[NYTr] How the Bush Regime Drove Jose Padilla Mad

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Christian Science Monitor via Info Clearing House - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18181.htm

US terror interrogation went too far, experts say

Reports find that Jose Padilla's solitary confinement led to mental
problems.

By Warren Richey

Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush
ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he
does now.

The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation
techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts
say.

Two psychiatrists and a psychologist who conducted detailed personal
examinations of Mr. Padilla on behalf of his defense lawyers say his
extended detention and interrogation at the US Naval Consolidated Brig
in Charleston, S.C., left him with severe mental disabilities. All
three say he may never recover.

Padilla's psychological condition is important because his situation
marks the first time an enemy combatant in the war on terror is in a
position to present a verifiable claim of abuse at the hands of US
interrogators. Padilla's mental health itself is a form of evidence,
mental-health experts say, and it strongly suggests that – at least in
Padilla's case – the government's harsh interrogation and confinement
tactics went too far.

Padilla is currently on trial in Miami on terror conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors say he was a willing Al Qaeda recruit who attended a
training camp in Afghanistan. He denies the allegations. Closing
arguments in the three-month trial are slated to begin Monday.

Beyond the outcome of his Miami trial, larger issues loom. Chief among
them, legal scholars say, is whether Mr. Bush acted within his
constitutional authority when he ordered Padilla, a United States
citizen, held without charge as an enemy combatant at the brig for
three years and seven months.

Padilla's treatment in the brig raises another issue, these scholars
say: whether the Constitution ever permits the government to force a
man to confess to involvement in terrorist plots and, in doing so, risk
destruction of a portion of his mind.

Defense Department officials reject charges that Padilla was
mistreated. "The government in the strongest terms denies Padilla's
allegations of torture – allegations made without support and without
citing a shred of record evidence," writes Navy Commander J.D. Gordon,
a spokesman for the secretary of Defense, in an e-mail. "Any credible
allegations of illegal conduct by US military personnel are taken
seriously and looked into in painstaking detail."

He adds, "There has never been a substantiated case of detainee abuse
at Charleston Navy brig."

The Padilla mental-health issue arises as the Bush administration faces
increasing pressure to balance the requirements of the criminal justice
system against the demands of its intelligence-collection system.
Information about Padilla's detention and interrogation at the brig is
classified. But his mental health status can't be kept secret.

Rare window into detention

His psychological reports are on file in his Miami court case. The
three reports total 34 pages and offer a rare window into the
psychological effects of Padilla's experience in the brig. The
mental-health experts were retained by Padilla's lawyers for testimony
during pretrial motions. The reports reflect their professional
judgments offered to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.

In Padilla's case, these experts say, the pattern of signs and symptoms
clearly suggest their origin is the brig . Unlike many allegations of
harm from interrogation methods, Padilla's mental condition – and the
probable cause of his mental disabilities – can be critically assessed
and verified by an independent panel of mental-health professionals,
provided Padilla cooperates, these and other psychology experts say.

The judge in Padilla's criminal case has already ruled that Padilla is
suffering from a mental disability, but she refused to allow defense
lawyers to explore the issue of whether the disability was caused by
Padilla's treatment in the brig.

US intelligence officials had good reason to want to learn what Padilla
knew. He was detained on suspicion that he was plotting with Al Qaeda
to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. He was arrested
eight months after the 9/11 attacks as he stepped off a plane in
Chicago from the Middle East. Officials were worried about the
possibility of a second wave of terror attacks and the presence of
sleeper cells in the US.

Padilla's interrogation was designed to overcome his will to keep
silent, and then to wring from him every detail of what officials
thought he might know of Al Qaeda's plans and operations.

Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly said that
America does not use torture. They stress that all terror suspects are
treated humanely.

"There have been 12 major reviews conducted of detention operations
over the past several years, none of which found there was any policy
that ever condoned abuse," says Commander Gordon, the Pentagon
spokesman. "The reviews have resulted in numerous recommendations which
have been implemented and have improved our detention operations."

