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Psychological Warfare? A Debate on the Role of Mental Health
Professionals in Military Interrogations at Guantanamo, Abu
Ghraib and Beyond
Psychological Warfare? A Debate on the Role of Mental
Health Professionals in Military Interrogations at Guantanamo,
Abu Ghraib and Beyond
As the American Psychological Association kicks off its
national convention, a debate is raging in the mental health
community over the role of psychologists participating in
military interrogations. We host a debate with the director
of ethics at the APA Stephen Behnke, British medical ethicist
Michael Wilks, and renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton.
[includes rush
transcript - partial]
Interrogation techniques used by U.S. military personal on
detainees at Guantanamo Bay may amount to torture, according
to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Measures
reportedly include sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation,
painful body positions, feigned suffocation, and beatings.
The role of doctors as so-called behavioral consultants in
interrogations is being increasingly scrutinized. Last month
we spoke with journalist Jane Mayer about her article in the
New Yorker magazine titled "The Gitmo Experiment: How
Methods Developed by the U.S. Military For Withstanding Torture
are Being Used Against Detainees at Guantanamo Bay."
She told Democracy Now!, “it is becoming clearer that
a number of psychologists and possibly, it seems, probably
doctors, have been assisting in the interrogation process
in Guantanamo and that it has been an abusive process.”
- Jane Mayer, journalist with the New Yorker magazine.
Today on the eve of the annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association, or APA, we host a roundtable discussion on the
position of the APA on the role of psychologists in military
interrogations. The APA Presidential Task Force on Psychological
Ethics and National Security issued a report last month finding
that "It is consistent with the APA Code of Ethics for
psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation-
or information-gathering processes for national security-related
purposes." The report also affirms that "psychologists
have an ethical obligation to be alert to and report any acts
of torture or cruel or inhuman treatment to appropriate authorities."
A leading medical ethicist in Britain published a critique
of the APA position in the Lancet, the leading medical journal
in England. Dr. Michael Wilks warned that the report is part
of a trend of "governments and professional bodies rewriting
existing ethical guidance in the service of abuse."
- Michael Wilks, chair of the Medical Ethics Committee
at the British Medical
Association and author of the article "A Stain
on Medical Ethics" published in Lancet medical journal.
- Robert Jay Lifton, leading American psychiatrist and
an authority on the psychological causes of war and political
violence. He is the author of "The Nazi Doctors: Medical
Killing and the Psychology of Genocide."
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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