Psyche, Science, and Society

New York Times on interrogations controversy

The New York Times cover the psychologists-torture issue on the front page today:

Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations

By Benedict Carey

They have closely studied suspects, looking for mental quirks. They have suggested lines of questioning. They have helped decide when a confrontation is too intense, or when to push harder. More than those in the other healing professions, psychologists have played a central role in the military and C.I.A. interrogation of people suspected of being enemy combatants.

But now the profession, long divided over this role, is considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of its code of ethics.

At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting this week in Boston, prominent members are denouncing such work as unethical by definition, while other key figures — civilian and military — insist that restricting psychologists’ roles would only make interrogations more likely to harm detainees.

Like other professional organizations, the association has little direct authority to restrict members’ ability to practice. But state licensing boards can suspend or revoke a psychologist’s license, and experts note that these boards often take violations of the association’s ethics code into consideration.

The election for the association’s president is widely seen as a referendum on the issue. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, plan a protest on Saturday afternoon.

And last week, for the first time, lawyers for a detainee at the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, singled out a psychologist as a critical player in documents alleging abusive treatment.

“It’s really a fight for the soul of the profession,” said Brad Olson, a psychologist at Northwestern University, who has circulated a petition among members to place a moratorium on such consulting.

Others strongly disagree. “The vast majority of military psychologists know the ethics code and know exactly what they can and cannot do,” said William J. Strickland, who represents the Society for Military Psychology before the association’s council. “This is a fight about individual psychologists’ behavior, and we should keep it there.”

At the center of the debate are the military’s behavioral science consultation teams, informally known as biscuits, made up of psychologists and others who assist in interrogations. Little is known about these units, including the number of psychologists who take part. Neither the military nor the team members have disclosed many details.

Defenders of that role insist that the teams are crucial in keeping interrogations safe, effective and legal. Critics say their primary purpose is to help break detainees, using methods that might violate international law.

In court documents filed Thursday, lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee Mohammed Jawad asserted that a psychologist’s report helped land Mr. Jawad, a teenager at the time, in a segregation cell, where he became increasingly desperate.

According to the documents, the psychologist, whose name has not been released, completed an assessment of Mr. Jawad after he was seen talking to a poster on his cell wall. Shortly thereafter, in September 2003, he was isolated from other detainees, and many of his requests to see an interrogator were ignored. He later attempted suicide, according to the filing, which asks that the case be dismissed on the ground of abusive treatment.

The Guantánamo court is reviewing the case. Military lawyers have denied that Mr. Jawad suffered any mental health problems from his interrogation. On Thursday, the psychologist in the case invoked Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment.

“This is what it’s come to,” said Steven Reisner, an assistant clinical professor at the New York University School of Medicine and a leading candidate for the presidency of the psychological association. “We have psychologists taking the Fifth.”

Dr. Reisner has based his candidacy on “a principled stance against our nation’s policy of using psychologists to oversee abusive and coercive interrogations” at Guantánamo and the so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The psychological association’s most recent ethics amendments strongly condemn coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign. But its current guidelines covering practice conclude that “it is consistent with the A.P.A. ethics code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national-security-related purposes,” as long as they do not participate in any of 19 coercive procedures, including waterboarding, the use of hoods and any physical assault.

How these guidelines shape behavior during interrogations is not well understood. Documents from Guantánamo made public in June suggested that at least some of the coercive methods the military has used were derived from SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, a program based on Chinese techniques used in the 1950s that produced false confessions from American prisoners.

These techniques included “prolonged constraint,” “exposure” and “sleep deprivation,” known informally as the frequent flier program.

In this kind of environment, “health professionals, bound by strong ethical imperatives to do no harm, may become calibrators of harm,” said Nathaniel Raymond of Physicians for Human Rights, which has been strongly critical of the psychological association’s position.

According to the standard operating procedure for Camp Delta, at Guantánamo, the “behavior management plan” for new detainees “concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.”

Some psychologists, though appalled by these techniques, emphasize that there is a danger in opting out as well.

“There’s no doubt that the psychologist’s presence can be abused,” said Robert W. Resnick, who is in private practice in Santa Monica, Calif., “but if there’s no presence at all, then there’s no accountability, and you walk away feeling noble and righteous, but you haven’t done a damned thing.”

