Ethics Process Fails at APA, Psychologists Demand Review

Two psychologists with the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology have written an open letter to current American Psychological Association (APA) President Suzanne Bennett Johnson. The letter excoriates the APA Ethics Office for refusing to censure blatant cases of psychologist involvement in torture or other related crimes.

Doctors Steven Reisner and Trudy Bond review three cases that were brought to APA on charges of ethics violations -- Michael Gelles, John Leso, and Larry James. The letter is reprinted below, reproduced from its online posting here.

I was pleased to see that some of my own investigations into psychologist involvement in torture were referenced by Reisner and Bond, in particular my work on the Daniel King-Michael Gelles case.

APA Confirms It Exonerated Gelles

On August 8, 2010 I received an email from APA Communications Director Rhea Farberman. I had written to her after I'd seen a copy of an unpublished letter she had written to USA Today. According to Farberman, she had written to the paper because they were going to publish an op-ed by attorney Jonathan Turley on Gelles and the Daniel King case. She "wanted to let the USA Today editorial page staff know that at least one of Mr. Turley’s assertions was incorrect." The op-ed was subsequently cancelled.

While Reisner and Bond state in their Open Letter (italics in original): "The Ethics Committee apparently found that Dr. Gelles’ behavior did not violate APA ethics," Farberman confirmed she had written the letter to USA Today, and told me in the August 8 email (bold emphasis in original): "APA did investigate the allegations against Dr. Gelles and found no violations of the APA ethics code."

In the unpublished letter by Farberman to USA Today, written after the 2009 summer APA convention, where former King attorney Jonathan Turley had spoken about the King case and Gelles, the APA Communications Director wrote:

• Mr. Turley asserts that APA ignored his complaint. That is totally untrue. In April of 2001 a complaint was filed against an APA member, Dr. Michael Gelles. As a result of this complaint, filed by Mr. Turley, an ethics investigation was initiated and a formal ethics case was opened.

• Material relevant to the investigation was provided to APA by Mr. Turley who as the complainant’s representative received correspondence from the Ethics Office regarding this case.

• The complainant was provided multiple opportunities to submit information. Materials submitted by Mr. Turley included a videotape which was part of the record and thoroughly reviewed. According to APA’s procedures, the record also included Dr. Gelles’ responses to the charges against him.

• The full APA Ethics Committee reviewed the case and, on the basis of all the facts in the record, including materials provided by Mr. Turley and Dr. Gelles’ responses, determined that there had been no violation of the APA Ethics Code. On September 26, 2002, the APA Ethics Office informed the complainant through Mr. Turley of the final outcome of this matter.

I tried on multiple occasions to get comment from Turley, but he never responded to requests. Nevertheless, another of King's attorney's did speak to me, and revealed that not long after the Gelles interview, Daniel King made a suicide attempt or gesture. I wrote up this interview with former JAG Robert A. Bailey in a follow-up article to my first King-Gelles story, Broken Faith: How a Navy Psychologist Drove A U.S. Prisoner to Attempt Suicide.

I followed up the Aug. 8 email and asked Farberman if APA could "verify if the ethics investigation also contacted Daniel King's military JAG attorneys, Lieutenant Robert Bailey or Lieutenant Matthew Freedus, or reviewed their testimony to the Senate Intelligence committee as part of the ethics investigation?" I also asked if APA would share the video of the King interrogation, if they had a copy.

Farberman refused to make further comment. "We will not be releasing any further materials related to the investigation and review of Mr. Turley’s allegations against Dr. Gelles beyond what I have already told you," she said in her email response.

Actually, what Farberman confirms is far worse than what Turley originally claimed. He said that APA ignored the ethics charge. Farberman insists the charges were investigated but APA found Gelles did nothing wrong. What that means is that from APA's standpoint, misrepresentation of roles, lying, and participation in an abusive interrogation, using sleep deprivation on a prisoner, is totally fine with APA, and such behavior doesn't even merit the most minor of rebukes. (For more details on the King case, see the link above.)

I'd add that I also wrote on the role Col. Larry James played in supervising the rendition of child prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. See Guantanamo Psychologist Led Rendition and Imprisonment of Afghan Boys, Complaint Charges. As one example of James' crime we have the testimony of Mohammed Ismail Agha, age 13, who told the Washington Post, he was "put on a plane with other prisoners, chained by the wrists and ankles, with a hood placed over his head." None of the parents of these children were informed what had happened to their sons.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to psychologists Steven Reisner and Trudy Bond, and other psychologists and medical professionals who have tried to stand up and get their professional associations, and the members of same, to be accountable. It is surely a dark, dark stain on the history of the helping professions to see them twisted into their exact opposites, agencies of cruelty and despair.

What follows is the text of the Open Letter. All italics were in the original.

Open Letter to

President Suzanne Bennett Johnson

American Psychological Association

A.P.A. has taken a very strong stance against the use of torture, inhumane, and degrading treatment, and if anyone is able to identify A.P.A. members who have been involved in such activities, we will take disciplinary action.
-- Gerald Koocher, former APA President, speaking on Democracy Now! (June 16, 2006)

September 18, 2012

Dear Dr. Johnson:

We are two psychologists committed to making certain that psychologists implicated in torture and prisoner abuse are held accountable by oversight bodies for their egregious ethical violations. We believe the public trust and the reputation of our profession depend upon such accountability.

We are writing at this time regarding ethics complaints filed with the APA Ethics Office against three psychologists who remain APA members in good standing: Dr. Michael Gelles, Dr. Larry James and Dr. John Francis Leso. Based on undisputed facts, these cases cry out for investigation and appropriate censure. We would like to briefly review some of the evidence for these complaints and express our concern with regard to the status of each complaint.

Attorney Jonathan Turley filed a complaint with the APA Ethics Office in 2001 against Dr. Michael Gelles for alleged complicity in the harsh treatment of US Naval Officer Daniel King, who had been accused of espionage.[i] [ii] King was held for 520 days without charge by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and interrogated for 29 days in 15-20 hour sessions. During this period, Navy investigators gave King multiple polygraph tests and lied to him about the results. By the end of the month, King had signed a confession despite having no recollection of the actions to which he admitted. Prior to his military hearing, King had become suicidal and felt he was losing his grip on reality, since he could not remember the event. He requested a consultation with a psychologist to help him remember, via hypnosis or truth serum, and King was sent to Dr. Gelles for a psychological consultation.[iii] [iv] [v] According to testimony of King’s defense attorney before the Senate Intelligence Committee, “Gelles virtually ignored the statement of King that he had suicidal thoughts…two days before the interview.”[vi] He focused instead on pressuring King to give the agents “corroborating” evidence, offering to hypnotize King if he did so. These allegations are supported by the videotape of Dr. Gelles’ session with King (made by NCIS without consent) which was provided by Turley to the Ethics Committee. (Ultimately, all charges against King were dismissed when a military judge concluded there was insufficient evidence even to sustain a determination of probable cause.[vii])

The Ethics Committee apparently found that Dr. Gelles’ behavior did not violate APA ethics; in fact, subsequent to this case, Dr. Gelles was chosen by the Director of the Ethics Office to sit on the PENS Task Force and help develop ethical guidelines for national security interrogations.

On December 5, 2007, Dr. Trudy Bond filed a complaint with the APA Ethics Office against Dr. Larry James for his alleged involvement in the harsh treatment of detainees. Among numerous ethical violations, Dr. James oversaw the transport of three child prisoners – one 12 years old and two 13 years old[viii] – from Bagram, Afghanistan to Guantánamo, where Dr. James was the Chief Behavioral Science Consultation Team member (“BSCT #1”).[ix] [x] According to the New York Times, during transport the boys were “put on a plane with other prisoners, chained by the wrists and ankles, with a hood” placed over their heads. At Guantánamo, Dr. James oversaw the daily interrogations of these boys. For ten months the boys’ families were not told what had happened to their children, who had been “disappeared” by American authorities. The United Nations Committee Against Torture has held that such “disappearance” is torture – not only for the subject, but also for the family of the child taken without public acknowledgement. In addition, there is no dispute that such treatment of children is a violation of international law.

The ethics complaint against Col. James was dismissed by the APA Ethics Office without investigation.

In 2006, Dr. Alice Shaw filed a complaint against Dr. John Leso with the APA Ethics Office, which was never officially acknowledged. On April 15, 2007, Dr. Trudy Bond filed a similar complaint against Dr. Leso, which also was not acknowledged. Dr. Bond refiled the complaint on September 4, 2007. That complaint was formally acknowledged by APA on February 27, 2008. Declassified U.S. government documents indicate that while serving at the U.S. Station at Guantánamo Bay Dr. Leso, in his position as BSCT #1 (he preceded Dr. James in this position), co-authored a document recommending that a series of escalating physically and psychologically abusive interrogation tactics be used on detainees there. Many of these techniques were applied to Guantánamo detainee “063,” Mohammed al-Qahtani, under Dr. Leso’s direct supervision.[xi] [xii] Susan Crawford, the Convening Authority for the Guantánamo Military Commissions appointed by George W. Bush, dismissed the case against al-Qahtani precisely because “his treatment met the legal definition of torture.” Many of the techniques and conditions that appeared in Dr. Leso’s written interrogation document were subsequently applied to other men and boys held at Guantánamo and eventually to detainees held in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, more than five years after filing, the ethics complaint against Dr. Leso still remains unadjudicated by the APA Ethics Office (apparently the longest unadjudicated case in APA history).

