Psyche, Science, and Society

Secret APA torture e-mail list not so secret anymore

Just because that mailing list that you’re participating in is secret doesn’t mean that it’ll always stay secret. Just ask the members of the American Psychological Association who used a (formerly) secret mailing list to develop the organization’s controversial stance on its members’ involvement in military interrogations.

By Jon Stokes

Information may or may not want to be free, but digital information certainly wants to be copied. The ease with which copies are made online isn’t just a problem for folks trying to make money on information, it’s also a problem for any group that’s trying to hold an online discussion in secret—terrorists, pedophiles, pirates, or, in this case, the American Psychological Association. Some prominent members of the latter group are probably none too pleased that an archive of their discussions with military psychologists on the subject of military interrogations is now in the public domain.

Off-the-record mailing lists are a standard but rarely-scrutinized feature of journalism and politics in the online era, but these are two groups for whom off-the-record conversations are like oxygen. Even in the event of a leak, the damage to most of the participants would likely be minimal, since the members of such lists all know how the off-the-record game works (i.e., you still have to watch what you say, because you could well be outed eventually).

But when secret e-mail lists get used by members of other professions, especially guilds where members are accustomed to communicating confidentially with their peers absent any regard for the concept of “plausible deniability,” a leak can make things really complicated for list members. Witness the invitation-only e-mail discussion list created by the American Psychological Association and the Pentagon in order to host a dialogue between military and civilian psychologists on the profession’s role in the interrogation side of the war on terror. The APA probably didn’t expect the entire list archive [PDF] would ever get leaked to the press and follow its members around on Google for the rest of their careers. But that’s exactly what happened.

ProPublica and Salon published the archive of the mailing list, which was for the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) group in the APA, and the 219-page PDF is quite a read. Some of the participants are military psychologists, at least one of whom was assigned to Abu Ghraib in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal, and some are civilians who specialize in psychological ethics. All of them, though, are concerned with defining the APA’s official stance on psychologists’ participation in military interrogations, especially when those interrogations involve torture (i.e., waterboarding, stress positions, isolation, and various forms of psychological abuse).

The eventual product of the list-based discussion, as well as closed-door, offline meetings among the members, was a controversial report that split the APA and pitted many of its members against the organization’s president, Gerry Koocher, who was accused by many members of being soft on torture.

Interestingly, it turns out that Dr. Koocher was addicted to the TV show 24 while he was working with the other PENS members on putting together the report. How do I know that? Because he says so in the list archives. His 24 addiction (the first few seasons were indeed pretty great) is one of the many items that the Chief of Psychology at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and specialist in psychological ethics would probably have preferred to keep confined to the list.

I’ve no doubt that the APA members who strenuously objected to the original PENS report on the grounds that its condemnation of any and all psychologist involvement in interrogation wasn’t clear enough or strong enough will read through Koocher’s e-mails with great interest. And I’m also sure that the APA in general has learned a painful lesson of the Internet age: if you want to keep it secret, don’t hit “send.”

The Torture Debate: The Lawyers

It is encouraging to see the Obama team moving toward some accountability for the Bush administration lawyers who justified torture.

Wednesday’s Times reported that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the lawyers were guilty of serious lapses of judgment when they argued that detainees could be subjected to interrogation methods long banned by American law, military doctrine and international treaties.

A draft report by the office does not call for prosecuting those lawyers, The Times said, but is likely to ask state bar associations to consider disciplinary action. We believe it must do so in unequivocal language. Bar association disciplinary committees are not set up to do investigations into torture, but they have no excuse not to use documentary evidence from the report to proceed.

When the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel renders an opinion, it has the force of law within the executive branch. It is obvious when the attorneys in that office under President Bush were asked for their legal opinion on detainee treatment, they did not make a cold, independent judgment. They deliberately contorted the law to justify decisions that had already been made, making them complicit in those decisions.

Their acts were a grotesque abrogation of duty and breach of faith: as government officials sworn to protect the Constitution; as lawyers bound to render competent and honest legal opinions; and as citizens who played a major role in events that disgraced this country.

The three primary authors of the torture memos were John Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury. Based on their own words and what we have read about the Justice Department investigation, it is hard to imagine any bar association allowing them to go on practicing law.

Mr. Bybee’s case is the worst. While Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bradbury returned to private life, President Bush rewarded Mr. Bybee with a lifetime position on a federal appeals court. The memos he wrote or signed made it clear that he was not fit to make judgments about the law and the Constitution. Congress should remove him.

The Justice report was finished last November, but withheld by the Bush team to give Mr. Bybee and the others a chance to amend it. The Obama administration should release the full report quickly. There can be no excuse or justification for the abuses — or the abuse of the law. But telling the truth about what happened is the best way to ensure that it never happens again.