UPDATED AND EXPANDED: In the wake of the Fort Hood tragedy, there have been media reports that mental health staff had been concerned about Major Nidal Malik “AbduWali” Hasan, but did not report their concerns to higher authorities. Rather, these staff hoped he would disappear, into Fort Hood and then Afghanistan. The press and pundits have been extremely critical of those professionals for failing on act on their concerns.

Meanwhile, Mark Benjamin today tells of a psychiatrist serving the military who did express his concerns about potential tragedy, and was “disappeared” by firing as a consequence. Benjamin tells the story of Dr. Kernan Manion, a civilian contract psychiatrist at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina who repeatedly warned that Marines recently returned from combat zones were in danger of acting violently, whether toward themselves or others.

“A significant number of Navy medical officials and Marine commanders do not get it,” a frustrated Manion said about the situation at Camp Lejeune. “They do not understand the implications of what happens if somebody loses it,” explained Manion, who has 25 years of experience as a psychiatrist and who also specializes in traumatic brain injury — exactly the kinds of skills needed so desperately at military hospitals, because mental problems and brain injuries are the signature wounds of the ongoing wars. “People either commit suicide, commit homicide, get drunk, beat up the wife, all these things. I’ve seen it,” he added. “That is how serious this is and they just don’t get it.”

Dr. Manion followed procedures and expressed his concerns to the chain of command:

In an April 24 memo to his superiors, including Cmdr. Robert O’Byrne, head of mental health for the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital, Manion describes a frustrated Marine punching a telephone pole with his bare fists outside a treatment clinic, then storming around, cursing, with a piece of lumber with a nail in it, though nothing was done to ensure he didn’t hurt himself, again, or others. In another case, a severely homicidal and suicidal Marine pounded his fists into a table and stormed out of treatment. Yet the hospital, Manion complained to his superiors, made no efforts to discuss these cases or how to better handle similar events in the future.

Manion was instructed by his contractor employer to shut up:

On June 24, a supervisor for the contractor warned Manion to stop making trouble. “Kernan Manion, it is requested that you cease and desist all further correspondence with the government,” the supervisor with NiteLines, Pamela Friend, wrote to Manion.

When he got no response from his employer or the commanders at the base, he took the next step specified by regulations for complaints. He wrote to the various Inspectors General:

On Aug. 30, he appealed to a series of military inspectors general in a written complaint. He warned of an “immediate threat of loss of life and/or harm to service members’ selves or others” if conditions did not improve. He complained of a “complete disregard for … implications for patient safety and well-being.” He decried that officials at Lejeune had ignored “repeated overt and emphatically stated concerns about the very safety and overall welfare of the affected patients.” And he warned that “many patients’ lives are imminently at risk.”

As a result, four days later Manion was fired, effective immediately, with no reason given. His contractor employer told Benjamin that the firing was at the request of the Navy.

While it may be tempting to see a giant conspiracy at work here, I believe the processes involved are more subtle. There are indications that the top military brass and Pentagon officials are genuinely concerned about the rampant trauma, including Posttraumatic stress disorder among troops returning from combat zones. They have funded studies, instituted screening programs, and increased treatment resources, both on the battlefield and after deployment.

There is, however, little evidence that this concern has filtered down to middle-level officers and officials. The problem is at least partly psychological. Much of the military is still in a “see no evil, hear no evil” mode of massive denial, in which they assume that highly traumatized troops are malingerers. The macho culture of the military, especially the Marines, is threatened by real acceptance that exposure to combat can profoundly damage many otherwise healthy individuals. It is easier to assume that those negatively affected must have had something wrong with them to begin with.  The brass and Pentagon officials would need to take much stronger steps to get officers, NCOs, and officials up and down the chain of command to openly face this serious problem.

Further, to really accept the extent of combat-associated trauma among our troops is to face some of the consequences of our wars without end. The pursuit of these wars depends upon the ability to deny, to oneself and to the public, the immensity of their negative consequences. US officials denied the extent of civilian casualties in Iraq and they deny the extent of trauma their policies are creating among US troops.

Often the denial isn’t total. It is briefly acknowledged and then turned away from with a claim to oneself and to others that the problem is being dealt with. But efforts to improve the mental health of troops while laudable, remain woefully inadequate. The single action that would most improve the situation, to end the repeated deployments to combat settings where the dangers are many and the goals elusive, remains off the table.

In the meantime, Dr. Manion remains concerned about the marines he is no longer allowed to treat:

He still worries. “I don’t like seeing these guys mistreated,” Manion said. “This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to,” he added. “These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, ‘next, next, next.’”

Mark Benjamin’s article:

Camp Lejeune whistle-blower fired
A psychiatrist who tried to prevent Fort Hood-style violence among Marines about to “lose it” instead loses his job

By Mark Benjamin

Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to “lose it.” Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, “One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire.”

They weren’t talking about Marines suffering from a tangle of mental and religious angst, like news reports suggest haunted the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The risk they reported at Camp Lejeune was broader and systemic. Upon returning home, troops suffering mental health problems were getting dumped into an overwhelmed healthcare system that responded ineptly to their crises, the men reported, and they also faced harassment from Marine Corps superiors ignorant of the severity of their problems and disdainful of those who sought psychiatric help.

As Dr. Kernan Manion investigated the two Marines’ claims about conditions at the North Carolina military base, the largest Marine base on the East Coast, he found they were true. Manion, a psychiatrist hired last January to treat Marines coming home from war with acute mental problems, warned his superiors of looming trouble at Camp Lejeune in a series of increasingly urgent memos.

• Continue Reading

But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy’s behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story.

While military officials and the media examine whether the Army missed warning signs that might have indicated an unhinged Nidal Hasan was capable of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Manion’s Camp Lejeune story is a cautionary tale of what happens to those who blow the whistle on conditions for military personnel with mental problems.

Manion says the April incident with the two Marines was just one of a series of disturbing events and serious problems with mental healthcare he saw at Camp Lejeune, a base that may be best known for a water contamination scandal that led to high rates of cancer and birth defects among Marines and their families who lived there. He was particularly concerned to see that troubled Marines were stricken with the overwhelming impulse to commit suicide or murder, telltale signs of severe combat stress.

In a telephone interview from his Surf City, N.C., home, Manion talked of overburdened staff and inadequate resources at the Naval hospital at Camp Lejeune. The psychiatrist charged that medical officials failed to study and discuss violent events among returning Marines in an effort to prevent further, similar events, and did little planning to improve handling distraught Marines who were killing themselves and others in shocking numbers. In 2008, for example, 42 Marines committed suicide and 146 attempted to do so, according to the Marine Corps.

Coincidentally or not, within 12 hours of Hasan’s shooting spree, Camp Lejeune officials discovered the body of one Marine and took into custody another Marine, Pvt. Jonathan Law, who is accused of killing his colleague. Law, who had served a seven-month tour in Iraq, was suffering from self-inflicted wounds when arrested.

Mirroring reports from military installations across the country, Manion also reported harassment of Marines seeking mental help. The psychiatrist began to worry about the possibility of a major outburst of violence on the base.

“A significant number of Navy medical officials and Marine commanders do not get it,” a frustrated Manion said about the situation at Camp Lejeune. “They do not understand the implications of what happens if somebody loses it,” explained Manion, who has 25 years of experience as a psychiatrist and who also specializes in traumatic brain injury — exactly the kinds of skills needed so desperately at military hospitals, because mental problems and brain injuries are the signature wounds of the ongoing wars. “People either commit suicide, commit homicide, get drunk, beat up the wife, all these things. I’ve seen it,” he added. “That is how serious this is and they just don’t get it.”

Manion believes he likely prevented a “Columbine-style attack” late last April after the two Marines who warned that someone might “lose it” directed him to a third Marine who seemed on the verge of violence. Manion also provided his superiors with documentation showing troubling incidents and neglect for the needs of returning Marines that could easily precipitate violence. Maybe not on the scale of the massacre at Fort Hood, but more like the rampage by a frustrated Sgt. John Russell, who gunned down five fellow soldiers at a military mental health facility in Baghdad last May.

Manion provided to Salon a stack of correspondence with superiors, a virtual crystal ball predicting dire consequences if mental healthcare at Camp Lejeune isn’t immediately improved.

