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Blunderov
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Fresh psychologist torture role revelations
« on: 2007-08-11 08:29:54 » |
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[Blunderov] Transcending the murky, cutthroat shenanigens in the ruthless underworld of anthropology as revealed in
http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=63;action=display;threadid=39050
the discipline of psychology now plumbs new depths of disgrace; no mean feat even by it's own high standards. I suppose we always knew in our secret selves that these people were infinitely more vicious than mere rodent lawyers. (Present company,as always, excepted!) Here's proof.
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/08/fresh_psychologist_t.html
Fresh psychologist torture role revelations:
The last fortnight has been a grim period for psychology as a two major news sources have published additional revelations about the key role of psychologists in military interrogations that many deem tantamount to torture under international law.
As we've reported earlier, online news source Salon have been investigating the role of contracted psychologists in creating an abusive and likely-illegal CIA interrogation programme.
They've also been covering the unbelievably flaccid response of the American Psychological Association who have yet to explicitly ban their members from participating in these interrogations, in direct contrast to the clear non-participation policy adopted by their medical colleagues.
In fact, the APA seems even to allow participation in unethical practices when following orders from a "governing legal authority" - the so-called Nuremberg defence.
Mainly a professional matter until now, the story has become huge during the last fortnight as articles in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have reported a raft of additional disturbing revelations.
The Vanity Fair article investigates the role of psychologists, named as James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates, in developing practices that reportedly include 'waterboarding' (simulated drowning), isolation, sleep deprivation, environmental extremes, ritual humiliation and severe psychological pressure.
It has been widely cited that this is derived from a 'reverse engineering' of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) programme, designed at the end Korean War, ironically, to protect US troops from the effects of torture.
Notably, the article quotes several senior military and civilian psychologists who are scathing about the lack effectiveness and scientific evidence for the technique.
Both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker report that the method was used on 'Al-Qaeda lieutenant' Abu Zubaydah. The New Yorker article has this interesting snippet:
Nevertheless, the SERE experts' theories were apparently put into practice with Zubaydah's interrogation. Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he was not only waterboarded, as has been previously reported; he was also kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a "dog box," which was so small that he could not stand. According to an eyewitness, one psychologist advising on the treatment of Zubaydah, James Mitchell, argued that he needed to be reduced to a state of "learned helplessness." (Mitchell disputes this characterization.)
The description of the cage as a "dog box" is interesting when put in context.
'Learned helplessness' is a theory of clinical depression that was proposed by psychologist Martin Seligman. It was developed, to be blunt, by torturing dogs.
In a series of experiments Seligman found that if a dog was prevented from escaping an electric shock it eventually gave up trying, just remaining passive while being electrocuted.
The idea was that depression might be similar: a state of helpless, hopeless passivity caused by a series of unavoidable painful events.
Although 'learned helplessness' in animals is still used as a model of depression it has never been convincingly shown that it explains depression in humans.
There's much more information in the full articles that can be summarised here, but needless to say it is a mixture of the disturbing and shameful.
The Vanity Fair and The New Yorker articles are complimented by an article in this month's Psychologist that charts the history of psychologists assisting in developing and deploying abusive interrogations.
Unfortunately, the current situation may well be the most reprehensible episode so far.
Link to Vanity Fair article 'Rorschach and Awe' (via Corpus Callosum).
Link to New Yorker article on interrogation 'black sites'.
—Vaughan.
Posted at August 8, 2007 03:30 PM
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Blunderov
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Re:Fresh psychologist torture role revelations
« Reply #1 on: 2007-08-16 01:55:33 » |
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Blunderov]Says Mike McConnell -"I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process."
I say old chap! Isn't that a bit thick, what?
The credibility of the entire profession is at stake. Not to mention American academe in general.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/15/apa_torture/
Psychologists to CIA: We condemn torture
In a rebuke of President Bush, the American Psychological Association has resolved to condemn brutal CIA and military interrogations.
By Mark Benjamin
Aug. 15, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- The American Psychological Association, the world's largest professional organization of psychologists, is poised to issue a formal condemnation of a raft of notorious interrogation tactics employed by U.S. authorities against detainees during the so-called war on terror, from simulated drowning to sensory deprivation. The move is expected during the APA's annual convention in San Francisco this weekend.
The APA's anti-torture resolution follows a string of revelations in recent months of the key role played by psychologists in the development of brutal interrogation regimes for the CIA and the military. And it comes just weeks after news that the White House may be calling on psychologists once again: On July 20, President Bush signed an executive order restarting a coercive CIA interrogation program at the agency's "black sites." Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has indicated that psychological techniques will be part of the revamped program, but that the interrogations would be subject to careful medical oversight. That oversight is likely to be performed by psychologists.
In fact, given what promises to be the continuing involvement of psychologists in coercive interrogation, there is intense infighting within the organization about whether simply condemning abusive tactics is enough. Some of the APA's 148,000 members think the anti-torture resolution put forward by APA leadership is too weak, and they are putting intense pressure on the organization's leadership to go a step further and ban psychologists from participating in detainee interrogations altogether. They have introduced their own resolution proposing a moratorium. "I and others think that a moratorium is essential to try to tell the government that psychologists are not going to participate in the interrogation of enemy combatants," said Bernice Lott, a member of the Council of Representatives, the APA's policy-making body. Others oppose the moratorium because they think psychologists must be involved in the interrogations to prevent abuse -- and because the government may just choose to use non-APA members for its interrogations, as has already happened.
