As most of my regular readers know, my friend and colleague Steven Reisner is running for President of the American Psychological Association as an attempt to change the association’s policies allowing psychologists to participate in US detainee abuse. Steven has released his candidate statement. For more information on the campaign, go to http://www.reisnerforpresident.org/. And please register to receive further information and to help the campaign.
Dr. Steven J. Reisner’s candidate statement
I am running for President of the American Psychological Association for several reasons, but none more important than the fact that the APA’s support of psychologists’ participation in detainee interrogations and detention operations demonstrates that the association has lost its moral compass. APA interrogation policy is a part of a culture of unreflective support of military and intelligence counterterrorism operations that has led our country and our profession down a dangerous and disingenuous path. This policy and culture have undermined the APA’s independence, its scientific integrity, and its ability to lead us into the twenty-first century. The APA, and the field of psychology it represents, must stand unequivocally for human rights and human welfare. Otherwise, we are merely a guild, promoting only the interests of its well-connected members; otherwise, we are the tools of our government, pandering to programs that violate our own ethical values.
My foremost task as APA President will be to reclaim our first ethical principle of beneficence: “to benefit those with whom [we] work and take care to do no harm… to safeguard the welfare and rights of those with whom [we] interact professionally and other affected persons.”
At this point in our history, our Association stands alone among the health professions in supporting its members’ direct participation in military and CIA interrogations. Psychiatrists, physicians, and nurses, have all rejected such participation and aligned themselves with international standards of medical ethics. Recently, international associations of psychologists, too, have protested our Association’s unique position. The Nordic Psychological Associations stated in their June 25th, 2008 letter to the APA that “military psychologists cannot function in an ethically correct way in sites where basic human rights are systematically violated and where appropriate international bodies of control are denied access.”
New information steadily emerges on psychologists’ operational role in abusive detention conditions—from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, the Defense Department’s Inspector General Report, and the press—directly implicating psychologists in the design or practice of abusive interrogations at Guantánamo, Bagram and at CIA black sites. When orders came directly from the White House to use waterboarding, sleep and sensory deprivation, and other abusive techniques on detainees, psychologists implemented the program; and when secret Justice Department memos asserted that health professionals’ oversight was required to render such techniques legal, psychologists provided that oversight. These revelations are not only morally damning but scientifically embarrassing, with psychological research and theory distorted for political maneuvers and abusive ends.
Let’s be clear – these abusive interrogation procedures and conditions were not exceptions, perpetrated by unsupervised individuals. These abuses were part of a carefully developed program of psychological pressure, abuse, and torture, supported by protocols from the CIA and the military and with legal justifications from the Justice Department. Psychologists helped to author and implement those protocols and to give legal cover to those involved in abuse. To this day, brutal systems of psychological reward and punishment are implemented and overseen by psychologists at Guantánamo.
While the APA has passed several anti-torture resolutions, APA policy continues to support psychologists’ presence at detention sites whose very conditions violate international law, and where psychologists have been consistently implicated in those violations. Against all evidence, it remains APA policy that psychologists’ presence at such sites is necessary to keep interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.”
As president, I will seek practical measures to prohibit such involvement and to restore APA’s reputation as an unequivocal voice for human welfare. Such measures would protect not only “those with whom we interact professionally,” as mandated by our Ethics Code, but our good name—and future!—as a profession. It would also offer safeguards for our military and CIA psychologists from moral compromise under pressure as well as from potential criminal liability.
Resolving our ethical conflicts will strengthen our profession as we confront healthcare reform and other significant challenges to our profession in the 21st Century. As APA President, I will advocate on behalf of these pressing issues, based upon the same guiding principles of improving human welfare, doing no harm, and upholding scientific integrity:
- to bring about universal health care, accompanied by full mental health parity.
- to raise awareness of the psychological dimension of environmental and ecological responsibility through research, practice and policy.
- to address the crisis in mental health care and private practice through public education and through combating managed care’s ever narrowing definition of mental illness and treatment.
- to advance the role of psychology in our transition into a diverse and global society.
- to work to resolve the crisis in psychology education and training, address the problems of student funding and debt, and help develop diverse internship opportunities relevant to our changing world.
- to build bridges between our research and practice communities by fostering a variety of research-practice partnerships.