In an April 24 memo to his superiors, including Cmdr. Robert O’Byrne, head of mental health for the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital, Manion describes a frustrated Marine punching a telephone pole with his bare fists outside a treatment clinic, then storming around, cursing, with a piece of lumber with a nail in it, though nothing was done to ensure he didn’t hurt himself, again, or others. In another case, a severely homicidal and suicidal Marine pounded his fists into a table and stormed out of treatment. Yet the hospital, Manion complained to his superiors, made no efforts to discuss these cases or how to better handle similar events in the future.

“There was — and continues to be — no means of discussion of high-intensity/dangerous cases such as this,” a desperate Manion wrote on April 24. He warned of “immediate concerns of physical safety” at the base’s mental health facilities. Manion wanted to set up special protocols for handling intense situations, such as having specially trained MPs ready to intercede if things got bad, and a plan to hospitalize potentially violent patients quickly. “They dragged their feet on that,” he told me.

Within days that April, Manion intervened with the two Marines who’d warned of colleagues potentially losing it. They directed him to a third Marine who they believed was going to go on a shooting rampage. Manion worked hard to get that Marine into treatment, possibly averting bloodshed. The two Marines involved also reported harassment for working limited duty while seeking mental healthcare for themselves. They heatedly claimed that two noncommissioned officers had recently told them, “I don’t care why you are on [limited duty]. You are nothing but worthless pieces of shit,” according to an April 29 e-mail Manion sent to O’Byrne and others, complaining about such attitudes.

Like many healthcare providers at military bases across the country, Manion technically worked for a military contractor, Spectrum Healthcare Resources, a subcontractor for  NiteLines Kuhana LLC.

On June 24, a supervisor for the contractor warned Manion to stop making trouble. “Kernan Manion, it is requested that you cease and desist all further correspondence with the government,” the supervisor with NiteLines, Pamela Friend, wrote to Manion.

But Manion was still frustrated that Camp Lejeune did not seem to be taking these risks seriously. On Aug. 30, he appealed to a series of military inspectors general in a written complaint. He warned of an “immediate threat of loss of life and/or harm to service members’ selves or others” if conditions did not improve. He complained of a “complete disregard for … implications for patient safety and well-being.” He decried that officials at Lejeune had ignored “repeated overt and emphatically stated concerns about the very safety and overall welfare of the affected patients.” And he warned that “many patients’ lives are imminently at risk.”

Four days later, the contractor fired Manion “effective immediately,” according to his termination e-mail. The note provides no reason for the firing. Manion was directed to clean out his office the next day, under the watchful eye of a chief petty officer, and have no further contact with his patients.

In a statement to Salon, NiteLines said the Navy wanted Manion fired, but did not explain why. “The treatment facility at Camp Lejeune notified (Nitelines) that Dr. Manion did not meet the Government’s requirements in accordance with the contract, and they directed he be removed from the schedule,” it reads.

Salon e-mailed the spokesman for the Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, Raymond Applewhite, with details of this story and then described some of these facts with him in a follow-up telephone call, requesting an interview with O’Byrne. The Navy did not respond further.

Manion left Camp Lejeune after he got fired, but he did not stop worrying about the potential for violence there. In mid-September, Manion filed a 14-page complaint with the Department of Defense inspector general. On Sept. 29, he warned the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery inspector general in writing of “serious mismanagement of post-deployment mental health services that was both endangering patient, staff and community safety as well as severely compromising the quality of care” for returning Marines. Manion noted that the poor care at Camp Lejeune continued despite “the ever present threat of life-threatening violence by distraught service members towards themselves or others.”

Finally, Manion wrote President Obama that same day. “Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness — literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience,” he wrote to the president. Manion added, however, that at Camp Lejeune, that immense problem was being met with “inadequate treatment” and “callous indifference.”

He still worries. “I don’t like seeing these guys mistreated,” Manion said. “This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to,” he added. “These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, ‘next, next, next.’”

A psychiatrist who tried to prevent Fort Hood-style violence among Marines about to “lose it” instead loses his job

By Mark Benjamin

Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to “lose it.” Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, “One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire.”

They weren’t talking about Marines suffering from a tangle of mental and religious angst, like news reports suggest haunted the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The risk they reported at Camp Lejeune was broader and systemic. Upon returning home, troops suffering mental health problems were getting dumped into an overwhelmed healthcare system that responded ineptly to their crises, the men reported, and they also faced harassment from Marine Corps superiors ignorant of the severity of their problems and disdainful of those who sought psychiatric help.

As Dr. Kernan Manion investigated the two Marines’ claims about conditions at the North Carolina military base, the largest Marine base on the East Coast, he found they were true. Manion, a psychiatrist hired last January to treat Marines coming home from war with acute mental problems, warned his superiors of looming trouble at Camp Lejeune in a series of increasingly urgent memos.

But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy’s behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story.

While military officials and the media examine whether the Army missed warning signs that might have indicated an unhinged Nidal Hasan was capable of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Manion’s Camp Lejeune story is a cautionary tale of what happens to those who blow the whistle on conditions for military personnel with mental problems.

Continue Reading here

www.democracynow.org, April 21, 2009

AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road in Spokane, Washington, less than three miles from the headquarters of a secretive CIA contractor that played a key role in developing the Bush administration’s interrogation methods. The firm, Mitchell Jessen & Associates, is named after the two military psychologists who founded the company, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

Beginning in 2002, the CIA hired the psychologists to train interrogators in brutal techniques, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and pain. Both of the men had years of military training in a secretive program known as SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—which teaches soldiers to endure captivity in enemy hands. Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics taught in SERE training for use on prisoners held in the CIA’s secret prisons.

The declassified torture memos released last week relied heavily on the advice of Mitchell and Jessen. In one memo, Justice Department attorney Jay Bybee wrote, quote, “Based on your research into the use of these methods at the SERE school and consultation with others with expertise in the field of psychology and interrogation, you do not anticipate that any prolonged harm would result from the use of the waterboard.”

Well, today we’re going to take a detailed look at Mitchell Jessen’s role. We’re joined now by three journalists who have closely followed this story. Katherine Eban joins us from New York. Her 2007 article in vanityfair.com, “Rorschach and Awe,” gave a detailed account of the role of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Mark Benjamin joins us from Washington, DC, national correspondent for Salon.com. He wrote about Mitchell and Jessen in his 2007 article called “The CIA’s Torture Teachers.” And here in Spokane, I’m joined by Karen Steele. She is a former reporter at The Spokesman-Review, where she covered this story.

We called Mitchell Jessen & Associates, based here in Spokane, not far from these studios, to invite them on the show, but, well, we did not hear back from them. Mitchell and Jessen have avoided speaking to the media for years. Two years ago, they released a statement to Vanity Fair that read, quote, “We are proud of the work we have done for our country.”

Well, why don’t we begin first with Mark Benjamin in Washington. How did you first hear of Mitchell and Jessen, Mitchell Jessen & Associates?

MARK BENJAMIN: I first heard of those two psychologists when I was doing my reporting a couple of years ago from—frankly, from some of their associates and people that worked with them in the military. And their associates were concerned, because this SERE training that you referred to, it’s not designed to be an interrogation tool. It’s designed to teach soldiers to resist, frankly, what are tools developed by communists, used by the Koreans, for example, during the Korean War to force false confessions out of soldiers. And so, we were teaching our soldiers how to—the SERE training teaches soldiers how to resist that kind of abuse. The reason it was brought to my attention is some of these Mitchell and Jessen’s colleagues were very, very concerned that these guys had, quote, “gotten their hands dirty,” unquote, by reverse-engineering these things. Frankly, their colleagues thought it was a very stupid idea, for obvious reasons.

AMY GOODMAN: Katherine Eban, tell us a little about these two men, exactly who they are, and what you found in this very comprehensive piece that you did called “Rorschach and Awe,” the first piece.

KATHERINE EBAN: Thanks very much, and it’s nice to be here, Amy.

