SEALs, CEOs, Milton Friedman, and Fraudulent Incentives

[OnyxCollie]

8. Sociopaths R Us.

RENEWING AMERICA’S PURPOSE
Policy Addresses of George W. Bush
July 1999 – July 2000

Defense: A Period of Consequences
The Citadel
Charleston, South Carolina
September 23, 1999

I will encourage a culture of command where change is welcomed and rewarded, not dreaded. I will ensure that visionary leaders who take risks are recognized and promoted.

Guantánamo torturer led brutal Chicago regime of shackling and confession
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-police-brutality?CMP=share_btn_tw

In a dark foreshadowing of the United States’ post-9/11 descent into torture, a Guardian investigation can reveal that Richard Zuley, a detective on Chicago’s north side from 1977 to 2007, repeatedly engaged in methods of interrogation resulting in at least one wrongful conviction and subsequent cases more recently thrown into doubt following allegations of abuse.

Zuley’s record suggests a continuum between police abuses in urban America and the wartime detention scandals that continue to do persistent damage to the reputation of the United States. Zuley’s tactics, which would be supercharged at Guantánamo when he took over the interrogation of a high-profile detainee as a US Navy reserve lieutenant, included:
• Shackling suspects to police-precinct walls through eyebolts for hours on end.
• Accusations of planting evidence when there was pressure for a high-profile murder conviction.
• Threats of harm to family members of those under interrogation used as leverage.
• Pressure on suspects to implicate themselves and others.
Threats of being subject to the death penalty if suspects did not confess.

When Zuley took over the Slahi interrogation in 2003 – his name has gone widely unreported – he designed a plan so brutal it received personal sign-off from then-US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site?CMP=share_btn_tw

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
Shackling for prolonged periods.
Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

Bad lieutenant: American police brutality, exported from Chicago to Guantánamo
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chicago-guantanamo

“From what I was told, General Miller thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Couch said. “Miller was amazed at the information he was getting. So apparently Zuley ratcheted up these techniques, with the backing of Miller, to go up the chain of command for approval.”

~snip~

Miller retired from the Army in 2006. He has disappeared from public view after invoking his right against self-incrimination when called as a witness in an Abu Ghraib-related trial that year. Emails seeking comment about Miller’s relationship with Zuley bounced back, and a spokesperson for the US Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, did not know how else to contact him.

~snip~

As the military intensified its treatment of Slahi, the FBI and Fallon’s task force, uncomfortable with torture, pushed back. But the military took full control of Slahi’s interrogation. On July 1, 2003, Miller approved a “special projects status” request for Slahi from the Defense Intelligence Agency, with Zuley placed in charge. By August 13 of that year, Rumsfeld personally signed off on the Slahi interrogation, already under way.

In addition to using stress positions, sleep deprivation and auditory bombardment against him, Zuley intended to make Slahi think he was taken somewhere else, somewhere more dangerous for him. He would be placed on a boat, and taken around the bay to disorient him, though they would never actually leave Guantánamo. Dogs would be used during the transport, Zuley wrote in a memo uncovered by a Senate committee, to “assist developing the atmosphere that something major is happening and add to the tension level of the detainee.”

Daboub, A. J., Rasheed, A. M., Priem, R. L., & Gray, D. A. (1995). Top management team characteristics and corporate illegal activity. Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 138-170.

Ermann and Lundman (1987: 8) suggested that organizations can produce deviance in at least three ways: (a) the structures of large organizations may limit the information and responsibility of position holders and thus reduce control; (b) organizational elites can indirectly initiate deviant actions by establishing particular norms, rewards, and punishments for members at lower levels; and (c) elites can consciously initiate deviant actions and use hierarchically linked positions to implement them. The first source of deviance corresponds to the "authority leakage" (Vaughan, 1983) that results from organizational size and complexity. The other two sources ultimately reside in top management. Even when top management does not explicitly decide to behave illegally, it usually establishes the norms and reward systems that shape the ethical conduct of subordinates. Thus, top managers may actively direct and participate in, or may enable and passively acqueisce to, illegal activities (Kriesberg, 1976). When a corporate illegal activity comes to light, top management usually disowns any knowledge of it. In many cases, however, top managers can "arrange patterns of reporting so that they cannot find out (or at least, if they do find out, they find out in such a way that it can never be proved)" (Stone, 1975: 53). Clinard and Yeager (1980) found that, even though most executives charged with criminal antitrust violations were middle managers, the senior management of most corporations involved knew about the illegal activities. Gross (1978: 71) concluded that "persons who will engage in crime on behalf of the organization will most likely be the officers of the organization, its top people."

Court in Abuse Case Hears Testimony of General
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/us/25abuse.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&

FORT MEADE, Md., May 24 — Testifying at the court-martial of a dog handler accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller said Wednesday that he never suggested that dogs be used to intimidate prisoners during interrogations in Iraq.

~snip~

Since the disclosures in April 2004 of extensive abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, sometimes involving dogs, the question of who was responsible for interrogation procedures has remained a subject of debate.

~snip~

In nearly an hour on the witness stand, General Miller offered new details of his trip to Iraq, which has been depicted as importing harsh interrogation techniques from Guantánamo. He said he recommended that military dogs could be used to help with "custody and control" of detainees at the prison.

~snip~

General Miller said he believed that the dogs "were very effective in assisting detention staff in maintaining custody and control."

From Abu Ghraib: The dog at the bottom of the picture is a Belgian Malinois.
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My dog is a Belgian sheepdog (Groenendael). From an Iron Maiden-inspired birthday card I made, here's an example of a really big smile:

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