- to restore and increase behavioral research funding, particularly in areas that further psychology’s time-honored commitment to human welfare and social justice.
Currently, the APA puts an extraordinary effort into supporting government funding for psychologists’ contributions to homeland security and counterterrorism. Such advocacy may have its place, in that it supports psychologists seeking government-funded contracts and academic grants. But, in a manner analogous to psychiatry’s dependence on pharmaceutical funding, our dependence on military-related contracts and appropriations can undermine our necessary independence. We must undertake a transparent, internal review of the allocation of APA resources and lobbying efforts so that APA members may decide together how to best advocate for the good of our members, our scientific discipline, and our society. But we cannot bring the best of our field to bear on these pressing issues unless we put our ethical house in order. With your vote for my presidency and with your assistance, we can transform the APA at this turning point in our history.
August 2nd, 2008
Physicians for Human Rights has issued a statement in response to last night’s repot that the US secretly housed prisoners at its base on the British island of Diego Garcia:
Covert CIA Detention Center on British Soil Revealed
PHR Demands Trans-Atlantic Investigation and International Red Cross Access to All Detainees in US Custody
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) calls for a full trans-Atlantic investigation by Congress and the Parliament of the United Kingdom in the wake of today’s revelation by TIME magazine that the US covertly used Diego Garcia, a British island off the coast of India, as a top secret CIA detention center. Further, PHR demands that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) be given immediate access to all detainees that may still be held at Diego Garcia and other “black” site locations.
“The US and the UK must at last come clean about the scope of extraordinary rendition and secret detention—a violation of American and British law, human rights standards, and the rules and regulations of NATO,” stated Frank Donaghue, Chief Executive Officer of PHR. “Both Congress and Parliament must set the record straight about what happened at Diego Garcia. PHR knows from our twenty-one year history of documenting torture around the world that secret detention opens the floodgates to torture and other gross human rights abuses.”
The disclosure that Diego Garcia held CIA “ghost” detainees, such as Riduan Isamuddin, commonly known as “Hambali”, shows that General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, provided false information to senior members of the British Government. Director Hayden assured the Brown Government earlier this year that only two rendition flights had refueled at Diego Garcia. According to TIME, however, senior Bush Administration officials had been previously informed about the existence and use of the facility in highly classified briefings in the White House situation room.
“The Bush Administration’s detainee treatment and interrogation policies have damaged our nation’s reputation as human rights leader,” said Donaghue. “Seven years of secrets whispered in secret rooms must give way to on-the-record testimony and open hearings.”
PHR calls on the House and Senate committees on Intelligence and Armed Services to hold CIA Director Hayden and senior Bush Administration officials accountable. PHR also calls on Parliament to determine what current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, current Foreign Secretary David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and other members of the Privy Council knew about US detention activities at Diego Garcia and when they knew it.
Since the publication of its landmark report in 2005 documenting the use of torture against detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces, PHR has been a leading voice in the effort to end the use of abusive interrogation techniques during interrogations of detainees held by the US military and intelligence services. PHR published in June the report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and its Impact, an analysis of medical and psychological evaluations of detainees held at US detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
August 1st, 2008
Time magazine and the BBC are both reporting that the US detained prisoners at their base on the British island of Diego Garcia. This despite repeated assurances by the US to the British government that this was not occurring. The BBC has a video report. Here is the Time article:
Source: British Territory Used for US Terror Interrogation
By Adam Zagorin
Almost two years have passed since President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of a CIA program in which agency-leased aircraft fly terror suspects between secret prisons and interrogation sites around the world. “This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill,” the President said on Sept. 6, 2006. Since that admission, the White House has declined to elaborate or comment further on the program’s specifics, although multiple reports have surfaced regarding the existence of secret facilities in Poland and Romania.
According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.
The official, a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings after Sept. 11 who has since left government, says a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island. The identity of the captive or captives was not made clear. According to this account, the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence. According to this single source, who requested anonymity because of the classified nature of the discussions, the U.S. may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia’s territorial waters, a contention the U.S. has long denied. The White House meetings were also attended by a variety of other senior counter-terrorism officials.