You know, these were guys who have been described to me as op-docs. They were, you know, Ph.D.s who wanted to be sort of in the operational arena, which is a very seductive arena to be in. But effectively, they were teachers and overseers of a SERE program where they were just monitoring, you know, the well-being of troops. They weren’t scientists. They had no data, according to my sources, to show that if you reverse-engineered these tactics, they would be effective in eliciting information. So, you know, the description that I got, also from colleagues of theirs, is that these guys were wannabes. You know, they were wannabe operational psychologists, like, you know, Jodie Foster’s character in Silence of the Lambs. And they weren’t.

But apparently—and now we really see the extent of it—they were very convincing in selling the use of these tactics to the CIA. And I guess it was a moment in time when our government was really desperate for any kind of solutions. But the fact that they landed on this without any data to justify its use, without any proof of effectiveness, is really what was remarkable to me in my reporting.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Benjamin—well, both of you, actually, have now written new pieces. Mark, as you look to the torture memos, how does Mitchell Jessen fit in? These new documents that have been released, well, pretty much unredacted; there are—you know, it is blacked out especially around the names of the people involved.

MARK BENJAMIN: Well, we already knew, because of reporting like mine and Katherine’s, how crucial these psychologists were in developing the CIA’s torture program. I think what the documents show is how crucial they were in carrying it out. In other words, if you look through these memos, these Justice Department memos, the whole rationale, you know, or the defense of the program from the Justice Department is that it’s safe. You know, in other words, it’s not torture according to doctors, and there are doctors there to monitor what’s going on, and there are doctors there to make sure that the person being interrogated doesn’t die on them. And they have data allegedly showing that, you know, SERE, this training, when we do it to soldiers, it doesn’t—you know, it doesn’t kill them, and it doesn’t make them crazy from the abuse they do during training. And so, it must be OK.

I mean, in other words, I think that—I don’t think you can overemphasize the extent to which the Justice Department relied on the advice and consent and participation of these psychologists, not just in designing the program, but carrying it out and arguing that it was safe and that it wasn’t torture. I mean, they were an absolutely vital part of this program, either in the room while these people were being tortured or watching on videotape.

AMY GOODMAN: Karen Dorn Steele, you were writing for The Spokesman-Review, and after Mark Benjamin’s piece came out, you did your first. Of course, this is a local story. We’re broadcasting here at the PBS station in Spokane, KSPS, that’s run by the Spokane Public Schools. Not three miles from here is the American Legion Building. Tell us what you learned in the reports that you started to do here in Spokane.

KAREN DORN STEELE: Yeah, after we had read Mark’s piece, we did some research, Bill Morlin and I, on who these guys are. We pulled their corporate records and other records, and we found out that they had 120 employees. And they opened their rather large offices here in March of 2005, although they had had contracts with the CIA prior to that. We learned that they came out of the SERE program, as has been discussed, and that they lived here because Spokane is a good place to live. They had many military connections here. These programs are still very big, the SERE program at Fairchild Air Force Base and the—

AMY GOODMAN: How far is Fairchild Air Force Base from here?

KAREN DORN STEELE: It’s just about three miles west of town. It’s very, very close. It’s the big Air Force community. And the agency, the overarching agency that runs the SERE program nationwide also has a major facility here. It’s called the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. And sources within JPRA knew a lot about Mitchell and Jessen. They said they were self-promoters, they were cowboys. They disapproved of the kind of techniques and their cozying up to the CIA. But they told us that they live here because it’s a nice place to live. And even though their mailing address is Langley, Virginia, they’re based in Spokane.

AMY GOODMAN: I understand Mitchell doesn’t live here anymore, but Jessen does.

KAREN DORN STEELE: That’s correct. That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: And why was SERE big at Fairchild?

KAREN DORN STEELE: SERE was big at Fairchild because every pilot in the US Air Force is required to go through this Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape programming to learn what they might be subject to if they ever fell into the hands of an enemy that didn’t follow the Geneva Accords. And of course we know that these techniques were reversed by Mitchell and Jessen for the CIA and the black sites overseas.

We also followed rather closely the debate within the American Psychological Association about the ethics of psychologists participating in sites where they were arguably doing harm, not doing no harm, as their guidelines say. And APA distanced themselves from Mitchell and Jessen, so they were not APA members, but we found out that one of their board members, Joseph Mazzarato [sic.]—Matarazzo, excuse me—who’s an emeritus psychology professor at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, is a former president of the APA. And so, after we broke that story, then the APA could no longer say there weren’t ties between this organization and their organization.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. Then we’re going to come back to this discussion. Our guest in studio is a former reporter with The Spokesman-Review. Like many newspapers in this country, there have been a number of buyouts and layoffs at the paper here. Karen Dorn Steele is a George Polk Award-winning reporter for her work on the Hanford Reservation. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But today we’re talking in light of the memos that have just been released by the US government about Jessen, Mitchell, psychologists who run a firm here, well, that are involved in the coercive interrogations around the world. Our guests in New York, Katherine Eban, and in Washington, DC, Mark Benjamin. We’ll be back in a minute.

AMY GOODMAN: Here in Spokane, we’re broadcasting from the PBS station KSPS, run by the Spokane Public Schools, and we’re talking about an institution, a company, not three miles from here, operating out of the American Legion Hall in Spokane.

Our guest here in the studio is Karen Dorn Steele, a George Polk Award-winning journalist. She wrote for The Spokesman-Review a series of pieces on Jessen, Mitchell. In Washington, DC, Mark Benjamin. In New York, in our firehouse studio, we’re joined by Katherine Eban of Vanity Fair.

I wanted to ask about Dick Cheney’s latest comments. Dick Cheney is demanding that the CIA release memos that show that these enhanced interrogation techniques were effective. He said, “What we authorized wasn’t torture. But it worked. We got actionable intelligence from these techniques.” Katherine Eban, from your research, what did you find?

KATHERINE EBAN: Well, from my research, I found exactly the opposite, that there had been an FB—the issue is very active over the detainee Abu Zubaydah, and there had been an FBI interrogation team with him initially, which had basically nursed him back to health after gunshot wounds and used rapport-building, classic rapport-building tactics, which is what the FBI excels at, and it was because of those tactics that he revealed that KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was the architect of 9/11 and also revealed the name of Jose Padilla, and that in fact he was talking to interrogators until Mitchell showed up along with the CIA interrogation team, began imposing these harsh tactics, and Zubaydah clammed up.

So, in response to that, they made a request to accelerate these tactics. I think they refer to it in the memos that were just released as an “intense pressure phase.” You know, basically, what my sources say is, “Sure, these tactics, these coercive tactics, can get you to talk. But about what? So how do you verify the legitimacy of the information?” Well, apparently, under torture, Zubaydah gave investigators a lot of false leads, which ate up the time of American intelligence back at home. So, you know, the debate is a very live one. There are people in the CIA who say these tactics absolutely worked, and I do think that this is going to be a central question of investigations as they go forward, is the effectiveness of these tactics. And people are now—yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I thought it was very interesting, Katherine Eban, how you describe what happened. The FBI there, they’re getting intelligence that they think is actually useful. George Tenet, then Director of Central Intelligence, hears about this. He’s very proud that intelligence is coming out from the interrogation. And then he’s informed it’s not coming from CIA interrogators, it’s coming from FBI interrogators. And he hits the roof. And that’s when they send in Jessen and the other CIA interrogators. You could take it from there.

KATHERINE EBAN: Right. You know, and let me just say that they sent in Mitchell. I don’t believe that Jessen was there at that point. But it was interesting—

AMY GOODMAN: I mean Mitchell.

KATHERINE EBAN: —that Mitchell Jessen—Mitchell’s company at that point closed up shop about a day before—the day after Zubaydah was captured, and then he was deployed to Thailand to the safe house where they were interrogating Zubaydah. But what you had in this situation was a classic turf war. You know, you had the CIA wanting to take the credit for getting actionable intelligence.

As soon as they started using these coercive tactics, it had a rather profound effect, which is that the FBI felt compelled to withdraw their investigators from the scene. The effect of that, the end result, is that the CIA had total control over these interrogations. So, by using these coercive tactics, they also won a turf war.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Benjamin, as you look at these torture memos right now and the whole cachet around Mitchell Jessen, if you can call it that, around getting effective intelligence when, as Katherine Eban was saying, it was the opposite.

