Guantanamo Psychologist Led Rendition and Imprisonment of Afghan Boys, Complaint Charges

Originally posted at Truthout

Four Ohio residents filed court papers last week seeking to compel the Ohio State Psychology Board to investigate Dr. Larry James, a retired Army colonel and former chief psychologist for the intelligence command at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, who oversaw the brutal torture of detainees, including children.

The motion was filed by Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas on behalf of the four residents, which includes a psychologist, a veteran, a minister and a long-time mental health advocate.

Earlier this year, the psychology board had dismissed a complaint first filed by the same Ohio residents last July, stating, "It has been determined that we are unable to proceed to formal action in this matter."

The original complaint, filed with the Ohio Board of Psychology, was supported by over a thousand pages of documentation, including reports from the US military, the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency and statements from survivors and witnesses. But the board did not provide a rationale as to why it was unable to probe the allegations leveled against James.

James was head of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT), which was made up of psychologists and other mental health professionals who assisted interrogators at the prison facility during the first half of 2003. From 2004 to 2006, he served as chief of psychology at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, and in 2007 he returned to Guantanamo. He retired in 2008.

James is currently dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He was licensed to practice psychology in Ohio in 2008.

According to the complaint, during James' tenure at Guantanamo, "boys and men were systematically abused" and were subjected to "rape and death threats" and torture techniques such as "forced nudity; sleep deprivation; extreme isolation; short-shackling into stress positions; and physical assault."

Moreover, the complaint states that James supervised the forceful and arbitrary detention of three Afghan boys, "transported thousands of miles away from their families and denied them access to counsel."

James did not return an email request for comment.

In their verified complaint filed with the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, seeking a writ to compel the Ohio Board of Psychology "to proceed to 'formal action' against Dr. Larry C. James," the complainants quote an affidavit by former American Psychological Association (APA) Practice Directorate Chief, Dr. Bryant Welch, that the allegations in the complaint, "if true, represent the most serious ethical breaches I have seen in my thirty-five years as a psychologist. They also have the most far reaching implications for the profession of psychology of any ethical or licensing issue I have yet encountered."

IHRC's earlier complaint (PDF link) was damning.

He was accused of numerous instances of professional misconduct and violations of the law, including failure to protect his clients from harm, exploitation of those with whom he worked, failure to protect detainees' confidentiality and failure "to represent honestly his own conduct, experience and the results of his services."

Indeed, in "Fixing Hell," a book James published in 2008 about his experiences at Guantanamo and at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, he claimed that he was "righting the wrongs" at both prisons and that there "have been no incidents of abuse at Guantanamo Bay by either an interrogator or psychologist reported since my arrival in Cuba in January 2003."

Ironically, in his book, James wrote of at least two incidents of such abuse during his 2003 tenure, which as the IHRC complaint explains, he failed to report to proper authorities.

A fair amount of James' narrative about his time at Guantanamo concerns his actions after his commander, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, put him in charge of three young teenage prisoners, all younger than age 16 and one perhaps as young as 12 years old, in February 2003. James was in charge of rendering the boys from Bagram, Afghanistan, where they were then held, arranging their Guantanamo housing and attending and supervising their interrogations. James wrote that the boys were "very traumatized" upon arrival at Guantanamo. While he presents his treatment of these children as a "case study" for his "softer" style of interrogation - "exactly the kind of prisoners I needed to test my philosophy on interrogation" - a closer, more nuanced look presents a very different picture.

"Teenage Terrorists"

The story of these young detainees had previously been documented in news reports and is also retold in the IHRC complaint, which redacts the boys' personal information, something James failed to do in his book.

While James doesn't mention the fact in his book, there were at least a dozen underage, minor children or teenagers held at Guantanamo. US authorities in Iraq and Afghanistan have allegedly held thousands of other juveniles. The IHRC complaint refers to torture and abuse suffered by two of the Guantanamo minors, Omar Khadr and Mohammed Jawad, during the period James was chief psychologist. These teens, as well as all the others but the three held at Camp Iguana, the special camp built to hold them at the Guantanamo base, were kept with the adult prisoners at Camp Delta and other sites at the prison.

