Psychologist Association Ethics Chief Paid $10,000s for Training Advisers to Guantanamo Interrogations

Back in May 2015, I broke the story that the American Psychological Association's "long-time Ethics Director Stephen Behnke worked directly with Department of Defense officials in creating a training curriculum for psychologists working with interrogators at Guantanamo and elsewhere." The issue was later taken up in the July 2015 "independent review" on APA collaboration with the Department of Defense, CIA, and FBI on national security interrogations released by David Hoffman and co-workers at the law firm Sidley Austin (see PDF for full report).

The Hoffman report did a decent job looking at Behnke's work with the Department of Defense on the establishment and training of psychologists and other behavioral health specialists, including sometimes psychiatrists, to work for DoD's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCTs. (For alternate view, see note below.) The BSCTs were formed to offer advice and guidance to interrogators at Guantanamo and other DoD interrogation sites, and to the guard and detention force at Guantanamo as well.

Today, BSCTs help facilitate Army Field Manual Appendix M interrogations, which use isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, and environmental and dietary manipulations, as well as other AFM interrogation techniques, such as "Emotional-Futility," to purposely prolong the "shock of capture," and create a "sense of hopelessness and helplessness" and futility in prisoners being interrogated. (See PDF of AFM.)

Mentioned in passing in the Hoffman report was the amount of money Behnke received in what was a clear conflict of interest, as on one hand he presented himself to the public as an ethics expert working for a professional psychological association, offering his advice on the torture controversy to APA members and the public at large. On the other hand, he was paid a good deal of money to help train adjuncts to ethically problematic if not abusive interrogations.

Behnke has said he did not personally profit from the trainings. He told the Hoffman/Sidley investigators that any money he received was turned over to APA, minus any travel expenses, and that APA used the money for "educational purposes" or programs. Where exactly that money went within APA -- and Behnke said he handed it directly over to the Ethics Office -- has never been precisely enumerated. The issue in any case is not only the money (prior to 2011, Behnke said he was paid $1500 per workshop, and $5000 per workshop in later years), but the unethical method by which Behnke and others kept the association with the BSCTs hidden.

According to the Hoffman report (p. 360):

Shortly after Behnke’s first training in April 2006, he and [BSCT psychologist Col. Debra] Dunivin explicitly discussed not telling APA’s Board about his participation in the BSCT training program. And in fact, it appears that APA’s Board was never made aware of his participation, his status as a DoD contractor, or these payments from DoD to APA. On June 18, 2006, Dunivin emailed Behnke (copying [Special Forces psychologist, Morgan] Banks) and asked, “Did you report to APA Board about participating in training at Ft Huachuca? I know we talked about waiting to report it out... What do you think, Morgan?” Behnke replied that the Board did not know, and implied that keeping quiet about it might be the best strategy: “I’ve not mentioned it to the Board; after my last meeting with the Board, I expect that it would receive the Board’s full support. I have informed my APA supervisors, naturally, but given how hot things are at the moment discretion may be the better part of valor for the time being, at least in terms of the broader APA community.”

Behnke did in fact tell his supervisor, APA Deputy CEO Michael Honaker, that he was regularly giving a paid ethics lecture at an Army base as part of the interrogation training course for BSCT psychologists.1679 Honaker did not provide this information to CEO Norman Anderson or the Board. When Anderson learned from Sidley during the investigation that Behnke had been providing this training as a DoD contractor, he appeared stunned, and was visibly upset that the matter had not been discussed with the Board.

Guantanamo has been widely condemned as inhumane and a torture site, even under the Obama administration administration, where conditions of indefinite detention, violent forced cell extractions, drugging of prisoners for "chemical restraint," and multiple suicides have taken place. In addition, the Obama administration reliance on the current Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on interrogation is problematic, according to UN monitoring agencies, who said some of the techniques allowed in that manual's Appendix M amount to "ill treatment" and raise concerns of torture.

The UN issued a report criticizing the Army Field Manual's Appendix M in late 2014, but as we shall see below, both APA and Behnke continued to work teaching "ethics" to those who used or consulted on use of Appendix M as recently as last year.

Dr. Behnke and his APA associates certainly knew of the controversies over interrogation, including by Appendix M methods, but chose to offer their services to DoD, while hiding them from APA rank-and-file and the public at large. Behnke was later fired by the Board. His supervisor, former Deputy CEO at APA, Michael Honaker, "retired."

The Contracts Released by Hoffman/APA

Below is a list of known contracts Behnke was involved in. The earliest available for perusal is from December 2010. The most recent available is from February 2015. Prior to 2012, Behnke was listed as the contractor; afterwards, APA itself is listed as contractor. According to Hoffman's narrative of events (pages 358-361 in his report), Behnke said he worked as a contractor doing training for and designing curriculum for training the BSCTs since 2006. Hence the list below is by no means complete, only what has been made thus far publicly available.

In the contract for Behnke's 2010 work for DoD, he is described as having "been associated with the BSCT course since its inception several years ago. He is viewed as an expert in this field." (All quoted material and data on Behnke's contracts are from Binder #3 of the material released by APA to accompany the Hoffman report. See PDF of this portion of the material, and this link for all associated materials to the Hoffman report.)

2/17/15 - Contractor: APA
Issuer: USA Medcom - HCAA
Amount: $10,000
“Provide Behavioral Science Consultation course”

1/22/14 - Contractor: APA
Issuer: USA Medcom - HCAA
Amount: $10,000 - BSCT SME Instuctor DSB

1/25/2013 - Contractor: APA Issuer: Great Plains Regional Contracting Office, USA Medcom -HCAA
Modify earlier contract, no $ amount specified - "CLIN 0001... Contractor will provide a Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) Course"

12/19/12 - Contractor: APA Issuer: USA Medcom –HCAA (Health Care Acquisition Activity) - Amount: $14,999
BSCT instructor – 3 1-day classes

12/20/11 - Contractor: Stephen Behnke Issuer: USA Medcom -HCAA - Amount: $15,000
BSCT Guest speaker providing course – 3 1-day classes

12/22/10 - Contractor: Stephen Behnke Issuer: Great Plains Regional Contracting Office, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston - Amount: $7,497
Guest Speaker, consultant to, BSCT training, 3 (1) day trainings

Terms of Contracts

The classes were of 12-16 students per training, and conducted at the Army's Ft. Huachuca Intelligence Center and School.

The training will be conducted at Ft. Huachuca at the Intelligence Center and School. The target audience is composed of military psychologists (psychiatrists occasionally) and enlisted behavioral health specialists assigned in support of interrogation/detainee operations....
The services required to meet the agency's needs are to provide behavioral health personnel training in support of interrogation/detainee operations. Topics to be addressed and therapeutic materials:
* Ethics involved in performing duties as a BSCT
* American Psychological Association's view on torture
* American Psychiatric Association's view on torture
* MEDCOM/OTSG Policy on utilizing BSCTs
* FM2-22.3 Human Intelligence Operations
* How to remain Safe, Legal, Ethical and Effective as a BSCT

It is worth noting that the contract language in the latter contracts stated, "OTSG [Office of the Surgeon General]/MEDCOM policy Memo 09-053 (Behavioral Science Consultation Policy) requires that all active duty Psychologist, Forensic Psychiatrist, and Behavioral Science Technicians, serving in a BSCT role be trained in the core principles of interrogation and the psychology of persuasion."

The 2012 contract stated: "This contract will consist of training conducted on 'Ethical Decision Making' under guidance and direction. The trainer and facilitator will provide guidance, eduction and knowledge in learning and application of ethical principles within Behavioral Science Consultants Teams. Once trained, BSTC [sic] will provide safe, legal, ethical and effective consultative services to Interrogators, Detention Guards, Intelligence Commanders and Detention Commanders using the sound ethical principles."

There's a lot to ponder in the full information on Behnke's contract. The reason to publish this particular post is to bring more of the full story of unethical behavior at APA into the open.

But it is not only APA's actions that are notable. One thing I found interesting is how long, even really to the present day, the training of the BSCTs to help interrogators remains something contracted through DoD's health services. What is that about? Perhaps it has something to do with drawing BSCT personnel often out of current medical military personnel. In any case, the blurring between medicine and the world of interrogation and torture remains a feature of DoD's ongoing interrogation concept. Additionally, the full story of the ongoing role of the Office of the Surgeon General, or the Army Medical Services in working with military intelligence and detention officials remains somewhat obscure.