MARK BENJAMIN: Well, that’s right. And when you look at the memos, there are even some hints there that show what interrogators have long believed, which is that these are not effective ways to gather intelligence, what Mitchell and Jessen were doing is just—it’s just not an effective way of running an intelligence operation.

And I would just add, you know, my reporting suggests that when the CIA put together this interrogation program, this torture program, they didn’t involve any experienced interrogators. There were no interrogators involved. Nobody who knows how to question—effectively question a suspect set this thing up. The CIA didn’t have anybody on board that knew how to do this stuff. I mean, it was people who just frankly didn’t know what they were doing. I mean, you know, they knew how to train soldiers how to resist torture, but not how to get effective intelligence.

And, in fact, if you look at the memos that came out last week, there is a reference in one of the memos to a CIA inspector general report. And according to the reference, the CIA inspector general criticized the CIA’s own interrogation program, saying essentially they didn’t know when somebody was being recalcitrant and wouldn’t talk and when they just didn’t know anything. That’s the problem with torture. And so, they ended up torturing people even though they had already said everything they know. I mean, it was just—and that’s the problem with torture. You don’t know—I mean, how do you know when to torture somebody and when not to? How do you know when they’re telling you the truth and when they’re not? It’s just, you know—and I think the memos, you know, while they’re meant to back up and say that this torture program is defensible, I think if you look at them pretty closely, that that facade starts to fall apart pretty fast.

AMY GOODMAN: Karen Dorn Steele?

KAREN DORN STEELE: Yes, we interviewed two former SERE instructors here in Spokane, who—one person who’s now a lawyer, another who’s a psychologist. And the psychologist, Mark Mays, told us that the most important function of the psychologist in the legitimate SERE program is to make sure that the interrogators aren’t going out of bounds, because when they do, you get bad information.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Benjamin, we were both covering in 2007 the APA national convention that was taking place in San Francisco. At that time, the dissident psychologists who wanted the APA to impose a ban on members participating in coercive interrogations lost. They ultimately found this loophole in the bylaws and found that they could put out the referendum to the membership instead of keep getting it voted down by the leadership. But what about the APA and—well, and Mitchell Jessen?

MARK BENJAMIN: Well, you know, as we mentioned, Mitchell and Jessen were not members of the APA. But I think the sort of, you know, Reader’s Digest version is that I think it’s safe to say that the psychologists have been traditionally very, very close to the military. You know, they’ve been working with the military and the CIA for years and are closer than, say, psychiatrists and other doctors. I think it’s fair to say that the APA, the psychologists, as opposed to psychiatrists and doctors, have been much more willing since September 11th to play ball, essentially, to not remove themselves from interrogations as doctors and psychiatrists did, to continue to participate.

And I think that’s reflected in the way Mitchell and Jessen, you know, were so important here. I think the psychologists saw a way to be players at the table, and that was reflected in their association, in the APA. And the APA essentially allowed their—you know, wrote rules, year after year after year, that would allow the continued participation of psychologists in these brutal interrogations. And now that these memos have come out, I think it’s really clear how important the government saw those psychologists were, in having them in the room or watching on video or designing the program or carrying it out.

AMY GOODMAN: Katherine Eban, I think you’d like to chime in here, as you talk with a number of top military psychologists and even those at the beginning who were recruited into an APA committee that would investigate whether psychologists should continue, people like Kleinman and others who you quote saying, “I think Mitchell and Jessen have caused more harm to American national security than they’ll ever understand.”

KATHERINE EBAN: Yeah. I mean, what was interesting is, is that there was suspicion initially that the psychologists who participated on this APA committee that basically sort of approved participation in interrogations, that they were somehow behind these coercive tactics. What you really had was almost what I describe as a Wizard of Oz scenario. You had Mitchell and Jessen behind the curtain driving, you know, the sort of good name of psychologists, as it were, into this very murky, dark area.

And I think, you know, what’s really important in the debate going forward among psychologists is the extent to which psychologists loaned their names and loaned their credentials and their Ph.D.s to this kind of activity and essentially were used by the Bush administration to provide a kind of “get out of jail free” card for the people who were, you know, doing these interrogations, because the logic, which I think Mark had mentioned, is, you know, this circular logic. So long as there are trained psychologists from the SERE program who are on site at these interrogations who are saying that these detainees can withstand this treatment, are not being harmed psychologically, then it’s not torture. So, you know, you’ve got this sort of [inaudible] tortured—tortured logic, which is the phrase that has come up, but it’s this sort of self-justifying loop in which professionals are loaning their credentials to this kind of activity.

And you see the same thing in the Office of Legal Counsel, where you have, you know, lawyers loaning their credentials to approving what are clear violations of the Geneva Conventions.

AMY GOODMAN: Karen Dorn Steele, this is both a global issue and, as is usually the case, a local one, because Mitchell Jessen is right here in Spokane. There were local protests after your reports came out. Describe what happened.

KAREN DORN STEELE: Yes, they were about a month after our first stories and some of the follow-ups on the APA debate. There was a street protest. Maybe three dozen people showed up. Many of them were psychology students from local colleges who said, “Not in our names should this be done, and this is a violation of everything we’ve been taught in schools.” And there were intelligence agents there. We couldn’t determine who they were, but they were photographing everybody in the crowd. But Spokane is not a place that’s given to street protests normally, although there have been some anti-Iraq war protests. But this was an unusual event, and it triggered some passion here.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, they continue, and they not only have Mitchell Jessen, but little other companies that are right in the American Legion Hall.

KAREN DORN STEELE: Yeah. There’s a cluster of national security companies that all come out of the SERE and JPRA program that are still here and functioning.

AMY GOODMAN: I went over to The Spokesman-Review yesterday and was speaking to the editor. I said, “Have you ever been able to speak to Mitchell Jessen? I mean, they’re a local company.” And he said, “No, they do not respond.”

KAREN DORN STEELE: No, they just gave us the same response that you read earlier on the program, that they condemn torture.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Benjamin, do you think we’re going to see any arrests? Do you think—well, President Obama has said they’re not going after CIA interrogators, questioners. What do you think?

MARK BENJAMIN: No, I don’t think we’re going to see any arrests. And I think that the significance of what the Obama administration has done over the last few days or announced over the last few days has been largely missed, which is, if you look at the President’s statements and you combine them with the statements of Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff, and Eric Holder, the Attorney General, if you put those together, you will see that over the last couple of days the Obama administration has announced that no one, not the people who carried out the torture program or the people who designed the program or the people that authorized the program or the people who said that it was legal even though they knew that it frankly wasn’t, none of those people will ever face charges. The Attorney General has announced that not only that, the government will pay the legal fees for anybody who is brought up on any charges anywhere in the world or has to go before Congress. They will be provided attorneys.

And not only that, they have given this blanket immunity, if you will, in return for nothing. I mean, in other words, you know, as you said at the top of the program, Obama yesterday—President Obama was at the CIA and called these things “mistakes,” even though they were very carefully designed, and hasn’t demanded anything in return for this immunity. I mean, you know, in other words, it’s not like the Obama administration said, “Hey, let’s take a close look at this, and let’s have some people come forward and testify, and let’s take a close look at this program and see if the claims of former Vice President Dick Cheney are really true, that we really did get some good information out of this program, it really was effective.” The Obama administration has demanded nothing and has announced, you know, effectively that the story is over and nobody will be held to account ever.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you, Mark Benjamin of Salon.com in Washington, DC; Katherine Eban in New York at the firehouse studio, vf.com, your pieces appear. But before I say goodbye to you, Karen Dorn Steele, I wanted to ask you about one other issue that is very close to here in Spokane, and it’s the issue of the Hanford Reservation, for which your coverage, “Wasteland,” won a George Polk Award.

Published on Friday, April 17, 2009 by Salon.com

Is there a lot America doesn’t know about Bush torture policies? There is, says Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. “This is going to be big.”

By Mark Benjamin, www.salon.com

Feb. 24, 2009 | WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to move forward with a commission to investigate torture during the Bush administration. Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., told Salon Tuesday that his panel would soon announce a hearing to study various commission plans. His staff said the announcement could come as early as Wednesday.