According to James, when he arrived at Bagram to pick up his new prisoners, he found them looking "not only terrified but also disheveled and lost." Nevertheless, he believed them to be "far from innocent," "teenage terrorists." "These juveniles were not sweet kids," James wrote.

Yet, he also found that the trauma they endured was very real. James wrote that the boys were "victims of rape, illiterate, one certainly had PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]"; they were, according to James, "the most fragile - psychologically, medically and academically - children I had ever met."

James glosses over in his book the circumstances of the 20-hour flight from Bagram that brought the children to Guantanamo. But news reports published after the children were released in January 2004 provides more detail about their time held by US forces in Afghanistan and their subsequent transport to Guantanamo.

In his book, James states that all three children "had been captured while fighting in a combatant role against US forces in Afghanistan." But James failed to provide any evidence to support such an assertion, which is contrary to reports the boys made themselves. According to a report published a Guardian UK article, two of the boys were caught while US forces were "looking for a local commander, Mansoor Rahman Saiful, who had fought against the Taliban for years, but joined the radical Islamists when America attacked Afghanistan."

Naqibullah, age 13, "a local imam's son, said he stumbled into the raid while cycling from a friend's house," and was interrogated daily about his knowledge of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

"I told them, 'I don't know these people and I am too young to give anything to anyone without my father's authority.'" After two weeks, Naqibullah said, he was asked whether he had any objection to being taken to "another place."

"I said, 'What can I do? You will take me wherever you want to.'" That night, bound, blindfolded and fitted into orange overalls, he was loaded on to a cargo plane and flown non-stop to Cuba. Naqibullah's first 10 days in Guantanamo were the worst of his life, he said.

According to a March 2004 story by The New York Times, another child prisoner, Asadullah, age 12 or 13, believed to be the youngest of the prisoners, said he was interrogated daily for several months while held in Afghanistan. The beatings he endured in the first five days of his captivity still bothered him when he arrived in Guantanamo.

As with Naqibullah, the third child prisoner, Mohammed Ismail Agha, age 13, told a foreign journalist, as reported in The Washington Post in February 2004, that he had been arrested because a friend with whom he was looking for work was supposedly identified as a Taliban. He spent a month and a half at Bagram before being "warned that if he did not confess he would be sent to a terrible and distant place called Guantanamo."

Agha was subjected to sleep deprivation and stress positions during his time at Bagram in an effort to get him to make a confession.

"It was a very bad place. Whenever I started to fall asleep, they would kick on my door and yell at me to wake up," he said. "When they were trying to get me to confess, they made me stand partway, with my knees bent, for one or two hours. Sometimes I couldn't bear it any more and I fell down, but they made me stand that way some more."

Agha's story of his rendition is similar to that of Naqibullah. He was "put on a plane with other prisoners, chained by the wrists and ankles, with a hood placed over his head."

"It was hard to breathe," he said.

Supervising the transport back to Guantanamo on the large C-17 transport plane, complete with medical team, military police and Air Force Special Forces shooters, was Col. Larry James. The former chief psychologist never states whether he reported the treatment received by these child prisoners at Bagram to any authority.

"I Prayed to God, I Asked, 'Where Is My Son?'"

While James and the Guantanamo authorities apparently did try to make the boys' treatment much improved over that of prisoners in the rest of the camp, including at least eight or nine other teens held at roughly the same time, the young prisoners were not entirely grateful.

According to the Guardian report, "The boys played football every day and sometimes basketball and volleyball with their guards." But Asadullah told his interviewer, "I was very sad because I missed my family so much.... I was always asking, 'When can I go home? What day? What month?' They said, 'You'll go home soon,' but they never said when."

According to a February 2004 story in the UK Telegraph, Ismail Agha (who is reported as 15 in this article) said, "At first I was unhappy ... For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer."

APA Convention Fallout After Organization Bails on Ethics and Torture

The first notable resignation from the American Psychological Association (APA) after their epic fail of a convention last week is now recorded. Dr. Jancis Long, until recently the President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), sent her resignation letter (reproduced below) to the President and Ethics Director of APA on August 8. The letter was posted by Stephen Soldz, the new President of PsySR.

