Psychologists and Torture

Like doctors, psychologists are supposed to do no harm (literally "Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm"), but the US, under the Bush administration, found two who arguably violated the principle:

As the secrets about the CIA's interrogation techniques continue to come out, there's new information about the frequency and severity of their use, contradicting an 2007 ABC News report, and a new focus on two private contractors who were apparently directing the brutal sessions that President Obama calls torture.

According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington.

Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates.

Former U.S. officials say the two men were essentially the architects of the CIA's 10-step interrogation plan that culminated in waterboarding.

The two found it lucrative:

Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites.

Their experience and qualifications for acting as the architects of the program were arguably spotty at best:

Both Mitchell and Jessen were previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how to survive behind enemy lines and resist brutal tactics if captured….

But it turns out neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them.

"They went to two individuals who had no interrogation experience," said Col. Kleinman. "They are not interrogators."

The new documents show the CIA later came to learn that the two psychologists' waterboarding "expertise" was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was "medically safe" or effective. The waterboarding used on al Qaeda detainees was far more intense than the brief sessions used on U.S. military personnel in the training classes. (emphasis mine)

Mitchell and Jessen are Not the Only Ones

The recent issue of the involvement of psychologists in implementing and supervising "harsh interrogation techniques" is already old news:

A recently declassified August 2006 report by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (OIG) –Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse—describes in detail how psychologists from the military's Survival, Evasion Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program were instructed to apply their expertise in abusive interrogation techniques to interrogations being conducted by the DoD throughout all three theaters of the War on Terror (Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq).

In 2005 the American Psychological Association formed a committee to investigate the use of psychologists by the Department of Defense (DOD) in arguable cases of torture, but DOD was able to stack the deck:

Two years ago, after a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross criticizing the role of health professionals in U.S. interrogations, the American Psychological Association formed its Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). There were nine voting members. Six of them were connected to the military. At the time, the identities of the panelists were secret. The PENS panel endorsed the continued participation of psychologists in military interrogations. (emphasis mine)

What of the 3 non-military members?

Of the three nonmilitary voting members, one, Dr. Michael G. Wessells of Randolph-Macon College, resigned, and another, Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo, recently called for the PENS report to be annulled. "I'm an oral historian, maybe even before a psychologist, and I always take notes. And I was told very sharply by one of the military psychologists not to take notes." She took notes anyway. She archived the group's entire e-mail list-serve, including months of e-mails from before and after the sole two-day PENS meeting. She went on: "I came later to realize that the entire report had been orchestrated. I no longer felt bound by that confidentiality agreement." She recently handed over all her materials to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The third, Dr. Nina Thomas, told me: "I don't think I was, in fact, critically aware of what Morgan Banks' role was at the time of the meetings themselves. I knew the outline of his background, but I didn't know the meaning of his background. So it disturbs me." ("Col. Morgan Banks…'the senior Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape psychologist, responsible for the training and oversight of all Army SERE psychologists'.") (emphasis mine)

The report was clearly a whitewash.

The injunction "Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm" clearly shows that the involvement of psychologists in "harsh interrogation techniques" manifestly reveals that they are violating their oath. Even if one were to grant that these techniques do no harm (which is ludicrous on its face), one cannot maintain that the interrogated detainees "benefit" from such treatment. The American Psychological Association (APA) needs to revisit the issue and forbid its members from participating in these interrogation methods. It's shameful and it casts a shadow across the APA.

To read more about the role of psychologists in arguable cases of torture go here and here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Senate Investigation: Coercive methods prepared before OK (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Psychologists shaped detainee interrogations (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Obama says waterboarding was torture (huffingtonpost.com)
• Report: Bush officials authorized detainee abuse (cnn.com)
• Report Details Pentagon Role in Torture Tactics (time.com)
• The Torture Apologists Have No Place Left To Hide (crooksandliars.com)