Trump Ordered Guantanamo to Stay Open, Now APA to Vote on Overturning Ban on Psychologists at Guantanamo

originally posted at Medium.com

The American Psychological Association’s Board of Directors and Council Leadership team have endorsed a new agenda item for APA’s upcoming national meeting in early August. Labelled New Business Item (NBI) 35B, the resolution would overturn a 2015 APA decision calling for the removal of all psychologists from Guantanamo, stating psychologists may not work in “settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law…or the US Constitution.”

An exception had been made for non-military or independent psychologists who could treat detainees when “they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.”

The proposed change comes after President Trump issued an executive order in January 2018 reversing President Obama’s stated, but unfulfilled, promise to close Guantanamo. Trump has announced that he intends to send newly captured “terrorists” to the Cuba-based military prison, though none have been sent there as yet.

[Update, August 10, 2018: On August 8, at a vote by APA’s Council of Representatives, the proposal to allow psychologists to return to sites like Guantanamo, that are considered illegal and stand outside of international law, or where human rights abuses routinely take place, was defeated by a vote of 105 to 57, with 15 abstentions.]

Psychologist Participation in Torture

The current APA policy prohibiting psychologists from working at Guantanamo followed a series of scandals relating to the participation of psychologists in torture by both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. In August 2017, two CIA contract psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, settled a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of two CIA torture victims and the family of one CIA detainee who died in custody. The terms of the settlement have been kept confidential.

In 2008, a referendum was first proposed by rank-and-file members of the APA that called for removal of psychologists from Guantanamo and CIA “black sites” where torture and other human rights violations were conducted. APA fought that referendum and delayed its implementation.

But in the aftermath of a 2015 report by an independent investigator, Chicago attorney David Hoffman, which documented numerous contacts between APA officials and DoD and CIA contacts, particularly pertaining to the development of APA’s “Psychologists in National Security” policy, APA fired some officers, and others resigned, while the banning of psychologists at sites like Guantanamo was finally made official APA policy.

This author has contended the Hoffman report soft-pedaled the influence of CIA on APA affairs, noting that David Hoffman previously worked with and still has “limited, occasional contact” with former CIA special counsel, Kenneth J. Levit, and George Tenet, who was CIA director during the time CIA’s “enhanced interrogations” torture program was implemented.

But the loudest criticism of APA and Hoffman came from a number of people named in the Hoffman Report itself, who have sued David Hoffman and APA, contending the report made “false claims,” defamatory statements, and omitted key documents that would show APA officials were not involved in any unethical or illegal activity.

In a February 2018 open letter to APA membership, key members of the lawsuit turned to APA for assistance. “We ask APA members to press the Council and the Board to take control back from the lawyers’ hands, and to bring this painful chapter in the APA’s history to a fair and prompt end,” they wrote.

It would seem that help was already on the way. In August 2017, two members of Division 19, the Society for Military Psychology, a small but influential group within APA, put forward a new resolution meant to undo the banning of psychologists from treating detainees at Guantanamo and similar “illegal” sites.

The authors of the new resolution are Sally Harvey, a past president of the military psychology division, and Carrie Kennedy, Division 19’s representative to APA Council and the former Chief of Behavioral Health Services for detainees at Guantanamo.

Harvey is also a co-mover of another resolution up for consideration at the upcoming APA council meeting next month (NBI 13D). This resolution would remove the Hoffman report from the APA’s website for alleged “inaccuracies.”

Inside APA, there’s some fear of unknown legal repercussions if the report were taken down. The APA’s ad hoc Committee on Legal Issues (COLI), which styles itself the “think tank” for APA’s Board of Directors, has recommended rejecting this particular resolution.

“Outside the Law”

Meanwhile, NBI 35B, the resolution that would bring psychologists back to Guantanamo, has COLI’s support. In a May 25, 2018 letter to the Board, COLI “unanimously” supported the change that would let psychologists treat detainees “held outside of…either International Law…or the US Constitution,” i.e., outside customary legal detention. Some have said “outside the law” itself.

Even more, COLI told the Board, “Beyond approving the amendment, COLI encourages broadening the provision to also allow psychologists to be involved in the practice and policy of humane interrogations…. [COLI] recommends that the Resolution be revised to more explicitly allow for the inclusion of psychologists in the practice of humane information-gathering approaches.”

Dan Aalbers, the author of the original APA membership referendum calling for the psychologist ban at Guantanamo, told me via email, “This bill must be defeated. Not only would it return psychologists to Guantanamo, it would signal organized psychology’s willingness to participate in Trump’s interrogation program. Indeed we know that one section of APA leadership decided to endorse the bill exactly because it held out the promise that psychologists could once again be involved with interrogations in sites that violate international law.”

Five other psychologists have added themselves as cosigners to 35B, including Robert Resnick, PhD; Jeffrey Younggren, PhD; Deirdre Knapp, PhD; Avi Kaplan, PhD; and Keely Kolmes, PhD. Dr. Younggren is a highly public figure in APA who for many years gave APA public continuing education courses on ethics to psychologists, while Dr. Resnick is a former APA president.

This return to participation of psychologists in interrogations would rewind the clock back to the darkest days of the Bush administration’s torture program, and a period when DoD renditioned hundreds of detainees from around the world to Guantanamo. Forty detainees still remain in indefinite detention at Guantanamo, the majority of them never charged with any crime after 15 or so years imprisonment.

According to the Kennedy-Harvey resolution, a change in APA policy is needed because otherwise APA is in violation of anti-trust laws. Even more, they claim that denying military psychologists access to detainees at places like Guantanamo puts the U.S. at risk of violating Geneva Conventions protocol, which maintains “Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated…. Prisoners of war shall have the attention, preferably, of medical personnel of the Power on which they depend and, if possible, of their nationality.”

The new resolution seems to ignore the fact the policy begun by President Bush, and continued by every President since, asserts the detainees at Guantanamo are “unlawful” or “unprivileged” combatants meriting the designation “detainee,” but not “prisoners of war,” with its attendant rights and privileges in the Geneva Conventions.

A “Back Door” for “Potential Further Harm”

Not every group within APA agrees with changing the “no detainee treatment” policy. According to APA materials provided to Council members, APA’s Board of Professional Affairs (BPA) worried “that any change could be perceived as APA providing a back door for psychologists assisting in exposing detainees to potential further harm or endorsing torture.”

BPA didn’t think that was the intent of the new resolution, but believed “there is insufficient information to properly assess the consequences of this change” and “insufficient evidence to assess consequences of approval.” BPA officials worried about issues surrounding psychologists having to respond to chain of command within a “black site.”

In addition, the Board of Psychology in the Public Interest (BAPPI) opposed amending the previous APA policy to allow psychologists to treat detainees at Guantanamo and “black sites.”

Besides issues surrounding detainee confidentiality (detainee medical information had previously been used by interrogators to pressure detainees, leverage phobias, etc.), BAPPI pointed out that military psychologists are subject to the military chain of command:

“ It is impossible to provide a therapeutic relationship when the psychologist involved works for the organization (i.e., the Military) that is detaining the individual…. Psychologists in military service at isolated detention centers are likely to be particularly vulnerable to conflicts because of both physical isolation and national security constraints.”

On the other side of the issue, the APA Ethics Board essentially signed off on the proposed new policy. Allowing psychologists to treat detainees was “consistent with the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.”

In particular, the Ethics Board said the policy would be consistent with APA’s principles concerning Beneficence and Non-Maleficence, as well as Ethics Standards 3.01 (Unfair Discrimination), and 3.04 (Avoiding Harm).

The standard regarding avoiding harm reads, in part, “Psychologists do not participate in, facilitate, assist, or otherwise engage in torture, defined as any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person….”

But according to medical experts, the policy of indefinite detention, alone, at Guantanamo is tantamount to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. According to an article in the International Review of the Red Cross, “indefinite detention may raise issues under the peremptory international law rule against torture….the International Committee of the Red Cross… has access to the detainees at Guantánamo Bay and has observed their deteriorating psychological condition, leading to a high number of suicide attempts.”

