The APA - Gitmo and torture
The Biscuit Breaker - Psychologist Steven Reisner has embarked on a crusade
to get his colleagues out of the business of interrogations. By Dan Ephron |
NEWSWEEK Published Oct 18, 2008 From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
....But the ties go back decades, to the early years of the cold war when
psychologists helped the CIA experiment on U.S. citizens with mind-altering
drugs. The relationship has warmed and cooled over the years, heating up
whenever
defense or intelligence officials wanted better mind-control methods, ways to
direct people's behavior or detect deception. Since 9/11 military and
civilian psychologists at Guantánamo Bay and other sites have often watched
through
the glass when detainees have been interrogated, part of a secret program
about which few details have ever emerged. Reisner first read about the
program in a newspaper article in 2004. The 54-year-old psychoanalyst is
convinced
that some of the techniques used in those interrogations amounted to torture,
and he has made it his mission since then to get psychologists out of the
business of helping the military as they break down prisoners. Reisner's
crusade has been waged largely within the American Psychological
Association—in the
minutiae of association bylaws and on the pages of internal listservs. Last
week, balloting began for a new APA president in what for many is a
referendum on the relationship between psychologists and the military. Among
five
contenders, Reisner has staked his candidacy on the issue. The APA is the only
remaining medical association not to have shunned the contentious
interrogations in the years since Guantánamo was opened in 2001. Two civilian
psychologists helped introduce techniques like waterboarding into
interrogations, drawn
from the military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) schools
where troops are taught to withstand torture. Since 2002 psychologists have
observed interrogations and suggested specific ways to exploit the weaknesses
of
detainees, including Mohammed Jawad, whose disturbing case is now being
heard by a military tribunal in Guantánamo. The military claims the
psychologists
have only helped to make interrogations "safe, legal and effective." Judging
by recent internal votes, APA members have grown uncomfortable with the
interrogation business. Reisner has received endorsements from a few big-name
psychologists, including Stanford University's Philip Zimbardo.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/164497
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