The results of the case against Dr. Leso in New York clearly establish why the APA must take the lead in such cases. Unlike the NYOPD, the APA’s standards for psychologists do not permit the sidestepping of ethical issues through legal gymnastics. As the APA Ethics Code states:

This Ethics Code applies only to psychologists' activities that are part of their scientific, educational, or professional roles as psychologists. Areas covered include but are not limited to the clinical, counseling, and school practice of psychology; research; teaching; supervision of trainees; public service; policy development; social intervention; development of assessment instruments; conducting assessments; educational counseling; organizational consulting; forensic activities; program design and evaluation; and administration.

Most states follow the lead of the APA Ethics Office in determining ethical standards and in adjudicating cases.

Because of the Ethics Committee’s delay in adjudicating the Leso case, Dr. Steven Reisner initiated an ethics complaint against Dr. Leso with the New York Office of Professional Discipline (NYOPD), which grants his license to practice.[xiii] The NYOPD and the New York Attorney General acknowledged the fact that, “Dr. Leso, apparently, was asked to use his skills as a weapon; not to help the mental health of the detainees.” But the NYOPD used these very facts to determine that – since the aim of Dr. Leso’s activity at Guantánamo was explicitly to cause harm, and since there was no “therapist-patient relationship between Dr. Leso and any of the Guantánamo detainees” – Dr. Leso’s professional behavior could not be considered the “practice of psychology” under the New York Education Law and therefore the ethics code did not apply. The case was dismissed without investigation.

Dr. Reisner pursued the case against Leso in New York State Supreme Court. The Court refused to overrule NYOPD, not on the merits of the case, but based on a technicality: that harm to the profession at large notwithstanding, Dr. Reisner could not show that he had been personally harmed by Dr. Leso’s activities. But harm to the profession of psychology is precisely a central issue for the American Psychological Association. The ability of our association to establish and uphold ethical principles is the very basis upon which we garner and maintain public trust. And that trust has been sorely challenged by the failure of the APA Ethics Office to determine when a psychologist’s behavior in national security interrogations has violated our basic, time-honored ethical principles.

In light of the circumstances we have described here, we are requesting that you, as President of the APA:

1. Open a full review of the practices of the APA Ethics Office with regard to the investigation and adjudication of cases alleging torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in general, and the cases of Drs. Leso, James, and Gelles in particular.

2. Ensure that the case against Dr. Leso now receives a prompt adjudication, five years after it was filed.

3. Move to rescind the current statute of limitations on cases of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment so that there can be accountability for psychologists who participate in classified abuses whenever the evidence of such abuses becomes available.

Sincerely,

Trudy Bond
Steven Reisner

Endnotes

[i] Kaye, J. (2009, July 24). Former Top Navy Psychologist Involved in Pre-9/11 Prisoner Abuse Case. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from Invictus: http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/former-top-navy-psychologist-involved_24.html
[ii] Turley, J. (2007, August 20). Testimony in Senate Intelligence Committee on Abuses By Naval Intelligence and the Daniel King Case Published 1, Aug. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from http://jonathanturley.org/2007/08/20/testimony-in-senate-intelligence-committee-on-abuses-by-naval-intelligence-and-the-daniel-king-case/
[iii] (Turley, 2007)
[iv] (Kaye, 2009)
[v] Soldz, S. (2009, December 7). The "Ethical Interrogation": The Myth of Michael Gelles and the al-Qahtani Interrogation. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from The PsySR Blog: http://www.psysr.org/blog/2009/12/07/michael-gelles-and-the-al-qahtani-interrogation/
[vi] (Turley, 2007)
[vii] (Kaye, 2009)
[viii] James, L. (2008). Fixing Hell. Grand Central Pub. p. 43.
[ix] International Human Rights Clinic. Public Accountability for U.S. Doctors and Psychologists Involved in Torture. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from Human Rights Program Harvard Law School: http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/hrp/clinic/current%20projects/current_americas_projects.html
[x] Center for Constitutional Rights. Evidence: Larry James. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from When Healers Harm: http://whenhealersharm.org/sources-call-for-an-investigation-on-larry-james/
[xi] Center For Constitutional Rights. John Leso. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from When Healers Harm: http://whenhealersharm.org/john-leso/
[xii] UC Berkeley School of Law. Do No Harm? Intelligence Ethics, Health Professionals and the Torture Debate. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from BerkeleyLaw - University of California: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/8307.htm
[xiii] The Center for Justice & Accountability. Reisner v. Leso: Accountability for One of the Psychologists Behind the Guantánamo Abuses . Retrieved September 7, 2012, from The Center for Justice & Accountability: http://cja.org/article.php?list=type&type=412

New Soldz Article Pounds Gelles/FBI Story on Al Qahtani Interrogation

Psychologist Stephen Soldz has written a scathingly accurate article on ex-PENS task force member Michael Gelles, and the truth behind the myth that Gelles and others intervened at Guantanamo and tried to stop the abusive interrogation of Mohamed Al Qahtani and replace it with a benign and more effective form of "rapport"-based interrogation.

Soldz describes, in The "Ethical Interrogation": The Myth of Michael Gelles and the al-Qahtani Interrogation, how the FBI and other interrogators working in the Criminal Investigative Task Force at Guantanamo in late 2002, proposed an interrogation approach to a psychiatrically debilitated Al Qahtani that would exploit months of isolation and abuse with -- another year of near-total isolation! 

Soldz quotes "former police investigator and veteran Army counterintelligence operative David DeBatto" on the likely result of the plan Gelles was proposing:

"That [the initial three-months isolation] is an excessively long time and on the face of it, violates the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] and international law. Two major problems I have with this is first, solitary is a punishment reserved for the worst kind of behavior by inmates in a prison, not for refusing to answer questions. Second, it is the worst possible way to interrogate anyone and will almost always produce negative results."

There's a lot more I could say about Dr. Soldz's excellent article, but for now I simply want to direct my readership to it. I'll have more to comment in a few days.

In the meantime, I'll note that in the same batch of material from the ACLU FOIA release upon which Stephen drew for the article, I found this strange admission from an anonymous member of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, in a memo addressed to Raymond S. Mey in FBI's Counterterrorism Unit, Marion Bowman (Senior Counsel for National Security Affairs) and various Special Agents in the Bureau's Miami office. The memo's date is 5/30/2003. (Note, Mey's name is redacted on the latest version of this memo, which otherwise unredacts much of the text; but Mey's name appears on earlier versions.) Emphasis is added to quote below:

Although SERE techniques may be effective in eliciting tactical intelligence in a battlefield context, the reliability of information obtained using such tactics is highly questionable, not to mention potentially legally inadmissible in court.

Now, since this memo was written to complain about the use of "aggressive interrogation tactics" at Guantanamo, which we know were based on the SERE techniques, it's interesting to see this FBI agent note that such techniques "may be effective" on the battlefield. Why even make this comment? Was it understood that Special Forces were already using such techniques in theater operations? Is torture okay in certain circumstances?

Just asking...

Broken Faith: How a Navy Psychologist Drove A U.S. Prisoner to Attempt Suicide

Cross-posted from The Public Record

Los Angeles attorney Robert A. Bailey, formerly a military JAG officer, and one of the lawyers in the Daniel King case, spoke to me a few weeks ago in some detail about the controversial King interrogation. Bailey, now on the Board of the Program for Torture Victims, described to me how the abusive interrogation King endured, and the betrayal of the military psychologist he thought would help him, led King to a suicidal breakdown.

In articles last month, both at FireDogLake and at The Public Record, I reported on the role of Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) Chief Forensic Psychologist Michael Gelles in the abusive treatment of Chief Petty Officer King, who was forced into giving a false confession of espionage. The story made waves in psychology circles, and was picked up by Truthout and Naomi Wolf, among others.

The story had resonance for anti-torture activists, as Dr. Gelles is a primary spokesperson for the presumed ethical use of psychologists in national security interrogations, and was a prominent member of a 2005 American Psychological Association (APA) task force on the issue. That task force was widely seen as rubber-stamping the military’s position, and backing the use of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere, interrogations later labeled as torture.

King was a cryptanalyst and chief petty officer with twenty years in the Navy when he was held on suspicion of espionage after producing an inconclusive, or “no opinion” polygraph result in September 1999. He was held without charges and interrogated for 29 straight days. He produced a “confession” after seven days of 12 to 19 hour interrogation, sleep deprivation, threats, and 24-hour a day constant surveillance. He quickly recanted this confession, and the interrogation continued, ending after 29 days. King was moved to the brig at Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia, where he remained in a six by nine foot cell for another 500 days.

Until now, it wasn’t clear why NCIS finally abandoned the interrogation. The interview with Robert Bailey clears up what happened, and the revelation is shocking.

The Gelles Interview and Its Aftermath

During the 29 days of interrogation, NCIS agents had ignored King’s pleas for an attorney. When he broke down crying, and voiced suicidal thoughts, complaining that he was losing contact with reality, agents apparently relented when King asked to see a mental health therapist. It was about three weeks into the interrogation, and King was taken to see Dr. Gelles.

As previously reported, the interview with Gelles was videotaped without the approval of King. Two NCIS agents sat in the room. One was a woman agent who Bailey believed had often been utilized to play “good cop” and provide feminine attention to the divorced and lonely Daniel King. The sleep-deprived King told Gelles he couldn’t tell what was real anymore. Agents had told King he had been found lying on his polygraph tests, which itself was a lie that Gelles did nothing to dispel. King asked Gelles to hypnotize him or give him truth serum, so he could figure out what was real.

