After eleven years, the International Trauma Treatment Program has decided to change our name. After deliberating about it for the last three months, our board and staff have all agreed that International Network for Trauma Research and Education (INTRE) more accurately reflects our mission and purpose. All future publications and events will have the heading “INTRE” on them.

Thank you for your patience while we revise and re-design our website. As you can imagine, working with our two visiting practitioners (Chester Clark from Liberia and Ivana Vidacovic from Serbia) is so interesting and informative that we are unlikely to get the new site up before 2010. In the meantime, please keep the following dates in mind:

November 9 @ 8:30–the Olympia Film Festival is showing the film “Hunger” as a fundraiser for ITTP. Please join us!

December 6: Our diploma award ceremony, refreshments, and silent auction at the Phoenix Inn. Stay tuned for further information.

Again, thank you for being part of ITTP’s efforts worldwide!

Case management will be through group supervision (consultations). Our first case focused on the work of one of the members who was called in by a pre-school program, one of whose teachers had been found with her husband, both of whom had been murdered during the night in their house across the street from the school.

Once again, ITTP has generated a dedicated, indigenous trauma treatment program in another land.

Sincerely,

John Van Eenwyk

Clinical Director – ITTP

Their refusal to facilitate Zimbabwe’s crackdown has ignited a wildfire
that is spreading across the continent. Now, as pressure builds, China is
publicly wavering–and might decide to bring the arms home.[2] Click
below to sign a petition to keep arms away from Zimbabwe. The petition
will be launched at a press conference in Johannesburg before the end of
this week, and used to lobby key leaders until the crisis ends. Join the
call now:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_arms_for_zimbabwe/5.php

Three weeks on, the results of the March 29 elections have still not been
released, and Zimbabwe’s crisis is getting worse. Mugabe’s government has
unleashed a brutal campaign to retain power. The opposition says that ten
have died, and hundreds have been injured; now, a “human wave” of
refugees is fleeing to South Africa and other neighbouring countries.[3]

But even as the political emergency deepens, an African-led upswell of
resistance has begun to turn the tide. In the last ten days:
*  More than 150,000 Avaaz members worldwide signed the petition for
democracy in Zimbabwe, including citizens of 53 of Africa’s 54
countries. The goal: prod South Africa’s president Mbeki to pressure
Mugabe. To make sure the message got through, Avaaz hired a small
plane to fly a 280 square metre (3000 sq ft) banner over the United
Nations.[4] The next day, amidst pressure from other governments and
worldwide media coverage of the Avaaz stunt, South Africa finally
shifted its position on Zimbabwe.[5]
*  Last week, a Chinese ship carrying 77 tonnes of Zimbabwe-bound
weapons and ammunition docked in Durban, South Africa–but, refusing
to aid Mugabe’s crackdown, the dockworkers refused to unload it.
Unions, churches, and legal groups throughout Southern Africa quickly
mobilized; the ship was forced to leave the harbour, and other ports
in the region are vowing to block the weapons as well.[6]
*  As the grassroots outcry has grown, political officials have begun to
press their case. Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa urged other
African leaders not to allow the weapons to reach Zimbabwe.[7] United
Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and former UNSG Kofi Annan have
called for democracy. And more and more other leaders in Africa and
worldwide are joining in.
The Chinese arms ship is now sailing up the Western coast of Africa.
Union officials tell Avaaz that it could stop in Namibia to refuel, but
is probably headed towards Angola.[8] Time is short. A strong
international outcry now can help support the groups in both
countries–dockworkers, NGOs, and church leaders–who are working to
block the weapons and support Zimbabwean human rights.

There is more at stake here than the weapons in this ship. Together, we
can build a consensus that Zimbabwe should not be sold ANY weapons in
this time of crisis–and in the longer term, we can build momentum for a
strong international Arms Trade Treaty[9]. Moreover, stopping the flow of
weapons provides a concrete, immediate step that leaders in the region
can take on Zimbabwe–paving the way for stronger actions in coming days
and weeks.

Add your name to the petition, and then send this link to friends and
family:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_arms_for_zimbabwe/5.php

The situation in Zimbabwe is dire. But because of people power–the
courage of ordinary workers and community members, standing on
principle–the political currents are shifting, and hope is emerging for
change. And in the global media, a new strain can be heard amidst the
grinding stories of brutality and chaos.

This crisis has many layers, and raises issues that range from the legacy
of colonialism to the uncontrolled international arms trade. At the heart
of it is the simple idea that every human life is equally precious, and
that every person has rights. The people of Zimbabwe took their stand in
the voting booth. The dockworkers of South Africa took their stand at the
harbour. Now, even if we can only offer a click, it is time to do our
part as well.

