Psyche, Science, and Society

Physicians for Human Rights calls for investigation of destruction of CIA tapes

Physicians for Human Rights calls for an investigation of the destruction of CIA tapes:

PHR CALLS ON ATTORNEY GENERAL TO CONDUCT INVESTIGATION INTO DESTRUCTION OF CIA TAPES, LEGALITY OF‘ENHANCED’ INTERROGATION PROGRAM

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today called on Attorney General Mukasey to open an investigation into whether the CIA’s admitted destruction of video recordings, allegedly showing interrogations of suspected terrorists, violated the law. The tapes reportedly show the use of “enhanced” interrogation tactics, including waterboarding. Congress must also investigate this potential destruction of evidence of torture, the group said. PHR also called upon Attorney General to investigate the use of methods of torture by the CIA and bring charges against those who are found to have broken the law.

The CIA’s “enhanced” tactics, according to a joint report, Leave No Marks, by PHR and Human Rights First (HRF), violate US and international law, including the Geneva Conventions, and can constitute war crimes, according to the groups’ analysis of legal and medical literature [http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-2007-08-02.html].

“The alleged destruction of potential evidence of torture demands immediate investigation by both the Attorney General and Congress,” stated Frank Donaghue, Chief Executive Officer of PHR. “Any remaining video and audio recordings, tactics logs, and other evidence of torture and mistreatment of detainees should be promptly handed over to the Department of Justice and Congressional oversight committees.”

Additionally, Attorney General Mukasey should quickly fulfill the promise he made in a letter to Judiciary Committee Senators prior to confirmation to “review any coercive interrogation techniques currently used by the United States Government and the legal analysis authorizing their use to assess whether such techniques comply with the law.” Those who are found to have violated the law through the authorization, design, supervision or implementation of the “enhanced” tactics should be prosecuted.

“Official Congressional and Department of Justice investigations are required to determine not only if the law was broken when the CIA destroyed potential evidence of torture, but to also examine what laws may be violated by the CIA’s ‘enhanced’ interrogation program itself,” stated Donaghue. “Any individual, regardless of their position, found to have committed a crime must be prosecuted by the Attorney General to the fullest extent of the law. The time for full accountability for this regime of psychological and physical torture is long overdue.”

Any inquiry into the destruction of the tapes and the conduct of the interrogations they reportedly showed must include close examination of the role of psychologists and other health professionals in implementing the “enhanced” tactics and in monitoring the interrogation, PHR stated. An article published in July by Vanity Fair revealed the essential role played in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the reported subject of one of the video tapes, by psychologists James Mitchell and E. Bruce Jessen, who were serving as contractors to the CIA [www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707].

“Government documents and press reports have clearly shown that psychologists played a crucial role in implementing abusive and illegal interrogations for both the CIA and the Pentagon as part of the Administration’s policy of using torture,” said Donaghue. “The US Government must ensure that health professionals are no longer employed in this illegal and unethical role.”

PHR praised the House and Senate Intelligence Committees for advancing legislation yesterday that makes the Army Field Manual the unified standard for detainee treatment and interrogation across all branches of the military and intelligence services. While PHR has expressed concern over some crucial aspects of the Army Field Manual, the group believes that the compromise measure approved by the committees represents significant progress, despite the likelihood that President Bush will veto any bill containing such a provision.

“Congress must continue to work toward ensuring one standard for detainee treatment and interrogations for all US personnel,” said Donaghue. “Our soldiers, law enforcement and intelligence agents are in desperate need of clear guidance about what is legal and illegal under the law. We urge President Bush to reconsider his threatened veto.”

PHR has repeatedly called on the Bush Administration and Congress to explicitly prohibit the “enhanced” interrogation tactics. These tactics include, though are not limited to, the following:

–Mock executions

–Waterboarding or any other form of simulated drowning or suffocation

–Threats of harm or death to the detainee or a member of his or her family

–Isolation used for the purpose of interrogation

–Sensory deprivation (particularly of light and auditory stimuli)

–Sensory bombardment (particularly with loud noise or music, bright lights, or flashing strobe lights)

–Hooding

–Sleep deprivation

–Forced nakedness

–Sexual humiliation

–Cultural or religious humiliation

anxiety or depression

–Stress positions (including “short shackling” and prolonged standing)

–Use of animals, including dogs, to instill fear

–Physical assault, including slapping and shaking

–Exposure to extreme heat or cold

–Induced hypothermia

–The threatened use of any of these techniques

–Use of psychotropic drugs or any other mind-altering substances in support of interrogations

December 7th, 2007

Another APA resignation: Paul R. Dokecki

I just became aware of yet another resignation from the American Psychological Association. Paul R. Dokecki, a senior community psychologist, joined those deciding that enough is enough. Given his long history of grappling with ethical issues in psychological practice, perhaps especially poignant is this line in his resignation letter that expresses the feelings of so many of us: “This semester, I was ashamed to have to tell my students about the ethically problematic APA position on interrogation and torture that has been emerging over the last several months.”