According to Bailey, Gelles told King that he would feel better if he confessed. King’s civilian attorney, Jonathan Turley, told a congressional committee how Gelles represented himself as “the doc,” ignored King’s suicidal statements, and “told King to give corroborating evidence as a precondition for the hypnosis that King sought to clear his doubts as to any espionage.”

(In full agreement with King’s JAG attorneys, Turley later filed an ethics complaint against Gelles with the APA, which declined to accept it. At the APA convention in Toronto last week, Turley told an audience that Gelles’s behavior was the most egregious case of medical ethics violation he had ever experienced.)

Bailey first met Dan King in the brig at Quantico, only a few weeks after the Gelles interview. Bailey described how King told him that after the Gelles meeting he became more despondent. King had gone to Gelles for help and therapy, and was only met with another demand to confess. He subsequently became “less certain what was real.” His mental condition deteriorated. He had lost faith in people.

Chief Petty Officer King was a man in his 40s, a career Navy man, falsely accused of espionage, the penalty for which could be death, kept from sleeping more than an hour or two at a time for days on end, holed up in various hotel rooms for weeks, and subjected to near constant interrogation. According to Bailey, King could not stand the pressure anymore.

Approximately a week after his attempt to get psychological help, and — as Bailey explained King told him — “distraught” with the duplicity of “doc” Gelles, King grabbed a knife found in the residence hotel where they were holding him and tried to stab himself in the stomach. Agents quickly grabbed him and prevented King from harming himself. But the NCIS agents worried they could no longer monitor their prisoner under the current circumstances, and he was removed from their custody and placed in the brig.

Once King was put in the brig, he was finally allowed to see a lawyer. When Robert A. Bailey, a young JAG attorney with only six months experience, was the first person assigned to King’s defense, he found his client to be “a wreck, just incomprehensible.” The defense team spent weeks just trying to piece together the story of what had happened to him.

The young military attorneys struggled to defend their client against an overbearing and obstructionist prosecution and Navy bureaucracy. The fears the attorneys had for themselves and their careers were aired in May 2000 court hearing at the time before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and can still be viewed via C-SPAN video (warning: the Flash video has garbled sound for the first 14 minutes). Coincidentally, the Chief Judge on the Appeals panel was Susan Crawford, who later was appointed Convening Authority for the military commissions at Guantanamo.

According to Bailey, the two military attorneys in the case realized early on that they would have to decide if they “were going to stick around for a career in the Navy,” or work diligently for their client. Luckily for Daniel King, they made the right choice.

Today, King works at an agency helping veterans access their benefits. He stays in contact with his former attorneys, and reminds them each year how grateful he was that they stood up for him and restored his faith in people. Meanwhile, the APA Ethics Director at the time of the referral of charges against Gelles, Dr. Stephen Behnke, whose office refused to investigate the serious charges noted above, retains his position.

United States v. Daniel King (video)

Some of you may have followed my coverage of the Daniel King case, wherein Navy Chief Forensic Psychologist Michael Gelles reportedly participated in an abusive interrogation regime along with agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). In early 2001, the investigating judge in the case dismissed charges against King, in part because the prosecution had forced a false confession from the 20-year Navy petty officer, who was incarcerated over 500 days without charges ever being brought.


Those interested in the King/Gelles story may now watch on-line a May 20, 2000 video of a hearing on the case, which aired on C-Span at the time. The sound for the first 14 minutes of the video is garbled, but is fine thereafter.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces heard oral arguments in the case of the United States vs. Daniel King. Mr. King was charged with passing National Security Agency secrets to the Russians while working in the United States Navy. The bulk of these arguments centered around the legality of having an armed guard present during all of counsel's meetings with the accused.

Interestingly, the Chief Judge on the Appeals panel was Susan Crawford, who later was appointed Convening Authority for the military commissions at Guantanamo. Judge Crawford famously told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post in January 2009 that U.S. interrogators had "tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani".... His treatment met the legal definition of torture." Judge Crawford subsequently declined to refer al-Qahtani for prosecution.

Attorney Jonathan Turley speaks on behalf of his client, Mr. King. The video itself (click here to play) is 1 hour, 36 minutes long.

When Healers Harm: Rights Groups Call for Canadian Investigation of Guantanamo Psychologist

Given the failure of the U.S. government to pursue legal accountability for acts of torture and abuse committed by military and other government personnel, including contractors, it has fallen to citizens to pursue by civil means a redress of these crimes. Psychologist Trudy Bond has been one of those brave individuals who has matched time and dedication with principles.

In April, 2007, Dr. Bond filed an ethics complaint with the American Psychological Association (APA) against psychologist John Leso, who had been implicated in the torture of Guantanamo prisoner 063, Mohammed al-Qahtani. She recently wrote an article for ACLU Blog of Rights that detailed her experiences with APA's delaying tactics in following up on her complaint, in effect, protecting Leso from examination of the charges.

A recent article on the 2001 referral to APA of ethics charges against former Navy Chief Forensic Psychologist Michael Gelles was recently published at Truthout. Both Gelles and Larry James (see below) were members of the APA's Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force, which in 2005 ignored evidence of psychologist complicity in the torture then taking place at the behest of the Bush administration, and rubber-stamped participation of psychologists with the lie that such participation made things safer for prisoners, when in fact military and intelligence psychologists and contractors were deeply implicated in the torture itself.

On February 29, 2008, Bond filed a complaint against psychologist, Colonel Larry James, with the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists for his part in the torture and abuse that occurred at Guantanamo during his tenure there.

Dr. James is a major figure at APA. As the information in the press release below explains, he is President of the APA's Division for Military Psychology. At the APA's 2007 convention, he made an impassioned speech against a resolution that would remove psychologists from Guantanamo and other sites where human rights were being abridged. He has been a major spokesman for the APA and military's position that psychologists should be part of national security interrogations. In that role, at Guantanamo, Dr. James was a senior leader of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT).

James claims that he stopped the abuse at Guantanamo when he arrived in January 2003. But a recent release of documents, obtained by ACLU, show that torture and abuse continued at Guantanamo during and after the period James was there. For his part, James denies any involvement in torture or abuse.

The APA is about to open its yearly convention, held in Toronto, Ontario this year. Fights are certain to emerge over ongoing obstructionist behavior by the APA bureaucracy, which has held up action on implementing a member-passed referendum against psychologist participation in sites like Guantanamo, as well as delaying for the fourth year straight action on changing the language of a controversial section of its ethics code that well-known attorney and Harper's columnist Scott Horton called the Nuremberg Defense, after the Nazis' infamous apologia for their crimes, in that they were simply following orders.

I'll have more to say about the referendum and the ethics code in a future article. Of imminent importance is the call that has just gone out from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) for the Canadian government to take advantage of the appearance of Col. James at the Toronto APA convention and investigate the military psychologist for his role in torture. Their press release, along with copious links to corroborative and supplementary material, follows:

Rights Groups Call on Canada to Investigate Guantanamo Psychologist for Possible Torture Complicity

Legal Battle Continues Against Louisiana Psychology Board for Refusing to Investigate Professional Misconduct Allegations Against Dr. Larry James

CONTACT: press@ccrjustice.org

August 6, 2009, Ottawa and New York - Human rights organizations are calling on the Canadian government to investigate retired U.S. Army colonel and psychologist Dr. Larry C. James, a former high-ranking advisor on interrogations for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay. According to his own statements, Dr. James played an influential role in both the policy and day-to-day operations of interrogations and detention at the base. Publicly-available information suggests that while Dr. James was at Guantanamo in the spring of 2003, abuse in interrogations was widespread and cruel treatment was official policy.

Responding to reports that he would travel to Toronto this week, the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) sent a joint letter yesterday to Canada’s Minister of Public Safety requesting an investigation into whether Dr. James had a role in war crimes or torture at Guantanamo Bay in 2003. Dr. James, who currently serves as the President of the American Psychological Association’s Division 19 for Military Psychology is expected to attend the APA’s Convention beginning today in Toronto.

Also today, a motion for appeal was filed in Louisiana, in the case Dr. Trudy Bond v. Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists (LSBEP). In compliance with her ethical obligation to report abuse by other psychologists, Dr. Bond, a Toledo-based psychologist, filed a complaint against Dr. James before the LSBEP, the agency that issued and now regulates his psychology license. Dr. Bond alleged that Dr. James breached professional ethics by violating psychologists’ duties to obtain informed consent, to protect confidential information and to do no harm. As Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group and a senior member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at Guantanamo, Dr. James had access to the confidential medical records of people he was charged with exploiting for intelligence. Reports issued after his departure alleged that BSCTs used information from patients’ records to help identify physical and mental vulnerabilities of detainees for the purposes of interrogation. Dr. James denies that claim.

Following the LSBEP’s summary dismissal of the complaint without investigation, Dr. Bond filed suit against the LSBEP in Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court, which dismissed her case last month. Today’s motion signals Dr. Bond’s intention to continue her pursuit of accountability at the state appellate level.

Allegations of abuse during Dr. James’ January to May 2003 deployment include beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr is one of the prisoners who has alleged brutal treatment in the spring of 2003 when he was only 16 years old.