Whether or not the APA imposes a moratorium at this weekend's convention, its Council of Representatives is likely to approve the resolution condemning specific interrogation techniques. A draft of the resolution obtained by Salon includes "an absolute prohibition" on psychologists directly or indirectly participating in interrogations that involve a list of coercive measures, including, but not limited to, mock executions; water-boarding; sensory deprivation; "hooding"; forced nudity; sexual humiliation; rape; cultural or religious humiliation; exploitation of phobias or psychopathology; stress positions; dogs; physical assault; slapping and shaking; exposure to extreme heat or cold; induced hypothermia; psychotropic drugs or mind-altering substances; isolation and sleep deprivation; threats of harm or death, or threats to members of an individual's family.
And even without a moratorium, adopting a resolution condemning specific interrogation techniques -- including some allegedly used by the CIA -- could be interpreted as a rebuke of the agency and the White House. Stephen Soldz, a faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, supports a moratorium. But he said the new condemnation of specific harsh tactics would in itself be "an advance because it would be a blow to the CIA." (The military last September disavowed the tactics and embraced a new interrogation field manual that expressly prohibits the coercive methods, but the CIA, under Bush's new executive order, seems to be going ahead full steam.)
But how much of a rebuke it would be is debatable. "It is somewhat of a rebuke, because it does name some interrogation techniques that have been used or advocated by the White House and the CIA," said Neil Altman, a former member of the APA's council. "But it still allows psychologists to continue to be part of a process which overall is cruel, inhuman and degrading," he added. "There is no due process. It is indefinite detention without being charged. The entire setting is cruel, inhuman and degrading."
Altman introduced the resolution calling for a moratorium. Last year, the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association banned doctors and psychiatrists from participating in coercive interrogation of so-called enemy combatants. Some psychologists warn, however, against the effects of following their sister organizations' example. The argument is that psychologists can make valuable contributions to an ethical, non-coercive interrogation built on establishing rapport with a prisoner. Michael Gelles, the former chief psychologist of the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, who played a key role in forcing the Pentagon to dial back the coercive techniques used at the military's Guantánamo prison in 2003, said psychologists should still be able to help ethical interrogators do their jobs. "Psychologists can help the interrogator think about how he directs questions in a rapport-based approach to facilitate the most accurate information," Gelles explained. They can also help determine if a subject is mentally ill, or even lying.
Gelles said he doesn't have any problem with condemning coercive interrogation techniques, but he called a moratorium "equivalent to throwing the baby out with the bath water."
What remains unclear is whether the APA leadership, headed by APA president Sharon Stephens Brehm, will even allow a vote on Altman's moratorium. That leadership is seen by some psychologists as too chummy with government interests and with the military in particular. Backers of the moratorium are set to meet with APA leadership before next weekend just to negotiate for the opportunity to bring their resolution up for a vote before the council.
And there is another worry. Psychologists interviewed by Salon noted a series of potential loopholes embedded in the resolution condemning CIA tactics. A simple example is the ban on isolation and sleep deprivation, favorite tactics of the CIA. But the resolution from Brehm and the APA leadership only forbids the methods when "used in a manner that adversely affects an individual's physical or mental health." There will be efforts in San Francisco to plug those loopholes, and to force a vote on a moratorium.
Next page: Psychologists are the last of the medical professionals willing to support the interrogation of "high-value" detainees
Psychologists to CIA: We condemn torture
At least on paper, what happens in San Francisco could make a big difference to the CIA. Mike McConnell told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" last month that under Bush's new executive order the CIA was going to continue to mentally pressure detainees, using a "psychological approach to causing someone to have uncertainty and in a situation where they will feel compelled to talk to you about what you're asking about." He insisted that the pressure did not amount to torture and there would be no permanent damage to prisoners, but admitted that "I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process."
McConnell assured Russert that the program would be "under medical supervision." And the executive order Bush signed to continue the CIA interrogation program calls for "effective monitoring of the program, including with respect to medical matters, to ensure the safety of those in the program."
But since doctors and psychiatrists have ruled themselves out, that leaves psychologists as the last of the medical professionals willing to support the interrogation of so-called high-value detainees. Presumably, what the APA deems unacceptable would make a big difference.
But it is unclear whether an APA resolution will have any effect on real-world interrogations conducted by the CIA. Salon reported in June that two CIA-employed psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were in the cross hairs of Senate investigators looking into the genesis of the brutal, and very similar, post 9/11 interrogation regimes developed by the CIA and the military.
Mitchell and Jessen are part of a cabal of psychologists associated with the military's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program. The program trains soldiers to resist torture if captured by exposing them to brutal techniques employed by Cold War adversaries who would violate the Geneva Conventions to provoke confessions: water-boarding; forced nudity; stress positions; lengthy isolation; sleep deprivation; sexual humiliation. The plan was to reverse-engineer those techniques for use on real detainees.
The military employed the same game plan at the same time, suggesting high-level government coordination. A previously classified Department of Defense inspector general report released in May detailed efforts in 2002 by the Army Special Operations Command's Psychological Directorate to reverse-engineer SERE training for use at Guantánamo, including a September 2002 "SERE psychologist conference" at Fort Bragg to brief staff from Guantánamo on the use of SERE tactics.
But Mitchell and Jessen, the psychologists who helped the agency, are not APA members. So a resolution might not matter much to men like them.
