US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 'collusion' | Law | The Guardian

7/10/15 5:56 PM

US torture doctors could face charges after

report alleges post-9/11 'collusion'
Following repeated denials that its members were complicit in Bush administration-era
torture, leading group of psychologists faces a reckoning
Spencer Ackerman
Friday 10 July 2015 15.48 EDT

The largest association of psychologists in the United States is on the brink of a crisis, the
Guardian has learned, after an independent review revealed that medical professionals lied
and covered up their extensive involvement in post-9/11 torture. The revelation, puncturing
years of denials, creates the potential for leadership firings, loss of licenses and even
prosecutions.
For more than a decade, the American Psychological Association (APA) has maintained that a
strict code of ethics prohibits its more than 130,000 members to aid in the torture of detainees
while simultaneously permitting involvement in military and intelligence interrogations. The
group has rejected media reporting on psychologists complicity in torture; suppressed internal
dissent from anti-torture doctors; cleared members of wrongdoing; and portrayed itself as a
consistent ally against abuse.
Now, a voluminous independent review conducted by a former assistant US attorney, David
Hoffman, undermines the APAs denials in full and vindicates the dissenters.
Sources with knowledge of the report and its consequences, who requested anonymity to
discuss the findings before public release, expected a wave of firings and resignations across
the leadership of an organization that Hoffman finds used its extensive institutional links to
the CIA and US military to facilitate abusive interrogations.
Several officials are likely to be sacked, including Stephen Behnke, the APAs ethics chief and a
leading figure in recasting its ethics guidelines in a manner conducive to interrogations that,
from the start, relied heavily on psychologists to design and implement techniques like
waterboarding.
But the reckoning with psychologists institutional complicity in torture may not stop there.
Evidence in the Hoffman report, sources believe, may merit referral to the FBI over potential
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criminal wrongdoing by the APA involvement in torture. The findings could reopen something
human rights groups have urged for years: the potential for prosecutions of people involved in
torture. The definition of collusion adopted by Hoffman is said to be similar to language used
in the federal racketeering statute known as Rico.
If so, however, it would not be American military or intelligence interrogators themselves
under investigation, nor the senior officials who devised torture policy in the Bush
administration, but the psychologists who enabled them.
Additionally, sources believe there will be grounds to initiate ethics charges against
responsible individuals both within the APA and in the states in which they operate, which
would be the first step toward the loss of a professional license.
Sources familiar with Hoffmans report said the APA, knowing that the findings will undermine
years of its public positions, is negotiating with its dissenters and critics to deliver a public
apology. Recommendations for structural reform are said to be likely ahead of the
organizations 123rd annual convention, scheduled to begin on 6 August in Toronto.
An APA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Manipulating the opposition: three doctors and torture tactics

Substantial sections of the report focus on the APA ethics chief and describes Behnkes
behind-the-scenes attempts to manipulate Council of Representatives actions in collusion
with, and to remain aligned with DoD a reference to the Department of Defense.
A University of Michigan-pedigreed psychologist, Behnke has held his position within the APA
since 2000, and, according to sources, used it to stifle dissent. Hoffmans report found Behnke
ghostwrote statements opposing member motions to rebuke torture; was involved in voter
irregularity on motion passings; spiked ethics complaints; and took other actions to suppress
complaints.
But Behnke was hardly the only psychologist involved in the establishment and application of
torture.
According to two landmark Senate reports, one from the armed services committee in 2009
and the other from the intelligence committee in 2014, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce
Jessen were instrumental in persuading the CIA to adopt stress positions, temperature and
dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation and waterboarding in interrogations. (Neither man is
an APA member.)
Psychologists assigned to the CIAs office of medical services assisted abusive interrogations,
which the Guardian revealed in June appear to violate longstanding CIA rules against human
experimentation.

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Those tactics, save waterboarding, spread from the CIA to the military. Psychologists joined
behavioral science consultation teams that advised interrogations at Guantnamo Bay.
For the APA officials who played the lead role in these actions, their principal motive was to
curry favor with the Defense Department for two main reasons: because of the very substantial
benefits that DoD had conferred and continued to confer on psychology as a profession, and
because APA wanted a favorable result from the critical policy DoD was in the midst of
developing that would determine whether and how deeply psychologists could remain
involved in intelligence activities, Hoffman found.
Human rights-minded psychologists railed for years that the APA had created an environment
that was conducive to medical professionals effectively participating in torture. Critically, in
2005, a prominent and highly controversial APA taskforce ruled that members could perform
consultative roles to interrogation- or information-gathering processes for national securityrelated purposes.
Yet the organization withstood all public criticism, until New York Times reporter James Risen
revealed, based in part on a hoard of emails from a deceased behavioral-science researcher
named Scott Gerwehr, the behind-the-scenes ties between psychologists from the APA and
their influential counterparts within the CIA and the Pentagon.
In 2002 the critical year for the Bush administrations embrace of torture the APA amended
its longstanding ethics rules to permit psychologists to follow a governing legal authority in
the event of a conflict between an order and the APA ethics code.
Without the change, Risen wrote in his 2014 book Pay Any Price, it was likely that
psychologists would have taken the view that they were prevented by their own professional
standards from involvement in interrogations, making it far more difficult for the Justice
Department to craft opinions that provided the legal approvals needed for the CIA to go ahead
with the interrogation tactics.
In 2004, after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal burst into public view, the emails detailed a
private meeting of APA officials with CIA and military psychologists to provide input on how
the APA should deal with the growing furor, Risen wrote.
Ethics chief Behnke emailed: I would like to emphasize that we will not advertise the meeting
other than this letter to the individual invitees, that we will not publish or otherwise make
public the names of attendees or the substance of our discussions, and that in the meeting we
will neither assess nor investigate the behavior of any specific individual or group.
Risen went on to report that six of the 10 psychologists on the seminal 2005 APA taskforce
had connections with the defense or intelligence communities; one member was the chief
psychologist for US Special Forces. The subject of tremendous internal controversy, the APA
ultimately rescinded the taskforce report in 2013.
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Collusion to promote torture: a reckoning finally arrives

In October, the APA called Risens account largely based on innuendo and one-sided
reporting. Yet the next month the association announced it had asked Hoffman to investigate
potential collusion with the Bush administration to promote, support or facilitate the use of
enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States in the war on terror.
Throughout the controversy, the APA has preferred to treat criticism of its involvement in
torture, either from journalists or from human rights-minded psychologists, with dismissal. Its
internal investigations of the criticisms have typically ended up exonerating its members.
A thorough review of these public materials and our standing policies will clearly
demonstrate that APA will not tolerate psychologist participation in torture, the APA
communications chief, Rhea Farberman, told the Guardian in January 2014, after the Guardian
revealed that an APA inquiry declined to pursue charges against a psychologist involved in the
Guantnamo Bay torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani.
The psychologist, former US army reserve major John Leso, took part in a brutal interrogation
of Qahtani, the suspected intended 20th 9/11 hijacker, according to a leaked interrogation log
and investigation by the Senate armed services committee.
Interrogators extensively deprived Qahtani of sleep, forced him to perform what the log called
dog tricks, inundated him with loud music for extended periods, and forcibly hydrated him
intravenously until he urinated on himself.
The concern that APAs decision to close the matter against Dr John Leso will set a precedent
against disciplining members who participate in abusive interrogations is utterly unfounded,
the APAs Farberman told the Guardian in January 2014.
More news

Topics
Torture
September 11 2001
Guantnamo Bay
Doctors
Psychology
More

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