While Michigan Democrat Rep. John Conyers and North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones drafted a bill to create a commission to review abuse of war powers during the Bush administration, Leahy’s Senate commission would represent the first concrete steps toward a broad review of U.S. torture since 9/11.

Spearheading Senate efforts to establish a torture commission is Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. As a member of both the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse is privy to information about interrogations he can’t yet share. Still, regarding a potential torture commission, he told Salon, “I am convinced it is going to happen.” In fact, his fervor on the issue was palpable. When asked if there is a lot the public still does not know about these issues during the Bush administration, his eyes grew large and he nodded slowly. “Stay on this,” he said. “This is going to be big.”

Whitehouse admitted he had not discussed the plan yet with President Obama, who has been notably wishy-washy on the notion since taking office. On the one hand, Obama has consistently said that “my administration is going to operate in a way that leaves no doubt that we do not torture.” Yet on the other hand, he has insisted that “nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.”

According to Whitehouse, current politics dictate that Congress should take the lead on establishing a torture commission. “When you look at the economic meltdown that [Obama] was left by the Bush administration, you can see why he would want to reassure the American public that he is out there looking at these problems and trying to solve them and not focusing on the sins of the past,” he said.

Whitehouse, however, predicted that Obama would not object to a torture commission moving forward in Congress. Besides, he said, “When push comes to shove, we are the legislative branch of government. We have oversight responsibilities. And we don’t need the executive branch’s approval to look into these things just as a constitutional matter.”

Plans to establish the commission still remain in their infancy, as senators and staff look at previous panels, such as the 9-11 Commission, and investigations following Watergate. Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney, noted that a torture commission might need the power to immunize witnesses on a case-by-case basis. The prospect of future prosecutions, he said, are beside the point. Most important was putting a spotlight on abuses committed by the Bush administration.

Last week, retired Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, known for conducting an honest investigation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, discussed his support for such a commission in an exclusive interview with Salon. Taguba joined a group of former high-level diplomats and law enforcement officials who also announced their support for a torture commission late last week, along with 18 rights groups.

During that interview, Taguba stated that any review must include close analysis of claims from Bush administration officials that abusive interrogations worked. “Some of those activities were actually not effective and those who thought so were in the academic or pristine settings of their offices,” Taguba said. “What would they know?”

Whitehouse agreed, and depicted as ironic the fact that some members of the intelligence community saw themselves as “the Lance Armstrongs of interrogation,” while some members of the military objected to abuse as ineffective. “In fact, the exact opposite was true,” Whitehouse said about such claims from the CIA.”It was amateur hour with them, and the career, tough, serious military interrogators said that this just was not effective,” he said. “But it is important to prove the point, because they keep saying, ‘We saved lives. We interrupted plans. We did this, that and the other.’” Whitehouse added, “Well, when you drill down, there is never a fact there. It turns into fog and evasion.”

Reuters/Larry Downing.  Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by U.S. military personnel, May 11, 2004.

By Mark Benjamin, www.salon.com, February 21, 2009

Abu Ghraib investigator Antonio Taguba talks to Salon about why he backs a commission to examine Bush torture policies.

Feb. 20, 2009 | WASHINGTON — President Obama vowed that “the United States will not torture” only two days into his new administration. But one big question Obama hasn’t answered is whether and how to investigate notorious Bush-era interrogation and detention policies. On Thursday, 18 human rights organizations, former State Department officials and former law enforcement and military leaders asked the president to create a nonpartisan commission to investigate those allegedly abusive detention practices.

Retired Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, who investigated the famed abuses at Abu Ghraib, signed on to the effort. He explained his support in an interview with Salon. Taguba agrees with many attorneys who think it would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to prosecute former Bush administration officials. A nonpartisan fact-finding commission, however, might provide some degree of accountability for official U.S. detention and interrogation policies that Taguba called misguided and illegal.

Taguba would like to see a broad mandate for the commission, including a study of administration claims that abuse gleans good intelligence, which he fervently disputes. And while he believes the commission should look at the decisions of military and civilian policymakers, he has a particular interest in getting to the bottom of civilian leaders’ claims for the legality of the administration’s interrogation and detention policies, which he called “despicable and questionable.” The retired general would also like to see the commission empowered to make recommendations for the future, to help ensure such abuses never occur again.

You are best known for doing an honest investigation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. You suffered some consequences for that. Is that fair to say?

As far as consequences are concerned, the report and testimony were not going to be well received. I followed my conscience and integrity — the best I could do to honor the Army uniform I had the privilege of wearing for over 34 years.

They parked you at the back of the Pentagon in retribution, right?

I was disappointed in my assignment back to the Pentagon to be on Rumsfeld’s staff. I was suspicious about the assignment. But I served at the pleasure of the president and performed as expected. It was conveyed to me by close friends that I had to be watched closely by senior leaders.

Can you describe this torture commission that you and others are advocating?

I would not refer to it as a torture commission. [It remains to be decided] if it is to be a truth and reconciliation commission, or a presidential commission, or a congressional commission, or a private commission … Interest groups have talked about establishing a special prosecutor in that regard. I feel we have to come to terms with policies that have gained such notoriety and have been debated about whether they were in the best interest of our national security, and whether those who created these policies were pressured by their senior leadership.

Are you advocating one particular flavor of a commission, or are you simply advocating for an investigation in general?

“Investigation” is a good term, but not one I would subscribe to. [I support] a structured commission with some form of authority with clear objectives and a follow-on action plan. I’m not looking for anything that is prosecutorial in nature, unless a suspected violation of relevant laws occurred, which should be referred to the Department of Justice.

That was going to be my next question. Why not?

Because it would be difficult. In my opinion, our military prosecuted those who were involved in torture or unlawful interrogation. And I think our military has come to terms with that. We are an institution that prides itself on taking corrective action immediately, admitting to it, and holding ourselves accountable. And we have done that. But I am not so sure that our civilian authorities in government have done that for themselves.

Is there still a lot of dirty laundry out there that we don’t know about?

I think so. This notion that a lot of constitutional legal experts — lawyers with great intellect, well-educated — came up with such despicable and questionable legal findings that were contrary to the definition of defending the Constitution? And then they framed this as if the executive branch had the authority to extend beyond the Constitution to establish a policy of torture and illegal detention?

The argument against a commission is that it would turn into a political catfight between Democrats and Republicans. What is your response to that?

I think we have to satisfy the American public at large. Some of those that were tortured were innocent. How do we come to terms with those that were cruelly mistreated and were innocent, never charged, were illegally detained and never compensated for their suffering? This is not a political issue, but a moral and ethical dilemma which has far-reaching implications.

Proponents of coercive interrogation argue that it works. I can’t find an experienced interrogator who thinks torture is an effective way of gathering quality intelligence. Should the efficacy of torture be a part of this commission’s work?

I think so. You have two sides here. One says, “We had to do it.” The other says, “It never actually worked.” You have to consider this in those terms. Some of those activities were actually not effective and those who thought so were in the academic or pristine settings of their offices. What would they know?

Should people receive amnesty for coming forward and participating in a commission of this type?

If you want people to talk, you need to give them that immunity. I would submit to you that issuing a subpoena to people like [former counsel to the vice president David] Addington, [former Justice Department attorneys John] Yoo and [Jay] Bybee or [former Pentagon general counsel Jim] Haynes will not work. They are not going to come up and talk freely because they want to save their reputations and write books about it. They know their positions and so do the public. They know that it was illegal.

But you have other folks, soldiers, for example, or civilian contractors who are willing to address why things happened and who gave them the authority to do these things.

What else should I have asked you?

This is a comment. In the opinion of some legal experts, it would be extremely difficult to stand up a commission and question those in government because they were supposedly acting in the interest of national security. What do we say to the soldiers who committed wrongdoings with regard to detention operations who were also acting in the interest of national security and who are now in jail or who have been punished? If the military can hold themselves accountable, why can’t the civilian authorities be as well? Why can’t they hold themselves accountable as well?

So, you’ve got low-level soldiers in jail. Why not take a look at the people who put those policies together in the first place?

When the policymakers create a policy, you have to account yourself for the consequences unintended or intended. The question we ought to ask these civilian authorities is, What was your intent in creating those illegal policies? What was the intent? Was the intent in the interest of national security, which is broad and contestable? What was the intent and what were the lawful precedents, if any, that led them to these highly questionable opinions?