Theoretically, a psychologist could lose his state-issued license for violating an APA resolution, regardless of APA membership, which might plant a seed of doubt in a psychologist's mind when he steps into a CIA interrogation booth. Military psychologists, for example, are required to maintain a state license.
But the CIA might not be so strict. When asked a series of questions on whether the CIA requires psychologists working with that agency to maintain a state license, CIA spokesman George Little responded, "On these questions, I decline to comment."
Still, psychologists predict that their colleagues -- even those employed by the CIA -- will be less inclined in the future to participate in harsh interrogations that have been explicitly condemned by the APA. "These are our rules and our professional ethics," said Brad Olson, president of the Divisions for Social Justice within the APA. "What this whole group of professionals believes does matter. What psychologists say they are willing to do and not willing to do does matter."
The simmering debate over interrogations inside the APA has been increasingly heating to a boil for several years. In 2005, a group of 10 psychologists drafted new APA ethics guidelines that condemned torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment -- but that also noted that psychologists helping interrogators were performing a "valuable and ethical role to assist in protecting our nation, other nations, and innocent civilians from harm." (Salon reported last summer that six of the 10 psychologists who drafted that policy had close ties to the military, including the chief of the Army Special Operations Command's Psychological Directorate, Col. Morgan Banks.)
Then last summer, the APA's council passed a resolution reaffirming a "condemnation of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment wherever it occurs."
But the positions taken by the APA so far -- the ethics principles drafted by those 10 psychologists and the resolution last summer -- contain legal vagaries of the flavor repeatedly exploited by the Bush administration to pursue coercive interrogations in one theater or another. The concern among psychologists is that their profession is being dragged along for the ride. And that is what is driving the resolutions the psychologists are wrestling with now, to specifically outlaw individual interrogation techniques or even ban psychologists from interrogations altogether.
In its continued effort to fashion a legal defense of the CIA's interrogation program, the Bush administration has employed a dexterous strategy: decry international standards that ban detainee abuse as hopelessly "vague." Demand detailed clarifications from Congress, and then drive loopholes into those clarifications to allow coercive interrogations to continue.
The most recent example is the Military Commissions Act, a law signed by Bush last October that contains a detailed ban on prisoner abuse. Experts in international law have been scouring the bill for loopholes inserted by the Bush administration, including language that could give the administration wiggle room to inflict mental pain on detainees -- the specialty of the CIA. An example is a definition, apparently included at the behest of the White House, that seems to outlaw serious mental pain and suffering, but defines it as suffering that must be "serious and non-transitory."
"If I screw up your brains for two weeks, three weeks, a month, is that non-transitory?" Scott Silliman, a professor at Duke University School of Law who specializes in national security, asked rhetorically. Water-boarding is simulated drowning. It creates sudden, extreme, brief panic. "If I was defending someone in the CIA who was charged with water-boarding, I would make an argument that unless the government can prove that serious mental harm was prolonged and non-transitory -- which means permanent -- then there has been no offense." The executive order that Bush signed July 20 to continue the CIA interrogation program was written to comply with the Military Commissions Act.
The CIA will not comment on the future of the agency's high-value detainee interrogation program, or the possible role of psychologists. Little, the CIA spokesman, would say only that the program had been "implemented lawfully, with great care and close review -- including extensive discussion within the executive branch and oversight from Congress."
But whatever happens, it will be done in secret. Little confirmed that the CIA will not allow officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the agency's detention facilities or monitor detainees held by the agency. Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Washington, said his organization "deplores any form of undisclosed detention and repeats its call to have access to any person who might be detained by the United States."
He also said his organization remains concerned about people who have been held by the CIA since 9/11 but seem to have disappeared. In June, six human rights groups published the names of 39 such individuals believed to have been held by the CIA in secret locations. Said Schorno, "The ICRC remains gravely concerned by the fate of the persons previously held in the CIA detention program who remain unaccounted for."
Psychologists now have to decide if they still want to associate themselves with that kind of a program. Or if after six years of brutal interrogations, enough is enough.
"Psychologists have been involved one way or another in supporting the CIA in various forms of psychological torture for years," said Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights. "The issue is coming to a head because there are so many people within the profession who really feel that the whole integrity of the profession is at stake ... This is the profession coming to terms with itself."
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Blunderov
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Re:Fresh psychologist torture role revelations
« Reply #2 on: 2007-08-25 05:51:15 » |
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[Blunderov] Back in the bad days of apartheid many South African institutions that should have known better disgraced themselves by becoming caught up in the ideology of the day instead of their own professed ethical standards. Many and mighty were the rationalisations produced to show that two masters were really one. Apparently things are not much different in America now. But all things must pass. It's true that there are some things that we could wish would pass sooner rather than later, the current administration of the American Psychological Association being very distinctly one of them.
opednews.com/articles/
Why I've Returned My Award to the American Psychological Association-- Because it Sanctions Torture
by Mary Pipher Page 1 of 1 page(s)
http://www.opednews.com
I am writing to inform you that I am returning my Presidential Citation dated 2/02/06 and awarded to me by then President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Gerald Koocher. I have struggled for many months with this decision, and I make it with pain and sorrow. I was honored to receive this award and proud to be a member of APA. Over the years I have spoken at national conventions many times and had enjoyed an excellent relationship with the APA and its staff. With this letter, I feel as if I am ostracizing a good friend.