November 19, 2007

Dr. Sharon Brehm
President, American Psychological Association
Department of Psychology
1101 East 10th Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7007

Dear Dr. Brehm:

I have been a member of the American Psychological Association since 1962 and am a Fellow of Division 27, but I hereby resign from the organization. In stating my reasons, I can do no better than refer you to the attached copy of the October 7, 2007 letter to you from Marybeth Shinn, Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy at New York University, and soon to be my faculty colleague in Vanderbilt’s Department of Human and Organizational Development. I was pleased to have received and commented on earlier drafts of Professor Shinn’s eloquent and thorough argument, and I applaud her candor and courage.

I have been teaching ethics to undergraduate and graduate students for almost 20 years and was always pleased and proud to recommend the APA Code as perhaps the finest professional code of ethics in the world. I was particularly proud because of the role my mentor, Nicholas Hobbs, played in developing the first version of the code in the 1950s. This semester, I was ashamed to have to tell my students about the ethically problematic APA position on interrogation and torture that has been emerging over the last several months.

In sum, the situation has become intolerable, and I submit my resignation with deep sorrow and regret.

Sincerely,

Paul R. Dokecki [ paul.r.dokecki@vanderbilt.edu ]
Professor of Psychology
Dept. of Human and Organizational Development
Peabody College #6 Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37203

With the wave of resignations with more to come, and with the hundreds withholding dues, it looks as if the doors of APA are opening. If the Association does not its interrogations policy soon, the Association will suffer damage from which it may never recover.

December 7th, 2007

Did destroyed CIA tapes show psychologists torturing? Did APA dodge a bullet?

Last night we had news that the CIA, in 2005, destroyed videotapes of the “interrogation”, aka, torture, of two al Qaeda detainees. One of these detainees has been identified as Abu Zubaydah. Of special relevance is that, according to Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair last summer, Zubaydah was tortured by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Thus, it is possible that the destroyed tapes show Mitchell and/or Jessen “keeping interrogations, safe, legal, ethical, and effective” — as the American Psychologists repetitively tells us psychologists do — by waterboarding and other techniques.

So far, the APA has responded to news of Mitchell and Jessen’s torture simply by informing the public that these two psychologists are not APA members:

“Two psychologists have been identified by the media as developers of these interrogation tactics. They are not members of the American Psychological Association. Therefore, we have no ability to discipline them. APA continues to state publicly, however, that their alleged tactics have been discredited by responsible psychologists everywhere, including within the military.”

Notice that their tactics are “discredited,” presumably because they apparently don’t work. Nowhere does the APA actually say they are immoral, disgusting, a perversion of psychological knowledge and expertise, or anything similar. The tactics are simply “discredited” and these psychologists are not members. End of story. Not our problem.

Similarly, when we were told that a former APA President had a financial and voting stake in Mitchell Jessen & Associates, APA leadership might hve expressed their shock and dismay at the possibility [admittedly only a possibility] that a former President had knowledge of or involvement in heinous behavior. Surely APA leaders could have said that, if the claims about Mitchell and Jessen were true and if this former President had knowledge or involvement, it would be reprehensible and that the APA would do all it could to find out. Instead we read:

“APA President Sharon Brehm and Stephen Behnke, the director of APA’s Ethics Directorate, both declined comment last week when asked about Matarazzo’s ties to the private psychology firm working for the CIA.

“Dr. Matarazzo was president of APA 18 years ago,” Rhea Farberman, the organization’s director of public affairs, said in a prepared statement.

“Since that time, he has had no active role in APA governance but has been actively involved in the American Psychological Foundation (APF), the charitable giving arm of APA. Dr. Matarazzo currently holds no governance positions in either APA or APF,” the statement said.”

Again, not President right now, so not our problem.

If the destroyed tapes had become public and had showed psychologists using their ‘expertise” to torture, or to train and supervise torture, would the APA have been able to continue its deafening silence? After all, it was the pictures from Abu Ghraib that broke through all the legal gobbledygook and seared the reality of American torture into consciousness around the world. With the destruction of these CIA tapes, has the APA, as well as the CIA, dodged another bullet? For the moment, anyway?