It seems to me that if we don’t do some sort of review, this thing will just continue to come out in dribs and drabs and sort of haunt us forever. Do you agree with that?

I agree with that. You can’t sweep unlawful activities under the table and just forget about it. I feel strongly about this because we have future generations who will be the beneficiaries of these actions. We have a president who declared that torture is illegal. He signed executive orders repudiating torture and unlawful interrogation practices.

We have a lot of unanswered questions on accountability, questions that need to be answered and hold responsible officials — civilians and military — accountable. These include contractors. We ought not to refer to accountability as a bumper sticker or to be used loosely. We have an integrity issue to contend with if we are to prevent this matter from recurring.

Mark Benjamin & Michael de Yoanne, Salon

Check out the entire excellent series “Coming Home” here.

Series Introduction:

On Oc. 30, 2008, Army Pvt. Adam Lieberman attempted to kill himself via prescription drug overdose at Fort Carson, Colo. After swallowing the pills, he painted a suicide note on the wall of his barracks that read, "I FACED THE ENEMY AND LIVED! IT WAS THE DEATH DEALERS THAT TOOK MY LIFE!" (Salon)

FORT CARSON, Colo. — Preventable suicides. Avoidable drug overdoses. Murders that never should have happened. Four years after Salon exposed medical neglect at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that ultimately grew into a national scandal, serious problems with the Army’s healthcare system persist and the situation, at least at some Army posts, continues to deteriorate.

This story is no longer just about lack of medical care. It’s far worse than sighting mold and mouse droppings in the barracks. Late last month the Army released data showing the highest suicide rate among soldiers in three decades. At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008. Another 15 deaths are still under investigation as potential suicides. “Why do the numbers keep going up?” Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a Jan. 29 Pentagon news conference. “We can’t tell you.” On Feb. 5, the Army announced it suspects 24 soldiers killed themselves last month, more than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

But suicide is only one manifestation of the unaddressed madness and despair coming home with U.S. troops. Salon’s close inspection of a rash of murders and suicides involving soldiers at just one base reveals that many of the deaths seem avoidable. Salon put together a sample of 25 suicides, prescription overdoses and murders among soldiers at Colorado’s Fort Carson since 2004. Intensive study of 10 of those cases exposed a pattern of preventable deaths, meaning a suicide or murder might have been avoided if the Army had better handled the predictable, well-known symptoms of a malady rampant among combat veterans: combat-related stress and brain injuries. The results of Salon’s investigation will be published in a weeklong series of articles that begins today with “The Death Dealers Took My Life!”

Salon chose Fort Carson as a laboratory almost by chance. The story started to emerge on its own last summer during reporting at Fort Carson that exposed an alleged friendly fire incident involving soldiers posted there. It was clear during several visits to interview soldiers who’d witnessed the deaths of their colleagues that there was psychological turmoil on the base. Paranoid soldiers were running around with guns. There was prescription and illicit drug abuse, extremely heavy drinking, suicide and murder.

The soldiers seemed to be suffering classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: explosions of anger, suicidal and homicidal ideation, flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia. The Army was responding, for the most part, with disciplinary action rather than treatment, evincing little concern for possible underlying problems. The soldiers self-medicated further. Predictable outcomes followed.

The Army handled the families of the disturbed and neglected soldiers callously. Last November, as detailed today in the first of Salon’s multi-part series on preventable deaths at Fort Carson, officers provided paint for a mother to paint over her son’s suicide note, which he had scrawled on a barracks wall. Two years after his return from Iraq, Army doctors still hadn’t properly diagnosed him with PTSD. Two other troubled soldiers died after the Army handed them a brutally heavy and in one case toxic combination of drugs for their symptoms. In a moving prison interview, another soldier explained to Salon how better treatment might have prevented him, a month after returning from his second tour in Iraq, from being involved in the November 2007 murder of a fellow soldier.

Keep reading…

There were other deadly blunders. In the press for warm bodies in Iraq, Fort Carson sent a soldier, diagnosed with PTSD and a brain injury, back into combat, where he committed suicide by overdosing on some of his eight prescription drugs. Medical records show Fort Carson dispatched another soldier to Iraq despite a diagnosis of “schizotypal personality disorder,” characterized by peculiar beliefs and paranoia. On his return to Colorado, prosecutors say he raped a 19-year-old woman and slit her throat.

Salon documented several completely new cases. A few others have appeared in news articles, though not deeply explored.

After the Walter Reed scandal finally exploded in 2007, a presidential commission led by former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., responded by recommending in July 2007 a series of steps to aggressively treat combat stress, among other things. President Bush ordered a raft of initiatives to help returning troops. In interviews, Army officials produced a laundry list of new programs designed to address some of these very problems, from a 24-7 counseling hotline to hiring 250 new mental health professionals since the spring of 2007. Presumably, these programs saved some lives.

Out in the shadow of Pikes Peak, however, it is easy to find examples where the initiatives didn’t seem to ease the misery. At least three Fort Carson soldiers committed suicide just last month as we raced to complete our reporting.

And there are good reasons to think the problems fester far beyond Colorado. Shalala expressed concern at the apparent lack of progress at places like Fort Carson. “We clearly are not doing enough when they come back,” she said in a telephone interview. “This doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar.”

President Obama says he wants to bring tens of thousands of troops home from Iraq. How will the government respond when they need help the most?

###

Story #1

“The Death Dealers took my life!”

Adam Lieberman tried to kill himself when he returned from Iraq. Only then did the Army take his mental health seriously.

FORT CARSON, Colo. — The day before Halloween 2008, Army Pvt. Adam Lieberman swallowed handfuls of prescription pain pills and psychotropic drugs. Then he picked up a can of black paint and smeared onto the wall of his room in the Fort Carson barracks what he thought would be his last words to the world.

“I FACED THE ENEMY AND LIVED!” Lieberman painted on the wall in big, black letters. “IT WAS THE DEATH DEALERS THAT TOOK MY LIFE!”

Soldiers called Lieberman’s unit, the 1st Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, the Death Dealers. Adam suffered serious mental health problems after a year of combat in Iraq. The Army, however, blamed his problems on a personality disorder, anxiety disorder or alcohol abuse — anything but the war. Instead of receiving treatment from the Army for his war-related problems, Adam faced something more akin to harassment. He was punished and demoted for his bad behavior, but not treated effectively for its cause. The Army’s fervent tough-guy atmosphere discouraged Adam from seeking help. Eventually he saw no other way out. Now, in what was to be his last message, he pointed the finger at the Army for his death.

It would be a voice from beyond the grave, he thought, screaming in uppercase letters. The last words, “THAT TOOK MY LIFE!” tilted down the wall in a slur, as the concoction of drugs seeped into Adam’s brain.

Late last month the Army released figures showing the highest suicide rate among soldiers in three decades. The Army says 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008 with another 15 still under investigation. “Why do the numbers keep going up?” Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a Pentagon news conference Jan. 29. “We can’t tell you.” The Army announced a $50 million study to figure it out.

It is not just the suicides spiraling out of control. Salon assembled a sample of 25 cases of suicide, prescription drug overdoses or murder involving Fort Carson soldiers over the past four years, by no means a comprehensive list. In-depth study of 10 of those cases revealed a pattern of preventable deaths. In most cases, the deaths seemed avoidable if the Army had better handled garden-variety combat stress reactions.

Interviews, Army documents and medical records suggest that Adam might not have attempted suicide if he had received a proper diagnosis and treatment. His suicide attempt seems avoidable. But the Army’s mistreatment extended well into its aftermath.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

At the last minute on Oct. 30, Lieberman stumbled out of his room and dialed 911. He lived.

Five days later Adam’s mother, Heidi Lieberman, sat opposite the desk of Lieberman’s battalion commander, Lt. Col. Lance Kohler, at Fort Carson. Nobody from the Army had bothered to call her in Rochester, N.Y., to tell her about Adam’s suicide attempt. There was no requirement to alert parents of an attempt, the Army said, only a successful suicide.

Heidi had watched her son’s mental health deteriorate precipitously after he returned from Iraq in late 2006. He had suffered from a laundry list of symptoms typical of post-traumatic stress disorder, including insomnia, depression, panic attacks and flashes of violent anger.