In this author’s own research via Freedom of Information Act, one detainee who supposedly killed himself at Guantanamo in 2006, Mohamed Al Hanashi, explicitly cited the actions of the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo for leading him to take his life. I believe this event occurred during the time Carrie Kennedy was operational at Guantanamo (though she was not the “Chief Psychologist” there).

Another detainee who allegedly died by suicide, Adnan Latif, cited the lack of confidentiality between himself and a nurse as a reason for his wanting to die. Moreover, numerous detainees over the years have complained about the actions of medical personnel, including psychologists.

Supporters of current APA policy intend to fight the military psychologists’ bid to amend the policy denying psychologists access to detainees for the purposes of either care or assisting interrogations.

Aalbers told this reporter: “Never again should psychologists be involved in the business of torture, never again should organized psychology aid violations of fundamental human rights.”

White House Denies Existence of "Task Force" Ex-Guantanamo Psychologist Claims He Was Appointed to by Michelle Obama

by Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, originally posted at Truthout.org

The White House has categorically denied that it set up a task force to address the psychological well being of military families and had First Lady Michelle Obama appoint as one of its members the former chief psychologist at Guantanamo, who allegedly oversaw the torture of some "war on terror" detainees, including children.

Kristina Schake, Michelle Obama's communication's director, told Truthout there is no such task force.

But Schake said she did not know whether retired Army Col. Dr. Larry James, now the dean of the School of Professional Psychology (SOPP) at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, has provided any advice to more than a dozen federal government agencies involved with carrying out a May 2010 presidential directive, at the time announced by the first lady, which requested recommendations for "supporting and engaging military families."

Nor could Schake state whether James, who has been the subject of several ethical complaints filed with psychology boards over his alleged role in supervising the torture of Guantanamo detainees in 2003, played any role in shaping a comprehensive report that was the product of the presidential directive. The report, entitled, "Strengthening Military Families," was unveiled at a White House ceremony in January by President Barack Obama, the first lady, and Jill Biden.

Calls to spokespeople at government agencies that contributed to the study, including the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration, were not returned Monday.

The latest controversy surrounding James erupted Friday morning after he sent an email to the "SOPP community" announcing that he was "appointed by the First Lady to a White House Task Force entitled 'Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family.'"

James appears to have lifted the name of the "task force" directly from the White House report, which is one of the document's four priorities (although James slightly misquoted the title): "Enhance the well-being and psychological health of the military family."

Last month, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, both of who are leading the Strengthening Military Families effort, announced the launch of a campaign, which began this month, "designed to rally citizens, businesses and nonprofit organizations to provide support for US service members and their families."

James did not return phone calls and emails sent over the weekend and on Monday seeking comment. Truthout was later advised by Wright State University's press office to leave a voicemail message for spokesman Seth Bauguess as he was identified as the university official who would respond to inquiries about James' email. However, Bauguess did not return that message nor did he respond to several follow-up phone calls and an email sent to him at the university.

In his SOPP email, James said the first meeting of the "task force" would take place at the White House today. He indicated that he would be in attendance and that he felt "honored" to represent the university, the psychology department and the American Psychological Association (APA).

James' email caught the attention of Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, who reported the contents of it and was harshly critical of the administration for tapping James to serve on the "task force."

"This isn't exactly a powerful Task Force, but what this appointment does is have the White House - yet again - signal that it does not really take very seriously the Bush torture regime," Greenwald wrote.

Schake told Truthout Saturday the task force isn't "powerful" because it does not exist.

"Dr. James has not been appointed to serve in any capacity with the White House," Schake said. "Nor was Dr. James to meet with the First Lady."

Greenwald updated his story Saturday with a statement from Schake, which was identical to one she provided to Truthout. But her denial of the existence of the "task force" was not included in the addendum Greenwald attached to his story.

Schake said the APA, which was invited to today's meeting, where "multiple" mental health professionals will discuss "military families issues," with White House staffers, may have been one of two organizations that "indirectly" asked James to attend.

It's unknown who will be attending the meeting or what the agenda items are. Schake said the White House does not release "agendas or attendance lists for staff meetings."

Truthout queried the APA to find out if the organization invited James to the White House meeting and, if so, whether APA officials also provided him with any information that led him to believe he was appointed to a White House "task force" dealing with the mental health of military families.

Kim Mills, APA's deputy executive director of Public & Member Communications, failed to specifically address Truthout's question about whether the APA invited James to the meeting. Instead, in a carefully worded statement, Mills said the APA is "happy to work with the White House to recommend psychologists who have experience in helping military families."

"It is our understanding that this White House group plans to make available a broad range of resources for families dealing with the psychological stressors of deployment," Mills said. "Because of the importance of this effort, APA has made available the materials we have developed for military families ... However, to date, APA has had no input into who would be invited to the group's meeting."

Mills did not return numerous calls Monday nor did she respond to emails requesting she clarify her remarks and respond to specific questions about whether the APA asked James to attend the White House meeting and if APA told him that he was being appointed to a "task force."

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is the other group attending the meeting today that Schake said might have invited James.

Brad Stone, a spokesman for SAMHSA, said the agency does not have anything additional to add to Schake's statement. Although Schake said she understood that James is affiliated with SAMHSA in some capacity, a search of the agency's web site did not turn up a single record citing James nor was there a mention of James and SAMHSA in an Internet search Truthout conducted and a search through LexisNexis archives.

It would not be a surprise if the APA did invite James to the White House meeting or recommend that he advise the administration on its military families program given that James was the president of the APA's Division 19/Society for Military Psychology from 2009-2010.

According to its About Us page, "The Society for Military Pyschology [sic] represents an 'intellectual town hall' for pyschologists [sic] who share in common an interest in pyschological [sic] issues pertaining to military personnel and their families."

Ironically, five years ago, James was appointed to a task force by then-APA President Gerald Koocher, which, not unlike the nonexistent White House "task force" James said he was appointed to, was charged with studying the mental health needs of military personnel and their family members and developing a "strategic plan for working with the military and other organizations to meet those needs."

In February 2007, after seven months of research, James and other task force members co-authored a report, "The Psychological Needs of U.S. Military Service Members and Their Families," which made recommendations that are similar to those contained in portions of the White House's "Strengthening Military Families" report.

That was not the first task force on which the APA asked James to serve. He was also one of ten members of the APA Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). The PENS task force controversially recommended in a report that "Psychologists may serve in various national security-related roles, such as a consultant to an interrogation, in a manner that is consistent with the Ethics Code and when doing so psychologists are mindful of factors unique to these roles and contexts that require special ethical consideration."

A number of APA members complained that the PENS task force was stacked with psychologists who had close ties to the military and intelligence communities and that APA did not take seriously evidence that psychologists were involved in the creation and promulgation of abusive interrogation techniques. One member of the PENS task force later resigned in protest and another later spoke out publicly on irregularities during the task force proceedings.

The APA has defended allegations leveled against James regarding his alleged involvement in overseeing the torture of detainees at Guantanamo. The APA said  when James was sent to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where he also served as chief psychologist, it was so he could "implement procedures to prevent future abuse."

The lack of clarity and refusal by a wide-range of officials to address specific questions about James underscores the extent to which he has become a controversial figure in recent years.

In his 2008 book, "Fixing Hell," James stated that he witnessed abusive interrogations of detainees, but did not report it and, in at least one instance, did not intervene to stop it. In addition, he supervised the rendition of three children, ages 10 to 15, from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, including the hooding and shackling of the children and interrogations after they arrived. The families were not informed of their children's whereabouts. Although these children were subsequently placed in humane surroundings at specially-built Camp Iguana, at least nine other children under 18 were incarcerated in the adult camp, kept in isolation and suffered other abuse, all while then-Col. James was chief of psychology of the Joint Interrogation Group at Guantanamo.

In September 2009, James issued a statement saying he opposed the Justice Department's decision to appoint a special prosecutor to determine if there was enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal probe of less than a dozen torture cases that were closed for unknown reasons by the Bush administration.

