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Before the dust has had a chance to settle on the report detailing the American Psychologists Association’s complicity in the CIA torture program, the psychologist found to have violated the ethics code now appears to be helping the FBI do the same thing.
In late April, a 60-page report entitled ‘All the President’s Psychologists’ pointed
to Susan Brandon as the White House architect behind the policies
regulating the legality of an interrogator’s actions – something
that goes against the APA’s own rulebook, which prohibits
psychologists from making such judgments.
The document alleges the APA’s close coordination with the White
House, the CIA and the Department of Defense on the formulation
of a legal policy that would exempt the interrogators from
prosecution, following a scandal involving allegation of torture
at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison. “Susan Brandon …
played a central role in the development of the 2005
[Psychological Ethics and National Security] policy,” the
report alleges – the second inquiry investigating the medical
role in the practice.
READ MORE: Study accuses psychologists group of
complicity in CIA torture program
“What we see is associations. And the associations with the
apparent supervisor of [James] Mitchell and [Bruce] Jessen at
each step of the process over a period of three years,” the
report said then, in reference to the two masterminds of the CIA
torture program, whom Brandon was allegedly in contact with in
2003, as evident from a string of emails.
Brandon’s complete role in the program is at this point unknown,
but one particular email she was included on focuses on the pair
“doing special things to special people in special
places.”
“The issue here is not about what she thinks about torture;
the issue is about what she did in the past to knowingly or
unknowingly create a legal heat shield for the president using
the ethics of the APA. That’s the issue. This is not a question
of torture. It’s a question of alleged corruption,” says the
report’s co-author and program director at the Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative, Nathaniel Raymond, according to the
Huffington Post.
Now Brandon is advising the FBI’s High-Value Detainee
Interrogation Group – essentially the Obama’s administration
continuation of the CIA program regarded as having crossed the
line. She is tasked with research into determining whether a
crime has been committed in the course of an interrogation.
The FBI has not officially commented on the claims yet.
Journalists might not get a reply from Brandon anytime soon, as
she’s still an HIG adviser and is not expected to break protocol
– the association has a policy of operating in secrecy, according
to fellow member Mark Fallon.
The initial reason for the government’s acceptance of the CIA
torture program hinged, in part, on the presence of psychologists
and their expertise acting as a check, as is evident from a 2005 Justice Department
document.
The reason the APA had to be called in was apparently due to the
CIA’s own psychologists’ refusal to sign off on the memo,
claiming that the proposed assessments simply strayed outside of
medical professionals’ competence.
As a result, Brandon’s Psychological Ethics and National Security
policy became the document that could be “seen as opening the
door for psychologists to fulfil a function that [CIA Office of
Medical Services] health professionals were resisting,”
according to the report.
APA collusion with govt. #torture
reminiscent of Nazi practice, says leading American
psychologist Robert Jay Lifton: http://t.co/kNtrPYIh3Q
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) May
8, 2015
Brandon’s own language went in a separate direction from the CIA
doctors’, effectively paving the way for a psychologist’s role in
judging the harm and effectiveness of an interrogation.
The APA has denied the report’s findings. Its own review of the
complicity in the Bush-era program is ongoing.
Brandon’s role as one of the HIG’s top specialists is now under
scrutiny, but she has defenders as well. Fallon, for one, has
since said that Brandon “is a research scientist who was
helping craft language, from what I can read in those emails,
that might in fact be totally appropriate.”
“[Was] it a witting collaboration, or is it an unwitting
person within the government who’s a research scientist looking
to ensure that we’re at least learning lessons? I just could not
conceive that she would ever do anything that would support
degrading and inhumane treatment,” he added.