TIME discussed the allegation with Richard Clarke, who served as a Special Advisor to President George W. Bush on the National Security Council dealing with counter-terrorism until 2003 but is not the source for this story. “In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high value targets was discussed,” says Clarke. Clarke did not witness a final resolution of the issue, but adds, “Given everything that we know about the Administration’s approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the U.S. did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible.”
Since leaving the White House, Clarke has written Against All Enemies, a scathing critique of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war on terror. Clarke, who was in charge of U.S.-U.K. cooperation on Diego Garcia in the early 90s, says that using the island for interrogations or detentions without British permission “is a violation of U.K. law, as well as of the bi-lateral agreement governing the island.”
Diego Garcia is a tiny island, but its use by the U.S. as a detention or interrogation site has global significance. While the governments of Poland and Romania have faced few domestic consequences for their rumored cooperation with U.S. counter-terrorism measures, many in Britain have been voluble in their opposition to what they see as the U.S.’ abrogation of human rights as well as violations of law and British sovereignty. The chief spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office says: “Our intelligence and counter-terrorism relationship with the U.S. is vital to the national security of the United Kingdom. We accept U.S. assurances on rendition in good faith. But if others have definitive evidence of rendition through the U.K. or our Overseas Territories, including Diego Garcia, then we will raise it with the U.S. authorities.”
A CIA spokesman says there have been no changes in the agency’s position on Diego Garcia since February 2008, when CIA director Michael Hayden admitted that the agency’s previous denials about U.S. activities on the island were incorrect. Hayden acknowledged then that the U.S. had inadvertently misled the British government and that two suspects had been on flights that stopped to refuel on Diego Garcia en route to Guantánamo Bay and Morocco in 2002. “Neither of those individuals was ever part of CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation program,” said Hayden. “These were rendition operations, nothing more.” Hayden did not identify the suspects who transited on the island and said that no other U.S. prisoners have been on Diego Garcia since Sept. 11.
A variety of press reports over the years have claimed otherwise, citing evidence that everyone from alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his associate, Abu Zubaydah and other suspected terrorists were in American hands there. (Britain leased Diego Garcia, which is halfway between Africa and Southeast Asia, to the United States, and barred anyone from entering the island, except by permit, in 1971.) In 2003, TIME reported that Hambali, alleged architect of the Bali discotheque bombings, was held there.
U.K. foreign secretary David Miliband, and his predecessor, Jack Straw, who served under Prime Minister Tony Blair, have both repeatedly denied that the U.S. detained terror suspects on British territory.
Hayden’s attempt to set the record straight has failed to quiet British protests about American activities on the island. Instead, an All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition has begun an investigation, raising a variety of pointed questions about the island with Gordon Brown’s Labour government. Speaking to the BBC, Labor MP and Foreign Affairs Committee member Fabian Hamilton said this week that, “I think it’s important the British government makes plain its … deep concern that it’s not being told the truth and that our territories are being used for these purposes.”
In late June, Foreign Secretary Miliband said the United States had studied a list of 391 flights compiled by British human rights groups and assured British authorities it had found that no further extraordinary rendition flights had passed through British territory. But Hamilton’s Committee insists that Britain can no longer take at face value America’s assurances that it is not torturing prisoners, and, in a clear reference to Diego Garcia, said the U.K. now bears a “legal and moral obligation” to make certain that no British territory abets American rendition flights or interrogations.
August 1st, 2008
Steven Miles has a new editorial in the British Medical Journal on medical complicity with torture and the spotty record of accountability:
Doctors’ complicity with torture: It is time for sanctions
By Steven H. Miles
It is an arresting thought. More doctors abet torture than treat the millions of victims. More than 100 countries condone the use of torture. A third to a half of torture survivors report that a doctor oversaw the abuse.1 Many prisoners never see the doctors who refined the techniques to minimise evidential scars, prolong pain, or cause psychological destruction.2 Estimates of the numbers of torture victims do not include people whose murders disappear when a doctor writes “natural causes” on a death certificate.
The medical profession ought to dissociate itself from torture-a practice that destroys institutions of civil society; that is used against colleagues of conscience, and that has far reaching adverse mental, physical, and social consequences. Instead, medical societies and licensing boards offer lofty condemnation, which is most ardently aimed at offenders abroad rather than accomplices at home.