As I noted in a recent article, the APA was facing two major issues going into the annual convention and summer meeting of their Council of Representatives, which run concurrently. The APA was stonewalling on implementing of the member-passed referendum on psychologist participation at interrogation sites that do not meet human rights standards. Additionally, the APA announced that after four years, they were extending by another six months any work on a revision of a portion of their ethics code (1.02) that allows psychologists to suspend ethical functioning if they wish to adhere to domestic law, or the orders of an employing agency, like the military. The latter has been called the Nuremburg Defense by its critics.

One surprise heading into the convention was a special letter (MS Word doc) sent by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, to APA leaders, labeling Guanatamo's prison to be "outside, or in violation of, international law." Nowak called on APA to implement the member-passed referendum and take action to tell "the Obama administration, the Department of Defense, and the US intelligence agencies [to] remove psychologists from Guantánamo and any other sites where international law is being violated or where inspectors are prohibited from assessing that conditions are in compliance with international law."

While reportedly making a stir, the UN Special Rapporteur's letter did not influence the seat-warmers at the Council of Representatives, who made no move to implement the referendum. Neither did any executive officer make any motion in that direction. Mr. Nowak also called on APA to amend the aforementioned ethics code. The result? United Nations... meet lead balloon.

When it came to the ethics provision, the Council of Representatives courageously bounced the issue of amending the ethics code back to the same committee that just announced no change was needed, and told it to report back in another six months. After such brave action, I imagine the COR reps had to fan themselves from exhaustion, and retire to the lounge to recover from the vapors.

The resignation of Long follows other prominent resignations by APA leaders, and a recent article by one of the latter,Byrant Welch, former Executive Director of APA's Practice Directorate, who had recently written an article explaining in detail how APA conducts its duplicitous internal affairs.

I congratulate Dr. Long, and others who have chosen, often with sadness and great internal debate, to leave this rotting corpse of an organization, which has tied organized psychology to the worst aspects of the scientific tradition -- obeisance to governmental authority, and the use of knowledge without ethical compunction in the subjugation of individuals and other groups of people at the behest of coercive state interests.

What follows is the text of Dr. Long's letter:

8th August, 2009

Dr. James Bray, President
Dr. Stephen Behnke, Ethics Director
American Psychological Association
First Street NE, Washington DC 20002

Dear Drs. Bray and Behnke:

This is to let you know that I am resigning today from APA. I have been a member since around 1980, and would have expected to continue for many more years. I am resigning now because of the decision of the Ethics Committee in June to postpone indefinitely rewording Ethics Code 1.02 and 1.03, and the agreement of the Board to let this go out as APA policy. This decision came four years after the Council of Representatives had requested the Ethics Committee to consider revisions to these items, now termed the APA's "Nuremberg Defense" clauses. The recent developments of the Substitute Motion and apparent commitment to reopen the Ethics Committee's decision (to be handled, presumably, by the same body that delayed a decision for four years, and decided against revision two months ago) with a reporting date six months hence, to me do not mitigate the June decisions taken at the highest levels of APA. "Too little, too late, too slow" remains my opinion.

Although I have been deeply disturbed over the past four years at learning of APA's policy toward psychologists' involvement with torture and mistreatment of illegally held foreign prisoners, I have not resigned before because I do not expect either people or institutions to be perfect, and am well aware that positive social change is often complicated and shockingly slow. I also recognize that APA performs many services to psychologists, psychology and social wellbeing. But the decisions in June told me that APA is no longer a place for a responsible humanitarian psychologist.

I write you this on the last day of my Presidency of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. I shall continue as an active psychologist, and will add the sad lessons I have learned from APA in my teaching and activism.

Jancis Long Ph.D.
President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
JLong@psysr.org

Monkey Business on APA Anti-Torture Referendum?

Stephen Soldz has a story up at Psyche, Science and Society questioning whether there has been undue interference by staff at the American Psychological Association, "rallying sentiment against the Referendum."

The Referendum's key passage reads:

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.

Former Executive Director of the APA Practice Directorate, Bryant Welch, has written to APA CEO Norm Anderson "expressing concern about... staff interference in the voting process."