With hope,

Ben, Ricken, Graziela, Galit, Paul, Iain, Pascal, and Veronique–the
Avaaz.org team

Sources:
1. Business Day: “South Africa: Unions Bid to Halt Zimbabwe Arms Ship.”
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804220109.html
2. New York Times: “China Says Shipment of Arms for Zimbabwe May Turn
Back.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23zimbabwe.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slog
in&oref=slogin
3. New York Times: “Human Wave Flees Violence in Zimbabwe.”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/world/africa/21zimbabwe.html?ex=1366516800&en=
0378560da461b30a&ei=5088

First things first:

Our Graduation Ceremony for Osborn Omoding and Rita Ennu was a a great success thanks to our fantastic supporters, generous local businesses, fabulous Board of Directors, Faculty and volunteers! Many thanks goes out to all that supported us in whatever capacity this past fall. We certainly, more than any other year, could not have done it with out all of you!

Rita and Osborn have returned to Uganda, and are busy working wtih Pilgrim. We are anticipating an official update from them and Calvin Echodu soon. Please check back soon for more from our friends in Uganda.

John Van Eenwyk, our Clinical Director, has been enjoying his year-long sabbatical in Trinidad. Never one to rest on his laurels, John has begun meeting with members of the Professional Psychology Association of Trinidad and Tobago about setting up a trauma treatment program there. According to John, “The crime rate for the island as a whole is higher than Washington, DC and for Port-of-Spain, the capitol, higher than any U.S. city. Things are pretty much out of control here.”

John Reports, “As a result of our meeting, the association has asked me to present a one-day workshop where we’ll look how traumatic experiences influence our psychology, what we can do about it, what pitfalls to avoid, and–finally–what resources we can bring to the project. I’ll then consult with them for the time i am here as we launch the project. They have been trying to get this off the ground for over a year, but needed someone to spearhead the effort. ITTP comes through again!”

IN OTHER NEWS:

ITTP has been the fiscal sponsor of a local non-profit, POWER(Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights -formerly known as WROC). It has been a growing and learning experience to be sure. Please visit POWER’s website for more information on their programs in Olympia.

ITTP has also been joining forces with former student, Janaka Jayawickrama to edit and publish the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Bulletin. Through the efforts of Mr. Jayawickrama, the bulletin has grown in content and distribution. We are very excited to be collaborating on this project with Janaka. Please return to this website to view the bulletin in its entirety. The Spring edition should be out by May 1st.

ITTP will be publishing its own newsletter soon as well. If you have any interesting ideas for articles or announcements for our newsletter, please contact Keylee at: minnaloushe2@gmail.com with your ideas. The ITTP Newsletter will also be published in the first week of May.

Finally, this website will be getting a slight overhaul! This is an exciting proposition as there are many blank pages still existing on this site. I will be working with new advisory board member, Andrew Ford Lyons, on a site update and re-design. Please check back for updates soon!

That’s it for now. Thank you all again for your support.

Peace -

Keylee Marineau – Program Director

WASHINGTON – In a stunning admission to ABC news Friday night, President Bush declared that he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details of the CIA’s use of torture. Bush reportedly told ABC, “I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Bush also defended the use of waterboarding.

Recent reports indicate that high-level advisers including Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet were part of the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee” that met regularly and approved the CIA’s use of “combined” “enhanced” interrogation techniques, even pushing the limits of the now infamous 2002 Justice Department “torture memo.” These top advisers reportedly signed off on how the CIA would interrogate suspects – whether they would be slapped, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning.

“We have always known that the CIA’s use of torture was approved from the very top levels of the U.S. government, yet the latest revelations about knowledge from the president himself and authorization from his top advisers only confirms our worst fears,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “It is a very sad day when the president of the United States subverts the Constitution, the rule of law, and American values of justice.”

Romero added, “It is more important than ever that the U.S. government, when seeking justice against those it suspects of harming us, adhere to our commitment to due process and the rule of law. That’s why the ACLU has taken the extraordinary step to offer our assistance to those being prosecuted under the unconstitutional military commissions process. We unfortunately can’t erase or make up for what has already happened, but at least we can attempt to restore some of the values and some semblance of due process that the Bush administration has squandered in the name of national security.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling on Congress to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.

“No one in the executive branch of government can be trusted to fairly investigate or prosecute any crimes since the head of every relevant department, along with the president and vice president, either knew or participated in the planning and approval of illegal acts,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Congress cannot look the other way; it must demand an independent investigation and independent prosecutor.”

