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Hello, The following event may be of interest to you: The CIA, their consulting psychologists, and the ACLU lawsuit: Secrecy, torture, and the struggle for accountability Wednesday, September 27, 2017 Intelligence agencies often claim that their work must be conducted in secret for the sake of national security. But with secrecy comes a lack of oversight, enabling grave abuses of those targeted by intelligence agencies and significant danger to the democratic process. One of the most extreme examples of this dynamic is the CIA's construction and operation of a network of secret prisons called "black sites," where prisoners were tortured. For years, the CIA fought to keep the program secret. Over years, however, sustained efforts by civil rights lawyers, government leakers, intrepid reporters, and Senate overseers forced the grim details of the CIA program into the light.The CIA's torture program was designed and implemented by two psychologists working as independent contractors. The CIA paid the company they formed 81 million dollars to design, implement, and oversee the agency's program of “enhanced interrogation." The psychologists' methods include exposure to extreme temperatures, starvation, stuffing in boxes, and infliction of various kinds of water torture. Although every previous attempt at seeking justice for CIA torture had failed, three survivors and victims of CIA torture sued the psychologists in federal court in 2015. The ACLU represented Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman in their fight for accountability. After prevailing over numerous obstacles, they secured the first-ever settlement at the end of the summer. A lead ACLU attorney on the case, DROR LADIN will reflect on its significance and his own impressions of the process and protagonists. Ladin is a staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project, and was previously a Skadden Fellow at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights project. Earlier, he clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. Time: 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102 Sponsor: Human Rights Program; Psychology Program; Sociology Program Contact: Joel Perlmann. E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 845-758-7667 If you would like to see more events please visit the following URL: http://www.bard.edu/academics/programs/physics/events/