New version of Pink’s Dear Mr. President
A new live version of Pink’s Dear Mr. President. I love this song:
[H/t to Crooks & Liars.]
Add comment September 22nd, 2007
Archive for September, 2007
APA sidelined Task Force on the Psychological Effects of Efforts to Prevent Terrorism to not offend Bush administration
Those of us fighting the American Psychological Association’s campaign of denial, deceit, and delay in order to maintain psychologists in Bush’s illegal and abusive interrogations are not surprised that the APA leadership has used similar slimy tactics to counter other challenges to its cozy relationship with the War of Terror boondoggle and war machine. Paul Kimmel writes of how APA sidelined a report from an APA task force he chaired, the Task Force on the Psychological Effects of Efforts to Prevent Terrorism. [This article will appear in the APA's Peace Psychology Division newsletter (Division 48). Reprinted with permission.]
Reflections From Panama
Paul Kimmel
Hola, amigos
Greetings from Panama City where Ramona and I are living until December to see if we want to relocate here in 2008. We missed seeing you in San Francisco, but through the wonders of the Internet, kept up with much of what happened there. We were saddened, but not surprised, when we read Linda Woolf’s commentary on the Moratorium proposal.
As Yogi Berra said, it was like “deja vu all over again.” The experiences that she described in dealing with the APA before and during the Council meetings brought back many memories of my two years as Chair of the Council’s Task Force on the Psychological Effects of Efforts to Prevent Terrorism.
At their February 2003 meetings we were charged with “assessing the emotional and behavioral effects of processes initiated in the U.S. to safeguard American lives and property and prevent future acts of terrorism.”
Council approved this Task Force proposal nearly unanimously with one long time council member calling it the “most important task force ever established by Council.”
The Board of Directors of the APA, President Sternberg and Secretary Levant vetted the 15 Task Force members that I recommended and added one other researcher from NIH. We pursued our assignments individually and coordinated through conference calls attended by a variety of employees of the APA’s Public Interest Directorate between June and October of 2003. The editing of the final document was done by e-mail with expert help from Art Kendall on the necessary detailed work.
Three other experts in conflict resolution reviewed our work in March 2004. Their comments were taken into account in the Final Report that went to the Board of Directors’ June 2004 meeting. At this meeting the Report was approved for the Council meetings of July 2004.
And then the fun began.
Just before the afternoon session at which I was scheduled to present our Report to the APA Council, Ron Levant, Rhea Farberman, Henry Tomes and my contact on the Board of Directors called me from lunch to discuss our Report. I was told that to have the Report “received” by the Association - as proposed in our Agenda item - would not be as powerful as having it “reported” to the APA after being reviewed by a number of relevant Boards and Committees. They suggested that I amend our item on the floor to have such a review take place so that the Association could do more with our findings and recommendations than just accepting them.
With little time to consult the rest of the Task Force (there had been no mention of such a review process before this hurried discussion), I amended the proposal as requested (although Bernice Lott, another TF member on Council, who was skeptical of this last minute turn of events, opposed postponing the reception of our time-sensitive work). My expectation was that by going through the review process, the Report would be stronger and the Association would act upon it more quickly and comprehensively after Council approved it in February 2005.
Attending the meetings and responding to the suggestions of the many Boards and Committees involved a lot more work for me and our authors, as these groups had different interests and points of view regarding our findings and recommendations.
When we finished revising our Report in light of their suggestions, the APA Board of Directors recommended it be rejected as lacking “peer review” in spite of the fact that it was a policy piece and not an academic journal article.
It was also suggested that our findings and recommendations were too “political” (it seems that only the status quo is not “political” or “politically correct” at the Association).
We brought our responses to the Board of Directors’ objections to the February 2005 Council meetings, only to find our item being moved down the agenda by Ron Levant (presiding as President) until there were just 10 minutes left in the final afternoon session.
This was barely enough time to go over the main item and no time for discussion of or response to the Board’s critique.
Our first speaker was cut off by Levant (there were several others ready and able to address their issues) and a vote was called.
We were voted down - as Representatives were leaving to catch flights and other Convention activities - and the Report was never received by the APA.
As many of you know, I took the initiative to transform the 12 articles written by the Task Force members into chapters in “Collateral Damage: The Psychological Consequences of America’s War on Terrorism” published by Praeger in August 2006. The APA’s attorney made it clear that I was not to intimate in any way that the book was endorsed or approved by the Association.
Like Linda in her struggles with the recent Moratorium proposal, I felt neglected, misled and taken advantage of by the Board of Directors and members of the APA Central Office.
There was little money for the Task Force (our only meeting was at our own expense, staying late at the 2004 Convention in Toronto) and no single staff member was assigned by the Public Interest Directorate to assist us as needed with our volunteer activities.
The APA’s Director of Public Affairs told me that the Association could not publish some of our statements such as “more people will die from the ‘war on terrorism’ than died on 9/11,” even before the Report was seen by Council. In short, rather than feeling we were part of a professional organization working together to promote the general welfare, I felt that we were being led through a series of obstacles in an effort to prevent us from bringing to the public important information about the effects of our government’s policies on terrorism.
After being rejected, our Report was referred to the Board of Scientific Affairs for further review where it has remained undiscussed for two and one half years.
Thus, our findings and recommendations are available only to those who purchase “Collateral Damage.”
