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Sirens of the Potomac: Think Tanks and Torture

By Emma Briant | CounterPunch | July 23, 2015

Recent findings of the independent report into the American Psychological Association ‘collusion’ in torture are not shocking. This is a symptom of a larger infestation that is eating away at the independence of social science. Think tanks played an important role in pulling senior academics into supportive relations with the defense establishment and must not be able to slink off into the shadows. The report indicates that Stephen Behnke, a DOD contractor and APA ethics director helped ensure the APA rules did not restrict psychologists from collaborating with interrogations and made changes to ‘curry favour with the DOD’.

But some think tanks also act as the pseudo-academic sirens of the DOD tasked with luring academic associations into increased cooperation. Think tanks played a key intermediary role after 9/11, reassuring academics who initially felt uncomfortable with military involvement. No strangers to ‘influence’, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies are a think tank who were contracted in the propaganda effort to the Office of Strategic Influence, a propaganda office of the DOD in the early ‘War on Terror’. In interviews for my book Propaganda and Counter-terrorism: Strategies for Global Change Potomac Institute Director Dennis McBride complained to me about academics’ concern saying,

things’ve changed a little bit but there’s still this attitude that … we get from academic social science in particular that comes across as they’re above, they’re better than soldiers and … they’re not gonna participate in what we call here ‘baby-killing’. (Interview: 5th June 2009)

When I met McBride in 2009 he told me about a meeting he arranged ‘a few years ago’ to deepen military involvement luring in key figures from Social Science Discipline Associations including ‘the American Anthropological Association … Executive Director’ and Lee Herring who is now Director of Public Affairs at the American Sociological Association. McBride’s allegiances lie firmly with the US military but he got himself ‘deputised by the American Psychological Society to be in this meeting’ to enhance his credibility (Interview: 5th June 2009).

He described the pitch that he said pulled them in:

I basically said, look … the Pentagon’s … number 1 mission, is to prevent war, by being so damn strong, so smart, that no one would dare, mission number 2 is that if we fail that one, to get it over with, OK? I said, your communities have a role to play in mission number 1 … The Pentagon is engineering, it doesn’t understand other cultures … We’re not good at that. We wanna be good at it and we don’t know how, absent your help. And I went through this and they said, absolutely, you know what? We’re changing our minds, we’re gonna support this. (Interview: 5th June 2009)

The conditions of funding for academic research preference research governments deem ‘useful’, preferencing uncritical research and the think tank culture which fed the blurring of academic boundaries. There has been a proliferation of well-funded ‘yes-men’ factories. McBride described how heavily involved Potomac were in ‘War on Terror’ planning, work that went beyond propaganda – for example he disclosed that Dan Gallant ‘yet another Potomac person who was working for Rumsfeld’ came up with the idea for using Guantanamo Bay for detainees (Interview: 5th June 2009). Perhaps unsurprisingly then, McBride was dismissive of public distrust of the military on the topic of torture:

‘so-called torture … this is I think the most overblown thing I think I have experienced. People need to do their research and find out that enhanced interrogation techniques, as they are being called, are done as any coercion, or any interrogation is done, with the presence of the Inspector General. … no nation can stand next to the United States in terms of its torture rules and regulations. Do you honestly think in Somalia when one faction grabs another they don’t torture the hell out of ’em? I mean I’m not justifying it, I’m just saying … We’ve got a process of self-inspection that is, is er, so motivated and everything is on video … at Guantanamo and so the [laughs] I’ve talked to people a lot who do that and … the [chuckles] waterboarding … I’m sure you know what it is … and noone’s ever drowned, there’s never been any tissue damage but I guess it could scare the hell out of them … but I’m told that the mode number of dunks is one … ‘mmm, OK, whaddya wanna know!’ (original emphasis)

This flies in the face of independent evidence, and international legal judgements condemning torture practices. Of course, as a former military public servant, McBride was confident that ‘it’s not my job to evaluate that sort of thing’, but in his view it did mean that ‘it’s important the Strategic Communication thing here is very big’ – spinning an unpalatable story.

McBride calls himself a social scientist and yet dismissed the notion that anyone outside the institutions of government can make sound value judgements on torture, since those on the military’s ‘list’ are officially ethical, determined through ‘the fastidiousness of the five-sided building’ This McBride felt was a more scientific approach to torture ‘Whereas civilian reaction has been all about being judgemental as opposed to critical’. (Interview: 5th June 2009). An unquestioning faith in the Pentagon of course leaves little room for personal responsibility and critical judgement.

