Article archive / June 1, 2015
Originally published: . Volume 6, No. 6. Source pages: 9.
An April report authored by human rights activists triggered a New York Times article which in turn prompted the American Psychological Association (APA) to hire an independent investigator to look into allegations that APA secretly worked with the Bush administration regarding interrogation techniques. The allegations include that APA attempted to form ethics guidelines that could allow certain uses of psychological science in enhanced interrogations in the military.
The April report, “All the President’s Psychologists: The American Psychological Association’s Secret Complicity with the White House and US Intelligence Community in Support of the CIA’s ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program,” is authored by Stephen Soldz, Ph.D., Nathaniel Raymond, and Steven Reisner, Ph.D.
The April 30 New York Times article “Report Finds Collaboration Over Torture,” was authored by James Risen and the story also appeared on the front page May 1, 2015 of the paper edition.
James Risen is the author of a 2014 book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, where he pointed to similar involvement by APA. APA had said the claims are not true. For this recent allegations, APA said, in an April 30 statement, “… APA senior governance and staff take the allegations of support for torture and the public misunderstanding they have created very seriously.” They will hire outside attorney David Hoffman of the firm Sidley Austin to conduct and independent review.
The APA Board of Directors wrote members on Friday, May 22 saying, “Many APA members have shared their concerns with us about the allegations reported in national media that APA supported the CIA's “enhanced interrogation” program during the Bush administration’s war on terror. Allegations that individual psychologists and/or APA supported this torture program are extremely disturbing to us and to others in our APA community.”
In this most recent report, “All the President’s Psychologists,” authors point to 16 key emails from Scott Gerwehr, a researcher at RAND Corporation and later a defense contractor, who is now deceased. The emails include several from Geoffrey Mumford, director of science policy at APA, and included Kirk Hubbard, a psychologist at the C.I.A. who left to work for Mitchell Jessen and Associates, the firm involved in the enhanced interrogation procedures for the military. The emails show communications between these and other individuals about a number of topics.
The full report, which includes the text of the 16 emails, is available online.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.