Joanne Tortorici Luna favorably reviewed our book in the August 15 2007) on-line issue of PsyCritiques. It ends, “It is good to know that, in a moment of our history when even a supposedly independent press has largely suspended its critical voice, there are still some who will call it as they see it. Psychologists are sometimes referred to as those who are willing to speak the unspeakable. There is no better time than now.”
I sincerely hope that the time is not too far off when our membership association will speak with a clearer voice on critical national and international issues.
In the meantime, I suggest that you read the rest of the PsyCritiques’
book review and/or buy a copy of “Collateral Damage” to see what it is that the Association will not associate with.Hasta luego,
Paul Kimmel
1 comment September 21st, 2007
ORB Iraq mortality poll to be reexamined
The British polling company, ORB, that reported that an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis had died from violence post-invasion has decided that their results might be affected by a sampling design that undersampled rural areas. They had taken the survey results off the front page of the Newsroon page for a while. Now it has returned to that page, with a press release announcing that they are conducting some additional surveys in rural areas.
Iraq Casualties Poll Update
ORB to conduct additional interviews in rural Iraq.
We have received a lot of interest in the recent ‘casualties’ poll that we carried out in conjunction with our local partners in Iraq - IIACSS. Our survey was carried out throughout Iraq and looked at the incidence of civilian deaths since 2003 - together with Iraqi’s views on the displacement of people.
As with many other activities in Iraq polling has its own restraints and it is simply too dangerous for interviewers to operate in some areas. Meanwhile local authorities prevent interviewers from working in certain towns and districts. This means that we cannot gather opinion from the more volatile areas but, at the same time we have, so far, also limited coverage in rural districts. Both of these factors mean that any estimate of deaths will remain just that - an estimate.
While, for obvious reasons, we cannot boost our representation of people living in Iraq’s most violent areas we have decided - following feedback from readers of our poll - to conduct a more extensive survey of rural areas to see how this may impact on our estimate. We are in the process of conducting additional interviews in rural areas of Iraq. Once this data has been verified and merged with our current data set we will post it here on the ORB.
As scientists, we await the release of these additional results. I also hope that ORB will post details on their sampling methodology and survey administration techniques. Like the Johns Hopkins studies, the ILCS, and others, we need to closely examine their methodology. While I take the Hopkins and ORB studies seriously as evidence that the death toll is in the many hundreds of thousands, as a scientist, and sometime survey researcher (albeit in a very different area), I know that estimates in a situation like Iraq are just that, estimates. I’d like to see their methodology to see how well they dealt with the various potential biases. If it stands up, the replication of the basic findings of the Hopkins study, that the mortality in Iraq is enormous, will immeasurably strengthen our case.
At the same time, as I teach my research methods students, we should be skeptical of studies that support our prior beliefs and subject them to the same critical examination that we do of studies which challenge our prior beliefs.
1 comment September 21st, 2007
Wicked and the Association
This Boston Globe editorial on my favorite book, Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, has resonance in the struggle to transform the American Psychological Association. The most disturbing thing has been how generally decent people can close their eyes to the most obvious evil. As APA appoints those implicated in abuse to formulate its anti-abuse policies, as it passes yet another “anti-torture” resolution that has built in loopholes, as it lauds the anti-torture efforts of those who were in charge of fellow psychologists at Guantanamo at the very time that the Red Cross, the FBI, and the Defense Department’s own Inspector General says horrifying abuses were the order of the day, I can only think of the importance of getting along, of being accepted as part of the group, as we watch so many regurgitate the spin and the lies. How this need to be accepted leads to evil and the demonizing of those who resist, is one of the themes of Macguire’s book, as the Globe reminds us:
A recognizably wicked world
IN THE OPENING number of “Wicked,” which returned to Boston last week, the citizens of Oz, along with Glinda the Good Witch, are celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. In the play - and in the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel on which it was based - Glinda and the Wicked Witch were once best friends. Glinda’s face registers her discomfort over the celebration, but still plays down her connection to the vanquished witch.
To watch novelist Gregory Maguire and producer David Stone respond to questions from the Globe opinion staff, please visit boston.com/opinion
The play pretends to tell the story behind “The Wizard of Oz.” By taking the Wicked Witch’s point of view, it reminds us that one person’s villain is another’s hero. Yet works of art mean different things at different times. In the present context, the most chilling lesson in this cheerful musical concerns the price of loyalty and the temptations of power.
In this version of Oz, dissent is stifled. This Oz is a dead ringer, to liberal “Wicked” fans, for George W. Bush’s America - though the Wizard acts more like a comic version of Kim Jong Il. His plan to keep Oz happy involves muting all the animals. This radicalizes sardonic, green-skinned Elphaba, whom the Wizard’s propaganda machine demonizes as the Wicked Witch. Glinda lacks her friend’s tolerance for solitude, and becomes a wand-waving functionary of the Wizard regime.
Her choice isn’t surprising. Humans are social animals, and one person can only achieve so much on her own. But “Wicked” reminds us how the need to belong can push an individual, inch by inch, into doing things that might once have seemed repugnant.
In the real world, some people have the spine to resist. Lawyer Jack Goldsmith quit the Bush administration after being pushed to rubber-stamp policies he thought unwise. But compare this with the now-infamous 2004 incident in which then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card rushed to see a hospitalized John Ashcroft, hoping to get his OK for a supposed antiterrorism effort. Going along to get along, Gonzales and Card were prodding a bedridden man to authorize secret surveillance on US soil.
