APA Meeting Mulls Over Interrogation Policy Changes

The American Psychological Association's Presidential Advisory Group on the Implementation of the Petition Resolution met at APA offices in Washington, D.C. last weekend. The "Petition Resolution" refers to the stunning victory of a referendum vote by APA membership last summer that officially changed that organization's policy, banning members from participating in interrogations or other activities at sites that are in violation of international or domestic law. (Read the Referendum's full text here.) The victory of the resolution won major media attention.

Previously, while passing formal resolutions against torture and psychologist participation in torture, APA had championed the use of military (and CIA) psychologists at national security sites where interrogations took place. While arguing that psychologists kept interrogations safe, an avalanche of revelations showed that, on the contrary, some psychologists had been intimately involved in the abuse.

The petition was the brainchild of doctoral candidate Dan Aalbers, who worked in collaboration with psychologists Ruth Fallenbaum and Brad Olson, both leaders of an ongoing effort to convince APA members to withhold their dues until APA changed their policy on interrogations.

But by last weekend, with the victory of the anti-torture referendum, Aalbers, Fallenbaum, and Olson, met with the other members of the APA advisory group, hand-picked from APA's Board of Directors and Council of Representatives. By the accounts of the petition's originators, the meeting went well.

According to reports, APA was very open to guaranteeing complete transparency of the meeting, allowing tape recording of sessions. In addition, all recommendations from group members were to be included in the report to be written by President Kazdin to the Council of Representatives. The Council meets next February and will consider all the "options" presented to them. According to the account I read, Kazdin's report will "include clarification of questions raised by members regarding the new policy, many of which revolve around where and to whom the policy applies." Aalbers, Fallenbaum, and Olson promise to reiterate the same positions regarding implementation of the resolution as appeared in their written statements last summer.

It seemed to the pro-resolution attendees at last weekend's meeting that the APA bureaucracy had accepted that the resolution was now APA policy. This has certainly been the public position taken by the organization. While "cautiously optimistic" things will turn out well, everyone is aware that the battle to make concrete the resolution's policy turns now to APA's Council of Representatives.

APA is a federated organization, with many interest divisions. (The military psychologists, for instance, have their own division, number 19, the Society for Military Psychology.) It was a Council vote in August 2007 that defeated an attempt to remove psychologists from all but clinical roles at sites like Guantanamo. But the political situation is different today, and the vote of the membership for such a removal weighs heavily over the APA bureaucracy. On the other side of the scale are years of connections with the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, and the lucrative promise of jobs for some psychologists, and money for myriad government related research programs, which APA fears losing.

The most immediate way to implement the resolution would be to include its provisions in the organization's Code of Ethics. This would only make sense if, at the same time, that APA's Ethics Code 1.02 was rewritten or rescinded. It allows psychologists to obey commands and "governing legal authority," even when an action is at variance with professional ethics. Rewritten after 9/11, 1.02 remains a virtual get-out-of-jail card for military psychologists engaged in abusive interrogations. Opponents have compared it to the Nazis' Nuremberg defense: "I was only following orders" ("Befehl ist Befehl"). The APA promised to insert a qualifying phrase about human rights into 1.02 back in 2006, but no action has been taken to date.

The membership of APA owes a debt of gratitude to the activists who championed the resolution, and are now trying to implement its provisions in a very real way. And, given the importance of APA policy to Pentagon operations in the way of interrogations, really the entire country owes a debt of gratitude to these unsung individuals.

Dr. Alan Kazdin Replies

Dr. Kazdin has written a letter in reply to Drs. Wessells and Arrigo (see yesterday's post). Dr. Soldz has posted it at his website. Here it is in its entirety:

Dear Drs. Arrigo and Wessells,

Thank you for your letter regarding the formation of the APA Presidential Advisory Group on the Implementation of the Petition Resolution. I, too, am optimistic that the work of this group will help to unite the organization and enable us to move forward to implement this new policy, which was approved by a vote of our membership.

Over the past few weeks, we have received several recommendations regarding the group process - all that it ought to and ought not to include. In response to your words of caution, I can assure you that the process has been, and will continue to be, open and transparent. While I appreciate your suggestion of an independent monitor, I have invited all three original sponsors of the petition for the very purpose of ensuring that the views and interests of those bringing the petition forward are well represented in the group’s discussions.