There's plenty to still investigate on the torture scandal, but the appetite to do so remains vanishingly small, particularly in Congress. Indeed, there is nothing in the supposedly "progressive" platform of the Democratic Party about any kind of accountability for past torture, nor any indication that the abusive Army Field Manual should be changed or withdrawn. I don't expect to see any change in a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration either.

-- Added Note (8/7/16): After this posting was published, I had some feedback on Twitter to the effect that my conclusions were unfair to the military psychologists involved, that they were not involved in any torture or were ever found to be, and that in essence, I didn't know what I was talking about. In previous postings I've given links to a website where these psychologists, including Debra Dunivin and Morgan Banks, mentioned above, have posted letters, relevant documents, etc. I do recommend the interested reader peruse their site at www.hoffmanreportapa.

While I disagree with their point of view, the psychologists who put together hoffmanreportapa.com have done a service in posting links to many valuable documents. See their "references" page.

The most recent statement by the group is dated August 2, 2016 and is signed by Colonel (Ret.) L. Morgan Banks, Colonel (Ret.) Debra L. Dunivin, Colonel (Ret.) Larry C. James, and Dr. Russ Newman. In the format of a reply to a recent posting by anti-torture activist, psychologist Stephen Soldz, the reply document states that the Hoffman report’s conclusions are incorrect, "especially the claim that APA and DoD officials colluded to ensure the PENS Guidelines would not constrain abusive interrogations."

Banks, et al. believe that DoD documents in place already made clear that torture was unacceptable. They say that Hoffman characterized the "normal organizational process of creating policy as 'collusion,'" and misread certain sections of the APA's PENS report on ethics and national security. Even more, they maintain that military psychologists in national security settings "can be a strong bulwark against abuses." They say that "DoD psychologists became a primary force for trying to end abusive interrogations." This is certainly a key argument by any who would feel Stephen Behnke was in fact trying to prevent torture by lecturing to BSCTs, and that there is nothing untoward about his contracting to do so.

I was particularly interested in Banks, et al. claim that a June 9, 2015 press release by "seven human rights and civil liberties organizations, including the ACLU and Physicians for Human Rights, [which] supported the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act." Banks et al. note, "The release does not criticize Appendix M, which specifies the stringent restrictions placed on the use of separation (the military’s term) or isolation (the critics’ preferred term). It is worth noting that the APA likewise gave strong support to the McCain-Feinstein Amendment both before and following the release of the Hoffman report."

Banks, et al. are correct about this press release, and I was sharply critical of this press release by ACLU and others in a June 13, 2015 article I posted at this site.

But Banks, et al. must ignore the many writings by human rights organizations that have been very critical of Appendix M. Indeed, in a March 11, 2016 article by Deb Reichmann at Associated Press, Raha Wala, senior counsel for defense and intelligence at Human Rights First is quoted as saying, "We have been asking for changes to the Army Field Manual and Appendix M in particular for years now... There hasn't been momentum. I now sense that in the first time in years, there is a real interest in looking at it."

In the same article, Mark Fallon, who leads the research committee of the Obama administration's multiple agency High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, said, "I don't think there's much validity to Appendix M... I think it can open the door to the types of abuses we have seen before."

Hence, there is a gulf of difference in opinion between myself and other APA and U.S. government critics and the people at hoffmanreportapa.com. Interested readers should pursue the relevant documents and decide for themselves who makes the stronger case.

APA Torture & Ethics Scandal Highlights Fact No Medical Professionals Have Been Held to Account for Torture

In her very interesting analysis of the American Psychological Association's new policy calling for withdrawal of psychologists from national security interrogations and sites identified with torture and abuse, such as Guantanamo, Deborah Popowski ("The APA’s Watershed Move to Ban Psychologists’ Complicity in Torture," August 11) writes:

I predict that ultimately, this resolution [Motion 23B passed by APA's Council of Representatives] will be more powerful than its AMA and American Psychiatric Association counterparts precisely because it took years of dogged advocacy to achieve. The APA’s bad behavior was a mobilizing force for psychologists of conscience. The organization now faces a savvy group of reformers that understand its playbook and will keep pressing for enforcement. I look forward to seeing how they ride this wave of momentum.

I think this is a good point, but it, like most of the analysis on the APA's new interrogations policy has a certain unreal character, as its analysis exists outside of the realities of the Department of Defense justifies its use of health professionals, including psychologists and psychiatrists, in interrogations.

DoD and the American Psychiatric Association "Ban" on Psychiatrists in Interrogations

Popowski mentions AMA and the American Psychiatric Association (APsyA) because both of these practitioner groups previously issued policies forbidding their members to participate in interrogations. Such participation is unethical, they said, although the psychiatrist's group did allow their members to "provide training to military or civilian investigative or law enforcement personnel... on the possible medical and psychological effects of particular techniques and conditions of interrogation..."

But what these powerful organizations condemn and how they enforce these policies are two different things. In addition, how the Pentagon chooses to interpret the policies of these organizations is yet another thing.

In a September 2008 letter to then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the APsyA president, Dr. Nada Stotland, quoted an article by George Annas, who noted, "The DOD's new position that its physicians not follow nationally and internationally accepted medical ethics represents a major policy change." Stotland was complaining about how the Pentagon continued to train psychiatrists for interrogation despite the APsyA's opposition to the their participation. It is not known if or how Gates replied, but DoD's policy in the matter itself never changed.

But the psychiatrist association itself never put any teeth in their policy. It never moved to sanction any member for participation in interrogations, which is done under the auspices of the Pentagon's Behavioral Science Consultation (BSC) program. Later, then-APA president Gerald Koocher would use APsyA's stated preference not to bring any such charges as an example of the rightness of APA's own policy. (See "President's Column," APA Monitor, July/August 2006)

Indeed, no doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse, medical technician, or any medical professional involved in interrogations has ever been brought up on charges by any medical or professional association. Attempts to bring charges by state licensing agencies were undertaken by private individuals -- attempts with which Ms. Popowski has assisted -- and such attempts universally failed (thus far), though not for trying.

But as important as the attempts to get at the torturers via licensing board complaints are, is a strategy aimed at prosecution via state licensing agencies really going to be effective? As one state licensing agency official told me, "How do you expect us to prosecute these cases when the U.S. government will not do so?" It would indeed take a great deal of courage to buck the federal government. There is also the issue that legal actions against health professionals would be subject to "graymail" defenses, in that defendants will argue that (supposedly, or potentially) exonerating evidence is classified and highly unlikely to be made available from the government. What happens then?

Applicable DoD policy on BSCs goes back to the 2006 DoD Instruction 2310.08E, "Medical Program Support for Detainee Operations." This policy allows DoD to use psychiatrists or physicians with the approval of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, despite the policy by the American Psychiatric and American Medical associations.

E2.2 As a matter of professional personnel management, physicians are not ordinarily assigned duties as BSCs, but may be so assigned, with the approval of ASD(HA), in circumstances when qualified psychologists are unable or unavailable to meet critical mission needs.

In case some might think this old Bush-era instruction is not in force, it is. The most current policy, DoD Directive 3115.09, "DoD Intelligence Interrogations, Detainee Debriefings, and Tactical Questioning" (in its most up-to-date version of 11/15/13) references the 2006 DoD 2310.08E instruction as "reference (r)", i.e., for policy on BSCs.

Manipulation of Phobias

It's worth noting, 3115.09 has also made allowance for the ongoing use of SERE techniques, as they are used in the Army Field Manual, which I pointed out some time back. The only recent change in 3115.09 has to do with BSC manipulation of detainee phobias, a change that has not been publicly noted before: "Behavioral science consultants may not be used to determine detainee phobias for the purpose of exploitation during the interrogation process." That appears to be the one concession made by the Obama administration to criticisms of its interrogation policy. The reference was to phobias as addressed in Army Field Manual 2-22.3 in its description of the "Fear Up" approach. Before this change was made in 2012, BSCs were allowed to manipulate or create phobias in prisoners in a style of coercive interrogation that an earlier version of the Field Manual noted some nations -- though not the United States -- would find illegal.

The fact is, the opponents of existing policy at APA, not to mention officers at AMA, APsyA, and a number of human rights watchdog groups are aware of current Pentagon policy on using physicians in interrogations in lieu of psychologists, and despite the opposition on paper of physicians organizations, but nothing is ever said about it. One has to ask why this is. Psychologists, who still have a fight on their hands in making the new APA policy enforceable within APA, have not mentioned DoD's policy on such use, about which nothing has changed since the days of the Bush administration.