Some scholars see L. Frank Baum’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a parable about late-19th-century economic policy. In an interview with the Globe, Maguire said it’s not clear Oz’s creator meant to sow messages for adults, but suggested themes of Baum’s time might have bubbled into his story.
Oz as depicted in “Wicked” shares some features with modern American politics - a tendency to brush past moral ambiguities, a sharpening of the political debate into reductive extremes. Poor Glinda needs room to think, and she doesn’t get it. She’s not the only one.
It’s amazing how few APA insiders have the spine to resist. As the editorial points out conservative Lawyer Jack Goldsmith quit rather than rubber-stamp torture and surveillance policies that were wrong. So far, very few in the APA leadership has come forward to denounce the policies of an organization that, over and over, denounces torture and then winks.
Add comment September 21st, 2007
Summary of Letter to President Brehm
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 onAmy 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
6 comments September 18th, 2007
Letter to APA President Brehm responds to attacks on Jean Maria Arrigo
The Coalition for an Ethical APA has just sent another letter to Dr. Sharon Brehm, President of the American Psychological Association. This letter replies in detail to widely distributed letters from former APA President Gerald Koocher and Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, former Chair of the PENS Task Force [Presidential task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security]. These letters were extremely critical of Jean Maria Arrigo’s talk at the recent APA convention on irregularities in the PENS process, which suggested that the Department of Defense had direct influence on task force process and hence, on its final report. The bulk of Dr. Arrigo’s talk was broadcast during the August 20th Democracy Now! radio/TV show.
We sent the reply to President Brehm because she had widely distributed the letter from Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter with the following endorsement:
“Dear colleagues,
With her permission, I’m forwarding you a letter from Dr. Olivia
Moorehead-Slaughter that responds to comments made by Dr. Jean Maria
Arrigo and Amy Goodman, host of the program “Democracy Now.” These
comments were posted on the Democracy Now website
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/20/1628234 and were
also posted by Ken Pope to his listserv.I hope you will find the information provided by Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter
to be useful in your own thinking and I would encourage you to forward
Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter’s letter to any individuals or organizations
interested in this issue.Thank you for your consideration, Sharon
———————–
Sharon Stephens Brehm
2007 APA President”
We have found that both letter respond to charges never made and ignored the real substance of Dr. Arrigo’s presentation. In our reply, we provide sound evidence from the public record, as well as from contemporaneous PENS documentation, to support Dr. Arrigo’s scholarly presentation, which she delivered first as part of the mini-convention on Ethics and Interrogations, at the invitation of the APA. The evidence we provide casts serious doubt on much of what Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter purports to be the case.
Here is the Letter to President Brehm in full. As it is long, we have also written a Summary, which I will post separately.
************************************
September 19, 2007
President
American Psychological Association
Dear Dr Brehm:
You recently distributed a letter from Dr. Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter to members of the American Psychological Association (APA) that has spread to many APA listservs and other outlets. There are serious distortions, inaccuracies and misrepresentations in this letter, and our aim here is to correct these errors, as well as those in a related letter by former APA President Gerald Koocher, and to encourage you to distribute the correction.
At the August, 2007 Convention in
Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter and Dr. Koocher, each of whom have held positions of leadership in the APA, and both of whom were participants in the PENS process, have written open letters attacking Dr. Arrigo’s scholarship, integrity, and in one instance, her mental stability. Although these attacks were personal, we will focus on the substance of their attempts to challenge Dr. Arrigo’s critique of the PENS process.
As you know, Dr. Arrigo deposited copies of the PENS listserv and documentation materials at the Hoover Institution Archives at
Dr. Arrigo’s Critique of the PENS Task Force Process
Dr. Arrigo’s critique of the PENS Task Force Process included the following points:
1) Dr. Arrigo asserted that the PENS Task Force was created in response to press reports stating that psychologists were involved in interrogation abuses at Guantánamo and elsewhere. Neil Lewis, for example, in the November 30, New York Times 2, cited a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). This report stated that psychologists and other health professionals were participating in abusive interrogations ”tantamount to torture.” The article further reported that these health professionals utilized medical records to guide the processes of such interrogations. During their visits to Guantánamo in early 2003, the ICRC found these practices to be such egregious violations of medical ethics that they refused to return for six months. The article further reported that the teams of interrogation supervisors, Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), singled out by the ICRC, consisted primarily of psychologists and/or were trained and supervised by psychologists. This has since been validated by a Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General report, 20063.
2) Dr. Arrigo pointed out that the task force was not an independent body. Six of the nine voting PENS members were in the employ of the Department of Defense at the time of the meeting. Three held positions in the very chains of command during a critical period when, according to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, the abusive interrogation techniques were nothing less than “standard operating procedures.”
3) Dr. Arrigo expressed concern that two APA officials holding leadership positions in the organization, neither of whom were members of the Task Force, took dominant roles in task force proceedings. Her observation was that these APA leaders guided the direction, focus, and conclusions of the task force at multiple critical points, and marginalized minority opinion. In the room, too, and privy to listserv communications, were four other unacknowledged observers, who had been APA lobbyists to the DoD and to Congress. While it is not unusual to have observers at Presidential Task Force proceedings, the presence of observers who had been lobbyists on issues that overlapped with the mission of the Task Force constitutes a further conflict of interest and potential source of bias. This is magnified by the fact that their activities included directly lobbying one of the Task Force members, who had been the Director of the Psychology Unit of the highly secret DoD Counterintelligence Field Activity Unit (CIFA) (See APA’s ‘Science Policy Insider News’ [SPIN] October, 20044.)
