uh, you know, it turned out all of it to, you know, for the most part to be bogus.
Yeah.
Well, and this is the footnote for everyone.
According to Ron Susskind, this is when George Tenet finally confronted George Bush and said, you've got to stop citing Abu Zubaydeh was nothing but a half insane or maybe three quarters insane travel agent for these guys.
Um, George Bush said to George Tenet, you're not going to make me lose face on this, are you?
Right.
Because George Bush had said over and over and over again, that this was the reason we had to torture people because of dangerous people like him.
Right.
And by the way, it's, uh, you know, it wasn't just, they said it was Bush himself had, had used Zubaydeh over and over and over.
And by the way, they used him over and over, they tortured him.
And I think it's becoming very clear.
Uh, they did it before August.
You know, the big question that's out there is, was he waterboarded before the August memo?
Well, you know, that may be an important fact in terms of a timeline, but what's really important to keep in mind is that they put him through these experimental techniques, techniques that have never been tested, particularly sleep deprivation before the issuance of that memo.
And that's been clear that has been established.
Uh, you know, so the, uh, you know, the CIA says, well, we gave, uh, you know, some, uh, uh, oral or verbal, uh, authority to do this.
And, uh, you know, that, uh, it's still important to go deeper into it, but, you know, you made an important, um, uh, reference earlier before the break, which was enemy combatant, you know, again, um, with, with regard to this directive, with regard to the word detainees, these are very important word games.
They are word games, legal word games.
As a matter of fact, that the Bush administration had played because, um, you know, as I, as you know, the, uh, Geneva protections provides, you know, prisoners of war, uh, you know, these, these built-in safeguards, but enemy combatants is, uh, you know, they don't have those safeguards.
So when it came time to certainly, you know, when, when Bush issued this action memo on February, uh, second, I believe 2002, which said that they don't, they are not entitled to these protections.
And then you had Wolfowitz issuing this, you know, uh, this directive, uh, titled protections, um, of human subjects and adherence to ethical standards and DOD supported research.
Enemy combatants, uh, are not, is nowhere to be found.
The only protections that were there were for, you know, prisoners of war.
So, uh, these detainees were vulnerable and, uh, vulnerable to, you know, they, they were being used as guinea pigs and, you know, for some people, you know, I have to emphasize this and I've done it, uh, in several conversations I've had over the past week, some people are willing, or most people are at this point are willing to accept Scott that our government tortured, uh, you know, you said thousands of, uh, of, of detainees.
And I, and I have to say that I agree with you on that.
There, they seem to be unwilling to go further, uh, to, uh, accept that there was also experimentation done and perhaps they're doing that because they.
Can I keep you one more segment?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Great.
Hold on the line there.
We'll be right back.
Everybody with Jason Leopold from truth out.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott talking with Jason Leopold from truth out.
That's truth dash out.org special report detainee experimentation program revealed.
So, uh, please continue where we were interrupted by the break.
And then if you can, uh, please tell us about Al Qahtani.
I remember him, I think from a important report about a high level officials involved in his torture, uh, from ABC news a couple of years back.
Right.
Sure.
Well, I just wanted to, uh, you know, to wrap up what I was saying, you know, before the break is that, uh, people are willing to, excuse me, to accept that, okay, our government tortured, but when you go further into it, when you, when, when you start, you know, opening up that, uh, or peeling the, uh, the, you know, the layers skins of the onion to show that this was even, uh, uh, you know, a program that, uh, revolved around research perfecting techniques by using detainees as Guinea pigs, uh, uh, they're not willing to go there.
So they're, they, they, they seem a bit unwilling to, you know, accept these facts and, uh, you know, it's somewhat, it's somewhat troubling, uh, because the, uh, you know, the, the, certainly the evidence, um, is there to show that this was an experimental program.
Uh, and, uh, you know, with Al Qahtani we used in order to show how the Wolfowitz memo, for example, the directive, which by the way, I must say that it's still in place, this Wolfowitz directive is still in place.
Department of defense says, uh, said to us that they are going, uh, uh, to, uh, change it, uh, and it'll be ready for review next year.
But, uh, to show how this, uh, memo was likely used, we, uh, you know, we, we, we went into Mohammed Al Qahtani captured in January, 2002, again, another important date, as you could see here, all these sort of, uh, pieces fall into place, um, January, 2002 Bush removing the, uh, uh, you know, Geneva convention protections.
Uh, and, uh, you know, later on in the year, uh, Al Qahtani, um, was brutally tortured.
And in fact, his prison cell, um, when, when, when they, um, stepped up his, uh, torture, when they first started, uh, putting them through it, it was actually modeled after, um, Jose Padilla's, uh, his, uh, uh, cell that, uh, where, where he was being held.
And, uh, you know, the treatment of Al Qahtani, uh, was, uh, the, the torture of Al Qahtani was, uh, was based on, you know, verbal and written author authorizations from, uh, Donald Rumsfeld.
Uh, and, uh, his treatment, uh, was cataloged in an 84 page, uh, torture log.
