The recent release of the Executive Summary of the Senate Select Committee Report on Intelligence has once again raised the distressing issue of psychologists involvement in the Bush Administration torture program and the role of APA.
As psychologists and psychoanalytic clinicians, I think we have two ethical obligations: (1) to do what we can to see that psychologists who have been involved in torture are held accountable for their actions; and (2) to see that the APA be held responsible for its actions to the extent that it colluded with torture policy and with those who participated in illegal techniques. Making public the Executive Summary of the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the first public admission by the US government that it has conducted a policy of torture in detention centers around the globe.
The release is a step toward transparency in an area of US foreign policy that the government has tried to hide from the American people since its inception in 2002. Furthermore, it renewed national attention on our policy of torture, one of the dark episodes of US international relations. For those two reasons, making the summary public is a welcome shift in government policy.
However, with regard to the involvement of psychologists, the released summary only mentions the role of two psychologists, although pseudonymed they are known to be James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, owners of a Washington based firm that contracted with the CIA for $181 million to conduct “enhanced interrogations,” $81 million of which was disbursed to their company before the contract was pulled. While Mitchell and Jessen deserve all the public scrutiny and criticism directed to them for teaching, promoting, and using torture techniques in their so-called “interrogation methods,” the exclusive spotlight on them has the potentially deleterious consequence of diverting attention from other psychologists who consulted on, and in at least one case participated in, torture.
Mitchell and Jessen were hardly the only psychologists involved in torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere. According to the Office of Inspector General’s 2004 report, psychologists taught reverse engineered SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) techniques at a conference in Fort Bragg in September, 2003, to JT-170 personnel, that is to say, the staff at Guantanamo. SERE techniques were originally devised during the Korean War to help our soldiers resist torture in case they were captured. The OIG 2004 report states clearly that the purpose of the conference was to teach JT-170 personnel to “reverse engineer” SERE tactics, that is, to deploy the torture techniques, for use at Guantanamo. It was shortly after this conference that those torture techniques were deployed on a regular basis at Guantanamo. The instructors at the Fort Bragg conference were psychologists, and the consultants at Guantanamo on how to use reverse engineered SERE techniques were psychologists, and while Mitchell consulted at Guantanamo, other psychologists did so as well.
While the torture at Guantanamo is documented in the published summary of the Senate committee report, the role of psychologists other than Mitchell and Jessen is not mentioned, although it may well be in the report itself which is classified and three times as long as the executive summary.
Information from a variety of sources dating back to 2004 documents the role of psychologists in the Bush Administrarion torture program (e.g., IOG, 2004; Bloch & Marks, 2005; McCoy, 2006; Sands, 2008; Miles, 2009). The psychologists at Guantanamo who conducted and consulted on the torture program were military psychologists who were stationed at Guantanamo and other detention sites. Mitchell and Jessen were independent contractors. While Mitchell and Jessen were not APA members, some of the other psychologists are and were at the time of their involvement, and therefore they do come under the purview and ethical standards of the APA.
Nonetheless, the APA position was originally that no psychologists were involved and some leaders, like former Presidents Koocher and Levant, attacked those who said anything to the contrary. When irrefutable evidence of psychologists’ involvement was revealed by journalists, the APA never apologized for its previous denials and claimed that only a “few” were involved. It has taken no action on anyone who participated.
So, it is important that while this issue is in the public spotlight we make the public aware that there is substantial evidence that psychologists who are APA members have been involved, and even the APA admits the participation of a “few.”
Because there is now an ongoing independent investigation of the APA role, in my opinion the most effective course of action at this juncture is to provide information we have to David Hoffman, who is in charge of the investigation, so that he is aware of the substantial body of evidence that is not in the Executive Summary of the committee report which is suggestive of both a signficant role for psychologists other than Mitchell and Jessen and collusion of the APA with the Bush administration torture policy and the psychologists who participated in it.
Mr. Hoffman can be reached at david.hoffman@sidley.com
Frank Summers, Ph.D., ABPP, President, Division 39
References
Bloch, G. and Marks, J. (2005). Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. The New England Journal of Medicine 353 (1), pp. 6-8.
McCoy, A. (2006). A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, New York: Metropolitan.
Miles, S. (2009). Oath Betrayed. New York: Random House.
Office of the Inspector General, Report to the US Congress, 2004.
Sands, P. (2008), Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.
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Frank Summers, Ph.D.
333 East Ontario Suite4509B
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President, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association
Author of The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process (Routledge 2013)
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PLEASE NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS Franksumphd@gmail.com
Frank Summers, Ph.D.
333 East Ontario Suite4509B
Chicago, IL 60611
President, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association
Author of The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process (Routledge 2013)
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