Psychologists Helped Guide Interrogations

[cal04]

Source: Washington Post

Extent of Health Professionals' Role at CIA Prisons Draws Fresh Outrage From Ethicists

When the CIA began what it called an "increased pressure phase" with captured terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida in the summer of 2002, its first step was to limit the detainee's human contact to just two people. One was the CIA interrogator, the other a psychologist.

During the extraordinary weeks that followed, it was the psychologist who apparently played the more critical role. According to newly released Justice Department documents, the psychologist provided ideas, practical advice and even legal justification for interrogation methods that would break Abu Zubaida, physically and mentally. Extreme sleep deprivation, waterboarding, the use of insects to provoke fear -- all were deemed acceptable, in part because the psychologist said so.

"No severe mental pain or suffering would have been inflicted," a Justice Department lawyer said in a 2002 memo explaining why waterboarding, or simulated drowning, should not be considered torture.

The role of health professionals as described in the documents has prompted a renewed outcry from ethicists who say the conduct of psychologists and supervising physicians violated basic standards of their professions.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/17/AR2009041703690.html?hpid=topnews

[ThomCat]

1. Any licensed professional who helped torture anyone

should lose their license and be barred for life from getting it back and from working in the field in any capacity. x(

They are clearly incapable of upholding the ethical requirements of their professions.

I wish we could get a list of names and start submitting ethics complaints to their professional associations.

[Seldona]

7. What if the medical organization itself is complicite?

I know the APA didn't want this brought to vote, and defended their member's participation in what turned out to be torture. The leadership had no interest in stopping its' members.

As far as I am concerned, any psychologist with an APA membership certificate on their wall should be ashamed of themselves. They may have ultimately passed the resolution barring their members from participating, but it damn sure wasn't the result of the ethics of being involved with torture that did it imo. It was the publicity a couple dozen members were able to generate, plain and simple.

Do no harm my ass.

snip

The American Psychological Association has been racked with controversy over the role of psychologists in Bush regime detainee interrogations. Unlike other health professions, which have determined that participation in the interrogations is unethical, the APA leadership has defended psychologists' involvement in interrogations at Guantanamo and the CIA "black sites." Psychologist opponents of the APA position have, for the first time in APA history, organized a referendum to change APA policy. They ask the APA membership to reject psychologists' participation when such sites are in violation of international law or the Constitution. The ballots are currently arriving in members mailboxes.

-

Vote to End the Shame APA has Inflicted on all Psychologists

By Bryant L. Welch, J.D., Ph.D.

In the eyes of the world psychologists are being seen as aiders and abettors of torture. The damage to the profession grows day by day, and the shamefulness of it reflects on all of us, whether we like it or not.

This is the third consecutive annual convention in which APA has presented new reasons for refusing to explicitly state that psychologists are not to participate in detention centers where torture is being used. In 2006 we were told, among many things, that torture was not occurring, and that it was sufficient for APA to reiterate its 1986 resolution "opposing torture." Last year we were told that psychologists' presence at the detention centers was actually necessary to prevent the torture whose very existence these same APA officials denied the previous year. Bizarrely, APA outlawed nineteen specific forms of torture, as if in some way the large number of proscribed techniques would cripple torture efforts.

snip

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18403


snip

The CIA's torture teachers

Psychologists helped the CIA exploit a secret military program to develop brutal interrogation tactics -- likely with the approval of the Bush White House.

By Mark Benjamin

Jun. 21, 2007 | There is growing evidence of high-level coordination between the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military in developing abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorist suspects. After the Sept. 11 attacks, both turned to a small cadre of psychologists linked to the military's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program to "reverse-engineer" techniques originally designed to train U.S. soldiers to resist torture if captured, by exposing them to brutal treatment. The military's use of SERE training for interrogations in the war on terror was revealed in detail in a recently declassified report. But the CIA's use of such tactics -- working in close coordination with the military -- until now has remained largely unknown.