Uh, that was leaked to time magazine in 2006.
Uh, it was show it shows that he was poked with IVs, uh, you know, when it was interrogated at 20 hour stretches, uh, you know, uh, sleep deprived for, um, you know, days on end.
Uh, you know, he was the, um, uh, uh, according to his attorney subjected to a regime of aggressive interrogation techniques known as the first special interrogation plan.
And as I, as I said earlier, um, this was actually part of the special access program that went on at Guantanamo involving, you know, the, uh, uh, torture experimentation, uh, of these high value detainees.
And in fact, you know, um, Steven miles, he wrote a book called oath betrayed.
He said that the, the fact that they kept these meticulously recorded logs of Al Qahtani's, uh, torture, uh, and interrogation, it does not focus, um, on, you know, intelligence, but it focuses on the emotions and the interactions of the prisoner.
That's a quote from his book rather than on the questions that were asked and the information that was obtained.
So, um, you know, it really shows that this, you know, he, he was an experiment and as, as you know, um, last year, if I'm not mistaken, last January of 2009, uh, Susan Crawford, one of the, uh, uh, you know, the convening judges at the, uh, at, uh, Guantanamo, uh, military commission, she said, you know, to Bob Woodward, uh, we tortured Al Qahtani.
Um, you know, so that was a, a clear admission and, and, and obviously one of the reasons I believe that, uh, you know, we're not seeing him, uh, being, uh, you know, brought up for, um, you know, for, for any sort of military commissions, uh, trial, he, he did receive the death penalty previously before it was dropped.
But, um, you know, when you start looking closely at, uh, you know, at, uh, how, how these detainees were, uh, you know, were being tortured, it becomes very clear that it's, you know, Scott, it's not about intelligence because, um, you know, uh, they certainly didn't receive anything that was actionable in the sense that the, you know, weren't any, you know, imminent, uh, plots.
It was really about exploitation, control, breaking the prisoner.
Um, I'll, you know, mention this, that, um, my, uh, uh, coauthor, Jeff K and I actually obtained, and we have a follow-up story coming out, uh, within the next week.
We actually obtained the, the notes, um, handwritten notes by Bruce Jessen, uh, the, uh, attorney, uh, the psychologist who designed this, this program.
These notes were actually written in 1989, uh, 1989, 1990.
And, you know, what we're going to be able to show, uh, when we put the story together from these handwritten notes is that the entire, it, first of all, it's the first real insight into how these techniques were, you know, so-called reverse engineered, uh, these torture techniques, but it will truly show that, you know, this was not about intelligence.
This was about, uh, control, exploitation, uh, you know, uh, getting the, you know, prisoner to collaborate.
Uh, so it's, um, you know, I think the important thing is, you know, continuing to reveal this to, you know, having it become part of the, uh, you know, the historical public record, uh, because it, it, it does change the narrative.
Uh, you know, as I said, no one really, um, had, uh, realized that Congress actually changed the law in December of 2001, right after the, uh, you know, the, uh, invasion of Afghanistan, you know, changed a law that was put into place in 1972 to protect, you know, the, you know, uh, subjects of, uh, uh, DOD funded, uh, research and experimentation, uh, and, and the changes that they made truly weakened it.
Uh, and I think it's important if I can just, you know, I'll wrap up with this is that back in February or actually in March, uh, former, uh, uh, director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, he revealed to Congress that, uh, you know, the Obama administration's high value detainee interrogation group, they planned on conducting quote unquote, scientific research to determine if there are better ways to get information from people that are consistent with our values.
Um, it's unclear what that scientific research entails, you know, how they're going to do that, you know, what laws or directives they're, they're using to, uh, support that.
Uh, but, um, you know, it's, uh, it's clear that this is ongoing and I, and I should add that the, you know, we did speak to the department of defense and they said that there's no, you know, there's no detainee policy directive or instruction that, uh, you know, that, that would permit performing any sort of research or experimentation.
And, and they, you know, noted that, uh, none of this, um, uh, had actually, uh, uh, occurred.
Um, and, and, and the final thing I will say is that there was a, an investigation into the use of drugs, uh, for the purposes of interrogation, uh, on, uh, on detainees.
And a year ago, uh, the, uh, that was from the department of defense, uh, inspector general.
They investigated this, um, year ago, they finished up a report and they handed that report to the Senate Armed Services Committee, uh, who, you know, did not comment on it.
And just, uh, uh, Jeff K actually, uh, that was another story he and I had, uh, uh, you know, had, had, uh, put together on this.
Uh, you know, he, we, we were told by the Senate Armed Services Committee that they could not discuss the report because it was still classified.
However, uh, they said that, uh, you know, the one thing we can tell you is that the investigation did not substantiate that drugs were used for the purposes of interrogation.
Uh, so, you know, again, there's, there's, there's still so much to be revealed, uh, about this, uh, uh, program because that's really what it is, is a program.
Well, we'll keep our eyes on truth out.
I'm sorry, we're out of time, but thanks very much for yours.
Thank you.
