When suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was whisked from the criminal justice system to military custody in June 2002, it was done for a key purpose – to break his will to remain silent.

For a month, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been questioning Padilla in New York City under the rules of the criminal justice system. They wanted to know about his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. Padilla had nothing to say. Now, military interrogators were about to turn up the heat....

In essence, experts say, the US government was trying to break Padilla's silence by plunging him into a mental twilight zone...

The Soviets used isolation and sensory deprivation to identify and discredit political dissidents. US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment.

In other words, the U.S. Government attempted to torture a confession out of a U.S. Citizen when he refused to admit to a crime that didn't occur. An admission which would have been in the political interest of the Administration, as it would justify the fear of a nuclear threat from Al'Queda, and demonstrate that the Justice Department was putting a stop to it. Paradoxically, the threat from this particular sort of weapon is mostly psychological. If the Administration were interested in defusing it as a real threat they would do so by educating people about the actual effects of such an attack rather than making misleading statements.
Recall this statement by a judge who was on the Republican Party's short list for Supreme Court nomination until he committed political suicide by issuing this ruling:

The government surely must understand... its actions have left... the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years... by mistake...

Yes, it appears he was held "by mistake." He was held, in my opinion, illegally. And he was destroyed...

"It is clear from examining Mr. Padilla that [the point of irreversible psychological damage] was surpassed."

The actual evidence against him seems to consist entirely of this form. Personally, I think a star recruit would have had more to say on this form. A star recruit probably would have indicated more religious knowledge, might have had some military experience, might have listed a skill other than carpentry, might have indicated an... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]