According to congressional sources and mental healthcare professionals knowledgeable about the secret program who spoke with Salon, two CIA-employed psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were at the center of the program, which likely violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. The two are currently under investigation: Salon has learned that Daniel Dell'Orto, the principal deputy general counsel at the Department of Defense, sent a "document preservation" order on May 15 to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top Pentagon officials forbidding the destruction of any document mentioning Mitchell and Jessen or their psychological consulting firm, Mitchell, Jessen and Associates, based in Spokane, Wash. Dell'Orto's order was in response to a May 1 request from Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who is investigating the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Mitchell and Jessen have worked as contractors for the CIA since 9/11. Both were previously affiliated with the military's SERE program, which at its main school at Fort Bragg puts elite special operations forces through brutal mock interrogations, from sensory deprivation to simulated drowning.

A previously classified report by the Defense Department's inspector general, made public last month, revealed in vivid detail how the military -- in flat contradiction to previous denials -- used SERE as a basis for interrogating suspected al-Qaida prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and later in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the involvement of the CIA, which was secretly granted broad authority by President Bush days after 9/11 to target terrorists worldwide, suggests that both the military and the spy agency were following a policy approved by senior Bush administration officials.

snip

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/21/cia_sere/print.html

Besides getting that list will likely prove to be very difficult. This stuff has been known for a couple years. If anyone were going to step-up, I believe they would likely have done so by now.

[EFerrari]

10. It wasn't the members. APA was totally in bed with Pentagon intelligence

and CIA. Remember, they had a fake conference to write a fake position paper, stacked the conference with intel people without disclosing that and only allowed the participants to vote on the already drawn up document. APA leadership was in it up to their eyeballs.

[Seldona]

13. Votes on the resolution failed more than once.

That isn't all by any means, nor do I have the exact numbers for the years it failed to pass. However it is a majority.

Remaining a member of an organization that defended their member's participation is up to the individual. I wouldn't, if it were me.

I hope we can agree to disagree. I've been reading your posts for years.

[EFerrari]

15. There are a lot of jobs for psychologists in the military.

I agree with you that the members also had a stake in the situation.

Some good did come of it all, though. Iirc, one of the members that mounted a dissent was eventually voted in as president. So, it looks like there was a good house cleaning at the APA.

[Seldona]

17. 'So, it looks like there was a good house cleaning at the APA'

That is good news.

[EFerrari]

34. Sometimes, good things happen.

:)

[JohnnyLib2]

20. Thank you.

I am less embarrassed to be an APA member than an American, in regard to institutionally sanctioned torture.

[EFerrari]

33. You're right. If our country can manage to do what the APA did, we'll be in much better shape.

peace

[bobthedrummer]

59. Both APA's...and the American Psychiatric Association's liability insurer is AIG

http://www.psychprogram.com

[CreekDog]

8. Yep, that's just horrible

Why would anyone be willing to use their training and their professional credentials to break people. It's just beyond me!

Of course there are doctors who supervise executions. If they couldn't get doctors to do it, it would complicate them as it well should.

[saigon68]

48. Supervise before or after the WATER was poured?

Ass-clowns

[EFerrari]

2. See? This story is years old but here it is, reported as if we never heard it.

All the torture stories are retold the same way.

[Solly Mack]

5. Yes!!! Yes!!!

and I get so frustrated. (and I know you do too)

[EFerrari]

6. I don't really understand it. The closest I come is, political memory

is nothing if not selective. And there's nothing that I can think of more concretely, radically political than torture.

[Solly Mack]

9. That makes a lot of sense

[KT2000]

11. No kidding!

Law & Order: Criminal Intent even did a story line about this a few years ago.

[EFerrari]

16. It's freaky. We've been noticing this for a long time.

The APA convention that rebelled over this happened two years ago this May or June. That was well publicized locally and Amy reported it.

[chill_wind]

29. Was again noticing that same disturbing "amnesia" yesterday.

MSM 2004: Medical professionals...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5473047#5476633

[bobthedrummer]

52. Yep, seems like classical conditioning...

[Jeep789]

3. Psychologists in need of psychiatric care themselves

How can they live with themselves?