I would be grateful if you would forward this response to those you copied on your email.

Thank you.

Best wishes,
Alan

Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D., ABPP
President, American Psychological Association
John M. Musser Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry
Department of Psychology
Yale University
PO Box 208205
New Haven, CT 06520-8205

I haven't much time for full analysis, but Dr. Kazdin's rejection of the recommendation of an independent monitor is disappointing. Such a monitor would not be under the same pressures as the "three original sponsors of the petition" on the Advisory Group. Observation and participation are different operational functions, as organizational theory might tell us. They should be staffed by different individuals, as the work tasks involved are not the same.

Nor do I see the process of choosing the members of the Advisory Group to have been "open and transparent." But then, I am an outsider (at this point), looking mainly at the lateness of the appointments to the Group, and pondering over the wisdom of these assignments, as well as the relative weights of the interests represented.

On the other hand, Dr. Kazdin seems friendly and willing to listen to alternative voices. Others are more optimistic than I, who tends to be somewhat of a pessimist (though I would rather say "realist"). Hence, I cannot shake the idea that the process is stacked with the idea of minimizing the impact of the non-participation resolution. We shall soon know, as the Advisory Group is set to meet beginning tomorrow. Again, I wish all participants luck, and hope that the spirit of the resolution, meant to curtail psychologists from participating in abusive settings that fail to observe international standards of human rights, is obeyed, and with it, the intent of the majority of APA's membership.

PENS Redux? Arrigo & Wessells' Letter to APA President Kazdin

Stephen Soldz, whose blog is a treasure chest of information about the fight against torture, has kindly reproduced a letter from Jean Maria Arrigo and Mike Wessells, two former members of the American Psychological Association's Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS), to current APA President Alan Kazdin.

As was noted in an earlier article here, aimed to address ethical and practical problems arising through the use of psychologists in the U.S. "war on terror," PENS was stacked with military psychologists, and gave a quick and pressured rubber stamp to the use of psychologists at military and CIA interrogation sites, despite reports of abuse, leading to the resignation or apostasy from the panel of leading non-military members. Two of those former members wrote the following letter to APA's current president, concerned about APA's approach to constituting a new "Advisory Board" to implement a new policy on psychologist non-participation in national security interrogations, and at sites "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)." This new policy was passed by referendum of the membership two months ago, after a petition campaign led by key APA dissidents.

The new advisory board is supposed to meet this weekend to decide how to implement the petition's resolution. For more analysis of the background of the situation, see this earlier article. The letter from Arrigo and Wessells to Dr. Kazdin is reproduced below (as originally published at Psyche, Science and Society):

Dear President Kazdin:

We, Jean Maria Arrigo and Mike Wessells, are writing in response to news of your formation of the Presidential Advisory Group on the Implementation of the Petition Resolution. With this committee, the APA has a new opportunity to unite the organization by effectively implementing the policies widely adopted by vote of the membership.

Yet we also see that setting up the organizational structure, charge, and guidelines for communication and transparency warrants caution. As members of the 2005 Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics in National Security (PENS), we wish to warn of certain procedural irregularities in the PENS process that are potential pitfalls for successful implementation of the referendum. These irregularities led to a fraudulent process that undermined the ostensible purpose of PENS: to develop ethical guidelines for psychologists in national security interrogations.

It appears to us that the fraudulent PENS process was the root cause of many of the APA’s difficulties in the past three years because it prevented true deliberation. As much as anything else, it deprived thoughtful, honest advocates for psychologists’ involvement in interrogations of the opportunity to present a credible case for their position.

Many of the stakeholders to the PENS process are involved in the Implementation process, directly or indirectly. It is therefore crucial that the actual Implementation process — as opposed to the public face of the process — be transparent, fair, and deliberative. To illustrate both the subtlety and the gravity of violations in the PENS procedures, and the potential for violations in the Implementation process, we offer four examples from among a dozen that equally de-legitimized the PENS effort. All of these can be substantiated. Not one has been publicly acknowledged by APA authorities. There were other— in some ways more dramatic and egregious—violations of independent, democratic process, but the following examples particularly signal risks to the work of the new Advisory Committee.