"Being an interrogator is a stressful, challenging and dangerous job," James said. "If there is new evidence that suggests crimes have been committed, then it would make sense to move forward with an investigation. However, since at the time of the interrogations they were deemed legal and acceptable by that sitting administration, I do not believe the investigation is warranted or necessary. I advise the president to be supportive of our current mission and be very careful as he moves forward in this sensitive area."

Last July, Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic filed a complaint against James with the Ohio Psychology Board calling for the panel to launch an investigation into James for "causing [the] psychological devastation to people he was duty-bound to protect." But the board did not act on the complaint and in early February it was dismissed.

Deborah Popowski, a legal fellow at the law school's Human Rights Clinic who drafted the complaint, said at the very least, James should not be permitted to provide any psychological advice to military families. "Dr. James was chief psychologist of a prison where psychological torture was the weapon of choice," Popowski said. "It would be an affront to military families to put him anywhere near a discussion on how to care for the spouses and children of our service members."

 
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

APA Old Guard Campaigns Against Progressive Reisner

Monday, December 1, will be the last day members of the American Psychological Association can vote for president of the organization. Members can vote online at this link. They should cast their vote for the only progressive candidate standing for election, Steven J. Reisner, Ph.D.

According to the ranked nature of the APA ballot, members must mark Dr. Reisner #1 on the ballot. In a letter to his supporters, Steven describes his opponents' tactics:

The APA leadership has mounted a coordinated effort to combat my campaign for change at the APA. Nearly identical emails have gone out from members of the APA’s ‘old guard’ urging members to stop my bid for the APA Presidency by giving their top four votes to the other candidates, in whatever order, just so long as they put Steven Reisner last.

Such campaigning is perhaps not unusual, although with five candidates for office, it does represent a kind of pile-on by the opposition. The other candidates are united in one thing: stop Steven Reisner.

One reason is his association with and support of those APA members who successfully passed a referendum to change APA policy on having psychologists at military and CIA sites that violated human rights of detainees, as recognized in domestic and international law. Psychologists in particular had been associated with abusive interrogations as part of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) at Guantanamo and in Iraq. Psychologists were associated with similar actions with Special Forces in Afghanistan. Finally, some psychologists were intimately involved in implementing torture procedures, reverse-engineered from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program.

Most recently, a key group of anti-torture psychologists led by Stephen Soldz, a close associate of Dr. Reisner, initiated a successful petition campaign against a possible CIA directorship for torture apologist and CIA insider John Brennan. The campaign was widely viewed as contributing to the downfall of any Brennan appointment. It's precisely this kind of action that probably scares some of the APA old guard, who heavily support the military and intelligence services, believing them the source of a bevy of important jobs for current and future psychologists.

While the anti-Brennan campaign came only recently, the successful referendum campaign, which had been opposed by key APA insiders, still rankles, as demonstrated by this post from the APA Council representative for military psychologists on their division listerv (Division 19, the Society for Military Psychology):

Thank you to those who voted in the recent APA special ballot on the petition regarding the so-called “torture” resolution. Unfortunately, as we feared, relatively few APA members voted, and the resolution passed. This will be a difficult resolution for us to live with, but things could get even worse if one of the leaders of the petition movement, Steven Reisner, is elected president of APA…Soon you will receive a ballot to vote for APA president-elect. You will be asked to rank order the five candidates. Because of the vote-counting system that APA uses, it is very important that you use all five positions, and that Dr. Reisner be ranked in the #5 spot. Your Executive Committee is uncomfortable endorsing specific candidates for APA president.

According to Dr. Reisner, similar emails have gone out to the division for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and various state psychological associations. Dr. Reisner's letter gives a powerful and systemic analysis of his opponents' motivations, and offers a progressive program to address the imbalance of military and intelligence influence within APA:

We know that the status quo was roundly rejected by an overwhelming majority of APA members through the referendum vote. Yet, the authors of these emails are contemptuous of the referendum (“Unfortunately…the referendum passed”) and are still trying to delegitimize its validity ("relatively few members voted”). In fact, the referendum passed with a larger number of votes than any previous policy change and with a larger turnout than all but two elections in APA history.

For years, the APA leadership has been on the wrong side of this issue, to our shame, and to the detriment of our ability to speak as professionals with moral authority. The persistence with which the leadership maintains this position has caused some to suspect that APA's policy has much more to do with economics and power than with ethics. Many of the opponents of policy change work directly for the military and many others work for corporations, like HUMRRO, that garners millions in military contracts each year. For this reason I have called for transparency in APA dealings with government, military, and intelligence organizations, including full disclosure of government ties or contracts of any member who is involved in setting APA policies with regard to these agencies.

APA elections are often decided by razor-thin margins. This is a very important election. A relatively small group of psychologists are going to decide what direction a key civilian component of the military-industrial-academic complex takes in the coming period. No one knows what direction exactly national security and military matters will go under an Obama administration. This vote is a way to show the right way for both a President Obama and the incoming Congress.

All APA psychologists: vote for Steven Reisner in the upcoming elections, putting him as #1 choice on the ballot.

To Vote:

You may vote online by Monday, December 1, at https://www.intelliscaninc.net/apa/2008president/. You will need your membership number (on your APA card or on any APA journal mailing label) and your 'ballot control number' (located above your name and address on your paper ballot).

If you are missing either of these, you may call Garnett Coad of the APA election office at 202-336-6087, or email him at gcoad@apa.org.

Please pass this information on to all APA members you may know, and please encourage them to vote by Monday!

For those with further questions, I suggest you email Dr. Reisner, or visit his website, www.reisnerforpresident.org.

For the record, I have no association with Dr. Reisner's campaign. No member of his campaign has asked me write this, or asked for my support. I have no current association with APA. I am writing this, and supporting Dr. Reisner, because of concern for my profession (psychology), and an even larger concern for the direction of my country.

Psychologists and the Realpolitik of Torture

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?

Sometimes it seems as if it is raining news and analysis. A number of good articles have appeared lately on the subject of U.S. torture. David Goodman's "The Enablers" over at Mother Jones is one of a number of articles in a special MJ series on torture. Goodman's article focuses on the fight within the American Psychological Association (APA) over psychologist participation in military and CIA interrogations of "enemy combatants." It's very good, fairly up-to-date, and puts the controversy into some historical context.

Another article, by Stephen Soldz and Brad Olson -- both psychologists and both active in the APA opposition organization, Psychologists for an Ethical APA -- has been published online over at ZNet. Its long title, "A Reaction to the APA Vote on Sealing Up Key Loopholes in the 2007 Resolution on Interrogations," tips you off that there has been some recent activity in the struggle to change APA policy on psychologists and interrogation. Indeed there has been, as last week APA Council voted to approve a substantial change in their previous language on prohibited interrogation techniques. But will it make a difference in the long run?

Soldz and Olson do a good job explaining what the loopholes were in the earlier APA position. The latter is a subject I've covered earlier myself:

The APA is touting how the new 2007 resolution prohibits "specific techniques sometimes used in interrogations and calling on the U.S. government to ban their use"....

Looking back at APA's long list of prohibited techniques we see something strange in the wording. The first part of the list are odious forms of obvious torture. "Techniques" that are "unequivocally condemned" include rape, mock executions, waterboarding, etc. Note, however, that use of "psychotropic drugs or mind-altering substances" are prohibited in instances where they are "used for the purpose of eliciting information". If they are used to sedate or "soften up" a detainee prior to the questioning, drugs are apparently not prohibited.

Even worse is what comes next: a subset of other techniques are also singled out as prohibited when they are "used for the purposes of eliciting information in an interrogation process". These are "hooding, forced nakedness, stress positions, the use of dogs to threaten or intimidate, physical assault including slapping or shaking, exposure to extreme heat or cold, threats of harm or death".