Based on this information, the CCIJ and CCR called on the Canadian government to investigate whether action should be taken against Dr. James or other attendees of the APA Convention who may have been involved in abuse of detainees.

The organizations have appealed to Canadian officials because the United States government, despite the change in administration, has failed to take proper steps to investigate people in positions of military, intelligence and political leadership who may have been involved in crimes related to the torture and abuse of detainees.

Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act gives the federal government power to prosecute war crimes regardless of where they were committed if the alleged perpetrator is later present in Canada. A similar provision of the Criminal Code applies to crimes of torture.

Said CCIJ Legal Coordinator Matt Eisenbrandt, “Any time there is credible information that someone on Canadian soil may have been involved in torture or war crimes, the Canadian government should investigate. The fact that a Canadian citizen says he was abused during the time Dr. James was at Guantanamo only makes the case stronger for the government to conduct a full inquiry into the evidence.”

Said CCR Fellow Deborah Popowski, “”The Louisiana Board should investigate Larry James to find out whether he hurt people using the license it issued him to heal. No one can afford to ignore evidence that a psychologist may have been complicit in torture. When politics trump the rule of law, everyone suffers: survivors of torture, the health profession, and all patients.”

James was also stationed in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and returned to Guantanamo in 2007.

For more information on the involvement of health professionals in torture and abuse visit the Center for Constitutional Rights website www.whenhealersharm.org.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

The Canadian Centre for International Justice/Centre Canadian pour la justice internationale (www.ccij.ca) is a charitable organization that works with survivors of genocide, torture and other atrocities to seek redress and bring perpetrators to justice.

Larry James once famously said that when it comes to his belief about how one operates in an intelligence setting, "... if I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it." Well, the people have a right to know about the torture and other crimes that have occurred by their government. And we will know, one way or the other, and thanks to individuals like Dr. Trudy Bond, and organizations like CCR, CCIJ, and ACLU, the torturers will be brought to justice.

Resources (courtesy of CCR):

The CCR/CCIJ letter to the Canadian Department of Public Safety

Cover letter of the CCR/CCIJ letter sent to James H. Bray, President of the American Psychological Association

Media backgrounder on Larry James and the Bond vs. Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists case

List of sources on Larry James, also available as a single PDF document

Court documents on Bond vs. Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists

Timeline of events: Bond vs. LSBEP

Four Important Articles

Democracy Now! has an amazing interview with a number of activists and an ACLU attorney on the stunning revelations around the use of spies (thanks, Wikileaks!), hired through private contracting firms, to infiltrate domestic political groups.

Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. “This could be one of the key revelations of this era,” said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations. [includes rush transcript]

From OpEd News, and following my own ground-breaking story on the role of former Navy psychologist Michael Gelles's role in the abuse of Daniel King, Stephen Soldz has written an excellent essay, The American Psychological Association and the Missing Ethics Investigation:

What is most important is that the APA Ethics Committee, faced with a complaint of very serious ethical lapses from a highly reputable attorney, failed to open the case or investigate these claims. It thus appears that they never even viewed the videotape containing the Gelles interview of King or sought information from King or his complainant attorneys.

This case is not the only ethics complaint filed against a member of the PENS task force. Another Task Force member faced charges for possible involvement in abuses at Guantánamo in 2003. Here, too, the APA Ethics Committee declined to open a case, even though the same APA Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke, publicly admitted that the acts alleged are unethical. In yet a third case, an ethics complaint against a Guantanamo military psychologist was opened but remains open three years later. Government documents show this psychologist participating in the planning and execution of the of Guantanamo detainees al Qahtani. A fourth psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, has acknowledged training Guantánamo interrogators in abusive interrogation techniques. Ethics charges could not be brought against Banks because he was not an APA member at the time of the abuse. Nor was he an APA member when Behnke appointed him to the PENS Task Force, though he has joined the APA since. Evidently ethics complaints against psychologists affiliated with the military [Gelles was a civilian NCIS employee at the time of the King interrogation] have an exceedingly high threshold before the APA will even open a case, much less investigate.

Equally important to the failure of the APA to investigate the complaint against Gelles was that Behnke allowed Gelles to be appointed to the PENS task force on the ethics of interrogations, in spite of the fact that an ethics complaint had been filed against him for interrogation abuse.

Bmaz over at Firedoglake has an article on Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, whose case is finally coming to trial in Britain. Quoting from Reprieve representative Clive Stafford Smith in the Guardian:

"It pains me, then, to report on the role of the British government in the case of Saad Iqbal Madni, whose legal case Reprieve begins today. Madni was seized in Jakarta on 11 January 2002, and badly beaten. The Americans put him in a coffin, and flew him to Egypt, apparently stopping off in the British colony of Diego Garcia en route. When Madni arrived in Cairo, he was still bleeding through his nose and mouth from his earlier abuse, yet this was soon relegated to a minor complaint. At the behest of the Americans, he spent 92 days being tortured with electric cattle prods, before being rendered to Afghanistan and ultimately to Guantánamo Bay."

If you still have time after reading these excellent articles, you might want to bookmark, as well, Andy Worthington's important analysis on the Obama administration's dilatory policy towards ending the worst abuses around torture and detention, Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think:

The proposals put forward by the Task Force — and clearly endorsed by Obama — are bitterly disappointing, not only because they are so shamefully dismissive of the presumption of innocence, and because they reveal a desire to further turn the judicial system on its head by endorsing preventive detention, but also because they are cowardly in the extreme....

The fact that the Task Force appears not to have fully understood the scale of the Bush administration’s incompetence regarding the capture and interrogation of the Guantánamo prisoners, and the manifold problems with the supposed evidence against them counts, in the end, as a distressing example of the sort of paranoia for which Dick Cheney is best known triumphing over the kind of common sense and dedication to the pursuit of justice for which Barack Obama seemed to stand just a few short months ago.

Former Top Navy Psychologist Involved in Pre-9/11 Prisoner Abuse Case

Crossposted from The Public Record

By Jeffrey Kaye

A well-known spokesman for ethical interrogations by psychologists in national security settings was himself accused in 2001 of unethical behavior for his part in the interrogation of a suspect in an espionage case. Dr. Michael Gelles was at the time the Chief Forensic Psychologist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). His work on the investigation of Petty Officer Daniel King was referred for ethical violations by King’s civilian attorney, Jonathan Turley, to the Ethics Office of the American Psychological Association, who declined to follow up the charges.

Lieutenant Robert A. Bailey of the Judge Advocate’s Corps, and one of two military attorneys for Mr. King, described the interrogation techniques used on his client as “abusive” and “unconstitutional.” The conditions of King’s custody were “intrusive, threatening, and illegal… coercive and inescapable.”

Daniel King was a Petty Officer and Navy cryptanalyst who was arrested for espionage in October 1999. The cause was an inconclusive, or “no opinion” polygraph examination made after he finished his assignment in Guam and was returning to the United States. The administration of such polygraphs is routine when exiting a high-security clearance assignment. King was subsequently incarcerated for 520 days without formal charges.

According to a CBS 60 Minutes story in March 2001, King recalled what happened after his arrest:

“That’s when I started getting interrogated for 17 to 19 hour [sic] at a time,” he says. “When we’d get done, I’d go back to the safe house and go into a room. I’d have to leave the door open, the lights would be on, they’d blare the TV, the phone would keep ringing all the time. Even when I went to the bathroom, I had to leave the door open.”

After 29 days of long interrogations (some sources say it was 26 days), in which every waking hour was spent with NCIS agents, and with periods of sleep deprivation imposed upon him, King made a false confession, which he later recanted. His requests for an attorney were ignored. NCIS tried to get family members to incriminate him.

When on October 6, 1999 he made his “confession” — admitting he had turned a computer disk over to the Russian Embassy — Petty Officer King had been interrogated for 30 out of the previous 39 hours. The confession was quickly retracted at his next interrogation session, and, according to Lt. Bailey, at almost all subsequent sessions King “denied the veracity of the October 6 statement.”

For many months after his return to the United States, King was held incommunicado in a six by nine foot cell for 19-20 hours per day. The lights were kept on at all times. He was subjected to multiple polygraphs, none of which obtained more than inconclusive results. These polygraphs were administered despite the fact Mr. King was not of sound mind, having trouble distinguishing fact from reality, and having suicidal thoughts. Sometimes they were administered after hours of onerous interrogation, breaking Department of Defense guidelines on the administration of polygraphs. Additionally, interrogators lied to King about the results of his polygraph examinations, which were never anything but inconclusive.

According to Jonathan Turley’s account, Mr. King was encouraged to write down his dreams and prior fantasies about espionage and then sign them as statements. Audio tapes made by the government “show King weeping and sobbing” during interrogation.

At times, King is shouting “I don’t know what I’m supposed to give you” over and over at the agents as they press him for a signed confession.

In the end, Petty Officer King was released from custody without charges on March 9, 2001. The Investigating Officer in the case, Commander James P. Winthrop, wrote in dismissing the charges (emphasis added):

Although the espionage charge is a very serious one, the government’s evidence does not appear to be significantly stronger. It is based exclusively on a confession that the accused subsequently contradicted on several occasions. Additionally, the defense clearly intends to attack the voluntariness of that confession and it appears that such a claim is colorable. The defense contention is bolstered by considerations of the accused’s mental state both before and during the weeks-long period where conditions were placed on his liberty. Furthermore, and most importantly, the confession lacks strong corroborating evidence.