The Enforcement Question

Except for an Aug. 8 article in Al Jazeera America, no news accounts have noted that when APA opponents of the old interrogation policy were putting forth their motion to ban members from participation in interrogations or at sites where human rights abuses take place, the first draft of that motion had a strong enforcement proviso, which stated, "Be it resolved that the APA will direct staff to contact the licensing boards of all states and territories informing them that it is the sense of the Council of Representatives that any complaint against a psychologist who refuses to comply with the call to leave Guantanamo be reviewed ‘with prejudice’."

The final version of the motion that passed, and is hailed as a victory, omitted that provision. Such a step back from enforcement does not bode well for the future effectiveness of the APA action.

Other arguments regarding the efficacy of enforcing the APA's new policy were raised by psychologist John Grohol at his blog PsychCentral last week. Grohol quoted an August 18, 2015 email from APA’s Associate General Counsel Jesse Raben to psychologist and ethics exert Ken Pope, who resigned from APA in 2008 over APA's slippery ethics policies.

With regards to 23B (and therefore with the 2008 [member-initiated] resolution [banning psychologists from interrogation at human rights violating sites]) while this new Council resolution invokes Ethical Principle A to “take care to do no harm,” it does not amend the Ethics Code and is not enforceable as a result [emphasis added]. However, Council’s implementation plan for the new policy requests that the Ethics Committee consider a course of action to render the prohibition against national security interrogations enforceable under the Ethics Code.

Grohol's article must have made some impact, because Nadine Kaslow and Susan McDaniel, both members of the Special Committee for the Independent Review by David Hoffman that excoriated APA's connivance with the Department of Defense on interrogation issues, responded to Grohol's charges in an email to APA's Division 48, The Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence. (Kaslow is also an APA past president, while McDaniel is the organization's president-elect.)

APA Officials Respond

Kaslow and McDaniel's full reply is not online, but what follows is an edited version of the high points. The two APA officials sympathized with Grohol's skepticism, but felt "that this reaction is misplaced at this time in the history of APA."

The authority and processes regarding policy development and modifications to the APA Ethics Code are stipulated in APA’s Bylaws and Association Rules. The first very important step is for a policy, such as the national security interrogation prohibition, to be passed by Council. For those policies with ethical aspects such as this one, the next step is for it to be considered by the Ethics Committee. The independence of the Ethics Committee is important, as described in the Hoffman Report. According to our Bylaws and Association Rules, the Ethics Committee has authority for formulating the Ethics Code, overseeing the process for changing the Ethics Code (which involves governance review and public comment), and for enforcing it. The movers of New Business Item #23B -- Scott Churchill, Jean Maria Arrigo, and Frank Farley, supported by Steven Reisner and Dan Aalbers -- were well aware of the necessary process. They successfully achieved the policy change, the all-important first step to achieving their ultimate goal of an enforceable prohibition, in keeping with the American Medical Association. (The American Psychiatric Association's policy is not part of their Ethics Code.)

.... The movers also included a provision in the implementation section of the resolution for Council to request that the Ethics Committee "consider pursuing an appropriate course of action in as expeditious a manner as possible to incorporate into the Ethics Code the prohibitions surrounding psychologist participation in national security interrogations, as set forth in this policy." The next step is for the Ethics Committee to carry out this recommendation. An amendment to the Ethics Code will provide the necessary “teeth” for the policy to be enforced. In the interim, I would like to point out that the Ethics Committee considers APA policies, guidelines, and other documents when interpreting the Standards of the Ethics Code.

.... As noted above, although the 2013 policy is not enforceable under the Ethics Code, it provides valuable guidance to the Ethics Committee in this regard....

Changing policy, aspects of the Ethics Code, and creating a culture that is transparent and trustworthy in all parts of the organization will take time and considerable effort. But it is a commitment we feel deeply in support of our public, our discipline, and our members....

Reading Kaslow and McDaniel's email, I think Ms. Popowski may have a point about the sanguinary effect of the new APA policy. From my own standpoint, I believe it was a huge step forward for the new APA policy to bring the recondite and legal struggle against the U.S. Reservations to the UN Convention Against Torture treaty out into the open, and put the imprimatur of a huge medical and professional organization behind the goal of removing those reservations, which in action eviscerated enforcement of that treaty in the U.S., and which were used by John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury to alibi torture in their infamous OLC memos on interrogation.

Loopholes on Unethical Research to Remain

But there are also giant holes in APA's new policy, particularly as it pertains to psychologist research for the military and intelligence agencies. Since that is really where the bulk of federal money to psychologists and psychology programs go, that means the haze of unreality around these issues is a veritable fog of obfuscation. APA ethics code 8.05 allows psychologists to suspend informed consent -- which is the bedrock of ethical research on human subjects -- "where otherwise permitted by law or federal or institutional regulations." In addition, ethics code 8.07 allows psychologists to use deception in research on "prospective participants," unless such deception would be "reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress." The emphasis on "severe" emotional distress is a weakening of earlier language, and allows great discretion for research using deception that would allow, say, "moderate" levels of emotional distress. Indeed, a section of the Hoffman report contains a section on the research issue, and I will examine it more fully in the near future.

Nevertheless, when it comes to interrogations or psychologists presence at national security detention sites, the APA policy is much more stringent that that passed by APsyA or AMA, and demands that psychologists not even involved in interrogations at sites such as Guantanamo be transferred out. But will DoD listen to that? And if psychologists continue to work in such secret circumstances, how will APA or anyone else know? And what if anything will happen about that? I don't imagine anyone in DoD is losing much sleep over this... yet.

There is also the force of moral suasion, which if not terribly powerful, does play some role in historical circumstances. The leaders of the fight against APA's previous torture policy, and against an APA leadership that worked with government forces to allow torture and abuse of prisoners during interrogation and detention, are to be congratulated. I know from private conversations they are aware that more battles lie ahead. I suggest those battles lie directly with the Obama administration itself, and the leadership of other medical professional and human rights organizations to hold the administration's metaphoric feet to the fire, and end the use of all medical professionals in interrogations and under cruel conditions of confinement at so-called national security detention sites that are known to abuse prisoners, like Guantanamo.

Soldz & Reisner's "Comments" to APA on Hoffman Report, with My Initial Thoughts on the Report

As can be seen from the introductory material below, the following material has been granted wide release by its authors. I am reproducing it here with general formatting from the original. A few typos have been quietly corrected.

The "Comments" by Stephen Soldz and Steven Reisner concern the July 10 release of the APA-initiated Hoffman report, "Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Interrogations, and Torture," conducted by David H. Hoffman of the law firm Sidley Austin LLP. A PDF of the lengthy report can be found here. APA's own press release and their own recommended actions related to the report's release is linked here. An index to the exhibits in the report and five binders of supplementary materials used in the report are posted at APA's website.

Previously, I cited what I believed to be serious questions regarding conflict of interest issues regarding Hoffman and CIA and the RAND Corporation (see here and here). I still believe those were relevant questions to ask, and until I absorb the full report, I cannot say for certain what effect any relationship in particular between Hoffman and the CIA or RAND had in the final version of the report.

In this report, Hoffman stated that he could not get the full story on how the APA interacted with CIA, primarily due to classification issues. Regarding the issue, for instance, of participation of past APA presidents with the CIA, Hoffman had this to say in a key paragraph:

As to the actions and knowledge of the former APA officials listed above (Fox, Gravitz, Matarazzo, and Seligman), some of them were clearly brought closer to the circle of knowledge through important interactions with Hubbard and Mitchell, as described further below. But we did not find evidence that there was a significant link between APA and their interactions or communications with the CIA. It is a fair question whether important interactions between these very prominent former APA officials also entailed, led to, or were connected to important interactions between APA and CIA. Except for very limited instances, we did not see any evidence of this in our examination of APA emails and other documents, and in our interviews, despite having found a very substantial amount of email and documentary evidence establishing important interactions between APA and government officials in other contexts, as set out above and below. On the one hand, this makes sense, since prominent psychologists who are former APA Presidents and Board members would not necessarily think that their interactions with the CIA about these issues would call for them to contact the APA, unless the CIA had specifically requested something from APA. On the other hand, we keenly recognize that in investigating activities involving the CIA, an agency that trains people to keep things secret for a living, we are especially limited in our ability to determine definitively what occurred, and therefore we are aware that our conclusions can only be based on the evidence available to us. This is especially true when the interactions are between CIA officials and individuals who were not APA officials or employees at the time, since their emails would not necessarily have been within APA’s system. [pg. 46 of report]

Furthermore, there are various points were evaluations of the evidence seems unwarranted, or based on interviews and evaluations of credibility that cannot be independently assessed, as in the assertion that "APA did not have the same close and longstanding relationship with the CIA as it did with DoD..." I also believe that Hoffman's dismissal of the import of the 2003 APA-CIA-RAND meeting, and the roles of Kirk Hubbard, Charles "Andy" Morgan, Kirk Kennedy, Susan Brandon, Philip Zimbardo, Martin Seligman, and others, may not be accurate. But I hesitate to say more until I have more fully examined the evidence, particular what has been posted in the over 600 MB of binder material at APA's Hoffman-related webpage.