Doctors who abet torture rarely face professional risks. Governments will not punish a doctor for helping them carry out their crimes. Few medical societies or licensing boards have the courage and constancy of vision to investigate or censure colleagues who carry out the law of the land. In principle, medical societies support ethics codes like the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo, which bars doctors from complying with torture. In practice, they sustain the policy of impunity.3
The exceptions are instructive. The Nuremberg trial of Nazi doctors for war crimes was the birth of bioethics. That admirable court was convened by victors over defendants from a vanquished nation. But it is the wrong place to look for solutions to the common problem of doctors complying with torture. The problem today is holding doctors accountable for abetting torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of their own citizens. Such cases have occurred after a torturing regime loses power. Brazilian medical licensing boards began investigating doctors for collaborating with torture during the last years of military rule. Initially, the government blocked sanctions against doctors; within a decade of civilian government sanctions against doctors took hold.4
In Greece, Dimitrios Kofas, a doctor stationed at the persecution section of a prison in Athens, was sentenced to prison within a year of the military junta being deposed.5 The Chilean Medical Society actively investigated complaints against doctors and expelled six doctors for overseeing torture during Pinochet’s rule.6 Three years after Argentina’s junta fell, Dr Jorge Berges was sentenced to prison for carrying out torture.7 A South African medical board tabled complaints against police doctors who failed to report or treat the fatal head injury inflicted by police on civil rights leader Steven Biko; two doctors were punished eight years after his death.8
A more secure foundation for this kind of accountability can and should be laid. The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Hamburg states that licensing boards should deny licences to doctors who are guilty of war crimes, including torture.9 Unfortunately, that declaration only applies to immigrating doctors who are accused of crimes in another country. For example, there was a successful campaign to deny a Belgian licence to an immigrant doctor who had been active in Rwanda’s genocide.10 The BMA is one of a few medical societies that support sanctions against doctors who torture, but it has not established a means to implement such sanctions.11
Countries wax and wane in their practice of torture. Foundations for making doctors accountable for this crime must be laid during periods of civil society. At such times, each national medical society and licensing agency should assert that medical complicity with torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment is a punishable breach of medical ethics that cannot be excused by law and for which there is no term limit. In the United States, California is considering a law that would ask its licensing agencies to inform health professionals that participating in coercive interrogation, torture, or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment may subject them to prosecution.12
The recruitment of the medical community in support of torture has far reaching effects. It harms prisoners. It deprives all prisoners of hope in the humanity of the medical staff. A civilian medical community that acquiesces to torture by its military members cannot credibly protest against foreign doctors who carry out torture. Such a community can hardly support doctors who are endangered for their resistance against torture. The prestige and values of medicine make it a crucial part of the campaign to abolish torture.
“I will guard my art and my life.” That pivotal promise of vigilance in the Hippocratic oath acknowledges that medical professionalism is not an easy virtue. Diverse enticements lure doctors from the core of medicine: “I will use regimens for the benefit of the ill but from what is to their harm or injustice, I will protect them.” Governments that practice torture need doctors. The medical accomplices of torture must not rest in the confidence that they can violate civil society and the ethics of medicine with impunity.
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1088
Steven H Miles, professor of medicine and bioethics
1 Center for Bioethics, N504 Boynton, Minneapolis, MN 55414, USA
miles001@umn.edu
Competing interests: None declared. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.
From the archive: Two recent news stories have dealt with torture. Doctors protest against surgeon held for six years at Guantanomo (news story; doi: 10.1136/bmj.a1071); Medical evidence exposes US use of torture-includes embedded video clip (news story; doi: 10.1136/bmj.a490)
References
- Rasmussen OV. Medical aspects of torture. Dan Med Bull 1990;37(suppl 1):1-88.[ISI][Medline]
- Stover E, Nightingale E. The breaking of bodies and minds. Washington DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1985.
- World Medical Association. Guidelines for medical doctors concerning torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in relation to detention and imprisonment (Declaration of Tokyo). 2006. www.wma.net/e/policy/c18.htm.
- Amnesty International. Brazil. Human rights violations and the health professions. 1996. http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR190251996?open&of=ENG-346.
- Amnesty International. Torture in Greece: the first torturers’ trial 1975. London: Amnesty International, 1977.
- BMA. Medicine betrayed. London: BMA, 1992.
