Psyche, Science, and Society

Summary of Letter to President Brehm

September 18th, 2007

I have just posted a Letter to American Psychological Association President Brehm responding in detail to recent attacks on Jean Maria Arrigo and her presentation at the recent APA convention on process irregularities in the task force forming association policy of psychologist participation in interrogations of “enemy combatant” detainees.

Given the length of that detailed letter, we also wrote a Summary. The Summary outlines the argument but leaves out the detailed documentary evidence we provide in the full letter.

Here is the Summary:

September 19, 2007

 Dear Colleagues:

 Attached is a letter to APA President Sharon Brehm responding to open letters from former APA President Gerald Koocher and Olivia Moorhead-Slaughter, Chair of the 2005 PENS (Presidential Ethics and National Security) Task Force. Drs. Koocher and Moorehead-Slaughter each criticize a paper presented by Jean Maria Arrigo on irregularities in the process of the PENS Task Force that cast doubt upon its independence from both the APA leadership and the Bush administration.

 Dr. Arrigo’s paper was presented as part of the mini-convention on psychologists, ethics and interrogations held at the APA Convention in San Francisco; part was later broadcast on Amy Goodman’s public television news program, Democracy Now!

 The attached letter counters distortions, inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the letters written by Drs. Koocher and Moorehead-Slaughter, with documentation from the public record and from the archived records of the PENS Task Force. Below is a summary of the letter’s contents. Please read the attached letter for a full rebuttal of the issues raised by Drs. Koocher and Moorehead-Slaughter.

 Dr. Arrigo expressed the following concerns about the PENS process:

 Ø      Six of 10 members were employed within the US military and intelligence community at the time of the PENS meetings. The biographies and self-reports of several task forces members place them directly in the chain of command that, according to investigations by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, as well as reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere in the press, oversaw abusive interrogations conducted by military, the CIA and other agencies.

 Ø      Two top APA officials, including Dr. Koocher, played dominant roles in the task force, casting doubt on the independence of its process and its eventual conclusions.

 Ø      Several previously unacknowledged observers of the task force had high level connections to the national security community and/or were engaged in actively lobbying Congress and the Administration for defense and intelligence appropriations for psychological research.

 Ø      The task force process was kept confidential. Only APA officials, no actual task force members, were authorized to discuss the PENS report publicly.

 Ø      After independently reviewing the PENS procedures and staffing, two former US counterintelligence professionals found the process consistent with “a typical legitimization process for a decision made at a higher level in the Department of Defense.”

 In response, Dr. Koocher distributed a letter that contains distortions and in some cases outright fabrications, including the false assertion that Dr. Arrigo’s father committed suicide, and that this suicide somehow informed Dr. Arrigo’s position on the PENS process. Dr. Koocher also incorrectly attributed to Dr. Arrigo a statement describing the Task Force membership as predominantly military. It is clear that Dr. Koocher constructed the argument in terms of “civilians” vs. “military” in order to obscure the actual relation of the six PENS members to the Department of Defense. What Dr. Arrigo did say was that “Six of the ten [Task Force] members were highly placed in the Department of Defense, as contractors and military officers.” There is no disputing the veracity of this statement.

 Finally, Dr. Koocher inferred that he played a rather minor role in the PENS process. We provide ample evidence to refute his contention and show that he indeed played a dominant role.

 Similarly, we respond to Dr. Moorhead-Slaughter’s letter. Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter devoted the first page of her letter to denying that she works for the CIA or military. She denies, as well, that she has received compensation for her work and denies providing information to the military. We point out that no such charges were ever made by Dr. Arrigo, or anyone else, and Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter’s defense against the non-existent charge sets a false tone for the entire debate.

 Dr. Moorhead-Slaughter presents a brief excerpt from the PENS email listserv in which Dr. Arrigo expressed polite praise for the PENS process and report. Yet Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter at the same time ignores the extensive accompanying, contextual documentation by Dr. Arrigo (as well as Mike Wessells, another PENS member) expressing grave concern along with her polite praise. Both Drs. Arrigo and Wessells repeatedly raised serious concerns about the process and the resulting report, concerns that were consistently minimized or dismissed.

 Dr. Moorhead-Slaughter denies that anyone attempted to hide the PENS membership from the public. We present straightforward evidence from the PENS listserv that the APA leadership tried to do exactly that.

 Dr Moorhead-Slaughter, too, denies any serious conflicts of interest or bias in the PENS process, but fails to address all the evidence presented by Dr. Arrigo and by many others, of extensive conflicts of interest and bias. Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter does not explain the evidence that a majority of Task Force members were directly involved in detainee interrogations or interrogation research and this in itself compromised their ability to independently assess the ethics of psychologists’ participation in such interrogations. Further, there is evidence in the PENS listserv to indicate that the PENS report itself had to be approved by the DoD before its military members could assent. And finally, although DR. Moorehead-Slaughter makes general claims about PENS members’ “central roles in fighting detainee abuse,” she ignores the extensive evidence that several PENS members were involved in the chains of command under which abuse was reported to have taken place.

 In refuting each of these claims, we provide extensive documentary evidence from the public record and from PENS materials. All APA members, and other members of the public concerned about human rights are encouraged to read the entire letter. We also urge Dr. Brehm and other APA officials, in the interests of fairness, scholarly integrity and democratic debate, to circulate our letter as they did Dr. Moorhead-Slaughter’s letter.

 We engage in this effort in order to correct the historical record. We further hope to help others understand the conflicts of interest in the APA processes that govern the organization’s policy-making on psychologists’ involvement in detainee interrogations where abuses have taken place and where basic human rights continue to be violated. We believe it is necessary for the APA to clear the air once and for all and to develop simple and unambiguous policies against such participation.

 We were disappointed that the resolution passed at this past summer’s convention, which began as an important clarification of APA policy against torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was, in the end, compromised by loopholes that made many wonder whether the APA was tacitly providing cover for continued psychologist participation in CIA “enhanced interrogations.” We wish to work together with the APA leadership to remove these loopholes and to develop an unambiguous policy. We also urge the Association to put ethics first and to reject the presence of psychologists, except as direct health providers, in national security settings that do not sustain basic human rights. We call upon all psychologists, and citizens, to work with us to accomplish these goals.

 Steven Reisner

Stephen Soldz

Brad Olson

For the Coalition for an Ethical APA

Entry Filed under: Guantanamo,Interrogation,Psychological Torture,SERE,Torture