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Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday. The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has...

They have closely studied suspects, looking for mental quirks. They have suggested lines of questioning. They have helped decide when a confrontation is too intense, or when to push harder. More than those in the other healing professions, psychologists have played a central role in the military and C.I.A. interrogation of people suspected of being enemy combatants. But now the profession, long divided over this role, is considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of its code of ethics. At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting this week in Boston, prominent members are denouncing such work...

MADRID — A Spanish court absolved four men and upheld the acquittal of a fifth on Thursday in the convoluted legal proceedings relating to the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings that killed 191 people in the deadliest attack by Islamic militants on European soil. The rulings followed appeals of some of 21 convictions by a lower court after a five-month trial that ended in October. Seven other people were acquitted at that time. Most dramatically, the court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of one of the bombing’s accused masterminds, Rabei Osman, an Egyptian, who was found guilty in 2006 in...

General Reports More than 24,000 Interrogations Conducted Since 2002; Assertions that All Interrogations Were Videotaped Affect Impending 9/11 TrialsNewark, NJ—Seton Hall Law’s Center for Policy and Research has discovered new evidence of a longstanding government practice of recording interrogations at Guantánamo Bay. In light of the national debate about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) destruction of video recordings, the report proves that the two CIA tapes that were destroyed were only a tiny fraction of perhaps 24,000 recorded interrogations. A May 2005 report by Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley confirms that each interrogation at Guantánamo was videotaped. Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt...

No details as of yet.

Rep. Jane Harman said Friday that she warned the CIA not to destroy videotapes of its interrogations of terror suspects and defended herself from critics who said she should have done more to prevent their disposal. CIA Director Michael Hayden disclosed Thursday night that congressional leaders, including Harman, had been informed of the agency's plan to destroy those tapes several years ago. Hayden was defending his agency from a New York Times report that the tapes had been destroyed in 2005. In an interview Friday, Harman said that after the briefing in 2003, she sent a letter to the CIA...

The controversial interrogation technique known as water-boarding, in which a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex, has been banned by CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, current and former CIA officials tell ABCNews.com. (Image above is an ABC News graphic.) The officials say Hayden made the decision at the recommendation of his deputy, Steve Kappes, and received approval from the White House to remove water-boarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques first authorized by a presidential finding in 2002. The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never...

Members at S.F. convention reject banning presence at suspects' questioning -- After a raucous debate about what role - if any -- psychologists should play in U.S. government interrogations of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, the American Psychological Association voted overwhelmingly today to reject a measure that would have banned its members from those interrogations. Instead, the association passed a competing measure that reaffirms the organization's position against torture "and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of terror suspects. For the first time on record, the resolution lists specific treatment that the association opposes, including mock executions, water-boarding,...

SAN FRANCISCO - Stung by reports implicating mental health specialists in prisoner abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the nation's largest group of psychologists is considering banning its members from interrogations of terror suspects. The American Psychological Association, which is holding its annual meeting in San Francisco, is scheduled to vote Sunday on two competing measures concerning its 148,000 members' participation in military interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military detention centers. One measure would bar members from any involvement in interrogations at U.S. detention facilities where foreigners are held. The moratorium would not be backed by...

When the Pentagon needed someone to prosecute a Guantanamo Bay prisoner linked to 9/11, it turned to Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch. A Marine Corps pilot and veteran prosecutor, Col. Couch brought a personal connection to the job: His old Marine buddy, Michael "Rocks" Horrocks, was co-pilot on United 175, the second plane to strike the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Hi, Here's an op-ed I've written with some help from others. Most House Democrats opposed the Bush policy of aggressive interrogations, which have led to breaking up terrorist plots, capturing terrorists and SAVING AMERICAN LIVES. Please use this information in letters to the editor and please forward it to others. This is another story the old media won't report. sruleoflaw Tough tactics produce leads Steve Wampler/For the Tracy Press Tuesday, 24 October 2006 Democrats should ask themselves why they're against tough interrogation tactics when the alternative could cost American lives. As President Bush has led America’s fight against Islamic terrorism...

<p>"Interrogators and detainees both know what the limits are," the official said. "They know that if the United States captures them, they will get a medical exam. They'll get their teeth fixed. They will get essentially a free physical and they will be released if they don't talk after a certain amount of time."</p>

The recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in a feat of tortuous logic and ignoring the Political Question Doctrine, has created Geneva Convention protections for international terrorists, something few students of international humanitarian law anticipated, certainly few in uniform ever contemplated. This has detrimental and broad implication for the specific applicability of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the two “Protocols Additional of 1977” as they relate not only to the protection of combatants and terrorists, as appears to be the focus of current national debate, but more importantly to the protection and safeguarding of civilians, indeed to the...

