A new article at Truthout describes how Paul Wolfowitz issued a military directive in March 2002 that loosened rules against human experimentation and protections for subjects of such research that had been in place since the early 1970s. According to sources within the Department of Defense, the Wolfowitz Directive, “Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research”, was used to support a top-secret Special Access Program at Guantanamo funded through the Defense Department’s black budget involving “deception detection”, interrogation, and other research upon detainees.

Headlines were made last week concerning revelations that a key researcher who was part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment had also headed a 1940s project in Guatemala that deliberately inoculated prisoners and insane asylum inmates with various venereal diseases. But there have been many more examples of U.S. government experimentation on unwitting subjects, including CIA experiments on detainees held in the “war on terror.”

In a summary of recent news in the fight against torture, a D.C. judge has dismissed all charges against demonstrators arrested in an anti-Guantanamo demonstration last January. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has announced it will not review the District Court’s decision refusing to review Canadian citizen Maher Arar case against U.S. officials for their role in rendering him to Syria to be tortured. At the same time, the Canadian RCMP is revealed to be investigating both Syrian and U.S. officials for this crime.

The New York Times’ editorial board has called for the White House and Congress to investigate charges of illegal human experimentation by the CIA and possibly other agencies. Such illegal research is a war crime, and insofar as undertaken by medical professionals, represent a grave breach of medical ethics.

In a “top secret” paper (undated) entitled “The CIA Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, March 2001 – January 2003,” in a section that, though heavily redacted, describes the review of the tapes by a CIA attorney from the Office of General Counsel, “interrogation materials” are described as consisting of “videotapes, logbook, notebook, and psychologist’s notes.” From what is known or speculated about a second taping system used in the interrogation of Zubaydah, it seems likely that psychologist notes were also an integral part of the process involved in the use of those tapes. The specific use of psychologist’s notes corroborates earlier information that ongoing psychological and medical observations were playing a key role in the CIA interrogation process.