APA director of ethics Stephen Behnke added that psychologists may actually help keep interrogations safe, by encouraging interrogators to talk to prisoners rather than employ harsher methods. "Psychologists take advisory or consultative roles in relation to interrogations to help ensure interrogations are safe, legal, ethical, and effective," Behnke wrote in an e-mail.
That may be true in some cases, but the presence of a psychologist did not prevent the interrogation of so-called 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Khatani at Guantánamo from turning brutal. Khatani was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself, and exercised to exhaustion during interrogations that lasted 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days.
Part of the plan was to humiliate Khatani and submit him to extreme psychological stress. He became exhausted, disoriented and hopeless. He was called a homosexual, forced to wear a mask and dance, and leashed and made to perform dog tricks. Interrogators hung pictures of fitness models on his neck and had a female interrogator "invade his personal space," according to the unredacted interrogation log obtained by Salon.
To help break down Khatani's psyche, the interrogation team included a psychologist, Maj. John Leso, a member of the military's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, called BSCTs. The teams are a newly minted tool in the "war on terror." They include psychologists who are supposed to help interrogators break down resistance and pry loose useful information. Former Guantánamo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller called the teams "essential in developing interrogation strategies" in a September 2003 internal military report.
At various points during the questioning of Khatani, Leso's BSCT operators instructed interrogators to keep the prisoner awake, force him to stop staring at a wall, and advised on the effectiveness of techniques. "BSCT observed that detainee does not like it when the interrogator points out his nonverbal responses," reads an entry in the log from Dec. 29, 2002.
Leso's actions may not be typical. But the press has obtained a much more detailed record of Khatani's interrogation than that of any other "high-value" prisoner.
Leso's behavior would appear to violate the ethics principles that were later established by the APA task force, which bar "torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Those prohibitions might ordinarily appear to be unequivocal, but the Bush administration's "war on terror" has made them far murkier. As Zimbardo, the former APA president, noted, that kind of terminology is precisely the lexicon that Bush administration lawyers have turned into Swiss cheese. The Bush administration has "changed the definition of torture, the definition of detained prisoners, and the nature of their prolonged confinement without due process," Zimbardo said. In the Bush administration's eyes, Zimbardo said, "nothing done to such detainees qualifies as torture."
Several civilians close to the APA task force criticized the final product for failing to make a clear statement about the excesses of the "war on terror" and failing to explicitly say what psychologists can and cannot do. "It is a bunch of platitudes without any situational reality to it," said Jean Maria Arrigo, a civilian psychologist who served on the APA task force and founder of the Intelligence Ethics Collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "This was not a politically adequate document. There are no specifics in it. We needed to at least say that we can't do waterboarding," Arrigo said.
Arrigo said she doesn't have any complaints with the military members of the task force. Instead, she blames Koocher for the vagueness of the APA position statement, which allows psychologists broad latitude in interrogations. "Koocher was involved in appointing the task force, he strongly guided and monitored it and had taken the position of representing the document," she said.
Other civilian psychologists on the task force agree that the fault lies not with individual military members of the task force, but with the APA leadership. Task force member Michael Wessells, a psychology professor at Randolph-Macon College, resigned from the task force in protest early this year. According to his resignation letter, which he provided to Salon, "At the highest levels, the APA has not made a strong, concerted, comprehensive, public and internal response of the kind warranted by the severe human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay."
Wessels said that the ethics guidelines, which sailed through the APA's board of directors and Council of Representatives to become APA policy, never addressed such controversial questions. "I think by going this route, strategically, the organization was playing it safe," he said. "As a response to the nature of the situation, it was completely inadequate." Despite promises that the standards would be further debated, Wessells said that there was never any follow-up. As a result, he said, "I felt more than a little exploited."
Both sides expect intense debate next month over the interrogation standards -- and the question may overwhelm the other items on the APA's agenda at the convention. Koocher has asked Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the surgeon general of the Army, to come to New Orleans and address the organization's leadership.
Koocher acknowledged that his organization could revisit the issue in the future. "Remember that as far as APA is concerned, the issue is not over," Koocher said in a phone call.
But some psychologists are not satisfied with bland promises of further review. "At the moment, the American Psychological Association is complicit in the mode of interrogations going on at Guantánamo, by focusing on the justification for interrogation," said Reisner. "We are being used to further the ends of what amounts to torture."
About the writer
Mark Benjamin is a national correspondent for Salon based in Washington, D.C.
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