There is also the significant problem that the entire issue of the controversy over the use of Behavioral Science Consultants in interrogations is posed as something in the past. In fact, as I've made clear recently, the passing of the Feinstein-McCain amendment to the National Authorization Act, which made use of the Army Field Manual a lawful requirement by government interrogators, including the CIA, means that use of BSCs have now the force of law. Much worse, and related, is the fact that the Army Field Manual on interrogations itself contains many abusive and torture-like "techniques" like isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, use of fear and inducing "hopelessness and helplessness" in detainees, such that it has been condemned by the UN and various human rights organizations. The Hoffman report never references anything in relation to this.

Despite these concerns, and any others I may yet find, the report has provided a wealth of material that is useful to those who oppose unethical use of medical professionals in interrogations, as well as those who oppose torture in general and are trying to unwind the entire story of U.S. involvement in torture. For that I am grateful. The report helps fill in many gaps in our knowledge of how APA interacted with the Department of Defense, both in sidestepping and sabotaging critics, and in managing how APA ethics practice could be made congruent with DoD (and CIA) needs. I agree, however, with Hoffman, that evidence shows that changes to the APA ethics code itself, made in 2002, were not in response to the need to alibi torture, at least not in their inception.

Additionally, it has not passed my notice that the report has important new details on certain stories I covered earlier, including the interrogation and abuse meted out by NCIS to Daniel King, and Stephen Behnke's work helping train the BSCTs.

Also, Hoffman examined changes made to the "Common Rule" governing government-linked human subjects research changes made by Paul Wolfowitz to DoD's own directive on such research, and stated, "it seems likely that the exceptions in the Common Rule and the definitional changes in the Wolfowitz Directive broadened opportunities for DoD to conduct research on detainees subjected to interrogations."  He added, "However, there is no evidence that APA acted to facilitate psychologists’ participation in such research, if it occurred."

Hoffman evidently drew in part upon a lengthy examination of the Wolfowitz Directive and other ethics changes which Jason Leopold and I wrote in October 2010, as he footnoted that article in a section that commented on the weakening of informed consent protections by DoD (pg. 281 of the report).

As regards the rehabilitation of the APA, I am dubious. In my Jan. 2008 public resignation from the APA, I wrote, "I view APA's shifting position on interrogations to spring from a decades-long commitment to serve uncritically the national security apparatus of the United States. Recent publications and both public and closed professional events sponsored by APA have made it clear that this organization is dedicated to serving the national security interests of the American government and military, to the extent of ignoring basic human rights practice and law. The influence of the Pentagon and the CIA in APA activities is overt and pervasive, if often hidden."

Ongoing revelations, including the material in the Hoffman report, strengthens this conclusion from seven years ago. I do not believe that, recent events otherwise, this is going to change.

Now, the U.S. is gearing up for new Cold War with Russia and China, and the use of psychologists and other medical professionals by the military and intelligence services is likely to continue. It would be utopian to believe that APA or any significant organization involved in government contracts and activities would be able to separate itself from such actions. Instead, we might see that a rejuvenated APA, supposedly made clean by a purging of elements, like Behnke, APA's former Ethics chief who was recently fired based on the Hoffman revelations, still working on many elements of strengthening imperialist armed forces aimed at war and conquest, much as medical professionals and their organizations have in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

It has not passed my attention, for instance, that the American Psychiatric Association and American Medical Association, both of which have stated policies against the use of their members in interrogations, have never once censored or made charges against any CIA or DoD medical professional for their actions in relation to renditions and torture. As APA proposes to make a similar ban, it is worth considering the worthlessness of how such bans have been implemented, or rather not implemented, at those organizations.

The following are the thoughts and recommendations of key opponents of APA policy on interrogations. I have not evaluated these in any depth, and present them here for public examination and as a key part of the evolving discussion around the APA torture scandal, noting that the authors note their comments are preliminary, and that they, too, have not had time to absorb the full content or import of the Hoffman report.

I thank Stephen Soldz and Steven Reisner for their willingness and dedication to transparency to make these "Opening Comments" to APA a part of the public record. (Update: Dr. Soldz has now added a link to his own posting of the "Comments.")

Folks,

As you know, Steven Reisner and I met with the APA board on July 2. We agreed to confidentiality until the report was public, which happened today. We, therefore, are distributing the Opening Comments that Steven and I made at that meetings. We believe that they provide a guide with which to judge APA’s actions in the coming weeks. Feel free to distribute. [Apologies for cross-posting.] {Ed. note: square brackets in original}

Opening Comments of Stephen Soldz and Steven Reisner to the American Psychological Association Board, July 2, 2015

Last October, James Risen published allegations of American Psychological Association (APA) complicity in the Bush era torture program in his book Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. In the wake of these allegations, the APA Board in November 2014 commissioned an independent investigation of these allegations. This allegation was conducted by Chicago attorney David Hoffman of Sidley Austin LLC and his colleagues.

In late June, 2015, as they prepared to receive the Hoffman Report, the APA Board asked to meet with us (Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz). We presume we were asked because over the last nine years we have been leaders of the movement to remove psychologists from abusive and sometimes torturous national security interrogations. Further, we have researched and published extensively on these issues and extensively shared the results of our research with Hoffman and his team. Most recently, we were the psychologist coauthors of the report All the President’s Psychologists: The American Psychological Association’s Secret Complicity with the White House and US Intelligence Community in Support of the CIA’s ”Enhanced” Interrogation Program, which was featured in a May 1, 2015 New York Times article.

The Board requested and we agreed to keep the substance of our discussions confidential until the report became public. However, with the public release of the report, we are now free to speak. Below are our opening comments to the Board.

Stephen Soldz Comments:

Thank you for having us here. I wish it was under less disturbing circumstances. We have come to discuss with you what we believe needs to be done by the American Psychological Association (APA) in the wake of the imminent release of the Hoffman Report. The conditions of confidentiality requested by the Board and agreed to by us have precluded our being able to discuss our ideas with our colleagues who have joined us for the last decade in our attempts to unveil the web of collusion beneath APA’s policies and actions regarding psychologist participation in sometimes abusive national security interrogations. However, our ideas have benefited from hundreds of hours of discussion with colleagues regarding the steps necessary to put APA on an ethical course. We believe that these ideas reflect those of many others besides ourselves, though we also consider it vital that the voices of those many others be actively heard as we proceed.

I would like to make some opening comments, following which Steven Reisner will describe our ideas for the initial steps needed for APA to right itself and weather the storm that is just over the horizon. We would like to emphasize that these comments and ideas were put down less than 48 hours after we obtained access to the 500+ page Report. Neither of us has even read the entire report, much less absorbed it. Thus, these ideas are preliminary and may well be supplemented by others as we fully absorb the report and discuss with colleagues what should be done.

I would like to begin with a very brief summary of what we take to be the gist of this report. The report documents in exhaustive detail the existence of a years long conspiracy to engage in collusion between senior leadership in the APA and the intelligence community, including the CIA and, most notably, the Department of Defense (DOD). This collusion involves a two-pronged strategy by the APA: First, there was a concerted attempt to generate so-called “ethical” policies on psychologist involvement in interrogations that would provide no constraints whatsoever on psychologists in the military working for DOD and other agencies. The second prong consisted of an elaborate deceptive and dishonest public relations strategy to falsely portray APA policy as concerned with the protection of detainee welfare and human rights.

This collusion included the development of apparently fine-sounding policy statements that were, as the report documents, virtually always vetted directly by DOD officials; manipulation of critics of APA policy to ensure that attempts to change that policy were toothless and did not in fact challenge DOD policies or practices; a strategic decision to turn heads away from increasing evidence on torture and other detainee abuse, including homicides, and on psychologist involvement in that abuse; and the dismissal and/or failure to investigate in any serious way ethical complaints against psychologists alleged to have participated in abusive interrogations, accompanied by repeated assurances from APA officials that all complaints would be comprehensively investigated. This collusion was accompanied by systematic manipulation of APA governance procedures, the active solicitation of opposition to critics by APA staff, and even the recording, in at least two known instances, of falsely claimed “unanimous” votes.

