The American Psychological Association (APA) secretly worked with the CIA, the White House, and the Defense Department during the post-Sept. 11 war on terror to bolster the legal and ethical justification for the CIA’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques on prisoners, according to a new report co-authored by experts at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The report, published online April 30, 2015 in the New York Times, analyzed newly released emails between psychologists at the CIA and the APA that were written during a time of growing national concern about the George W. Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and death threats. These techniques came to light in 2004 after public disclosure of graphic photos of prisoner abuse by American military personnel at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
The emails suggest that APA psychologists collaborated with the government in creating an ethics policy that sanctioned psychologists’ participation in national security interrogations.
One of the three lead authors of the new report—the first to examine the APA’s role in the interrogation program—was Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and former director of the campaign against torture at Physicians for Human Rights. Another Harvard Chan co-author was Isaac Baker, imagery analysis manager for HHI’s Signal Program.
Read a New York Times article about the new report: Report Says American Psychological Association Collaborated on Torture Justification
Read a July 20, 2014, Boston Globe update: Report on interrogation tactics roils academics