[Cynth The Poet]

12. same way the Nazi doctors did

They just told themselves it was for the good of the country. "The ends justify the means" and all that BS.

This from the sort of folks who have no problem with four-point restraints as long as they're used in a hospital setting.:evilfrown:

[chill_wind]

30. Hello Cynth

welcome aboard DU. It's disturbing to me beyond words to consider the eventual reassimilation of so many of these medical personnel types returning to our clinics, our nursing homes, our hospitals to care again for our own loved ones without perhaps even a scratch on their credentials and professional licenses...

[InkAddict]

21. Here's where the complicit order-followers assign the blame...

"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on."

Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard, said that the long, cold months of winter could be a major contributor to the January spike.

"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.

But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/05/army.suicides/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

[InkAddict]

22. Hear the silence?

http://www.nationalpsychologist.com/articles/art_v14n6_2.htm

[Downwinder]

4. Can we say that politicians

are any more or less corrupt or corruptible than doctors or lawyers?

[bleever]

14. So many professions who violated their principal oaths.

God help them.

And God help their professions, if they allow their time-established principles to be violated without consequence.

So many hundreds of thousands of hours of heartfelt work, and dedication to the progress of humanity, and the serious study of conscience, washed away, as if it never happened, or never really mattered.

[No Elephants]

19. You mean, like

this oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

How is refusing to enforce the Constitution of the United States against the highest officials of the United States preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States?

Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Anyone?

[chill_wind]

31. And like this one:

The Hippocratic Oath: Modern Version


I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.


Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_modern.html


Hospital Corpsman Pledge

"I solemnly pledge myself before God and these witnesses to practice faithfully all of my duties as a member of the Hospital Corps. I hold the care of the sick and injured to be a privilege and a sacred trust and will assist the Medical Officer with loyalty and honesty. I will not knowingly permit harm to come to any patient. I will not partake of nor administer any unauthorized medication. I will hold all personal matters pertaining to the private lives of patients in strict confidence. I dedicate my heart, mind and strength to the work before me. I shall do all within my power to show in myself an example of all that is honorable and good throughout my naval career."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Corpsman

(principled examples, at least..)

[chill_wind]

32. A Hypocritical Oath: Psychologists and Torture (Amy Goodman)

First, do no harm.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/06/1690

[LeftishBrit]

18. They need to be struck off for life, if this us proved

[usregimechange]

23. Which ones? They didn't ask me.

[Paladin]

24. I Recently Visited The WWII French Resistance Museum In Lyon

It's housed in the building where the Gestapo carried out their torture practices. Lots of photos of Resistance members, most bearing death dates in 1943-1944. I can't begin to describe how I feel about these memos, generated in my own country, in the present day. Anybody who engaged in these practices out to be nailed to the wall---and that goes double for medical professionals.......

[formercia]

25. The CIA has a unit dedicated for just this kind of thing.

When I was there, they were called the behavioral activities division (BAD).

You don't want these people inside your head. I had them used against me. They will fuck with you big time.

[bobthedrummer]

43. Maybe that's a Post Technical Services Directorate/PTSD group-kick...

there's nothing funny about those militarized nutty professors at all.

[madrchsod]

26. the russians have used punitive psychiatry for years....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psikhushka

the united states condemned the russians using punitive psychiatry. those days are over for the united states to condemn other nations.

[Cass]

27. Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime

Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime

By Evan Wallach
Sunday, November 4, 2007; Page B01

<...>
The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.
<...>
After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.
<...>
As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

The US prosecuted those who engaged in water boarding in the past. I don't see why it can be justified as an acceptable interrogation method today.

[Wednesdays]

28. Dr. Mengele, anyone?

:puke:

[The abyss]

35. Gee – Reminds me of the Candy Jones story.

First thing I thought of.

[bobthedrummer]

42. Or the Hersha sisters...

[daleo]

36. It's just like the old Soviet Union

Psychologists assisting the state in the torture of prisoners.

[ProgressIn2008]

37. Silence = complicity. No more excuses. No more. nt

[bobthedrummer]

38. kick

[bobthedrummer]

39. and another...