Last August 10, I wrote an article reporting APA bureaucrats' campaign against the Referendum. (The full text of the Referendum can be accessed here.) At that time, I wrote:

...APA policy and organizational apparatus is fully intertwined in the governmental spiderweb of military, intelligence, and private consultation and "scientific" organizations, and academia, under the umbrella of serving the national security state. This wide-ranging set of special interests forms an extremely formidable opposition to those who would fundamentally change the policies and personnel responsible for the institution of a world-wide network of secret prisons and institutionalized torture.

The following quote from one of two letters by Dr. Welch to Dr. Anderson, CEO of APA, is taken from Dr. Soldz's article. I highly suggest readers go to Soldz's website to read the entire thing. The passage below captures, I think, Dr. Welch's main points:

When I worked at APA it was an absolute rule that staff were not to participate in organizational political issues. After the reorganization by-laws vote, for example, a very senior staff member was advised to find alternative employment because he assisted in sending out a mailing in support of the reorganization plan. This was probably the single most widely recognized principle directing APA staff behavior.

In the current referendum campaign, it is very clear that this longstanding principle has been utterly disregarded. The APA Ethics officer has been quite outspoken in opposition to the referendum and tireless in his efforts to defeat it. The director of public information and her staff have released numerous documents to the media and to the membership in support of the policy that was adopted by Council and the Board of Directors. At the recent APA Convention, proponents of the referendum were literally followed and their remarks surreptitiously tape recorded without their knowledge by a staff member from the public information office. (This individual allegedly did advise a non-APA member of her intent, but did not seek such permission from the psychologists or even indicate that she was taping them.) In the current political climate and given the nature of the issue at hand, this is very inappropriate and, quite frankly, bizarre and chilling.

This, of course, also puts the APA governance and central office in conflict with the by-laws. The principle of a referendum by the membership to overturn decisions by the Board of Directors and the Council of Representatives, guaranteed by the by-laws, is obviously rendered meaningless if the membership in seeking such relief can be opposed by a Board of Directors and Council of Representatives using the full staff and financial resources of the central office. These resources belong to the members, not the Board or the governance, and they ought not be used to support a position the very nature of which is being challenged by the membership. I think the logic of this position is quite clear and compelling.

It is also important to note that this apparently new policy of putting mid-level staff out front on major political issues,only frustrates organizational accountability. Ms. Farberman and Dr. Behnke are presumably not the policy makers and not acting on their own on these matters. The members have a right to know who is making the decisions on this important policy, but that is nowhere to be found in APA’s pronouncements either to the public or to the membership. Since Dr. Levant and Koocher left office, one gets the sense that there is no one home at APA on the issue except for the aforementioned APA staff members. The current APA president in the context of this dispute is alleged to have said that presidents “have no power” in APA.

Accordingly, Norm, this extraordinary effort on the part of the staff to advance a position currently in dispute within the association creates a huge “tilt” in the election process and, I believe, will justify putting aside the results of any negative vote on the referendum should that occur. Hopefully, for the good of everyone, it will not happen. Winning the referendum vote, as the current governance hopes to do, will be a terrible pyrrhic victory for the APA, and it will be a defeat of disastrous proportions for the profession.

I hope you will reconsider what I believe is a serious and inappropriate misallocation of APA staff and resources. I also hope you will see to it that in future APA communications mid-level staff people are not used to obscure the identities of the higher-ups that are actually making the decisions, whoever they may be at this time. The membership has a right to know who these individuals are. Most importantly, the right to petition on a policy matter is a meaningful right only if one side to the dispute is not opposed by the vast resources of the APA central office.

I doubt if the current APA inner sanctum desires advice from me at this point, but, I can assure you it is well-intended and, I think, based on years of experience and training. For what it is worth, I hope the governance will stop trying to rationalize and reframe their initial bad decision and, instead, support the referendum. It will be a lot easier on them to make that decision now than it will be to tolerate the contempt that will be directed toward them, the APA, and the profession of psychology if the referendum is defeated. The group think rationalizations, including attempts like the Bush Administration’s to scapegoat people who oppose them, simply will not wash outside the APA inner sanctum.

