FwShocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists in Torture of Military Detainees Requires Emergency Reform of American Psychological Association, Says Coalition of Psychologists

July 20, 2007

[bush_Be_Gone] Shocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists

in Torture of Military Detainees Requires Emergency Reform of American

Psychological Association, Says Coalition of Psychologists

July 18, 2007

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. [The article is available at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/}

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.

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.

After two years of reports that psychologists were aiding abusive

interrogations, we now have clear evidence that psychologists directly

participated in torture. During this time the APA, the main voice of the

psychological profession, has closed its eyes and ears to all reports of abuse "

said Dr. Soldz, Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation and

Program Development of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis

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

and Bruce n 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 and n 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 and n 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 article also makes clear that the sometimes misplaced prestige of psychology

as a science and the importance of the supposed " scientific credentials " of the

SERE psychologists were crucial to the acceptance of these abusive techniques by

general interrogation staff and superiors alike. The article additionally

reports that the APA supported the claim that and n had

specialized scientific knowledge by inviting them to a joint APA-Rand

Corporation, CIA-funded conference on the " Science of Deception: Integration of

Practice and Theory. " This conference debated " the effectiveness of truth serum

and other coercive techniques, " according to Vanity Fair.

The article also reports that the these SERE-based techniques developed by

and n in the CIA's secret " black sites " proliferated to other

venues where detainees were interrogated, including Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and

Iraq. The proliferation of SERE techniques was aided by the scientific " patina "

afforded by psychology, as stated in the article by Human Rights Watch's

Sifton. The article further reports that psychologists at Guantanamo

participated in interrogations as judges of abuse levels, as " safety officers "

deciding just how much abuse a given detainee could tolerate. This very role has

been objected to by other health provider organizations, including the American

Medical Association.

Since 2005, multiple press reports and government documents have clearly

demonstrated that US military and intelligence service psychologists were

involved in developing a regime of psychological torture for use on suspected

terrorists. In May, the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General

(OIG) declassified a report revealing that psychologists from the military's

SERE program worked with US military psychologists at Guantanamo tasked with

" developing the standard operating procedure " for interrogations using tactics

that violate the Geneva Conventions. The OIG report also documented that these

SERE psychologists played a role in bringing abusive interrogation techniques to

Iraq and that the SERE-based techniques also migrated to Afghanistan. [The OIG

report is available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/abuse.pdf].

" When the APA leadership chose psychologists to formulate its ethical position

on interrogations and torture, they included six from the military and

intelligence services, some of whom were in the chain of command that directed

the abuse. " said Reisner, of the Coalition for an Ethical APA and

Columbia University's International Trauma Studies Program. " Is it really any

surprise that, unlike psychiatrists and physicians who prohibited their members'

participation in interrogation, the APA concluded that psychologists could

abandon 'do no harm' in favor of 'break them down?' "

Increasingly, as the number of these reports multiplied, members of the APA have

called for the Association to unequivocally condemn the use of psychological

knowledge for purposes of coercion, abuse and torture, and to take concrete

steps to prevent further participation of psychologists in abusive

interrogations. 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.

" The evidence was strong and is now irrefutable, " states Brad Olson, chair of

Divisions for Social Justice (DSJ), a collection of divisions within the APA,

and faculty member at Northwestern University, " psychologists not only organized

abusive interrogations, they directly participated in torture itself. APA

members and psychologists everywhere will not stop our efforts until the APA

changes its policy to prevent these disturbing violations of human rights from

happening again. "

The APA leadership has stated repeatedly that psychologists' participation in

interrogations help keep interrogations " safe, legal, ethical, and effective. "

The public record now suggests that the exact opposite is the case.

In response, the Coalition for an Ethical APA today reasserted its call for

basic changes in APA policy regarding participation in interrogations and for

fundamental reforms in the Association to prevent the reoccurrence of such

catastrophic ethical breaches in the future, the Coalition said. The Coalition

believes it is critical that the APA take immediate steps to remedy the damage

done to the reputation of the profession and its ethical standards, to the

Association, and to human rights, in general.

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;

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/].

Contact:

Soldz

ssoldz@...

Reisner

SReisner@...

Brad Olson

b-olson@...

The Coalition for an Ethical APA unites psychologists deeply concerned about our

Association's failure to act on this major crisis facing our profession.

http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1 & p=34617 & s2=20

Click to join Out_Of_The_Frying_Pan

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out,

the conservative adopts them.

- Langhorne Clemens [Mark Twain] (1835-1910)

July 20, 2007