By the end of his incarceration, according to Turley, Daniel King had exhausted his finances. His mother had died and he had missed the funeral. The Navy released him with a statement that he was a “traitor.” The case made headlines in early 2001, including reports by CNN, the Washington Post, and NPR (with audio, and includes an interview with Daniel King and a clip from the Gelles interrogation).

Michael Gelles’s Role

According to a prepared statement for a Senate Intelligence Subcommittee hearing by Lieutenant Matthew Freedus, the second of two defense counsels for Daniel King from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, Mr. King continued to be interrogated by NCIS agents after his “confession,” and after repeated requests for access to counsel.

On October 19, 1999, three weeks into the interrogation, King was taken by his own request to see psychologist Michael Gelles. While this indicates probable earlier contact with Dr. Gelles, nothing is currently known about any earlier contact. Gelles met with King for 45 minutes. The session was videotaped, although this was done without the legal requirement to read King his rights, or inform him the tape could be used against him in court. Two other NCIS agents were also present during the meeting, which took place after days of prolonged interrogation, sleep deprivation, and ever-present monitoring.

Lieutenant Freedus stated that King made “highly exculpatory statements” during this meeting, as indeed he did in all other taped sessions with him.

The actions of Dr. Gelles were documented by a videotape, which with other audio tapes, were discovered by accident by the defense, as they had illegally been withheld from discovery. The videotape reportedly shows Dr. Gelles referring to himself as “the doc” and “not an agent.” King told Gelles he had “no memory” of any of the espionage activities to which he’d confessed. He was concerned he had “repressed memories, or something like that,” because he was falsely told the polygraphs had come out positive, and he wondered if perhaps hypnotism or “truth serum” could jog his memory.

According to Turley’s statement to the Senate Intelligence subcommittee (emphasis added):

[King] told Gelles that he had no memory of the espionage facts but says that the polygraph examinations prove that he must have done something – a clear misconception that neither Gelles nor the agents correct. King asked for hypnosis and truth serum to determine if this is merely a dream. Gelles told him that he might give King hypnosis if King goes back and gives the agents “corroborating” evidence. Gelles told King that he could trust the agents and says that the agents are clearly his friends, he had a “special relationship” with the agents and the agents “will be with you forever.” Gelles virtually ignored the statement of King that he had suicidal thoughts when he left Guam – two days before the interview. Instead, Gelles told King to give corroborating evidence as a precondition for the hypnosis that King sought to clear his doubts as to any espionage.

After King was released, Turley made known his intent to file ethics charges against Michael Gelles with the American Psychological Association (APA). According to Mr. Turley, Dr. Gelles “refused to give licensing information to the defense or to respond to allegations of violation of basic canons of professional conduct as a licensed psychologist.” In a private communication, Mr. Turley subsequently indicated the ethics charges were filed, and dismissed without any investigation by APA.

From Guantanamo to the APA PENS Task Force

After 9/11, Dr. Gelles was appointed in early 2002 to the government’s newly formed Criminal Investigations Task Force (CITF). He retained, as well, his position as Chief Psychologist with NCIS. At first, he appears to have gone to Afghanistan to help train interrogators there. Later he was sent to Guantanamo.

As documented by the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report on prisoner abuse, Dr. Gelles, along with a number of other CITF and NCIS professionals, protested the use of coercive interrogation techniques on prisoners. These techniques derived from the reverse-engineering of torture training protocols by the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) school. CITF and FBI interrogators had developed an alternative interrogation plan based on facilitating “long-term rapport” with the prisoner. In the end, along with his superior officer, Dr. Gelles took his complaints about the SERE-influenced techniques to the Navy General Counsel, Alberto Mora.

In a review of the draft interrogation plan for Guantanamo “Detainee 063,” Mohammad Al-Qahtani, Dr. Gelles observed of these abusive techniques:

Strategies articulated in the later phases reflect techniques used to train US forces in resisting interrogation by foreign enemies… [These techniques] would prove not only to be ineffective but also border on techniques and strategies deemed unacceptable by law enforcement professionals.

Nevertheless, Dr. Gelles and his colleagues were overruled and the torture plan for Al-Qahtani proceeded. So far as is known, Dr. Gelles continued to work at Guantanamo, and subsequently in Iraq. At no time has Dr. Gelles criticized the cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo that stemmed from a Standard Operating Procedure that emphasized isolation of prisoners, behavioral control over prisoners lives, or the “frequent flyer” sleep deprivation program run at the prison. In fact, in an interview for the recent documentary Torturing Democracy, when asked Gelles minimized the psychological damage done to prisoners there:

Well, I think that whether you’re detained at Guantanamo Bay or you’re detained in any type of prison facility, one could experience psychological disturbance….

I mean, right now, I have a — though I haven’t been there in close to two years, though I do have some connections to those folks who are involved. It’s very much like a US prison in many cases. But that doesn’t change one’s own psychological expectation of what a potential outcome could be. Any degree of detention is going to have a psychological impact on someone.

With increased controversy over revelations about the use of psychologists in torture at U.S. prison facilities, especially following the Abu Ghraib scandal, the American Psychological Association bowed to pressure from the membership. In Spring 2005, they constituted a Psychological Ethics and National Security Task Force (PENS) to address the role of professional ethics and national-security related activity.

Altogether, six of the nine formal participants were military-related. One of these six was Michael Gelles.

While later held up by APA as a model of integrity for his protest against SERE techniques at Guantanamo, APA officials never alluded to the fact that ethics charges had been filed against Gelles in the King case. Nor was any of his behavior in that case ever brought to light. This could not be for lack of knowledge. In fact, Gelles alluded to his participation in the case in private emails exchanged with other PENS participants prior to the Task Force’s official meetings (and later published publicly at the ProPublica and Salon websites) (emphasis added):

As Chuck Ewing has said on many an occasion… the Agency is entitled to consultation just as an individual…. In the Squillicoate [sic] case referenced in the article, and to some extent my experience with the King case, a new demand to re-think how the profession was going to hold psychologists in practice accountable in contexts outside of the clinical and academic arena’s was becoming more evident.

There is no further mention of the King case in the PENS email listserv collection.

On 2005, the PENS Task Force issued their report. While formally condemning torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, the Task Force endorsed the participation of psychologists in national security interrogations, stating “The Task Force believes that a central role for psychologists working in the area of national security-related investigations is to assist in ensuring that processes are safe, legal, and ethical for all participants.”

Subsequent Developments

As Dr. Gelles’s role in protesting abusive interrogations at Guantanamo became public, he became an exemplar for APA in polemics with opponents on their interrogation policy from both within and outside the organization. Dr. Gelles has had letters to APA prominently posted on APA’s ethics website. In an article in the September 1, 2008 issue of Psychiatric Times, Dr. Stephen Behnke, who is APA Ethics Director, and who authored the PENS report, wrote “of psychologists who have used their professional positions to fight abuse”:

One stellar example is found in The Dark Side, in which author Jane Mayer reports that psychologist Michael Gelles, an American Psychological Association member, took heroic steps to fight abuse at Guantánamo.

Other professionals in the interrogation field have also been highly laudatory of Dr. Gelles. A recent example of this occurred in a public email exchange between Colonel Steven Kleinman, an intelligence officer and director for Air Force Special Operations Command, and anti-torture activist and psychologist Martha Davis, a visiting scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mr. Kleinman told Dr. Davis that he had “extensive professional and personal knowledge” about Dr. Gelles, and some of Gelles’s PENS colleagues. “As a result,” he told Dr. Davis, “I am in a position to serve as a witness to their principled conduct and willingness to speak truth to power in defense of the law and the moral high ground.”

Despite the seriousness of the Daniel King case, no statement regarding Dr. Gelles’s participation in the King interrogation by APA or any of Dr. Gelles’s peers can be found. It is difficult to know exactly how much APA officials knew about his previous activities prior to assigning him to the PENS Task Force. Yet, at a minimum, one would think the Ethics Director would have been aware of the King case, after all, an ethics complaint was filed with his department, and Gelles brought up the subject during the PENS discussion.

A number of disputes are likely to be aired over interrogations and related issues at the APA Council of Representatives meeting at the psychologists’ yearly convention this August 6-9 in Toronto. One such dispute concerns a controversy over APA Ethics Code 1.02, which allows psychologists with ethical conflicts with organizational authorities to defer to government orders. Another controversy concerns the implementation of a member-passed referendum last summer that calls for prohibiting psychologist participation in settings where human rights violations take place.

It is incumbent upon APA members, as they consider the arguments for and against these issues, to consider the deeds as well as the words of the advocates for status quo at APA. Dr. Gelles is on the record as supporting the inclusion of psychologists in national security interrogations. Yet his words ring hollow when one considers his actual history:

Having worked with law enforcement, the intelligence community and correctional officers, I am very familiar with the structure and function of detention facilities. I am too aware of how easily aggression can get out of hand, and how the well intentioned can become carried away with emotion and perverse purpose and drift across boundaries, all of which may result in aggressive, violent and humiliating acts to detainees…. Removing trained professional psychologists from these settings will impact the degree of oversight and inevitably increase the likelihood of abuse, thus having precisely the opposite effect of what occurred as a result of my involvement at Guantanamo Bay.