The vote on the Referendum, sent out via mail ballot, ends at the conclusion of the business day, September 15. All ballots must be received by then.

APA members, don't delay. Vote for the Referendum. Please note: Ballots can be faxed to 610 935-6175 attention of Paul Nentwig.

UPDATE, 9/14/08
To all APA members who cannot find their ballot for the referendum, please call Garnett Coad at APA tomorrow. The number is 202-336-6087. He will fax the ballot to you, and it can be faxed back. I've heard that over 200 people did this last week.

Late Summer Reads on Psychology, Anthropology & National Security

For those trying to squeeze in some serious late summer reading, I strongly recommend Dr. Bryant Welch's recently published book, State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind.

Dr. Welch elegantly and succinctly describes the psychological mechanisms behind paranoia and denial, and links them to the mindset of many Americans post-9/11. This societal regression due to fear and uncertainty is exploited by political leaders and charlatans in a process Dr. Welch calls political gaslighting. The term "gaslighting" is derived from the classic movie Gaslight (with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman), where a sociopathic husband subtly manipulates his wife's reality and invalidates her sense of what is real, until she feels she is becoming insane and enters a state of mental breakdown.

From State of Confusion:

When the mind's reality sense is repeatedly manipulated by clever people with devious intent, victims' mental ability to function is effectively eroded, and they become disoriented. Rationality falls by the wayside. People behave erratically, and, because of their own ever increasing uncertainty, they become dependent on demagogues and ideologues who speak confidently and appear to offer escape from the uncertainty. This has happened to millions of Americans who, lured by moralistic bromides, have turned to neoconservative spokesmen, ministers, and politicians and become dependent upon them, even enthralled by them....

Political gaslighting is a sophisticated psychological art form that has combined with mass media techniques to become a very powerful political instrument.... the American mind is being manipulated, making America's national behavior highly dysfunctional and volatile.

The book goes into more detail on the mental and social processes involved in this national regression and experience of mass manipulation, making it clear we live in very dangerous times. Those who seek to fight back against political reaction need to read about and understand the social-psychological processes that inhabit the psyches of those who fall under the sway of such reaction, and I can think of no better introduction than Dr. Byrant's book.

"The "Melding of Science and Commerce"

For those who may not have the time to read a full book right now, there are a few good articles I'd like to recommend.

For those following the controversy at APA, a long-time psychologist has started a website, VirtualAPA, and has produced two articles on the controversies over psychologist participation in torture and coercive interrogations. While I can't say I follow some of his more philosophical musings, his analysis of the dilemma that faces the American Psychological Association and institutional psychology (and by extension, psychiatry and medicine in general) is both sharp and incisive.

Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen are not members of APA and can only be assailed from afar as unethical practitioners or ill informed scientists. The entity of Mitchell, Jessen and Associates can continue to operate and will function according to an entrepreneurial ethic. Their SERE training model is a brand, a product that has been successfully marketed to the military and to private corporate interests. The extension of their model into the detention centers and the “reverse engineering” is a logical business decision. They have increased their market share and can justify their actions, just as any military contractor does, that their efforts are good for the country and good for business.

This melding of science and commerce permeates the entire field.

Embedding Anthropologists?

Finally, over at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hugh Gusterson has a good article on The U.S. Military's Quest to Weaponize Culture. In the article, Gusterson explains both the rationale and the growing opposition to embedding anthropologists and other social scientists in military operational teams, such as the so-called Human Terrain Team System:

The Pentagon plans 26 Human Terrain Teams--one for each combat brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan. The five-person teams include three military personnel. Each team also includes an anthropologist--or another social scientist--who will wear a military uniform and receive weapons training. Described as doing "armed social work" by David Kilcullen, an Australian expert in counterinsurgency who advises Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, the teams elicit information from villagers for Pentagon databases and provide cultural orientation to U.S. military leaders....

Last year, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) issued a statement condemning the use of anthropologists in Human Terrain Teams....

