Personality Disruption as Mental Torture

This chapter analyzes the interrogation program employed by the CIA on high-value detainees (the so-called Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation or RDI program), and argues that it constitutes mental torture under U.S. law. By extension, the argument applies to any use of similar interrogation methods. Specifically, we show through detailed textual and historical analysis that the RDI program of inducing “learned helplessness” violates the Torture Acts’ prohibition on inflicting prolonged mental harm by procedures “calculated to disrupt profoundly the human personality.” The chapter accomplishes four main things. First, it demonstrates a connection between the RDI program and previous decades’ interrogation research sponsored by the CIA. The program was not an improvisation devised by contract psychologists because the Agency lacked expertise (one of its public claims). Second, it demonstrates that the Torture Statute prohibits the methods devised through this research. Third, it demonstrates the need for a fundamental shift in the way both lawyers and commentators talk about the RDI program: de-emphasizing the short list of “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved in the well-known “torture memos,” and emphasizing instead the larger program of round-the-clock abuse aiming at personality disruption. Finally, it documents these claims with information mined from tens of thousands of pages of declassified government sources.