This years-long collusion was accompanied by false statements from every Board and every elected President over the last decade denying the existence of the collusion described in such detail by Mr. Hoffman. The collusion was also accompanied by squelching of critics and, sometimes, by personal attacks upon them in the face of overwhelming evidence in the public record, including media reports and the results of multiple government investigations by Congress and other agencies. Most notable, are the vicious personal attacks upon PENS task force member and national hero Jean Maria Arrigo, who first revealed the collusion, attacks that in one case was distributed widely by the president of the Association; responses to those attacks went unanswered by that President or any other Association official. Other critics have been banned from state psychological association listservs; been attacked by an APA president in the official Monitor on Psychology as “opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars;” been threatened with possible libel suits and ethics complaints; been disinvited from speaking to and writing for state psychological associations; been surreptitiously recorded by APA staff when having a private conversation with reporters; had venues where they were speaking criticized and even implicitly threatened with loss of accreditation; and called “clowns” in a national psychological newspaper by an individual given numerous awards by APA and its divisions and who is often in APA governance. This, sadly, is only a partial list of the attacks on critics. In none of these instances did people in APA leadership positions stand up to defend the right of critics to speak. These actions were all undertaken against those who sought to uncover the collusion that was denied by Association leadership, including this Board and the current CEO only a few months ago.

That is the background to our meeting today to discuss how the APA should respond to the crisis facing the Association, the profession, and the country. I suspect that some of you have not yet fully grasped the magnitude of this crisis. As the result of its collusion, the APA is likely to become the public face of torture. The press storm will be fierce. Editorials will condemn the Association’s actions. Congress members will weigh in. Human rights groups, frustrated with the lack of accountability for torture, will be lining up to raise money off of suing the APA. There may be a decade of lawsuits, draining the budget and staff and elected officials’ time. Members will flee and young psychologists will be even more reluctant to join. And the Association’s 501©(3) nonprofit status may be threatened.

More importantly, if not handled correctly, torture collusion will become the public face of the profession we love. There is little doubt that the APA’s actions will go down in history books next to the chapter on the Tuskegee and Guatemalan syphilis experiments. The actions we take in the coming weeks, months, and years will determine how that chapter ends.

I would like to end by outlining what I believe are the fundamental principles that should guide the APA’s actions forward. These are: contrition, accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and genuine change. Notice that I did not list “healing” or “reconciliation.” Healing and reconciliation are needed, certainly, but this is not the time to talk of them. Before healing can start, we need painful surgery to remove the tumor that our work and the Hoffman Report demonstrate have been at the heart of the APA for the last decade.

Now Steven will describe the preliminary steps necessary to start removing this tumor.

Steven Reisner Comments:

Following on Stephen's comments I want to reiterate: There is a cancer on the APA. You here will have to decide whether to do the necessary surgery or whether you will preside over the death of the association:

There are four issues here:

1. The APA sacrificed its reputation and independence – perhaps its 501c3 tax exempt status – to align its policies with those of the CIA and the DOD. This was an active campaign, with constant behind the scenes consultation, in order to do the bidding of these agencies, first the CIA, then the DOD.

2. There was an active campaign to undermine the will of the membership and of the council when they attempted to institute ethical restrictions on such activity. Simultaneously efforts were made to prop up and expand opposing efforts in support of such activity. Sometimes efforts were made to create opposing efforts to such activity. Thus APA ceased being a member-driven or democratic organization. The letter and spirit of the organizations by-laws were thwarted in favor of this secret agenda pushed by a staff that is supposed to be neutral and facilitative of the will of membership and governance. Instead staff manipulated the council and the membership.

3. There was a public relations campaign directed to deceive the public and to manipulate governance. To the public the PR campaign made the false claims that APA was acting independently for human rights at the behest of its membership, while in fact it was doing the opposite. Within the organization there was a campaign to influence and manipulate those who opposed the policy or were uninformed and to bully those who would not be manipulated.

4. All of this was done to advance a program of torture and abuse. It continued long after that program and the psychologists’ role in that program were public knowledge. If this level of manipulation and deception were done solely to secretly promote a government agenda, it would be a scandal; the fact that it was done to support torture and abusive monitoring of and research on detainees, is more than a scandal – it reaches the level of support for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The numbers of APA staff and members of governance involved actively in this disgrace is staggering. It began with a few and rapidly incorporated increasing numbers from top to bottom.

Before I lay out what we believe APA must do, I want to make clear what you are dealing with. If the report is released on July 20th, there will be front-page articles in every major newspaper in this country and around the world on July 21st.

The headlines will read: Report Finds APA Leadership Colluded With Bush Administration in Support of Torture.

What will the subheading read?
“Many named remain in leadership positions”
or
“APA removes tainted leadership in response to investigation”

This is not a PR problem. This is a survival of the association problem. And there is no good way to get through this. You will face numerous lawsuits and secondary investigations. You will face a hemorrhage of membership and the loss of public trust. And APA is going to lose its central leadership of the past decade and a half.
--------------
I will now follow on Stephen’s list of five essential categories of steps that must be taken if the association has a chance of surviving:

Contrition,
Accountability,
Transparency,
Inclusiveness
Genuine Change

Contrition

· Let’s be clear that contrition is not a PR maneuver. Contrition requires thoroughgoing acknowledgement, remorse and change. APA must publicly acknowledge the depth and scope of this failure.

· Apology to all affected – to the people harmed (detainees), it includes the public and the congress (for not upholding public trust and deceiving them), to the profession, members, former member and non-members for undermining our ethical foundations, opening us up to ridicule and scorn, and damaging our reputation. And to Jean Maria Arrigo.

· I would like to see an op-ed written by APA leadership in the Times expressing this contrition.

Accountability and Housecleaning

· Staff involved must be fired
· Members involved must be banned from governance
· Bring ethics charges where appropriate.
· More importantly, APA must publicly recommend state ethics charges where appropriate.
· Make sure there is no hint of conflicts of interest in any part of governance or staff
· Those found to be part of the collusion should be stripped of association awards, standing and honors.
· And then you can give a special award to Jean Maria for being willing to stand up to an onslaught of power and manipulation that no one in this room was willing to stand up to.

I will start with staff. I see that some of the people who need to go are in this room. That in itself tells me that you don’t really yet understand the seriousness of your situation. I want to say that this list is possibly incomplete, because I haven’t yet read every page of the report.

Staff to be fired
Anderson, Honaker, Gilfoyle, Farberman, Garrison, Kelly, Mumford, Behnke.

Governance prohibition effective immediately
Levant, Koocher, Banks, Dunivin, Moorehead-Slaughter, James, Deleon, Gelles, Newman, Gravitz, Shumate, Breckler, Strassberger, Sternberg, Matarrazo, and Anton

Recusal for conflict of interest and investigation of role required
Strickland

APA needs to recommend to Division and State Association that they do the same.

But housecleaning is a small piece of what is necessary for full accountability.
How do we hold leadership and governance itself accountable?
How do we answer the question, how did this happen and what must we do to insure it doesn’t happen again?

We must have a thoroughgoing and independent institutional review. We need to appoint a blue ribbon panel to evaluate the organizational processes, structures, procedures and culture that allowed this to happen.

The panel must recommend changes in processes, structures and procedures geared to preventing this kind of power manipulation from happening again. It must review APA’s overly close ties to military, intelligence agencies and government; it must in particular look at the potential for corruption in the directorates, in particular the ethics office, the ethics committee and the science directorate. It must investigate the APA voting processes and investigate the opaque entity that counts our votes: Intelliscan

It must further address:

· The power of staff and how it oversteps its institutional bounds
· The progressive minimization of the oversight role and authority of Council and restore its authority and responsibility
· Investigate how staff managed to impede the will of Council and prevent it from happening again (e.g., 1.02, statue of limitations).

We need a committee of ethicists to redesign APA ethics policy and procedures. It may be true that 1.02 was not changed with torture in mind – the fact that it and other standards were weakened under the influence of APAIT is a second scandal unto itself that must be investigated. We also need to reopen ethics cases closed as part of this conspiracy. And if those to be investigated are no longer members, we must recommend state board investigation.

There must be a financial accounting, including DOD, CIA and government money, awards, fellowships and quid pro quos.

We must refer this report and its findings to the FBI and we must cooperate fully in any ensuing investigation.

We must also refer the report to the appropriate Congressional committees, as per Senator Feinstein’s request. These committees include Senate Select CI, SASC, Senate Judiciary, and Senate Committee Health and human services and their counterparts in the House of Representatives. (Like the PENS report)

Policy change

All policies regarding APA and national security must be annulled, including the approval of operational psychology as a subspecialty.