- Human Rights Watch. Argentina. 2006. www.hrw.org/reports/2001/argentina/argen1201-02.htm.
- McLean GR, Jenkins T. The Steve Biko affair: a case study in medical ethics. Dev World Bioethics 2003;3:77-95.[CrossRef]
- World Medical Association. Statement on the licensing of physicians fleeing prosecution for serious criminal offences (Declaration of Hamburg). 1997. www.wma.net/e/policy/c16.htm.
- Hall P. Doctors and the war on terrorism. BMJ 2004;329:66.[Free Full Text]
- British Medical Association. The medical profession and human rights: handbook for a changing agenda. Torture. 2001. www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/MedProfhumanRightsRecommendations#Torture.
- California Senate 19. Health professionals: torture. 2008. www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sjr_19&sess=CUR&house=B&author=ridley-thomas.
Steven Miles, MD
N504 Boynton, 410 Church St SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0346
612-624-9440
July 31st, 2008
Please join us. This is an issue for all concerned citizens, not just psychologists. All are welcome.
Come join Boston Psychologists for an Ethical APA
Rally at the American Psychological Association Annual Convention
Protest Psychologists’ Involvement in Abusive Interrogations and Illegal Detention
Where: Plaza at front entrance of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St., Boston
When: Saturday, August 16th, 12:00-2:00
Voice your outrage at the APA’s continued acceptance of psychologists’ participation in Bush administration interrogations and detention centers where human rights and international law are continually violated. “There is no right way to do something wrong.”
This issue is of increasing concern to all citizens but of particular importance to us as psychologists because it violates our primary ethical obligation to “Do No Harm.” Our complicity in the current administration’s “privileged” war on terror is now well-documented.
Co-Sponsors:
Psychoanalysts for Social Responsibility (Div. 39 S9)
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Withholdapadues.com
Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR)
Psychologists for an Ethical APA
Monterey Bay Psychological Association
Physicians for Human Rights
[More being added]
Speakers include:
Steven Reisner
Ghislaine Boulanger
Dan Aalbers
Brad Olson
Anthony Marsella
Nathaniel Raymond
Stephen Soldz
Bryant Welch
Entertainment by two Jazz-Blues performers:
Kathleen Kolman
Marlene del Rosario
We look forward to seeing you there on Saturday, the 16th.
OUR CALL:
Psychologists for an Ethical APA Calls for Protest Outside APA Convention
“A government is not the expression of the will of the people, but rather the expression of what the people will tolerate.”
Kurt Tucholsky
We as psychologists and American citizens have become aware that our government has adopted torture and the denial of human rights for detainees as official policy. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, rendition and CIA “black sites” have irrevocably entered our language and consciousness. Waterboarding, sexual and religious humiliation, and denial of habeas corpus have become symbolic of a climate of disdain for human rights and human decency that has infected our government and been absorbed into our social fabric.
During the last several years, we have also become aware that psychologists have played central roles in the Bush regime of torture and detainee abuse. As has been documented by numerous journalists and official government reports, psychologists helped develop, implement, standardize, and disseminate abusive interrogation techniques that have led to torture. Other psychologists responsible for treating detainees, along with other health professionals, failed to act against abuses being committed upon those they were ethically obliged to heal and protect. Given the central role of our profession in perpetrating and abetting these abuses, the rest of us who represent the field bear a special responsibility to do all we can to stop the abuses and voice our objection.
Our professional association, the American Psychological Association, has failed us. While we expectantly listened for a clear moral voice opposing complicity with our government’s abuses, the APA engaged in a pattern of denial, deceit and distraction in support of its policy keeping psychologists engaged in interrogations at detention centers where human rights and international laws have been grossly and systematically violated. When we needed an ethics policy that underscored the importance of ethical behavior, the APA created a revised code which allowed the following of unethical laws and regulations, and which removed protections for research participants when permitted by law or government regulation. When we needed deep ethical discussion, the APA appointed an ethics task force dominated by military-intelligence psychologists, most of whom served in precisely those interrogation settings under debate. When we needed clear statements condemning ongoing U.S, government abuses, the APA passed resolution after resolution condemning “torture” and “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” while failing ever to condemn, or even acknowledge, the ongoing abuses. When we needed action against those psychologists participating in abuses, we received denial after denial and delay after delay, making a continual mockery of ethics enforcement. And when we needed to indicate to the world that psychology was a profession with the highest ethical standards, the APA alone, of all the major health professions’ organizations, not only allowed continued participation in interrogations, violating the centuries-old “do no harm” ethical standards for health professions, but kept silent on known harms.
