MediaBloodhound: Story of the Day: U.S. Citizen, Jose Padilla, Tortured Until Broken

When historians look back on George W. Bush’s war on terror, the case of Jose Padilla may come to symbolize the brutality, inhumanity and futility of this entire campaign.

Accused al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla suffers from intense stress and anxiety stemming from his isolated years in military custody and cannot adequately help his lawyers prepare for trial, two defense mental experts testified Thursday.

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"He is immobilized by his anxiety," said Patricia Zapf, a forensic psychologist who administered tests on Padilla last October. "He believes he will go back to the brig and he will die there."

And he believes “he will die there” not only due to his “isolated years in military custody” but also because of the torture and cruel and inhumane treatment to which he was subjected during his incarceration. Additionally, “intense stress and anxiety” hardly sum up what he is suffering from, which, in part, includes post-traumatic stress disorder.

Now a little background from the AP:

Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen, is charged with being part of a North American terror support cell that provided money, recruits and supplies to Islamic extremists around the world. All three have pleaded not guilty and face possible life imprisonment.

The Bush administration initially claimed that Padilla was on an al-Qaida mission to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major U.S. city when he was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

He was designated an "enemy combatant" and was imprisoned by the military without criminal charges. But the dirty-bomb allegations are not part of the Miami case.

If you ever wonder why a greater number of Americans are not more outraged by cases like Padilla’s, these three paragraphs prove instructive.

First, there’s the order of information. That he was jailed without charge is slipped matter-of-factly into the last of the three paragraphs. The number of years, three and a half, is not mentioned here; though it is four paragraphs later, a full eleven paragraphs into the article, and even that’s muddied in an allusion to “his 3 1/2 years in the brig.” To separate these two factors - incarceration without charge and the number of years held - simply boggles the mind. Imagine a report in which you’re told a man was pistol whipped by an assailant in one paragraph while information that he died only comes paragraphs later, presented as if the two weren’t directly connected. Nor are we told when Padilla was formally charged by the Bush administration (November 2005). Thus, the math is not even there for the reader to do if he wanted.

Then there’s the skeletal, and consequent misleading, encapsulation both of what he was finally charged with and what the Bush administration originally claimed was behind his arrest. The indictment against Padilla is known in the intelligence community to be flimsy at best yet is presented here as if it’s clear-cut. And “The Bush administration initially claimed that Padilla was on an al-Qaida mission to detonate a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’ in a major U.S. city…” is quite an understatement. The administration, with then Attorney General John Ashcroft as head cheerleader, hailed Padilla’s arrest as one of the most significant victories in the war on terror before sticking him in a dark hole in solitary confinement where he would be tortured and treated cruelly and inhumanely for three-and-a-half years without ever being charged with a crime.

Finally, back to the screwy order of information: We then have to go to the final of these three paragraphs for: “But the dirty-bomb allegations are not part of the Miami case.” Far more than not being “part of the Miami case,” the one in which he's been charged, all of those prior allegations are dead in the water. No credible evidence was found to charge Padilla for trying to make and use a dirty bomb. Therefore, the initial and much ballyhooed justification for his arrest and incarceration was utterly baseless. A sham. Padilla's arrest was leveraged in much the same manner the administration used the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner: as an illusion of success to keep the wheels of war turning. So with no evidence and growing questions about Bush’s right to hold detainees indefinitely without charge, new charges suddenly appeared against Padilla.

Failing to connect these dots for the reader is more than a disservice; it is intellectually dishonest journalism. Scattering facts about the page does not suffice. Presenting news in a logical order, with coherent background information, should be requisite for any report - but especially for one dealing with such a serious topic.

Padilla's symptoms are most acute when he is asked to talk about his 3 1/2 years in the brig, including interrogations techniques used on him, or to review evidence in his criminal case, including transcripts of intercepted telephone conversations, [Dr. Angela] Hegarty [a forensic neuropsychiatrist] said.

"He doesn't want to because it hurts so much, and because it hurts so much he shuts down," Hegarty said.

When Padilla is asked about his case or the brig, [Patricia] Zapf [a forensic psychologist] said, he becomes noticeably tense, begins to sweat, tries to change the subject and rocks back and forth while hunched over. She said he was adamant that he did not want to testify in his own defense.

"He said he can't relive it, he can't go through it again, and he can't name names," Zapf said.

I’ll leave you with a trip down the memory hole, a glimpse into Padilla's living hell, the very definition of tyranny under which Padilla dwelled for those three-and-a-half years. The following scene, a description of Padilla being taken to a military dentist for a root canal, was viewed on videotape obtained by his lawyers and reported in The New York Times in December 2006. (Keep in mind that one of his lawyers, Andrew Patel, said in his affidavit, “I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla’s temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of ‘a piece of furniture.’”)

''Today is May 21,'' a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. ''Right now we're ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.''

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla's bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla's legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla's cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

If mainstream news outlets spent a fraction of the time they do on such stories as Anna Nicole Smith’s death or folks lost on Mt. Hood or John Mark Karr’s in-flight dinner as they did on this administration’s glaring Constitutional and human rights abuses, maybe Jose Padilla would not be a broken man today.

Maybe. But it's too late for this U.S. citizen. A terrorized, quavering shell of his former self, Jose Padilla is now just another casualty among the hundreds of thousands of human beings whose lives have been shattered or snuffed out by George W. Bush's perpetual war for perpetual peace.

AP Experts: Padilla Unable to Stand Trial, by Curt Anderson
Associated Press