Review of the ethics of national security and operational psychology:

Blue ribbon panel #2 to do a thoroughgoing independent ethical review of the role of psychologists in national security operations. JMA should be a part of such a panel, along with internationally recognized medical ethicists and human rights advocates.

Moratorium on participation in national security interrogation and detention operations during the review process.

No statute of limitation on TCID ethics charges, automatic ethics committee investigation for TCID charges when these arise in the context of national security operations, detention or interrogation activities.

We need to develop guidelines for undertaking such investigations.

For Non-members, APA has to recommend full investigation from the state boards in national security sites and offer them guidelines.

Transparency

Let this be the last time that APA discussions of such import are held in secret. We need to make all such discussions transparent and easily accessible. We also need to report in plain language:
· The salaries and perks of staff
· The lobbying APA does
· Who gets to represent APA to congress and government and how such people are chosen.
· Anything else members of council, the membership, or the public wants to know or should be informed of.

We need to make all our deliberations and actions transparent, including these discussions.

We should have APA books publish the Hoffman report; The American Psychologist and the Monitor should publish the Executive Summary.

We should deposit the entire record of the Hoffman investigation deposited into the APA PENS Debate Collection at the archive of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

And we should call for a Congressional investigation into the role of health professionals and health professional organizations roles in support of the torture program and invite the other health professional organizations to do the same.

Inclusiveness

All stakeholders must be represented in these discussions. These include the broader psychological community, including those who opposed now-tainted APA actions when they occurred and the hundreds or thousands who quit the APA because they recognized this complicity while the elected leadership and staff denied it. In addition, equally important stakeholders are the medical ethics community, human rights advocates, Congress (as seen by the expressed desire of Sen. Feinstein to review the report), and the broader public, as attested to by the extensive press interest in our April report. All of these have a stake in the decisions and initiatives you and we undertake today and in the coming weeks.

Ultimately, and importantly, we must set aside a time in August for a lengthy Town Hall Meeting at the convention where we give the membership a chance to discuss these revelations

Genuine Change - ???

Stephen Soldz
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
ssoldz@bgsp.edu

APA Ethics Director Consulted on Development of BSCT Training Program

A new report by what New York Times reporter James Risen called "a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists" has provided the best proof yet of collaboration and links between the CIA, Department of Defense, and the American Psychological Association (APA) regarding the government's interrogation program.

Not noted in the report but revealed here for the first time is the fact that APA's long-time Ethics Director Steven Behnke worked directly with Department of Defense officials in creating a training curriculum for psychologists working with interrogators at Guantanamo and elsewhere. He has never revealed his role in that.

It has been widely reported, and was the topic of two major Congressional investigations, that both CIA's and DoD's interrogation programs involved widespread use of torture. This policy was supported and endorsed at all levels of the Executive Branch, and the programs involved were repeatedly funded by Congress. Indeed, a high-level report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that I obtained recently via FOIA indicated that detainee facilities at Guantanamo's Camp Delta were built early on via solicitation of emergency contingency funds from the House and Senate intelligence committees.

The new report, All the President's Psychologists: The American Psychological Association’s Secret Complicity with the White House and US Intelligence Community in Support of the CIA’s ”Enhanced” Interrogation Program (PDF), draws on a cache of over 600 emails from a former RAND employee and presumed CIA contractor, Scott Gerwehr, who died in a mysterious accident in 2008.

The narrative -- as constructed by report authors, psychologists Stephen Soldz and Steven Reisner, and Nathaniel Raymond, Director of Harvard's Signal Program on Human Security and Technology -- concentrates on events surrounding three key events: a July 2003 joint APA/CIA/RAND conference on "The Science of Deception"; a July 20, 2004 "confidential meeting between senior APA staff and senior national security psychologists and behavioral research personnel"; and the circumstances surrounding the June 2005 APA Task Force meetings, over a single weekend, to rush out policies on Professional Ethics and National Security, producing a report on the same (PENS).

While there is much that can be discovered from a close reading of the report and its accompanying documentation (one only wishes that more of the emails were released), one of the leading figures throughout the entire APA drama is its Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke.

Behnke Accused

As pointed out in a "Fact Sheet" on Behnke, put out by the Soldz and Reisner-linked Coalition for an Ethical Psychology in February 2011, the APA Ethics Director had been a key player in "the creation and management" of the PENS task force. Behnke kept the membership of the task force secret, even as it later turned out the members were largely drawn from the military and intelligence fields.

Indeed, an important email released in the new Soldz/Reisner/Raymond report describes the Science Policy Director at APA, Geoff Mumford, telling Kirk Hubbard, the chief of the CIA's Research & Analysis unit at the Operational Assessment Division, Special Activities Division, CIA, that the PENS task force members were "very carefully selected" to represent his views and that of CIA psychiatrist Charles "Andy" Morgan and DoD intelligence official Kirk Kennedy.

The Coalition fact sheet also criticized Behnke with ignoring blatant conflicts of interest among PENS personnel. They specifically cited the selection of Russ Newman, then Director of APA's Practice Directorate" to be an observer at the PENS meetings. The Coalition continued, "Dr. Newman's wife was Lt. Col. Debra Dunivin, a member of the Guantanamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) -- the very form of psychologist involvement that was a primary focus of the PENS Task Force's ethics deliberations."

The BSCTs were formed in the very early days of holding "war on terror" prisoners at Guantanamo. Over time, they were exposed as assisting interrogators in ferreting out psychological weaknesses, and even proposing "exploitation" of those weaknesses to interrogators.

But it wasn't Behnke who sent Newman to PENS. Newman was recommended by then-APA Board of Director liaison, Dr. Barry Anton. Anton is the current President of APA.

As for Dunivin, a 2004 APA Monitor story identifies her as also being a SERE psychologist. SERE is the U.S. military's program to inoculate soldiers and intelligence officers to the hardships of capture by foreign forces or terrorists. It includes a mock-torture camp experience, the procedures of which were utilized in forming the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program, reportedly devised by former SERE psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

Consulting with DoD on the BSCTs

The Coalition noted that after the PENS report was released and approved by the APA, Dunivin "subsequently joined members of the Task Force in revising the BSCT instructions on the basis of the PENS report." While the Coalition simplifies history a small bit here -- they were not simply "revising" BSCT instructions but developing a training curriculum for BSCT members, at the direction of then-Surgeon General Kevin Kiley.

Still, it is true that Dunivin and other PENS members, including Larry James, another Guantanamo BSCT, and Special Forces psychologist Morgan Banks, became advisers to top military officials on the organization of the BSCTs. They all attended a meeting on August 5, 2005, only a month after the public release of the PENS report, with its finding that it was ethically appropriate to work with government interrogators working with detainees in the "war on terror," a stance which was rejected by both the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

It is with some irony that Behnke's own role working on the new BSCT training was revealed in a 2014 book chapter written by Dunivin and another Special Operations psychologist, Jay Earles.

In an essay entitled "Behavioral Science Consultation to Interrogation and Detention Operations: Policy, Ethics, and Training" (PDF) (Ch. 14 in the book Forensic and Ethical Issues in Military Behavioral Health, Borden Institute, 2014), Dunivin and Earles describe the tasking from Medical Command and the Surgeon General's office in 2005 to create new BSCT guidelines and procedures.

Then surgeon general of the Army, Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley, convened a group in the summer of 2005 to develop doctrine in this specialized area. He assembled subject matter experts, including several psychologists and psychiatrists who had served as BSCs, a medical ethicist, a military attorney, a master interrogator, and two general officers who trained and educated military medical personnel.

Dunivin and Earles don't go into more details on the tasking, but on May 24, 2005, Kiley approved the findings of a report by a "Functional Assessment Team" he had sent to Guantanamo and both Iraq and Afghanistan theater of operations to assess medical operations. (It is worth noting that by January 2004, BSCT staffing was only by psychologists.)

The recommendations in the report (long PDF) included this: "DoD should develop well defined doctrine and policy for the use of BSCT personnel. A training program for BSCT personnel should be implemented to address the specific duties." Some of the development of BSCT operating procedures and organizational definitions and boundaries can be ascertained by comparing an early 2002 version of BSCT Standard Operating Procedures with a DoD 2008 policy statement on BSCTs, which includes a section describing the training program devised back in 2005.

As Dunivin and Earles describe it, military authorities at MEDCOM and the Surgeon General's office were closely following the debates at medical and psychological associations regarding medical professionals in so-called behavioral consultant roles in interrogation. The military drew on a number of "experts" of their own, including Army, Navy and Air Force psychologists, and other personnel from JSOC, the Counterintelligence Field Activity office, the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (then parent-command for SERE), the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, and the Criminal Investigation Task Force.