Stephen Behnke, director of ethics at the psychological association, said in an interview on Friday that Defense Department standards for interrogation appeared to have improved in recent years.

“If you take the position that interrogation cannot be done ethically, then the discussion stops there,” Dr. Behnke said. “But if the answer is yes, then you don’t shut down the whole operation because certain individuals behaved unethically.”

Interrogators, too, are split on the question of whether psychologists provide valuable assistance. Some say that their advice can be helpful; others point out that there is no evidence that it improves the quality of the information obtained.

“I take a hybrid view of this,” said Steven Kleinman, a veteran interrogator and trainer who has worked in Iraq and strongly opposes coercive techniques. “The idea that a psychologist or psychiatrist is going to systematically unlock any prisoner’s resistance and provide some unique strategy is completely false — it’s a fantasy. Their role should be protecting the rights of both the interrogator and the prisoner. That’s far more valuable, and anything they might whisper in the interrogator’s ear, like ‘This person seems to have issues with his mother, play that up.’ ”

However the field addresses the issue, scholars say it may not alter the relationship much between psychologists and the military. Psychologists have helped screen recruits and study morale going back to World War I, and in Iraq, some military psychologists have worked long tours under fire, managing troops’ mental reactions at the front.

“American psychology really grew up with the military,” said Jean Maria Arrigo, a psychologist who has studied the profession’s relationship to military intelligence. “It was barely considered a science before the collaboration began, and the entanglement goes very deep.”

2 comments August 16th, 2008

New York Sun on interrogations controversy

The New York Sun covered the interrogations controversy on their front page Friday.

Psychologists Are Split Over Gitmo

By Joseph Goldstein

A military psychologist’s unprecedented refusal to testify when called to a Guantanamo courtroom yesterday will add to a debate that is expected to rage at this weekend’s annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

The professional organization is riven over whether to prohibit members who are in the military or who work with intelligence agencies from participating in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. That issue has prompted the first referendum in the organization’s history this month, for which voting remains open.

The issue has also spurred a New York psychoanalyst, Steven Reisner, to run for president of the APA on a platform of banning psychologists from involvement in national security interrogations “at sites where the conditions violate international law,” he told The New York Sun yesterday.

The APA has long had a close relationship with the military, which is one of the country’s largest employers of psychologists. In recent years, the APA has generally encouraged “engagement” — or involvement in national security interrogations — for the purpose of stopping “interrogations that cross the bounds of ethical propriety,” as the director of the APA’s ethics office, Stephen Behnke, wrote in a letter earlier this year. APA officials also have encouraged involvement in interrogations by psychologists on the grounds that psychologists should assist in the country’s anti-terrorism efforts.

After the American Psychiatric Association voted in 2006 not to allow psychiatrists to be part of the military’s behavioral science consultation teams, which are called “biscuit teams” and advise interrogators, the military began staffing the teams with psychologists alone.

The event that occurred in a courtroom yesterday at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is expected to add a new dimension to the debate among psychologists this weekend. When a military psychologist was called yesterday to testify about the treatment of a detainee, she pleaded the military law’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment privilege to not self-incriminate, the detainee’s lawyer, Major David Frakt, said in a press release sent by an intermediary. The psychologist’s name is protected by court order.

It is the first time a military psychologist belonging to a biscuit team is publicly known to have been called to give testimony in a Guantanamo court proceeding. The woman’s response suggests that military psychologists are concerned about either their professional licenses or criminal liability.

Court papers filed on behalf of the detainee, Mohammad Jawad, say the psychologist had, in 2003, advised an interrogator to put Mr. Jawad in isolation in an effort to facilitate interrogation, a person familiar with the detainee’s case and who has seen the unclassified legal papers said. The interrogator had sought out the psychologist’s advice because of a concern that Mr. Jawad’s mental state was deteriorating, the person said, adding that Mr. Jawad had been observed speaking to posters on his wall. The psychologist apparently rejected that layman’s diagnosis and believed Mr. Jawad was faking and recommended isolation, the person said.