[Yes, yes, I know the APA has condemned torture and even written the President and the CIA asking them not to torture. But their letters, like all other APA statements on the issue, were passionless. They read as an academic exercise conveying an APA policy statement, not as a passionate condemnation of the abuses we all know are being committed in our name, and that were aided and abetted by a number of psychologists. Call me old fashioned, but I think a little passion is in order when we're talking about torture and about the perversion of psychology to facilitate torture.]

2 comments December 7th, 2007

Six psychology department have now endorsed interrogatios resolution

Inside Higher Ed brings news that two additional psychology departments have now passed resolutions for APA change, following the Earlham Resolution, brining the total to six departments, with a numberof others discussing following suit.

Psychology Protest Grows

by Scott Jaschik

A movement that started in the psychology department at Earlham College — seeking to push the American Psychological Association to take a stronger stand against its members participating in interrogations that might deny basic human rights to prisoners — is growing.

Psychology departments at six colleges and universities have now endorsed resolutions saying that they believe it is unethical for psychologists to participate in any way in the interrogations of prisoners in facilities outside of the United States that lack the due process and other protections available to prisoners in the United States.

While APA ethics rules declare it unethical for psychologists to help any entity engage in torture, and the association recently strengthened those guidelines, the group left open the possibility of psychologists working in foreign prisons, assisting teams with certain kinds of interrogations. The refusal of the association to rule out such participation has angered many psychologists — enough so that six departments involved have taken steps to disassociate themselves from the association’s position.

After the drive started at Earlham, the departments at Guilford and Smith Colleges quickly signed on in October. Since then, measures have been adopted by the departments of California State University at Long Beach, the University of Rhode Island, and York College of the City University of New York.

At departments passing these resolutions, professors say that they believe strongly that any help for interrogating prisoners in settings where they lack due process rights is inherently unethical — as there can be no assurances that such interrogations stop short of torture. At the University of Rhode Island, the only questions raised about the resolution related not to the determination that such conduct would be unethical, but came from some professors (in the minority) who thought it would be better to make individual stands on the issue, rather than departmental stands.

The dispute in psychology is in some ways similar to one raging in anthropology — where the American Anthropological Association appointed a committee to consider the ethics issues raised by doing anthropology work for military or security agencies, and some rank-and-file scholars are saying that the panel did not go far enough in opposing ethically questionable activities.

In both disciplines, a key dispute is over whether any form of “engagement” can be helpful, when dealing with situations that could lead to torture or worse. APA leaders have said repeatedly that they agree completely with the departments that are passing resolutions that torture of prisoners is never justified, but that the involvement of psychologists in teams planning interrogation strategies could decrease the chances of torture taking place.

The APA has been making that argument — without success — to the professors bringing forward these resolutions. Michael R. Jackson, Earlham’s psychology chair, released a letter he received from Sharon Stephens Brehm, the association’s president and a professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. “There is strong support within APA for ethical interrogations that leave no room for abusive or harmful techniques,” she wrote. “After many years of intense discussion, APA has chosen a strategy of engagement. The cost of disengagement is that one loses any ability to influence policy — and the opportunity to prevent torture, humiliation or abuse in actual interrogations.”

Jackson sent a reply to Brehm that cites the unlikelihood that the APA will manage to sell its position to its critics. While Jackson praised the APA for clarifying its opposition to torture, he said that the association was ignoring the impact of operating outside a judicial system where basic human rights are assured — a point he said was more than theoretical in light of reports about how the Bush administration, with the assistance of some social scientists and their work, has managed prisoners outside U.S. borders.

“These rights, which include the right of habeas corpus and, more generally, the right to due process of law, are not currently being accorded to these detainees; and, indeed, the detainees are being held in secret and/or isolated locations precisely for the purpose of facilitating this deprivation,” Jackson wrote. “When psychologists, with the acquiescence of APA, participate in illegal interrogations in secret facilities, not only does this personally harm detainees; it also violates APA’s General Ethical Principle E (Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity), undermines the moral stature of psychology, and weakens our system of jurisprudence by legitimizing the suspension of basic human rights.”

He added that the psychology association may be exaggerating the ability of its members to influence what actually happens in interrogations after guidance is received from scholars.

Wrote Jackson: “APA hopes that psychologists’ participation in these illegal interrogations will help to protect detainees — a hope which many find quixotic in light of the current administration’s open disparagement of internationally accepted standards of conduct and its infamous determination to carry out coercive interrogations. Quixotic or not, APA’s hope must be measured against the actual damage that is being done by its ‘policy of engagement’ to the one and only instrument that is specifically designed for the purpose of protecting these detainees, and all individuals, from abuses of authority: the rule of law.”

December 7th, 2007