On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly interviewed(video included) Brian Ross on the subject of “coercive interrogation” techniques. I couldn’t find a transcript online, so here’s one I put together, just for my own reference. Maybe you’ll find it useful, too.

WASHINGTON - The White House told lawmakers it would send Congress a revised proposal late Monday for dealing with terrorism suspects as the number of GOP senators publicly opposing President Bush's initial plan continued to grow. A Republican-led Senate committee last week defied Bush and approved terror-detainee legislation that Bush vowed to block. Sen. John Warner, normally a Bush supporter, pushed the measure through his Senate Armed Services Committee by a 15-9 vote. John Ullyot, a spokesman for Warner, said the Virginia senator expected to receive another draft of the legislation. No details were immediately available.

Does John McCain favor the CIA interrogations or not? The media are concentrating on the politics of the intra-Republican fight over military tribunals and detainee treatment, which last week saw the Senate Armed Services Committee move a bill substantially different from what the White House wants. But the stakes here are far more serious: To wit, if Senators John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins get their way, aggressive interrogation as an antiterror intelligence tool will effectively end. Thanks to last year's McCain Amendment, the Defense Department is already required to give detainees in its custody better treatment...

by Mark Finkelstein September 15, 2006 - 08:01 Like a baseball player - rescued from the nether reaches of the minor leagues and brought up to the Yankees - who cuts his hair, shaves the shaggy mustache and minds his grammar in his first TV interview, Keith Olbermann was on his better behavior in a 'Today' appearance this morning. In a temporary reprieve from the ratings purgatory that is his own Countdown on MSNBC, Olbermann was awarded an interview on Today for purposes of plumping his new book, 'The Worst Person in the World.' Lauer gave Olbermann respectful treatment, inviting...

Political life since the Novemeber 2005 defeat of his “Year of Reform” special-election initiatives has been a whirlwind of change for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has thoroughly revamped his political operation. The Weekly has learned that just before the upheaval began, the governor received an anonymous letter alleging serious financial mismanagement and improprieties in his political operation. The letter triggered an unprecedented round of questioning of the governor’s political consultants by his legal counsel. The “letter was a stupid smear and 1,000 percent bullshit,” said Mike Murphy, who until last month was the man in charge of Schwarzenegger’s political operation....

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2005 – Military medics saw few signs of detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and when they did see such signs they generally reported them, according to a recently completed Army Medical Department review. In a Pentagon briefing July 7, Army Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Kevin Kiley, the service's surgeon general, said the five-month review found that the majority of medical personnel never saw signs of abuse and that most who did reported it. The review team also found that in the earliest days of detainee operations, policies for caring for detainees were inadequate and...

The US military has always been sabotaging itself with its flawed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gay service personnel and now a government study shows exactly how much. The military has discharged 9,488 soldiers for being gay, lesbian, or bisexual since the policy went into effect in 1993. It has had to spend at least $200 million to recruit and train their replacementsmany in the key areas of intelligence, linguistics, interrogations, and code-breaking. The statistics come from a new Government Accountability Office report initiated by US Representative Martin Meehan of Lowell, who was joined by 19 other lawmakers in...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account. A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk. It's the most revealing account so far of interrogations...

America admits suspects died in interrogations By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 07 March 2003 American military officials acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners captured in Afghanistan in December had been killed while under interrogation at Bagram air base north of Kabul – reviving concerns that the US is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qa'ida operatives. A spokesman for the air base confirmed that the official cause of death of the two men was "homicide", contradicting earlier accounts that one had died of a heart attack and the other from a pulmonary embolism. The men's...

Terrorism is not confined to foreigners who murder Americans abroad, hijack airliners and crash them into American skyscrapers, or send anthrax-laced letters through the U.S. Postal Service. Likewise, terrorism's supporters are not limited to foreign leaders and the U.N. Terrorism lives on the streets of America's cities, and is robustly supported by American activists, elected officials, and by the mainstream, American media. The main form such domestic terrorism takes, is a war on the law-abiding populace by criminals. The supporters of such terror, have focused their efforts on handcuffing white, urban police officers, so that urban terrorists may have license...