Soldz Answers APA President on Interrogation Whitewash

Stephen Soldz responded to the news report of American Psychological Association President Sharon Brehm's remarks at an Indiana University forum on November 30 sponsored by the Progressive Faculty Coalition there. Brehm is a psychology professor at IU, and a former chancellor there. She also, as current president of the APA, helped defeat the drive to place a moratorium on psychologist participation in national security interrogations of so-called "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo, CIA "black sites", and elsewhere. In addition, she was co-author of a series of letters to George W. Bush and administration officials recently, describing APA's position on coercive interrogations, while remaining studiously (and shamefully) quiet on the use of psychological torture, which APA contingently supports -- no matter what APA says -- at U.S. sites.

It is worth noting that President Brehm was instrumental in torpedoing the original moratorium resolution at APA, and bureaucratically forwarding the placement of an alternate resolution, which would allow for the contingent use of sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, etc. See my story on Moment of Truth Arrives: APA & Participation in U.S. Torture, especially the section titled "Brehm the Decider".

The following was posted at Stephen Soldz's site, Psyche, Science and Society:

The Facts be Damned!:
Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Participation in Detainee Interrogations

Stephen Soldz

Last Friday American Psychological Association President, and Indiana University professor, Sharon Brehm discussed the APA's policies supporting psychologist participation in national security interrogations with faculty and students at her university. The Indiana Daily Student has an account of the meeting.

While the entire article is well worth reading, a few of Dr. Brehm's comments as cited there are especially worth commenting upon. Either they reflect an unacceptable level of ignorance of the basic facts about psychologists' roles in American torture or they are simply willful falsehoods. For example, Dr. Brehm stated:

"Brehm said psychologists only acted in an advisory role during questionings, working with interrogators to develop effective strategies that will elicit “accurate information.”"

There is now overwhelming evidence from reporters and government documents that this statement is not simply false, but almost the exact opposite of the truth. Thus, three major journalists (Jane Mayer at the New Yorker, Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair, and Mark Benjamin at Salon) have reported that the basic torture techniques used by the CIA in its black sites were initially developed and implemented by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. This role is far from Brehm's "…psychologists only acted in an advisory role during questionings, working with interrogators to develop effective strategies that will elicit 'accurate information.' " On the contrary, as Eban reported In Vanity Fair:

"psychologists weren't merely complicit in America's aggressive new interrogation regime. Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the C.I.A..”

Thus, Dr. Brehm's "effective strategies" include months of total isolation with nothing to do and no one to talk to, freezing, being chained up in painful positions for hours and days on end, and it seems, waterboarding.

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (OIG), in a report declassified last May, documented the central role of psychologists, including those from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program in the development of what the OIG itself saw as abusive. [See our summary of the OIG report and in pdf format.] The OIG report documents how SERE psychologists trained Guantanamo psychologists in the use of SERE-based torture techniques. The OIG report also documents how SERE and Guantanamo staff went to Iraq to train US soldiers there in abusive SERE-based "counter-resistance" techniques. The OIG report made clear that these techniques were, in the OIG's opinion, abusive.

Just last month the Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures manual was leaked. As I wrote, this document details the systematic use of a month of isolation on all new detainees "to foster dependence on interrogators and `enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process.' " The decision about how long a detainee would be held in isolation, the SOP states, was to be made by the GTMO Joint Intelligence Group (JIG). The Chief Psychologist for the JIG at the time the SOP was issued was Col. Larry James. The APA appointed Col. James, along with five others with military or intelligence ties (including the head SERE psychologist), to its Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security to formulate "ethics" to decide if it was "ethical" for psychologists to participate in national security interrogations. Further, the APA selected Col. James to present its "anti-torture" policy to the 2007 Convention.

To this extensive record that psychologists were active and central participants in some of the worst of the Bush administration's abuses, Dr. Brehm contrasts her faith:

"“We have great confidence that at least most of our members are really good people and that they would not do bad things,” Brehm said, adding her belief that psychologists had the ability to be heroes in fighting against torture."

Given the historical record, Dr. Brehm's belief only makes sense if the words "heroes," "against," and "torture" no longer mean what they used to mean.