One cannot grasp AAA's concerns without understanding that anthropologists have a unique research method that brings with it special ethical responsibilities: We engage in what one anthropologist has called "deep hanging out" with people, passing the time with them, often day after day for months, painstakingly earning their trust and getting them to tell us about their worlds. What distinguishes anthropology from espionage (apart from anthropologists' impenetrable jargon) is that we seek the consent of our subjects, and we follow an injunction to do no harm to those we study. According to the anthropological code of ethics, our obligations to those we study trump all others--to colleagues, funders, and nation.

The article continues with an examination of another Pentagon program, Project Minerva, which plans to spend millions of dollars "to mobilize social scientists for open research related to the war on terror."

Meanwhile, U.S. Army personnel are showing up at meetings of anthropologists and taking down names and institutional affiliations of anthropologists who had signed a public pledge not to participate in "counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the 'war on terror,'" believing that "anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat, be it through torture, interrogation, or tactical advice."

The U.S. ruling class's mobilization of all layers of civil society for the fear-driven defense of the nation against "terror," is leading to the militarization of the society as a whole. We are already far down this path... too far, such that many sober observers would already call the United States "fascistic."

I would stop short of making that judgment, but we may be closer to it than anyone would like to think. What is lacking is an all-out domestic assault against political opponents and organizations the government deems to be a danger to its political rule and ideology. Under fascistic rule, thousands, if not tens, even hundreds of thousands would be jailed, and violent terror against domestic political opponents would become the order of the day.

Let us hope it does not come to that. A portion of the academy is fighting back, as are other sectors of the society. The "hope" presidential aspirant Barack Obama embodies (whether he really intends it or not) is precisely the hope that U.S. society can turn back from the self-destructive path it appears at times determined to follow.

APA Bureaucrats Try to Torpedo Anti-Torture Resolution

As Stephen Soldz, one of the supporters of an anti-torture referendum resolution now being mailed out to members of the American Psychological Association, reports:

The APA has launched a strong effort at spin and disinformation regarding the referendum. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues who should support this efforts have also parsed the text in such a way as to perceive a potential threat.

The referendum seems tame enough, stating:

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.

The Incredible Lightness of Div. 48

A blow to the proponents of the referendum came from Executive Committee of APA's Division 48, the (ironically-named) Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence. The statement by Division 48 is being passed around on the various APA listservs, as this is a battle largely being fought via e-mail, out of sight of the general public, and even much of APA membership, who may not pay attention to or even be members of the various listservs (which are generally populated by APA bureaucrats, bureaucrat wanna-bes, and members of the politicized opposition).

The EC at Division 48 states the referendum, whose "spirit" it "very much supports", "lacks clarity," is "unrealistic", and "more aspirational than practical." The meat of their opposition is expressed in a very particular fear:

As written, the petition/referendum also extends beyond psychologists involvement at detention sites for individuals held as "enemy combatants" to all contexts and could result in a prohibition against psychologists work in other environments within the United States (e.g., prisons, hospitals). Could psychologists work at supermax prisons, for example?....

... perhaps more importantly, we have concerns about the treatment of prisoners in U.S. correctional facilities and thus, do not want to take U.S. sites off the table for discussion related to human rights.

The opponents of the referendum have seized upon the apostasy of the Peace division, with APA President-elect James Bray circulating copies of the Division 48 Executive Committee position to other APA divisional listservs. The President of Division 48 has publicly stated that "the referendum in its current form would undermine the vital humanitarian work of many psychologists."

But the defense of supermax prison jobs, and the concern about U.S. prison conditions rings hollow, being a disingenuous attempt to back institutional concerns in alliance with the Department of Defense and the CIA. In political terms, the coalition between so-called peace psychologists and pro-military types within APA represents a classic rotten bloc.

In one example of the right-wing acrimony whipped up by the threats against psychologist jobs -- even jobs attending prisoners held in inhumane long-term isolation and/or indefinite detention -- I came across this case of preposterous mock-heroic posturing, posted to a listserv from the division for media and psychology:

The referenced sponsoring coalition would have us turn the USA into a toothless lion in our defense against the deranged terrorists, which have set a fatwa limit of 10-Million innocent casualties per incident.

