The Facts be Damned! Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Participation in Detainee Interrogations

As seen on OpEdNews, and on Stephen Soldz' own blog, where he points out the dramatic need for the head of a professional organization like to APA to be far more knowledgeable and responsible about the ethical standards vs the conduct his memberships indulges in. This is only a portion of the full article. Fait to say that it l;ooks like he is merely making excuses, and is likely engaged in a PR coverup.

Last Friday American Psychological Association President, and Indiana University professor, Sharon Brehm discussed the APA's policies supporting psychologist participation in national security interrogations with faculty and students at her university. The Indiana Daily Student has an account of the meeting.

While the entire article is well worth reading, a few of Dr. Brehm's comments as cited there are especially worth commenting upon. Either they reflect an unacceptable level of ignorance of the basic facts about psychologists' roles in American torture or they are simply willful falsehoods. For example, Dr. Brehm stated:

"Brehm said psychologists only acted in an advisory role during questionings, working with interrogators to develop effective strategies that will elicit “accurate information.”"

There is now overwhelming evidence from reporters and government documents that this statement is not simply false, but almost the exact opposite of the truth. Thus, three major journalists (Jane Mayer at the New Yorker, Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair, and Mark Benjamin at Salon) have reported that the basic torture techniques used by the CIA in its black sites were initially developed and implemented by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. This role is far from Brehm's "…psychologists only acted in an advisory role during questionings, working with interrogators to develop effective strategies that will elicit 'accurate information.' " On the contrary, as Eban reported In Vanity Fair:

"psychologists weren't merely complicit in America''s aggressive new interrogation regime. Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the C.I.A..”

Thus, Dr. Brehm's "effective strategies" include months of total isolation, freezing, being chained up in painful positions for hours and days on end, and it seems, waterboarding.

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (OIG), in a report declassified last May, documented the central role of psychologists, including those from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program in the development of what the OIG itself saw as abusive. [See our summary of the OIG report and in pdf format.] The OIG report documents how SERE psychologists trained Guantanamopsychologists in the use of SERE-based torture techniques. The OIG report also documents how SERE and Guantanamostaff went to Iraq to train US soldiers there in abusive SERE-based "counter-resistance" techniques. The OIG report made clear that these techniques were, in the OIG's opinion, abusive.