Fredrickson added, “Congress is duty-bound by the Constitution not only to hold the president, vice president, and all civil officers to account, but it must also send a message to future presidents that it will use its constitutional powers to prevent illegal, and immoral conduct.”

For further reading and to take action:

• The ACLU’s letter calling for an independent prosecutor for torture crimes and any criminal cover up is available by downloading this PDF.
• Information on the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealing information on the U.S.’s treatment of detainees is available online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia
• To take action go to this section of the ACLU website.

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”

As first reported by ABC News Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Contacted by ABC News, spokesmen for Tenet and Rumsfeld declined to comment about the interrogation program or their private discussions in Principals meetings. The White House also declined comment on behalf of Rice and Cheney. Ashcroft could not be reached.

ABC News’ Diane Sawyer sat down with Powell this week for a previously scheduled interview and asked him about the ABC News report.

Powell said that he didn’t have “sufficient memory recall” about the meetings and that he had participated in “many meetings on how to deal with detainees.”

Powell said, “I’m not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal.”

In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals’ involvement was not so “startling.” The president had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before Wednesday’s report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans — down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner — had never been disclosed.

Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.

In interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”

The discussions and meetings occurred in an atmosphere of great concern that another terror attack on the nation was imminent. Sources said the extraordinary involvement of the senior advisers in the grim details of exactly how individual interrogations would be conducted showed how seriously officials took the al Qaeda threat.

It started after the CIA captured top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in spring 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. When his safe house was raided by Pakistani security forces along with FBI and CIA agents, Zubaydah was shot three times during the gun battle.

At a time when virtually all counterterrorist professionals viewed another attack as imminent — and with information on al Qaeda scarce — the detention of Zubaydah was seen as a potentially critical breakthrough.

Zubaydah was taken to the local hospital, where CIA agent John Kiriakou, who helped coordinate Zubaydah’s capture, was ordered to remain at the wounded captive’s side at all times. “I ripped up a sheet and tied him to the bed,” Kiriakou said.

But after Zubaydah recovered from his wounds at a secret CIA prison in Thailand, he was uncooperative. “I told him I had heard he was being a jerk,” Kiriakou recalled. “I said, ‘These guys can make it easy on you or they can make it hard.’ It was after that he became defiant.”

The CIA wanted to use more aggressive — and physical — methods to get information. The agency briefed high-level officials in the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, led by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and including then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, which then signed off on the plan, sources said. It is unclear whether anyone on the committee objected to the CIA’s plans for Zubaydah.

The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Mohammad, who is known as KSM, was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.

In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.

“We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it,” Bush said. “And no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew.”

The president said, “I think it’s very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack — I mean, the 9/11 attacks.”

At a hearing before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay March 10, 2007, KSM, as he is known, said he broke under the harsh interrogation. COURT: Were any statements you made as the result of any of the treatment that you received during that time frame from 2003 to 2006? Did you make those statements because of the treatment you receive from these people?

KSM: Statement for whom??

COURT: To any of these interrogators. ?

KSM: CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning, when they transferred me…?

Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the “enhanced” questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called “Golden Shield” for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.

Old hands in the intelligence community remembered vividly how past covert operations, from the Vietnam War-era “Phoenix Program” of assassinations of Viet Cong to the Iran-Contra arms sales of the 1980s were painted as the work of a “rogue agency” out of control.

But even after the “Golden Shield” was in place, briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal.

According to a former CIA official involved in the process, CIA headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking for authorization for specific techniques. Agents, worried about overstepping their boundaries, would await guidance in particularly complicated cases dealing with high-value detainees, two CIA sources said.

Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.

“It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time,” said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. “They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan.’”

Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved. “These discussions weren’t adding value,” a source said. “Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it’s legal, [you should] just tell them to implement it.”

Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department’s own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.

At one meeting in the summer of 2003 — attended by Cheney, among others — Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.

A year later, amid the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the top al Qaeda suspects that was leaked to the press. A new senior official in the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo — the Golden Shield — that authorized the program.

But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns — shared by Powell — that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: “This is your baby. Go do it.”

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

At our celebration, we will be offering a selection of fine wines from local Olympic Wine Merchant, a dessert auction, silent auction, and Live Auction!

We will be gathering together Sunday Dec. 2nd at 5:30pm at the Phoenix Inn, Olympia, WA. For registration information, please contact Keylee at (360)352-2974 or email at ittpolympia@gmail.com