[NYTr] Wash Post on APA Rules on "Abusive" Interrogations

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by rick kissell

*APA Rules on Interrogation Abuse*

Psychologists' Group Bars Member Participation in Certain Techniques

By Shankar Vedantam
Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 -- The American Psychological Association ruled 
Sunday that psychologists can no longer be associated with several 
interrogation techniques that have been used against terrorism
detainees at U.S. facilities because the methods are immoral,
psychologically damaging and counterproductive in eliciting useful
information.

Psychologists who witness interrogators using mock executions,
simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions
or sleep deprivation are required to intervene to stop such abuse, to
report the activities to superiors and to report the involvement of any
other psychologists in such activities to the association. It could
then strip those professionals of their membership.

The move by the APA, the nation's largest association of behavioral 
experts, is a rebuke of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism 
policies. Many of the techniques deemed unacceptable have been widely 
reported to be used at military facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as 
well as in Iraq and at various CIA detention centers.

But it also has practical effects. Psychologists who have their 
membership revoked can lose their license, since many state licensing 
boards require psychologists to be in good standing with the national 
association.

Also ruled out of bounds are the exploitation of prisoners' phobias,
the use of mind-altering drugs, hooding, forced nakedness, the use of
dogs to frighten detainees, exposing prisoners to extreme heat and
cold, physical assault and threatening the use of such techniques
against a prisoner or a prisoner's family.

Several psychologists declared that these methods are not only 
physically and psychologically damaging to both inmates and captors but 
also counterproductive for obtaining useful intelligence. Data from 
several wars and from a range of criminal justice settings show that 
once prisoners start to fear for their lives and safety, they start 
trying to guess what their captors want to hear, and the resulting bad 
information is often worse than having no information at all, several 
psychologists said.

The move follows similar decisions by other professional associations, 
such as the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric 
Association. But psychologists play an unusual role in that they widely 
serve both in a clinical role -- involving the treatment of sick 
prisoners -- and as researchers of human behavior. The decision came 
after days of heated protests at the 115th annual meeting of the APA. 
Protesters, some wearing orange jumpsuits, urged the experts to 
disassociate themselves entirely from the Bush administration's 
detention facilities.

The association decided against a blanket measure that would have kept 
psychologists from working in interrogation facilities altogether. Many 
critics of that measure, including several government experts, said
that psychologists play an essential role in these settings, both in
terms of safeguarding detainees and in helping to debunk the belief
that coercion and humiliation are effective interrogation tactics.

"If we lose psychologists from these facilities, people are going to 
die," said U.S. Army Col. Larry James, chief of the department of 
psychology at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, just before 
the APA's Council of Representatives took a vote.

There were several references to the hit television show "24" in the 
psychologists' debate. It routinely depicts abusive techniques used to 
elicit information from prisoners, usually in "ticking time bomb"
scenarios.

"I find the interrogation scenes in the television show '24' repulsive, 
absurd and even idiotic," said Katherine Sherwood, a civilian 
interrogator for the Department of Defense who spoke at the convention. 
"If I am talking to a bombmaker, I am not trying to get him to tell me 
he is a bombmaker. I want him to tell me what students he trained, what 
their nationalities are, what materials he used and who was funding the 
project."

Such Hollywood scenarios, Sherwood said, fail to recognize that the 
central utility of interrogations is in building a lattice of 
interconnections that can inform military and civilian policymakers.

"Interrogations are about gathering breadth or depth of information," 
Sherwood said. "It is not about getting to a single moment of a
confession."

Several other experts at the psychologists' convention, including 
Stephen Behnke, director of the APA's ethics office, said successful 
interrogations are almost always about building a relationship with a 
prisoner -- a relationship that is impossible to build when the
prisoner is being subjected to stress, humiliation or abuse.

Interrogation policies at U.S. detention facilities went astray when 
officials decided to apply techniques developed to train U.S. troops to 
deal with torture if they were captured, said Air Force Reserve Col. 
Steven Kleinman.

Such techniques, developed under a military program known as SERE 
(Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), were meant to toughen 
soldiers against abuse. The techniques were never designed to help 
interrogators elicit useful information from prisoners, added Eric 
Anders, a psychoanalyst at the convention who is a graduate of the SERE 
program.

Neil Altman, a clinical psychologist at New York University, who had 
pushed to get psychologists out of detention facilities altogether, 
praised the APA for laying out what was prohibited. But he said the 
measure still allows psychologists to remain in facilities that are 
inherently "cruel, inhumane and degrading."

Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of the group Physicians for 
Human Rights, said the psychologists had fooled themselves into
thinking their continued presence at detention facilities would make a
difference when they were actually playing only a support role.

"It is unfortunate the APA did not recognize you cannot practice
ethical psychology in interrogation settings in the context of
pervasive violation of human rights," he said.