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December 11, 2014<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/11/the-complicity-of-psychologists-in-cia-torture/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/11/the-complicity-of-psychologists-in-cia-torture/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big><big>What the APA Knew</big></big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">The Complicity of Psychologists in CIA
Torture</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by ROY EIDELSON and TRUDY BOND </div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>Earlier this week the Senate Intelligence Committee released
the long-awaited <a
href="http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf']);">executive
summary</a> of its 6,000-page classified report on the CIA’s
brutal post-9/11 detention and interrogation program. The
report provides gruesome details of the abuse that took place
in several “black site” prisons – waterboarding, confinement
in a coffin-sized box, threatened harm to family members,
forced nudity, freezing temperatures, “rectal feeding” without
medical need, stress positions, diapering, days of sleep
deprivation, and more. The report also found that the
“enhanced interrogation techniques” were ineffective; that the
CIA misrepresented their effectiveness; and that the program
damaged the standing of the United States around the world.</p>
<p>Two names appear dozens of times in the committee’s summary:
Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar. These are the <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nytimes.com']);">pseudonyms</a> that
were given to James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. It has been <a
href="http://www.salon.com/2007/06/21/cia_sere/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.salon.com']);">known</a> for
several years that these two contract psychologists played
central roles in designing and implementing the CIA’s torture
program. Now we also know how lucrative that work was for
Mitchell and Jessen: their company was paid over $80 million
by the CIA.</p>
<p>Prior to their CIA contract work, Mitchell and Jessen were
psychologists in the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance
and Escape (SERE) training program. Even though they had no
experience as interrogators, spoke no Arabic, and had no
expert knowledge of al-Qaeda, they were <a
href="http://www.pegc.us/archive/In_re_Gitmo_II/mitchell_final_20100617.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://www.pegc.us/archive/In_re_Gitmo_II/mitchell_final_20100617.pdf']);">hired</a> by
the CIA in late 2001 to reverse-engineer SERE principles and
transform them into a set of new and more aggressive
interrogation techniques. Mitchell and Jessen arrived at the
CIA black site in Thailand in April 2002 and applied those
harsh techniques for the first time in their interrogation of
Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian national thought to be a
high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. They kept Zubaydah naked for
almost two months, with his clothes provided or removed
depending on how cooperative he was judged to be. They
deprived him of sleep for weeks at a time by painful shackling
of his wrists and feet. And in August 2002 they waterboarded
him at least 83 times.</p>
<p>Responding to the new Senate report, the American
Psychological Association (APA) was quick to issue a <a
href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/12/senate-intelligence.aspx"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.apa.org']);">press
release</a> distancing itself from Mitchell and Jessen. The
statement emphasized that the two psychologists are not APA
members – although Mitchell was a member until 2006 – and that
they are therefore “outside the reach of the association’s
ethics adjudication process.” But there is much more to this
story. After years of stonewalling and denials, last month the
APA Board <a
href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/11/risen-allegations.aspx"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.apa.org']);">appointed</a> an
investigator to examine allegations that the APA colluded with
the CIA and Pentagon in supporting the Bush Administration’s
abusive “war on terror” detention and interrogation practices.</p>
<p>The latest evidence of that collusion comes from the
publication earlier this fall of James Risen’s <a
href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780544341418-2"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.powells.com']);"><em>Pay
Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War</em></a><em>. </em>With
access to hundreds of previously undisclosed emails involving
senior APA staff, the Pulitzer-prize winning reporter <a
href="http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Questions-for-APA-Board.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Questions-for-APA-Board.pdf']);">concludes</a> that
the APA “worked assiduously to protect the
psychologists…involved in the torture program.” The book also
provides several new details pointing to the likelihood that
Mitchell and Jessen were not so far removed from the APA after
all.</p>
<p>Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, APA member and CIA head of
behavioral research Kirk Hubbard first <a
href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/2269-blochech7docs-as-warriors-i"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.law.upenn.edu']);">introduced</a> Mitchell
and Jessen to the CIA as “potential assets.” A few months
later, in mid-2002, Hubbard <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/07/mayer-on-seligman/214016/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.theatlantic.com']);">arranged</a> for
former APA president Martin Seligman to present a lecture on
his theories of “learned helplessness” to a group that