1. As psychologists we are aware that majority influence plays a great role in group decision-making. The undisclosed “observers” to the PENS task force meeting included: the Assistant Director of Social, Behavioral, and Educational Sciences for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; the Executive Director for APA Science Policy; a second APA Science Policy staff member; a former National Security Agency psychologist and former director of the Navy Internship Program; and the Director of the APA Practice Directorate. At least the first four of these five had been closely involved in securing defense-related funding for APA programs. And all received the PENS listserv communications. Their presence and involvement was inconsistent with what anyone would understand by the “public face” of the PENS task force.

2. An APA Board liaison to the PENS task force was the first to suggest that the Director of the APA Practice Directorate attend the PENS meeting as an “observer,” because, as he wrote on the pre-meeting PENS listserv, “this TF has direct implications for practice.” In the morning of the first day of the June 26-29, 2005 task force meeting, it was this same Board liaison who proposed confidentiality of the task force proceedings, although no sensitive issues had yet arisen. This subtle intrusion by the APA Board exceeds the official role of Board liaison.

3. The Director of the APA Practice Directorate indeed attended, but not as mere observer. This Director articulated the task force mission as “putting out the fires” of controversy at APA, rather than resolving complex questions in psychological ethics. With cooperation from the task force chair (who was simultaneously vice-chair of the APA Ethics Committee), the Director steered the task force toward policy to be made in extreme haste, secrecy, with only an appearance of unanimity, and with no concrete examples to substantiate the policy.

Further the Director of the Practice Directorate was married to a BSCT psychologist who had served at Guantánamo, one of the theaters of concern to the task force. His spouse was closely involved with Army Surgeon General Kiley and, along with two other task force members, was part of the almost immediate military review of the PENS report with General Kiley. Other task force members employed by the military and intelligence agencies and APA task force organizers were surely aware of these profound conflicts of interest, although the Director disclosed no such influential relationships at the meeting.

4. As is now publicly known, one military member of the task force had been involved in the so-called “reverse engineering” of the Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program to produce abusive techniques for terror suspects and prisoners of war. At least one of his colleagues on the task force was certainly aware of his severe conflict of interest. Further, four of the task force members served in the chains of command that had been accused of abuses.

The PENS process generated cadres of fierce critics of APA policy, whose researches eventually exposed many of the specific instances and mechanisms of fraud. These same cadres of APA members, international psychologists, human rights scholars, and journalists have their eyes on the Implementation process.

To fulfill the promise of your Presidential Advisory Group on the Implementation of the Petition Resolution, and because the PENS process so deeply damaged trust in APA institutional process, we think three things are needed: (a) a fair and transparent process, (b) committee participants who are free from overt conflicts of interest (whether disclosed or undisclosed), and (c) a reputable, independent monitor. We do not at all question your sincerity. This is not the point. Nevertheless, however far down the path you feel you are to a fair and transparent process, we urge you to arrange for a reputable, independent monitor. Such a practice will finally help put out the fires of controversy at APA over psychological ethics in interrogations.

Thank you very much for your time in considering our letter.

Sincerely,

Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD
Michael Wessells, PhD

One final note: Drs. Arrigo and Wessells apparently cc'd the letter to other PENS Task Force members, the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. I'd say that those wishing to hold APA and like institutions to something like transparency and ethical process will be much more vigilant after the experience of the Bush years.

APA Advisory Group Examines New Interrogations Policy

This weekend, a little-known group will meet in Washington, D.C. It's the American Psychological Association's Presidential Advisory Group on the Implementation of the Petition Resolution. The petition resolution, for those who may not have known or remembered, was the fruit of a successful campaign by anti-torture activists within APA to change that organization's policy of allowing psychologists to participate in interrogations at "war on terror" sites like Guantanamo or Baghram, which had been implicated in use of torture and human rights violations, like the use of indefinite detentions.

APA officialdom had long argued that the presence of psychologists protected the prisoners from abuse. Unfortunately for them, a wealth of documentation proved that in fact psychologists had been implicated in the organization and implementation of U.S. torture.

Subsequently, the membership voted to pass a resolution banning psychologists from Guantanamo and similar military sites, and participating in any way in the military and clandestine interrogations of prisoners "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)."

APA officially welcomed the new policy, while indicating that it was not enforceable, and that even as policy, the resolution could not become effective until the APA's next annual meeting in August 2009. This set off a storm of protest, and APA suggested the new policy could be implemented even sooner, after some consideration at a meeting of its Council of Representatives this coming February.

