Psychologists have a higher calling than just following orders

The American Psychological Association (APA) must be feeling the heat.

On August 16 the California state legislature adopted a resolution aimed at stopping the participation of California psychologists and other health professionals in coercive interrogations at Guantanamo and other “war on terror” detention facilities. The New York state legislature is considering a similar resolution.

Two days later, as a front page article in The New York Times focused on the battle in the APA for the “soul of the profession,” many ACLU members rallied outside the Boston Convention Center where the APA was meeting. The protest -- which was covered by USA Today, among others -- was organized by psychologists who have been speaking out against the APA’s refusal to take seriously its ethical obligation to “do no harm.”

I spoke on behalf of the ACLU of Massachusetts. Because many in the audience wanted a copy of my remarks, we are providing them here.

Nancy Murray
Director of Education, ACLU of Massachusetts
(Photo by Pat Westwater-Jong: Nancy Murray speaks at an anti-torture rally in 2007)

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At the end of the 20th century, who would have predicted that within a handful of years, the United States would be running a secret prison network in at least a dozen countries in which, according to the UK human rights group Reprieve, as many as 80,000 people would at some point be held as "ghost detainees," without the ability to challenge their detention and without their names or whereabouts being known?

Who would have conceived that the United States, in Jane Mayer's words, would sanction “government officials to physically and psychologically torment US-held captives, making torture the official law of the land in all but name?"

Who would have imagined that these practices would be justified by White House legal memos which define torture so narrowly that just about anything could be done to captives and justified by necessity or self-defense?

And who would have thought that the APA, whose Code of Ethics mandates a respect for the basic principles of human rights, and holds psychologists to a "higher standard of conduct than is required by law" would be so reluctant to prohibit psychologists from participating in interrogations from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib?

The APA has justified this "policy of engagement" by stating -- including in a letter to the ACLU -- that its involvement is intended to stop unethical interrogations. But as ACLU executive director Anthony Romero points out to the Director of the APA's Ethics Office, in a letter dated June 18, there is plentiful evidence now in the public record that Army psychologists have contributed to the development of abusive interrogation methods. For instance, a recently-obtained portion of the 2005 Church report into interrogation methods states about the psychologists involved with the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams and various Special Operations units, "One of their core missions is to support interrogations."

If you go on the national ACLU website, you can read for yourselves the Justice Department legal memos justifying torture and the more than 100,000 documents obtained by the ACLU from the Justice Department and Pentagon through Freedom of Information Act litigation.

They reveal that detainees have been subjected to what used to be known as "water torture," to sensory and sleep deprivation, to electric shocks, to strobe lights and loud music, to temperature extremes, to being chained to the floor in stress positions for more than 24 hours, to beatings ending in injury and even death, to sexual abuse and humiliation, to the use of menacing dogs, to mock executions and deliberate burnings. Many of these techniques have been revealed to be part of the SERE program of "coercive management techniques" which psychologists helped adapt for use on "war on terror" detainees.

Sami El Haj is a Sudanese journalist for Al Jazeera who was released from Guantanamo on May 1, 2008 after being held there for more than six years. In an recent interview, he claims that during that time was interrogated more than 200 times, and gives horrific details of torture which appear designed to induce the "learned helplessness" which we now know is part of the SERE program. He was mostly questioned about Al Jazeera. He says he refused an offer of American citizenship for himself and his family if he agreed to spy on Al Jazeera.

He then states: "We were under the constant supervision of military psychologists. They were not there to treat us, but to take part in the interrogations, observing the tortured prisoners so that no detail of their behavior would escape them. The interrogations were the responsibility of Colonel Morgan, a specialist psychiatric doctor. He gave instructions to the officers who were torturing us, studied our reactions, then noted every detail in order to be able to adapt the torture techniques to each detainee, which had profound psychological consequences. I spoke to them. I told them that the mission of a doctor is an honorable one, to help people, not torture them. They replied, 'We are military personnel and we must follow the rules. When an officer gives me an order, it is my duty to carry it out; otherwise I will be imprisoned just like you. When I signed a contract with the army, I realized at the time that I must obey all orders.'"

On behalf of the ACLU and its 500,000 members nationwide, I urge members of the APA to say clearly to the leadership of their organization and to the world: psychologists have a higher calling than just following orders, and should not participate in the US government's torture regime. What happens here at this Convention will be of major significance in the struggle to restore the rule of law and re-set our nation's moral compass.

Torture or human rights? The choice is ours to make.