4) Dr. Arrigo also pointed out that the Task Force proceedings, the names of the members, and, in particular, the names of the observers, although shared with Council, were kept from the membership and from the public in a manner that is unusual for Presidential Task Forces.
5) Dr. Arrigo also presented the results of her consultation with two former counterintelligence professionals, skilled in tracing covert influences and who had not been part of the PENS process. They agreed to review the PENS procedures and staffing. Both counterintelligence professionals independently found the process consistent with “a typical legitimization process for a decision made at a higher level in the Department of Defense.”
Assessment of Dr. Koocher’s Remarks
[Dr. Koocher’s letter is available here.]
Dr. Koocher charges Dr. Arrigo with “a substantial number of false and defamatory allegations regarding me [Dr. Koocher] and other members and staff of the American Psychological Association.” He then does what should be unthinkable for an ethicist, former President of the APA, and current APA Board Member. He attempts to undermine the validity of Dr. Arrigo’s conclusions by asserting bias due to a troubled past. Dr. Koocher’s letter contains distortions and in some cases outright fabrications, such as the following:
1. “Dr. Arrigo stated that she, ‘was one of the three civilian members of the 2005 PENS Task Force.’ That statement is patently false… Six of the ten task force members and both members of the APA Board of Directors who participated in the meetings were civilians.”
In point of fact, Dr. Arrigo made no such statement; the quote is from Ms. Goodman.
What Dr. Arrigo did say was, “A third matter is an unbalanced task force. Six of the ten members were highly placed in the Department of Defense, as contractors and military officers.” There is no disputing Dr. Arrigo’s statement. Drs. Banks, James, and Lefever were all active in the military at the time 5. Dr. Gelles worked for the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service. Dr. Shumate was chief psychologist for Department of Defense Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), and Dr. Fein was a consultant to CIFA on “effective” interrogation methods, responsible to Dr. Shumate. Although it is true that the latter three were civilians, this is irrelevant to Dr. Arrigo’s point, which had to do with conflict of interest due to DoD involvement. All three were involved in military or intelligence interrogations or interrogation effectiveness research, and could suffer career harm, including loss of security clearance, if they were to reject DoD policies. Although Dr. Arrigo said nothing about the Board liaisons’ connections with the military, it is worth pointing out that although Dr. Barry Anton, the other Board liaison mentioned by Dr. Koocher, was a civilian at the time of the meeting, he had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve for 22 years. Dr. Koocher not only misquotes Dr. Arrigo, he does so in the interest of obscuring an issue that is valid and relevant: the fact of the DoD employment and/or affiliation of six of the nine voting Task Force members.
2. Dr. Koocher goes on to state that “Dr. Arrigo also conveniently ignores the fact that the task force’s report was reviewed, edited and approved by the completely independent APA Ethics Committee.”
Dr. Koocher is making the claim that whatever conflicts of interest might be evident in the PENS Task Force are somehow overridden by review of the “completely independent APA Ethics Committee.” But, in fact, the Chair of the PENS Task Force, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter, was then Vice-chair of the Ethics Committee, and the PENS Task Force Report was actually written by Stephen Behnke, the Director of the APA Ethics Office. Dr. Behnke was designated one of two spokespeople for the Report. (The other was APA public relations director Rhea Farberman.) Other members were discouraged from speaking. As Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter wrote to the PENS listserv on July 7, 2005:
“[W]e agreed to let our Report speak for us, and that we would not share the substance of our discussions further than what the Report contains, I ask that we all refer any questions from the media concerning the Task Force to Steve and Rhea, even if we’re asked to speak off the record or “on background.“
Further, as Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter wrote on the listserv on June 25, 2007, the Ethics Committee, in reviewing the document, had an extremely narrow mandate:
“The Ethics Committee is reviewing the Report this afternoon, for the purpose of determining whether our twelve statements are “appropriate interpretations and applications” of the APA Ethics Code.”
3. Dr. Koocher asserts that “Because Dr. Levant could not attend the meeting, I (as 2006 President) represented him at the start of the meeting to help the group understand its charge and I was present for only the first six hours of the two day meeting… Such was the nature of my alleged ’strong controlling’ behavior.”
A reading of the PENS Listserv documentation shows, on the contrary, that Dr. Koocher was a dominant member of the PENS process from the very start of email communication, two months before the meeting, and he continued in this role to the very end. Here are examples of Dr. Koocher’s comments on the PENS listserv, one from six weeks before the meeting, and one from six weeks after:
May 6, 2005: “In many of the circumstances we will discuss when we meet the psychologist’s role may bear on people who are not ‘clients’ in the traditional sense. Example, the psychologist employed by the CIA, Secret Service, FBI, etc., who helps formulate profiles for risk prevention, negotiation strategy, destabilization, etc., or the psychologist asked to assist interrogators in eliciting data or detecting dissimulation with the intent of preventing harm to many other people. In this case the client is the agency, government, and ultimately the people of the nation (at risk). The goal of such psychologists’ work will ultimately be the protection of others (i.e., innocents) by contributing to the incarceration, debilitation, or even death of the potential perpetrator, who will often remain unaware of the psychologists’ involvement.”
Dr. Levant, on the other hand, contributed only one post to the listserv, on January 16, 2006, six months after the Report was published, and three months after his visit to Guantánamo at the invitation of the Department of Defense. In this sole communication he asked Task Force member Mike Wessells to reconsider his resignation from the Task Force.
