British academic whose book was used to justify US torture ‘saddened and appalled’ by Bush efforts

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20 April 2009


Professor Jim Horne is ‘saddened and appalled’ by Bush Administration’s efforts to exploit his book to excuse 180-hour stints of sleep deprivation. Melanie Newman reports

A 48-page Justice Department memo, written in 2005 by Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney-general, and sent to John A. Rizzo, senior deputy-general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, addresses “whether certain specified interrogation techniques designed to be used on a high-value al-Qaeda detainee in the War on Terror comply with the federal prohibition on torture”.

It quotes Why we Sleep, a book written by Professor Horne 20 years ago, as saying: “The longest studies of sleep deprivation in humans… involved volunteers who were deprived of sleep for eight to 11 days… Surprisingly little seemed to go wrong with the subjects physically. The main effects lay with sleepiness and impaired brain functioning, but even these were no great cause for concern.”

While the memo notes that there are “important differences” between sleep deprivation as an instrument of interrogation and its use in controlled experiments on volunteers, it concludes that “the authorised use of extended sleep deprivation by adequately trained interrogators would not be expected to cause… severe physical pain”.

Professor Horne told Times Higher Education that the memo understates the differences and he labeled its conclusions “nonsense”


read more: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=406225&c=1