Despite the opinions of Dr. Gelles, and a number of others who hold the same position, the Daniel King story stands as an indictment of professionals working for a government that all-too-often abuses individuals with no regard to human rights. Whatever Dr. Gelles did or did not do after 9/11, it was wrong to hide the story of his involvement in the King case from his peers, and wrong of APA not to investigate. It calls into question the sincerity of Dr. Gelles, NCIS, APA, and other actors involved in the case. It also challenges the legitimacy of the PENS Task Force, as well as the position of Gelles and the APA bureaucracy on the ethics of psychologists in interrogations.

On a larger scale, the Daniel King case, and the actions of NCIS agents and the “Chief Psychologist” involved, should raise red flags for Congress and other groups considering the proposed new “special unit of professional interrogators,” which the Obama administration is said to be “considering creating… to handle key terror suspects, focusing on intelligence-gathering rather than building criminal cases for prosecution.” Typically, “intelligence-gathering” interrogations have less safeguards regarding suspect rights than those used to build probable criminal prosecutions, i.e., less safeguards than even those that supposedly were involved in the King case.

For the record, back in 2001, the Navy denied using “coercion” on Daniel King. Today, Dr. Gelles is no long working for the Navy, but works as a consultant and writer. He was interviewed in January 2009 by Foreign Policy about interrogation issues and his experience at Guantanamo. Both Dr. Gelles and Dr. Behnke were contacted by email and offered an opportunity to comment for this article. Neither replied.

Correction, 7/26/09: The article incorrectly states that Petty Officer King's false confession was rendered after 29 days of interrogation. As the article elsewhere points out, the "confession" occurred on October 6, seven days after interrogation began. King subsequently recanted this confession and the interrogation continued, ending 29 days after it initially began.

Deconstructing Gelles: A Documentary Record of a Torture Apologist

Crossposted at Daily Kos and NION

In my March 25 [Daily Kos] diary, Just in: Military Psychologists Oppose Torture Moratorium, I noted:

The battle over the use of torture by U.S. forces is being fought within the psychological profession. Because of the importance of psychologists in the development and implementation of interrogation plans, and of torture techniques, the use of psychologists in interrogation has direct bearing on the ability of the United States to implement torture worldwide.

That diary also looked at former Navy CIS psychologist Michael Gelles support for the military's opposition to a moratorium on psychologist participation in coercive interrogations. This diary looks at Gelles's reply to his critics, contrasting Gelles's assertions with a look at the documentary record.

The following letter has been published online now in a number of places. I took the text from Stephen Soldz's Daily Kos diary, Michael Gelles condescends to APA critics. The APA referred to is the American Psychological Association, and as readers should know, or can follow through links throughout, a massive and important political battle around Bush's "war on terror" assault on political liberties, and especially on the use of torture, is taking place in this large and influential organization.

All bolded text is my own, and made for editorial emphasis. The post is longish, and I hope readers will forebear. I felt in the spirit of fairness, Dr. Gelles's letter should be printed in toto.

Michael G. Gelles, Psy.D., ABPP
4 Professional Drive
Suite 120
Gaithersburg, MD 20879
301 346 5177
mggelles@cs.com

April 5, 2007

Dr. Neil Altman, PhD Dr. Uwe Jacobs, PhD Dr. Steven Miles, MD

Dear Drs. Altman, Jacobs, and Miles,

Thank you for your correspondence, in response to my letter to Drs. Altman and Moorehead-Slaughter. I appreciate your commitment to this issue and hope that we can find common ground in our approach. It is clear to me that we all seek the same goal: An ethical means of eliciting accurate and reliable information in order to prevent acts of violence and loss of life.

I will switch back and forth from the Gelles letter to appropriate commentary, quotes, and documentary evidence, which will serve as a gloss on Gelles's text. In that spirit, let's hear from social psychologist and CIA contract interrogation specialist, Albert Biderman, from the book of essays by psychologists and psychiatrists he helped edit, The Manipulation of Human Behavior:

There is no question that it is possible for men to alter, impair, or even to destroy the effective psychological functioning of others over whom they exercise power....

In assuming the attitude of the "hard-headed" scientist toward the problem, there is a danger in falling into an equivalent misuse of science....

The conclusions reached do in fact show that many developments can compound tremendously the already almost insuperable difficulties confronting the individual who seeks to resist an interrogator unrestrained by moral or legal scuples....

Several scientists have reported on the possible applications of scientific knowledge that might be made by the most callous interrogator or power. The results of their thinking are available here for anyone to use, including the unscrupulous.

And again, Gelles:

I must say, however, that based upon my extensive work in consulting to law enforcement, police and military around the world, including in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, the position you set forth in your letters and the questions you pose rest upon substantial misconceptions about the nature of interrogations, the role of psychologists in national security settings, and the likely impact of APA disengaging from this critical debate and of APA members withdrawing from the practice of interrogations.

Please allow me to begin by emphasizing: Psychologists should not defer to lawyers on the question of what constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

The CIA manual of interrogation, code-named KUBARK:

A brief summary... may help to pull the major concepts of coercive interrogation together:

1. The principal coercive techniques are arrest, detention, the deprivation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, and drugs.

2. If a coercive technique is to be used, or if two or more are to be employed jointly, they should be chosen for their effect upon the individual and carefully selected to match his personality.

3. The usual effect of coercion is regression. The interrogatee's mature defenses crumbles as he becomes more childlike. During the process of regression the subject may experience feelings of guilt, and it is usually useful to intensify these.

4. When regression has proceeded far enough so that the subject's desire to yield begins to overbalance his resistance, the interrogator should supply a face-saving rationalization. Like the coercive technique, the rationalization must be carefully chosen to fit the subject's personality.

5. The pressures of duress should be slackened or lifted after compliance has been obtained, so that the interrogatee's voluntary cooperation will not be impeded.

.... In the Western view the goal of the questioning is information; once a sufficient degree of cooperation has been obtained to permit the interrogator access to the information he seeks, he is not ordinarily concerned with the attitudes of the source.

Gelles:

I believe Dr. Altman's resolution is considerably off the mark on this score. I took action when I learned of abusive behaviors. I didn't go through a legal analysis, nor did I consult with attorneys even though many were present and, like me, troubled by what was occurring. I became involved because behaviors that were wrong came to my attention, not because an attorney intervened or a definition in a legal text had been violated. APA should focus on specific behaviors, not on legal definitions.

Moreover, nothing in my experience supports your concern that psychologists will be forced to engage in behaviors they believe to be unethical. I am not aware of any psychologist who has been ordered to support a coercive interrogation or to train interrogators in abusive processes, nor am I aware of any psychologist who has been disciplined for communicating concerns or refusing to participate in a consultation.

From Stephen Miles' article, "Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo 063", in The American Journal of Bioethics, 7(4): 1–7, 2007.

Major L., a psychologist who chaired the BSCT at Guantanamo, was noted to be present at the start of the interrogation log. On November 27, he suggested putting the prisoner in a swivel chair to prevent him from fixing his eyes on one spot and thereby avoiding the guards....

Other degrading techniques were logged. His head and beard were shaved to show the dominance of the interrogators. He was made to stand for the United States national anthem. His situation was compared unfavorably to that of banana rats in the camp. He was leashed (a detail omitted in the log but recorded by investigators) and made to “stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to a dog.” He was told to bark like a happy dog at photographs of 9/11 victims and growl at pictures of terrorists. Some psychological routines referred to the 9/11 attacks. He was shown pictures of the attacks, and photographs of victims were affixed to his body. The interrogators held one exorcism (and threatened another) to purge evil Jinns that the disoriented, sleep deprived prisoner claimed were controlling his emotions.

Back to Gelles:

In the time since I reported concerns to my chain of command -- an action that was followed by a promotion -- ethics has become a focus for psychologists being trained for this role. Current Department of Defense policy makes explicit reference to APA's PENS report and includes the actual report itself. The community of military psychologists, together with civilians who consult to national security and law enforcement, have formed a tight network where didactic seminars and peer consultation on ethics are frequent. Through the PENS Task Force and subsequent Council of Representative actions, APA is playing a critical role in bringing moral clarity to the debate over what constitutes an ethical consultation to an interrogation, as well as science to the practice of interrogations. Removing psychology and psychologists would stop the steady and measurable progress we have made and are making. From my perspective, a moratorium would be to abdicate rather than to embrace our ethical responsibilities.

From an earlier, if recent, diary of mine:

AP is reporting today [3/20/2007] that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is saying that "high-profile" terror detainees held in CIA secret prisons and later transferred to last September to Guantanamo "were kept and questioned under highly abusive conditions"....

The Red Cross said the techniques reported by the 14 prisoners, including sleep deprivation and the use of forced standing and other so-called "stress positions," were particularly harsh when used together....

The CIA's detention methods were designed to soften detainees and make them more likely to talk during interrogation. Human rights organizations say the CIA's extreme conditions of detention and the coercive questioning techniques constitute torture.

More Gelles:

In his thoughtful letter, Dr. Jacobs states that "our professional organization has to protect our own." I wholeheartedly agree. We are a professional association whose members have extensive experience and expertise in a broad range of practice areas-an aspect of APA that is to our decided advantage. If we want to protect psychologists working in detention facilities, let's ask our colleagues who are most familiar with operations in these settings: military psychologists, police psychologists and correctional psychologists. What protection do our colleagues working in these settings and in these areas of practice believe they need? What steps do they think APA can take that will best offer that protection? Does a moratorium offer the protection that military psychologists seek? Let's begin our discussions by respecting the experience and expertise that resides within these communities-in the same manner we would proceed with a complex treatment intervention only after having consulted at length with the psychologist who knows the patient best.

