A long but interesting Democracy Now interview with a forensic psychology professor up at Columbia University who interviewed Padilla for 22 hours:
http://www.alternet.org/story/59958/
Besides the familiar ground of how isolation destroys the mind, it casts a different light on the trial. She claims that not only has Padilla come to internalize the goals of the government (adamently in favor of keeping Guantanamo open, wanting to do all he can to help the president); and not only was completely unwilling to aid in his defense; but that he was now convinced that the government was all powerful and that he couldn't ever be freed, and that going to prison was his only escape from his situation of torture.
She's a low-key witness who sounds very plausible. But what she's narrating is mechanics of a stalinist show trial. The only thing that's missing is the public confession to something completely impossible.
According to most standard histories, these isolation techniques that the CIA developed in the 1950s stemmed ultimately in part from the show trials, from wondering how such "brainwashing" was scientifically possible. It looks now like we've scientically reproduced it. It may be no good for interrogation. But it still works perfect for conviction. And for the legal confirmation of any crazy theory we want to project into the world.
Several torture historians have theorized that sleep deprivation was largely how they got witches to confess too -- and to believe. Boy is the future full of possibilities now.
Michael