Nine weeks after Mr. Jawad was removed from a month of isolation, he tried to commit suicide by hanging or repeatedly banging his head, the source said.

“What is so disturbing about the Jawad case,” the source said, is that the psychologist “is calibrating the level of harm.”

Major Frakt said in the statement that the psychologist’s refusal to testify shows that she “now apparently recognizes that her conduct was criminal in nature.”

Mr. Jawad, now about 24, is accused of throwing an grenade at American forces in Afghanistan while in his late teens.

The effect, if any, of a move by the APA to forbid its members from participating in interrogations is uncertain. While the APA has no control over the licensing of psychologists, which is done by the states, the ABA can censure members on ethics charges. State licensing bodies could consider the APA’s findings in deciding license applications.

Mr. Reisner, the New York candidate for APA president, said he supports extending the APA’s current four- to five-year statute of limitations on ethics complaints in order to investigate the role of psychologists have played in national security interrogations.

Add comment August 16th, 2008

Referendum FAQ

The authors of the APA referendum on participation in Bush detention centers have created an FAQ which they have just revised to address questions being raised about the wording and the intent of the referendum [see also my Vote Against Torture Collusion]:

Q. In regard to the U.S. Constitution, the referendum says, “(where appropriate)”, why was that put in there, and what does “(where appropriate)” mean?

Where appropriate means settings where the U.S. Constitution forms the law of the land and settings in which the Supreme Court has decided it applies.  It therefore applies to the 50 states, embassies, and areas within the U.S.’ maritime and territorial jurisdiction - it also applies to U.S. citizens everywhere.  It does not apply in, say, Canada.  So a Canadian psychologist working in Canada is working ‘outside’ of the U.S. Constitution but ‘inside’ of international law.

Q. I have been told that this language will affect the work of psychologists working in jails, prisons and hospitals.

See our August 6 letter to APA members on the Psychologists for an Ethical APA homepage.  www.ethicalapa.com

Q. This is a complex answer.  Why don’t just answer that question with a simple and definitive ‘no’?

Because this is a complex situation.  If and when Guantanamo and the black sites are closed down the ‘detainees’ could be brought to the U.S. and held under similar conditions.  If Guantanamo, the facility, is ‘closed’, the equivalent of Guantanamo, the policy, could be re-established on U.S. soil. In these, and other possible cases, the referendum policy could and should still apply.

Q. If you didn’t mean to target existing U.S. prisons and jails why did you include the words ‘U.S. Constitution’ in the referendum?

We had two main reasons for doing so:

1. As we have already mentioned, we are concerned that U.S. torture policy will be brought home.

2. To make it clear that we are endorsing both the U.S. Constitution and international law, as outlined in the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, directly and without qualification.

Q.  Why is that important?

Some people strongly support and value international law.  However, the United States has taken an ambivalent stance towards international law by adding “reservations” to some international treaties it has ratified.  For example, when it ratified the Convention against Torture, the U.S. added “reservations” that exclude the law’s ban on most forms of psychological torture:

“In its reservations to the Convention against Torture, the United States claims to be bound by the obligation to prevent “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” only insofar as the term means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, U.S. reservations say that mental pain or suffering only refers to prolonged mental harm from: (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the use or threat of mind altering substances; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) that another person will imminently be subjected to the above mistreatment. (Human Rights Watch, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/24/usint8614.htm)

We find it unfortunate that the APA has reproduced the language of the U.S. “reservations” in its official statements. Since we believe these “reservations” deserve no additional legitimacy from our organization, this referendum unequivocally endorses both international and constitutional law.

Q. Why haven’t you provided a definition of torture?

A. Our first citation includes the internationally accepted definition of torture as well as an extensive discussion of the scope and applicability of international law.  It is important to note that this definition - like many legal definitions - is in a state of flux, it changes as courts consider new cases. The jurisprudence surrounding this definition is as important as the definition itself.  Further, the definition may change as new treaties are adopted.  We would ask the question - why would we accept anything other than the internationally accepted definition?

Q. What do you mean by international law? Which treaties? What courts? Which cases?

A. The APA is a UN- recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO) and therefore is subject to the U.N.’s interpretation of international law. We believe that the question is not to which portions of international law should psychologists adhere, but rather why would we be seeking to opt out of some portions of the law?