included Mitchell and Jessen at the Navy SERE School in San
Diego. And in 2003 Hubbard worked closely with APA senior
staff in developing an invitation-only <a
href="http://www.apa.org/about/gr/science/spin/2003/07/also-issue.aspx"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.apa.org']);">workshop</a> –
co-sponsored by the APA and the CIA – on the science of
deception and other interrogation-related topics. Mitchell and
Jessen were both participants (having returned from overseas
where they were involved in the waterboarding of detainees Abu
Zabaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed).</p>
<p>Then, in mid-2004, shortly after the horrific Abu Ghraib
photos were released, Hubbard was among a small group of
senior CIA and Pentagon officials who received an <a
href="http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Questions-for-APA-Board.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Questions-for-APA-Board.pdf']);">invitation</a> to
a private meeting from APA Ethics Office Director Stephen
Behnke. According to emails obtained by Risen, one key reason
for the gathering was to “sort out appropriate from
inappropriate uses of psychology” in national security
settings. In extending the invitation, Behnke assured Hubbard
and the other attendees that their names and the substance of
their discussions would never be made public, and that “in the
meeting we will neither assess nor investigate the behavior of
any specific individual or group” (presumably including the
activities of Mitchell and Jessen).</p>
<p>That private meeting was the <a
href="http://www.apa.org/about/gr/science/spin/2005/02/ethics.aspx"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.apa.org']);">springboard</a> that
led to the creation of the APA’s <a
href="http://ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Statement-on-Complicity-Psychology-and-War-on-Terror-Abuses.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Statement-on-Complicity-Psychology-and-War-on-Terror-Abuses.pdf']);">controversial</a> 2005
Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National
Security (PENS). The PENS task force was dominated by <a
href="https://www.clarku.edu/peacepsychology/tfpens.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.clarku.edu']);">representatives</a> from
the military and intelligence community, several of whom were
drawn from chains of command where detainee abuses reportedly
took place. The task force held a single weekend meeting and
then issued a <a
href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/pens.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/pens.pdf']);">report</a> asserting
that it was ethical for psychologists to serve in various
national security-related roles, including as consultants to
detainee interrogations.</p>
<p>Although Hubbard was not a member of the PENS task force, he
played an influential role. Indeed, according to Risen, within
days of the release of the PENS report in July 2005, Hubbard
received an email from Geoff Mumford, APA’s Science Policy
Director. In that letter Mumford thanked Hubbard for his
“personal contribution…in getting this effort off the ground”
and assured him that his views “were well represented by very
carefully selected [PENS] task force members.” A month before
receiving that note of appreciation, Hubbard had emailed
Mumford and other colleagues to let them know that he had
retired from the CIA. In the same message Hubbard also told
them about his new job: “Now I do some consulting work for
Mitchell and Jessen Associates.”</p>
<p>These troubling connections – between Mitchell and Jessen,
Hubbard, and the APA – represent only a single trail in what
must be a broad and thorough investigation of possible
collusion and corruption within the world’s largest
organization of psychologists. Other <a
href="http://ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Statement-on-Complicity-Psychology-and-War-on-Terror-Abuses.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Statement-on-Complicity-Psychology-and-War-on-Terror-Abuses.pdf']);">evidence</a> suggests
that the abhorrent actions of two highly paid CIA contractors
were by no means the only instances in which the profession’s
do-no-harm principles were tragically <a
href="http://ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Responds-to-APA-Leso-Decision.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Responds-to-APA-Leso-Decision.pdf']);">abandoned</a>.
So while this week’s grim Senate report provides important
answers to crucial questions, for the psychology profession
there is much more yet to be illuminated.</p>
<p><em><a href="mailto:reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com"><strong>Roy
Eidelson</strong></a> is a clinical psychologist and the
president of <a href="http://www.eidelsonconsulting.com/">Eidelson
Consulting</a>, where he studies, writes about, and
consults on the role of psychological issues in political,
organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past
president of <a href="http://www.psysr.org/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.psysr.org']);">Psychologists
for Social Responsibility</a>, associate director of the
Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at
Bryn Mawr College, and a member of the <a
href="http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.ethicalpsychology.org']);">Coalition
for an Ethical Psychology</a>. Email: <a
href="mailto:reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com">reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="mailto:drtrudybond@gmail.com"><strong>Trudy Bond</strong></a><strong> </strong>is
a counseling psychologist in independent practice in Toledo,
Ohio. She is a member of the Coalition for an Ethical
Psychology and on the steering committee of Psychologists
for Social Responsibility. Email: <a
href="mailto:drtrudybond@gmail.com">drtrudybond@gmail.com</a></em></p>
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