A third subset of "prohibited" techniques concerns sensory deprivation and overstimulation, and sleep deprivation. Here, the APA goes completely off the rails. They define these techniques to be prohibited only if "used in a manner that represents significant pain or suffering or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm". (Emphasis mine)

Soldz and Olson described their reaction at the 2007 convention when APA Council brought forth their "substitute" resolution, written precisely to replace a bureaucratically-blocked resolution proposed months earlier calling for a moratorium against any psychologist participation at interrogation sites. They read the language around "definitions" of torture and cruel, abusive and inhuman behavior:

We remember clearly our shock at first observing this careful parsing of allowed degrees of suffering. We remember such insertions mysteriously occurring overnight before the Council vote. We recall how upset we were with this new language that was in such brazen contrast to the APA Ethics Code's injunction to "do no harm." We also remember our group of APA critics not being able to keep ourselves from wondering "Who pulled strings to get these phrases inserted?"

Opponents of APA collaboration with U.S. torture jumped on the wording of the disputed paragraph. Yet, introduced by representatives of APA's military psychology division, the Council resolution, with its weak and misleading language, passed easily. And that's where things sat for a number of months, as revelations mounted in the press about abusive conditions of confinement at Guantanamo's Camp Delta, about CIA use of waterboarding, and the participation of foreign countries in the U.S. "extraordinary rendition" program. Capping it all off, there was the circus of Attorney General Mukasey's testimony before Congress, with Bush's number one legal officer unable to make up his mind about whether waterboarding represented torture or not.

Meanwhile, the backlash grew against APA's sneaky maneuvers and parsing of language, allowing for the continuation of psychological forms of torture and abusive treatment. Goodman's article nicely summarizes what happened next:

In the wake of these revelations, a growing number of APA members have protested by withholding dues. In August [2007], Mary Pipher, author of the best-selling Reviving Ophelia, returned her APA Presidential Citation. And a stream of prominent APA members are resigning, including Kenneth Pope, the former chair of the organization's ethics committee, who quit in February. In addition, at least six college psychology departments -- Earlham, Guilford, Smith, University of Rhode Island, California State University at Long Beach, and York College of the City University of New York -- have gone on record saying it was a violation of professional ethics for psychologists to participate in interrogations in any prison outside the U.S. where prisoners are not afforded due process. And in January, the California State Senate Committee on Business, Professions, and Economic Development passed a resolution discouraging California licensed health professionals from participating in detainee interrogations.

(As a gesture demonstrating my wish to be open about any bias I may have, I should add that I resigned from the APA myself earlier this year.)

The APA brass certainly noticed something was happening. Ethics Director Stephen Behnke began sending out emails, trying to smooth the waters with critics. He assured the doubting Thomases that there was no attempt to create any loopholes, and that the confusion would all be cleared up by the long-promised casebook on ethics and interrogation due out in about a year. Of course, not a word was said about the now-forgotten moratorium proposal. It was dead in the water, relegated to the maximum program of radicals and little-read bloggers (ahem).

New APA Ban on Torture Techniques: Victory or Clever Cover-up?

According to Goodman's article, the Senate Armed Services Committee is still investigating the role of psychologists in the reverse-engineering of Pentagon anti-torture training for the interrogators of Bush's "war on terror." I had given up on any real hearings ever happening, but perhaps APA headquarters knows more than me. Or perhaps, as Soldz and Olson suggest, and I've made explicit in the past, the dawning realization that a Democratic administration is probably going to take over Washington, D.C. next January has signaled to APA that a change in approach is necessary. The Democrats have offered a reform of interrogation policy that includes a similar ban on abusive techniques, and offers the current Army Field Manual as an authority of allowable interrogation techniques.

Then again, maybe the resignations of prominent and non-prominent members, the dues boycott, and the muffled drumbeat in the press on the subject has played a role in APA's turnabout on torture definitions. In any case, all of a sudden, APA Council moved with due speed to make some purportedly dramatic changes in their previous position.

More than one critic of APA's past policy has noted the participation of Bill Strickland from APA's Division 19, Society for Military Psychology, on the small group redrafting the controversial paragraph. Not only has Strickland been a major opponent of a psychologist moratorium, wherein psychologists would follow the policies of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatrist Association forbidding their membership from participation in the interrogation of detainees, he is also Vice President of Human Research Resources Organization, or HumRRO.

Goodman notes in his article that HumRRO is a major recipient of defense funding, and staffed at high levels by APA honchos past and present. But HumRRO was a major research center in the 1950s-1960s on sensory deprivation, using U.S. soldiers as guinea pigs, and thus a center of MKULTRA research. As reported in J.P. Zubek's 1969 compendium, Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research (Appleton-Century-Crofts, publishers), HumRRO, located in Monterey, California, reportedly had the best laboratory of all the sensory research centers:

...they made significant contributions to the study of the effects of sensory deprivation on hallucinations, attitude change, emotions, motor behavior, and cognition. Perhaps their most important work has been in the area of the measurement of affect and subjective stress... (p. 10)

I presume Strickland and his military/CIA partners are counting on the fact that sensory deprivation can be banned in name only, but still be practiced in the field. How do they do this? By simply claiming, as is done in the new Army Field Manual, that what they are doing is not sensory deprivation, even when they are applying special goggles and mittens to detainees, taking a page right out of the Donald Hebb SD playbook. The famous picture of then-defendant Jose Padilla being taken from his cell in goggles illustrates the technique quite well.

As we shall see, the supposed closing of the loopholes (and they likely aren't all completely closed) belies the fact that the military and APA leadership have shifted the terms of the debate away from psychologist participation in unethical and likely illegal governmental detention of prisoners, and away from other, more arcane loopholes that promise no major change in U.S. torture practice. For brevity's sake, the reedited 2007 paragraph defining proscribed interrogation techniques is not reproduced here, but can be accessed at this link. Let me allow that it is quite encyclopedic in proscribing most torture techniques known or that can be imagined. It's reliance on the UN Convention Against Torture, which was ratified in the U.S. with a number of "reservations" that weakened its definitional structure, remains a possible difficulty in implementation. (See discussion on this point here.)

But the other difficulties are more obvious. Hence it is not in the resolution's language that we find the problems (at present), but in the politics that got us to where we now are. These are enumerated below:

1) Despite all protestations of good faith by APA, psychologists still staff the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams at Guantanamo, and other interrogation sites, including, presumably, secret "black site" prisons run by the CIA. Psychologists at these sites are under the military chain of command, not APA ethics codes and committees. These sites are known to be in violation of Geneva Conventions and other national and international laws and agreements concerning prisoners, including the holding of detainees in indefinite detention, hiding detainees from the Red Cross, subjecting detainees to abusive conditions of detention, transferring via secret rendition some detainees to foreign prisons to be tortured, and subjecting prisoners to secret courts where hearsay evidence and evidence supplied via tortured confession is allowed.

Scandalously, a promised resolution to be brought before APA Council calling for the closure of Guantanamo's prison facility failed to make an appearance yet again at February's meeting, putting off any action for some months. The Council member who promised to do this explained to an inquiring member that the Gitmo closure resolution wasn't presented at the Council meeting for the following reasons: it was being vetted by APA's Board for the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest (BAPPI), emails got lost, a busy work schedule intervened, and various other dog-ate-my-homework excuses. When APA wants to bureaucratically bury something, they don't fool around.

2) APA's Ethics Code 1.02, which allows psychologists to obey commands and "governing legal authority," even when an action is at variance with professional ethics, remains a virtual get-out-of-jail card for military psychologists engaged in abusive interrogations. The code, rewritten after 9/11, places into APA's ethics code the Nazis' Nuremberg defense: "I was only following orders" ("Befehl ist Befehl"). The APA promised to insert a qualifying phrase about human rights into 1.02 back in 2006. No action has been taken to date. Contrast this with the six month time frame that brought about the recent word change in last summer's resolution.

3) For months, APA activists have been concentrating their fire on the previously weak language of the 2007 resolution and its loopholes regarding certain kinds of torture. With the "victory" of recent days over this disputed language, some activists aren't wondering if it isn't time to end the dues boycott, implemented last year as a protest against APA's torture policy. Others are seeing the language change as a sign of good faith by APA leadership. The days of a strong fight over a moratorium of psychologist participation at Guantanamo and CIA "black site" prisons seems a thing of the past, indicating the success of APA in changing the terms of the torture debate.

