The American Psychological Association's Involvement in CIA Torture

Jean Maria Arrigo, among others, attempted to expose the crimes of the APA’s involvement in torture for over a decade before the information even began to become public knowledge. In COPS1¹ she and her colleagues divide operational psychology into two fields: adversial, which is highly suspect, and collaborative, which quite ambiguously serves to ‘optimize performance’. What then follows consists in a brief survey of recent developments in the field of American psychology from the beginning of the 20th century onward. We learn that even since World War II, American psychologists have been working directly with military personnel in order to supervise behavioral assessment of soldiers and direct further psychological training done on them. In World War I, the APA had plans for attempting to, “Throw its weight behind the mobilization of the military service”, as quoted by the then head of the APA, Robert Yerks. 9/11 gave psychologists new grounds for entering into discourse with the military, which motivated a reinvigoration of experimentation in the techniques of psychological warfare. It is questionable whether this simple division is enough to safeguard the practice of psychology from involving itself in yet more vile methods down the line.

The authors of COPS1 provide an example of a collaborative effort such that an employee of a nuclear facility is regularly subjected to reasonable tests checking for the stability of their mental health. The safety of potentially millions of neighboring residents surrounding the facility rests on this practice, after all. And it seems to pose no harm to the patient, so far as has been described. In DOPS2 the proponents of torture begin by comparing their own torture of detainees to that of the pain suffered by students enrolled in psychology research programs, wherein people are forced to learn and apply practices that have been devised in order to serve the interests of the university and not so much that of the health or well-being of their students. Students often complain about being overworked and stressed out by the pressures applied on them by their professors.

A forceful conclusion is reached in DOPS2 that, “There is no difference between these psychologists serving in the military or other national security arenas and those supporting law enforcement, public safety, forensic evaluation, or social psychological market research (to name just a few).” They claim that the proposed regulations set out by COPS would simply ban known practicing members from the APA, allowing the practices themselves to continue going on indefinitely or even expand further unsupervised at the direction of other types of personnel such as military intelligence officers. Additionally, it would place the practice of information retreival from detainees behind closed doors where we would never have any idea of what goes on, not even the minimal one that we are permitted for now.

It is briefly mentioned in DOPS4 that national security concerns sometimes means information must be withheld from the public. I strongly condemn this idea and would argue that all information should be made freely available, national security concerns being amongst those reasons but by far from being the most important one. Put very simply, we can not know if harm is being done if we do not know what is happening, and there is no level of national security concern which trumps this basic point. They quite humorously complain in DOPS4 that their privacy was violated by Arrigo’s obtaining of their email exchanges and publicizing the most egregious among them. This is an amusing defense put forward by people who have literally made lifelong careers out of violating not only the privacy of others, but moreover their safety and livelihoods.

COPS3 claims that DOPS2 points out the interests of all parties are suspect, not just of their own. Each psychologist has a background in some particular subfield which they have an obvious interest in defending its practices against all others that are specifically opposed to it. Some practices of psychology may get along, while others hold strong criticisms against one another. The DOPS2 suggest that we find ourselves exactly in such a situation in which two conflicting camps of psychological regimes have reached a deadlock in which the ethics of each one that condemns the other can not in any way be seen to supercede one another. This is basically an appeal to absolute moral relativism, which is in fact a commonly held belief among all of the public today. It would be viewed as easily defensible in many situations, excepting only those ones hopefully rare such as cases of alleged torture. The problem is specially confused when we find out the torture was applied against unknowingly innocent victims. The bulk of Guantanamo detainees at worst are low level fresh recruits who have no information to offer about anything whatsoever, and some are random victims dragged away from their homes who have no affiliations to any terrorist groups whatsoever.

Importantly, COPS3 argues that, “Staal and Greene provide no cost-benefit analysis.” I am no psychologist, but if this were indeed the case, there are apparently qualitative and quantitive measures for collaborative procedures that allow for their effectiveness to be analyzed. Conversely, adversial procedures are applied seemingly at random and by arbitrary whim and data recorded as to their outcomes are either woefully insufficient or just not completed at all. There is a conflict to be pointed out here in that it is easy to see why people would always choose to avoid documenting apparently illegal behaviors. The members of COPS3 note that, “In sensitive cases, records are intentionally destroyed, as happened with the videotapes of CIA ‘black site’ interrogations (Mazzetti, 2009).” But at the same time, the management of these organizations are required to present figures showing that the procedures they apply to detainees at their own facilities are working effectively and so should continue being done. Also, the tremendous amounts of funding they require should continue being afforded, so they must provide some form of documentation even if it is entirely corrupted.