4. Dr. Koocher included in his letter the following allegation: “During the introductions Dr. Arrigo disclosed that her father served as a military officer during the Korean War, he interrogated and tortured people, and he committed suicide. She has therefore made it her life’s mission to campaign against torture and interrogation.”
Here we will allow Dr. Arrigo to speak for herself (personal communication, September 7, 2007):
“Dr. Gerald Koocher’s assertions about my background and motivations do not connect with reality. My father is not a suicide but alive, at 93 years of age, in
Further, the fact that Dr. Arrigo has attended and even organized a number of conferences in collaboration with military and intelligence professionals, as well as with professional interrogators demonstrates the falseness of the claim that she “campaign[s] … against interrogation.”
5. Last, Dr. Koocher stated that, “Until now, I had remained respectfully silent in public regarding Dr. Arrigo’s biases, history of personal trauma, and lack of boundaries, but will no longer do so.”
Alas, it is not true that Dr. Koocher remained “respectfully silent” in public about this matter. When a reporter from the Washington Monthly,
Assessment of Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter’s Remarks
[Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter’s letter is available here.]
Like Dr. Koocher, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter sidesteps Dr. Arrigo’s evidence of conflicts of interest in the PENS process and focuses on innuendos that are falsely attributed to Dr. Arrigo. Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter begins her letter with a 300 word defense against allegations she claims came from Dr. Arrigo, but that in fact were never made.
Thus, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter states that she did not work “in any capacity for the CIA,” was not paid “monies or compensation” for her time, was not covertly “providing information to the military,” and that any implication to the contrary is “an insult to my integrity.” But not a single one of these charges can be found in Dr. Arrigo’s remarks (nor in Ms. Goodman’s, for that matter). Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter’s insinuation that such charges were made presents a false picture of Dr. Arrigo’s argument and serves the purpose of impugning her veracity, while sidestepping the conclusion that Dr. Arrigo did draw from the proceedings: that there was conflict of interest among certain members of and observers to the PENS Task Force.
Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter in her letter quotes an email Dr. Arrigo sent to the PENS listserv in which Dr. Arrigo expresses polite praise for the PENS report:
“The depth, scope, and wisdom of this document are indeed impressive, and I approve it as a Task Force member. Also, I appreciate its literary grace (owing to Steve). As mentioned previously, I have felt uneasy with some elements, primarily omissions. Fulfillment of the Task Force recommendations would relieve my concerns, and I hope for an opportunity for further participation. Thanks to the APA ethics committee, board, and staff members who have mobilized for swift review and dissemination of the PENS report.”
Dr. Arrigo provided us an explanation of her thinking:
“Dr. Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter’s interpretation of my approving comment on the penultimate draft of the PENS report is misleading. First, I spoke well of it in polite prelude to three serious objections—all of which were overruled by Dr. Koocher. Second, in June 2005 I did have positive feelings about the full PENS Report. Following its statement of twelve ethical principles. the PENS Report stated nine recommendations for action. I had initiated three of these, including the call for a PENS casebook, and was led to expect these recommendations would be implemented expeditiously. Fulfillment of the recommendations would have compensated, in a diplomatic manner, for gaps in the principles. Two years later there is still no casebook.” (For a more detailed critique of the PENS process, see Drs. Arrigo’s and Dr. Wessells letters to Council, February 2006,in an appendix to this letter.)
In her letter, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter disputes Dr. Arrigo’s assertion that there were “significant conflicts of interest” in the PENS Task Force membership. We have already addressed the fact that the PENS listserv reveals that the majority of Task Force members were in the employ of the Department of Defense. At this point, however, it is important to add further evidence of conflict of interest: that the process appears to have been vetted by the DoD itself. One military/intelligence member wrote on the PENS TF listserv on January 23, 2006:
As with all publicly released information, DoD and other Governmental officials have to have their work reviewed by various elements within the Government, and in this case specifically by the Department.
On January 31, 2006, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter acknowledged without objection this “process of approval and clearance.”
Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter states in her letter, “The notion that either the names of Task Force members or their biographical descriptions were not publicly available until a year after the Task Force met is completely false.”
But this point is flatly contradicted by the fact that the PENS Report is the only Presidential Task Force Report, to our knowledge, to be released to the public without the names of the members or the observers listed. Although it is true that the names and bios of the members, after being made available to Council representatives, were posted on the Division 48 listserv, this was not acknowledged by the APA leadership, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter, or Dr. Behnke until after the names were released in the press. Attempts were made by members of the APA and the press to obtain the Task Force membership. After the report was published, all requests were turned down.
Evidence for this comes not only from APA members and reporters, but also from the PENS listserv. This post is from August 22, 2005 by a military/intelligence member of the Task Force:
“I wanted to leave a short note regarding the Ethics in National Security Panel presentation at the APA Conference on Friday. While this was not related to the Task Force, there were many questions and comments regarding the Task Force report posed to Dr. Steve Behnke who chaired the panel. I was once again impressed with how Dr. Behnke eloquently represented our work and insured the confidentiality of the panel, despite pressure to reveal the identities of the task force members and the process that unfolded during the Task Force meetings. Steve was respectful, gracious and polite in response to some very direct and provocative questions and comments.”
Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter responded to the above email by stating, also on August 22, 2005, “I have no doubts that Steve [Behnke] was respectful and masterful in preserving the integrity of our Task Force process.”
