Psychologists for Social Responsibility Statement on Interrogations and Torture

With the 2006 APA Convention about to start in New Orleans on Thursday, Psychologists for Social Responsibility has issued the following statement.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 8, 2006
Contact: Anne Anderson: (Cell) 202-262-0989

Psychologists for Social Responsibility Urges APA to Adopt Policy of “No Participation in National Security Interrogations”

PsySR urges the American Psychological Association to declare immediately, clearly, and unequivocally that psychologists should not participate at this time in any way in national security or military interrogations.

Multiple, well-documented reports* indicate that psychologists have played a crucial role in the development and use of psychologically coercive and psychologically abusive practices against detainees. Theis allegations pertain to has happened at Guantáanamo Bay and other U.S- operated detention centers.The reports are based on reputable government records, personal interviews, and investigations by human rights organizations. They have specified how detainees have been subjected to psychological torture, and other psychologically cruel, inhuman, and degrading, and inhumane techniques. designed to weaken mental and physical integrity.

The reports also specify that psychologists have been directly involved in this abuse in the following ways:

• Psychologists have been directly involved in researching and designing the coercive techniques.
• Psychologists have been directly involved in training and advising interrogators in the systematic use of the coercive techniques.
• Psychologists on BSCTs have personally participated in, and at least one allegedly helped direct, BSCT team interrogations based on the systematic use of the coercive techniques.

Given this history and the need for clear and unequivocal guidance for psychologists, PsySR strongly supports the effort initiated by Division 48 to update APA’s 1986 Human Rights Resolution on torture. The proposed revision would build a firm foundation in human rights law for APA. We urge the APA Council to pass a strong resolution to accomplish that link and also to also call for psychologists to refrain from participating in any way in national security and military interrogations at this time.. To do otherwise would ignore the urgency of helping psychologists avoid further enmeshing themselves in abusive interrogation practices.

Unfortunately, national security agencies in the United States and many other countries have a long history of applying psychologists’ research in coercive and abusive interrogations. That has occurred both with and without the consent of the psychologists who conducted the studies. In fact, APA’s 1986 resolution on torture followed revelations that the CIA and the School of the Americas trained interrogators to use coercive methods based on psychological research.

Without a clear standard against participation in such interrogations, individual psychologists will continue to face an impossible ethical quandary – how personally to draw the line between what should or should not be considered psychological torture or psychologically cruel, inhumane, orand degrading treatment in the high-pressure, secretive environment of a national security interrogation. The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Medical Association have all adopted policies and standards that prohibit their members from participating in interrogations of individual detainees and place strict limits on the general training they can provide.. In response, the Department of Defense recently announced that it now prefers to work with psychologists in interrogations.*** That intensifies the need for immediate APA action.

Therefore, PsySR recommends:

• That the APA Council of Representatives pass an unambiguous resolution strengthening its current prohibition on torture by 1.) linking it to strict observance of international human rights standards and 2.) issue a clear, unequivocal call for psychologists to refrain from participating in any way in national security and military interrogations at this time.
• That APA honor its previous commitment to open an ethics investigation of the behavior of any individual psychologist whose name surfaces as having participated in the interrogation of individual detainees that relied upon psychological abuse.
• That APA open an ethics investigation of the role of the U.S. Special Operations CommandPentagon’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) program, and psychologists working for SERE in the possible development and systematic use of psychologically coercive techniques against detainees in national security interrogations.
• That APA condemn the design and use of new or existing techniques and practices, used alone or in combination, that are intended to create psychologically degrading, fearful, abusive, and therefore coercive experiences for detainees in national security interrogations. These include, but are not limited to, the following: sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, threats to family, continuous loud noise, light control, presence of military working dogs for intimidation, physical stress positions, and physical assaults such as slapping, beating, and “waterboarding.,” in which water is forced down a person’s lungs to simulate drowning.

*See for example:

Jane Mayer, “The Experiment: The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantanamo Guantanamo?” The New Yorker: July 11th and July 18th, 2005. (www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050711fa_fact4)
“Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces,” Physicians for Human Rights: May, 2005. (www.phrusa.org/research/torture/report_breakthemdown.html)
Bloche MG and Marks JH, “Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay,” New England Journal of Medicine: 2005:353(1); 6-8.
“Situation of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay,” United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights: Feb. 15th, 2006.
Neil A. Lewis, “Military Alters the Makeup of Interrogation Advisers,” New York Times: June 7th, 2006.
Mark Benjamin, “Torture Teachers,” Salon.com: June 29th, 2006, (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/29/torture/print.html); and “Psychological Warfare,” Salon.com: July 26th, 2006, (http://salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/26/interrogation/print.html).

**See, for example, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror, 2006, by Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

***The New York Times, June 6, 2006

***Lewis, op.cit., June 7th, 2006.

Psychologists for Social Responsibilitiyty
208 I St. NE, Suite B, Washington, DC 20002-4340
(202) 543-5347, Fax: (202) 543-5348
psysr@psysr.org, www.psysr.org