Q. Isn’t this language vague?

A. That depends on what you mean by “vague.”  If, by “vague,” you mean badly or inadequately defined, the answer is “no.” We do not believe we have offered poor or partial definitions.  If you mean ‘unspecified’, then it is true that we have not specified what portions of international law to which the APA should adhere; nor do we believe that we should do so.

By way of analogy, if we had written a referendum that said: “psychologists shall at all times obey the speed limit,” we could be charged with failing to specify what speed limit psychologists should follow. In this hypothetical and admittedly absurd example it would be appropriate to respond by saying: “that information is easily found and need not be included in the referendum - it is not for us to say”. We would ask why would psychologists attempt to define torture when they could simply refer to internationally accepted definitions?

Q. I understand this referendum, but doesn’t this seem a little simple? Why have you chosen to write this in such ordinary language?

A. Two reasons:

1.           We wanted the referendum be easily read and understandable by everyone.

2.           Because the Bush administration has redefined everyday terms in ways that completely subvert the original meanings of the words. Take, for example, ‘participation’:

“For purposes of this recommendation the term “participating in interrogations” refers to the active participation by medical personnel during an interrogation. For example, asking questions would be active participation. Medical personnel who assist in developing the plan of interrogation are not deemed to be “participating in an interrogation.” Likewise, actual presence in the interrogation room may not constitute “participating in an interrogation.” For example, direct observation by medical personnel to ensure the health and welfare of the detainee is not deemed to be “participation in the interrogation.” (  http://www.defenselink.mil/news/detainee_investigations.html )

Further, we know that many of these definitions - including the current definition of torture - are secret.  We do not know what other terms have been secretly redefined.  Thus, rather than engage in an effort to define each word we were using, we chose language that is easily understood with use of a dictionary or the references we provide.

Add comment August 12th, 2008

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Psychology and Torture

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a News Analysis of the APA controversy:

Psychology and Torture

By David Glenn

Mock executions, waterboarding, and religious humiliation: Participation in those interrogation practices and more than a dozen others was banned in a resolution enacted at last August’s convention of the American Psychological Association. At the time, the association’s spokespeople said they hoped they had put to rest a lengthy debate about psychologists’ responsibility for torture at the Guantánamo Bay detention center and other sites where suspected terrorists have been held.

But as the association prepares to meet this week in Boston, feelings are running hotter than ever. For the second consecutive year, activists are planning a large street demonstration outside the convention. One of the activists scheduled to speak there — Steven Reisner, a psychoanalyst and a senior adviser in New York University’s international trauma-studies program — is running for the association’s presidency.

The lingering ill will stems in part from new revelations about how the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Defense drew on psychological research when they designed their post-September 11 interrogation systems.

The Dark Side, a new book by Jane Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, describes a 2002 incident in which Martin E.P. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a former president of the psychology association, accepted a CIA invitation to lecture at a naval training center about his theories of “learned helplessness.”

Mr. Seligman’s widely respected research suggests that when people and animals are traumatized at random intervals, they tend to give up: They stop seeking to rationally help themselves, and they stop responding to ordinary incentives. Mr. Seligman insists that his 2002 lecture was intended only to help train U.S. soldiers to resist torture if they are captured. But in his 50-person audience that day were Bruce Jessen and James Elmer Mitchell, psychologists who operate a consulting firm that helped the CIA develop interrogation techniques that some critics have called abusive. According to Ms. Mayer’s book, Mr. Mitchell has long been fascinated by learned-helplessness theory. (Through a lawyer, Mr. Mitchell denied to Ms. Mayer that his CIA interrogation techniques were inspired by Mr. Seligman’s work.)

Few people in the psychology association believe that Mr. Seligman consciously assisted in the development of detainee abuses. But many say that the association needs to make a more thorough public accounting of how the work of Mr. Seligman and other prominent members may have been misused by government agencies.

The association has so far rejected calls for formal inquiries. In a public statement last summer, Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts who chaired an association task force on psychological ethics and national security, argued that the association is not equipped to sift through the military’s decision making in 2002 and 2003. The association “has neither subpoena power nor the necessary security clearances,” she wrote, “so an ‘investigation’ would be pointless.”

