Complaint dropped against John Leso, involved in brutal interrogation of suspected 9\/11 hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0APA: ‘We cannot proceed with formal charges’ \u2013 full letter<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n America\u2019s professional association of psychologists has quietly declined to rebuke one of its members, a retired US army reserve officer, for his role in one of the most brutal interrogations known to have to taken place at Guant\u00e1namo\u00a0Bay, the Guardian has learned.<\/p>\n The decision not to pursue any disciplinary measure against John Leso, a former army reserve major, is the latest case in which someone involved in the post-9\/11 torture of detainees has faced no legal or even professional consequences.<\/p>\n In a 31 December letter obtained by the Guardian<\/a>, the American Psychological Association said it had \u201cdetermined that we cannot proceed with formal charges in this matter. Consequently the complaint against Dr Leso has been closed.\u201d<\/p>\n But the APA did not deny Leso took part in the brutal interrogation of the suspected 20th 9\/11 hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose treatment the Pentagon official overseeing his military commission ultimately called \u201ctorture\u201d.<\/p>\n Leso was identified as \u201cMAJ L\u201d in a leaked log,\u00a0published by Time magazine<\/a> in 2005, of Qahtani\u2019s marathon interrogation in November 2002. With Leso recorded as present for at least some of the session, Qahtani\u00a0was forcibly hydrated through intravenous drips and prevented from using the bathroom until he urinated on himself, subjected to loud music, and repeatedly kept awake while being \u201ctold he can go to sleep when he tells the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n At one point, Qahtani\u00a0was instructed to bark like a dog.<\/p>\n \u201cDog tricks continued and detainee stated he should be treated like a man,\u201d the log records. \u201cDetainee was told he would have to learn who to defend and who to attack.\u201d<\/p>\n During an interrogation on 27 November 2002, the log records a direct intervention by Leso: \u201cControl puts detainee in swivel chair at MAJ L\u2019s suggestion to keep him awake and stop him from fixing his eyes on one spot in booth.\u201d<\/p>\n The APA\u2019s move concludes a years-long effort within the organization to get the association to condemn members who took part in torture. Those who argued for censuring Leso said that the organization has opened the door to future wartime violations of its central do-no-harm ethos.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Leso, the evidence of his participation is so explicit and so incontrovertible, the APA had to go to great lengths to dismiss it,\u201d said Steven Reisner, a New York clinical psychologist who unsuccessfully ran for the APA presidency last year. \u201cThe precedent is that APA is not going to hold any psychologist accountable in any circumstance.\u201d<\/p>\n Trudy Bond, an Ohio psychologist who filed the complaint against Leso, cited APA\u2019s policy on interrogations and torture<\/a>\u00a0as she said the organization had sent the message that \u201cpsychologists are free to violate our ethical code, perhaps, in certain situations\u201d.<\/p>\n The APA\u2019s communications chief, Rhea Farberman, told the Guardian that a seven-year ethics investigation could not meet the burden of finding \u201cdirect unethical conduct\u201d by Leso, and said it was \u201cutterly unfounded\u201d to fear the organization has condoned professional impunity.<\/p>\n \u201cA thorough review of these public materials and our standing policies will clearly demonstrate that APA will not tolerate psychologist participation in torture,\u201d Farberman said.<\/p>\n Documents that emerged from a Senate armed services committee torture inquiry detailed Leso\u2019s involvement in an early \u201cBehavioral Science Consultation Team\u201d at Guant\u00e1namo, which was instrumental in crafting torture techniques out of measures taught to US troops to withstand brutal treatment.<\/p>\n Leso, whose name is redacted in a lengthy report produced by the committee in 2008, helped write a memorandum in October 2002, \u201cCounter-Resistance Strategies\u201d, for Guant\u00e1namo\u00a0staff who were under pressure from the chain of command to produce intelligence from the detainee population.<\/p>\n The memorandum detailed the use of abusive conditions and techniques on the detainees, including isolation, \u201cstress positions\u201d, sensory and sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation and exposure to extreme cold. Those techniques migrated through the Pentagon bureaucracy and were ultimately used at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.<\/p>\n \u201cCounter-Resistance Strategies\u201d also recommended manipulating the living conditions of detainees outside the interrogation chambers, such as limiting \u201cresistant\u201d detainees to four hours of sleep daily, depriving them of \u201ccomfort items\u201d like sheets and mattresses and controlling access to their Qur\u2019ans.<\/p>\n \u201cAll aspects of the [detention] environment should enhance capture shock, dislocate expectations, and support exploitation to the fullest extent possible,\u201d according to a section of the memorandum published by the Senate committee.<\/p>\n The minutes of an October 2002 Guant\u00e1namo\u00a0meeting published by the committee identified Leso by name, rank and membership in the Behavioral Science Consultation Team.<\/p>\n But those minutes and other records published by the Senate also portray Leso as being at least ambivalent about detainee abuse. \u201cForce is risky, and may be ineffective due to the detainees\u2019 frame of reference. They are used to seeing much more barbaric treatment,\u201d the minutes record him saying<\/a>.<\/p>\n Leso and a psychiatrist colleague on the team, Major Paul Burney, conceded in Counter-Resistance Strategies that torture was a poor method of extracting accurate information.