<p><table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/50c655fbecad04bc7b000002-442-331/interrogation-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Interrogation" /></div><p class="source"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewdlecam/3501280430/">Flickr</a></p></td></tr></table>Should one of America’s most well-regarded universities be affiliated with the military’s <keyword id="6386721" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Interrogation">interrogation</keyword> program and, by extension, its ongoing operations to identify and eliminate terrorist networks?</p>
<p>That is one of the questions posed by a <a href="http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/02/15/batraville-and-lew-dod-plans-are-shortsighted-unethical/">recent op-ed published in the Yale Daily News</a>, which goes so far as to imply the school's participation in the Obama administration's "kill lists."</p>
<p>That article draws attention to what has so far been a fairly under-the-radar effort to organize the U.S. SOCOM Center of Excellence for Operational Neuroscience, a partnership program between <keyword id="66336" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yale">Yale</keyword> University and the Department of Defense that seeks to train military officers in “Modified Cognitive Interviewing” techniques.<br /><br />A series of blog posts and an online petition have begun to circulate in response to the new program, which should be up and running in just a few months.</p>
<p>Criticism of the center includes lack of transparency in its introduction, but is really centered on its <a href="http://raniakhalek.com/2013/02/18/yale-university-to-train-u-s-special-forces-in-interrogation-techniques-by-practicing-on-immigrants/">use of New Haven’s local immigrant population as test subjects</a>, along with the obvious political implications: Should an institution of higher education be so closely affiliated with the <a href="http://www.thepetitionsite.com/867/857/532/dont-open-a-department-of-defense-training-center-at-yale/">Department of Defense</a>, and more specifically with its activities in combat zones?</p>
<p>There might be a public relations nightmare somewhere in the use of Yale’s local immigrant population to provide military trainees with an enhanced understanding of “deception” by locals in overseas deployment. Still, it is important to note that participation (or recruitment, as it were) is entirely voluntary, and paid.</p>
<p>An article by another of Yale’s student publications, The Yale Herald, goes into greater depth, and interviews one recent participant of the center director’s research, a Middle Eastern immigrant who arrived in New Haven in 1999:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">As a contact in his ethnic community, the man has <a href="http://yaleherald.com/news-and-features/yale-welcomes-special-ops/">introduced Morgan</a> to between 50 and 100 friends from the Middle East. “Some of them,” he says of his friends, “they accept it. Some of them, they get afraid. Some of them, they don’t like to give their real name…But I bring some who accept the idea.” He explained that they volunteer in the <keyword id="6355244" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Study">study</keyword> for a number of reasons, one being the compensation Dr. Morgan provides: a minimum of $50 for one hour of their time, and up to $100 in bonuses if they successfully deceive the interviewer. The man I spoke to indicated personal satisfaction in advancing Dr. Morgan’s scientific knowledge: “They learn to figure out who’s lying and who’s saying the truth,” he said. “So you don’t take innocent people…If he’s doing something, you know, you find out.”</p>
<p>It seems fair to say that a decision to participate in Dr. Morgan’s studies is not a straightforward one for any “local immigrant,” particularly one of Middle Eastern descent. At the same time, the center’s cognitive research and its approach does present an effort to<br />“talk to people without scaring them,” as Morgan states. But is the potential to avoid detaining innocents abroad a legitimate (and moral) motivator for a local participant?</p>
<p>The involvement of medical professionals within the psychiatric community with the U.S. military’s interrogation program is, of course, not a new development. While most attention has been focused on the harshest methods of “enhanced” interrogation, fewer questions<br />have been raised regarding actual role of <a href="http://harpers.org/blog/2010/08/more-on-the-cias-torture-doctors/">American physician’s involvement in the mistreatment of prisoners</a>.</p>
<p>Would Yale’s new center then be more than indirectly associated with the whole of the military’s interrogation program?</p>
<p>According to Dr. Morgan, the aim of using subjects of diverse backgrounds is to provide military personnel the opportunity to practice interviewing with someone they “can’t necessarily identify with.” The program would look to bring in participants from such<br />countries of origin as Morocco, Colombia, Nepal, Ecuador and undoubtedly many others.</p>
<p>Regardless of the intent, the center’s focus on non-white participants seems to have struck a nerve with at least some of Yale’s student body who are clearly not in agreement.</p>