I do not want an award from an organization that sanctions its members' participation in the enhanced interrogations at CIA Black Sites and at Guantanamo. The presence of psychologists has both educated the interrogation teams in more skillful methods of breaking people down and legitimized the process of torture in defiance of the Geneva Conventions.
The behavior of psychologists on these enhanced interrogation teams violates our own Code of Ethics (2002) in which we pledge to respect the dignity and worth of all people, with special responsibility towards the most vulnerable. I consider prisoners in secret CIA-run facilities with no right of habeas corpus or access to attorneys, family or media to be highly vulnerable. I also believe that when any of us are degraded, all of human life is degraded. This letter is as much about us as it is about prisoners.
In our Ethics Code we agree to promote honesty and accuracy. Our involvement in these projects has been secretive and dishonest. Finally, as psychologists we vow to do no harm. Without question, we violate this oath when we allow people in our care to be deprived of sleep or subjected to sensory over-stimulation or deprivation.
I cannot accept the August 19, 2007 Reaffirmation of APA's Position Against Torture (Substitute Motion Three.) Under this motion, psychologists will be allowed to continue working on interrogation teams that are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. This motion places our organization on the side of the CIA and Department of Defense and at odds with the United Nations, The Red Cross, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association. With this reaffirmation we have made a terrible mistake.
I know that the return of my Presidential Citation from Dr. Koocher will be of small import, but it is what I can do to disassociate myself from what I consider to be a heinous policy. All of my life I have tried my best to stand up for those with no voices and no power. The prisoners our government labels as enemy combatants are in this category.
I return my citation as a matter of conscience and in the hopes that the APA will reconsider its current unethical position. We have long been a wonderful organization that respected human rights and promoted tolerance, kindness, and peace. Nothing is more fundamental to our core orientation and professional service to others than our commitment to all people's inherent dignity, safety and welfare. I hope my letter may be useful in restoring the APA to its long-respected and important stance as a beacon of integrity and kindness for all human beings.
Respectfully,
Dr. Mary Pipher
Dr. Mary Pipher received her BA in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1969 and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska in 1977. She received the American Psychological Association Presidential Citation in 1998. In 2001, she was a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar in Residence at Bellagio, Italy. Dr Pipher's work combines her training in both the fields of psychology and anthropology. Her special area if interest is how American culture influences the mental health of its people. Dr. Pipher has appeared on the TODAY SHOW, 20/20, THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW, the NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER, and National Public Radio's FRESH AIR. She has written articles for Time Magazine, Hope, Psychotherapy Networker, The Journal of Family Life, and many other publications. Three of her books, Reviving Ophelia, The Shelter of Each Other, and Another Country were New York Times bestsellers. Reviving Ophelia was #1 for 27 weeks and on the NYT list for 154 weeks. Dr. Pipher travels all over the world sharing her ideas with community groups, schools, and health care professionals. Her articulate and passionate delivery creates enthusiasm in all types of audiences. Her down-to-earth stories of hope and resilience inspire people to work together to build a better community.
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Re:Fresh psychologist torture role revelations
« Reply #3 on: 2008-07-25 13:54:20 » |
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[Blunderov] The American Psychological Association will live forever in the annals of infamy which is why it will have to be utterly repudiated and then dissolved. A new institution is required. Now.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/torture-and-the-strategic-helplessness-of-the-american-psychological-association/
Torture and the Strategic Helplessness of the American Psychological Association
by Stephen Soldz, Brad Olson, Steven Reisner, Jean Maria Arrigo, and Bryant Welch / July 23rd, 2008
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Jane Mayer’s new book, The Dark Side, has refocused attention on psychologists’ participation in Bush administration torture and detainee abuse. In one chapter Mayer provides previously undisclosed details about psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen’s role in the CIA’s brutal, “enhanced interrogation” techniques. These techniques apparently drew heavily on the theory of “learned helplessness” developed by former American Psychological Association President Martin Seligman. (Seligman’s work involved tormenting dogs with electrical shocks until they became totally unable or unwilling to extract themselves from the painful situation. Hence the phrase “learned helplessness.”)
Mayer reports and Seligman has confirmed that, in 2002, Seligman gave a three-hour lecture to the Navy SERE school in San Diego. SERE is the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program, which attempts to inoculate pilots, special forces, and other potential high-value captives against torture, should they be captured by a power that does not respect the Geneva Conventions. For reasons that are not clear, Seligman reportedly was not invited to the presentation by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) that runs this program, but directly by the Central Intelligence Agency itself.
In responding to reports of his lecture to SERE psychologists, Dr. Seligman has confirmed the presence of both Mitchell and Jessen at his lecture. He also apparently asked his hosts if the lecture would be used for designing interrogation techniques. Seligman reports that they refused to answer his inquiry on the grounds of military security. Despite the reply, Seligman concluded that his presentation was intended solely to help SERE psychologists protect US troops. He also states unequivocally that he is personally opposed to torture.
The American Psychological Association (APA), the organization of which Seligman was president in 1999, echoed Dr. Seligman’s statement in a press release. The release denied allegations that Dr. Seligman knowingly contributed to the design of torture techniques. The APA, in its recent statements, neither denied nor addressed any of the other reports suggesting that the work of psychologists — including that of Seligman, Jessen, and Mitchell — was used to torture detainees. The only comment APA made about Jessen and Mitchell was that because they are not APA members they are not within the purview of the APA’s ethics committee.