Additionally, as a good faith gesture, last month APA President Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D., sent a letter to George W. Bush, "informing him of a significant change in the association's policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated." (The text of the letter can be found here.) Similar letters were to be sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and to key congressional committees, including the Armed Services, Judiciary, and Intelligence committees.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kazdin announced he would appoint an advisory panel to discuss how the resolution would be implemented, once it became "official" policy. The organization wrangled over the composition of the panel, and only recently announced its composition. Today, APA Senior Policy Adviser Ellen G. Garrison announced the membership of the new advisory panel in a letter to APA's Council of Representatives. It includes three members of the group who organized the successful petition campaign -- Dan Aalbers, Ruth Fallenbaum, and Brad Olson -- and eight others.

From Dr. Garrison's letter (no link):

Dr. Kazdin's appointments to the group are being made after an open nominations process and include the original petitioners, as well as members of the APA Council of Representatives and Board of Directors. The advisory group members reflect the broad range of APA constituent groups with interest and expertise related to the petition resolution and its implementation.

The charge to the advisory group is to identify issues in need of clarification related to the petition resolution and to suggest ways that this might be accomplished, as well as to propose possible options to implement the resolution for Council to consider.

Members of the advisory group are:

Elena J. Eisman, Ed.D., Chair
Allen M. Omoto, Ph.D.
Daniel Aalbers
Walter E. Penk, Ph.D.
Armand R. Cerbone, Ph.D.
William J. Strickland, Ph.D.
Ruth H.A. Fallenbaum, Ph.D.
Michael Wertheimer, Ph.D.
Corann Okorodudu, Ed.D.
Elizabeth C. Wiggins, J.D., Ph.D.
Bradley David Olson, Ph.D.

Advise and Consent

The eight non-opposition members of the panel represent a heterogeneous group, but have in common that most have served in some institutional capacity within APA. Some of the members were known opponents of the petition campaign, like William Strickland, a member of APA's Division of Military Psychology. Elizabeth Wiggins helped co-author, along with Strickland and another APA stalwart, APA officialdom's apologia for their insufficient 2007 interrogations resolution in the APA's house organ, the Monitor.

One advisory panel participant, Walter Penk, has a long association with the Veterans Administration. Other participants were involved in earlier iterations of APA policy on torture and interrogations, and opposed an earlier proposed moratorium against psychologists at sites like Guantanamo.

One of the stranger appointments to the panel is eminence gris, Michael Wertheimer. This retired University of Colorado professor is the son of famous Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. He is known to the UFO conspiracy crowd as a member of 1950s Air Force Condon Project on the existence of UFOs. He was also a co-editor of a book on perception in 1958 that included a number of articles about sensory deprivation, including some written by known members of the government's sensory deprivation research project, which was part of its mind control program at the time. While it would be a huge stretch to connect Michael Wertheimer to anything nefarious re the government, given his background (albeit it was many years ago), it is an odd choice to include him this panel. One wonders how he fits the criteria of being part of "the broad range of APA constituent groups with interest and expertise related to the petition resolution and its implementation."

A final strangeness inhabits this committee: its timeframe and its method of making decisions. The panel has just two days to make its deliberations and form a policy. What's the rush? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the organization awaits the results of it presidential election, and one of the candidates is Steven Reisner, a prominent supporter of the petition resolution and strongly associated with a change in APA's interrogations policy? Reisner won a plurality of votes during the nomination process earlier this year.

And just how will the decisions in the group be made? By majority vote? By consensus? Either way, it's looking like APA has stacked the panel with bureaucratic placeholders. As always in these instances, I wouldn't mind looking like I have egg on my face and be surprised with the outcome.

Still, it seems there are a lot of questions about this group's composition and work. The decision making process whereby the panel was selected has been anything but transparent. I count a majority as anti-referendum to begin with.

The Expectations Game

All expectations must take into account the larger political picture, as the GOP administration has been kicked out by a decisive victory by now-President-elect Obama. Already the potential closing of Guantanamo has returned to the headlines. Newsweek magazine has published an article describing various obstacles to any quick closure of Guantanamo by an Obama administration. Meanwhile, at least one member of the Obama advisory team has floated an idea of constituting a new judicial "hybrid" system to replace Bush's military commissions, but keep "enemy combatant" prisoners out of the regular justice system. Within the same day this idea was floated, Obama's transition team denied any such idea was in the works, or any specific idea, for that matter, as they await the final assembly of their national security team.