Calling the Question

The issue boils down to this: Are psychologists involved in interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo, CIA prisons, and other theater of war prison sites? Yes. Are these sites in violation of basic human rights laws and treaties? Yes. Have psychologists been implicated in torture of prisoners, and training other personnel in such torture? Yes. Does APA have an ethics policy in place that allows military psychologists to follow orders, regardless of ethical demands? Yes. Has anyone in the 50 plus year history of psychologist participation in mind control and interrogation research ever been held responsible for unethical practices? No. Has any military psychologist, or for that matter any health professional, been held responsible for torture-related activities since 9/11? No.

The overwhelming conclusion is that the language change in APA's 2007 resolution regarding interrogations, while welcome, is a small victory at best, part of a larger campaign where the government and their institutional handmaidens, like APA, have by far the lion's share of victories. This is the time when all opponents of APA participation in U.S. abusive interrogation must redouble their efforts to push for a moratorium on psychologist involvement in national security interrogations of so-called "enemy combatants." They must come out strongly against the use of psychological torture techniques in the Army Field Manual. They must call for accountability from those who have promoted torture and other abuse, up to and including criminal prosecutions. They must call for an end to the nation's policy of "extraordinary rendition." They must call for the rescission of APA Ethics Code 1.02. And, finally, they should take up Drs. Soldz and Olson's call for a reckoning with the sordid aspects of the history of the behavioral sciences:

We must, together with other health professions, come together as part of a truth and reconciliation process to publicly clarify the roles of psychologists and other health and mental health professionals in the production of harm. We must publicly admit and apologize for the use of psychological knowledge and expertise in detention and interrogation abuses. Until we clarify and personally accept the extent to which our profession and our professional association has condoned or abetted these and other abuses committed during this so-called "war on terrorism," we will have done little to learn what went wrong, and little to make the moral and institutional changes necessary to prevent their recurrence.

For further reading, please see this recent article, "The ethics of interrogation and the American Psychological Association: A critique of policy and process", by Brad Olson, Stephen Soldz, and Martha Davis.

Torture Critics, Ethics Games, and Institutional Corruption

Also posted at Daily Kos, Docudharma, and NION

Dr. Michael Wessells, one of ten members of the American Psychological Association's 2006 Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS), has released a letter to APA strongly condemning the position taken by that organization regarding psychologist participation at national security interrogations at sites like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison.

Dr. Wessells is Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at Columbia University, and also Professor of Psychology at Randolph Macon College. He is the psychosocial advisor for the Children's Christian Fund, and "regularly advises U. N. agencies, donors, and governments on policies regarding child protection and well-being". Dr. Wessells is the author of Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection.

The PENS Task Force, of which Dr. Wessells was a member, was ostensibly organized to address the controversy over psychologists working in national security settings. As the APA/PENS June 2005 Report described it, PENS was to

[E]xamine whether our current Ethics Code adequately addresses [the ethical dimensions of psychologists’ involvement in national security-related activities], whether the APA provides adequate ethical guidance to psychologists involved in these endeavors, and whether APA should develop policy to address the role of psychologists and psychology in investigations related to national security.

The report, and the subsequent 2006 APA Resolution Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, came in for a lot of criticism. At their 2007 annual meeting, the APA passed a "Reaffirmation" of the 2006 resolution. The new resolution did not stem the tide of criticism regarding APA policy, both within the organization, and without.

The main sticking point for the opponents of official APA policy has been that APA allows psychologist participation at sites where human rights, such as habeas corpus, are denied. Furthermore, despite banning participation in a number of odious forms of torture, such as waterboarding, APA resolutions have threaded the legal needle in allowing some forms of modern psychological torture under some circumstance, such as isolation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, and use of drugs. The APA states that it is resolutely against torture, but it consistently misrepresents the position of its opponents, and spins the truth around what its policy allows.

Mike Wessells is not the only original member of PENS committee to speak out against the process that led APA to its current position, and at least one APA insider has also written publically about the corruption of the APA decision-making bodies around the interrogation issue. But Dr. Wessells was notably the only PENS member to resign, in January 2006, from the task force. In a letter to PENS chair Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, he explained:

Out of ethical concerns, I have decided to step down from the PENS Task Force because continuing work with the Task Force tacitly legitimates the wider silence and inaction of the APA on the crucial issues at hand. At the highest levels, the APA has not made a strong, concerted, comprehensive, public and internal response of the kind warranted by the severe human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. The PENS Task Force had a very limited mandate and was not structured in a manner that would provide the kind of comprehensive response or representative process needed.

A Letter to the President

Dr. Wessells new letter, dated yesterday, and addressed to current APA President Sharon Brehm, shows the same concerns over APA policy. It is reproduced here in full (originally published on-line at Stephen Soldz's blog Psyche, Science, and Society):

September 25, 2007

Dr. Sharon Brehm
President
American Psychological Association

Dear Dr. Brehm,

I am writing to you out of strong concern regarding the ethics of psychologists’ involvement in coercive interrogations. Events during and following the 2007 APA Annual Convention have created significant ethical questions regarding both the substance of APA’s position and the process through which APA leaders debate these complex issues.

Substantively, the main problem is that the 2007 Resolution by APA Council makes it ethical practice for psychologists to violate international human rights standards. In particular, the resolution allows psychologists to practice and support interrogations in sites that operate outside the protections offered by the Geneva Conventions and other international human rights instruments such as the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). The illegal, indefinite detention of people at these sites itself constitutes a violation of international law and human rights standards, and psychologists’ presence at these sites only legitimates these human rights violations. No profession should put itself above international human rights standards as the APA has done in this matter. In fact, international human rights standards ought to be the foundation of any professional Code of Ethics. By allowing psychologists to practice in ways that flaunt international human rights standards, APA has committed itself to an unethical course of action.

The process of the communications following the APA Convention is also cause for significant concern. The recently released statement of the APA Communications Office on APA’s position on torture presents a view that falls short of accepted standards of full, accurate disclosure. In particular, the statement conveniently fails to mention the aforementioned point that illegal, indefinite detention itself violates the CAT and that psychologists who practice at sites operating outside international human rights protections thereby enable a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. A more balanced, honest statement would outline the important steps that the APA has taken on these issues and also point out the ongoing debates within the Association and the issues that warrant further analysis. Stronger concern arises out of the statement made by former APA President Gerald Koocher in which he attempted to use in public sensitive, psychological disinformation (most of it was false) to discredit the statements and activities of a former PENS Task Force member who criticized the PENS process. Such misuse of sensitive, personal information by an APA leader is ethically questionable, diverts attention from the wider issues that warrant much discussion, and could have a chilling effect on the open discussion and debate that are badly needed on these complex issues.

I urge you to exercise leadership in helping the APA to act in an ethical, responsible manner in addressing these issues of substance and process. Your leadership is needed to bring the APA in line with international human rights standards and to enable the processes of accurate disclosure, dialogue and mutual learning that will promote ethical action within the APA.

Sincerely,

Michael Wessells, PhD
Columbia University

Is Change Possible?

So far, the response from President Brehm and her colleagues has been to disseminate letters critical of their APA opponents. And APA has also released a "Frequently Asked Questions" webpage to answer their critics. This is what Dr. Wessells refers to in his letter as a "recently released statement of the APA Communications Office". Full of half-truths and self-serving misrepresentations, internal APA opponents to the mainstream policy of support to Bush's "war on terror" interrogations and abrogation of interntional law, are promising a thorough rebuttal in coming days.

It is my opinion that the APA is not reformable, at this point. The integration of APA leadership, and much of the academic psychological community and university departments, into the national security apparatus of the United States government is far too advanced to admit significant change. While I respect those who fight to change APA, and restore trust to the field of psychology, I cannot see how that change can take place. At the very least, a real movement towards change would mean severing the organizational links of the Society for Military Psychology (Division 19) from the APA. Military psychologists are subject to the command structure of the Pentagon before they are subject to an ethical oversight process of the APA. No other entity within organized psychology is allowed such special status, and this special relationship, which goes back to the foundation of the American Psychological Association, must end. I'll note that it was members of Division 19 that introduced and led the argumentation at APA Council for the current insufficient policy resolutions on torture and cruel, unusual, and inhumane interrogations passed by that body.