Defending the Resolution

Meanwhile, the backers of the referendum have released a statement clarifying the intent of the resolution:

Dear APA members:

As sponsors and supporters of the referendum, we are aware that this is a period given to commentary from those who have introduced the referendum, and that–consistent with APA policy–such commentary will be considered in future policy decisions as valid interpretation of the resolution’s intent. We are also aware that there has been some concern voiced on several listservs that the resolution may have ‘unintended consequences’; namely that it may impact the work of psychologists working in existing U.S. jails, prisons, psychiatric facilities, and hospitals.

While we believe a reading of the full referendum in its context resolves these concerns, we would like to be sure that there are no misunderstandings on this point. We are therefore using this commentary period to reiterate the application of the petition, its meaning, and intent:

This referendum is focused on settings such as Guantánamo Bay and the CIA ‘black sites’ set up by the U.S. as part of its ‘global war on terror’; settings where the persons being detained are denied the protections of either constitutional or international law, settings which have been denounced by the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

We are well aware of the harms and legal struggles facing certain prisons and jails inside the domestic U.S. criminal justice system. However, the referendum takes no position on such settings where prisoners have full access to independent counsel and constitutional protections; nor does the referendum take a position on settings that now exist within the domestic mental health system where clients and patients also possess these basic rights.

For Psychologists for an Ethical APA
Dan Aalbers
dan.aalbers@gmail.com

Ruth Fallenbaum
ruthfallenbaum@comcast.net

Brad Olson
b-olson@northwestern.edu

As Soldz's piece points out, The Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International has issued a statement in support of the referendum, as has former APA-PENS member Jean Marie Arrigo. Former head of APA's Practice Directorate, Bryant Welch, has released a statement in support, as well:

This is the third consecutive annual convention in which APA has presented new reasons for refusing to explicitly state that psychologists are not to participate in detention centers where torture is being used. In 2006 we were told, among many things, that torture was not occurring, and that it was sufficient for APA to reiterate its 1986 resolution “opposing torture.” Last year we were told that psychologists’ presence at the detention centers was actually necessary to prevent the torture whose very existence these same APA officials denied the previous year. Bizarrely, APA outlawed nineteen specific forms of torture, as if in some way the large number of proscribed techniques would cripple torture efforts.

As a result, for the first time in APA history, APA rank and file members have secured the necessary signatures to petition the APA and force APA to submit the torture issue to a referendum by the membership.

Persisting in its support for psychologists’ participation in Bush detention centers and appearing insensitive to the moral concerns of its members, APA leaders are now advising APA members to oppose the referendum because the language of the referendum might be interpreted to preclude psychologists working in certain institutional settings. This argument is based on scenarios that are extremely far fetched and could readily be addressed even were they to occur. To the public, of course, the message would be that psychologists are not willing to stop torture now if there is even a remote risk of losing jobs in the future.

Since the Bush Administration will be out of office by the next time APA meets, this will be the last opportunity psychologists will have to remove this terrible stain from our reputation and our history.

Torture is not a nuanced issue. Vote No to torture. Vote YES on the referendum.

The voting will continue for the next month or so. If you know a psychologist, forward this story to them. Have them visit ethicalapa.com. Tell them about the presidential campaign of Steven Reisner, who aims to implement the policies the referendum represents.

APA and the National Security State

I, of course, am under no illusions that the APA will be reformed any time soon. It will be an immense victory to pass the resolution or elect Dr. Reisner. But the APA policy and organizational apparatus is fully intertwined in the governmental spiderweb of military, intelligence, and private consultation and "scientific" organizations, and academia, under the umbrella of serving the national security state. This wide-ranging set of special interests forms an extremely formidable opposition to those who would fundamentally change the policies and personnel responsible for the institution of a world-wide network of secret prisons and institutionalized torture.

But, as the cliche states, every journey must begin with the first steps. And a necessary first step is supporting the referendum being voted on this month at APA, and helping circulate the defense of that referendum as far and widely as you can.

On Eve of the Convention: Is APA Leadership Splintering?