Last February, over six years after the first reports of US torture and abuse in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and later, Iraq, surfaced, the APA finally unambiguously condemned participation in 19 specific interrogation techniques. While this is a laudable, if long-delayed, first step, it is not enough.
Ø We must forever remove psychologists from detention centers where human rights and international law are violated; to do otherwise is to collude in those abuses.
Ø We must change our ethics code to no longer allow members to follow unethical laws or orders and to restore protections for all research participants.
Ø We must reevaluate the nature of the ties between the APA and the military-intelligence establishment to avoid participation in future unethical government activities.
Ø We must, in collaboration with other health professions, set up a Truth process to create a public record of the roles of psychologists and other health professionals in torture and other detainee abuse, and to recommend ethical, policy, and structural changes to reduce the likelihood that psychologists and other health professionals will collaborate with future abuses.
We call upon all APA members, psychologists, other health professionals, and citizens concerned with fundamental threats to human rights to let the Association know the time is long past due for real change. Please join us on the 16th of August to speak with a common voice against torture and for a return to an ethical psychology and an ethical American Psychological Association.
“A profession is not the expression of the will of its members, but rather the expression of what these members will tolerate.”
Psychologists for an Ethical APA
Let the APA leadership know that we will not tolerate collaboration with detainee abuse. Psychology must once again become a profession based upon fundamental ethical principles.
July 30th, 2008
Last summer an attempt by APA dissidents at a Moratorium on psychologist participation in interrogations at US Detention facilities was defeated at the Convention through a combination of parliamentary maneuvering and Council vote. Proponents of change have since regrouped and adopted a variety of new tactics. One was to utilize a never-before-used provision in the APA rules allowing for a referendum to be adopted by vote of the membership.
A referendum to remove psychologists from sites in violation of international law was proposed and was signed by the requisite 1one percent of the membership. Ballots will go out to the membership this week, due back in mid-September. Here is the referendum text, followed by the Pro and Con statements that will accompany the ballots:
Referendum
We the undersigned APA members in good standing, pursuant to article IV.5 of the APA bylaws, do hereby petition that the following motion be submitted to APA members for their approval or disapproval, by referendum, with all urgency:
Whereas torture is an abhorrent practice in every way contrary to the APA’s stated mission of advancing psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting human welfare.
Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Mental Health and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture have determined that treatment equivalent to torture has been taking place at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. [1]
Whereas this torture took place in the context of interrogations under the direction and supervision of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) that included psychologists. [2, 3]
Whereas the Council of Europe has determined that persons held in CIA black sites are subject to interrogation techniques that are also equivalent to torture [4], and because psychologists helped develop abusive interrogation techniques used at these sites. [3, 5]
Whereas the International Committee of the Red Cross determined in 2003 that the conditions in the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay are themselves tantamount to torture [6], and therefore by their presence psychologists are playing a role in maintaining these conditions.
Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights[7].
Footnotes
[1] United Nations Commission on Human Rights. (2006). Situation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from here. The full title of the ‘Special Rapporteur on Mental Health’ is the ‘Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’.
[2] Miles, S. (2007). Medical ethics and the interrogation of Guantanamo 063. The American Journal of Bioethics, 7(4), 5. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from here.
[3] Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense: Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from here.
[4] Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (2007). Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from here.
[5] Eban, K. (2007). Rorschach and Awe. Vanity Fair. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from here.
[6] Lewis, N. A. (2004, November 30). Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo. New York Times, Retrieved March 4, 2008, from here.
[7] It is understood that military clinical psychologists would still be available to provide treatment for military personnel.
Pro Statement
As psychologists, our first ethical principle is to do no harm; yet substantial documentation reveals that American psychologists have systematically designed and participated in interrogations that amount to torture. In addition, they have helped to legitimize cruel and abusive treatment in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA blacksites.