Lastly, COPS3 details cases of strategic deception carried out by those on the side of DOPS. Inside this deliberately fostered state of confusion, the chain of command may easily be broken, vicious practices may be applied behind closed doors without proper oversight, and we may never know who exactly was accountable for what. They argue that DOPS wrongfully believe we are able to isolate opposing military personnel and apply tactics of psychological manipulation against them solely. However, COPS3 respond that the field of psychology has for a long time now held close ties to the military. The practices being applied by military-affiliated psychologists and those that are applied in civic life have been found to cross over quite regularly, and so we should expect that stategic deception will also begin to infest otherwise normal, collaborative civic affairs. We can see today that in the field of advertising and in journalistic reporting done by the mass-media sometimes terrifying practices get carried out against the public, and it is concerning to think about what military psychologists would do when equipped with similar powers.

Overall I strongly condemn torture under any circumstances, even if it were to lead to the information that would save millions. I do believe however, that members of DOPS have made a strong case that the group in COPS have not managed to set out clear enough guidelines for what would constitute an actual outright total ban on the practice of torture itself. It is also unclear whether we will be able to pick out the particular individuals responsible for actual events of torture that have already taken place and those that continue to go on today. If we do manage to decide on who the villains are we may not be able to hold them appropriately accountable for their actions. Very powerful criminals are walking freely all over the earth today. On the other hand, many people in the past have been hanged for committing war crimes.

One of the difficulties in sorting out the relevant parties in the APA torture scandal is that all sides purport to be defenders of psychology. This leaves many of those explicitly opposed to participation in torture in a position of placing limits or barriers on certain parts of psychological practice, being the most effective, immediate measure to be taken as apparent. The convolution also offers the shady set of government and military-affiliated actors forming up the bulk of the other side the opportunity of making enticing calls for open-ended advancement and growth in the field of psychology. We can not know what progress we might be able to make without exploring every opportunity. it is the onus on every person in every field to defend the good virtues of their practice or even to go so far as to claim access to methods those in other fields significantly learn from. It would seem preferable for those who fall on the side of the adamament demand that psychologists should “do no harm,” to be the ones to lay out a vitalizing path for the future of psychology. What stands in the way of this principled group of people from being the ones to set the standards most primarily is the chance for megalomania on all sides, including their own. In order to survive we must grow, but we cannot grow unchecked without there being accumulating unanticipated consequences.

Accelleration is necessary, but it can be done well or be done poorly. There are good and bad sides to it. This same critique can be applied to proponents of techno-political acceleration who call for an all-out proliferation of every even remotely progressive technological project. As well, though accelleration in the end may be accepted as a dominant tactic, some programs left ran out-of-check for far too long now must be deteroriated and brought to a hault. This would not be done most efficiently only through the construction of yet other projects, but from a direct assault on those intolerably destructive ones directly.

Put concretely, it is more likely that the public would rise up together and call for an outright end to CIA torture black sites. For covert agents acting on their own without the benefit of state-corporate financing, they could only aid in alerting the public as to the facts of the matter, and it seems impossible for them to resolve the situation generally.

References

COPS1. Arrigo, J. M., Eidelson, R. J., & Bennett, R. (2012). Psychology under fire: Adversarial operational psychology and psychological ethics. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18, 384– 400.

DOPS2. Staal, M. A., & Greene, C. H. (2015). An Examination of “Adversarial” Operational Psychology. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(2), 264–268.

COPS3. Arrigo, J. M., Eidelson, R. J., & Rockwood, L. P. (2015). Adversarial operational psychology is unethical psychology: A reply to Staal and Greene (2015). Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(2), 269 –278.

DOPS4. Staal, M. A., & Greene, C. H. (2015). Operational psychology: An ethical practice–A reply to Arrigo, Eidelson, and Rockwood (2015). Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(2), 279–281.

COPS5. Arrigo, J. M., Eidelson, R. J., & Rockwood, L. P. (2015). Adversarial Operational Psychology: Returning to the Foundational Issues). Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(2), 282 –284.