What we do now know, from a report issued by the Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and from documents released during recent hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), is that these SERE techniques, designed to ameliorate the effects of torture, were “reverse engineered,” transformed from ensuring the safety of our own soldiers, to orchestrating the abuse of detainees in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq. These documents reveal, further, that certain SERE psychologists shifted roles from supervising protective SERE programs to overseeing SERE-inspired abusive interrogations. Several reporters have named Mitchell and Jessen (former SERE psychologists under contract) as responsible for this “reverse-engineering” that was used at secret CIA “black sites”. The Senate Armed Senate Committee reported that other psychologists played a role in the “reverse-engineering” of SERE techniques for the Department of Defense at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq. Senator Carl Levin, in his introductory comments to the hearings stated:
a… senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s CounterTerrorism Center, went to [Guantanamo] attended a meeting of GTMO staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from [Guantanamo] who, a couple of weeks earlier, had attended the training given at Fort Bragg by instructors from the JPRA SERE school…While the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes … clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees.
The psychologist referred to in Levin’s opening remarks was APA member, Maj. John Leso, whose recommendations at that meeting included “sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time… [to] foster dependence and compliance.” Also reported in the hearings was that psychologist Col. Morgan Banks had provided training in abusive SERE techniques to Guantánamo interrogators. Col. Banks, while not an APA member, was appointed to the APA’s Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force on interrogations. APA has yet to comment upon the startling revelations of psychologist complicity from these committee hearings.
According to Mayer in The Dark Side and other reporters over the past three years, in the weeks following Seligman’s lecture, Mitchell made liberal use of the “learned helplessness” paradigm in the harsh tactics he designed to interrogate prisoners held by the CIA. One prisoner was repeatedly locked in a fetal position; in a cage too tiny for him to do anything, other than to lie still in a fetal position. The cage was evidently designed not only to restrict movement, but also to make breathing difficult. In periods where the detainee was outside of the cage, the torture mechanism always remained in plain view so the detainee was constantly aware of his pending return to the device.
Another detainee was suspended on his toes with his wrists manacled above his head. This detainee, however, had a prosthesis that agents removed so that he either balanced on one foot for hours on end or hung suspended from his wrists.
Most detainees were subjected to long periods of isolation, often in total darkness, and often while naked. Human contact in these periods was minimized. In one case, the only human contact for a detainee occurred from a single daily visit when a masked man would show up to state, “You know what I want,” and then disappear.
Based on these media reports and government documents, it seems likely that Dr. Seligman’s work on “learned helplessness” was used to aid the development of these torture techniques following his presentation at the SERE school.
APA’s response to the Seligman matter is perplexing. If Dr. Seligman’s report is accurate, and he was kept from knowing how the CIA would be using his material because he did not have security clearance, Seligman was evidently duped. At a minimum, one would hope the APA would be concerned enough about this deception to sound a cautionary alarm against psychologists’ naive engagement with government programs potentially involved in interrogation abuses.
Instead, the APA has put extraordinary effort into maintaining and expanding opportunities for psychologists to serve US intelligence and security institutions. As the APA’s Science Policy Insider News (SPIN) proudly announced in January 2005: “Since 9/11 psychologists have searched for opportunities to contribute to the nation’s counter terrorism and homeland security agenda.”
These efforts included cosponsoring a conference with the CIA to investigate the efficacy of enhanced interrogation techniques, including the use of drugs and sensory bombardment. Among the reported organizers of that conference was APA member Kirk Hubbard, Chief of the Research & Analysis Branch, Operational Assessment Division of the CIA. Hubbard recruited the “operational expertise” for that conference. Among the attendees to this “by-invitation-only” conference were Mitchell and Jessen. (Hubbard also helped organize the event at which Seligman spoke and to which Mitchell and Jessen were invited.)
In addition, the APA co-sponsored a conference with the FBI during which it was suggested that therapists report to law-enforcement officials information obtained during therapy sessions regarding “national security risk.” And just this past June, APA’s efforts included lobbying for the retention of “invaluable behavioral science programs within DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) as it reorganizes and loses personnel strength.” For those who are not familiar with this issue, the CIFA program was closed down because of numerous scandals, including: misuse of national security letters to gain access to private citizen’s financial information without warrants, the resignation of a Congressman accused of accepting bribes in exchange for CIFA contracts, and, according to the New York Times, the collection of a wide-reaching domestic “database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls.” The CIFA psychology directorate, although a top secret operation, was known for its risk assessments of Guantánamo detainees, including feeding questions to interrogators.
The issues of psychologist involvement in “national security” efforts are complex. Although there may be appropriate and ethically acceptable ways for psychologists to participate in such activities, even a cursory historical awareness indicates that such involvement is often ethically problematic. Whether for good or for ill, the CIA has a long record of tapping academic scientists as witting and unwitting consultants and researchers, and of providing protection through cover stories and secrecy. For example, the 1977 Senate investigation of the CIA Behavioral Modification Project (called MKULTRA) disclosed that the CIA had contracted with researchers at over 80 universities, hospitals, and other research-based institutions through a front funding agency. In the Senate hearing, the Director of Central Intelligence stated: “I believe we all owe a moral obligation to these researchers and institutions to protect them from any unjustified embarrassment or damage to their reputations which revelations of their identities might bring.”1 But these are not just ploys of the past. Recently, Dr. Belinda Canton, a long-time CIA intelligence manager and a member of the 2005 President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, recommended opportunistic use of scientists as an approach to management of uncertainty: “Identify academics and scientists who may have insights” and note where “opportunities exist to exploit scientific cadre.”2
This history, along with the current, well-documented authorizations for detainee abuse, should have provided sufficient warning to APA leaders and to individual psychologists about the moral risks in aiding the national security apparatus, especially under the present U.S. administration. But the APA has not taken the lead in helping psychologists confront these dangerous ethical situations. To the contrary, the APA has been insensitive to the use of psychological techniques in torture and to the role of psychologists in aiding that torture. This insensitivity itself has shocked many psychologists here and abroad.