Another of Dr. Brehm's statements is similarly astounding, given that she is a social psychologist:

"“All of our ethical policies are based on individual responsibility,” Brehm said. “If you violate the behaviors that are prescribed then, if it is a serious violation, we’ll kick you out of the association and you may not be able to make a living anymore. It is that basic.”"

Social psychologists are taught from the first day that the social environment often overrules individual behavioral tendencies. Those in abuse-generating situations are likely to participate in abuse. Social psychologists routinely study why "good" people do "bad" things. There is no evidence that psychologists are uniquely able to resist these pressures Indeed, at the APA Convention last August, Craig Haney, a social psychologist who studies the US criminal justice system, stated that in 30 years of research in prisons, he knew of not a single instance in which a psychologist stopped existing abuse.

Dr. Brehm, like the rest of the APA leadership, ignores that we live in a country which, at this time, is committed to detainee abuse as national policy. Those aiding interrogations in that system are, at best, complicit in the numerous abuses we know are occurring, the kidnapping of detainees from around the world, the purchase of detainees, the lack of any legal rights, the removal of the centuries-old right to habeas corpus, not to mention the abusive interrogations. Rather than denouncing this organized regime, the APA talks obsessively about "influencing policy" through engagement, but has precious little to show for it. The CIA still tortures, using the techniques that were designed by psychologists. We all know it. The press reports on it. But the APA has yet to utter a word condemning these misuses of psychological knowledge and expertise.

Jane Mayer, in an august 8, 2007 Democracy Now! interview pointed out that not only the knowledge and expertise but the prestige of psychology was central to the Bush administration's torture regime. The administration figures ordering torture hoped psychologist participation would prove to be a "get out of jail free" card, in the event of future investigation of and trial for their crimes:

"if you take a look at the so-called torture memos, the forty pages or so of memos that were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo way back right after 9/11, and you take a look at how they -- they're busy looking at the Convention Against Torture, basically, it seems, trying to figure a way around it. One of the things they argued, these lawyers from the Justice Department, is that if you don't intend to torture someone, if your intention is not just to inflict terrible pain on them but to get information, then you really can't be necessarily convicted of torture.

So how do you prove that your intent is pure? Well, one of the things they suggest is if you consult with experts who will say that what you're doing is just interrogation, then that might also be a good legal defense. And so, one of the roles that these SERE psychologists played was a legal role. They were the experts who were consulted in order to argue that the program was not a program of torture. They are to say, “We've got PhDs, and this is standard psychology, and this is a legitimate way to question people.”"

We have written Dr. Brehm directly documenting in detail reports that psychologists were central in creating, implementing, standardizing as policy, and disseminating the abusive interrogation techniques used by American military and the CIA. We sent Dr. Brehm an Open Letter signed by over 700 psychologists. We sent her our summary of the OIG report. She never responded. I sent her my article on the systematic use of isolation at Guantanamo. Again, no response. So, if Dr. Brehm is truly ignorant of the central role of psychologists in US abusive interrogations, it was not for lack of opportunity to inform herself.

Or do APA leaders know the facts, but simply not care? After all, the military and intelligence agencies hire hundreds, or even thousands of psychologists and provided many tens of millions in grant funding for psychological research. Further, psychologists have a preferred position over their long-time rivals, the psychiatrists, aiding interrogations in US detention centers. A little willful ignorance is, perhaps, a small price to pay for the APA leadership when millions of dollars and preferential treatment for psychologists are at stake.

But whether ignorance or willful avoidance, Dr. Brehm's lack of responsiveness to the legitimate concerns of so many of the APA's membership comes at a high price. The issue is increasingly dividing the organization, and threatens its hegemony as the primary representative of organized psychology at a time when rival psychological organizations are gaining membership and energy.

Only the APA's members can decide that closing one's eyes to abuse is too high a price to pay for government funding and other favors from the powerful.

Distribute as you see fit.

Stephen Soldz
Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
1581 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA 02446
ssoldz@bgsp.edu

I thank Dr. Soldz for all his labor in answering so quickly and so well the oh-so-placid obfuscations and falsifications of Brehm. I also am grateful for his integrity, as demonstrated by all the work he's done on this issue over the many, many months.