The Torture Trainers and the American Psychological Association

Further, SASC Chair Carl Levin described in his opening statement how:

"a... senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA's CounterTerrorism Center, went to GTMO, attended a meeting of GTMO staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from GTMO who, a couple of weeks earlier, had attended the training given at Fort Bragg by instructors from the JPRA SERE school.

While the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes (TAB 7) clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees." [emphasis added]

If this esteemed Board member had paid greater attention to these SASC hearings she would have discovered that they revealed the direct involvement of several psychologists in planning Guantanamo torture. Col. Morgan Banks, who had been appointed a member of the APA's PENS (Psychological Ethics and National Security ethics task force) was described by one of the SASC witnesses as requesting training in "exploitation... of detainees" from the military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, resistance, an Escape) program, which administered torture  to US military personnel in case they were captured by a force that doesn't respect the Geneva Conventions.

But, most chillingly, at the SASC  hearings, 63 pages of documents were released, including the minutes of an October 2, 2002 meeting at Guantanamo to develop torture strategy and techniques. Psychologist Maj. John Leso, a member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, and the psychologist described by Levin in the quote above, attended the meeting. According to these minutes, the BSCT proposed an approach to detainees based upon the following principles:

What's more effective than fear based strategies are camp-wide environmental strategies designed to disrupt cohesion and communication among detainees

The environment should foster dependence and compliance

Psychological stress = extremely effective (i.e., sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time)...

Disrupting the normal camp operations is vital, We need to create an environment of "controlled chaos"

It would appear that, to this esteemed APA Board member, creating an environment of "controlled  chaos" designed to "foster dependence and compliance" and utilizing "sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time" constitutes objecting to torture. I'm sure most who paid attention to the evidence might conclude otherwise.

Unfortunately, to this date the APA has ignored multiple ethics complaints extending back several yers against Maj. Leso based upon his documented participation in the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani, Guantanamo prisoner 063. Perhaps this esteemed colleague, rather than making unsubstantiated claims about supposed anti-torture activities, will push the organization to discipline this military psychologist who is documented to have participated in abuse.

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