Responding to these revelations, the APA has passed several resolutions barring psychologists from participating in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. These resolutions, however, are insufficient as they do not address the critical role that psychologists play in perpetuating harmful interrogation strategies and in maintaining conditions that the International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled “tantamount to torture.”
These concerns, which have propelled over a thousand APA psychologists to bring this referendum to the membership, are not hypothetical. Psychologists, as “consultants”, have been active in interrogations that have brought about extreme forms of torture. In at least one of these cases, the psychologist advocated for an escalation to even more extreme ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’
Psychologists have also played a critical role in this administration’s legal defense of torture. Justice Department lawyers have argued that torture can only take place if the perpetrator intends to cause ‘prolonged mental harm’ which, in turn, is measured by a subsequent diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychologists instead routinely provide diagnoses other than posttraumatic stress disorder, thus giving the illusion of safety and legal cover in otherwise objective instances of “torture”. Moreover, psychologists play a role in maintaining the conditions of detention, for instance, by removing “comfort items” such as toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap.
In settings that fail to meet basic standards of international law, it is unrealistic to rely on psychologists to challenge their superiors, report on violations, and protect abused detainees. We know, from decades of psychological research, that good people do bad things in bad situations. Psychologists are no less vulnerable to “behavioral drift” than others, particularly when subject to the chain of command in the closed environment of a geographically isolated detention center.
We do believe that psychologists working independently, and outside of the institution’s chain of command, can and should be available to detainees, through NGOs such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. In abusive settings, clinicians working in the chain of command cannot know whether they are helping detainees recover only to return them to more abusive interrogations; and detainees cannot gauge whether the information being gathered by the clinician will be used against them-as has been documented on several occasions. Instead, the proposed referendum policy places psychology and psychologists squarely on the side of the most vulnerable.
Some APA psychologists have argued that the presence of psychologists in these settings protects the detainee from abuse. Yet, in the six years since captives began arriving at Guantanamo, there have been few documented cases of psychologists speaking up on the behalf of detainees. There is significant evidence of many more cases of silence. While we commend anyone who has acted heroically, a reliance on individual heroism is an unsound basis for policy.
We stress that the referendum does not exclude any psychologist from working in any settings where international law and human rights are fundamentally upheld. Imperfect as our U.S. domestic justice system may be, people held within the present system have basic legal protections, including the right to know the charges against them, meet with an attorney, receive family visits and, most importantly, to be free of torture. This is in sharp contrast to the individuals gathered up and illegally taken to CIA blacksites. For the past 60 years, international law has held professionals responsible for upholding basic human rights. This referendum would thus protect psychologists from risk of future prosecutions.
Your vote in favor of the referendum will increase the independence of psychologists and protect the reputation of our discipline. The policy puts psychology and psychologists on the side of those who are the most vulnerable to mental harm. On behalf of Psychologists for an Ethical APA and all the APA members who have petitioned for this referendum, we strongly encourage you to research this topic through books, websites and articles, and to vote “yes” — to support human rights and to restore the integrity of American psychology.
Brad Olson, PhD
Con Statement
This Overbroad Petition Will Harm Vulnerable Populations and Put Ethical Psychologists at Risk
- This petition seeks to prohibit APA member psychologists from working in settings that are inconsistent with international law and/or the US Constitution. The petition’s “Be It Resolved” clause sets forth this prohibition even though a psychologist may adhere to all APA ethical standards, and despite the difficulty in determining whether a particular site meets the petition’s ambiguous criteria.
- The petition thus threatens to restrict the scope of practice for psychologists whose work in psychiatric hospitals, US correctional facilities, and countless other settings serves the public good each day.
- The petition is unnecessary given APA’s strongly worded Council resolutions against torture and concerted federal advocacy directed at the Bush administration and Congress.
- The unintended consequences arising from a resolution prohibiting locations of employment rather than unethical behavior make this petition impossible for us to support. Many psychologists are employed in settings where constitutional challenges arise. Such settings include jails, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and emergency rooms, and forensic units. Likewise, many psychologists work in settings that could be considered inconsistent with international standards, for example, settings where the death penalty may be administered. The “Be It Resolved” clause potentially affects thousands of APA members.
