The American Psychological Association gave psychologists involved in the often-brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere a free pass. The association tweaked its ethics code for the convenience of the U.S. military. For years it failed to investigate serious complaints of unethical conduct — and when it did investigate, its efforts were laughable. Officials seemed more interested in currying favor with the government than living up to the “high standards of ethics” the APA proclaims as integral to its mission.
The association not only didn’t meaningfully object to torture committed under the administration of President George W. Bush; it aided and abetted that abuse.
That’s the verdict of the 542-page independent review prepared by David Hoffman, a former federal prosecutor, at the request of the association.
The fact that psychologists participated in the so-called enhanced-interrogation program is in itself not a revelation: The complicity of psychologists has been known for years. A 2007 article in Vanity Fair spelled out how two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, had helped create interrogation tactics that amounted to torture. Even then there were questions about whether the APA had secretly given the military its approval, though the association denied doing so repeatedly.
James Risen’s book Pay Any Price, published last fall, provided some evidence to back up those long-held suspicions. Mr. Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, concluded that the APA’s cooperation, particularly its willingness to loosen its ethics code, was “essential to the Bush administration’s ability to use enhanced-interrogation techniques against detainees.”
The Hoffman review was commissioned in response to Mr. Risen’s book, which the association had criticized for peddling “innuendo and one-sided reporting.” Presumably APA leaders believed the review would uncover the facts Mr. Risen had supposedly twisted and perhaps polish the association’s besmirched reputation.
It did not. Instead the review, which was leaked on Friday to The New York Times, bolsters the allegations of Mr. Risen and the handful of very vocal psychologists, like Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner, and Jean Maria Arrigo, who had worked for a decade to persuade the organization’s leadership that participating in cruel, coercive military interrogations was unethical. While much of what’s contained in the review has been reported or at least hinted at before, the new details, taken as a whole, are damning.
Close Coordination
The star — some might say the villain — of the Hoffman review is Stephen Behnke, who had served as the association’s director of ethics since November 2000. (Mr. Behnke was “terminated for cause” as a result of the Hoffman review.) It’s clear from the emails that the APA provided to Mr. Hoffman, which are now published online, that Mr. Behnke made certain each step of the way that government interrogators wouldn’t be hampered by the association’s ethics code. He coordinated very closely with Col. Louie Morgan Banks, then the chief psychologist with the Army Special Operations Command, keeping him informed of discussions within the APA, getting his advice on specific policies, and working with him to craft language on restrictions.
According to the Hoffman report, Mr. Behnke made sure that the ethics code did not contain a simple mandate to “do no harm.” Instead, the code included watered-down guidelines to “take care to do no harm” and to “minimize harm,” wording that provided psychologists with the military and the Central Intelligence Agency the wiggle room they desired.
Mr. Behnke regularly forwarded emails to Mr. Banks, who is now retired from the military, asking for advice. When a reporter from Washington Monthly started asking questions about psychologists’ involvement in interrogations, in July 2006, Mr. Behnke sent a draft of his response to Mr. Banks, asking him: “Please let me know where I’ve gone astray. Also, if you think there are other points I should make, I can do so. I hope I’ve done a good job here.”
Mr. Hoffman writes that the two were “teammates” and that Mr. Behnke “turned to his partners and friends in DoD [the Department of Defense] to craft a unified response to critics and to ensure that the APA and military media strategies aligned in message and theme.”
Indeed, reading the correspondence between the two, it appears that the common enemies of the APA and the military included both the news media and psychologists critical of the APA’s permissive ethical guidelines on interrogation. Mr. Hoffman notes evidence indicating that Mr. Banks was “consulting with other military leaders” — suggesting that, via the Behnke-Banks relationship, top military officials were able to influence the APA’s positions on crucial matters.
Mr. Behnke understood that, should the degree of coordination become known, they would have a public-relations problem. He titled emails “Eyes Only.” After allowing Mr. Banks to review a draft of an APA statement, Mr. Behnke warned that “discretion about prior review is essential.”
