Doctors of interrogation

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 17-22

  Marks, Jonathan H ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26244433633     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3528822     Document Type: Review

References (49)

1. See R.J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986);
2. M.G. Bloche, "Uruguay's Military Physicians: Cogs in a System of State Terror," Journal of the American Medical Association 255 (1986): 2788-93;
3. and C. Reis et al., "Physician Participation in Human Rights Abuses in Southern Iraq," Journal of the American Medical Association 291 (2004): 1480-86.
4. M.G. Bloche and J.H. Marks, "When Doctors Go to War," New England Journal of Medicine 352 (2005): 3-6;
5. S.H. Miles, "Abu Ghraib: Its Legacy for Military Medicine," Lancet 364 (2004): 725-29.
6. On physician failure to report abuses, see R.J. Lifton, "Doctors and Torture," New England Journal of Medicine 351 (2004): 415-16.
7. Bloche and Marks, "When Doctors Go To War."
8. Bloche and Marks, When Doctors Go To War Ibid.
9. A. Zagorin and M. Duffy, "Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063," Time, June 20, 2005 (containing excerpts from a Guantanamo Bay interrogation log).
10. See also Document DOD-DOACID000558, http://action.aclu.org/site/ PageServer?pagenarne=torturefoia.
11. Testimony of Col. Thomas M. Pappas to Taguba Inquiry (February 2004), available at http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/a46.pdf.
12. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, memorandum to Lt. Gen Ricardo S. Sanchez: Request for Exception to CJTF-7 Interrogation and Counter Resistance Policy, http://www.publicintegrity.org/docs/AbuGhraib/Abu7.pdf.
13. Tactics such as mock executions and sexual humiliation were also used but are unlikely to have been the subject of formal requests. For discussion of techniques used, see the Taguba, Fay/Jones, and Schlesinger Reports collected in K.J. Greenberg and J.L. Dratel, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
14. and Physicians for Human Rights, Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces (Washington, D.C.: Physicians for Human Rights, 2005).
15. N. Lewis, "Interrogators Cite Doctors' Aid at Guantanamo Prison Camp," New York Times, June 24, 2005.
16. See also M.G. Bloche and J.H. Marks, "Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay," New England Journal of Medicine 353 (2005): 6-8.
17. P. Dodds, "Released Gitmo Prisoners Sue for Damages," Army Times, October 27, 2004.
18. Compare reports of the CIA's use of drugs in interrogation: M. Bowden, "The Dark Art of Interrogation," Atlantic Monthly, October 2003, 51-76.
19. Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales from Jay S. Bybee, Re: Standard of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 USC 2340-2340A, collected in Greenberg and Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers. The memorandum was withdrawn in June 2004 and replaced by Memorandum for James B. Comey from Daniel Levin, Re: Legal Standards Applicable under 18 USC 2340-2340A, December 30, 2004, available from www.usdoj.gov/olc/dagmemo.pdf.
20. For academic discussion of torture, see S. Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
21. See J. Waldron, "Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House," http://www.columbia.edu/cu/law/fed-soc/otherfiles/waldron. pdf.
22. See the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984) 1465 U.N.T.S. 85.
23. Article 2(2) of CAT. For the text of the U.S. ratification, see 100 Cong. Rec. 36194 (1990). See also Article 4(2) of the ICCPR.
24. International Court of Justice, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion of July 8, 1996, paragraph 25.
25. See Article 7 of the ICCPR. States are also required to review their interrogation policies to ensure that cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment does not occur (see Articles 11 and 16 of the Torture Convention).
26. Article 10 of the ICCPR. See also "Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment," UNGAOR 43/173 (December 9, 1988).
27. See Ireland v. U.K. (1978) 2 E.H.R.R. 25.
28. Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949) 75 U.N.T.S. 135. See articles 13 and 17.
29. Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) 75 U.N.T.S. 287. See articles 27, 31, and 32.
30. Article 130 of the Third Geneva Convention and Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
31. 18 U.S.C. 2441.
32. The focus of the analysis here is on international legal standards. For the applicability of these norms, see P. Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (New York: Viking, 2005) 143-73, 204-22.
33. U.N. Principles Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel, Particularly Physicians, in the Protection of Prisoners and Detainees against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, UNGAOR 37/194 (1982), Principle 2.
34. UNGAOR 37/194 ( Ibid., Principle 4.
35. M.L. Gross, "Doctors in the Decent Society: Torture, Ill-Treatment and the Civic Duty," Bioethics 18, no. 2 (2004): 181-203.
36. In Gross's "inverted world," international law is willfully disregarded and "those upholding patient rights [in times of war] generally bear the burden of proof": see M.L. Gross, "Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Mapping the Moral Dimensions of Medicine and War," Hastings Center Report 34, no. 6 (2004): 22-30.
37. Bloche and Marks, "When Doctors Go To War."
38. See United Nations, Economic and Social Council, U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation of Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Annex, U.N. Doc E/CN.4/1984/4 (1984).
39. E. Saar and V. Novak, Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo (New York: Penguin, 2005), 193.
40. See also M.G. Bloche, "Caretakers and Collaborators," Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 10 (2001): 275-84.
41. Bloche and Marks, "Doctors Orders: Spill Your Guts," Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2005.
42. Department of the Army, Field Manual 34-52: Intelligence Interrogation (1992).
43. See J. Mayer, "The Experiment," New Yorker, July 11-18, 2005, drawing on email correspondence from FBI agents at http://action.aclu.org/site/ PageServer?pagename=torturefoia.
44. See, for example, S. Budiansky, "Truth Extraction," Atlantic Monthly, June 2005, 32-35;
45. Mayer, "The Experiment."
46. M.G. Gelles et al., "An Approach to Interrogating Subjects of Al Qa'ida-related Investigations" in Investigative Interviewing, ed. T. Williamson (Cullompton, U.K.: Willan Publishing, forthcoming).
47. The treaty body of the ICCPR, the Human Rights Committee, has expressed the view that suspects should be examined by an independent doctor after each period of questioning. See Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee, Switzerland, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79/Add.70 (1996) at paragraph 24.
48. R. Campo, "Like a Prayer," in The Poetry of Healing (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997).
49. As this issue was going to press, the Office of the Army Surgeon General released - after a delay of several months - a report on detainee medical operations. Although it found "no indication that [Biscuit] personnel participated in abusive interrogation practices," this was not a formal investigation, and no inquiry was made into the specific advice given by Biscuit personnel to interrogators. The author of the report, Maj. Gen. Martinez-Lopez, recommended that "[p]hysicians/psychiatrists should not be used in a [Biscuit] role." However, this recommendation was rejected by the Surgeon General. The report is available at http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/ detmedopsrprt/detmedopsrpt.pdf, and the transcript of the Surgeon General's press briefing is at http://www.pentagon.gov/transcripts/2005/tr20050707-3301. html.