Dr. Jacobs quotes Alberto Mora and asks whether I agree with his statement, "To my mind, there's no moral or practical distinction between cruelty and torture ... cruelty ... destroys the whole notion of individual rights." I have an enormous admiration and respect for Alberto Mora. This quotation captures the essence of what we are talking about: Torture, cruelty and abuse have no role in interrogations. They are wrong. They violate human rights. They increase-not decrease-the long-term likelihood of violence. This is Alberto Mora's position. This is my position. This is APA's position. Let us assert and emphasize that position at every opportunity, in every venue possible, especially where interrogations are taking place.

Sincerely,
Michael Gelles

From Dr. Jacob's original letter to Dr. Gelles:

I know that I write on behalf of many colleagues who also do not know what precisely your involvement with the interrogation process was at Guantanamo Bay but who salute you for having honorably reported the human rights abuses you had become aware of. However, we remain unclear about the following:

1. Do you believe that the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay has been a productive practice and that this practice has been preferable to their detention on American soil, with all the relevant legal and constitutional protections?

2. Did you have any sense of unease about following an order to assist with the interrogation of these detainees under the circumstances? Conversely, were you not ordered to but eager to be of help and do you continue to think that aiding these interrogations was useful?

3. At what point precisely did you find it necessary to report abuses? What were the techniques used that you found objectionable? This is critical to understand.

4. More importantly, what were the techniques used that you did not find objectionable? To cite a few examples, did you believe it was ethical to transport prisoners to Guantanamo under conditions of sensory deprivation, i.e. wearing hoods, goggles, earmuffs, and other devices designed to create sensory deprivation and isolation, along with very restrictive shackling? Did you believe it was ethical to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for very long periods of time? Is it ethical to deprive prisoners of sleep? Is it ethical to subject them to severe heat and cold, constant noises or lights, stress positions, short shackling, screaming abuse etc.? You know the list I am referring to. Do you agree that these techniques have long been proven to produce severe nervous system dysregulation and often lasting psychological damage? Do these techniques not by definition constitute torture, just as stated by the UN?

As Dr. Jacobs noted in a follow-up answer to Michael Gelles's letter herein, Dr. Gelles never answered any of Dr. Jacobs's questions.
In a stinging rebuke to Gelles, psychologist-activist Stephen Soldz answered Gelles's letter himself in a diary at Daily Kos:

...there is not one mention of the terrible human rights violations that have occurred, and are still occurring, at Guantanamo, not to mention the role of psychologists in those abuses. He ignores the evidence that it is precisely his pals, "the community of military psychologists, together with civilians who consult to national security and law enforcement," who are reported by virtually every reporter who has looked into the matter -- Jane Mayer (New Yorker), Mark Benjamin (Salon), Art Levine (Washington Monthly) -- to be one ones who were sent to Guantanamo to develop torture techniques, not to prevent them. Evidently Dr. Gelles considers himself to be one of a tight-knit community with these people, not to mention those psychologists who helped developed the special technique used at the CIA black sites.

I easily could have made this posting much longer. Members of the APA should have no illusion that their association is under danger of becoming completely subordinate to the Pentagon and CIA. It is surely confusing to members when personnel thought to be highly ethical, such as Gelles, turn out to be otherwise. It spreads demoralization and a sense of defeat. This was the case in the Stalinist show trials of the 30s, the McCarthyite investigations of the 50s, and now, in a much lesser but no less sinister episode, in the turn of "moral" psychologists into apologists for torture.

Gelles and his ilk condemn torture out of one side of their mouths, while spinning like crazy a story out of the other side that will hide the truth of what the U.S. is doing in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Just in: Military Psychologists Oppose Torture Moratorium

The battle over the use of torture by U.S. forces is being fought within the psychological profession. Because of the importance of psychologists in the development and implementation of interrogation plans, and of torture techniques, the use of psychologists in interrogation has direct bearing on the ability of the United States to implement torture worldwide.

This diary looks at the latest development within the American Psychological Association, as a portion of the membership is fighting to place a moratorium upon psychologist participation in interrogations of "enemy combatants", due to the history of abuses perpetrated from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib. Now, led by the Society for Military Psychology, forces within the APA close to both the Pentagon and the CIA are fighting back to sink the proposed moratorium.

Division 19 -- the division for Military Psychology within the American Psychological Association (APA)-- is one of the initial constituents of the coalition of psychological groups that formed APA some decades ago (along with educational, industrial, research, and clinical psychology). Most people have probably never heard of it. In fact, it is one of the initial constituents of the coalition of various psychology groups that formed the APA some decades ago.

[The] Society for Military Psychology encourages research and the application of psychological research to military problems. Members are military psychologists who serve diverse functions in settings including research activities, management, providing mental health services, teaching, consulting, work with Congressional committees, and advising senior military commands.

First, a little background....

Psychologists Against Torture: The Proposed Moratorium Against Psychologists Participation in Interrogations at Foreign Detention Centers

At their convention in New Orleans last summer, the APA passed a resolution against torture. But someone snuck in some fine print at the last minute that allows for psychologist participation in various dubious interrogation techniques, such as sleep deprivation, isolation, and inducing fear and debility. I wrote about the APA betrayal last August. The APA leadership denied that their resolution allowed for participation in cruel and unusual punishment -- as defined by U.S. law -- and took the opportunity of signing a letter drafted by Physicians for Human Rights to McCain warning on ceding the Geneva Convention rules to Bush and the military/CIA. It made opposition to certain interrogation/torture techniques part of APA policy.

Abusive interrogation tactics used by the CIA that must be explicitly prohibited by Congress include prolonged sleep deprivation, induced hypothermia, stress positions, shaking, sensory deprivation and overload, and possibly water-boarding, among other reported techniques.

This all sounds good, and maybe even would do some good if implemented. But notice the language. "Prolonged sleep deprivation." What is considered "prolonged"? The letter doesn't say. The new Army field interrogation manual allows for sleep deprivation -- allowing only 4 hours of sleep per night for up to 30 days (or more days with further approval) -- in certain instances. Sensory deprivation and overload are also condemned, but what constitutes sensory deprivation is also unclear. Again, the Army manual now allows for the placement of goggles and earmuffs on captives for up to 30 days. And the Army says directly it does not practice sensory deprivation.

Also important is what's not named: the practice of isolation, time disorientation, and the inducement of fear. What about semi-starvation? Oops, they forgot to include that.

To be fair, the letter doesn't pretend to be inclusive. However, it seems to have left plenty of room for the participation of pscyhologists in special interrogations of foreign "enemy combatants" to continue. And we know from a recently leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that the torture is continuing.

In January 2007, Dr. Neil Altman, the representative of the APA's Division of Psychoanalysis (Div. 39), presented the draft of a moratorium against participation in interrogations at foreign prisons.

The Issue: That psychologists participating in interrogations of foreign detainees at US detention centers may be working within a framework in which there is inadequate protection of detainee human rights....

Whereas, current interrogation methods at U.S. centers holding “enemy combatants” may include techniques defined as torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under the 2006 APA Resolution Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment....

Therefore, Be it resolved that APA adopts this resolution calling for a moratorium on all psychologist involvement, either direct or indirect, in any interrogations at U.S. detention centers for foreign detainees. This moratorium is necessary as detainees may be currently denied protections outlined under the Geneva Conventions and interrogations techniques in violation of the 2006 APA Resolution Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment may be considered acceptable practice according to the Military Commissions Bill of 2006...

Opposition Arises from an Unexpected Quarter

Michael Gelles was the chief psychologist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, stationed at Guantanamo, when he blew the whistle on the unlawful interrogations at that U.S. prison. The charges went almost nowhere: read Jane Mayer's excellent piece on that episode in The New Yorker, How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted.

As a result of efforts such as his, and many others in the American Psychological Association (APA), there has been an effort to halt the participation of psychologists in "enemy combatant" interrogations. (See Stephen Soldz's Letter to the CEO of the APA.) But this campaign has been stymied by APA leadership and the opposition of military psychologists within APA (as we shall see). But not before Gelles himself inserted himself into the controversy a second time.

Gelles wrote a letter opposing the ban to the chief sponsor of the proposed APA Resolution calling for a Moratorium on psychologist involvement in national security “enemy combatant” interrogations. This letter was distributed by APA leadership to its Council of Representatives, while a letter answering Gelles's remarks was outrageously refused similar distribution. From Dr. Gelles's letter:

As you well know, there are very different and competing philosophies regarding what methods should be permissible in eliciting information from detainees. Unfortunately, at times in the past, those who have both conducted and consulted to interrogations and who have worked to develop methods for eliciting information have had little or no training, guidance, or oversight. The results have been catastrophic and the collateral damage far reaching. Interrogations left to those who are not properly trained can lead to drift and result in brutality, which is utterly contrary to the competent and effective methods for eliciting accurate and reliable information employed by those who have the appropriate training and experience.

Gelles makes the assertion that without professional guidance by psychologists, interrogations are subject to "emotion and perverse purpose and drift across boundaries". The results of such recently were "catastrophic and the collateral damage far reaching." These allusions to the events at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib repeat the lie that the brutality there was due to unsupervised pranks, and unprofessional operations. But as the recent HBO documentary "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" makes clear, the torture there was all of a piece with KUBARK style torture: with forced stress positions, humiliation, fear up, etc. The MPs there were instructed on what to do, or watched it modelled for them, by the professionals.

