Who Will Investigate CIA/RAND/APA Torture “Workshop”?

[Are_grits_groceries]

Back in May 2007, while researching the activities of the American Psychological Association (APA) in support of the U.S. government’s interrogation program, I came across evidence that the APA had engaged in a discussion of torture techniques during a workshop organized by APA and the RAND Corporation, “with generous funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).”
<snip>
The workshop was titled the “Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory”, and it discussed new ways to utilize drugs and sensory bombardment techniques to break down interrogatees. Those are signal techniques of psychological torture long utilized by the CIA and other intelligence agencies and military around the world.
<snip>
It was one of the particular “break-out groups” that concerned me. According to APA’s Public Policy Office, which publishes an online newspaper called (with perhaps an unconscious taste for irony) “Spin,” the workshops covered Embassy “Walk-in” informants, Law Enforcement Threat Assessment, and Intelligence gathering (”What are the dimensions of truth?”). But the workshop on Law Enforcement Interrogation and Debriefing had some shocking language (emphasis added, quoted material from APA Government Relations: Science Policy website):

Law enforcement routinely question witnesses and suspects regarding criminal activity. How do you tell if the individual is telling the truth, lying, or something in between? Acts of omission and acts of commission are both important to identify.

How do we find out if the informant has knowledge of which s/he is not aware? How important are differential power and status between witness and officer?
What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?
What are mechanisms and processes of learning to lie? Can these be demonstrated within relatively short periods of time (e.g., within a polygraph test session)?….
What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?

<snip>
Something very rotten is going on at the heart of American behavioral science, and I’m not talking about decades-old scandals — I’m talking about right now. Along with collaboration with the CIA and military on possible new abusive interrogation methods, the APA is fighting to keep its links with the military, and to keep psychologists as essential components of their interrogation practice. This is the program behind the Intelligence Science Board’s Educing Information (large PDF) report, which was accepted recently by the Obama administration as their new template for interrogation practice. In a future article, I’ll discuss how this report was set up by the CIA and military as a snow job to mask the use of pernicious interrogation methods that include techniques of psychological torture.

In the meantime, won’t someone with political clout open up an investigation of the CIA/RAND/APA meeting that plotted torture?
http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/19/who-will-investigate-ciarandapa-torture-workshop/

*sigh* Is there anybody not cahooting with the dark side? The APA is in?

[annabanana]

1. kicking and wondering. . .Where are the legions of principled

psychologists who should be MORE than outraged?

[EFerrari]

2. The military / CIA had to use APA when other professional organizations

forbade their members from participating in torture. DoD has their hooks deep into APA because there are so many jobs there.

There was a titanic battle and the APA members who led the opposition to torture eventually won and took office as leaders. I have to go read the article at FDL in order to find out if this workshop happened before then. It sounds like it did.

ETA: The bad guys were still in control of APA when they came to San Francisco for their conference and had their wrestling match. The next year, they were thrown out of office, iirc.

[EFerrari]

3. Amy has done good reporting on this if you want to read more. From 7/2008 headlines:

Ex-APA President Linked to CIA Torture Program

New information has been revealed about the role psychologists played in helping the CIA develop its torture techniques. In her new book The Dark Side, Jane Mayer reveals a former president of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman, was invited by the CIA in the spring of 2002 to speak at the Navy’s SERE school in San Diego. In the 1960s, Seligman experimented on dogs and found that by shocking a dog repeatedly and randomly, he could brutalize it emotionally into a state of complete passivity. Seligman spoke for three hours about his theory of learned helplessness. His theories were later adapted for use in CIA prisons. Seligman is the second APA president to be linked to the CIA’s torture program. Last year, it was revealed former APA president Joseph Matarazzo is a partner in the Spokane firm Mitchell & Jessen that was contracted to design the CIA interrogations program. Unlike other medical associations, the APA has refused to unequivocally condemn torture.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/15/headlines#7

The search "APA torture" returns a lot of material at her democracynow.org site. :hi: