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Coalition for an Ethical Psychology Calls for Investigation of American Psychological Association Torture Collusion
By Stephen Soldz (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Stephen Soldz - Writer Coalition for an Ethical Psychology Calls for Independent Investigation of Ties between the American Psychological Association and Defense-Intelligence Establishment. Supports Calls for Commission to Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in U.S. Torture Contacts:
Stephen Soldz, Ph.D.
ssoldz@bgsp.edu
Steven Reisner, Ph.D.
drreisner@gmail.com
May 4, 2009
The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology today calls for an independent and unbiased investigation into possible collusion between top APA leadership and the Bush administration’s Defense Department and CIA. Newly released emails from the American Psychological Association’s (APA) task force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) posted on the ProPublica web site today [http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/pens_listserv.pdf]., raise serious concerns regarding the role of the APA in providing cover for the Bush Administration abusive interrogation program. The emails suggest collusion between the APA and the Defense Department to create an ethics policy consistent with the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos authorizing torture:
“We can now see that the APA provided a platform to rewrite APA ethics policy for psychologists who were aware of, and possibly involved in, these abusive interrogation processes,” said Steven Reisner, founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. “The APA undermined 2000 years of medical ethics by giving its imprimatur to policy derived from secret interrogation manuals.”
The newly released Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) report provides dramatic confirmation of what last week’s release of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos made clear: that the Bush administration’s program of detainee abuse and torture depended crucially upon the profession of psychology and individual psychologists for its implementation and legal justification. The SASC report documents that at CIA black sites and at Guantanamo, psychologists helped design and implement the SERE-based abusive interrogation techniques, constituting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and often crossing the line into torture. The SASC report reveals, for example, that as early as March 2002, psychologist Bruce Jessen, who introduced water-boarding and other SERE techniques into CIA interrogations, began “ad-hoc ‘crash’ training courses” to bring abusive techniques to Guantánamo. Psychologist Gary Percival continued the training. And psychologist Col. Morgan Banks, while arguing against physical torture, nonetheless trained the Guantanamo BSCTs in the uses of SERE techniques in preparation for detainee interrogations. Following that training, SASC has reported that BSCT psychologist John Leso advocated for and helped implement abusive techniques, including “psychological stressors such as sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, and loss of time.” Leso is known to have participated in the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, an interrogation recently described as meeting the legal definition of “torture” by Susan Crawford, the Pentagon official appointed by President Bush to coordinate the military commission trials.
Last week’s release of the OLC memos also confirmed the central role psychologists and physicians played in providing legal cover for the abusive interrogation techniques. The memos assert that the techniques ostensibly do not violate torture statutes because they do not cause “lasting mental harm;” in fact, the memos argue, the presence of trained health professionals guarantees against such harm. The memos go further, asserting that should harm occur, CIA operatives would be indemnified against prosecution because they could rely on a good faith defense: “Good faith may be established by, among other things, the reliance on the advice of experts.”
For years the American Psychological Association has fully endorsed such a role for psychologists in aiding national security interrogations, stating “psychologists have a critical role in keeping interrogations safe, legal, ethical, and effective,” The phrase, taken from instructions to BSCTs distributed to the PENS task force by Col. Morgan Banks, was included in the Task Force Report, written during the task force meeting by the APA’s Ethics Director, Dr. Stephen Behnke. Behnke, an observer to the PENS process, wrote the first draft of the report within four hours of the start of the 2 ½ day meeting.
Chief Army SERE psychologist, Morgan Banks was one of six military and intelligence psychologists on the nine-member task force. Four of these PENS members served in chains of command accused of abuses, including the CIA Counter Terrorism Center, JPRA’s SERE program, the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantánamo, and detention facilities in Afghanistan. In spite of their knowledge of widespread implementation of interrogation protocols based on abusive SERE techniques, none of the military or intelligence members of the Task force acknowledged any coercive or stressful interrogations now known to have occurred at Guantanamo, in the CIA black sites, and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not one of the psychologists described in these reports whose command participated in these abuses reported the abuse or refused to participate. Instead, these psychologists simply denied that abuse was taking place. For example, Col. Larry James stated on the PENS listserv: “the fact of the matter is that since Jan 2003, where ever we have had psychologists no abuses have been reported .” Col. James was Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group, Guantánamo during a period when SERE-style abuses were widely reported.
The PENS report includes a citation of APA ethics standard 1.02 which essentially wrote the Nuremberg defense - “I was just following orders” - into the ethics code. The standard, added to the ethics code in 2002, asserts that a psychologist may follow military regulation or law when these conflict with ethical obligations.
“The Nuremberg defense, and related research ethics problems must be removed from the ethics code if psychology as a profession is to stand on a clear moral foundation. Otherwise ethics will just remain a cover for abuse” stated Dr. Stephen Soldz, of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.
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Sanctions
"We further call for ethics sanctions, including loss of professional licenses, and possible criminal prosecution for all health providers found to have participated in torture or abuse." This is critical, as the APA and state licensing boards have refused to investigate ethical complaints of those psychologists known to have engaged in and/or ignored ethical violations, including torture. by Trudy Bond (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments [6 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 5:39:58 PM  (1+)
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Reply: Hypocrisy
The APA repeatedly says they'd be glad to enforce their ethics. Just last week, the APA President said, in a statement "We stand ready to adjudicate" any reports of participation in torture.
by Stephen Soldz (106 articles, 0 quicklinks, 76 diaries, 55 comments [7 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 5:52:31 PM (1+)
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Reply: Hypocrisy
The APA repeatedly says they'd be glad to enforce their ethics. Just last week, the APA President said, in a statement "We stand ready to adjudicate" any reports of participation in torture.
by Stephen Soldz (106 articles, 0 quicklinks, 76 diaries, 55 comments [7 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 6:02:49 PM (0+)
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Licenses
These shrinks and quacks should all have the licenses to practice revoked for life. They should then be sent to the zoo to pick up elephant dung till the day they die. In between, let's figure out a way to torture the crap out of them. by Trailing Begonia (4 articles, 224 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 996 comments [622 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 10:46:21 PM (0+)
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Deep & Dark
“The APA undermined 2000 years of medical ethics by giving its imprimatur to policy derived from secret interrogation manuals.” What an incredibly awsome thought to consider. As a great admirer of Hippocrates it truly leaves me gasping for air. We are dealing with an overall system usurped by ponerism. It is rather like the system installed in Germany and Russia in the 1930s. What is really needed here is the good old Jefferson Flush; "When in the course..." and all that. For this is not simply a matter of ethics in medicine, but a matter of ethics system wide, deep and dark. by William Whitten (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4880 comments [1711 recommended, 28 rejected]) on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 8:24:20 PM (0+)
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Unpersuasive
I completely agree that the APA should move quickly to prosecute APA members after complaints have been filed, and that they appear to have been negligent in pursuing Leso. I also completely and wholeheartedly agree that the APA's position hewed far too closely to the DoD and the Administration, and perhaps even that the PENS task force was stacked in a way that pushed the TF position too far towards the DoD party line. But I am not persuaded that we have reason to suspect (much less probable cause) some sort of unethical collusion between APA and DoD. In large part, the evidence you present is consistent with the ordinary political process, in which leadership takes a position (and makes appointments consistent with that position) that others find objectionable and oppose. What makes your strongly-worded allegations and calls for investigation all the more unpersuasive is the APA membership's vote (which I disagreed with). How do we square the membership's willingness to sign off on the leadership's position with allegations of some sort of impermissible collusion? Where is the evidence for reasonable suspicion of collusion? I'd like to hear Steve S respond. by p watson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 5:10:40 PM (0+)
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Reply: What vote are you referring to?
What vote are you referring to? the only membership vote on policy in APA history was the September 2008 referendum, where the membership, by a margin of 57% to 43%, voted to repudiate the policy of the leadership and ban psychologists serving in detention facilities in violation of international law or the Constitution. Not one APA leader supported this referendum.
by Stephen Soldz (106 articles, 0 quicklinks, 76 diaries, 55 comments [7 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 6:11:08 PM (0+)
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Failure of poltical process to produce good result
The 2007 Council vote basically legitimated much of the PENS task force in my view (and again, I vehemently disagreed with that vote). A charge of collusion becomes much harder to make when you have the Council of Representatives legitimating the leadership's position. The list-serve shows (in my opinion) a group of people who are far too self-congratulatory about their report and not nearly self-aware enough about the likely reception of the report to the public. The dissenters only begin really to dissent when APA doesn't come through on the casebook or commentary and when they get push back on the report. The DoD compliance question is indeed dispensed with far too quickly. But this looks like the failure of a political process because of ineffective advocacy and outmaneuvering, not coercion and collusion. by p watson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Friday, May 8, 2009 at 9:40:35 AM (0+)
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