Beyond disputes about the past, calls to toughen the association’s interrogation policies still persist. Last year’s anti-torture resolution permits psychologists to work as advisers and therapists at Guantánamo-style detention centers, as long as they do not assist in or tolerate coercive interrogations. But some activists say that the general conditions at Guantánamo and similar sites are intrinsically abusive, and that psychologists should have nothing to do with them.

Those activists have forced a mail ballot on a resolution that would forbid the association’s members from working in any capacity “in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either international law … or the U.S. Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.” Ballots were distributed on August 1, and results are expected in late September.

The referendum’s authors say that if psychologists want to provide mental-health services to detainees, they should do so through outside agencies such as the Red Cross, not as direct employees of military or intelligence agencies.

But it is not clear that the government would welcome independent therapists into the detention centers. Many leaders of the association insist that if military psychologists leave Guantánamo, the detainees’ situation will only get worse. Even Michael Gelles, a former Navy psychologist who famously left Guantánamo after protesting abuses, has said that it would be a serious mistake for his colleagues to withdraw entirely. This debate seems likely to tear at the association well after the Guantánamo Bay facility itself is closed.

1 comment August 11th, 2008

Psychologists for Social Responsibility endorses APA referenndum

Psychologists for Social Responsibility has just voted to endorse the American Psychological Association referendum against psychologist participation at US detention sites in violation of international law. It is time for all progressive psychologists to join PsySR and make it a stronger, more active organization. [Truth in advertising: I am Co-Chair of the PsySR End Torture Action Committee and a member of its Steering Committee. Please join me.]

UPDATE: Here is a statement from Anthony Marsella, President of PsySR:

Dear PsySR Members & Friends:

I am writing to announce that the PsySR Steering Committee has voted in favor of endorsing a “yes” vote on the Referendum. The Steering Committee supports the the call for a referendum and encourages its members to vote “Yes” in accord with the PsySR Steering Committee decision.

The Steering Committee is the representative body for PsySR and is the primary source of major PsySR policies and decisions.

Best wishes, Tony

Add comment August 11th, 2008

Valtin on APA referendum

Psychologist blogger Valtin gives his perspective on the APA referendum and the fightback against it. His conclusion:

But the defense of supermax prison jobs, and the concern about U.S. prison conditions rings hollow, being a disingenuous attempt to back institutional concerns in alliance with the Department of Defense and the CIA. In political terms, the coalition between so-called peace psychologists and pro-military types within APA represents a classic rotten bloc.

Add comment August 11th, 2008

Globe Op Ed: Ending the psychological mind games on detainees

I have a Op Ed in the Boston Globe today:

Ending the psychological mind games on detainees

By Stephen Soldz

WHEN MOST people think of psychologists, they think of a professional helping them with life’s emotional difficulties, or of a researcher studying human or animal behavior. Since the Bush administration and the war on terrorism have transformed our country, however, a new, more ominous image of psychologists has slowly seeped into public consciousness.

Psychologists have been identified as key figures in the design and conduct of abuses against detainees in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA’s secret “black sites,” and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologists should not be taking part in such practices.

Yet a steady stream of revelations from government documents, journalistic reports, and congressional hearings has revealed that psychologists designed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, which included locking prisoners in tiny cages in the fetal position, throwing them against the wall head first, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliation, and waterboarding.

Jane Mayer, in her new book, “The Dark Side,” reports that the central idea was the psychological concept of “learned helplessness.” Individuals are denied all control over their world, lose their will, and become totally dependent upon their captors.

At Guantanamo, the Red Cross described a system of psychological abuse as “tantamount to torture.” Psychologists, and some psychiatrists, helped interrogators “break down” detainees by exploiting information in their medical records. Thus, someone with an intense fear of dogs would be threatened with snarling dogs, while a person with a fear of being buried alive might be threatened with being sealed in a coffin.

When reports of these abuses surfaced, we psychologists looked to our largest professional organization, the American Psychological Association, to take the lead in condemning them and taking measures to ensure that they would not recur. After all, these actions by psychologists violate the central principle of the APA’s ethics code: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.”