Consultants also came from the shadowy Intelligence Science Board, which is best known for its 2006 report, Educing Information -- Interrogation: Science and Art (large PDF). The members of the board are drawn from the intelligence community, broadly defined. It includes two members of the PENS board, NCIS's Mike Gelles and CIA's Scott Shumate, as well as the former Chief of the “Interrogation Control Element” in Guantanamo, David Becker.

Dunivin and Earles singled out Behnke as a significant consultant, though not by name, only title:

From the earliest stages, professional ethics and law were significant components of the curriculum development process; APA’s ethics director and staff judge advocates (attorneys) with expertise in law relative to interrogations and detention operations were consulted to ensure concordance with the ethics and the law." [bold emphasis added]

The APA ethics director then, and still is, Stephen Behnke. I emailed Dr. Behnke and asked for his input, including information on dates he consulted or "any information you deem helpful in understanding or describing your work in this regard." As of publication, Dr. Behnke had not responded to my request. It seems likely his contribution occurred roughly around the same period as that of Dunivin and Banks, i.e., early August 2005, maybe even that same meeting Morgan Banks mentioned on August 5.

In general, we can only say Behnke's contribution to DoD most likely came in the summer of 2005, and certainly well before the October 2006 release by MEDCOM of policy guidelines for medical personnel assigned to BSCTs (OTSG/MEDCOM Policy Memo 06-029). The PENS report was "Enclosure 1" to the 2006 MEDCOM guidelines.

There was also an intriguing October 2005 visit by various "delegates from several major health and mental health associations, medical ethicists," and others to Guantanamo to "learn more about operations and speak with DoD officials and other delegates about appropriate and effective roles of healthcare professionals in detainee operations."

The BSCTs and "Learned Helplessness"

To understand the egregious nature of Behnke's contribution, it is important to remember that he never indicated that he had any role in the current construction of the BSCTs, while he continued to be involved in ethics matters related to complaints against former BSCT members, and while he continued to talk and make recommendations regarding APA ethics policy in relation to torture and the BSCTs.

But matters stand even worse when you consider that participation with a BSCT program meant you accepted the authority of the interrogating regime. This meant Behnke had to overlook the human rights violations inherent in the detention of the detainees, especially at Guantanamo, with its emphasis on total control over prisoners, use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and other manipulations of environment, forced injections of drugs, and brutal guard attacks. The insistence that most prisoners' detentions are in effect indefinite in nature, and that even those the government believes to be innocent or without intelligence value can be held in theory forever, is a gross violation of human rights norms, as well as deleterious to the health of the prisoners involved. (Regarding the latter, see this report by Physicians for Human Rights.)

Also alarming is the fact the training of BSCTs that was developed, and described in MEDCOM's 2006 policy guidelines, included as a specific recommendation the possession of "professional level expertise" in the "application" of "learned helplessness" as an area of "behavioral science" relevant "to the interrogation/debriefing process."

Learned helplessness (LH) was originally a theory developed by psychologist Martin Seligman. Seligman was a known consultant to SERE, and had met two or three times with James Mitchell, including at least once at Seligman's house. The emails revealed by Soldz and his co-authors show that Seligman had also worked for or consulted to the CIA, presumably at Kirk Hubbard's CIA Operational Assessment Division.

LH was subsequently the theoretical model behind the development of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program, with the idea that use of inescapable shock and fear would break down captives into a state of "learned helplessness" -- "learned" in the psychological sense of being conditioned. Indeed, the BSCT curriculum also calls for expertise in use of operant and classical conditioning.

Whether Behnke knew of the inclusion of the "learned helplessness" recommendation is impossible to say with complete certainty. But he should have known. Or he should have known after the fact.

It is now more understandable why APA has refused to call for the closure of Guantanamo, or why they have stalled in implementing an APA-member-derived referendum on pulling psychologists out of human rights violating settings like Guantanamo -- one of their chief officers was involved in setting up the regime there, at least as it concerns the use of behavioral consultants.

Torture Program Assists Spread of Endemic Corruption

The meaning of the APA scandal opened up by the Soldz/Reisner/Raymond report, and James Risen's reporting on same in the New York Times, must be seen in the context of a much larger breakdown in ethical standards by the wider society at large, particularly, though not exclusively, when it comes to the torture scandal.

Most recently, we've seen that key figures from the Bush administration torture program have gone on to hold important positions in the Obama administration. A recent New York Times article by Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo last month showed how CIA officials implicated in the torture program, like former CIA Counterterrorism Center official Michael D’Andrea, who Obama put in charge of the CIA's drone operations. Meanwhile, former CIA officials from the days of the Bush administration torture program still essentially run the Agency -- John Brennan as Director, and Greg Vogel as chief of the Directorate of Operations.

President Obama's insistence that the nation should move on from the torture scandal, and his refusal to further investigations or prosecutions, is totally self-serving when looked at in the light of recent revelations.

It is worth noting that APA did not operate in a void either. They drew upon a top echelon of behavioral scientists when they worked with CIA or SERE officials, including, as I've noted in the past Albert Bandura, Richard Lazaraus, and Charles Speilberger, and more recently we have revelations regarding Seligman and Paul Ekman. As when CIA drew on the cream of behavioral science during the days of MKULTRA, many of these scientists and researchers are unwitting, in that they do not know (or deceive themselves) they are contributing to a torture program. But some of them certainly are very close to the CIA or other government intelligence agencies.

The APA announced last year they would conduct an "independent" investigation, and hired Chicago attorney (and former mayoral candidate), David Hoffman. Hoffman's report is supposed to be out in in another month or so. But the entire investigation is riddled with conflicts of interest. Hoffman used to work on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with soon-to-be CIA director George Tenet, the very man who led the CIA during the creation of the torture program.

The corruption of the APA is not very different than the corruption of many U.S. societal institutions, especially the police and the prison system, whose full racist and oppressive character is in the news daily lately. But this corruption is not reason for despair, but for further struggle. The actual roles of "experts" like Stephen Behnke need to be exposed, and the real nature of the institutions they serve revealed.

Crossposted at The Dissenter/FDL

Retired Gitmo Psychologist Makes the Short List for University Job: Students and Faculty Protest Ties to Torture

A number of students, faculty and staff at the University of Missouri (MU) are protesting the selection of a controversial psychologist linked to torture at the US detention facility at Guantanamo as a finalist for a top slot at Mizzou.

Dr. Larry James, who is currently dean of the professional psychology program at Wright State University in Ohio made the selection committee's short list for the position of division executive director at the university's College of Education.

According to the school prospectus, the division consists of nine graduate academic programs with 60 faculty and 29 professional staff members.

James is a retired Army psychologist who was senior psychologist on the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at Guantanamo in early 2003. In 2010, the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) helped file a licensing complaint against James in Ohio, alleging numerous instances of misconduct and ethical violations related to his work at Guantanamo. (A similar, less detailed summary of the case against James was put together by Center for Constitutional Rights in relation to another licensing case in a different state.)

"Fixing Hell?"

James claims he was sent to Guantanamo to "fix" problems with interrogation abuse, and that, moreover, he succeeded in doing just that. His book, Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib was published with a forward by well-known psychologist and former American Psychological Association president Philip Zimbardo, who praises James highly. (James was Chief Psychologist at Abu Ghraib in 2004.)

According to a February 5 article in the Missourian, James told a public forum called by MU's School of Education that he lacked the authority to stop the abuse he witnessed at Guantanamo. Nevertheless, he also has reportedly said, "The work I did there literally changed and outlawed all of those abusive tactics."

But a 2008 investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) totally contradicts James's contention. According to the SASC, during the period of James' first assignment at Guantanamo "the incidents [of abuse] occurring during the spring of 2003 [during James' tenure] signif[ied] a consistent problem at GTMO."

The "incidents" included cases of forced "compulsive exercise" and sexual humiliation. One interrogator performed a lap dance on a detainee "making sexual affiliated movements with her chest and pelvis while... speaking sexually oriented sentences."

Another "incident" involved a female interrogator wiping what the detainee was led to believe was menstrual blood on his face and forehead.

The report notes no evidence of any disciplinary action for these forms of physical and psychological abuse. A memo written at the time, "Historic Look at Inappropriate Interrogation Techniques Used at GTMO," cited interrogator use of yelling, loud music and strobe lights on detainees, while other documents note use of forced shaving, sensory deprivation and "implied death threats."