Finally, Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter asserts that there could be no conflict of interest given that the military/intelligence members of the Task Force have been “described in publicly available documents as taking central roles in fighting detainee abuse.”
First, this point is irrelevant to the question of conflict of interest. The task facing the PENS Task Force was to investigate the APA’s response to psychologists’ roles in detainee abuses, as well as the question of whether ethical issues were raised by psychologists’ participation in detainee interrogations. The fact that the majority of PENS members (six of the nine voting members) were already directly or indirectly involved in such interrogations and their careers were dependent on such interrogations, constitutes the very definition of conflict of interest. This conflict is only exacerbated by the fact that at least three PENS members were in the direct chains of command when and where the Department of Defense 3, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 2, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, all reported that these abuses had occurred. While considerable new evidence on the nature and extent of psychologist involvement in abusive interrogations has recently come to light, many of these reports were already in the public domain at the time of the PENS Task Force formation. In fact, as we have already noted, it was ICRC reports of abuse at Guantánamo that precipitated the formation of the PENS task Force in the first place. To put those in the Guantánamo interrogation chain of command on PENS after these reports were available is, by definition, a conflict of interest.
The public record is quite explicit that abuses were observed during the time when at least three PENS Task Force members were a part of the implicated chains of command. For example, there are documented reports of abuses by the
One military Task Force member’s statement on the PENS Listserv (May 23, 2005) that “since Jan 2003, where ever we have had psychologists no abuses have been reported” has been flatly contradicted by independent bodies with thorough access to Guantánamo detainee conditions. Multiple reports, for example, from FBI agents at Guantánamo document abusive interrogations during this period:
“In late 2002 and continuing into mid-2003, the Behavioral Analysis Unit raised concerns over interrogation tactics being employed by the
In a June, 2004 report, the Red Cross (ICRC) noted, according to the New York Times, that,
“investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo… and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through “humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions… Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly “more refined and repressive” than learned about on previous visits” 2.
This describes Guantánamo interrogations during and immediately following the period Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter refers to as “Task Force members…taking central roles in fighting detainee abuse,” and during the period where those members asserted that the abuses stopped.
Apparently, the psychologists on the PENS task force hold very different definitions of what constitutes abuse from the ICRC, the FBI and the DOD Inspector General (OIG). The OIG report states that in August 2003 interrogators from Guantánamo attempted to teach these abusive techniques to interrogators in
“In August 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff J3 requested the U.S. Southern Command to send experts in detention and interrogation operations from Guantánamo to Iraq to assess the Iraq Survey Group’s interrogation operations…Based on interviews with cognizant personnel, the JTF-Guantánamo assessment team reportedly discussed the use of harsher counterresistance techniques with Iraq Survey Group personnel” 3.
This history supports Dr. Arrigo’s contention that the PENS Task Force psychologists who were involved in interrogations could not be expected to offer an independent assessment of the ethics of psychologists’ involvement in detainee interrogations.
Dr. Brehm, you have disseminated Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter’s letter widely, giving the Presidential imprimatur to its contents. We request, in the interest of scholarly integrity, honesty, and fairness, that you send this letter to the same distribution networks. Our position is (a) that it is necessary to attend to the evidence that psychologists have been implicated in detainee abuse; (b) that the APA must do all it can do to condemn the psychologist-led abuses that have taken place and the use of psychological knowledge for the purposes of abuse; and (c) that the APA’s history of addressing this issue has been tainted by conflicts of interest that have compromised the ethical integrity of our commitment to end these practices.
The recent resolution passed by the Council of Representatives last month , Substitute Motion 35, is a step forward in bringing the APA in line with international standards of human rights and medical ethics, but loopholes exist in the language of the resolution that can be interpreted as permitting psychologists to continue participation in ‘enhanced’ and abusive interrogations; language that has been condemned by the ACLU 9, Physicians for Human Rights 10, and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims 11. We would like to work with you and the Board to close those loopholes to prevent any implication that the APA might condone abuses, enhanced interrogations, or ‘torture lite.’ We hope that you will distribute this letter to the APA membership, and that you will ask the Board to establish a working group dedicated to aligning APA policy with the highest standards of medical ethics and human rights.
Sincerely,
Steven Reisner
Stephen Soldz
Brad Olson
For the Coalition for an Ethical APA
Works Cited
1. Arrigo JM, Goodman A. APA Interrogation Task Force Member Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo Exposes Group’s Ties to Military: Democracy Now!, August 20, 2007. Available from: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/20/1628234
2. Lewis NA. Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo: New York Times, November 30, 2004. . Available from: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30910FF3A5A0C738FDDA80994DC404482
3. Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense. Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse, 2006. Available from: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/abuse.pdf
4. American Psychological Association Public Policy Office. Science Policy Staff meet with Psychologists in Counterintelligence. SPIN, October, 2004. Available from: http://www.apa.org/ppo/spin/1004.html
5. American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security: 2003 Members’ Biographical Statements: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, Peace Psychology Division 48 of APA, 2005. Available from: http://www.webster.edu/peacepsychology/tfpens.html
6. Eban, Katherine. Rorschach and Awe. Vanity Fair Online, 2007. Available from: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707?printable=true¤tPage=all
7. American Psychological Association. Reaffirmation of the American Psychological Association Position Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and Its Application to Individuals Defined in the
8. Testimonies of FBI Agents. (Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.) Available from: http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/testimonies-of-fbi-agents/index
9. Romero A, Goodman A. The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror: ACLU Head Anthony Romero on Civilian Killings in
10. Rubenstein L. Report from the APA meeting: Physicians for Human Rights, 2007. Available from: http://actnow-phr.org/phr/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=5944351
11. Quiroga J. APA resolution: a step forward in preventing torture and ill-treatment: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, 2007. Available from: http://www.irct.org/Default.aspx?ID=159&M=News&PID=5&NewsID=954
Appendix
February 12, 2006
Dear Olivia,
Please attach to your February 1, 2006, letter to Drs. Koocher and
I appreciate your graciousness as moderator.