How They Do It

Mike Kimmel's article, "Reflections from Panama", in an upcoming newsletter of APA Division 48 (Peace Psychology), "Paul Kimmel writes of how APA sidelined a 2004 report from an APA task force he chaired, the Task Force on the Psychological Effects of Efforts to Prevent Terrorism".

In his article, Dr. Kimmel describes how the work of the many psychologists honestly involved in study of this issue had that work bureaucratically suppressed at the last minute (much as in 2007, APA proponents of a moratorium against psychologist participation in national security interrogations were broadsided by last minute "substitute" resolutions, substitute "substitute" resolutions, word changes, etc., and very little time to debate issues on allowed amendments). The entire article is worth viewing, but I close here with this excerpt, which tellingly portrays the futility of action in an organization, like APA, whose leadership is dedicated to collaboration with the forces of the government, and who practice the dread arts of bureaucratic suppression. The quote begins with Dr. Kimmel describing why he submitted his report to last minute requests by APA heavyweights Ron Levant, Rhea Farberman, and others for further "review", which was supposed to make reception of the report even more "powerful":

My expectation was that by going through the review process, the Report would be stronger and the Association would act upon it more quickly and comprehensively after Council approved it in February 2005.

Attending the meetings and responding to the suggestions of the many Boards and Committees involved a lot more work for me and our authors, as these groups had different interests and points of view regarding our findings and recommendations.

When we finished revising our Report in light of their suggestions, the APA Board of Directors recommended it be rejected as lacking “peer review” in spite of the fact that it was a policy piece and not an academic journal article.

It was also suggested that our findings and recommendations were too “political” (it seems that only the status quo is not “political” or “politically correct” at the Association).

We brought our responses to the Board of Directors’ objections to the February 2005 Council meetings, only to find our item being moved down the agenda by Ron Levant (presiding as President) until there were just 10 minutes left in the final afternoon session.

This was barely enough time to go over the main item and no time for discussion of or response to the Board’s critique.

Our first speaker was cut off by Levant (there were several others ready and able to address their issues) and a vote was called.

We were voted down - as Representatives were leaving to catch flights and other Convention activities - and the Report was never received by the APA.

Moment of Truth Arrives: APA & Participation in U.S. Torture

On August 16, the American Psychological Association (APA) opens a five day convention in beautiful San Francisco. Behind the mise en scene of cable cars, wind-whipped fog, hot sourdough bread, and old Victorian gingerbread homes, a crucial political struggle is taking place over the future of coercive interrogation techniques and inhumane detention conducted by U.S. forces in the wrongly-named "war on terror".

In previous posts, I have explained how psychologists have participated in Pentagon and CIA-run torture of so-called "illegal enemy combatants", how there is a long history of this, and how a large group of APA internal critics and anti-torture activists have proposed a moratorium against use of psychologists in all operations concerning detention and interrogation of detainees in foreign prisons and at Guantanamo. A recent article by Jane Mayer at The New Yorker describes the fight within the Pentagon and CIA by some government behavioral scientific professionals against use of torture techniques:

The use of psychologists was also considered a way for C.I.A. officials to skirt measures such as the Convention Against Torture. The former adviser to the intelligence community said, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have Ph.D.s who have these theories.’ ” He said that, inside the C.I.A., where a number of scientists work, there was strong internal opposition to the new techniques. “Behavioral scientists said, ‘Don’t even think about this!’ They thought officers could be prosecuted.”

Unfortunately, this internal opposition by some CIA and military psychologists and psychiatrists proved impotent. No doubt, however, some of what we know about what's going on internally must have come from leaks by such disgruntled and disgusted personnel.

Bureaucratic Vertigo: Resolutions, Amendments, and Votes

Now the scene shifts to the civilized convention meeting rooms of the APA, where, somewhere, the APA's Council of Representatives will meet on Sunday, August 19 to vote on possibly two separate resolutions: one calls for a moratorium against psychologist participation at Guantanamo, in addition to detainee sites in Iraq, Afghanistan, and secret prisons abroad. The APA Board of Directors has proposed a different resolution, which details a number of prohibited interrogation techniques, but fails to support a moratorium, and will allow psychologists to still work in certain defined ways at prisons that allow indefinite detention. Forces within APA are working to derail the first proposal (on a moratorium) in favor of the weaker, new APA-crafted resolution. I detailed all this in my recent article: Will APA Psychology Convention Endorse Indefinite Detention?

Since the existence of this second proposal appears in part meant to remove the moratorium resolution from consideration, i.e., undemocratically not allow it to come to a vote, a number of the moratorium proponents have been working hard to amend the Board's resolution to make it more like the original proposal to ban psychologist participation (a "ban" by the way that was only advisory, with no enforceable provisions).

These amendments, some of which are very helpful, still have a number of problems. Not least is they leave intact the Board resolution's reliance on a definition of "cruel, unusual, inhumane and degrading treatment" (so-called "torture-lite") that is rooted in shifty and inadequate U.S. constitutional so-called protections, and not on international laws and treaties, which are much more specific in their protections. Consider the barbaric practices that exist in U.S. "supermax" prisons, and you get the idea. Additionally, the amendments fall short on nailing down the definition of certain prohibited techniques, creating loopholes for CIA and Pentagon torture proponents.

Closing the Loopholes

Recently, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) sent a letter to APA President Sharon Brehm calling for a vote on both proposals, and suggesting changes of their own to the Board's proposal to strengthen it. Their changes are worth noting:

We understand, of course, that the list of techniques in the proposed resolution is, by the very nature of a list, incapable of addressing all possible forms of torture; but the list does cover virtually all abusive psychological techniques used by the military and CIA and the Department of Defense since 2002....

To avoid creating loopholes, we urge that the resolution be amended in certain key respects that should not be objectionable:

A. Assure that the description of prohibited techniques leaves no room for ambiguity....

1. The use of isolation and sleep deprivation in interrogation is never permissible (thus eliminating the qualifier that they are condemned only if there is a detriment to health....

2. The use of psychotropic drugs is prohibited;

3. Any exploitation of fears or psychopathology (not just phobias) is unacceptable; and

4. Participation “during” interrogation is expanded to include “or in connection with detention,” because we now know that practices such as isolation, sleep deprivation, and use of persistent loud music have been used as part of a strategy to break down individuals both inside and outside the interrogation room....

The Board’s resolution serves to underscore the importance of other actions we urged in my letter of June 14, especially adopting a stance that psychologists not participate in the interrogation of individual detainees by performing pre-interrogation assessments, designing interrogation plans, assisting in interrogation, monitoring interrogation, or otherwise.

Brehm the Decider

Addressing the PHR letter to Sharon Brehm is more than just an organizational gesture, one organization speaking to the administrative head of another organization. In the APA internal struggle -- one you can be sure is monitored by the military, the CIA, and perhaps even by the White House itself, as the loss of APA support would be a huge blow to the attempt to make Bush's "war on terror" antidemocratic and torture techniques legitimate -- the battle of the two resolutions is likely to be partly decided by Brehm herself, as she is both APA President and also the presiding officer of the Council. This is because the APA Parliamentarian has asked her to judge the procedural matter in such a way that she may make the key decision as to whether the moratorium decision is allowed to come to a vote.

As one insider explained:

Thus, a member — indeed, THE most important member of the Board of Directors — is in a position to rule on the legitimacy of a motion that has been put forward by herself and her own Board of Directors!

Is the "fix" in? Or will Brehm allow, as many suggest, both resolutions to come to a vote? (The idea that the Board's resolution was meant to overturn the moratorium resolution and by the Council's own rules should be thrown out and only the moratorium resolution come to a vote is, while supported by a few, probably a non-starter.)

No one knows what Brehm will do. But one wonders if she wants to go down as the APA president that allowed continued psychologist participation in coercive detentions, and de facto endorsement of working at facilities that allow hellish indefinite (and often solitary) detention. Then again, the blandishments of the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA must be considerable, and the voice of the APA's own Society for Military Psychology (Division 19 of the APA) remains strong and vociferous against any moratorium.

