A Call for Annulment of APA’s PENS Report (on Torture)

Left: Marty Seligman. A Guantanamo detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily outside period,

at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba.

A friend sent this to me the other day - I signed it. If you are involved in the counseling or psychology world in any way, you may want to sign it too.

By way of background, this story ran in Salon in 2010:

“War on terror” psychologist gets giant no-bid contract


The Army has handed a $31 million deal to Dr. Martin Seligman, who once blasted academics for "forgetting 9/11"


BY MARK BENJAMIN


The Army earlier this year steered a $31 million contract to a psychologist whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration’s torture program.


The Army awarded the “sole source” contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university’s Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.


Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because “there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.” And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.

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Here is the email and the information on how to add your name to the petition.

Dear Colleagues,


The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology is spearheading a call for annulment of the American Psychological Association’s deeply flawed 2005 Presidential Task Force Report on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS).


The key conclusion of the PENS Report – despite clear evidence to the contrary – is that psychologists play a critical role in keeping national security detainee interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.” The PENS Report continues to be used as an authoritative document today, especially in national security contexts. Leading human rights groups and professionals from a range of fields – including psychology, medicine, law, military, and intelligence –have therefore joined together in this important annulment effort.


Below is the brief petition statement, along with the names of organizations and individuals that have been “early signers” to the call. A background statement with detailed documentation is available online at www.ethicalpsychology.org/PENS_Annulment_Background_Statement.pdf.


We are now reaching out to professionals from a variety of disciplines and the general public because we believe this is a critical human rights issue with ramifications that extend far beyond psychology alone. We hope you will join this initiative, and there are two valuable ways that you can contribute:


1. Please add your name to the annulment call at www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens.


2. Please share this email and accompanying information with your professional colleagues through listservs and personal correspondence, so that they too have the opportunity to sign on.


Thank you for your time and consideration.


Sincerely,
Roy Eidelson, on behalf of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

A Call for Annulment of APA’s PENS Report

(www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens)

Over the decade since the horrendous attacks of 9/11, the world has been shocked by the specter of abusive interrogations and the torture of national security prisoners by agents of the United States government. Although psychologists in the U.S. have made significant contributions to societal welfare on many fronts during this period, the profession tragically has also witnessed psychologists acting as planners, consultants, researchers, and overseers to these abusive interrogations. Moreover, in the guise of keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective," psychologists were used to provide legal protection for otherwise illegal treatment of prisoners.


The American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report) is the defining document endorsing psychologists’ engagement in detainee interrogations. Despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.” With this stance, the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged.


The PENS Report remains highly influential today. Negating efforts by APA members to limit the damages – including passage of an unprecedented member-initiated referendum in 2008 – the Department of Defense continues to disseminate the PENS Report in its instructions to psychologists involved in intelligence operations. The Report also has been adopted, at least informally, as the foundational ethics document for “operational psychology” as an area of specialization involving psychologists in counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations. And the PENS Report is repeatedly cited as a resource for ethical decision-making in the APA Ethics Committee’s new National Security Commentary, a “casebook” for which the APA is currently soliciting feedback.


Equally troubling, the PENS Report was the result of institutional processes that were illegitimate, inconsistent with APA’s own standards, and far outside the norms of transparency, independence, diversity, and deliberation for similar task forces established by professional associations. Deeply problematic aspects include the inherent bias in the Task Force membership (e.g., six of the nine voting members were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies, with five having served in chains of command accused of prisoner abuses); significant conflicts of interest (e.g., unacknowledged participants included the spouse of a Guantánamo intelligence psychologist and several high-level lobbyists for Department of Defense and CIA funding for psychologists); irregularities in the report approval process (e.g., the Board’s use of emergency powers that preempted standard review mechanisms); and unwarranted secrecy associated with the Report (e.g., unusual prohibitions on Task Force members’ freedom to discuss the Report). These realities point to the impossibility and inadequacy of merely updating or correcting deficiencies in the PENS Report.


We the undersigned organizations and individuals – health professionals, social scientists, social justice and human rights scholars and activists, and concerned military and intelligence professionals – therefore declare that the PENS Report is illegitimate. We call upon the American Psychological Association to take immediate steps to annul the PENS Report. At the same time, in our own efforts, we aim to make the illegitimacy of the PENS Report more broadly known within our communities.


