Counterpunch

December 4, 2007
Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Participation in Detainee
Interrogations
The Facts be Damned!

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

Last Friday American Psychological Association President, and Indiana
University professor, Sharon Brehm discussed the APA's policies supporting
psychologist participation in national security interrogations with
faculty and students at her university. The Indiana Daily Student has an
account of the meeting.
While the entire article is well worth reading, a few of Dr. Brehm's
comments as cited there are especially worth commenting upon. Either they
reflect an unacceptable level of ignorance of the basic facts about
psychologists' roles in American torture or they are simply willful
falsehoods. For example, Dr. Brehm stated:

    "Psychologists only acted in an advisory role during questionings,
working with interrogators to develop effective strategies that will
elicit "accurate information."

There is now overwhelming evidence from reporters and government documents
that this statement is not simply false, but almost the exact opposite of
the truth. Thus, three major journalists (Jane Mayer at the New Yorker,
Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair, and Mark Benjamin at Salon) have reported
that the basic torture techniques used by the CIA in its black sites were
initially developed and implemented by psychologists James Mitchell and
Bruce Jessen. This role is far from Brehm's "psychologists only acted in
an advisory role during questionings, working with interrogators to
develop effective strategies that will elicit 'accurate information.' " On
the contrary, as Eban reported In Vanity Fair:

    "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 C.I.A.."

Thus, Dr. Brehm's "effective strategies" include months of total isolation
with nothing to do and no one to talk to, freezing, being chained up in
painful positions for hours and days on end, and it seems, waterboarding.

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (OIG), in a
report declassified last May, documented the central role of
psychologists, including those from the military's Survival, Evasion,
Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program in the development of what the OIG
itself saw as abusive. [See our summary of the OIG report and in pdf
format.] The OIG report documents how SERE psychologists trained
Guantanamo psychologists in the use of SERE-based torture techniques. The
OIG report also documents how SERE and Guantanamo staff went to Iraq to
train US soldiers there in abusive SERE-based "counter-resistance"
techniques. The OIG report made clear that these techniques were, in the
OIG's opinion, abusive.

Just last month the Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures
manual was leaked. As I wrote, this document details the systematic use of
a month of isolation on all new detainees "to foster dependence on
interrogators and `enhance and exploit the disorientation and
disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation
process.' " The decision about how long a detainee would be held in
isolation, the SOP states, was to be made by the GTMO Joint Intelligence
Group (JIG). The Chief Psychologist for the JIG at the time the SOP was
issued was Col. Larry James. The APA appointed Col. James, along with five
others with military or intelligence ties (including the head SERE
psychologist), to its Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National
Security to formulate "ethics" to decide if it was "ethical" for
psychologists to participate in national security interrogations. Further,
the APA selected Col. James to present its "anti-torture" policy to the
2007 Convention.

To this extensive record that psychologists were active and central
participants in some of the worst of the Bush administration's abuses, Dr.
Brehm contrasts her faith:

    ""We have great confidence that at least most of our members are
really good people and that they would not do bad things," Brehm said,
adding her belief that psychologists had the ability to be heroes in
fighting against torture."

Given the historical record, Dr. Brehm's belief only makes sense if the
words "heroes," "against," and "torture" no longer mean what they used to
mean.
Another of Dr. Brehm's statements is similarly astounding, given that she
is a social psychologist:

    "All of our ethical policies are based on individual responsibility.
If you violate the behaviors that are prescribed then, if it is a
serious violation, we'll kick you out of the association and you may
not be able to make a living anymore. It is that basic."

Social psychologists are taught from the first day that the social
environment often overrules individual behavioral tendencies. Those in
abuse-generating situations are likely to participate in abuse. . Social
psychologists routinely study why "good" people do "bad" things. There is
no evidence that psychologists are uniquely able to resist these pressures
Indeed, at the APA Convention last August, Craig Haney, a social
psychologist who studies the US criminal justice system, stated that in 30
years of research in prisons, he knew of not a single instance in which a
psychologist stopped existing abuse.

Dr. Brehm, like the rest of the APA leadership, ignores that we live in a
country which, at this time, is committed to detainee abuse as national
policy. Those aiding interrogations in that system are, at best, complicit
in the numerous abuses we know are occurring, the kidnapping of detainees
from around the world, the purchase of detainees, the lack of any legal
rights, the removal of the centuries-old right to habeas corpus, not to
mention the abusive interrogations. Rather than denouncing this organized
regime, the APA talks obsessively about "influencing policy" through
engagement, but has precious little to show for it. The CIA still
tortures, using the techniques that were designed by psychologists. We all
know it. The press reports on it. But the APA has yet to utter a word
condemning these misuses of psychological knowledge and expertise.

Jane Mayer, in an august 8, 2007 Democracy Now! interview pointed out that
not only the knowledge and expertise but the prestige of psychology was
central to the Bush administration's torture regime. The administration
figures ordering torture hoped psychologist participation would prove to
be a "get out of jail free" card, in the event of future investigation of
and trial for their crimes:

    "if you take a look at the so-called torture memos, the forty pages or
so of memos that were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo way back right
after 9/11, and you take a look at how they -- they're busy looking at
the Convention Against Torture, basically, it seems, trying to figure
a way around it. One of the things they argued, these lawyers from the
Justice Department, is that if you don't intend to torture someone, if
your intention is not just to inflict terrible pain on them but to get
information, then you really can't be necessarily convicted of
torture.

    "So how do you prove that your intent is pure? Well, one of the things
they suggest is if you consult with experts who will say that what
you're doing is just interrogation, then that might also be a good
legal defense. And so, one of the roles that these SERE psychologists
played was a legal role. They were the experts who were consulted in
order to argue that the program was not a program of torture. They are
to say, "We've got PhDs, and this is standard psychology, and this is
a legitimate way to question people.""

We have written Dr. Brehm directly documenting in detail reports that
psychologists were central in creating, implementing, standardizing as
policy, and disseminating the abusive interrogation techniques used by
American military and the CIA. We sent Dr. Brehm an Open Letter signed by
over 700 psychologists. We sent her our summary of the OIG report. She
never responded. I sent her my article on the systematic use of isolation
at Guantanamo. Again, no response. So, if Dr. Brehm is truly ignorant of
the central role of psychologists in US abusive interrogations, it was not
for lack of opportunity to inform herself.

Or do APA leaders know the facts, but simply not care? After all, the
military and intelligence agencies hire hundreds, or even thousands of
psychologists and provided many tens of millions in grant funding for
psychological research. Further, psychologists have a preferred position
over their long-time rivals, the psychiatrists, aiding interrogations in
US detention centers. A little willful ignorance is, perhaps, a small
price to pay for the APA leadership when millions of dollars and
preferential treatment for psychologists are at stake.

But whether ignorance or willful avoidance, Dr. Brehm's lack of
responsiveness to the legitimate concerns of so many of the APA's
membership comes at a high price. The issue is increasingly dividing the
organization, and threatens its hegemony as the primary representative of
organized psychology at a time when rival psychological organizations are
gaining membership and energy.

Only the APA's members can decide that closing one's eyes to abuse is too
high a price to pay for government funding and other favors from the
powerful.

Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher,
and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He
maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the
Psyche, Science, and Society blog.

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