Psyche, Science, and Society

Democracy Now! on the APA and torture

June 4th, 2007

Friday on Democracy Now!, one segment — “The Task Force Report Should Be Annulled” - Member of 2005 APA Task Force on Psychologist Participation in Military Interrogations Speaks Out –was devoted to the American Psychological Association in light of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) report documenting psychologists at the center of US torture. On the show were Jean Maria Arrigo and Nina Thomas; two of the three non-military/intelligence members of the APA’s PENS Task Force. Also on the show was Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights and Eric Anders, a psychoanalyst who experienced SERE first-hand.

Arrigo has called for the PENS report to be rescinded. As she states:

“I came later to realize that the entire report had been orchestrated”

Thomas, while uncomfortable about aspects of PENS, spouts the latest APA spin that the Task Force was created because of the whistle-blowing of Michael Gelles, also Task Force member. This seems to be a new claim, one generated in the post-OIG era, when APA can no longer say the psychologists keep interrogations “safe, legal, and ethical” with a straight face. Now their latest spin is to point to all the military and intelligence psychologists who, allegedly, worked to avoid torture. This despite years of APA telling us how the BSCTs were really “safety officers,” keeping interrogators from going too far. The OIG report document, rather, that the psychologists consulted to interrogators on how to develop especially torturous abusive techniques. But APA and truth got divorced years ago.

Listen, watch, or read the show here.

Entry Filed under: APA, Guantanamo, Interrogation, Psychology, Torture, War Crimes