Big Victory: APA Informs Bush -- No Psychologists at Military Interrogations

Readers of this blog know that dissident psychologists, along with human rights and anti-torture organizations and individuals have been working for years now to get the American Psychological Association to change its policy of supporting the use of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo, CIA black-site prisons, and other governmental sites involved in Bush's Global War on Terror.

Last month, a referendum that called for banning such participation was passed by a large majority of voting APA members. At first, APA bureaucrats mumbled something about instituting this new policy come August 2009! But large scale protest by the membership seems to have caused them to back down, and today, APA has released a letter to George W. Bush informing the head of the U.S. executive branch and commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces of the new change in APA policy.

The letter was drafted collaboratively between APA staff and the primary authors of the referendum petition that led to the change in policy. Similar letters reportedly will be sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and to key congressional committees, including the Armed Services, Judiciary, and Intelligence committees.

What follows is the press release by APA on the change, and announcing the letter to Bush. The actual text of the letter can be found here.

The announcement by APA represents a major turnaround in their long-standing policy of backing the presence of psychologists at interrogations, and a victory for all who have fought to change that policy and fight back against U.S. torture.

APA LETTER TO BUSH: NEW POLICY LIMITS PSYCHOLOGIST INVOLVEMENT IN INTERROGATIONS

Prohibits psychologist participation in interrogations at unlawful detention sites

WASHINGTON—The American Psychological Association sent a letter today to President Bush, informing him of a significant change in the association's policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated, such as has occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA black sites around the world.

“The effect of this new policy is to prohibit psychologists from any involvement in interrogations or any other operational procedures at detention sites that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law (e.g., the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture),” says the letter, from APA President Alan E. Kazdin, PhD. “In such unlawful detention settings, persons are deprived of basic human rights and legal protections, including the right to independent judicial review of their detention.”

The roles of psychologists at such sites would now be limited to working directly for the people being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights, or to providing treatment to military personnel. The new policy was voted on by APA members and is in the process of being implemented.

For the past 20 years, APA policy has unequivocally condemned torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which can arise from interrogation procedures or conditions of confinement. APA's previous policies had expressed grave concerns about settings where people are deprived of human rights and had offered support to psychologists who refused to work in such settings.

Noting that there have been credible reports of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees during Bush's presidency, APA called on the administration to investigate these alleged abuses. “We further call on you to establish policies and procedures to ensure the independent judicial review of these detentions and to afford the persons being detained all rights guaranteed to them under the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture,” Kazdin wrote.

A copy of the full letter may be viewed at: http://www.apa.org/releases/kazdin-to-bush1008.pdf

Whither APA
While this is a big victory, it doesn't mean torture will end at Guantanamo, CIA prisons, or elsewhere. Most psychologists working at such facilities, similarly to doctors, nurses, interrogators, etc., work under the chain of command and answer to the leadership of the military and the executive branch. But the new policy does explode a central pillar of the government's rationale for such abuse, i.e., that psychologists are present at such sites as "safety officers" to stop "behavioral drift" or abuse from taking place.

Now the APA has rejected this premise, and is lending its prestige to the withdrawal of behavioral health professionals from the CIA and the Pentagon's program of coercive interrogation.

Yet, the APA still widely collaborates with the national security apparatus. Their work on "deception", which I've written about here, is only one aspect of this far-reaching connectivity between U.S. behavioral science and the military. Nor should we believe that the APA apparatus, staffed by the same people who tried for years to make psychologists hand-servants for the worst aspects of military abuse, is suddenly composed of pacifists and anti-militarists. For instance, APA has not, to date, seen fit as an organization to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay Naval prison.

It's clear that struggles around the interactions of the health professions, academia, and major scientific institutions with the organs of national security and the program of a militarist state, remain ahead of us. Furthermore, the cynic in me wonders if this turnaround by APA isn't too convenient, as it potentially cuts the ground out from under anti-torture activist Steven Reisner's campaign for APA president, with the election coming later this month.

