"I was given a voice in this important debate. This occurred by my appointment to the PENS Taskforce in 2005. This appointment was officially requested by my Specialty Leader. It was sanctioned by the Navy."
Lefever here tells us that he, a member of the task force was "officially requested" by a military official and was officially sanctioned by the Navy. This puts the lie to any claim that APA leaders selected the task force. Rather, they merely ratified choices "officially requested" by military officials. They thus surrendered the association's ethics decision-making to the military.
Lefever, in his sincerity, further informs us that "human rights" are divorced from "ethics" in the real world. While human rights are concerned about the rights of individuals, Lefever makes clear that he feels an ethical obligation to ride roughshod over those rights in order to protect "the peaceful, moral, productive citizen." He shows a profound misunderstanding of the fundamentals of our criminal justice system when he state, and his willingness to dispense with many of the protections that protect our freedoms:
"Even those accused of committing these acts, though presumed innocent, are deprived of their liberty for the benefit and safety of society."
Perhaps most chillingly, Lefever concludes his discussion of the flaws and dangers of "human rights" and of pacifism by stating "Our enemies are both foreign and domestic." Given the totality of the Letter, it certainly is reasonable to wonder if "pacifists" and "human rights" advocates are among those domestic enemies he has sworn to fight. Safe to say, few even among the APA leadership would openly support such views.
In putting Bryce Lefever, along with the other military-intelligence members, on the PENS task force and making them their "ethics" policy-makers, and in keeping their participation secret, the APA demonstrated the extremes to which they were willing to go to do the Bush administration's bidding.
With a new administration in Washington, the APA is busy trying to scrub their recent history. They may even rescind the PENS report, defended so vigorously for years, that resulted from this flawed process. But no mere policy change can be sufficient without a detailed understanding of how and why the nation's largest organization of psychologists created this obviously flawed and unethical "ethics" process. Four organizations -- Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Psychologists for an Ethical APA, and Physicians for Human Rights -- have so far called for independent investigations of APA-Bush administration ties. This investigation is necessary to begin the process of reforming an organization that has gone so far astray. The investigation must then be followed by changes in organizational structures and personnel to reduce the chances of a recurrence of flawed policy-making in the wake of the next national crisis.
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