Mr. Behnke appears to have been the primary conduit for military influence. His name is mentioned in the Hoffman review nearly 2,000 times. But he is not the only official Mr. Hoffman determined was willing to skew APA policy to comport with the government’s wishes.
Until 2007, Russ Newman was executive director for professional practice at the APA. As such, he played a role in creating the task force that composed the association’s ethics guidelines; he also had a say in their wording. According to the review, Mr. Newman specifically objected to including the word “coercive” in those guidelines. The word was replaced with the vaguer, less inflammatory “various investigative techniques.” Like Mr. Behnke, Mr. Newman was in touch with Mr. Banks and was aware of his preferences.
Perhaps more troubling was the fact that Mr. Newman’s wife, Lt. Col. Debra Dunivin, worked for the Department of Defense and at one time was the lead psychologist for interrogations at Guantánamo. That obvious conflict of interest was not disclosed, according to Mr. Hoffman. In fact, the review found that during the creation of the ethics code the couple “inserted themselves and influenced the process and outcome in important ways.”
‘Disingenuous’ Statements
While some APA leaders did raise concerns, those who were more sympathetic to the government quickly shot them down. When Diane F. Halpern, a former APA president and board member, suggested in an email that “somewhere we add data showing that torture is ineffective in obtaining good information,” Mr. Behnke pushed back immediately. Rhea K. Farberman, executive director for public and member communications, supported him: “Hopefully, Diane’s suggestion is dead in the water,” she wrote.
When the APA wasn’t modifying language to please the military, it was desperately trying to convince its membership and the public that its intentionally lax ethics code actually prevented psychologists from taking part in torture. Ronald F. Levant, the association’s president at the time, emphasized in a letter to The New York Times in 2005 that the association had put in place “strict ethical guidelines.” The Hoffman review reveals that the letter was actually written by Mr. Behnke, citing it as part of a “disingenuous media strategy” that made the association appear to be strongly against torture.
Despite the toothless ethics code, complaints were still filed. Publicly the APA swore again and again that it was vigorously upholding its code. Mr. Behnke, the ethics director, said that if APA members had acted “inappropriately,” the association would deal with any complaints “very directly and very clearly.”
The APA did nothing of the sort.
In 2005, The New Yorker published an article by Jane Mayer, who reported that a psychologist named James Mitchell had suggested using severe interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects. Later a complaint about Mr. Mitchell was made to the ethics office, which conducted a search that found three members named James Mitchell in the database — and that’s where the investigation ended. It turns out one of the James Mitchells in the database was indeed the psychologist mentioned in Ms. Mayer’s article, but no action was taken against him.
In 2007 a complaint was made against Col. Larry C. James, who served as chief Army psychologist at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. The complaint alleged that Colonel James’s public statements denying the use of certain harsh interrogation techniques were untrue, and included references to those remarks. But the investigation was stymied because the articles cited were behind subscription paywalls at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, so the assigned investigator did not view them.
The Hoffman review also examines claims that high-profile psychologists, like Philip Zimbardo and Martin Seligman, might have cooperated with the military in designing its torture program. The review found little evidence to support those allegations.
Mr. Zimbardo acknowledged giving a talk to a small group at the CIA but said that was the extent of his involvement.
Mr. Seligman met with CIA psychologists at his home to talk about his theory of learned helplessness, an idea that was incorporated into the government’s torture program. He also met with CIA psychologists several times after that and gave a lecture at the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training school, known as SERE. But Mr. Seligman said that the theory was discussed as it related to captured Americans, not the interrogation of suspected terrorists.
The Hoffman review raises an eyebrow at Mr. Seligman’s defense: “On balance, it seems difficult to believe that Seligman did not at least suspect that the CIA was interested in his theories, at least in part, to consider how they could be used in interrogations.”
In an email to The Chronicle, Mr. Seligman wrote that he is “grieved and horrified that scientific findings about learned helplessness” were used to torture detainees. “I have never and would never abet such activities,” he wrote.
None of the APA officials contacted over the weekend replied to requests for interviews.
Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and other things. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.