Jean Maria
===========
Addendum to Dr. Morehead-Slaughter’s February 1, 2006, letter to Drs. Koocher and
I disagree with two major assertions in this letter: (1) that the “Ethics Committee is the most appropriate group” for writing the casebook/commentary, and (2) that the Task Force “has provided the American Psychological Association the best service it is able.” Also, I remark on two related concerns: (3) lack of independence of the Task Force and (4) lack of Task Force transparency.
1. Authorship of the casebook.
Creation of the casebook is more demanding of specialized knowledge concerning interrogations than is articulation of the general ethical principles, because of the legal and political ramifications. Task Force members whose defense department affiliations prevent them from participating in the casebook can defer to their colleagues and myself to provide realistic examples for the casebook and to assist the Ethics Committee in formulating realistic advice. Without the participation of the Task Force members with defense department affiliations, the ecological validity of the casebook is apt to be low or absurd. What psychologists know about culture, setting, organizational roles, social influence, and so on, points to the need for insiders to provide the sample cases from domains clouded in secrecy. In my view, a body of illustrative examples for the Final Report is a crucial contribution of Task Force members affiliated with the national security system and would justify their majority presence on the Task Force.
2. Task Force fulfillment of service
For best service to the APA, from the beginning I have urged that the Task Force expand the scope of its inquiry. The Final Report narrowly focuses on ethical decision making by morally autonomous military psychologists faced with interrogatees at a detention center under
3.
APA sources have consistently characterized the Final Report as the product of deliberations by the ten named members of the Task Force. Dr. Koocher voiced strong opinions on the Task Force listserv and during the final deliberations in
In my view, the external social pressure prevented the Task Force from reviewing the ethical implications of its limited mandate, a mandate that excluded investigation of the participation of psychologists in coercive interrogation.
The present letter from the Task Force chair, addressed to Drs. Levant and Koocher, informs Dr. Koocher of a decision in which he substantially participated.
4. Transparency of the Task Force
Confidentiality of Task Force proceedings was advanced on two grounds: the members with national security affiliations could not sufficiently inform our deliberations except under a promise of confidentiality, and a united Task Force position would diffuse divisive and counterproductive criticism of the APA, both from within and without. I think the first reason was valid, but the second has worked against resolution of the question of psychologists’ involvement coercive interrogation. To many APA members, as evidenced by public letters from Divisions 48 and 51, the Task Force appears to be a tool of appeasement, created by the APA leadership to obscure members’ demands for an investigation. Honest discussion from Task Force members about the conflicted proceedings (preserving confidences related to national security) would have been much more fruitful than the gag rule. Such discussion would have been a valid step in addressing members’ concerns. We can still take that step.
Jean Maria Arrigo
From: Mike Wessells
Date: January 15, 2006 12:55:10 PM PST
Subject: PENS work
Reply-To: Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security
2 comments September 18th, 2007
Server problems
The databse server has been down a number of times since Friday. Sorry if you couldn’t get through. The sever company says, for the second time, that the problem’s been fixed. We’ll see.
Add comment September 17th, 2007
Summers: “Ethical vacuum that dominates the APA leadership”
Psychologist Frank Summers has sent the following letter to the American Psychological Association’s CEO explaining why he is continuing to withhold dues for q2008:
September 15, 2007
Norman Anderson, Chief Executive Officer
American Psychological Association
750 First Street
Washington, DC 20002-4242Dear Mr. Anderson:
I am writing to inform you of the reasons why I will not pay my 2008 dues. Having been a member of the APA for the past 31 years, I have not made this decision lightly. I have been considering some form of dissociation from the APA for some time, but after the events of the recent convention I have come to the conclusion that our organization is fundamentally corrupt, and I cannot in good conscience write a check in support of a professional association that has so little regard for ethics. I am certainly aware of the seriousness of this charge, and in what follows I will try to explain to you why I feel justified in making it.
The main ethical breach for which I judge APA is, of course, its refusal to oppose its members’ involvement in illegal detention centers. As I am sure you are aware, these institutions hold people who are taken from their homes without being charged, held indefinitely, given no chance to defend themselves, and have no right to counsel. This denial of due process violates both United States and international law. Detaining people indefinitely without charging them in itself constitutes a violation of the Geneva Convention. I would expect that the illegality of these camps would be sufficient reason for APA to oppose its members’ involvement, as has been the case for the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the World Medical Association, and the national organization of anthropologists. The only relevant professional organization that has refused to take an unequivocal stand against participation in these illegal camps is the APA.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Human Rights Watch have all concluded that both the conditions of confinement and the methods of interrogation at these camps violate international law. Moreover, these independent organizations have found that health care professionals have colluded in the use of techniques that amount to torture in violation of the Geneva Convention, the International Covenant against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to all of which the United State is a signatory. Any organization concerned about the ethical behavior of its members would at a very minimum be alarmed that three independent investigations have concluded that such illegal and unethical practices are routinely conducted in settings where psychologists are intimately involved. And, an organization that makes ethics a priority would take a clear ethical stand against such sordid practices. Unfortunately, the APA has been silent except when pushed by pressure from members who have ethical concerns, and then, has been dragged grudgingly to prohibit certain illegal activities, but left loopholes for the practice of others, as it did in passing “Resolution Number 3″ in San Francisco.