In 2006, Time magazine released the interrogation log of Guantanamo detainee 063, Mohammed al-Qahtani. This log demonstrated that al-Qahtani had been systematically tortured for six weeks in late 2002 and 2003. The log also alleged that psychologist and APA member Maj. John Leso was present at least several times during these episodes. The APA said nothing about this alleged participation of an APA member in documented torture. It is at least 23 months since ethics complaints were filed against Dr. Leso and still the APA has remained silent.
In May 2007, the Defense Department declassified the Office of Inspector General report, documenting the role of SERE psychologists in training military and CIA personnel in techniques of abuse that “violated the Geneva Conventions.” The APA responded with silence. When we inquired about the APA’s reaction, we were told that the organization needed time to “carefully study” the report. It has been 14 months, and to date no APA leader has commented upon the Report.
The APA leadership has failed psychologists and failed the profession of psychology. It has also failed the country. When ethical guidance was required, the APA put its ethical authority in the hands of those involved in the questionable practices that needed investigation. When the evidence became overwhelming that psychologists helped design, implement, and standardize a U.S. torture regime, the APA remained silent. When it was reported that the use of psychological paradigms such as ‘learned helplessness’ have guided psychologists’ manipulation of detainee conditions, the APA continues to ignore or discount these reports. They instead assert that psychologists presence’ at CIA black sites and detention camps “assures safety.” When it became clear that the APA should offer a strong voice and a clear policy prohibiting psychologists’ participation in operations that systematically violate the Geneva conventions and international law, the APA leadership raised concern that a “restraint of trade” lawsuit might be brought against them. These arguments, of course, do not pass the red face test in any discerning forum of world opinion.
These are not our values. The APA leadership has shamed us and our profession with its strategic helplessness. It is time for the APA to clarify that psychologists may not ethically support in any way abusive or coercive interrogation tactics in any settings. It is also time to identify and hold publicly responsible the individual psychologists who have created the institution that the APA has now become. It is time to hold these psychologists accountable for developing the widespread and systematic moral failures in the organization’s current infrastructure. Indeed, if we do not do this, then we, too, are complicit with torture.
U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources. (1977) Project MKULTRA: the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Pp. 7, 12-13, 123 & 148-149. #
Canton, Belinda. (2008). The active management of uncertainty. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 21 (3): 487-518. #
Stephen Soldz, Brad Olson, Steven Reisner, Jean Maria Arrigo, and Bryant Welch are part of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Read other articles by Stephen Soldz,.
This article was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 9:29 am and is filed under Psychology/Psychiatry, Torture.
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Fresh psychologist torture role revelations
« Reply #4 on: 2008-07-30 00:28:44 » |
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[Blunderov] A clear illustration of why it is so imperative that a proper ethical foundation for psychology professionals be enforced. (The Hippocratic oath might do perhaps?)
"...the solution delivers effective consequence modeling and improved confidence in decisions for a range of global operational and BUSINESS CHALLENGES..."
[Bl.] I hate it when my tail goes all bushy like that 
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUR20080729&articleId=9701
Antifascist Calling...
Operating with little ethical oversight, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been tapping cutting-edge advances in neuroscience, computers and robotics in a quest to build the "perfect warfighter."
Dovetailing precisely with other projects to "dominate" the urban "battlespace" of global south and "homeland" cities, DARPA researchers are stretching moral boundaries where clear distinctions between "human" and "machine" are being consciously blurred. (see "Simulating Urban Warfare" and "America's Cyborg Warriors")
As the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics warns,
The right of a person to liberty, autonomy, and privacy over his or her own intellect is situated at the core of what it means to be a free person. This principle is what gives life to some of our most well-established and cherished rights. Today, as new drugs and other technologies are being developed for augmenting, monitoring, and manipulating mental processes, it is more important than ever to ensure that our legal system recognizes and protects cognitive liberty as a fundamental right. (CCLE, "Frequently Asked Questions," September 15, 2003)
Not only is the right to "liberty, autonomy, and privacy" being undermined by militarizing the life sciences, but the legal system itself is ill-equipped to deal with advances--and emerging threats--to "cognitive liberty" as America's corporatist surveillance state seek new means to elicit compliance and control over individuals as biological science is securitized under the rubric of "national security."
In Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense (Dana Press, 2006), bioethicist Jonathan Moreno lays out a frightening scenario where various Pentagon agencies with DARPA leading the charge, have been funding neuroscientific and biological research in the following areas:
Mind-machine interfaces, also called "neural prosthetics." Living robots" whose movements can be controlled via brain implants. Research has successfully been carried out on "roborats" and "robodogs" for mine clearing and other dubious purposes. "Cognitive feedback helmets" that provide commanders or their medical surrogates the ability to remotely view an individual soldiers' mental state. MRI and fMRI technologies for what has been called "brain fingerprinting" as an interrogation tool or airport screening for "terrorists." So-called "non-lethal" pulse weapons and other neurodisruptors for deployment in global south or "homeland" cities as "riot control" tools. "Neuroweapons" that use biological agents to stimulate the release of neurotoxins. Research into concocting new pharmaceuticals that inhibit the urge to eat, sleep, suppress fear, or repress psychological inhibitions against killing.
With a multibillion dollar budget and dozens of projects in the pipeline, DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) are looking for newer and ever-more insidious means "to harness biology" for military applications. A short list of DSO projects include the following:
* Biological Sensory Structure Emulation (BioSenSE), a program "designed around the concept of understanding biological sensory structures through advanced characterization and emulating, or transferring, this knowledge to the creation of superior synthetic sensors." The majority of biological stimuli are deemed of "great military relevance" by Darpacrats.
* Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CTTWS), the intent of which is to integrate "advances in technology and biology" for a "soldier-portable" visual threat detection device that will utilized "cognitive visual processing algorithms" and "operator neural signature detection."
* Fundamental Laws of Biology (FLB), is described as a mathematical modeling program that "will impact DoD and national security by developing a rational and predictive basis for doing biological research to combat bioterrorism, maintain healthy personnel, and discover new vaccines and medicines"--or to facilitate the design of new biological weapons.
* Nano Air Vehicle (NAV), described by program managers as as a project that "will develop and demonstrate an extremely small (less than 7.5 cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10 grams) air vehicle system with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor military missions. The program will explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations." Paging John Anderton, white courtesy telephone!
* Neovision "will pursue an integrated approach to the object recognition pathway in the brain. This fundamental biological research will be accomplished using methods intentionally geared toward computational and modeling approaches that are amenable to hardware- and software-based implementations."
* Peak Soldier Performance (PSP) is designed to "create technologies that allow the warfighter to maintain peak physical and cognitive performance despite the harsh battlefield environment." In other words, develop drugs and nutrients for a "more efficient" soldier.
* Preventing Sleep Deprivation (PSD) is described as seeking to "enhance operational performance," under harsh conditions. Current approaches "under investigation" include "novel pharmaceuticals that enhance neural transmission, nutraceuticals that promote neurogenesis, cognitive training, and devices such as transcranial magnetic stimulation."
* Training Superiority (DARWARS), a suite of programs directly tying the military-industrial and entertainment complexes together into a seamless web. DARWARS seeks to provide "continuously available, on-demand, mission-level training for all forces at all echelons. Specifically, the program is developing, in areas of high military importance, new kinds of cognitive training systems that include elements of human-tutor interactions and the emotional involvement of computer games coupled with the feedback of Combat Training Center learning." Continuous "on-demand training anywhere, anytime, for everyone."
As with all dual-use research conducted by the agency, military relevance trump all other considerations. One need only examine the use of psychological research in the "war on terror" for some very troubling analogies.
AugCog
If behavioral psychology was handmaid to the horrors perpetrated at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and CIA transnational "black sites," what new nightmares are in store for humanity when advances in neuroscience, complex computer algorithms and a secretive national security state enter stage (far) right? Let's take a look.
Amy Kruse, Ph.D., is described on DARPA's website as the creator of the concept of "operational neuroscience," designing programs that "are helping transform neuroscience from a laboratory discipline to one that is doing advanced research to deliver revolutionary capabilities important to our warfighters."
DSO's "Training and Human Effectiveness" brief claims this suite of programs is "revolutionizing training...for everyone, anywhere, and at any time." Kruse's area of expertise is "AugCog" or augmented cognition, a subset of neuroscientific research seeking models for a "brain-machine interface." Described by the Augmented Cognition International Society (ACI) as
an emerging field of science that seeks to extend a user's abilities via computational technologies, which are explicitly designed to address bottlenecks, limitations, and biases in cognition and to improve decision making capabilities. The goal of AugCog science and technology is to develop computational methods and neurotech tools that can account for and accommodate information processing bottlenecks inherent in human-system interaction (e.g., limitations in attention, memory, learning, comprehension, visualization abilities, and decision making). ("What is Augmented Cognition?" ACI, no date) [emphasis added]
According to DARPA's description of the program, Improving Warfighter Information Intake Under Stress (AugCog):
Military operators must frequently perform cognitively demanding tasks in stressful environments. The AugCog Program has developed technologies to mitigate sensory or cognitive overload and restore operational effectiveness by extending the information management capacity of the warfighter. This is accomplished through closed-loop computational systems that adapt to the state of the warfighter and thereby significantly improve performance.
The exploitation of human and other biological systems by DARPA raise profoundly troubling questions of how these security-related applications will be used by the United States to achieve global dominance at any and all cost. A recent article in Military Geospatial Technology reveal the technophilic preoccupations that obsess securocrats.
Imagine a computer that can read human brain waves to assess the lay of the land. It might seem futuristic, but that's what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency [NGA] had partially in mind when they awarded contracts under DARPA's Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) program. (Cheryl Gerber, "Seeing with Your Brain," Military Geospatial Technology, Vol. 6, Issue 3, June 5, 2008)
One of URGENT's "prime contractors, major defense grifter Lockheed Martin, call their "approach to the program Object Recognition via Brain-inspired Technology," (ORBIT). In conjunction with DARPA's URGENT program, the AugCog project is based on brain-inspired software that seeks to merge neuroscience with computers to create a technology that promises to deliver "situational awareness" to the "warfighter." But building complex 3-D mapping systems is merely the initial jump-off point for what may come once "brain-inspired" algorithms are "perfected."
