9-11 Narco-Interrogation & Torture

Thu Oct 25 10:19:01 PDT 2001

Hi Matt -

Below is the CCLE response to information in the Washington 
Post indicating that the FBI is considering using torture and 
mind-altering drugs to get the 9-11 detainees to talk. Please forward 
to your list. (Sources with URLS are given at the bottom.)

This press release can be accessed on the Internet at: 
<http://www.alchemind.org/news/narcointerrogation1.htm>

--Richard Glen Boire
Executive Director
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 25, 2001

Drugging or Torture of 9-11 Suspects Breaks Constitution, Law, and Treaties

Amidst reports that the FBI is considering the use of forced drugging 
and even torture to make suspects in the September 11 attacks divulge 
information, the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) is 
calling on the FBI and other government agencies involved in the 
investigation to respect US and International law, which strictly 
forbids such invasive and brutal police tactics. 

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that in an effort to extract 
information from the detainees, FBI and Justice Department 
investigators are considering using drugs or pressure tactics, such 
as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract 
information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied 
countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family 
members or resort to torture. (Walter Pincus, "Silence of 4 Terror 
Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma", Washington Post, Sunday, October 21, 
2001; Page A06)

"The use of torture or physical intimidation to force a suspect to 
reveal information is a clear violation of US and International law" 
says Attorney Richard Glen Boire, Executive Director of the Center 
for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. The Fifth Amendment to the US 
Constitution guarantees that no person shall be compelled in any 
criminal case to be a witness against himself, and protects all 
people on US soil, whether citizens or not. Torturing a person in 
order to extract a confession is inherently coercive and renders any 
subsequent statements compelled, involuntary, unreliable, and wholly 
unconstitutional.

Invoking the Fifth Amendment, some of the 9-11 detainees have 
asserted their constitutional right to remain silent, refusing to 
speak with investigators. It's deeply disturbing, says Boire, that 
the act of asserting the constitutional right to remain silent is 
what is provoking the authorities to consider resorting to torture 
and drugging.

Numerous international conventions prohibit the use of torture as an 
intelligence gathering technique. Article 5 of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights and article 7 of the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both provide that no one 
shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading 
treatment or punishment.

Likewise the International Convention against Torture and Other 
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention 
Against Torture), prohibits any act by which severe pain or 
suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on 
a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person 
information or a confession.

The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics is particularly disturbed 
by reports that FBI agents may try and skirt US and international 
prohibitions on physical torture by instead interrogating the 
suspects after forcefully administering them mind-altering drugs. The 
Washington Post article quoted a former senior FBI official with a 
background in counter terrorism who distinguished the forced use of 
"truth serum" from beating a guy till he is senseless.
When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture on 
October 21, 1994, it expressly acknowledged that torture includes the 
administration or application, or threatened administration or 
application, of mind altering substances or other procedures 
calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.

The bar on torture and forced drugging under the Convention Against 
Torture does not have a war time or suspected terrorist exemption, 
comments Boire, adding that Article 2 of the Convention states  "No 
exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a 
threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public 
emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

The prospect of US law enforcement agents interrogating a person 
after injecting that person with a mind-altering drug is terrifying 
and grossly unconstitutional, says Boire. Under the Fifth Amendment 
there is no distinction between the use of physical force to obtain a 
statement and the compelled administration of a mind-altering drug to 
obtain a statement. Both techniques, notes Boire violate the firmly 
embedded constitutional guarantee against coerced confessions in 
which a suspect's will is overborne or the confession was not the 
product of a rational intellect and a free will.

Condemning the use of drug-induced confessions, the US Supreme Court 
has stated, "It is difficult to imagine a situation in which a 
confession would be less the product of a free intellect, less 
voluntary, than when brought about by a drug having the effect of a 
"truth serum." (Townsend v. Sain (1963) 372 U.S. 293.) In another 
case, the Supreme Court cautioned, "the blood of the accused is not 
the only hallmark of an unconstitutional inquisition." (Blackburn v. 
Alabama (1960) 361 U.S. 199, quoted in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 
U.S. 436.) 

The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics calls upon federal 
authorities to respect the fundamental rights that are enshrined in 
the US Constitution and in the international conventions protecting 
human rights and prohibiting government-endorsed torture and mind 
manipulation. Under no circumstances are US government agents 
permitted to coerce statements through the use of physical 
intimidation or the forceful administration of mind-altering drugs. 
Use of such barbaric interrogation techniques is unlawful, says Boire 
, violates the basic human right to physical and mental autonomy, 
vitiates the presumption of innocence, and runs counter to the most 
fundamental and cherished of American freedoms and constitutional 
guarantees.

For More Information:
Ms. Zara Gelsey
CCLE, Director of Communications
Telephone & Fax: 530-750-7912
E-mail: zara at cognitiveliberty.org

Resources:
This press release can be accessed on the Internet at: 
<<http://www.alchemind.org/news/narcointerrogation1.htm>>

Washington Post  Article 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27748-2001Oct20.html>>

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
<<http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm>>

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 
<http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr.htm>

Convention Against Torture <http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm>

US ratification of Convention Against Torture 
<<http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/treaty12_asp.htm>>

About the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE)
The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 
501(c)(3), law and policy center working in the public interest to 
protect fundamental civil liberties. The Center seeks to foster 
cognitive liberty  the basic human right to unrestrained independent 
thinking, including the right to control one's own mental processes 
and to experience the full spectrum of possible thought.

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