Summing Up

This has been a long and complicated post, especially for those who may not have kept up with this political fight in the Siberia of American politics. But it is not an insignificant tussle. As recent articles in Vanity Fair, the Washington Monthly, The New Yorker, and elsewhere have made clear, the fight over psychologist participation in torture is central to how Bush and Cheney conduct their criminal "war on terror" abroad, with its black site secret prisons, its use of extensive torture and abuse, and its arrogant dismissal of international law and treaties. It's evident the U.S. Congress has little appetite to oppose the Bush regime in any substantive way. That leaves it up to us -- to the rank and file of various civilian organizations, such as the APA -- to fight back against the antidemocratic and criminal impulses and policies both proposed and implemented by the Bush Administration and its compliant Pentagon and CIA toadies.

But perhaps not everybody at Langley and the Pentagon complex are so compliant! There are those within these institutions who want to see the torture and inhumane treatment stop. Perhaps some of these will stand up and reveal more of the inner connections of the Bush war machine with torture and affronts to international law. Perhaps even a few may have something yet to whisper into Sharon Brehm's ear.

Still, it would be foolish to hope much for anything along such lines, as the socialization and organizational pressures of being in the military or intelligence organizations, not to mention on the APA Council or Board of Directors, shapes the context within which these people think and behave. No. It will be up to the APA rank and file, and the general public at large, to the degree they can be mobilized to pressure the APA and their Council of Representatives.

Rally for an Ethical APA

There will be a rally to end APA collaboration with illegal interrogations and torture on Friday, August 17, 4-5:30pm at Yerba Buena Gardens, right by the APA convention. It is endorsed by many psychological organizations, including sections of the APA, as well as by prominent individuals and organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights, Tikkun, School of the Americas Watch, Robert Jay Lifton, MD, Steven Miles, MD, and others. There will be speakers and music. Come show your support.

Center of the Storm: Fight to Expose the Torture Planners

Previously I described the new Vanity Fair article by Katherine Eban, which details how CIA and SERE psychologists directly implemented and spread torture at U.S. government bases and prisons abroad. (See Vanity Fair Article Links CIA/SERE Psychologists to Torture.) I noted that

From afar, this all looks like a crazy trip through a double looking glass. The insanity of even discussing the "right" way to conduct illegal interrogations in the "war on terror" belies a moral and political bankruptcy so profound that it may take us an entire political and social epoch to extirpate it.

Now, in the wake of the VF revelations, Psychologists for an Ethical APA (PEAPA) have released a press statement calling for a fundamental overhaul of the premier psychological organization in the United States, and an investigation of its leading members, as the tentacles of the U.S. torture apparatus have reached deep down into American civil and academic society.

The Politics of Torture

From the PEAPA statement, dated July 17, 2007 (Emphases are added in bold and not in original):

Today’s deeply disturbing revelations in Vanity Fair show the essential role US psychologists played in the torture of detainees in CIA and Department of Defense (DoD) custody, heightening the urgent need for the American Psychological Association (APA) to issue clear ethical guidelines prohibiting psychologists in the military or intelligence services from violating basic human rights as part of interrogation processes, the Coalition for an Ethical APA stated.... When read in conjunction with the recently declassified Defense Department investigation which revealed that psychologists re-engineered counter-terrorist training techniques as mechanisms for detainee abuse at Guantánamo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, this article is an indictment not only of participating psychologists, but of the Association which refuses to condemn these practices.

As will be clear, much of the press release concerns the politics around a fight within the APA to stop psychologist participation in coercive interrogations. That psychologists and other health care workers have participated in such is irrefutable, as evidenced by the VF article, and in such documentary works by others, including myself.

The politics of the fight within APA now centers around a proposal by dissident psychologists to pass a moratorium resolution this August, coincident in time with the 2007 APA Convention in San Francisco, calling for APA to ban psychologist participation in national security interrogations in the "war on terror" as historically and inherently abusive. The APA leadership, for their part, maintain that psychologist presence at such interrogations actually facilitates their supposedly non-abusive character.

The APA has posted the response of their division for Military Psychology (Division 19, the Society for Military Psychology) to the proposed moratorium:

... military psychologists believe they are performing a valuable service by being included in the interrogation process....

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.

Hmmm... Well, let's keep that in mind when we consider this quote from Eban's VF article. (For those who don't know, the SERE acronym refers to the Pentagon's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program, which is supposed to "stress inoculate" U.S. soldiers against the POW experience. JTF-GTMO refers to Joint Task Force Guantanamo. BSCT refers to Behavioral Science Consultation Team.)

On December 2, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld granted JTF-GTMO 170's request to apply coercive tactics in interrogations. The only techniques he rejected were waterboarding and death threats. Within a week, the task force had drafted a five-page, typo-ridden document entitled "JTF GTMO 'SERE' Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure."

The document, which has never before been made public, states, "The premise behind this is that the interrogation tactics used at US military SERE schools are appropriate for use in real-world interrogations" and "can be used to break real detainees."

The document is divided into four categories: "Degradation," "Physical Debilitation," "Isolation and Monopoliztion [sic] of Perception," and "Demonstrated Omnipotence." The tactics include "slaps," "forceful removal of detainees' clothing," "stress positions," "hooding," "manhandling," and "walling," which entails grabbing the detainee by his shirt and hoisting him against a specially constructed wall.

PEAPA Presses On

In early 2005, the APA appointed a Presidential Task Force to form ethics policy that was dominated by psychologists from the military and intelligence establishment, some of whom were involved in the very interrogation chains of command now shown to have facilitated abuse. The ethics policy of the APA and the report of the APA’s Presidential Task Force, taken together, currently allow psychologists to participate in national security interrogations, unlike physicians and psychiatrists, and even permits contravening the ethics code when faced with a conflicting “lawful order” from a governing authority....

The Vanity Fair article reports the role of psychologists in developing the CIA’s regime of abusive interrogations (”torture”). The article states “that psychologists weren’t merely complicit in America’s aggressive new interrogation regime. Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the CIA.” Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen of the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program were brought in by the CIA to use SERE techniques, developed to help our soldiers resist collaboration if captured, to break down detainees.

While Mitchell and Jessen used so-called “enhanced” techniques such as waterboarding (i.e., simulated drowning), most of their techniques became staples of interrogation tactics toward detainees in the war on terror and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article quotes one source as describing the Mitchell and Jessen approach as being to “break down [the detainees] through isolation, [use] white noise, completely take away their ability to predict the future, [and] create dependence on interrogators.” The description of these techniques matches those techniques described by former interrogator Tony Lagouranis in his new book, Fear Up Harsh as being used by numerous interrogators in Iraq.

The PEAPA statement goes on to describe how the propagation of these abusive coercive techniquest -- of torture plain and simple -- was facilitated by the respectable cover of the scientific respectability of the psychological profession and of science in general.

I spoke out strongly against this latter role of modern "scientific" psychology over a year ago, in a diary at Daily Kos:

In [Alfred] McCoy's A Question of Torture, McCoy notes that a July 2005 survey of detainee medical care found the BSCT teams lacked clear guidelines, and "recommended the Army stop using psychiatrists and physicians to assist in interrogation". McCoy's narrative continues (p. 184):

Rejecting these recommendations... Lieutenant General Kevin C. Kiley, the Army's surgeon general, said they found, "no evidence of systemic problems in detainee medical care," praised the military's worldwide treatment for detainees, and deferred assessment of the BSCT teams to "more studies." In defense of his position that the role of these behavioral teams is "safe, legal and ethical," Kiley cited the APA task force report (PDF), noting that it reminded members to maintain "an ethical view of their duties. But it doesn't prohibit them from assisting in interrogations."

Thus do APA internal documents and resolutions make themselves into the very heart of Pentagon policy-making.