An Ivy League University Wants To Recruit Local Immigrants For An Interrogation Study

<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em;">In September of 2012, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni detainee at the U.S. <keyword id="6359526" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Military">military</keyword> prison at <keyword id="44258" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Guantanamo-Bay">Guantanamo Bay</keyword>, <keyword id="16815" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Cuba">Cuba</keyword>, was found dead of a psychiatric drug overdose. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em;">As one of the first men to be transported to the military prison in 2002, Mr. Latif had been described as a persistent problem for prison staff, often going on hunger strikes, and had been repeatedly placed on suicide watch.</span></p>
<p>Ironically Latif had been cleared by a federal judge for transfer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/us/yemeni-detainee-at-guantanamo-died-of-overdose.html">back to Yemen</a> more than once, rulings which were reversed due to hesitation by both the Bush and Obama administrations in light of that country’s ongoing Islamic insurgency.</p>
<p>Last week, the New America Foundation in Washington, DC convened a panel to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison — which is still up and running despite President Obama’s promise to shut it down.</p>
<p>According to Andy Worthington, one of the panelists at NAF’s event and author of The Guantánamo Files, over half of the facility’s prisoner population has been cleared for release — release, in this context, at least indicating cleared for transfer and likely repatriation.</p>
<p><table class="image-container float_left" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5050a87beab8ea846c000000-400-300/adnan-latif-gitmo.jpg" border="0" alt="Adnan Latif guantanamo prison dead" /></div><p class="source"><a href="http://www.apimages.com/OneUp.aspx?st=k&amp;kw=adnan%20latif&amp;showact=results&amp;sort=relevance&amp;intv=None&amp;sh=10&amp;kwstyle=and&amp;adte=1347463008&amp;pagez=60&amp;cfasstyle=AND&amp;rids=eac96efd21304e0d9859d0d88d3ff41a&amp;dbm=PThirtyDay&amp;page=1&amp;xslt=1&amp;mediatype=Photo">Associated Press</a></p><p class="caption">Adnan Latif, found unconscious in his cell on Sept. 8, 2012, is shown in this undated photo provided by his lawyers.</p></td></tr></table>As of May of last year, 610 of the 779 inmates at Guantanamo had been released, with only five out of that total having ever been convicted of a criminal offense – the remainder being held under the auspices of sealed evidence. Legally, the entire process of winding down Guantanamo seems to have ground to a halt following 2010’s Al-Adahi v. Obama case, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/13/federal-courts-reject-virtually-all-hab eas-petitions-from-gitmo-study.html">which was handled by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, the matter of where detainees have gone, or can go, has in itself proved a complicated issue. In the case of Yemeni nationals in particular, it has become de-facto policy that release back to Yemen presents an issue of national security, not because the inmates themselves have been proven to be high threat, but rather because the U.S. government is unwilling to entrust them to their own government.</p>
<p>It has become a political impossibility to relocate inmates out of Guantanamo and into a general prison population, even at a maximum security facility. As a result, and certainly ignoring the fact that Habeus corpus was ever granted to only about half of inmates prior to 2010, and rarely since then, even those cleared for transfer seem to face an indefinite detention.</p>
<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4fd7cbc06bb3f76f73000003-900-1372/bay19.jpg" border="0" alt="guantanamo" width="400" /></div><p class="source"><a href="http://www.defense.gov/home/features/gitmo/facilities.html">Department of Defense</a></p></div>Each inmate at Guantanamo arrived at the facility for distinct reasons, which is why the detainee population should not be viewed as one single, homogeneous group. So says Col. (ret) Morris Davis, another of NAF’s panelists, and the former chief prosecutor for military commissions at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>According to Morris, those men still held at the military prison represent a wide gamut of threat, if that is to be how they are regarded. While certain detainees due in fact fit the bill as “the worst of the worst” (as Donald Rumsfeld famously remarked in 2003), others were at some time merely foot soldiers, or even individuals at the wrong place at the wrong time, sold for bounty or to settle scores. Of the remaining inmates, at least 80 have already been cleared for transfer out of the facility.</p>
<p>Again, these distinctions among those inmates still held at Guantanamo are rarely made now, save for those who might be of particular interest to foreign governments, such as British nationals. Likewise, marking the anniversary of Guantanamo Bay is a headline that has been slowly relegated into obscurity with each passing year. Panelists at the NAF seemed almost surprised to find that C-SPAN had opted to carry the event’s live broadcast.</p>
<p>Eleven years into the prison’s existence, America’s political establishment seems to regard the entire inmate population as an unfortunate footnote of the war on terrorism, much as public opinion has slowly shifted to accept the existence of “enhanced terrorism techniques” by U.S. intelligence efforts.</p>
<p>As early as 2009, Gallup found that 55% of Americans believed the use of harsh interrogation techniques during the Bush administration were justified. While a softened public view on torture and the indefinite detention of Guantanamo inmates are not necessarily directly linked, they both indicate a general indifference to making complex moral choices.</p>
<p>Whether that indifference is borne out of political expediency or legal wrangling likely makes little difference to those inmates who, even by military definitions of national security, seem to have very little business being held in Guantanamo at all.</p>