I became aware of the ethical vacuum that dominates the APA leadership in my very first contact on this issue. When I first became aware of charges that psychologists were involved in coercive interrogations, possibly even amounting to torture, at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, I wrote of my concern to the then President of our organization, Dr. Gerald Koocher. Rather than expressing concern about the allegations, Dr. Koocher was arrogant, condescending, and dismissive in his response, telling me that I had no evidence and was being misled by media accounts. Now I had not indicated the source of my information to Dr. Koocher, so how could he be so sure that my sources were media and, even more tellingly, how could he be so sure, without conducting any investigation, that the charges were groundless? Because he had drawn hasty conclusions without any inquiry and was so arrogant in his response, it was clear to me that Dr. Koocher had interest in neither the truth nor the ethical concerns raised by a series of reports that were, in fact, based on investigations. When I conveyed the evidence to Dr. Koocher from the United Nations Commission report on human rights and asked for a response, he told me “don’t hold your breath.” Such behavior is not only disreputable; it reflects an organization that makes its top priority the protection of its members participation in illegal camps, rather than ensuring their adherence to ethical principles.
The APA’s defense that psychologists are ensuring that interrogations in detention camps are “safe, ethical, and legal” is patently untrue. The use of interrogations techniques that violate international law is well documented by the aforementioned United Nations report, Human Rights Watch, and the ICRC. At Guantanamo in 2003 alone, with a staff of psychologists, there were more than 350 acts of self-harm, mass suicide attempts, and massive hunger strikes. When Al-Qahtani was tortured, a psychologist was there participating. Where were the psychologists keeping interrogations “safe, ethical, and legal” when Paul Vance, an American contractor in Iraq, whose only crime was informing the F.B.I. of illegal activities, was abused in the interrogation process?
The dishonorable nature of the APA is reflected in the way it has conducted itself since the allegations first surfaced. I could not possibly recount all the deceptive, flagrantly manipulative, and unscrupulous acts of which the APA has been guilty, so I will confine myself to the PENS report. Six of the nine members were military personnel or had close ties to the military. Col. Larry James and Col. Morgan Banks, for example, had played major roles in Guantanamo. Banks is not even an APA member. The conflict of interest for these six members is so flagrant that their presence on the task force is nothing less than unconscionable. If they were to question the ethical practices of psychologists in detention camps, they would be raising those questions about their own behavior. The rationalization that the members were chosen for their “expertise” is the way conflict of interest is typically rationalized by unethical organizations. The Bush Administration uses the same rationale to put Dick Cheney at the head of its task force on energy. Equally disturbing is the fact that APA tried to keep the PENS task force membership secret. Now that we know who the members were, it is clear why APA tried to keep their identities secret. This is the way an organization operates that has abdicated ethics in favor of short-term self interest.
I understand that the APA is trying to protect and advance its profitable relationship with the military, and I am not faulting that motive, but when narrow self-interest conflicts with ethics and legality, I believe I have a right to expect the APA will have the moral backbone to stand for what is right. The fact that APA chooses not to take a moral stand is shameful, and has had a ripple effect of immorality that issues in dishonorable ways of operating. In short, there is nothing left of APA but short-term careerism. It has become a superficial, morally bankrupt, greedy organization. And, therefore, I will not support it.
Very sincerely,
Frank Summers, Ph.D., ABPP
Add comment September 17th, 2007
Emergency: Sign Australian psychologist petition!
Dear Psychologist Readers,
Our colleagues in the Australian Psychological Society (APS) have been running into difficulties on the interrogation/torture issue much as we have with the APA. Please sign their petition, and distribute it as far and wide as possible. The APS convention is in a week, possibly even this week, and it’s important to show large international support.
The Petition reads:
In light of a letter (can be read here) from our colleagues at the University of Wollongong, Australia, appearing in “Letters to the Editor” of InPsych, dated 10 September 2007 and subsequent investigation regarding the standpoint of past president of the APA, G. P. Koocher - invited as keynote speaker to the Australian Psychologists Society’s Conference in Brisbane, this petition is made.
There appears to be neither an APS policy with respect to torture nor APS members’ involvement in government sanctioned torture.
Hence, no formal organisational response to the APA is possible, even if the APS wished to do so.
Therefore, we ask other APS Members, and sympathising colleagues internationally, to join with us in petitioning the APS Board to take urgent action to:
establish an APS policy on torture and its members’ involvement in any activity that could be classified as supporting torture in line with the United Nations policy on Human Rights and
resolve how the APS should respond to the APA with respect to its policy regarding its members’ involvement with torture.
To sign the petition, go to http://criminologyonline.swahs.uq.edu.au/
Over on the right hand side of the screen, go to ORF – Online Research Facility.
Then use this password - apsconf
1 comment September 17th, 2007
The Free Voice of Labor
Google video now has a classic film on the Free Voice of Labor, the Jewish anarchist newspaper and movement in New York City who continued the spirit of resistance and freedom for many decades.
“I am a man of peace and I am an anarchist…. Anarchism is a peace movement” it begins:
Add comment September 16th, 2007