When wrongdoing becomes undeniable in situations like these, a familiar defensive response from "war on terror" proponents has been to describe an often-nameless perpetrator as one of "a few bad apples." But that defense also falls flat here, as Major Leso was then (and thereafter remained) a high-level commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, specifically assigned to use his psychological training to develop Guantanamo's coercive and abusive camp-wide policies. It is also troubling that APA member Col. Larry James (former President of APA's Division 19, the Society for Military Psychology) recommended that Dr. Leso attend the Ft. Bragg training, and that this training was organized by APA member Col. Morgan Banks.
With so much public evidence of significant professional wrongdoing by Dr. Leso, one might imagine that over a six-year period the Ethics Office could have adjudicated this case with a careful review of the facts. Instead there is the appearance that the case is being delayed by matters of political expediency or concerns about the APA's relationship with the national security establishment. Indeed to date the only indication that the Ethics Committee has taken the accumulated evidence seriously in any way is that they have not declared Dr. Leso guiltless.
The failure to adjudicate this case has long been indefensible. The resort to stonewalling and obfuscation by the APA in order to avoid accountability has been even more egregious. Over the past six years the APA's Ethics Office and leadership have, at various times, claimed that the complaint against Dr. Leso was never received; that documentation already submitted was still needed; that no decision could be reached while a similar complaint was under review in a different jurisdiction; and that the evidence provided -- including authoritative government documents -- did not constitute adequate primary source material. Most recently, in November 2012, the Deputy Director and Director of Adjudication in the APA Ethics Office wrote that "it is to the advantage of all parties involved to wait until APA obtains the best evidence available to make its determination." One can only wonder what would constitute that "best evidence," and what the APA is doing to obtain it.
Dozens of the detainees who were present when Dr. Leso helped to design and implement abusive and torturous practices at Guantanamo -- now over a decade ago -- still remain imprisoned there. Many of them are innocent victims of horrific mistreatment and indefinite detention. Some have been released and returned to their homelands to live with their nightmares, and today some are among the increasing number of hunger strikers. Amidst this national disgrace, the ongoing unwillingness of the American Psychological Association to act responsibly further implicates our profession in this travesty of justice.
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This essay also appears on Counterpunch.
Trudy Bond is a counseling psychologist in independent practice in Toledo, Ohio. She is a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and on the steering committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
Roy Eidelson is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, associate director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.
Stephen Soldz is a
psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at
the Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis . He has written extensively on the involvement of
psychologists in the U.S. torture program. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition
for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American
Psychological Association policy
on participation in abusive interrogations and is a former president of
Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He served as a psychological
consultant on several Guantanamo trials.
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