One prominent APA activist noted on a listserv earlier today that Kazdin's letter fails to call for an immediate removal of psychologists from interrogations at Guantanamo (for instance). The policy wherein Behavioral Science Consulting Teams, including psychologists, assist in interrogation planning and procedures is supposedly about due for review. It is time to ratchet up the pressure on the government to shut down Guantanamo, to decommission (if that is the word) the BSCTs.

A big question remains around the use of torture and the participation of same at CIA sites. CIA "enhanced interrogation" techniques remain supposedly approved by the President. No one knows exactly how the CIA's prisons work, who is there, or what goes on. APA should call for an immediate withdrawal of all psychologists from such secret prisons. While they are at it, to show they are serious, they could stop taking advertisements for CIA employment in their journals and publications.

[Update: I want to add here some important comments from the CEO of Physicians for Human Rights, Frank Donaghue on APA's letter:

"While today is a proud day for the APA and its membership, the APA must now act to permanently prohibit direct participation by psychologists in interrogations and to ensure those psychologists who engaged in abuse and torture are held to account," said Donaghue. "The APA has taken a tremendous step forward but has not yet reached the ethical standards of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, organizations which have banned direct participation by physicians in all interrogations. Also, the APA has not yet specified what rights abuses would render a detention facility illegal under its new policy."]

Despite all caveats, it is time to savor the victory, and spread the word. Congratulations to everyone who worked to win this battle. Tops among them must be the folks who pushed the referendum, when it looked like a long-shot, and the hard working members of Psychologists for an Ethical APA, withholdapadues.com, etc.

Bravo, my friends and colleagues. Good work!

Also posted at Invictus and Never in Our Names

Psychologist "Swat Team" Serves Bush's Torture Gulag

Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, current president of the American Psychological Association, in a new column in the APA Monitor, brags that APA lobbyists are a vertable "swat team" in support of government dollars for scientific research. Much of that money funds the work of psychologists "in support of homeland security after 9/11", "psychological research within the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense", and the "special relevance of psychological science on... counter-terrorism" research, among other items.

It is surely cosmic irony that places Dr. Kazdin's article in contrast to new revelations from the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. government documenting "the role of psychologists in military interrogations."

"The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse — a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "The documents only underscore the need for an independent investigation into responsibility for the systemic abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody abroad."

In 2006, the ACLU received a highly redacted version of the Church Report, which was commissioned by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a comprehensive review of military interrogation operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay based on 187 investigations into detainee abuse that had been closed as of September 30, 2004. The report did not analyze information relating to 130 abuse cases that remained open as of that date, and issues of senior official responsibility for detainee abuse were beyond its mandate. Written by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, the report skirts the question of command responsibility for detainee abuse, euphemistically labeling official failure to issue interrogation guidelines for Iraq and Afghanistan as a "missed opportunity."

The report states that "analogous to the BSCT in Guantanamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations."

The documents also demonstrate the failure of medical personnel to report abuses upon those ostensibly under their care. Moreover, when it comes to the use of torture techniques, such as forced nakedness, stress positions, the use of dogs, and other illegal forms of "interrogation" or incarceration, there was a decided policy of ignoring even the flimsy legal justifications and prohibitions issuing from the Department of Defense:

"The unredacted sections of the report provide new evidence confirming the use of abusive interrogation techniques after they were no longer authorized. According to the report, "the use of some of the techniques... continued even until July 2004, despite the fact that many were retracted by the October 2003 memorandum, and some were subsequently prohibited by the May 2004 memorandum."

As psychologists are implicated in the worst sort of human rights abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Dr. Kazin, who is the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology, Child Psychiatry, and Institute of Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, positively gushes over the "APA... dream team of experts that is nimble and can move into action as needed with Congress, funding agencies and other organizations."

