Dem. Now!: ...How Two Psychologists Shaped the CIA's Torture Methods

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/30/1416256


Rorshach and Awe: As Opposition Grows Over the APA's Policy Allowing Psychologists To Take Part in Military Interrogations, Vanity Fair Exposes How Two Psychologists Shaped the CIA's Torture Methods


Vanity Fair reporter Katherine Eban unravels the central role of two CIA-contracted psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, in designing torture tactics for use on detainees held in secret CIA prisons around the world. Both worked in a classified military training program known as sere—for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—which trains soldiers to endure captivity in enemy hands. Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on sere trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror. The C.I.A. put them in charge of training interrogators in the brutal techniques, including "waterboarding," at its network of "black sites." President Bush, in his July 20th executive order, gave the Central Intelligence Agency the green light to resume some severe interrogation methods to question detainees in secret prisons overseas. While the order explicitly bans murder, sexual abuse, and religious denigration it remains silent on the use of psychological torture and specific techniques such as waterboarding, sleep and sensory deprivation, death threats, stress positions, isolation, and use of dogs.

The story behind these interrogation techniques is the subject of an expose titled "Rorshach and Awe" by investigative journalist Katherine Eban that was published on vanityfair.com. Eban unravels the central role of two CIA-contracted psychologists in designing these tactics for use on detainees held in secret CIA prisons around the world. Her article is the latest in a series of revelations linking psychologists to US military and CIA interrogations of prisoners of the so-called "war on terror."

Although the two psychologists contracted by the CIA are not members of the American Psychological Association, many psychologists continue to voice grave concern over the APA's equivocation. In an open letter last month, leading psychologists urged the president of the APA to reverse its "years-long policy of condoning and encouraging psychologist participation in interrogations."

Today we spend the hour on the explosive issue of psychologists and their role in America's continuing use of so called "enhanced" interrogation techniques that the International Committee of the Red Cross calls "tantamount to torture." The pressure for a moratorium is mounting, with a vote expected in several weeks at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco.

* Katherine Eban, Investigative reporter and writer for several national publications. Her latest article is "Rorshach and Awe" published exclusively on vanityfair.com.

* Brad Olson, Assistant Research Professor at Northwestern University. He is a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical APA and is also the Chair of Divisions for Social Justice, a collaboration of 13 APA divisions promoting a greater emphasis on social justice in the field of psychology.

Did you catch the other segment Amy did on this story?

recall hearing if not posting about the involvement of the psychologists and the APA.

What I remember is, the APA put a panel together to do a study. The panel was stacked with military psychologists and it was a fake study -- one of those whitewashing CYA exercises. The civilian psychologists felt pretty betrayed when they found out that they had been duped into complicity, iirc.

My memory-there you are! :woohoo: :applause: :D

Wonder if CNN's editorial staff is as deeply penetrated...

OMG.

I only regret that I quietly quit the APA years ago, so I can't resign in loud protest now. I think it is despicable that they have not taken a stance against allowing the profession to be used in this way.

American exceptionalism...not even torture by America is wrong...because if it was...

of the new country thought they were very different from the 'old country'---there was an atttitude of exceptionalism----they (the americans) would be excempt from the tyranny of rule by the king (because of constitution and its checks and balances).


the experiment is working??

but you gotta admit, for propaganda and conditioning value, it was and remains a brilliant concept..sure, at its essence it is little more than "we're special and different", but the way it was presented...genius.

the idea/thinking/concept was around before the term was coined

with curiously reads the reverse. When the British came here, everything they saw was some version of what they already knew at home. In particular, I remember drawings of native Americans that figures them as Irish!

we're purer than them, we're smarter than them...so we should rule..them, of course.

So it would not be surprising for it to feel the same coming from any empire(and consider who settled in what would become America)...unless of course your empire was one of the "them" that should be ruled by those whose exceptionalism makes them "fit" to rule

America took the concept to a new heights...our intentions are good, so our "mistakes" are minor...we only want people to be free..so any horrors are not really horrors at all and what we do toward that aim (spreading freedom) are for the greater good ...our government is unique , so will endure...we're owed, we deserve, we are the greatest,the best, the wisest, the nicest...etc, etc, etc.

whose name translates to "we the only people". And, sure, American culture really ran with it.

to the viewing public. You know, like extreme sports only naughty.

beyond words.

OK. Cue Godwin's Law. Nevertheless...

From: http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug06/interrogations.html

American Medical Association and American Psychological Association are the same in allowing assistance to interrogation.

"From rules that APA and AMA share comes what both associations allow: Psychologists and physicians may consult to interrogations under strict ethical guidelines—namely, that the interrogation is not coercive and that the roles of health-care provider and consultant are never mixed. Explaining that the purpose of an interrogation is “to prevent harm or danger to individuals, the public, or national security,” and that a physician’s ethical obligations to individuals must be balanced against obligations to protect the public, the AMA report states that physicians may consult to interrogations by developing interrogation strategies that do “not threaten or cause physical injury or mental suffering” and that are “humane and respect the rights of individuals."

The American Psychiatrist Association shows why it's superior to the two above. They know that participating in interrogation won't stop there and they take the appropriate ethical stand. Good for them:

" While the psychiatrists’ much briefer (three paragraphs and a footnote) statement does not offer a conceptual framework for their position, the apparent attention to a single principle—Do No Harm—leads the psychiatrists to de-emphasize the role of protecting society. Thus, the psychiatric association states that psychiatrists should not participate in an interrogation by “being present in the interrogation room, asking or suggesting questions, or advising authorities on the use of specific techniques of interrogations with particular detainees,” even if the interrogation is conducted for the purpose of “identifying other persons who have committed or may be planning to commit acts of violence.” The difference between the psychologists and physicians, on one hand, and the psychiatrists, on the other, becomes understandable when placed in the context of how the associations have conceptualized the issue differently."

Dr. autorank says, you go American Psychiatric Association!!!