A primary responsibility of social science should be to critically evaluate the practices used by government and facilitate fuller debate of policy and practice. It is crucial that there is a dialogue between industry and academia, but this must be a dialogue that allows for criticism and is not solely aimed at recruiting academics to ‘enable’ already-determined strategies or unethical practises. The sacking of the APA’s leadership is welcome, but what needs to happen now is not just a redrawing of ethical boundaries at APA but a rethink of the government manufacture of supportive ‘expertise’. Rather than shackling research funding to pre-determined government objectives and reinforcing programmes of questionable worth, if independent academic work is to be ‘impactful’ or ‘relevant’ government needs simply to acknowledge its existing relevance and allow critical academic research to have impact on policy.

propagandacounterterrorDr Emma L Briant is a Lecturer in Journalism Studies from University of Sheffield in the UK. She completed her PhD in Sociology at University of Glasgow, Scotland in 2012 which examined Anglo-American counter-terrorism propaganda since 2001, which is now the subject of her new book. Her other recent published research includes analyses of media coverage of disability and also asylum in the UK with the Glasgow Media Group where she worked and studied prior to moving to Sheffield in 2013. She is the author of Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change (Manchester University Press) and co-author of Bad News for Refugees (Pluto Press).

July 23, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Ethics Director Among Top Psychologists Who Aided CIA Torture and Cover-Up

By Claire Bernish | ANTIMEDIA | July 13, 2015

An alarming recent report revealed not only that prominent psychologists colluded with the Department of Defense and CIA to create a framework of justification for appalling and inexcusable torture, but the person heading that partnership was none other than Stephen Behnke, the Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association.

“The APA’s collusion with the national security apparatus is one of the greatest scandals in U.S. medical history,” declared a statement by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) following the report’s release. That statement called for a full investigation by the Department of Justice over the APA’s actions—and inactions—that gave the Bush administration the greenlight for cruel and inhumane torture of the highest order.

“The corruption of a health professional organization at this level is an extraordinary betrayal of both ethics and the law and demands an investigation and appropriate prosecutions,” implored PHR’s executive director, Donna McKay. “Rather than uphold the principle of ‘do no harm,’ APA leadership subverted its own ethics policies and sabotaged all efforts at enforcement.”

Acting in concert with DoD officials, the APA became the de facto “PR strategy” [read: propaganda campaign] that sanitized gross human rights abuses in order to “curry favor” with the DoD. Sleep deprivation, waterboarding, stress positions, and other forms of torture were both spuriously justified and allowed to continue through the creative editing and generalization of the very ethics standards that should have prevented any torture from taking place. According to the report:

“[K]ey APA officials were operating in close, confidential coordination with key Defense Department officials to set up a task force and produce an outcome that would please DoD, and to produce ethical guidelines that were the same as, or not more restrictive than, the DoD guidelines for interrogation activities.”

The 542-page report, first obtained by the New York Times, resulted from seven months of investigation by a team headed by David Hoffman of the law firm Sidley Austin, at the request of the APA’s board.

Physicians for Human Rights summarized the “overwhelming evidence of criminal activity by APA staff and officials”—whose involvement is evidenced in the report by the following four key conclusions:

  1. “Colluding with the U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA, and other elements of the Bush administration to enable psychologists to design, implement, and defend the post-9/11 torture program”
  2. “Allowing military and intelligence personnel to write APA ethics policies regulating their own conduct to ensure they were ‘covered’ in their roles for the torture program”
  3. “Engaging in a coordinated campaign to cover up the collusion and blocking attempts to oppose these policies within the APA” and
  4. “Obstructing and manipulating ethics investigations into psychologists involved in the torture program”

Hoffman’s report posits several motives—all with “organizational conflict[s] of interest”—that the APA had for its rather astonishing partnership:

“[The] DoD is one of the largest employers of psychologists and provides many millions of dollars in grants or contracts for psychologists around the country. The history of the DoD providing critical assistance to the advancement and growth of psychology as a profession is well documented . . .”

Further, the group of DoD and APA officials who crafted the laughable ethics policy actively dodged international law of the Geneva Convention, where its strictures were tighter than U.S. law. “[I] cannot take a stand opposed to the U.S. government,” said one. Even the APA’s president-elect called it “a ‘distraction’ to draw international law into APA’s ethics guidance.” This falls in line with President Bush’s outright rejection of the conventions following 9/11 as a deplorably whimsical way to land al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in a “legal black hole,” as human rights groups and U.S. allies described it.