(For more on re predictions of Obama's possible intelligence policies and attitude towards interrogations and changing Bush's policies, see StanMO's interesting Daily Kos diary, Andrew Sullivan Asks: Obama's Policies "Torture Lite"?)

The APA is mostly concerned with keeping the flow of funding to psychologist research, and an open pipeline to government jobs for the profession. That means you will never find the organization straying too far from the policies of its governmental godfathers. The winds are blowing differently out of Washington these days, though the exact direction is yet to be determined, particularly on national security issues. Obama has not been one to challenge the national security establishment, though he has differed with them on a tactical level, e.g., the use of military commissions and overt torture.

One watches the upcoming work of the APA Presidential Advisory Group and wishes them good luck. We will see if the invitation to former opponents to participate in the proceedings is an attempt at real and open change within APA, an attempt at cooptation of a feisty opposition, or a repeat of the PENS fiasco from 2006, when that "Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security" was stacked with military psychologists, and gave a quick and pressured rubber stamp to the use of psychologists at military and CIA interrogation sites, despite reports of abuse, leading to the resignation or apostasy from the panel of leading non-military members. (I should add, I have great faith in the proponents of the new interrogations policy included in the Advisory Group's membership. They will not be easy to co-opt, should that be APA's intention.)

One thing is for sure: the impact of this small group meeting will have reverberations throughout Washington, as the fate of Bush's torture program -- itself descended from decades of U.S. use of coercive interrogation, especially by the CIA -- is debated and decided, for better or worse.

Big Victory: APA Informs Bush -- No Psychologists at Military Interrogations

Readers of this blog know that dissident psychologists, along with human rights and anti-torture organizations and individuals have been working for years now to get the American Psychological Association to change its policy of supporting the use of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo, CIA black-site prisons, and other governmental sites involved in Bush's Global War on Terror.

Last month, a referendum that called for banning such participation was passed by a large majority of voting APA members. At first, APA bureaucrats mumbled something about instituting this new policy come August 2009! But large scale protest by the membership seems to have caused them to back down, and today, APA has released a letter to George W. Bush informing the head of the U.S. executive branch and commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces of the new change in APA policy.

The letter was drafted collaboratively between APA staff and the primary authors of the referendum petition that led to the change in policy. Similar letters reportedly will be sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and to key congressional committees, including the Armed Services, Judiciary, and Intelligence committees.

What follows is the press release by APA on the change, and announcing the letter to Bush. The actual text of the letter can be found here.

The announcement by APA represents a major turnaround in their long-standing policy of backing the presence of psychologists at interrogations, and a victory for all who have fought to change that policy and fight back against U.S. torture.

APA LETTER TO BUSH: NEW POLICY LIMITS PSYCHOLOGIST INVOLVEMENT IN INTERROGATIONS

Prohibits psychologist participation in interrogations at unlawful detention sites

WASHINGTON—The American Psychological Association sent a letter today to President Bush, informing him of a significant change in the association's policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated, such as has occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA black sites around the world.

“The effect of this new policy is to prohibit psychologists from any involvement in interrogations or any other operational procedures at detention sites that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law (e.g., the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture),” says the letter, from APA President Alan E. Kazdin, PhD. “In such unlawful detention settings, persons are deprived of basic human rights and legal protections, including the right to independent judicial review of their detention.”

The roles of psychologists at such sites would now be limited to working directly for the people being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights, or to providing treatment to military personnel. The new policy was voted on by APA members and is in the process of being implemented.

For the past 20 years, APA policy has unequivocally condemned torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which can arise from interrogation procedures or conditions of confinement. APA's previous policies had expressed grave concerns about settings where people are deprived of human rights and had offered support to psychologists who refused to work in such settings.

Noting that there have been credible reports of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees during Bush's presidency, APA called on the administration to investigate these alleged abuses. “We further call on you to establish policies and procedures to ensure the independent judicial review of these detentions and to afford the persons being detained all rights guaranteed to them under the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture,” Kazdin wrote.

A copy of the full letter may be viewed at: http://www.apa.org/releases/kazdin-to-bush1008.pdf

Whither APA
While this is a big victory, it doesn't mean torture will end at Guantanamo, CIA prisons, or elsewhere. Most psychologists working at such facilities, similarly to doctors, nurses, interrogators, etc., work under the chain of command and answer to the leadership of the military and the executive branch. But the new policy does explode a central pillar of the government's rationale for such abuse, i.e., that psychologists are present at such sites as "safety officers" to stop "behavioral drift" or abuse from taking place.

Now the APA has rejected this premise, and is lending its prestige to the withdrawal of behavioral health professionals from the CIA and the Pentagon's program of coercive interrogation.

Yet, the APA still widely collaborates with the national security apparatus. Their work on "deception", which I've written about here, is only one aspect of this far-reaching connectivity between U.S. behavioral science and the military. Nor should we believe that the APA apparatus, staffed by the same people who tried for years to make psychologists hand-servants for the worst aspects of military abuse, is suddenly composed of pacifists and anti-militarists. For instance, APA has not, to date, seen fit as an organization to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay Naval prison.

It's clear that struggles around the interactions of the health professions, academia, and major scientific institutions with the organs of national security and the program of a militarist state, remain ahead of us. Furthermore, the cynic in me wonders if this turnaround by APA isn't too convenient, as it potentially cuts the ground out from under anti-torture activist Steven Reisner's campaign for APA president, with the election coming later this month.

One prominent APA activist noted on a listserv earlier today that Kazdin's letter fails to call for an immediate removal of psychologists from interrogations at Guantanamo (for instance). The policy wherein Behavioral Science Consulting Teams, including psychologists, assist in interrogation planning and procedures is supposedly about due for review. It is time to ratchet up the pressure on the government to shut down Guantanamo, to decommission (if that is the word) the BSCTs.

A big question remains around the use of torture and the participation of same at CIA sites. CIA "enhanced interrogation" techniques remain supposedly approved by the President. No one knows exactly how the CIA's prisons work, who is there, or what goes on. APA should call for an immediate withdrawal of all psychologists from such secret prisons. While they are at it, to show they are serious, they could stop taking advertisements for CIA employment in their journals and publications.

[Update: I want to add here some important comments from the CEO of Physicians for Human Rights, Frank Donaghue on APA's letter:

"While today is a proud day for the APA and its membership, the APA must now act to permanently prohibit direct participation by psychologists in interrogations and to ensure those psychologists who engaged in abuse and torture are held to account," said Donaghue. "The APA has taken a tremendous step forward but has not yet reached the ethical standards of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, organizations which have banned direct participation by physicians in all interrogations. Also, the APA has not yet specified what rights abuses would render a detention facility illegal under its new policy."]

Despite all caveats, it is time to savor the victory, and spread the word. Congratulations to everyone who worked to win this battle. Tops among them must be the folks who pushed the referendum, when it looked like a long-shot, and the hard working members of Psychologists for an Ethical APA, withholdapadues.com, etc.

Bravo, my friends and colleagues. Good work!

Reactions to APA Referendum Vote

The Coalition for an Ethical APA has just put out their own press release. This is a snippet:

In recent years revelations from the press, Congress, and Defense Department documents revealed that psychologists have played a central role in Bush administration detainee abuse. These reports conclusively demonstrate that psychologists designed, implemented, disseminated, and standardized detention and interrogation practices that frequently amounted to torture.

The passage of this referendum constitutes a decisive repudiation of the APA leadership’s long-standing policy encouraging psychologist participation in interrogations and other activities in military and CIA detention facilities that have repeatedly been found to violate international law and the Constitution. In 2005, the APA’s orchestrated Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security [PENS] declared that psychologists’ participation in interrogations in these sites helped keep interrogations there “safe, legal, an ethical.” Although APA followed this report with resolutions ostensibly condemning participation in torture, the resolutions continued to permit psychologists to serve in sites where human rights are routinely violated. The APA membership has now rejected APA policy in favor of one refusing psychologist participation in the running of detention facilities operating against the law and professional ethics....

Referendum proponents collected over 1,000 signatures, forcing APA to submit the policy change to a mail ballot of the entire membership. The ballots went out on August 1 and votes received as of Monday, September 15th were counted. The referendum passed with 8,792 [58.8% ] YES votes to 6,157 votes against. The turnout was the highest ever in APA history.

"With this vote APA members have taken a major step toward restoring unimpeachable ethical standards by prohibiting its members from participating at sites that violate human rights and international law. But until APA communicates this new policy to the White House, the Department of Defense and the CIA, the abuses might continue. We must assure that the policy is implemented quickly" said Steven Reisner, a New York psychologist who is running for APA President.

And a link to a statement from Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights:

Today PHR salutes the American Psychological Association (APA) membership for restoring the APA's commitment to human rights and medical ethics. For years, the APA has failed to fully address US psychologists' involvement in torture in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, and CIA black sites. This historic vote has moved the APA closer to joining the ranks of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, which have repudiated health professional involvement in interrogations.

"This turn-around follows revelations by the media and Congress of the central role psychologists played in the design, supervision, and implementation of a regime of psychological and physical torture against detainees held in CIA and Department of Defense custody. For example, CIA psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen have been implicated in the torture of Abu Zubaydah and others.

Also, by Tuesday night, the New York Times' Benedict Carey had an article on the vote posted online. Sad to say, Carey follows the APA script stating, "The association’s bylaws require that it institute the policy at the next annual meeting, in August 2009." Except, I don't know what bylaws state that. The assertion sounds like a deliberate policy of delay in implementation of the new, more stringent anti-torture, anti-abuse policy. You can hear the wheels of delay slowly grinding in Carey's quote from APA President Kazdin:

“The good part of this is that the membership has spoken, the process worked, and we’re going to follow it,” said Alan E. Kazdin, the association’s president and a psychologist at Yale University. “Will everyone be happy? Well, it’s a typical human enterprise, and there are nuanced positions on both sides. So, we’ll see.”

What do the APA Bylaws say on the issue of implementation of a resolution (and keep in mind, a petition-initiated resolution like the one passed here has never before occurred in APA's history)?

Article X of the APA Bylaws, "Nominations and Elections," states (emphasis added):

The Election Committee shall also secure reports from the Divisions and from the State/Provincial Associations of the results of all elections conducted by them. The election results shall be reported by the Election Committee to the Board of Directors and Council within thirty days after the ballot closes.

Article XX of the Bylaws, on "Amendments," states, in part:

Forty five days after the date of sending, the poll shall be closed and the votes counted by the Election Committee, which shall certify the result to Council at its next meeting, at which time the amendment, if passed by two thirds of all the Members voting, shall take effect.

That next meeting is in February 2009, not August 2009. Besides, certification of the result is not the same as instituting the policy change immediately, which ethically, and morally, APA is bound to do.

Psychologist "Swat Team" Serves Bush's Torture Gulag

Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, current president of the American Psychological Association, in a new column in the APA Monitor, brags that APA lobbyists are a vertable "swat team" in support of government dollars for scientific research. Much of that money funds the work of psychologists "in support of homeland security after 9/11", "psychological research within the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense", and the "special relevance of psychological science on... counter-terrorism" research, among other items.

It is surely cosmic irony that places Dr. Kazdin's article in contrast to new revelations from the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. government documenting "the role of psychologists in military interrogations."

"The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse — a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "The documents only underscore the need for an independent investigation into responsibility for the systemic abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody abroad."

In 2006, the ACLU received a highly redacted version of the Church Report, which was commissioned by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a comprehensive review of military interrogation operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay based on 187 investigations into detainee abuse that had been closed as of September 30, 2004. The report did not analyze information relating to 130 abuse cases that remained open as of that date, and issues of senior official responsibility for detainee abuse were beyond its mandate. Written by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, the report skirts the question of command responsibility for detainee abuse, euphemistically labeling official failure to issue interrogation guidelines for Iraq and Afghanistan as a "missed opportunity."

The report states that "analogous to the BSCT in Guantanamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations."

The documents also demonstrate the failure of medical personnel to report abuses upon those ostensibly under their care. Moreover, when it comes to the use of torture techniques, such as forced nakedness, stress positions, the use of dogs, and other illegal forms of "interrogation" or incarceration, there was a decided policy of ignoring even the flimsy legal justifications and prohibitions issuing from the Department of Defense:

"The unredacted sections of the report provide new evidence confirming the use of abusive interrogation techniques after they were no longer authorized. According to the report, "the use of some of the techniques... continued even until July 2004, despite the fact that many were retracted by the October 2003 memorandum, and some were subsequently prohibited by the May 2004 memorandum."

As psychologists are implicated in the worst sort of human rights abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Dr. Kazin, who is the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology, Child Psychiatry, and Institute of Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, positively gushes over the "APA... dream team of experts that is nimble and can move into action as needed with Congress, funding agencies and other organizations."

Kazin's organization, the APA, took five years to make a detailed statement against torture techniques that were documented at U.S. prisons, including Guantanamo, although even then the APA mimicked Bush administration language in saying that only psychologists who "knowingly" inflicted harm are to be sanctioned. This makes judging the intent of a torturer supposedly a crucial question. This doctrine of "specific intent" was written into the infamous Bybee memo, and represents a get out of jail free card for those who torture. (See John Mikhail's excellent discussion of the implications of that little word, "knowingly," over at the Georgetown Law Faculty Blog.)

APA Springs into Action for... Defense Funding

Despite all protestations of good faith by APA, psychologists still staff the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams at Guantanamo, and other interrogation sites, including, presumably, secret "black site" prisons run by the CIA. Psychologists at these sites are under the military chain of command, not APA ethics codes and committees. These sites are known to be in violation of Geneva Conventions and other national and international laws and agreements concerning prisoners, including the holding of detainees in indefinite detention, hiding detainees from the Red Cross, subjecting detainees to abusive conditions of detention, transferring via secret rendition some detainees to foreign prisons to be tortured, and subjecting prisoners to secret courts where hearsay evidence and evidence supplied via tortured confession is allowed.

In his article, Dr. Kazin brags how when the National Science Foundation threatened to defund some pet projects, "within approximately 12 hours, an APA swat team mobilized an effort that drew on targeted individuals, other organizations, congressional staff, grass-roots support from many psychologists, and more." Two hundred phone calls and many emails later, the bills were saved. And yet, to this day, the APA cannot find the time to pass a resolution or make a statement calling for the closure of Guantanamo prison, where basic human rights are not allowed, and a policy of isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, and a policy of indefinite detention remains in force. Show me where you put an organization's time and money, and I'll show you what that organization is really about. The APA is an obscentiy.

The newly unredacted Church report includes this statement about the role of psychologists, highlighting the use of psychologists throughout the different theaters in Bush's misnamed "war on terror":

Analogous to the BSCT in Guantanamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations.

Supposedly, those working clinically with the disease and mental illness fostered by abusive treatment and conditions at U.S. prison sites do not share medical records with interrogators, but the report, while claiming that use of such information to "plan interrogations" doesn't take place, admits that such "sharing" has taken place:

According to the Director, Psychological Applications Directorate (US Army Special Operations Command), the only reason for sharing any medical information would be to ensure that detainees are treated in accordance with their medical requirements.

If you believe that, I've got a proverbial bridge to sell you. Meanwhile, the unredacted portions of the Church Report corroborate the findings of the Pentagon's own Office of the Inspector General report that exposed the existence of abusive techniques at Guantanamo, just at the time that APA honchos like Colonel Larry James (then Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba) were in charge.

Alan Kazdin's article represents the mindset of the APA bureaucracy, which is dying to feed at the trough of "homeland security" and "counter-terrorism" millions drained from the public coffers to build up the power of the overtly militarist state that America has become.

Recently, APA dissident candidate for president, Dr. Steven Reisner, is campaigning on an overt call for an end to psychologist participation in military interrogations, such as at Guantanamo. While garnering a minority of votes, he still won a plurality in the first round of voting, demonstrating that rank-and-file psychologists are growing increasingly disgusted with the policy of their organization. A related group of APA dissidents are circulating a petition that psychologists "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."

When I left the APA earlier this year, I specifically cited the overall stance of that organization in relation to the national security state. While the complicity with torture and human rights abuses is bad enough, the promise of further integration into "counter-terrorism" and "homeland security" programs of the government is an ominous foreshadowing of what the APA intends to become. If those looking to change APA are unsuccessful, they must ponder what they are doing in an organization so steadfastly dedicated to serving those that torture, that are obsessed with national security at a time when the government of this country engages in illegal, genocidal wars abroad, and seems incapable of reforming its own increasingly militarist and anti-democratic policies and actions.