Subject: Letter to Nature on psychologists and torture

This letter, which appeared in last week's issue of Nature, might interest some of you. The author, Ryan Hunt, is a psychologist and 2007 graduate of Duquesne University's doctoral program in clinical psychology.  He is currently engaged in post-doctoral research at the Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh, and is in the final stages of licensure as a clinical psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania, after which he intends to begin a private practice in psychotherapy. Dr. Hunt's doctoral dissertation examined some of the significant precursors of the current APA interrogation and torture controversy, including an Army-funded Cold War social science research project known as "Project Camelot," in order to highlight discursive links between that project and the current torture scandal.  Dr. Hunt is puzzled as to why public discussion and debate on the U.S. torture program in the mainstream media treats it as an isolated incident of recent provenance when prevailing scholarship indicates that it is anything but, and that it is properly and fully understood only in the context of six decades of CIA-sponsored research, much of it involving psychologists, bent on perfecting techniques of psychological torture."  (from the Steering Commitee of Psychologist for an Ethical APA)


My Letter to the Editor of Nature
Posted by: "Ryan Hunt" huntryanw@gmail.com  
Fri May 29, 2009 5:43 pm (PDT)

Re: "Responsible Interrogation" (21 May, 2009 issue, Vol. 459, p. 300, http://www.nature. com/nature/ journal/v459/ n7245/full/ 459300a.html)

     To the Editor:

As a psychologist, I wish to commend your journal for addressing, in your May 21 editorial entitled "Responsible Interrogation," a topic which is of paramount importance today: the role of psychologists and health professionals in "interrogations" in extralegal U.S. prisons such as Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and the CIA's "black sites." Further, I appreciated your observation that there are "unequivocal" points to be made regarding this issue, one of which is that what we are discussing here is torture rather than "enhanced interrogation techniques," a misnomer you rightly reject as "sanitized parlance."

However, I was greatly disturbed by the remainder of the editorial, including everything after your first paragraph. After starting out by clearly and "unequivocally" condemning torture, your subsequent three paragraphs proceed to muddy the waters as they oscillate bizarrely between suggesting that torture may not be "effective," wondering whether research could be done to clarify its efficacy, suggesting that "soft" methods might be more effective, noting that even if torture were in fact sometimes effective it is "not to be tolerated," and then opining that "there are few easy answers," as evidenced by struggles within the APA to set policy regarding psychologists' participation in interrogations.

Let's clarify a few points before we proceed, points which I would suggest are also "unequivocal. " Torture has happened. Not in a few instances, nor due to a few "bad apples," but in a concerted, coördinated, programmatic fashion. The basic outline of this story, including psychologists' role in the migration of the psychological torture techniques and programs from "SERE School" at Fort Bragg to the above-named prisons, is now well-documented and indisputable. In the 2007 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report entitled "ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen `High Value Detainees' in CIA Custody," the ICRC provides ample evidence that not only do particular techniques (such as "waterboarding, " hooding, short-shackling, prolonged standing, dousing with cold water, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and over-stimulation, beatings, threats, and many others), considered singly or collectively, constitute torture, but so do the overall conditions of detention in Guantánamo. Thus, reverting to "softer" techniques, focusing on "rapport-building" interrogations, banning certain techniques such as "waterboarding, " and so forth, while continuing to hold detainees incommunicado, without effective habeas corpus rights, and in conditions of extreme isolation and stress, sensory deprivation, and so on, is still torture. This is not to mention the recent reports suggesting that detainees are still, at this late date, being subjected to severe physical beatings by the "Initial Reaction Force" or IRF. Nor is it to mention the many detainees who are currently hunger striking and being force-fed, in direct contravention of international standards of medical ethics, in the most rough and brutal of fashions with large plastic tubes shoved violently up their noses twice a day, under the supervision of medical doctors.

Regarding psychologists, one further point that I would suggest is unequivocal is that the only "struggle" that has gone on in the APA in terms of this issue is the ongoing "struggle" by the leadership of the APA to set and maintain the policy it prefers (one of "engagement" ), over and against adamant, sustained, public, and vocal objections and resistance from an ever-growing majority of its rank and file membership. As you point out at the outset of your piece, the issue of participation in torture is fairly straightforward and unequivocal: don't do it. At Guantánamo, in which the ICRC and others have rightly contested that the conditions of detention themselves constitute torture, there can be no ethical role for psychologists in such settings until the basic conditions of detention change and detainees are given their basic human rights.

A further point that is unequivocal, but somehow escapes mention in your editorial, is that APA policy regarding psychologists' participation in these settings was officially and dramatically changed in September 2008, when the APA membership pushed through a resolution banning members' participation in interrogations in these facilities. This was the first time such a member-sponsored resolution was brought to a vote in APA's history, and it passed by a roughly 60/40 margin, with a member turn-out that was, again, historical. This was a case of the membership advocating for a change in official policy over a period of years and against stiff resistance from the APA leadership. Again, the historical record on this point is clear and unambiguous, if you would care to look.

As to the final two paragraphs of your editorial, they offer such a combination of willful ignorance and apparent loathing for human decency that I would rather not discuss them at all. However, I feel I must. You suggest that it is "the reality that interrogation is a necessity in preventing loss of life from terrorism, and that some professionals feel it is their duty to ensure that the activity is conducted responsibly. " If this is "reality," and a "necessity," then surely you can provide some evidence as to how our cruel regime of torture in these extralegal prisons has "prevented loss of life from terrorism?" This willful, systematic, and cruel torture is, in fact, a form of terrorism, and to date over one hundred detainees have died during interrogation and confinement in these prisons. I can only assume, then, from the above passage that the only "loss of life from terrorism" that concerns you is that of U.S. citizens.

You then point out the only known example of a psychologist who spoke out against psychologists' direct involvement in torture (as opposed to the vast majority, who instead chose to remain silent and and complicit and collect their paychecks), and suggest that he deserves "the last word," which amounts in this case to a veiled threat that removal of psychologists will "increase the likelihood of abuse." Given that the conditions of detention at Guantánamo constitute torture, the issue, with all due respect to Dr. Gelles and his noble act, isn't one of "likelihood of abuse," it's one of "certainty of torture." It is a certainty that torture has been and is occurring in Guantánamo, based upon the conditions there alone. It is also a certainty that any psychologists who currently remain there or in other extralegal U.S.-controlled prisons around the world, and are working within the military or CIA's chains of command in those facilities rather than on behalf of the detainees or international human rights organizations, are doing so in direct contravention of their own professional body's policy.

History will not look kindly upon this regime of physical and psychological torture, nor upon psychologists' and other health professionals' involvement in it. I would suggest that the least that a respectable journal such as yours could do would be to accurately represent the APA's own policies in this regard to other concerned scientists around the world.

Yours,

Ryan Hunt, Ph.D.