Kazin's organization, the APA, took five years to make a detailed statement against torture techniques that were documented at U.S. prisons, including Guantanamo, although even then the APA mimicked Bush administration language in saying that only psychologists who "knowingly" inflicted harm are to be sanctioned. This makes judging the intent of a torturer supposedly a crucial question. This doctrine of "specific intent" was written into the infamous Bybee memo, and represents a get out of jail free card for those who torture. (See John Mikhail's excellent discussion of the implications of that little word, "knowingly," over at the Georgetown Law Faculty Blog.)

APA Springs into Action for... Defense Funding

Despite all protestations of good faith by APA, psychologists still staff the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams at Guantanamo, and other interrogation sites, including, presumably, secret "black site" prisons run by the CIA. Psychologists at these sites are under the military chain of command, not APA ethics codes and committees. These sites are known to be in violation of Geneva Conventions and other national and international laws and agreements concerning prisoners, including the holding of detainees in indefinite detention, hiding detainees from the Red Cross, subjecting detainees to abusive conditions of detention, transferring via secret rendition some detainees to foreign prisons to be tortured, and subjecting prisoners to secret courts where hearsay evidence and evidence supplied via tortured confession is allowed.

In his article, Dr. Kazin brags how when the National Science Foundation threatened to defund some pet projects, "within approximately 12 hours, an APA swat team mobilized an effort that drew on targeted individuals, other organizations, congressional staff, grass-roots support from many psychologists, and more." Two hundred phone calls and many emails later, the bills were saved. And yet, to this day, the APA cannot find the time to pass a resolution or make a statement calling for the closure of Guantanamo prison, where basic human rights are not allowed, and a policy of isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, and a policy of indefinite detention remains in force. Show me where you put an organization's time and money, and I'll show you what that organization is really about. The APA is an obscentiy.

The newly unredacted Church report includes this statement about the role of psychologists, highlighting the use of psychologists throughout the different theaters in Bush's misnamed "war on terror":

Analogous to the BSCT in Guantanamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations.

Supposedly, those working clinically with the disease and mental illness fostered by abusive treatment and conditions at U.S. prison sites do not share medical records with interrogators, but the report, while claiming that use of such information to "plan interrogations" doesn't take place, admits that such "sharing" has taken place:

According to the Director, Psychological Applications Directorate (US Army Special Operations Command), the only reason for sharing any medical information would be to ensure that detainees are treated in accordance with their medical requirements.

If you believe that, I've got a proverbial bridge to sell you. Meanwhile, the unredacted portions of the Church Report corroborate the findings of the Pentagon's own Office of the Inspector General report that exposed the existence of abusive techniques at Guantanamo, just at the time that APA honchos like Colonel Larry Banks (then Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba) were in charge.

Alan Kazdin's article represents the mindset of the APA bureaucracy, which is dying to feed at the trough of "homeland security" and "counter-terrorism" millions drained from the public coffers to build up the power of the overtly militarist state that America has become. Show me where you put an organization's time and money, and I'll show you what that organization is really about. The APA is an obscenity.

Recently, APA dissident candidate for president, Dr. Steven Reisner, is campaigning on an overt call for an end to psychologist participation in military interrogations, such as at Guantanamo. While garnering a minority of votes, he still won a plurality in the first round of voting, demonstrating that rank-and-file psychologists are growing increasingly disgusted with the policy of their organization. A related group of APA dissidents are circulating a petition that "not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

When I left the APA earlier this year, I specifically cited the overall stance of that organization in relation to the national security state. While the complicity with torture and human rights abuses is bad enough, the promise of further integration into "counter-terrorism" and "homeland security" programs of the government is an ominous foreshadowing of what the APA intends to become. If those looking to change APA are unsuccessful, they must ponder what they are doing in an organization so steadfastly dedicated to serving those that torture, that are obsessed with national security at a time when the government of this country engages in illegal, genocidal wars abroad, and seems incapable of reforming its own increasingly militarist and anti-democratic policies and actions.

Also posted at Invictus