Gelles continues:

...we must not “throw the baby out with the bath water,” but we must rather examine the mistakes that have been made and the abuses that have occurred in interrogation settings, continue to develop guidelines and parameters that direct us professionally, and remain fully engaged with these difficult and complex issues.

My direct experience leads me to conclude that we should remain engaged in interrogations as a persistent voice for the right way to do things.

Critics Answer Back

Over at Psyche, Science and Society, Dr. Uwe Jacobs, Director of the torture victim center, Survivors International, answered Gelles letter, asking for the sorely lacking specifics (emphases mine):

1. Do you believe that the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay has been a productive practice and that this practice has been preferable to their detention on American soil, with all the relevant legal and constitutional protections?

2. Did you have any sense of unease about following an order to assist with the interrogation of these detainees under the circumstances?....

3. At what point precisely did you find it necessary to report abuses? What were the techniques used that you found objectionable? This is critical to understand.

4. More importantly, what were the techniques used that you did not find objectionable? To cite a few examples, did you believe it was ethical to transport prisoners to Guantanamo under conditions of sensory deprivation, i.e. wearing hoods, goggles, earmuffs, and other devices designed to create sensory deprivation and isolation, along with very restrictive shackling? Did you believe it was ethical to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for very long periods of time? Is it ethical to deprive prisoners of sleep? Is it ethical to subject them to severe heat and cold, constant noises or lights, stress positions, short shackling, screaming abuse etc.? You know the list I am referring to. Do you agree that these techniques have long been proven to produce severe nervous system dysregulation and often lasting psychological damage? Do these techniques not by definition constitute torture, just as stated by the UN?....

6. Did you think that the prisoners’ confinement in the cages we have seen in documentaries and other media was regrettable but sufficiently humane and dignified? Did you think that cruelty was not frequently apparent? In short, did you find that the overall situation you were in was consistent with general practices of correctional confinement in the United States?

We are still awaiting Dr. Gelles's answer. Which brings us back to the military psychologists, for now their organization has chimed in against Altman's moratorium.

"...the resolution will not achieve its desired objectives."

Here's" what they say (edited, of course, with all emphases mine), dated 3/21/2007:

The resolution points out possible ambiguities that psychologists may confront in the context of interrogations of foreign detainees at US Detention Centers.... Such ambiguities relate to perceived inconsistencies between US laws and international treaties, conventions, and standards regarding the treatment of foreign detainees - in this case detainees defined by the US Government as "unlawful enemy combatants." Any such ambiguities are indeed unfortunate, but it is not at all clear that a resolution to remove military psychologists from such ambiguous situations would serve either the psychologists or the detainees.

The belabored language, with its strangled description of torture "ambiguities" that are "indeed unfortunate", is bad enough. But it's the last point, about serving the detainees, that galls me the most. The military contends, as have APA leadership and Michael Gelles, that you need professional behavioral scientists to keep things from getting out of hand in the interrogation room. Such a descent into gross brutality is defined as "behavioral drift". (Don't you love intellectual discourse.)

Nor would detainees likely be well served by a moratorium. The ethical and clinical training of psychologists make them more likely to be protective of the detainees' interests than those who have not had such training. Psychologists are more likely to recognize when interrogations are headed in a direction that would be psychologically harmful to the detainees and are thus more likely to deter interrogations from heading in that direction.

Tell that to Major John Leso, a psychologist with the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) on Guantanamo detainee #063, Mohammed al-Qahtani. Steven Miles, in a recent article in the American Journal of Bioethics tells the story of one well-documented instance of a psychologist involved in torture, including the transcript of the interrogation.

BSCTs in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay were chaired by a psychiatrist or psychologist, and advised on how to exploit the prisoners’ emotional and physical vulnerabilities and how to monitor the success of the interrogation (Miles 2006). BSCT personnel suggested how to stress, coerce and offer incentives in order to secure information. These behavioral science clinicians designed a two-pronged approach to break the prisoners down. The first was an attack on the cultural self of the Islamic men.... The second approach aimed at a prisoner’s personal vulnerabilities, sometimes using information from the prisoner’s medical record...

The transcript shows what the psychologist (Leso) and the other interrogators did. You can see that the Division 19 letter opposing the moratorium resolution is basically a pack of lies, mixed in with some nice-sounding statements (emphases mine):

In October 2002, before the time covered by the log, Army investigators found that dogs were brought to the interrogation room to growl, bark and bare their teeth at al-Qahtani. The investigators noted that a BSCT psychologist witnessed the use of the dog, Zeus, during at least one such instance, an incident deemed properly authorized to “exploit individual phobias"....

Major L., a psychologist who chaired the BSCT at Guantanamo, was noted to be present at the start of the interrogation log. On November 27, he suggested putting the prisoner in a swivel chair to prevent him from fixing his eyes on one spot and thereby avoiding the guards....

Many psychological “approaches” or “themes” were repetitively used. These included: “Failure/Worthless,” “Al Qaeda Falling Apart,” “Pride Down,” “Ego Down,” “Futility,” “Guilt/Sin Theme... Al-Qahtani was shown videotapes entitled “Taliban Bodies” and “Die Terrorist Die.” Some scripts aimed at his Islamic identity bore names such as “Good Muslim,” “Bad Muslim,” “Judgment Day,” “God’s Mission” and “Muslim in America"....

He was not allowed to honor prayer times. The Koran was intentionally and disrespectfully placed on a television (an authorized control measure) and a guard “unintentionally” squatted over it while harshly addressing the prisoner.

Transgressions against Islamic and Arab mores for sexual modesty were employed.... He was told that his mother and sister were whores. He was forced to wear a bra, and a woman’s thong was put on his head. He was dressed as a woman and compelled to dance with a male interrogator. He was told that he had homosexual tendencies and that other prisoners knew this. Although continuously monitored, interrogators repeatedly strip-searched him as a “control measure.” On at least one occasion, he was forced to stand naked with women soldiers present. Female interrogators seductively touched the prisoner under the authorized use of approaches called “Invasion of Personal Space” and “Futility.” On one occasion, a female interrogator straddled the prisoner as he was held down on the floor.

Other degrading techniques were logged.... He was leashed (a detail omitted in the log but recorded by investigators) and made to “stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to a dog.” He was told to bark like a happy dog at photographs of 9/11 victims and growl at pictures of terrorists. Some psychological routines referred to the 9/11 attacks. He was shown pictures of the attacks, and photographs of victims were affixed to his body. The interrogators held one exorcism (and threatened another) to purge evil Jinns that the disoriented, sleep deprived prisoner claimed were controlling his emotions.

It's amazing how many of these psychological techniques seem to be straight from Abu Ghraib. (Actually, the direction of technique flowed from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib.) There is much more that could be said about the military position on this issue, especially their (for them) crucial issue of whether they follow ethical or APA dictates, or whether they follow the chain of command. (Diary's already too long; I save this discussion for later.)

The fight againt the use of psychologists in torture interrogations is crucial. The use of behavioral experts is deemed crucial by the military and CIA. Stopping their participation would be a black eye for the torturers, and make it harder for them to practice their dark arts.
Hopefully, the APA membership will rise up and demand that the moratoruum be passed.

Appendix:

One small point on a claim made at the beginning of this piece. I asserted that "forces within the APA close to both the Pentagon and the CIA are fighting back to sink the proposed moratorium" (emphasis added). While the influence of the Pentagon is manifest, the influence of the CIA is inferred. However I believe such inference derives from a great deal of accumulated evidence, which can be studied in books and articles on the history of psychology.

A few sources, then, for links between the CIA and the APA:

The APA sends some of their science Fellows to the CIA:

2003-2004 APA Science Policy Fellow Starts Work at CIA

APA's new Science Policy Fellow, Linda Demaine, JD, PhD, has begun her fellowship year at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), working in the Operational Assessment Division's Research and Analysis Branch. Demaine completed an APA Congressional Fellowship last year with the Senate Judiciary Committee, and she is taking time off from her position as an Associate Policy Analyst for RAND to use both her legal and research expertise in deception at the CIA.

Various workshops and meetings attended by APA staff are funded by the CIA

On June 24th [2004], Science Policy staff attended a day-long meeting designed to forge collaborations between operational staff working in the intelligence community and scientists conducting research on interpersonal deception. Generously funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the meeting was held near RAND headquarters in Arlington, VA and was facilitated by RAND policy analyst Scott Gerwehr. Gerwehr provided a conceptual framework for the meeting while Susan Brandon, Assistant Director of Social, Behavioral and Educational Sciences for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and APA Science Policy Director Geoff Mumford concentrated on the logistics of inviting the particpants representing, the FBI, US Secret Service, CIA, DoD, Department of Homeland Security, UK Ministry of Defense, New Scotland Yard, and the UK Home Office as well as a long list of academic institutions. Gerwehr's notion was essentially the reverse of a previous workshop conducted as a joint CIA/RAND/APA exercise on the theme of detecting deception as he explains in the concept piece here.

Historical articles make the link between APA and CIA collaboration, as here and here, in this article published in the APA Monitor 30 years ago.

Other organizations in the medical field have also commented upon the role of psychologists and/or APA in intelligence-related interrogations or torture, as in this press release from Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Finally, there is the excellent documentation provided in such classic works as John Marks's Search for the Manchurian Candidate, Alfred McCoy's A Question of Torture, and Dominic Streatfeild's new book, Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control.