Dr. Bryant Welch's recent article, Why Did They Do It? - Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association, published online at Counterpunch, Psyche, Science and Society, and many other sites, is a powerful indictment of the moral and political bankruptcy of the American Psychological Association, written by a key insider.

Dr. Bryant is a Harvard law school graduate and a licensed psychologist. For over twenty years he's been a key member of the APA bureaucratic apparatus. Bryant's article is best when it details some of the organizational and personnel links inside APA that helped fashion that organization's pro-military policies, including its seeming indifference to the issue of psychologist involvement in torture.

From Dr. Bryant's article (see links above):

When the torture issue broke last year, the answer to the first question about APA’s military connection seemed obvious to me. Since the early 1980’s APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye’s office. Inouye, for much of that time, has served as Chair of the Subcommittee on Defense for the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Subcommittee has responsibility for all U.S. defense spending. One of Inouye’s administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick DeLeon, has long been active in the APA and served a term as APA president. For over twenty-five years relationships between APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon. It was DeLeon acting on behalf of Inouye who initiated the DOD psychologist prescription demonstration project in the late 1980’s that began psychology’s efforts to secure prescriptive privileges....

... there is no question that APA had formed a strong relationship with military psychologists and the DOD through its connections with Inouye’s office.

I strongly recommended reading Bryant's full article. But where it is weakest is in its delineation of the decay of APA governance and moral stature, so that APA's "terrible regression" is traced to the 1990s.

What is clear to me, instead, is that the pluralistic and multi-faceted governing process that I witnessed when I first entered the APA in the early 1980’s was sharply curtailed during the 1990’s. Differences of opinion stopped and the APA suffered a terrible regression. Increasingly inbred, under the administration of Raymond Fowler, the association agenda was primarily and at times exclusively financial, focusing on making money both through real estate ventures and through what many of us felt was a an unwarranted, financially harsh treatment of APA employees.

More peculiarly, Fowler’s “agenda”.... served as a means of social control, a subtle injunction against raising any of the conflictual issues, challenges, or ideas that need to be addressed in any vital and accountable organization. The APA became placid and increasingly detached....

As a result of the lengthy era of regression, the governance of APA was ill prepared for thoughtful deliberation on a matter as important as the torture issue. As I have written in State of Confusion when people are confused they are eager to be told what is real. The governance was simply over its head in trying to effectively deliberate on such an issue when there was organized support on the other side coming from the military interests supported by [APA former presidents, Gerald] Koocher and [Ronald] Levant and possibly DeLeon.

Dr. Bryant ignores the longer history of professional psychology in the United States. This history reveals a decades-long pattern of subservience to the needs of the military, police, prison, and national security interests. I hope he will incorporate this history into his further writings, as his sincerity in regards to his disgust with with APA as an organization -- "a regressed and chronically manipulated organization" -- cannot be doubted. His statement reminds me of the article released by distinguished APA member and former Ethics Chair, Ken Pope, earlier this year, when he resigned from APA over their scandalous torture-collaborationist policy.

Dr. Byrant's fusillade against APA comes on the eve of the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Anti-torture dissidents within APA are rallying around the presidential candidacy of Steven Reisner, and political heat generated by, among other things, a mail-in referendum on APA policy around psychologists and detainees at Guantanamo and other U.S. "war on terror" prisons, which currently supports psychologist involvement at these prisons, which do not allow for international protections against inhumane treatment, and have been implicated over and over again in torture.

Psychologists for an Ethical APA is planning a protest at the APA convention in Boston on Saturday, August 16, from 12pm - 2pm, at the plaza at the front entrance of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center at 415 Summer St. The demonstration is co-sponsored by PEAPA, Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and others. Bryant and a number of others are planned speakers.

Bryant was a key insider in APA's internal structure. How many other major APA figures are willing to stand up and speak against the self-destructive, Faustian bargain APA has made with the military and the intelligence agencies? I suspect the vast majority of such insiders are corrupt, bought off, or are true believers in the military's grandiose plans of conquest and technological-psychological-military Valhalla. But Bryant's article has given me hope that there are more principled figures wormed away inside the bloated carcass of APA governance.

Come on out, folks. The air is far better out here. And your souls will certainly thank you for it.