[jennygirl]

40. I as an Industrial/Organizational Psychology and APA member a

I am a psychologist and apa member whose father was in the Army for 21 years. My dad wanted me t0o be the first commissioned officer (in our family of sergeants) and he made it a point to respect the Geneva Conventions even when I was a young girl. One of his two tours in Germany he had the opportunity to visit the horror or Dachau
and made me promise NEVER EVER OBEY AN ILLEGAL ORDER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!! We even planned for me to get my Ph.D. in psych. while on active duty.

Fortunately for me,I was saved by a defense dept. hiring freeze. God, I came so close I passed all the written and board of majors tests. Looking back they wouldn't waste any time snatching me up and using my behavioral psych. expertise for unknown devious purpose.

This is to you people who keep criticizing us shrinks, most of us use our skills for the betterment of peoplekind.

P.S. I would have done as my father taught me and followed Lt. Watada to be court-martialed.

[bemildred]

41. Welcome to DU.

You have to know where to draw the line.

[bobthedrummer]

44. It's crazy, by design-kick

[bemildred]

45. "Little Eichmanns", eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns

[bobthedrummer]

46. ^

[bobthedrummer]

47. .

[superconnected]

49. Scary and scary as we go along. My what humans do to each other.

[bobthedrummer]

50. The most politicized profession aside from law in the Weimar Republic was medical-kick

[lovuian]

51. take their licenses away and lock them up

Horrible

[Hepburn]

53. I hear that Hitler also had "health care professionals" just like...

...the POS psychologist who was bought and pid for by the BushCo DOJ.

:puke:

[mule_train]

54. I was once recruited by a contracting broker who had been a military psychologist

and i did not trust the guy, period

he was a master of 'level jumping' and presumptiveness, and i cut him off at every turn, even when the market was thin

i knew every odd gesture was deliberate, and that his background was tricking people into doing things they didnt want to do, and may or may not have been in their best interests

[autorank]

55. "Practicing outside of their speciality" - any psych. who does this

That's right. Basic simpile law. If you're not qualified to do something in the field, you can't.

Well, since torture is not a sub specialty in psychology, then anyone doing it as a "psychologist"
is violating that common law.

You can be sure the legal eagles will pick up on this. It's the easiest way to see a civil remedy.

Dreadful behavior by anyone but by psychologists, truly unforgivable.

The American Psychiatric Association categorically bars psychiatrists from torture or violent
interrogation. The American Psycholoical Association failed to do that, used weasel words.
Wonder how many of the officers are involved?

[bobthedrummer]

56. "Tortured Profession: Psychologists Warned of Abusive Interrogations, Then Helped Craft Them"

by Sheri Fink (5-5-09 Pro Publica)
http://www.propublica.org/article/tortured-profession-psychologists-warned-of-abusive-interrogations-505

[autorank]

57. Having it both ways

"The new information re-opens a number of questions that have tugged at the conscience of a whole profession since the Sept. 11 attacks. Is it possible for psychologists to uphold the ethical tenets of their profession while working within a system of interrogation that violates those tenets? Does it matter if they raised objections to the system of interrogation but cooperated with it anyway? "

This is one of those instances I'm reminded of the dreadful pop poet Rod McKuen from the 60's who would say, "Some people say I'm a total hack and some say I'm like T.S. Elliot." That was total nonsense since there was only one correct answer.

The "tugged at the conscience of a whole profession" phrase is the only down side of this way to long (for my attention span) but hugely valuable article, truly valuable.

These are easy choices. They can't work against the code of ethics for the profession period. The did, therefore, they were not working with the profession. It doesn't matter at all if they raised objections to clearly unethical behavior, by their standards, because their task was to leave.

In many ways, the American Psychological Association did for psychologists involved in torture what the Military Commissions Act did for fascism, Busy-style. They legitimized it by not denouncing it completely. That's their shame to live with.

But these characters knew what was up and what was down. They chose to sow the wind. So did the APA leaders who allowed their compromise resolution on torture to pass.

Bad moves all around with these Gitmo mental health "professionals."

[bobthedrummer]

58. Yep.