One "product" that currently aids the "warfighter" and "counterterrorist" officials is called Signature Analyst, designed by corporate grifter SPADAC, a McClean, Virginia defense contractor with close ties to the Department of Homeland Security and the the NGA. According to SPADAC's website, Signature Analyst
delivers enhanced objectivity by discerning subtle yet powerful and actionable insights, maximizing likelihood of success. Combining predictive analytics with spatial information as well as human terrain and social networking elements, the solution delivers effective consequence modeling and improved confidence in decisions for a range of global operational and business challenges.
The program claims it provides "situational awareness" by "finding commonalities" and "relationships" in distinct, seemingly disparate data sources, including past events, as well as "human terrain" and "social networking" information. As we have described previously, Scaleable Social Network Analysis was a data-mining tool designed by DARPA's Total Information Awareness office that worked in tandem with the National Security Agency's illegal spying programs.
One shudders to imagine what "consequences" DARPA and their corporate "partners" are "modeling." A commercial version of the "product" is in the works. One "benefit" of the Signature Analyst software trumpeted by SPADAC is that will "allow fewer analysts to evaluate more data in less time." Why its the perfect "predictive" tool for the current capitalist downturn!
Carrying the mechanistic human/machine model a step further, Lockheed Martin and their "partner" Numenta, a California-based software company, are working on applications for the Defense Department. According to Numenta's website, company founder Jeff Hawkins, author of the 2004 book On Intelligence, has "a deep interest in neuroscience and theories of the neocortex." We bet he does!
Indeed, Hawkins' team has designed a suite of software applications, the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing (NuPIC), based on what it calls "hierarchical temporal memory (HTM)," a "computing paradigm" that mimics the structure and function of the human neocortex, the area of the brain that handles high-level thought.
John Darvill ORBIT's chief investigator described Lockheed's relationship with Numenta to Military Geospatial Technology thusly: "Lockheed has been involved with Numenta technology for two years and is a member of the Numenta Partner Program for technical interchange. We have a collaborative technical relationship with Numenta. We use their technology, modify it and apply it."
How? According to Numenta CEO Donna Dubinsky, HTM is designed to "be good at what the human brain can do--inference and pattern recognition even in the presence of noise." In a similar fashion, HTM "learns a model of the world" Dubinsky elaborated, "by exposure through its senses. In the same way, our software is self-learning and has to be exposed to the material that it has to learn. So we train the software. For example, we expose it to a lot of tanks so it learns tank-ness."
And if the software could be applied to an interrogation archetype, will it then "self-learn" how to "model" a sensory deprivation or psychological torture regimen, individually tailored to an "illegal enemy combatant" after it has been "exposed to the material"? Will the software in other words, be exposed "to a lot of torture so it learns torture-ness"?
Technological dual-use is a slippery slope towards atrocity and unimaginable horror, especially if left in the hands of American militarists.
Back to the Future
Here precisely, lies the crux of the problem of exploiting neuroscience and robotics in a quest for newer and ever more insidious military applications. The potential of neurologically interactive technologies to "enhance" human capabilities, indeed to invade the privacy of human thought, and infringe on the independence of our minds for "reasons of state," transform biological/medical research into a subset of weapons development.
To be sure, science, and in particular the cognitive sciences, have been seduced by the Pentagon and the CIA in the past. The literature on unethical CIA and Army research into quixotic quests for "mind control" over "enemy" agents and "target" populations--MKULTRA and their perverse offspring--are replete with the horror stories of their abused victims. Indeed, MKULTRA became the ideologically-charged basis for current interrogation and torture practices by the CIA, the military and their "outsourced" partners.
A perusal of the Company's seminal interrogation manuals, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983 drew liberally from the most up-to-date cognitive research of its time. Indeed, many of the sources cited in KUBARK and HRE were leading behavioral psychologists and psychiatrists "under contract" to the CIA, as documented by historians and researchers John Marks (The Search for the Manchurian Candidate), Alfred W. McCoy (A Question of Torture) and Christopher Simpson (Science of Coercion).
Indeed, as Simpson avers in Science of Coercion, the Human Ecology Fund, a CIA cut-out funneling money to prestigious academics such as Albert Biderman, underwrote research on "captivity behavior" and the efficacy "of drugs, electroshock, violence, and other coercive techniques during interrogation of prisoners."
Fast forward to the present. As anthropologist Hugh Gusterson writes regarding current Pentagon interest in neuroscientific research today,
individual scientists will tell themselves that, if they don't do the research, someone else will. Research funding will be sufficiently dominated by military grant makers that it will cause some scientists to choose between accepting military funding or giving up their chosen field of research. And the very real dual-use potential of these new technologies (the same brain implant can create a robosoldier or rehabilitate a Parkinson's disease sufferer) will allow scientists to tell themselves that they are "really" working on health technologies to improve the human lot, and the funding just happens to come from the Pentagon. ("The Militarization of Neuroscience," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 April 2007)
In the final analysis, DARPA, the Pentagon agency that brought us the internet, are now searching for the means to militarize the human mind itself, viewed as the ultimate platform for imperialist domination and social control.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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