Two days after he swallowed the pills, Adam called his mother himself from the hospital. With her son still slurring his words from the effect of the meds, Heidi could barely understand him. When Heidi asked him where he was, Adam had to ask someone.

Sitting across from the lieutenant colonel’s desk, Heidi wanted to know why the Army had not moved her son into a unit supposedly dedicated to healthcare where he might get better treatment.

“Well, he has legals,” Kohler told her. Legal trouble. She knew Adam was struggling. Mostly Adam had been silencing his demons with 30 beers a day plus some Jameson. He’d puke in a bucket and start over. Mental health professionals call it self-medicating when a soldier comes back from war and turns to booze when he can’t get help, another typical reaction. Just as predictable is the bad behavior that comes with it.

To Heidi, Kohler’s response showed that the Army considered Adam a discipline problem, but didn’t seem particularly concerned about why.

“What legals?” Heidi asked.

Adam had broken into a candy machine, so petty larceny. He had also gone AWOL for a short time to say goodbye to an Army buddy in Texas headed off to a second tour in Iraq. The Army denied Adam’s request for leave. He went anyway.

“And defacing government property,” Kohler added to the list.

“When did he do this?”

“Within the last couple of days,” Kohler responded, staring.

Heidi thought. No. Couldn’t be.

“What did he deface?”

Kohler stared. “The wall in his bedroom.”

Heidi met his stare, exasperated. “You mean his suicide note?” Kohler just looked at her.

The next day Heidi called Adam’s company commander, Capt. Phelps.

“You know,” Heidi fired at Phelps, “I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that my son is being charged with defacing government property and you people are more concerned about your wall than my son,” she stammered. Then she threatened, half jokingly, “I will paint that wall and make this stupidity go away.”

A pause, and then Phelps snapped, “We’ll contact supply and have them bring you the matching paint.”

And so, the Army allowed a mother to paint over her son’s suicide note. Heidi’s handicapped sister helped.

“I was kind of surprised that they took me up on that,” she said late last year sitting at her dining room table in her home in Rochester, N.Y. Heidi’s sister took photos of her, paint roller in hand, erasing what was supposed to be her son’s last message. “He agreed that if I painted that wall that charge would go away,” she recalled about her talk with Adam’s captain. “It didn’t.”

Just before Christmas, MPs fingerprinted and booked Adam for defacing government property.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

A blondish crew cut tops Adam Lieberman’s lanky, lumbering 6-foot-6 frame. He makes little eye contact. Adam joined the Army at age 17. In late 2005 he deployed to Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division as a forward observer, a radioman. He is all of 21 now.

More than two years after his return from Iraq, where several close explosions rocked his skull, his memory sometimes fails him. He carries a notebook to keep track of appointments. He still writes the occasional letter backward.

Adam is now at the stage of digesting (or at least sharing) his experiences in Iraq in a passive tense — he describes things happening to him and around him, rather than by him. He arrived at the scene of a roadside bomb attack on other U.S. troops in Sadr City in Baghdad. “A guy’s face was blown off from his nose to his chin,” he said as we sat at his dining room table with Heidi while he was home on leave recently. The U.S. soldier was gagging, drowning in blood without a mouth or nose. A medic performed an emergency tracheotomy. The soldier died anyway.

Adam didn’t even bother to inspect the nearby Humvee that took a direct hit. He could see through the windows that inside the vehicle, “It was blood soup.”

During another engagement a gunner atop Adam’s Humvee suddenly collapsed in Adam’s lap. Only a thin flap of skin attached the gunner’s head and torso. Beheaded. Adam vomited.

He once saw the lower half of a friend’s body sheared off by a roadside bomb. In the seconds that followed before he died, his friend still moved his right arm and tried to talk. He looked at Adam. Adam described the look in his eyes as “terror.”

Adam once took a sniper’s bullet to the chest. It shattered his digital camera and hit his body armor. On two separate occasions he lost consciousness because of head blows.

Heidi noticed a difference in Adam when she met him at the airport in December 2006. “When he got off the plane and we were walking, I saw his eyes shifting through the crowd,” she remembered.

Crowds freaked him out. Adam had a panic attack in a Wal-Mart. He started getting into fights at bars. He couldn’t sleep. “You become a new person,” he explained. “You are raised as a person and they send us over there and we become a new person.”

The Army “screened” Adam for mental health problems upon his return from Iraq, a process Adam describes as, “You stand in a line and go to a bunch of tables where people are sitting.” He filled out some forms. Some soldiers aren’t yet aware of their problems at that point. Some lie because they just want to go home with their wives. Others say they report problems but receive little follow-up.

“Nobody is willing to help anybody,” he said about his experience at Fort Carson after returning from Iraq. “You have to understand. We are just pieces of equipment.”

The Army says it is working hard to erase the stigma of seeking mental healthcare. It isn’t working at Fort Carson. Adam says he was actively discouraged from looking for help.

“If you have a problem, you are going to be a problem,” he explained. “You don’t ask for help — ever. That is just the Army’s way. Always will be.”

A document obtained from another unit at Fort Carson supports Adam’s description of a culture that discourages “weakness.” Someone in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team prepared a mock official form called a “Hurt Feelings Report,” and left a stack of copies near a sheet where soldiers sign out to see a doctor. (View it here.)

“Reasons for filing this report: Please circle Yes or No,” the Hurt Feelings Report directs. Options include: I am thin skinned; I am a pussy; I have woman-like hormones; I am a queer; I am a little bitch; I am a cry baby; I want my mommy; All of the above. A blank appears after, “Name of ‘Real Man’ who hurt your sensitive feelings.”

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, the Fort Carson commander, admits that the attitude of Army personnel toward mental healthcare needs work. “Because of the focus we have had on behavioral health, we have seen an increase in soldiers coming forward to get help,” he told me. “Is it as many as we think are out there? No, it is not. Do I think that we still have a stigma challenge here? Absolutely, we do.”

By December of 2007, Adam was getting increasingly violent. “I fucking punched a guy,” he recalled about a fight in the barracks. “I dragged him out of my room and threw him down the stairs.” On Dec. 20, 2007, he filled out an Army “PTSD checklist.” He checked off being “extremely bothered” by flashbacks, nightmares, bad memories, emotional numbness, insomnia and angry outbursts. He also reported panic attacks and jumpiness, among other things.

Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army’s top psychiatrist, ticks off a series of initiatives to improve Army mental healthcare, including the hiring of 250 new mental health providers through civilian contracts and more than 40 marriage and family therapists since the spring of 2007. Ritchie said an August 2007 Army directive ensures PTSD screenings for soldiers with disciplinary problems so serious the Army wants them out. She added that the Army surgeon general issued a memo in May 2008 requiring additional review of any diagnoses short of PTSD to make sure the Army gets it right. “We’ve really tried to enhance our access to care,” she said in a telephone interview.

Though Adam filled out his checklist in late 2007, the initiatives Ritchie describes did not trickle down to him. Throughout this entire period, Adam’s medical records show, the Army focused almost completely on his misbehavior, like drinking and fighting, and demoted him from specialist to private, but did not address the root cause. The Army enrolled Adam in an Army substance abuse program he called a “joke.” The Army wanted him to work on anger management. “I was like, ‘I don’t have anger problems. You people are causing me to be angry.’”

By the spring of 2008, Adam’s condition had deteriorated. “He called me in April and said he really wanted to die,” Heidi recalled. “He told me he had his Mustang up to 120 and pointed at a cliff. I told him he needed to get help now. No more dealing with it on his own.”

This time Adam checked himself into a private facility. A doctor soon informed him he had PTSD from his experience in Iraq. “That’s when I started figuring it out myself,” Adam told me. “I realized I was not an alcoholic, I was just self-medicating.”

After a few weeks, however, Adam had to return to Fort Carson, where the Army still basically considered him a drunk and a discipline problem.

That’s contrary to proper treatment of PTSD. “The best way to treat it is to identify it appropriately,” said Dr. Anthony Ng, a psychiatrist and board member of Mental Health America.