In a press release, former APA president Dr. Nadine Kaslow stated, “The actions, policies, and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values. We profoundly regret, and apologize for, the behavior and consequences that ensued.” Listing adopted and proposed strategies to prevent the possibility of a recurrence of such abhorrent ethics violations, Kaslow also admitted, “This bleak chapter in our history occurred over a period of years and will not be resolved in a matter of months.”

Resolved? For whom, exactly? PHR has called for the APA to change its policies for a full decade now—and has pleaded for a federal investigation for at least as long.

Despite the execrable abuses in the CIA torture report—the entirety of which hasn’t even been fully disclosed—one simple, and utterly indefensible, fact overshadows every new revelation.

Something that appears to be a minutiae from the torture report is, in actuality, a glaringly tragic prediction. One interrogator told a detainee that he would never go to court because, he explained, “we can never let the world know what I have done to you.”

But we do know. The entire planet knows.

And all those who suffered or died, enduring unspeakably heinous crimes at the behest of the U.S. government—know.

Yet no one—not a single person—has ever even been charged for their crimes.

July 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 2 Comments

American Psychological Association Refuses to Charge Member Who Committed Torture at Guantánamo

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | January 25, 2014

a13de587-bb38-4810-9211-d60197d62061An American psychologist who took part in the torture of a Guantánamo detainee has avoided disciplinary action by an association of his peers.

The American Psychological Association (APA) wrote in a letter that John Leso, a former U.S. Army reserve major and psychologist, would not be rebuked for participating in the harsh interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani in November 2002.

Qahtani was suspected of helping plot the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The APA said in the letter to Trudy Bond, an APA member who filed the complaint against Leso, that it had “determined that we cannot proceed with formal charges in this matter. Consequently the complaint against Dr Leso has been closed.”

The association did not deny that Leso took part in the brutal interrogation of Qahtani, whose treatment was categorized as torture by a U.S. military commission.

A classified record of the interrogation, which surfaced in 2005, showed Leso (identified as “MAJ L”) was present while Qahtani was forcibly given liquids, denied use of bathrooms, resulting in him urinating on himself, subjected to loud music, and repeatedly kept awake while being “told he can go to sleep when he tells the truth.”

Leso’s role in the use of torture at Guantánamo was bolstered by documents that surfaced during a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee torture inquiry which highlighted Leso’s involvement with a special team at the prison that crafted torture techniques. Leso’s name, rank and membership on the team were cited in minutes of a Guantánamo meeting that was published by the committee. That record quoted Leso, at the time, as pointing out that the detainees “are used to seeing much more barbaric treatment” and therefore the team’s use of “force” on them “may be ineffective.”

Leso also helped write a 2002 memorandum that detailed the use, at Guantánamo, of “stress positions,” sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, isolation and exposure to extreme cold. The memo made its way through the Pentagon bureaucracy, leading U.S. forces to apply those same abusive techniques to detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

The Senate’s torture report quoted Leso as telling them he had been uncomfortable with the memo he helped produce, preferring instead a “rapport-building approach” to interrogation. APA’s ethics office made note of this, and it has been speculated that it played a role in Leso’s exoneration by the group.

Bond and other APA members who wanted Leso punished were dismayed by the decision. They believe that APA gave more weight to the doubts that Leso expressed after the fact than to his actual participation in the torture program.

“With Leso, the evidence of his participation is so explicit and so incontrovertible, the APA had to go to great lengths to dismiss it,” Steven Reisner, a New York clinical psychologist who unsuccessfully ran for the APA presidency last year, told The Guardian. “The precedent is that APA is not going to hold any psychologist accountable in any circumstance.”

Bond said the organization had sent the message that “psychologists are free to violate our ethical code, perhaps, in certain situations.”

An APA spokesperson, Rhea Farberman, told The Guardian that its investigation could not meet the burden of finding “direct unethical conduct” by Leso, and said it was “utterly unfounded” to fear the organization has condoned professional impunity. Farberman added that the APA’s “standing policies will clearly demonstrate that APA will not tolerate psychologist participation in torture.”

To Learn More:

US Psychology Body Declines to Rebuke Member in Guantánamo Torture Case (by Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian)

American Psychological Association Letter on Dr John Leso: ‘We Cannot Proceed with Formal Charges’ (The Guardian)

Shrinks, Lies and Torture (by Trudy Bond, Counterpunch)

Is It Finally Time to Punish Pro-Torture Judge and Doctors? (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

Psychologists Move against One of Their Own Who Helped Torture (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

January 25, 2014 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment