[News] How Psychologists Have Abetted the CIA
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jun 25 19:03:17 EDT 2008
June 24, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz06252008.html
How Psychologists Have Abetted the CIA
The Torture Trainers and the American Psychological Association
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
The
<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/21/cia_sere/print.html>CIAs
Torture Teachers, psychologists James Mitchell
and Bruce Jessen [see
<http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707?printable=true¤tPage=all>Eban
and
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?printable=true>Mayer
for a reminder of their work], are in the news
again. In a front page New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/22ksm.html?pagewanted=print>article
on the interrogation of
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/khalid_shaikh_mohammed/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, it is mentioned that the subject
of the story, Deuce Martinez is now employed by the dynamic torture firm:
His life today is quiet by comparison with the
secret interrogations of 2002 and 2003. But Mr.
Martinez has not turned away entirely from his
old world. He now works for Mitchell & Jessen
Associates, a consulting company run by former
military psychologists who advised the C.I.A. on
the use of harsh tactics in the secret program.
His new employer sent Mr. Martinez right back to
the agency. For now, the unlikely interrogator of
the man perhaps most responsible for the horrors
of 9/11 teaches other C.I.A. analysts the arcane art of tracking terrorists.
As
<http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707?printable=true¤tPage=all>Katherine
Eban explaines what was so distinctive about this firm:
Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the
tactics inflicted on sere trainees for use on
detainees in the global war on terror, according
to psychologists and others with direct knowledge
of their activities. The C.I.A. put them in
charge of training interrogators in the brutal
techniques, including waterboarding, at its network of black sites.
They exemplified the CIAs humane treatment of detainees:
Mitchell had a tougher approach in mind. The
C.I.A. interrogators explained that they were
going to become Zubaydahs God. If he refused
to cooperate, he would lose his clothes and his
comforts one by one. At the safe house, the
interrogators isolated him. They would enter his
room just once a day to say, You know what I want, then leave again.
As Zubaydah clammed up, Mitchell seemed to
conclude that Zubaydah would talk only when he
had been reduced to complete helplessness and
dependence. With that goal in mind, the C.I.A.
team began building a coffin in which they planned to bury the detainee alive.
It seems that the coffin may not in the end have been used.
So Deuce Martinez, so according to the Times
followed torture sessions with rapport-based
session, getting KSM to talk. They report that he
turned down a CIA offer of specialized training
in the enhanced interrogation techniques, aka
torture, not because he objected but because he
believed his talents lay elsewhere. As Eban
explains, that training would have been with the torture duo:
Interrogators who were sent for classified
training inevitably wound up in a Mitchell-Jessen
shop, and some balked at their methods. Instead
of the careful training touted by President Bush,
some recruits allegedly received on-the-job
training during brutal interrogations that
effectively unfolded as live demonstrations.
The very fact that he accepted employment with
the nations premier torture firm indicates that
he had no ethical qualms about the Mitchell-Jessen approach.
The American Psychological Association has a long
relationship with Mitchell and Jessen. Their firm
was
<http://security-clearance-job-fairs.techexpousa.com/show_co_profile_and_jobs.cfm?employer_id=11793&show_id=212>authorized
to give APA Continuing Education credits, though
rumor indicates that may no longer be the case:
Mitchell, Jessen, and Associates, LLC (MJA) is an
executive consulting firm specializing in the
area of understanding, predicting, and improving
performance in high-risk and extreme situations.
MJA develops specialized assessment and selection
programs for high-risk occupations, devises and
conducts tailored training for related, high-risk
programs, and is additionally approved by the
American Psychological Association to offer
continuing professional education for psychologists.
After the Mitchell-Jessen directed torture of Abu
Zubaydah resulted in numerous false leads that
wasted thousands of hours of law enforcement
time, the CIA together with the APA and the Rand
Corporation conducted an invitation-only workshop
on the
<http://www.apa.org/ppo/spin/703.html>Science of
Deception, Mitchell, Jessen, and their likely CIA
supervisor, Kirk Hubbard, were
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2008/06/23/the-torture-trainers-and-the-american-psychological-association/VF%20-%20Eban:%20Rorschach%20and%20Awe.%20Vanity%20Fair>invited.
Many APA leaders were likely also there, so it
strains credulity that they are not intimately
aware of Mitchell and Jessens work.
Interestingly, the APA leadership has conveniently lost the attendance list.
As a further indication of APAs connection to
the CIAs torture firm, one of the
<http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=204358>five
governing people on the torture firms Board is
former American Psychological Association
President, Joseph Matarazzo. The APA is intensely
disturbed by President Matzrazzos possible
involvement in torture as can be gleamed from
these ethically-principled
<http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=204358>quotes
from APA leadership when Matzrazzos involvement was revealed last summer.
Then APA President Sharon Brehm: No comment.
APA Director of the Ethics Office and APA point
man on torture and interrogations: No comment.
But one official did have a comment, which says
everything one needs to knopw about the ethics of APA leadership.
Dr. Matarazzo was president of APA 18 years
ago, Rhea Farberman, the organizations director
of public affairs, said in a prepared statement.
Since that time, he has had no active role in
APA governance but has been actively involved in
the American Psychological Foundation (APF), the
charitable giving arm of APA. Dr. Matarazzo
currently holds no governance positions in either
APA or APF, the statement said.
Matarazzos professional activities are outside
and independent of any role he has played within
APA and APF, the statement said. We have no
direct knowledge about the business dealing of
Mitchells and Jessens company; however, APAs
position is clear torture or other forms of
cruel or inhuman treatment are always unethical.
Notice the deep concern for Mitchell and Jessens
and, potentially, Matarazzos, actions expressed
in this statement. Notice the (missing) promise
to investigate and, if confirmed, discipline this
former APA President. After all, while torture
is unethical", this former President's
professional activities are no concern of the APA.
Meanwhile, the Times article informs us that
Mitchell & Jessen Associates is still in the
CIAs good graces. Most likely they still have
the torture contract. And as for the APA, they
will most likely continue to forget about the
firms connection to them. Coincidentally, the
morning before the new New York Times article
appeared, a member of the APAs Board sent out to
various listservs an odd statement:
Colleagues,
I wanted to share the fact that APA is aware of
the concerns that two Washington state
psychologists were employed by the Department of
Defense to reverse-engineer survival and
resistance training (which is designed to help
U.S. military personnel in the event they are
captured) for use in interrogations. These two
psychologists are not APA members so are out of
the reach of the APAs ethics enforcement process
but, nevertheless, APAs position on
inappropriate interrogations techniques is very clear.
In August of 2007, the APA Council of
Representatives passed a resolution condemning
the use of 19 interrogation techniques because
they were unethical, abusive and constituted
torture. These condemned techniques included
waterboarding, forced nakedness, sexual
humiliation, stress positions and the use of dogs to intimidate.
In terms of active duty military psychologists
being used as trainers of harsh interrogation
techniques, the media reports that I have seen
suggest this was not the case. Rather, these
reports have singled out military psychologists
as raising concerns about aggressive
interrogation techniques including waterboarding,
forced nakedness and sleep depravation.
Notice that this esteemed APA board member cannot
distinguish between the Defense Department, the
subject of this weeks Senate Armed Services
Committee (SASC) hearings, and the CIA that
employed Mitchell and Jessen. Notice too that she
conveniently ignores former APA President
Matarazzos possible involvement in Mitchell and
Jessens's activities and also ignores the fact
that APA invited Mitchell and Jessen to the APA-CIA-Rand conference.
One also may wonder what media reports this
Board member read which featured military
psychologists protesting abuse as the main story.
After all, the
<http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/8845>Associated
Press began its first story on the SASC investigation by stating:
"Military psychologists were enlisted to help
develop more aggressive interrogation methods,
including snarling dogs, forced nudity and long
periods of standing, against terrorism suspects,
according to a Senate investigation."
Further, SASC Chair Carl Levin described in his
<http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=299242>opening statement how:
"a
senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was
chief counsel to the CIAs CounterTerrorism
Center, went to GTMO, attended a meeting of GTMO
staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of
aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo
had been drafted by a psychologist and
psychiatrist from GTMO who, a couple of weeks
earlier, had attended the training given at Fort
Bragg by instructors from the JPRA SERE school.
While the memo remains classified, minutes from
the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those
minutes (TAB 7) clearly show that the focus of
the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees."
If this esteemed Board member had paid greater
attention to these SASC hearings she would have
discovered that they revealed the direct
involvement of several psychologists in planning
Guantanamo torture. Col. Morgan Banks, who had
been appointed a member of the APAs PENS
(<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/apa_faq_coalition_comments_v12c.pdf>Psychological
Ethics and National Security ethics task force)
was
<http://www.senate.gov/%7Earmed_services/statemnt/2008/June/Baumgartner%2006-17-08.pdf>described
by one of the SASC witnesses as requesting
training in exploitation
of detainees from the
militarys SERE (Survival, Evasion, resistance,
an Escape) program, which administered
torture to US military personnel in case they
were captured by a force that doesnt respect the Geneva Conventions.
But, most chillingly, at the SASC hearings, 63
pages of documents were released, including the
minutes of an October 2, 2002 meeting at
Guantanamo to develop torture strategy and
techniques. Psychologist Maj. John Leso, a member
of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, and
the psychologist described by Levin in the quote above, attended the meeting.
According to these minutes, the BSCT proposed an
approach to detainees based upon the following principles:
Whats more effective than fear based strategies
are camp-wide environmental strategies designed
to disrupt cohesion and communication among detainees
The environment should foster dependence and compliance
Psychological stress = extremely effective (i.e.,
sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time)
Disrupting the normal camp operations is vital,
We need to create an environment of controlled chaos
Evidently, according to this esteemed APA Board
member, creating an environment of
controlled chaos designed to foster
dependence and compliance and utilizing sleep
deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of
time constitutes objecting to torture. Im sure
most who paid attention to the evidence might conclude otherwise.
Unfortunately, to this date the APA has
<http://counterpunch.org/bond05192008.html>ignored
multiple ethics complaints extending back several
years against Maj. Leso based upon his
<http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/1/6>documented
<http://www.time.com/time/2006/log/log.pdf>participation
in the
<http://ajobonline.com/journal/j_articles.php?aid=1140>torture
of Mohammed al-Qahtani, Guantanamo prisoner 063.
Perhaps this esteemed colleague, rather than
making unsubstantiated claims about supposed
anti-torture activities, will push the
organization to discipline this military
psychologist who is documented to have participated in abuse.
<mailto:ssoldz at bgsp.edu>Stephen Soldz is a
psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health
researcher, and faculty member at the
<http://www.bgsp.edu/>Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis. He maintains the
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/ORR.htm>Psychoanalysts
for Peace and Justice web site and the
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/>Psyche,
Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the
organizations leading the struggle to change
American Psychological Association policy on
participation in abusive interrogations.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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