The anonymous author(s) of the "Historic Look" memo criticized those in charge of interrogations, and all but accused them of lying. "Despite these revelations by interrogators, the supervisory chain of command reports that these techniques are not used," the report said.

In his 2008 book, Fixing Hell, James said that he witnessed an interrogation, which is also described in the IHRC report: A detainee was "forced into pink women's panties, lipstick and a wig ... then pinned ... to the floor in an effort 'to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown.'"

James admittedly did not intervene to stop this interrogation, but instead poured himself a cup of coffee and, in his own words, "watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason, even if this was a terrible scene."

According to his narrative, James ultimately was forced to intervene "several minutes later" after he determined "Someone is gonna get hurt" (italics in original). Nevertheless, James never mentioned problems with the interrogation or the use of sexual humiliation to the interrogator, nor did he mention reporting or disciplining him.

According to a story by Associated Press, James told those who attended a public meeting in Columbia, Missouri on February 5, "I was sent to Guantanamo not to aid these CIA operatives, but to teach these young men and women, how do you sit down and interview someone without any abusive practices whatsoever.... That's what my mission was."

Protests

The selection of James as one of two finalists for the College of Education position has led to demonstrations on campus, news conferences, public meetings to defuse the controversy and a letter from more than 30 faculty and staff protesting any hiring of James.

The letter to University of Missouri Chancellor Brady Deaton states, "[James'] possible appointment raises unresolved and extremely controversial issues. An ethical and moral cloud hangs over Dr. James's work and reputation, and, if he assumed a high-profile post here, that cloud would hang over MU, generally."

On February 1, according to the student newspaper, The Maneater, "About 30 students and Columbia residents marched from the Islamic Center of Central Missouri to Hill Hall" on the MU campus to protest the selection of James as a semi-finalist for the position.

Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation Coordinator Jeff Stack reportedly organized the protest.
"This decision is obscene to us as people of good will in our society," Stack told the crowd. "We are standing with the people who have been oppressed. We are not standing with the torturers."

The Barbara Peterson, director of strategic communications at MU's College of Education, told Truthout that College of Education Dean Daniel Clay had read James' book, Fixing Hell, and "all the documents" from the complaints against him.

According to the Associated Press, Clay stated James "was selected ... as a finalist because the search committee believed his leadership and management experiences aligned well with the minimum and desired qualifications for the position."

The Maneater quoted Clay's comments about the charges against James:

I felt strongly that in the interest of fairness and transparency that, um, you know, we can't discriminate against an individual based on unfounded allegations.... " As much as, uh, the thoughts of this turned my stomach and may turn yours, um, the reality is that he's not been, uh, indicted or found guilty of any ethics or, uh, legal or, uh, licensing board violations through this process.

James told AP that he was innocent of all the allegations, and called "the continued scrutiny of his military record 'an old story.'"

"Why do these people continue to try a decorated, disabled military veteran?" James said. "They cannot produce a patient, a prisoner, a government official or any official document that shows I have harmed any person."

Truthout asked the head of the School of Education Selection Committee, Dr. Michael Pullis, to respond to questions, but he referred all inquiries to Peterson. Pullis, who also is listed in the University of Missouri's Grants Manual Handbook as the official in charge of research grants, did not return further requests for comment.

Interestingly, MU is a recipient of millions of dollars of Department of Defense research grants, like a $5.3 million grant in November 2011 to evaluate combat casualty care.

On February 6, the St. Louis chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a news conference at MU's Student Center. According to an account in the Missourian, other groups present included "the MU Muslim Students Organization, the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation and concerned MU faculty members."

CAIR-St. Louis executive director, Faizan Syed, told the audience, "Mizzou has a high standard of ethics, and his possible hiring would put a black tarnish on that." He indicated CAIR intends to further organize faculty and students at other University of Missouri campuses across the state to oppose any James hiring.
According to the Missourian, "A CAIR petition opposing James' hiring had 289 signatures [as of Wednesday evening], but the organization will not present the petition to university officials until it reaches 1,000 signatures, Syed said."

James and the Rendition of Children

The IHRC report highlighted James' role as the leader of a military team sent to Afghanistan in early spring 2003 to render three young teenage boys from Bagram to Guantanamo. According to IHRC, James supervised the forceful and arbitrary detention of the Afghan boys, "transported thousands of miles away from their families and denied them access to counsel."

An April 2011 Truthout story described numerous media reports about the bereft parents, who were never informed by James or any US personnel that their children had been taken into custody, much less whisked off to Guantanamo.

The children told news media after their release they had not seen or heard from their families for many months after they were seized. They complained of homesickness during their incarceration. Though the UK Telegraph quoted one 15-year-old prisoner (some reports said he was 13) as praising the soldiers who watched over him; he also was critical of US authorities for not notifying his parents for ten months of his incarceration, even though he says he gave the Red Cross letters from the first months of his incarceration.
"They stole 14 months of my life and my family's life. I was entirely innocent - just a poor boy looking for work," the young teen said.

The families by most accounts were desperate to find out what happened to their children. No US authority or the Red Cross informed them about the fate of their sons for many months. James never raises the issue of the boys' parents in his book.

According to a February 2004 story in The Washington Post, Nayatullah, "an illiterate farmer of about 60," traveled to work sites throughout his area, asking if anyone had seen his son. No one had. "Finally I thought he must be dead," the father said.

Another boy's mother spoke through a translator to a Guardian UK correspondent about how she suffered not knowing her son's fate. She cried "every night thinking about my son."

"'I prayed to God, I asked, 'Where is my son?' she continued. 'He was just a boy, much too young to disappear on his own.'"

The family and other villagers looked high and low for the boy. Family members and friends went to Bagram, Logar and Gardez to ask the Americans about their son's whereabouts, but "no one knew about him." His father sold his land to acquire the several thousand dollars it took to fund the search for his son. It took the family seven months before they found out where their son was held.

At last, with no explanation or apology, the boys were released in January 2004. James had left Guantanamo after May 2003, but in his book, he wrote proudly of his work with the child detainees. "This is how my country handles prisoners," he said. "It's not all about abuse. We can take juveniles like that and send them home better than we found them."

As for the boys, for whom no evidence of terrorism was ever described or revealed, James still referred to them in his book as "far from innocent" and "teenage terrorists." Still, the psychologist in James also noted that the boys were terribly traumatized, ""not only terrified, but also disheveled and lost."

James wrote they were "the most fragile - psychologically, medically and academically - children I had ever met." Even so, he saw them also as a "case study" for his "softer" style of interrogation - "exactly the kind of prisoners I needed to test my philosophy on interrogation."

Asked about the actions of James in the matter of the rendition of the teenaged boys, and the failure to notify the parents, Dr. Pullis would not respond.

According to an Open Letter to the American Psychological Association by two psychologists - Trudy Bond and Steven Reisner - the APA dismissed without investigation a 2007 ethics complaint by Bond against James which highlighted the rendition of the boys and the failure to notify the parents.

James has also been the subject of license board complaints in Ohio and Louisiana. His BSCT associate, Dr. John Leso was the subject of a licensing complaint in New York State, and Dr. James Mitchell, one of the chief architects of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," faced a similar complaint in Texas. All of these complaints were dismissed by state boards for one reason or another.

Bond and Reisner have called for APA to conduct "a full review of the practices of the APA ethics office with regard to the investigation and adjudication of cases alleging torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment."

Forgotten in all the controversy, Matthew Burns of the University of Minnesota, the other finalist for the division executive director position, quietly interviewed for the job last week on the MU campus. No decision on the final selection is expected until early March.

This story includes in part reporting that was used in a previous Truthout story.

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission (Original URL)

[Update, 2/15/13: According to an article in the Missourian, the University of Missouri decided to put a halt on the hiring of someone new to fill the division executive director job "at this time."

Here's what Dean Clay had to say about the decision, according to a copy of his letter to faculty and professional staff, reprinted in the Missourian:

After receiving the recommendations from the search committee regarding the search for a new division executive director (DED), along with input received from other stakeholders, I have decided to not fill the position at this time.

The article explains, "According to a memo from Education Dean Daniel Clay, Mike Pullis will serve as interim director when John Wedman retires Feb. 28. He will continue in that interim role until another individual is selected.

"Wedman will continue in a part-time role throughout the next year to help facilitate the transition."

It looks like both James and Burns are out, but this may also be a strategy to let the whole controversy die out, and perhaps James might be considered again. In any case, the issue of accountability for those who served in senior roles in interrogations or forming interrogation policy was certainly brought to the forefront once again by this controversy.]