There's No Way Out Of The Guantanamo Bay Paradox

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56fc4bfd91058425008b9b67-605-359/screenshot 2016-03-30 17.57.57.png" alt="State Department tweet" data-mce-source="Twitter/TravelGov" /><p class="source"><span>Twitter/TravelGov</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>The State Department apologized Wednesday after sparking controversy while one of its official accounts tweeted travel tips under the hashtag #springbreakingbadly, warning travelers to beware of overseas scams.</p><p>Things went awry Wednesday when the department made a recommendation to avoid being "lured into buying expensive drinks."</p><p>From its travel account, the State Department <a href="https://twitter.com/TravelGov/status/715227237738483712">tweeted</a>: "Not a '10' in the US? Then not a 10 overseas. Beware of being lured into buying expensive drinks or worse-being robbed. #springbreakingbadly."</p><p>The tweet inspired an immediate backlash, with one Twitter user <a href="https://twitter.com/gonicholasgo/status/715245915888553985">saying</a> it was "unnecessarily sexist." The State Department responded: "We made no mention of gender. This can happen to anyone unfortunately."</p><p>But after the tweet gained more attention, the account tweeted a two-part apology.</p><p>"<span class="s1">Some have been offended by our earlier tweet and we apologize that it came off negatively," the department said. "</span><span class="s1">We see many Americans fall victim to scams each year &amp; want all to be careful while traveling."</span></p><p>Other tips from the State Department's #springbreakingbadly hashtag have included: "Somebody offered you a free trip abroad, but the free luggage they offered is lined with cocaine. Beware of these scams #springbreakingbadly."</p><p>But that didn't stop the snarky backlash:</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Hot Or Not, State Department Edition <a href="https://t.co/AJv087Einf">https://t.co/AJv087Einf</a></p>- Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) <a href="https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/715291173963894785">March 30, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Not a "10" in the US? Then not a 10 being recruited by ISIS.</p>- Emma Roller (@emmaroller) <a href="https://twitter.com/emmaroller/status/715295356850802688">March 30, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">State Dept. travel advisories being ghostwritten by college sophomore with popped collar <a href="https://t.co/Gco7s4n28w">https://t.co/Gco7s4n28w</a></p>- Leandro Oliva (@lmoliva_) <a href="https://twitter.com/lmoliva_/status/715294164569747456">March 30, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Looks like President Donald Trump won't need to replace the social media staff at State. <a href="https://t.co/JNMdPLu2nM">https://t.co/JNMdPLu2nM</a></p>- Josh Barro (@jbarro) <a href="https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/715292453851496448">March 30, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inmate-prison-hillary-clinton-death-row-penalty-capital-punishment">Watch a former death row inmate who spent 39 years in prison question Clinton on the death penalty</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VvZW0wMjE60jvz5OhuaQ0lU5sE4Bi8vZ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'VvZW0wMjE60jvz5OhuaQ0lU5sE4Bi8vZ',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

You Searched For "Leandro Oliva" and got 3 results

An Ivy League University Wants To Recruit Local Immigrants For An Interrogation Study

Leandro Oliva, Contributor

There's No Way Out Of The Guantanamo Bay Paradox

Leandro Oliva, Contributor

State Department apologizes after sparking uproar with tweet about being a '10'

Pamela Engel