In addition to hundreds of pages of medical records he gave me, Adam agreed to hand over a copy of his illustrated journal. An undated entry from after his private hospitalization notes that, “Since returning from the hospital my ball of twine has been unraveling fast. … The woman at [Fort Carson's] mental health dismissed me as if I were a bum asking for money,” he wrote, and then recorded one of those flashes of anger common to soldiers with PTSD. “I wanted to rip her jaw off and scrape the skin off her face with her Goddamn teeth.”

“But I wasn’t surprised,” Adam’s entry continues. “That’s Army health care.”

In June or July 2008, he got a call from an Army psychologist. “She didn’t even know my name,” he told me. “I’d seen her three times. How is she going to help me if she can’t even remember my name?”

The Army also seems to have resisted recognizing Adam’s likely traumatic brain injury, given his head blows in Iraq and subsequent memory loss and other symptoms. The Army put him through a battery of tests on Oct. 15 to determine if he might be eligible for disability pay for a brain injury. Adam tested “within normal limits,” his medical records show. “There is no evidence of clinically significant cognitive impairments.”

(Civilian neurosurgeons generally say that doctors should stash the tests and MRI exams for the most part, since TBI is notoriously difficult to pin down that way, and look to behavior instead. Patients with a history of head trauma who present with obvious symptoms should receive swift treatment for TBI).

Adam’s Army medical records from Oct. 30, the day of his suicide attempt, look similar to all of his Army medical records. The Army psychologist noted “alcohol dependence with continuous drinking behavior,” depression and anxiety disorder — his problems, not the Army’s.

A diagnosis of PTSD from combat would require the Army to pay Adam a lifetime of benefit checks. The Army would not have to pay if a doctor were to find instead that his mental problems were preexisting and/or unrelated to his Army service. Adam said his Army psychologist “has been trying to give me a personality disorder since Day One, that I wanted to kill people before I got into the Army.” Soldiers also don’t get benefits if they are ushered out the door with dishonorable discharges for misbehaving.

On Oct. 30 the Army psychologist noted “homicidal ideation,” or thinking about murder, but “no homicidal plans.” She also noted “no suicidal ideation.”

Adam admitted he lied on that one. He had made up his mind. “I didn’t want her to interfere,” he said. “I was thinking about killing myself, but I was restricted to post for drinking on duty so I could not get my gun. I went to my room and swallowed all my pills.”

Adam painted his note on the wall. And then he changed his mind. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital. He “remember[s] them trying to get me to drink this charcoal stuff” at the hospital, but not much more. “I woke up and I was chained to the bed.”

Nine days after Adam’s suicide attempt, the Army psychologist changed her diagnosis, according to Adam’s medical records. He had “chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.” It was the first time the Army seemed willing to admit that a year of war caused Adam’s problems. “It took me trying to kill myself for her to put it on there,” Adam told me.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Unfortunately, the problem likely goes beyond Fort Carson. Maj. Gen. Graham, the Fort Carson commander, makes noted efforts to recognize and address the problems. “Our goal is to get in front of this,” Graham said in a telephone interview. “Instead of doing the investigation following a suicide, to find out how this happened and how we could have prevented it, what we want to do is actually prevent them and get in front of this and figure out how you help a soldier before it gets to a point of critical mass and something horrible is going to happen,” he added. “Are we perfect? No. Are we trying? We are. Can we do better? Of course we can.”

Graham’s power to do better is limited, however. The Army Medical Command runs medical care at Fort Carson and other Army posts. MEDCOM reports to the Army surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, not Graham.

And some Army fighting units, or “line” units, stationed at Graham’s post have failed to incorporate the prevention, recognition and treatment of combat stress into their wartime mission. At Fort Carson a mental problem from combat is still a scarlet letter.

Meanwhile, the deaths keep coming. At least three Fort Carson soldiers died in apparent suicides in January. (Fort Carson quibbles with this statistic, claiming that one of the three had not completed the paperwork to be officially stationed at Fort Carson. The death of a second soldier, found dead in his home from a “drug interaction,” is still under investigation.

Mark Benjamin is a national correspondent for Salon based in Washington, D.C. Read his other articles here.

Michael de Yoanna is a freelance journalist in Colorado who specializes in military and crime stories. He holds several awards for news features and investigations.

By Mark Benjamin Salon

Enter the sport utility bicycle, a long bike nearly as dexterous as a conventional bike but with a remarkable capacity for cargo, whether that means lots of stuff or people. I recently turned my mountain bike (a Specialized Rock Hopper) into an SUB with a frame extension called the FreeRadical ($490), made by Xtracycle, a small, quirky and ingenious company based in Oakland, Calif.

MUDGE’S Musings

Mark Benjamin, writing in Salon.com, opened our eyes this weekend with an exclusive look inside the U.S. Air Force’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the illuminating article allows this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© to return to an abiding interest, what’s going on up there in the sky?

The changing face of military aviation

eighth in an occasional series

The series so far…

The videogame theme has struck yr (justifiably) humble svt before. Take a look.

Killing “Bubba” from the skies

Inside the U.S. Air Force’s Combined Air & Space Operations Center in the Middle East.

Inside a secret high-tech control center the U.S. Air Force targets enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But can they bomb them legally, and without killing innocents? A Salon exclusive.

By Mark Benjamin

Feb. 15, 2008 | UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, THE MIDDLE EAST — The cavernous control room used by the U.S. Air Force to manage the air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looks exactly how you’d expect it to look in a Hollywood movie. The lights are low. Around 50 camouflage-clad men and women lean forward in their chairs, staring intently at rows of computer screens glowing with multicolored graphs and fluctuating displays. They sometimes glance up from the banks of computer monitors to gaze at a sweeping panel of large television screens mounted on the front wall. Two massive, side-by-side screens in the center display digital maps of Iraq and Afghanistan. Swarms of U.S. aircraft above the war zones are represented by green labels that move about each map, gravitating toward wherever U.S. troops are fighting on the ground, in case they need backup.

To the left and right of those large maps are four smaller screens. Each is about 5 feet wide, displaying remarkably clear live footage from cameras mounted on the Air Force’s un-manned Predator drones that buzz incessantly above Iraq and Afghanistan. The Predator drones, however, are not filming a raging firefight, or a bridge about to be strafed from the air.

They are stalking prey.

Always appreciate an excuse to add a Predator image to this space.

Looks can be deceiving, can’t they? With its skinny landing gear, it looks like a kid’s toy.

A kid’s toy capable of loitering over a city, focusing its cameras to isolate a single supposed enemy, and perhaps even releasing a human-scaled bomb targeted at that enemy, although the actual bombing usually is the responsibility of manned aircraft called in for the purpose.

Some toy.

The Salon story provides a unique insight into the way war is prosecuted today. Worth the effort to read.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S. Air Force bombing operations | Salon News

Not in any respect a gamer, I have no idea whether any commercial entertainment videogame out there played by zillions of young’uns include avatars of attorneys standing by to rule on the legality, according to The Law of Armed Conflict, of bombing specific individual human targets, but it’s an interesting wrinkle.

So the future of U.S. combat is here: fewer men, more robots, more separation from the bloody reality that human beings are the target. As Salon’s writer points out, this antiseptic warfare, while it may put fewer U.S. combatants’ lives at risk, might all too easily cross the thin line of morality separating justified war from cold blooded murder.

Worth pondering next time you play World of Warcraft.

……………………………….

Update

Last post, while observing with awe China’s explosive investment in infrastructure, we took the U.S. consumer to task regarding our shopping habits: i.e., sending our treasure to China when we do business at the big box retailers we so favor.

Yesterday, my home office chair broke one of its casters off in a non-repairable manner.

Today, off to Staples to replace it. I’m sitting in it as I type this, some hours after bringing it home in its compact carton and spending about 30 minutes assembling it.

Reasonably high quality for such a modest price; very well packaged, including the card containing shrink wrapped screws (including one each extra of the three sizes furnished), washers and Allen wrench, the only assembly tool required.

Very comfortable new chair with very nice lumbar support, a trendy mesh back and a “microsuede” seat.

$80 well spent.

Made in China, of course.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the link to Staples.com used above is for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever, as a picture is today worth 3,714 of our maladroitly chosen words at the present rate of exchange. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor, and in any event it’s against WordPress.com’s rules. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

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