- While APA is clear that the petition, if adopted, is not enforceable, allegations that a psychologist was violating APA policy could arise in multiple venues (civil court; a licensing board; state psychological association, hospital, and other professional organizations’ ethics committees). Especially given the petition’s ambiguity regarding whether international standards and/or the US Constitution apply in a given instance, the petition places APA members doing good and ethical work in an untenable position of uncertainty regarding whether their practice is consistent with APA policy.
- The clause “unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights” would prevent psychologists in a prohibited setting from providing services to a person in psychological distress, since in most all settings psychologists work for the institution and not for the individual being held. Unlike the Ethics Code, the petition does not provide a way to resolve this ethical dilemma, i.e., between a prohibition from providing services and the need for services. (See e.g., Ethical Standard 2.02, Providing Services in Emergencies, allowing psychologists without the necessary training to provide services in emergent situations when other services are not available.) A psychologist who, in all good faith, assisted an individual in distress could nonetheless be in violation of APA policy.
- The sponsors’ good and noble intentions notwithstanding, for over two decades APA has held that torture is unethical and always prohibited. Five APA resolutions provide clear, explicit condemnations of torture. The last sentence of the 2008 resolution states: Psychologists are absolutely prohibited from knowingly planning, designing, participating or assisting in the use of all condemned techniques [Note: nearly two dozen techniques are enumerated] at any time and may not enlist others to employ these techniques in order to circumvent this resolution’s prohibition. APA has stated emphatically: Following orders is never a defense to torture.
- In August, 2007, the APA Council passed one of several resolutions condemning torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment. Council expressed “grave concern over settings in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection of their human rights” and “affirmed the prerogative of psychologists to refuse to work in such settings.” Council noted that “APA will explore ways to support psychologists who refuse to work in such settings or who refuse to obey orders that constitute torture.” APA has called upon US courts to reject testimony resulting from torture or abuse.
- APA has strongly and unequivocally condemned the abuse of detainees in letters to President Bush, Attorney General Mukasey, CIA Director Hayden, and members of Congress, and in articles in the media, and has urged the establishment of policies and procedures that fully protect the human rights of detainees, including judicial review of their detentions.
- The petition seeks to prevent psychologists from working where the federal, state, or local government is acting wrongly. The precedent-setting nature of this petition, which restricts the settings in which psychologists may work, raises insurmountable concerns. A highly unfortunate side effect of the petition will be to place at risk APA members who serve vulnerable populations and behave in legal, ethical, and entirely moral ways. This petition harms the very groups it seeks to protect: Vulnerable populations and ethical psychologists.
Robert J. Resnick, PhD
Now that you’ve seen the debate, please don’t throw those ballots away! And please vote in favor. This is our chance to change a disasterous policy which is casting shame upon the psychology profession while aiding the abuse of those in custody.
July 30th, 2008
An article in the Guardian reports that two MPs — one Labor, one Conservative — are calling for an investigation of charges that British citizens were tortured by Pakistan and then either interrogated by British intelligence or flown to Britain for trial.
McDonnell says he wants to know whether British officials colluded in the abuse of one of his constituents.
The man, a medical student, said he was abducted at gunpoint in August 2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. The student, who has not spoken out before, has described how he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with execution and witnessed other inmates being tortured.
He was questioned about the suicide attacks on London’s transport network in July of that year, and says that after being tortured by Pakistani agents he was questioned by British intelligence officers. He was released to his father, who says he received a personal apology from the director of the Intelligence Bureau.
The student returned to his London teaching hospital, qualified last year, and is now working in a hospital in the south-east of England. He remains terrified of both Pakistani and British intelligence agencies, however, and has asked not to be identified. A second Briton, Tariq Mahmood, 35, a taxi driver from Sparkhill, Birmingham, has said he was abducted in Rawalpindi in October 2003 and released without charge about five months later.
He is thought to have been held in a prison run by a different agency, Inter-Service Intelligence, where a number of other Britons have also been held and allegedly tortured before being flown to the UK to stand trial. Mahmood’s family say he was tortured, and that MI5 officers and American intelligence officers had a hand in his mistreatment. They have declined to issue any detailed allegation, however, apparently fearing for the safety of relatives in Pakistan.
Notice that “American intelligence” are alleged to have had a hand in the last incident. Is this a new version of US-British collusion on “extraordinary rendition?”
July 15th, 2008