The mental-health experts say their focus is on Padilla, not on
policies.

"He is not the same man who was taken into custody in 2002," says
Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist in New York who spent 22 hours
examining Padilla. "Whatever happened to him in there has radically
changed him."

Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, says Padilla's experience in
the brig has left members of his family stunned and frightened. "People
who have known him and loved him before his military detention don't
feel they can even bear to see him because he is so clearly mentally
ill."

Tricky issue: US citizenship

The administration has faced criticism for using harsh interrogation
tactics on foreign enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay and other
locations overseas. But Padilla's situation is unique.

Padilla is a US citizen who was arrested and detained on US soil.
Because of this status, his case was closely followed at the highest
levels of the US government. The president himself signed the order
authorizing Padilla's detention.

In 2002, the Justice Department produced a "torture" memo stating that
victims would have to experience pain equivalent to organ failure to
prove torture.

"The development of a mental disorder such as post-traumatic stress
disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic
depression, which can last a considerable period of time if untreated,
might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement" to prove torture, the
memo says.

Drs. Hegarty and Grassian say Padilla's psychological condition exceeds
even the high standard for mental damage set by the 2002 torture memo.
"This whole issue of torture turns on the question of what are the
types of effects that one would expect from putting a person in this
situation in the brig," says Grassian. "If you would expect a person to
become so deranged as to become psychotically terrified, to me that
constitutes torture."

The issue is not new. Lawyers representing Padilla in his criminal case
in Miami filed motions last year charging that their client had been
tortured while in military custody. They said the abuse rendered
Padilla mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense at trial.

But in a February hearing, US District Judge Marcia Cooke sidestepped
the torture accusations. She ruled that even though mental-health
experts had identified mental disabilities, Padilla was competent
enough to face prosecution.

"The mere fact that the defendant is suffering from a mental disease or
defect does not render the defendant incompetent to stand trial," Judge
Cooke declared.

Mental-health experts say that a legal determination of competence to
stand trial doesn't undercut the severity of Padilla's existing mental
disabilities.

Throughout his three-month trial in Miami, Padilla has sat quietly at
the defense table. He looks more the part of a legal assistant in his
charcoal gray suit with neatly cropped hair and eyeglasses than the
radical jihadist he is alleged to have become. He turns and smiles to
his mother when she attends the trial. But unlike his two codefendants
he rarely interacts with his lawyers.

'I saw this individual happy ... joking'

A Bureau of Prisons psychologist who examined Padilla prior to the
court competency hearing, found that Padilla was suffering from mental
disabilities. But Dr. Rodolfo Buigas disagreed with the other
mental-health experts on the severity of Padilla's conditions, painting
a somewhat rosy picture of the onetime military detainee. "I saw this
individual happy. I saw this individual joking in the context of the
evaluation. I saw the full, broad range of emotions," Dr. Buigas
testified.

The psychologist also testified that Padilla declined to answer most of
his questions, including his date of birth, and refused to participate
in any psychological testing during the six hours the two men spent
together.

Others with more significant interaction with Padilla say his brig
experience has left him in a state of mental disorganization.

Some psychological tests place him on par with individuals who have
suffered brain damage, according to the reports prepared by Hegarty,
Grassian, and Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist and psychology
professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Padilla's treatment in the brig is classified as a state secret.

Ironically, no one knows this better than Padilla himself. When
Hegarty, the psychiatrist, asked him about his interrogation in the
brig, Padilla responded: "I can't talk about what happened to me
because it is classified."

Although Padilla has been meeting with his Miami lawyers for more than
a year and a half, he refuses to discuss his treatment in the brig in
any detail.

The torture allegations made last year in the Miami court case were
raised as a result of repeated sessions asking Padilla "yes or no"
whether he'd endured the kinds of harsh interrogation tactics reported
in the press. He reluctantly answered yes to some, and no to others.
But his lawyers could pry no details or narrative from him.