September 26, 2011
(Visit www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens to add your signature)


Organizational Signers
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Justice and Accountability
International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School
Massachusetts Campaign Against Torture
Network of Spiritual Progressives
Physicians for Human Rights
Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Veterans for Peace
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity


Individual Signers (listed affiliations are for identification purposes only)
Roy Eidelson, PhD, Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility; Associate Director, Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, Bryn Mawr College
Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD, APA PENS Task Force Member, Project on Ethics and Art in Testimony
Michael Wessells, PhD, APA PENS Task Force Member, Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, Columbia University
Stephen Soldz, PhD, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Steven Reisner, PhD, Candidate for APA President; Clinical Assistant Professor, NYU Medical School; Faculty and Supervisor, International Trauma Studies Program, New York City
Brad Olson, PhD, President-Elect, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Bryant Welch, PhD, Program Director and Professor of Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA
Trudy Bond, PhD, Independent Psychologist; Steering Committee, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Philip Zimbardo, President, American Psychological Association (2002); Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, Brigadier General (Ret), U.S. Army
Nathaniel A. Raymond, Former Director of the Campaign Against Torture at Physicians for Human Rights
Leonard Rubenstein, Senior Scholar, Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (ret.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert Jay Lifton, Lecturer in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance; Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Psychology, The City University of New York
Manfred Nowak, Professor for International Law and Human Rights, University of Vienna; Director, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights
David Remes, Appeal for Justice; Guantánamo habeas attorney since 2004
Gerald Gray, LCSW, Co-Director, Institute for Redress & Recovery, Santa Clara University School of Law
Morton Deutsch, Past President, APA Divisions 8 (Society for Personality and Social Psychology), 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues), and 48 (Peace Psychology); Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Nora Sveaass, UN Committee Against Torture; Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway
Steven H. Miles, MD, Professor of Medicine and Bioethics, University of Minnesota
George Hunsinger, Professor of Systematic Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary
Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD, Senior Medical Advisor, Physicians for Human Rights; Adjunct Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School; Senior Research Fellow, Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley
David DeBatto, former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraq war veteran
Buz Eisenberg, Chair, International Justice Network; Attorney for Guantánamo detainees since 2005
Michael Ratner, President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights
Vince Warren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights
Susan Opotow, Past President, APA Division 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues); Professor, City University of New York
Richard Wagner, Past President, APA Division 48 (Peace Psychology); Professor Emeritus, Bates College
Marc Pilisuk, Past President, APA Division 48 (Peace Psychology); Professor Emeritus, University of California; Professor, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center
Ethel Tobach, PhD, Past President, APA Division 48 (Peace Psychology); American Museum of Natural History, New York
Joseph de Rivera, Past President, APA Division 48 (Peace Psychology); Research Professor, Clark University
James Coyne, PhD, Director, Behavioral Oncology Program, Abramson Cancer Center and Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Luisa Saffiotti, PhD, President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Jancis Long, PhD, Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Frank Summers, PhD, President-Elect (as of January 2012), APA Division 39 (Psychoanalysis); Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
Alice Shaw, PhD, President, Section IX, APA Division 39 (Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility)
Jules Lobel, President, Center for Constitutional Rights; Bessie McKee Walthour Endowed Chair Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School
Bernice Lott, Professor Emerita of Psychology and Women’s Studies, University of Rhode Island
Ruth Fallenbaum, WithholdAPADues Steering Committee
Dan Aalbers, WithholdAPADues Steering Committee
Anthony Marsella, Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility; Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii
Ghislaine Boulanger, PhD, WithholdAPADues Steering Committee
Jean L. Hill, PhD, President-Elect, APA Division 27 (Society for Community Research and Action); Professor of Psychology, New Mexico Highlands University
Joseph Margulies, Attorney, MacArthur Justice Center, Clinical Professor, Northwestern Law School
Martha Davis, PhD, Visiting Scholar (ret.), John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
Kristine Huskey, Director, Anti-Torture Program, Physicians for Human Rights; Guantanamo detainee habeas counsel (2002-2011)
Scott Horton, Columbia University School of Law
William P. Quigley, Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine; Executive Director, The Institute for Labor and Mental Health
Scott Allen, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Medicine, University of California, Riverside
M. Brinton Lykes, PhD, Professor of Community-Cultural Psychology, Boston College; Co-Founder, Ignacio Martin-Baro Fund for Mental Health and Human Rights
David Luban, University Professor in Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University
Jeffrey S. Kaye, PhD, Clinician, Survivors International, San Francisco
Sibel Edmonds, Founder & Director, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC)
David Sloan-Rossiter, Boston Institute for Psychotherapy; Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis
Stephen R. Shalom, Department of Political Science, William Paterson University
Andrea Cousins, PhD, PsyD, Massachusetts Campaign Against Torture (MACAT), Northampton, MA
Lynne Layton, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Deborah Popowski, Clinical Instructor, International Human Rights Clinic; Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School


(Names of additional signers are available at www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens/signers.php)


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Stephen Soldz
Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
1581 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA 02446
ssoldz@bgsp.edu
Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR)