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5.5.2.1.4. Psychological oversight for SERE training.
5.5.2.1.5. Special training programs.
5.5.2.1.6. Post-mishap and combat trauma recovery and return to duty.
5.5.2.1.7. Reintegration of recovered personnel, after isolation in hostile territory.
5.5.2.1.8. Human factors expertise for mishap investigations and prevention activities.
5.5.2.1.9. Consultation to Influence Operations.
5.5.2.1.10. Adversary profiling.
5.5.2.1.11. Psychological oversight of battlefield interrogation and detention.
5.5.2.2. In garrison, SOFPSYs are usually assigned to an operations unit at the Group level. When deployed, SOFPSYs serve in unit or battle-staff positions to facilitate their consultation and liaison roles. Most services provided by the SOFPSY fall into the categories of consultation and training, and are not clinical treatment interventions. When airmen require clinical treatment services, the SOFPSY primarily serves as liaison between commanders, unit personnel and the appropriate medical service provider. Typically, they will refer individuals needing clinical mental health evaluation and/or medical treatment to medical treatment facilities.
Special Operations Command clearly doesn't intend to use SERE psychologists for medical or clinical purposes. This blurring of medical and operational roles in a memorandum meant to document the roles of medical personnel is typical of the way in which the torture program, which utilizes medical and psychological personnel, has tried to hide its primary activities.
The long SASC report concludes with a section entitled "U.S. Joint Forces Command Issues Policy Guidance For JPRA 'Offensive' Support." It provides a narrative reconstruction of events at odds with the presentation in its Executive Summary. As noted, the entire SASC narrative is about reining in a JPRA agency that (mostly willingly) violated its charter, albeit wooed by others to do so. The Executive Summary ends with a chastened JPRA. The final section of the SASC report itself concludes somewhat differently.
In the
September 2004 memo that supposedly put the kibosh on SERE activities,
which are typically limited to "defensive" recovery operations, JFCOM
Chief of Staff, Major General Soligan, wrote:
Recent requests from OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the Combatant Commands have solicited JPRA support based on knowledge and their application to U.S. strategic debriefing and interrogation techniques. These requests, which can be characterized as "offensive" techniques include, but are not limited to, activities designed not to increase one's resistance capabilities to interrogation techniques but rather intended to instruct personnel, for the purpose of gathering of information, on how to break down another's ability to withstand interrogation ... The use of resistance to interrogation knowledge for "offensive" purposes lies outside the roles and responsibilities of JPRA.
That might have been an end to it, but there was a loophole, one
that the SASC Executive Summary fails to mention. JPRA could still use
their expertise for "offensive" support if "vetted through proper legal
and policy channels." That meant, per the memo (emphasis added):
JPRA personnel will not conduct any activities without specific approval from the USJFCOM Commander, Deputy Commander, or the Chief of Staff. Deviations from the JPRA chartered mission of this nature are policy decisions that will be forwarded to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for action. JPRA will continue to direct all requests for external support through USJFCOM and refrain from providing any support or information unless specifically directed by USJFCOM as outlined above.
Hence, after all that was learned about mission creep, overstepping chartered mandates, the pressure of other agencies and politicians upon JPRA and SERE, and even the misgivings of some at JPRA itself, the new policy allowed for "deviations." Even more noteworthy, such "deviations of JPRA "roles and responsibilities" would run through the office of the Secretary of Defense. In 2009, that office would be run by Bush's former SecDef, and now Barack Obama's SecDef, Robert Gates.
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