The APA, however, failed to take clear action. While the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association quickly and unequivocally condemned any involvement by its membership in such activities, APA leaders quibbled over whether psychologists had been present at the interrogations and questioned the motives of internal critics.

When the leadership appointed a task force on the ethics of psychologist involvement in interrogations, the report was strangely unsigned, and the members’ names were kept secret from APA members and the media. Finally, it was revealed that a majority of members were from the military-intelligence establishment, with four having served in chains of commands implicated in detainee abuses. Three of the four nonmilitary members have since denounced the task force process and two have called for the report to be rescinded.

The APA has since passed several antitorture resolutions - all of them full of loopholes - but has failed to take ethics enforcement action against a single psychologist for participating in abuses, despite publication two years ago of a detailed interrogation log showing the participation of a military psychologist in the abuse amounting to torture of a Guantanamo detainee.

Not surprisingly, unrest among APA members is growing. Many members, including the founder of the APA’s Practice Directorate and the former head of its Ethics Committee, have resigned in protest.

This month, ballots went out for a first-ever referendum to call a halt to psychologist participation in sites where international law is violated. And dissident New York psychologist Steven Reisner, a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, is running for the APA presidency. His principal campaign platform is for psychologists to be banned from participating in interrogations at US military detention centers, like Guantanamo Bay, that violate human rights and function outside of the Geneva Conventions. In the nomination phase Reisner received the most votes of the five candidates.

At our annual convention in Boston this month, other APA members and I will rally against association policies encouraging participation in detainee interrogations. We will be joined by community activists, human rights groups, and civil libertarians to demand that APA return to its fundamental principle of “Do no harm.” Psychologists owe it to their profession and to the cause of human rights to oppose abuses, not participate in them.

Stephen Soldz, psychologist and psychoanalyst, is professor and director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

1 comment August 10th, 2008

Support for psychologists’ referendum against collusion in detainee abuse

As regular readers know, their is an effort afoot to pass a referendum in the American Psychological Association that would express opposition to psychologists aiding US detention centers operating outside of international law or the Constitution. The ballots are currently arriving in members mailboxes.

The APA has launched a strong effort at spin and disinformation regarding the referendum. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues who should support this efforts have also parsed the text in such a way as to perceive a potential threat. In response to expressed concerns, the referendum authors have issued a clarifying statement:August 6, 2008

Dear APA members:

As sponsors and supporters of the referendum, we are aware that this is a period given to commentary from those who have introduced the referendum, and that–consistent with APA policy–such commentary will be considered in future policy decisions as valid interpretation of the resolution’s intent. We are also aware that there has been some concern voiced on several listservs that the resolution may have ‘unintended consequences’; namely that it may impact the work of psychologists working in existing U.S. jails, prisons, psychiatric facilities, and hospitals.

While we believe a reading of the full referendum in its context resolves these concerns, we would like to be sure that there are no misunderstandings on this point. We are therefore using this commentary period to reiterate the application of the petition, its meaning, and intent:

This referendum is focused on settings such as Guantánamo Bay and the CIA ‘black sites’ set up by the U.S. as part of its ‘global war on terror’; settings where the persons being detained are denied the protections of either constitutional or international law, settings which have been denounced by the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

We are well aware of the harms and legal struggles facing certain prisons and jails inside the domestic U.S. criminal justice system. However, the referendum takes no position on such settings where prisoners have full access to independent counsel and constitutional protections; nor does the referendum take a position on settings that now exist within the domestic mental health system where clients and patients also possess these basic rights.

For Psychologists for an Ethical APA
Dan Aalbers
dan.aalbers@gmail.com

Ruth Fallenbaum
ruthfallenbaum@comcast.net

Brad Olson
b-olson@northwestern.edu

Various illustrious colleagues and organizations are starting to line up in support of the referendum. The Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International has issued this statement in support:

The Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC) is an organization each of whose members is a survivor of torture.  Our  mission is two-fold: to support torture survivors in any way we can and to oppose torture wherever it may be practiced.