<\/p>\n \u201cExperts in the field of interrogation indicate that the most effective interrogation strategy is a rapport-building approach. Interrogation techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of resistance \u2026 The interrogation tools outlined could affect the short term and\/or long term physical and\/or mental health of the detainee,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n Leso and Burney told the Senate panel in 2007 interviews that they were \u201cnot comfortable with the memo they were asked to produce\u201d, according to the Senate report.<\/p>\n That stated discomfort appears to have influenced the APA in exonerating Leso.<\/p>\n \u201cAvailable evidence in the public domain also includes that, in the face of pressure from the highest levels of the Bush administration which strongly supported \u2018enhanced\u2019 interrogation tactics, the respondent sought consultation and argued against such approaches and in favor of rapport-building approach,\u201d wrote Lindsay Childress-Beatty, the deputy director of the APA\u2019s ethics office, on 31 December.<\/p>\n The APA also found it exculpatory that Leso \u201cdid not request to become involved with detainee interrogations but was rather informed that he would be in the role of behavioral science consultant (\u201cBSC\u201d) only after he arrived in Guant\u00e1namo\u00a0Bay in the summer of 2002\u201d.<\/p>\n Attempts at contacting Leso, who retired from the military in 2004, were unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone at a residence listed under his name said Leso no longer resided there. Another woman who identified herself as a relative of Leso\u2019s at a different phone number said she did not have a way of contacting him. The APA said it had no contact details it could share with the Guardian.<\/p>\n Bond and other psychologists said they considered the APA\u2019s response to be a whitewash of Leso\u2019s record, focusing on his subsequently vocalized doubts, rather than his participation in the interrogation.<\/p>\n \u201cHe should have refused,\u201d Bond said. \u201cIf the psychologists had done this back in 2002, things might have been different.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen Soldz, a Boston-based psychologist, called Leso\u2019s involvement in torture \u201cprobably the clearest, most documented case [of psychologist] participation in abuse that we\u2019re going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the most there\u2019s ever going to be, and for many years APA has been shouting from the top of its lungs, \u2018Give us names and we\u2019ll bring people up on ethics charges,\u2019 and yet they say the evidence is insufficient,\u201d Soldz said.<\/p>\n Qahtani\u2019s lawyer, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said it was \u201castonishing\u201d that the APA concluded Leso pushed back against torture.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same memo warned that the practices Leso came up with could produce ‘irreversible’ psychological harm, yet Leso went ahead and took part in interrogation sessions that applied those same techniques. He was in the room, watching as our client collapsed psychologically from being degraded, physically abused, deprived of sleep and human contact. And we\u2019re supposed to believe some throwaway line in a memo written a few weeks earlier excuses all of that and makes Leso fit to serve as a psychologist treating vulnerable patients?\u201d Kadidal said.<\/p>\n The APA\u2019s official position is an \u201cunequivocal condemnation\u201d on \u201call techniques considered torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment\u201d under the relevant international treaties. Banned techniques include some listed in Leso\u2019s 2002 memo<\/a>, including isolation, hooding, dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation, and stress positions.<\/p>\n But in its 31 December letter dropping Leso\u2019s case<\/a>, the APA said that Leso\u2019s involvement in US interrogations predated its opposition to such practices. \u201cAPA did not issue its first policy on interrogations until three years later, in 2005,\u201d its deputy ethics director, Childress-Beatty, wrote.<\/p>\n Qahtani, who claimed <\/a>that he lied to his interrogators to end the abuse, remains at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, caught in a legal limbo caused in part by his torture.<\/p>\n The Pentagon twice charged Qahtani with war crimes related to 9\/11 in 2008. But the Defense Department official overseeing his military tribunal, retired federal judge Susan Crawford, ruled she could not proceed with the case, since the government \u201ctortured Qahtani\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent,\u201d Crawford told the Washington Post <\/a>in early 2009.<\/p>\n Leso is the latest case in which US officials involved with torture have escaped legal or professional consequences. A justice department investigation into CIA torture resulted in no indictments, and it never considered examining the architects of torture policy. Nor has torture caused its architects to suffer professionally: some have returned to tenured academic positions, awarded federal judgeships and sit on the boards of major corporations.<\/p>\n Some experts are concerned that the lack of legal or disciplinary consequences for those involved in torture will encourage a future president to lift President Barack Obama\u2019s executive order banning torture after another terrorist attack. Bond and other psychologists worry their colleagues will aid brutal interrogations.<\/p>\n The APA\u2019s Farberman said that was a baseless fear. \u201cThe concern that APA\u2019s decision to close the matter against Dr John Leso will set a precedent against disciplining members who participate in abusive interrogations is utterly unfounded. Each ethics complaint is carefully reviewed on its own merits,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n