Psychologists are absolutely prohibited from knowingly planning, designing, participating in or assisting in the use of all condemned techniques at any time and may not enlist others to employ these techniques in order to circumvent this resolution’s prohibition.
If this resolution means anything, it means that psychologists are forbidden from participating in any way in activities at Guantanamo’s Camps 5 and 6, where prolonged isolation is the rule. It is time for the APA to speak loud and clear to state, consistent with its own resolutions, that psychologists may not participate in any capacity in these facilities.
However, the APA has consistently asserted that psychologists, rather than aiding abuse, are playing a vital role in protecting detainees. As their military-dominated task force on Psychological Ethics and National Security [PENS] asserted in 2005:
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. While engaging in such consultative and advisory roles entails a delicate balance of ethical considerations, doing so puts psychologists in a unique position to assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants.
After three long years of revelations about the abuses occurring in US detention facilities and psychologists roles in those abuses, APA leaders are still making this ridiculous claim that psychologists aiding detainee interrogations are primarily protecting detainees.
For years APA members have been pushing for a policy that would bar psychologist participation at Guantanamo, the CIA’s “black sites,” or other facilities outside the reach of the Constitution and international law. [APA members should go here and sign a petition calling for a referendum putting that policy into effect.] However, this policy change, while highly desirable, would be less critical if APA would actually enforce the policies it already has in place that, by any reasonable interpretation, clearly ban participation in Camps 5 and 6, as well as Camp 7. Unfortunately, the APA has a long history of talk against torture, but they have taken few steps to walk the walk. They appear to be dragging their feet until the Bush administration is long gone before taking any position on the well-known abuses of this administration. Perhaps this time they’ll act on the sides of ethics and of human decency and speak out when it might make a difference.
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