We understand the petition submitted by Ethical APA Psychologists to be entirely consistent with this mission. That such a petition is necessary seems, at the very least, distressing but since it is, we express our support for it and thank psychologists for this action.

In solidarity,
Harold Nelson
Advocacy Coordinator
Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC)

www.tassc.org

Additionally — Jean Maria Arrigo, the brave psychologist who served on the APA’s PENS [Psychological Ethics and National Security] task force in 2005 and revealed it as a cover job for an already decided upon policy — has issued the following explanation for her “Yes” vote on the referendum:

The ballot arrived today from APA, and I just voted Yes on the Referendum. To my mind, the timeliness of the Referendum as social action supersedes the problem of misinterpretation of the text.

My thinking on this matter has been most strongly influenced by military and intelligence personnel I know, including senior interrogators.

At an emotional level, I was much affected by audience responses to my February presentations to anti-torture symposia at two universities in Sao Paulo and the regional psychological association. Audiences were outraged by the APA endorsement of psychologists at military interrogation centers (people standing up and shouting) and truly horrified that I had agreed to the PENS report. (In Brazil, the word “interrogation” is virtually synonymous with “torture.”) If the APA leadership accommodates current government policy on interrogations, well, Brazilian psychologists can understand…, but if the APA membership defeats the Referendum, at this point in our history, that sends a bad message I cannot explain away. They are worried about the passivity of the APA legitimizing torture by our government, which legitimizes torture by their government and delegitimizes their own protests as psychologists.

Respectfully,

Jean Maria Arrigo

1 comment August 8th, 2008

Systematized sleep deprivation at Guantanamo persisted far longer than previously admitted

Today’s Washington Post brings further information on the Pentagon’s duplicity at Guantanamo. After Guantanamo officials claimed that the “frequent flyer” psychological torture program was shut down, they continued using it for many months, at least. The “frequent flyer” program involves frequent moves from cell to cell for days or weeks on end, profoundly disrupting sleep and increasing a sense of distress and disorientation.Apparently it was often, though not always, used to facilitate certain Guantanamo interrogations.

The basis for this program was established in a crucial October 2002 meeting — the infamous meeting where the CIA lawyer said “If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong” — to plan the Guantanamo abusive techniques. According to the minutes, at that meeting the Behavioral Science Consultation Team [BSCT] consisting of a psychologist and psychiatrist recommended techniques such as “sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time” in order to increase “psychological stress” and “to create an environment of ‘controlled chaos.’ ” This meeting also described what might have been the initial form of the “frequent flyer” program: “Let detainee rest just long enough to fall asleep and wake him up about every thirty minutes and tell him it’s time to pray again.”

One lesson here is that one should never believe official statements on the treatment of detainees. One should assume these statements are false until there is independent evidence otherwise. In the case of the “frequent flyer” program, they simply claimed it had ended in early 2004 and continued on with no change. In fact, they were torturing Mohammad Jawad at the very time that Vice Admiral Church was conducting one of the never-ending “investigations” that concluded that US abuses were isolated incidents due to the proverbial “few bad apples” and not evidence of a systematic program. Jawad’s attorney, Maj. David Frakt described the extreme contrast between official statements and the reality of abuse in his June 19, 2008 closing argument on a motion to dismiss charges due to subjection to the “frequent flyer” program:

“Incredibly, the very day that Admiral Church was investigating conditions at Guantanamo and finding the treatment of detainees to be so wonderful, detention officials at Guantanamo ordered the initiation of the frequent flyer program on Mohammad Jawad. Before the wheels of Admiral Church’s plane were even off the Guantanamo runway, Mohammad Jawad’s arms and legs were being shackled in preparation for the first of 112 moves up and down the hall of L Block, every 3 hours for the next 14 days. While Jawad was being shackled for the first of these moves, back on Capitol Hill, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was testifying before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, reassuring the nation that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated to a few rogue guards. When Secretary Rumsfeld testified before the HASC on May 7, 2004, the day the torture of Mohammad Jawad commenced, he told Congress, in reference to those detainees who had been abused at Abu Ghraib, Quote ‘I am seeking a way to provide appropriate compensation to those detainees who suffered such grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. military. It’s the right thing to do.’ “

Interestingly, while most detainees were subjected to the “frequent flyer” program  to aid interrogations, Jawad was not interrogated for months afterward. His brutal treatment, all meticulously documented in official logs, was apparently punishment for some unspecified offense, or perhaps simply entertainment for the guards. There is still much that we don’t know about this “program,” just as there is much we still don’t know about many other aspects of recent US brutality toward detainees.

Here is the Washington Post article:

Tactic Used After It Was Banned
Detainees at Guantanamo Were Moved Often, Documents Say

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2008

At least 17 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to a program that moved them repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation, according to U.S. military documents.

Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period.

Military police logs for cell blocks at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show that guards used the program — dubbed the “frequent flyer” program in official documents — on numerous detainees and noted the program in their 2003 and 2004 records. The logs, reviewed by The Washington Post, also indicate that the frequent cell movements took place on the same days a Navy admiral was visiting Guantanamo to assess possible detainee abuses.

Some of the detainees violently objected to the moves, spitting at guards and resisting handcuffs and shackles after enduring repeated cell transfers, leading to even more sanctions. One “cell transfer schedule” for detainee 519 — Maher Rafat al-Quwari — shows that he was moved six times a day for 12 days in July 2003, with a four-hour interrogation session in the middle.

Defense officials have previously acknowledged the program’s existence, saying it stopped in 2004. They also have said that detainees are treated humanely and that credible allegations of abuse are investigated.

“There is no such program currently in place,” said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo. “JTF Guantanamo conducts the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants legally, ethically and transparently.”

U.S. military investigators deemed the program “abusive” but did not describe the extent of its use. Military police soldiers noted in handwritten entries that the cell movements were part of interrogation plans and that they were carefully organized.

For example, Moroccan detainee Ahmed Rashidi was scheduled for six-hour interrogations in the middle of the night and then moved to his cell for four hours, “then cycled through again repeatedly,” according to one notation.

“Detainee must be monitored, observed, and recorded by on-duty MPs,” the entry states. “The room will contain nothing more than a chair.”

Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, a Saudi detainee who has been charged with terrorism offenses, was in the “frequent flyer” program from November 2003 to February 2004, according to the records, moving repeatedly from cell K36 to K38. Sharbi’s civilian lawyer said he was troubled to learn that his client might have faced sleep deprivation at the hands of his jailers.

“We have to assume that the frequent flyer program, what its details were, was not designed to strengthen the comfort and resolve of the prisoner,” said Robert Rachlin, who represents Sharbi. “Sleep deprivation is coercive. Of course it troubles me.”

Mohammed Jawad, a 24-year-old detainee accused of trying to kill U.S. forces in Afghanistan with a grenade, has asked through his lawyers to have all military commission charges against him dismissed as a result of the abuse he suffered by the frequent moves.

Other detainees could raise similar arguments in military commission cases, as Salim Ahmed Hamdan did in his commission trial that ended yesterday. The judge in that case ruled that some evidence could not be presented because of “coercive” techniques but found that his treatment at Guantanamo, including the frequent flier program, did not affect his statements to interrogators.

Jawad’s lawyer, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, said the newly discovered records indicate that “no one actually knows the full scope of the abuses at Guantanamo” and that “all of these allegedly comprehensive investigations were whitewashes.”

“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Frakt said. “This program was approved at the highest levels. . . . It suggests that people had simply lost their ability to distinguish right from wrong.”

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said he worries that more of the organization’s numerous clients at Guantanamo could have faced the frequent flier technique.

“News that this methodology is more widespread than the government has initially acknowledged is troubling but not initially surprising,” Warren said. “Things like sleep deprivation are against international law and U.S. domestic law, and all investigators, including those in Congress, need to focus on these issues of programmatic torture.”

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Add comment August 8th, 2008

Flyer for August 16 American Psychological Association rally

Here is a flyer for the rally, August 16, 12:00-2:00 at the American Psychological Association Convention in Boston protesting the APA’s policies on participation in detainee interrogations.  Please post it where appropriate and give it to freinds and colleagues who might consider attending. Note: The rally is for all citizens concerned about the abuse of psychological knowledge and expertise, not just psychologists.

Add comment August 4th, 2008