They asked Hegarty for help.

He changed the subject and twitched

She spent days attempting to establish a rapport, days trying to get
him to open up. "The first two hours were utterly useless each day. I
got no data at all," Hegarty says. Eventually he would relax and talk
about relatively minor subjects. When Hegarty tried to steer him toward
the brig or the evidence in his criminal case "he would just stop,
change the subject, and twitch," she said.

During her week-long effort, Hegarty would arrive each morning to
discover Padilla once again unwilling to talk. She says the experience
was like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which the same events repeat
over and over. "The 22 hours I spent with him, it was like it never
happened," Hegarty says. "It was chilling."

Grassian relates in his report that Padilla's mother found it
emotionally difficult to visit her son in Miami because it involved
observing his diminished mental condition. Padilla tried to reassure
her that he was fine, that the government was treating him very well.
At one point, Grassian says, Padilla suggested that his mother write
directly to Bush to help her speed through red tape to arrange her next
visit. The president was sure to help her out, Padilla assured his
mother.

"It was utterly irrational," Grassian writes in his report. "After all,
it was President Bush who had ordered him detained as an enemy
combatant."

Padilla's mother became increasingly anxious. Finally she confronted
her son: "Did they torture you?" she asked.

"He turned towards her, his face grimacing, his eyes blinking, and in
panic and rage he demanded: 'Don't you ever, ever, ask that question
again,' " the Grassian report says.

What makes Padilla's case especially challenging from a psychological
perspective is that he denies having any symptoms of psychological
distress. Experts say it is an attempt by Padilla to avoid being viewed
in any way as mentally disturbed.

"He was told not to talk about what happened in the brig and that if he
ever spoke about what happened, people would think he was crazy,"
Hegarty says. "This admonition has power over him," she says. "He
becomes visibly terrified as he is saying it."

Critical focus on the brig

Hegarty, Grassian, and Zapf all agree that Padilla exhibits symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder and that he has become psychotically
disorganized. They say that Padilla's ordeal in the brig was so
psychologically unsettling that it has left him terrorized. Any
reminder of the ordeal through questions by his lawyers or others,
triggers a recurrence of the disorganizing terror Padilla experienced
in the brig, they say.

"As soon as you try to approach a subject related to the brig he starts
grimacing and you can just see he becomes mentally disorganized. Anyone
who watched this with a reasonably unbiased eye would find it so
creepy," Grassian says. "You can see the terror come out of him."

Padilla has been on trial in Miami since May on charges that he became
a willing Al Qaeda recruit. The government never presented any part of
the alleged "dirty-bomb" plot in the case, and some analysts say the
government's cobbled-together case against Padilla is weak.

It is unclear what Padilla thinks about the possibility of an acquittal
in Miami. But Hegarty says that if Padilla's lawyers win the case it
could mark the worst possible outcome for him. That's because the
president might try to move Padilla back to his old cell in the brig.

"There is no question in my mind that his first and most important
priority is to not go back to the brig," Hegarty says. "This is what
leaves me chilled, if one were to offer him a long prison term or
return to the brig, he would take prison, in a heartbeat."

She adds, "He told me more than once that if he went back to the brig
he knew what he had to do." Her notes reflect Padilla's hints of
suicide.

Worst outcome: a return to the brig

Although it is still unknown exactly what happened to Padilla during
his three years and seven months in the Charleston brig, Hegarty says
this much is certain – for Padilla returning to the brig would be a
fate worse than death.

Legally, Padilla isn't at a dead end. Last year, three justices of the
Supreme Court issued a highly unusual warning. If the government
attempts to take Padilla back to the brig, they said, Padilla could, if
necessary, appeal directly to the highest court in the land.

Some longtime court-watchers suggest Padilla already has the support of
at least five of the nine justices, and maybe more.

When Padilla's case originally reached the high court in 2004, it was
dismissed on technical grounds by a 5-to-4 vote. The vote allowed the
continued harsh treatment of Padilla.

Justice John Paul Stevens, a US Navy intelligence officer during World
War II, filed a dissent. He quoted a 1949 opinion by then Justice Felix
Frankfurter.

It said: "There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much
affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this court
should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men."

When did Padilla's mental problems begin?

If Jose Padilla's mental disabilities are evidence that US coercive
interrogation tactics are too harsh, a key issue is when the
disabilities began.

It's possible they began before he was detained by the US military.

In a pretrial hearing in Mr. Padilla's terror conspiracy case in Miami,
a prosecutor said that perhaps they stemmed from his time in Pakistan
or his alleged time in Afghanistan. Padilla was in the region during US
operations in Afghanistan in 2001 and early 2002, a time of massive US
bombing raids and other military action. But the prosecutor offered no
evidence.

Conversely, several pieces of evidence suggest that the problems began
at the Navy brig in South Carolina.

In May 2002, a month before he entered the brig, Padilla was taken into
custody, held in New York City, and given access to a court-appointed
lawyer, Donna Newman. Two years later, when the Bush administration
first allowed Padilla to see his lawyers again, Ms. Newman and another
attorney visited.

"There is no question he had changed," Newman says. "Prior to his being
held in South Carolina there was no reason to suspect that he had any
kind of [mental] problem."

She adds, "After his being held in the brig ... his focus seemed less
direct, his eye contact was similarly diminished, and he was more
taciturn."

"Mr. Padilla had no evidence of any mental illness prior to his arrest
and incarceration in 2002," writes Stuart Grassian, a Boston
psychiatrist, in his report for Padilla's defense team. He examined
medical documents and interviewed Padilla's family, including his
mother, siblings, and ex-wife.

Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist, also retained by the defense,
quotes Padilla's mother in her report as saying that her son had "never
suffered from any mental illness or received treatment for any
psychological or psychiatric problems." His mother said she had visited
him eight or nine times but that it was becoming too hard emotionally
to "see Jose that way." She added that he did not have facial ticks
prior to being incarcerated.

"Mr. Padilla shows extreme anxiety," Ms. Zapf said at a pretrial
hearing. "He said he will go back there. He will die there. He is
fearful of his time in the brig. Everything that he talks about is with
respect to the time at the brig, no other time point."


Jose Padilla timeline
======================

1970 Born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

1974 His father dies; the family later moves to Chicago.

1980s ­ Several run-ins with the law, including gang involvement and
convictions for battery and armed robbery. A robbery turns deadly after
a friend stabs a victim. He enters a juvenile detention center and
remains until age 18.

1989 ­ Moves to Florida with mother.

1991 ­ Serves 10 months in Broward County jail for firing a shot after
a road-rage altercation. He becomes interested in Islam.

Mid-1990s ­ Employed with his girlfriend, Cherie Maria Stultz, at a
Taco Bell managed by the cofounder of an Islamic school. Eventually,
they both convert. He changes his name to Ibrahim. They marry.

1998 ­ Travels alone to Egypt to study Islam and Arabic with funds
collected at his mosque. Eventually, he and Stultz file for divorce. He
marries an Egyptian.

2000 ­ Visits Saudi Arabia for the hajj, then Yemen and Pakistan. The
US Justice Department claims he meets with Al Qaeda operatives in
Pakistan and attends a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

2002 ­ Reportedly talks with Al Qaeda leaders about a "dirty bomb"
plot. On his return to US to see family, FBI agents arrest him in
Chicago. President declares him an "enemy combatant" and he begins 43
months of detention and interrogation in a naval brig.

2003-2006 ­ Courts wrestle over whether the president has authority to
order the military detention of a US citizen arrested on US soil. The
administration indicts him in criminal court. The US Supreme Court
dismisses a case challenging the legality of his military detention.

2007 Is tried in criminal court on terror conspiracy charges in Miami.

– Compiled by Leigh Montgomery