Action Against APA's Interrogation Position Becomes a Crucial Front Against Bush's War/Torture Policy

The PEAPA release continues:

In June, the Coalition for an Ethical APA sent an Open Letter to the President of the APA, Dr. Sharon Brehm, demanding swift and comprehensive changes in APA policy. In six weeks, the number of signatories to the letter has risen to over 650. The APA leadership has yet to respond to this letter. Soon afterwards, 58 psychologists from the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs issued an additional letter expressing outrage over the failure of the APA to adequately respond to the growing evidence of psychologist involvement in torture. Numerous individual psychologists have written additional letters of protest, and a group of APA members has organized a campaign to withhold their dues until the APA changes its ethical policy to prohibit such abuses.

While you should read the entire statement, PEAPA concludes with a strong call for action in cleaning up one of the United States's largest and most prestigious professional, scientific societies, one that has become over the years an adjunct to Pentagon misdeeds and imperialistic foreign policy:

The group urgently recommends the following:

1. The President of the APA must immediately acknowledge errors and abuses committed by its leadership, and substantively reaffirm its commitment to promoting adherence by all psychologists to international human rights standards.

2. The APA Board of Directors and Ethics Committee must endorse the APA Moratorium on psychologist participation in interrogations of foreign detainees, to be voted upon at the August convention.

3. The APA Board of Directors must encourage, support, and cooperate with ongoing Senate investigations into the role of psychologist’s utilization of SERE techniques in developing the US regime of psychological torture used at Guantanamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA Black Sites, and elsewhere.

4. The APA Board of Directors must commence a neutral third-party investigation of its own involvement, and that of APA staff, in APA-military conflicts of interest. Among the issues this investigation must examine are:

a) the numerous procedural irregularities alleged to have occurred during the PENS process;

b) the role of the military and intelligence agencies in the formation and functioning of the PENS Task Force;

c) the reasons the APA and its leadership have systematically ignored the accumulating evidence that psychologists participating in interrogations are contributing to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, rather than helping to prevent it;

d) the overall nexus of close ties between the APA staff/leadership and the military and intelligence agencies, ties that may have contributed to a climate that permits undo influence of military and intelligence agencies in the creation of these policies and that encourages turning a blind eye to abuse;

e) the transformation of the APA Ethics Code, from one that protects psychologists’ ethical conduct when such conduct conflicts with law and military regulations to one that protects psychologists who follow unethical law and military regulations.

The Coalition for an Ethical APA calls on all concerned APA members and other psychologists to join them by signing the Open Letter to APA President Sharon Brehm at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/BrehmLetter/, to participate actively in mini-convention sessions on ethics and interrogation at the APA Convention in San Francisco beginning this August 18th, and to join the demonstrations planned for this Convention [information available at http://ethicalapa.com/].

Conclusion

This has been a long article, but I cannot overemphasize the importance of the issues herein. As Congress reveals itself more and more to be a toothless lion when it comes to opposition to the Bush Administration's assault on civil liberties, and its everlasting war drive, assisted by torturers and military apologists and profiteers, the American people must stand up in their everyday institutions, at unions, at churches, in professional societies, if and where the opportunity arises.

Today, for better or worse, psychologists have a unique opportunity to both strike a blow against an illegal and immoral war and interrogation policy, and to save their own organization from calumny and ignominy as a handmaiden to barbaric treatment and callous indifference to the sufferings of the weak and the helpless.

Today, the center of the storm is moving incongruously over Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco, where next month a battle will be fought over the soul of an organization, and maybe, over the soul of a country. Will you be there?

Major call for Congress to investigate CIA/Pentagon Torture

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which has been in the forefront of mobilizing medical professionals and citizens in general against torture, has released a major new call for full Congressional investigations into U.S. interrogation policies and their implementation by the CIA and the Department of Defense. Calling for "No More Abu Ghraibs" (the third anniversary of the Abu Ghraib revelations is on April 28), PHR states in its press release:

Over the last three years there has been a continuous outcry against the Administration's interrogation policies, including among the military and intelligence communities. The Department of Defense (DoD) has developed clearer guidelines prohibiting most abusive practices but it still continues to involve mental health professionals in the interrogation of detainees, making them active members of the "Behavioral Science Consultation Teams" (BSCTs). Ambiguities in the DoD guidelines and weaker standards for the CIA leave room for continued abuse and not enough accountability.

PHR has done stellar work in battling the inhumane and illegal coercive interrogation policies implemented by Bush and his unlamented former Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld.

Though Rumsfeld is gone, the torture continues. Amnesty International released a report on April 5, 2007, "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -- Cruel and Inhuman: Conditions of isolation for detainees at Guantánamo Bay", which describes the ongoing torture regime the U.S. conducts at the Gitmo Naval Base.

As of 1 April 2007, approximately 385 men of around 30 nationalities were detained without trial in the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Designated by the US authorities as “"unlawful enemy combatants”", many have been held for more than five years without knowing if or when they will be released or brought to any form of judicial process. None of those currently held has had the lawfulness of his detention reviewed by a court. A few face the prospect of trials by military commission under procedures that violate international fair trial standards....

Built to accommodate around 178 detainees, the compound known as Camp 6 is surrounded by high concrete walls with no windows visible on the façade. Inside, detainees are confined for a minimum of 22 hours a day in individual steel cells with no windows to the outside.... There are no opening windows and detainees are completely cut-off from human contact while inside their cells....

Contrary to international standards, the cells have no access to natural light or air, and are lit by fluorescent lighting which is on 24 hours a day and controlled by guards....

As of March 2007, dozens of detainees are reported to have continued or resumed a hunger strike in protest at their conditions as well as indefinite detention.... A number of them were being force-fed through nasal tubes, some while strapped into restraint chairs. In recently declassified accounts, detainees have described being subjected to considerable pain as the tubes are inserted into their nostrils. One detainee reported how, three times, the tube had been inserted the wrong way so that it went into his lungs; he said he frequently vomited after being force-fed and was not given clean clothes. Guards have allegedly subjected hunger-striking detainees in one block to further punitive treatment, such as pepper spraying them or turning the air-conditioning up high.

The PHR call for action explains how psychologists at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) military training program at Fort Bragg, North Carolina were "instrumental in creating the techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere." In addition, military psychologists have been instrumental, through their organization, the Society for Military Psychology (itself a recognized division within the American Psychological Association (APA)) in maintaining APA support for psychologist participation in coercive interrogations. I discussed this recently in my diary, Military Psychologists Oppose Torture Moratorium.

The word is that Senate committees already have gathered information preparatory to making a full-scale investigation of Bush's torture policies, including the use of medical and psychological personnel. But it may take a public outcry to make such investigations a reality.

Please join PHR in their call for a Congressional investigation. Go their action website, which automates the sending of your letter to the appropriate representatives. Or copy the letter below and send it to your Congressperson and to your Senators.

Congress Must Fully Investigate CIA and DoD Interrogation Methods

I am writing to request that you push for a full Congressional investigation into CIA and Department of Defense interrogations. Specifically, I would like Congress to investigate:

* the role of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) military training program techniques in CIA and DoD interrogations

* the involvement of psychologists and other health professionals in CIA and DoD interrogations

I have been deeply disturbed by the evidence brought forward by writers, such as Steven Miles, MD, Jane Mayer and Mark Benjamin, that harmful interrogation techniques, such as the use of dogs, prolonged sleep deprivation, humiliation, forcible restraint, hypothermia and compulsory intravenous infusions, may have been adapted from the SERE military training program. I am likewise alarmed that health professionals have played pivotal roles in interrogations by treating patients to prolong harsh interrogations and by using their training as behavioral scientists to break prisoners down psychologically.

Physicians for Human Rights has documented the severe physical and psychological harm caused by the current interrogation practices. Please help launch a full Congressional investigation as soon as possible, so we can learn the extent of the abuses in interrogations, how and why they occurred and put an end to these travesties.

Edit this letter as you wish. But do it today.

Please join PHR’s Campaign Against Torture in urging Congress to fully investigate the techniques used in CIA and Department of Defense interrogations, those who authorized them, and the involvement of health professional in these abusive practices.

Sources

Steven Miles, MD, “Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo 063”

Mark Benjamin, “Psychological warfare”

Jane Mayer, “The Experiment”