Roy Eidelson: Letter to APA Division Presidents on the PENS Report

Dear APA Division Presidents,

The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology appreciates your engagement -- and the engagement of your division memberships -- regarding the issue of annulling the APA’s 2005 PENS Report. As reflected in our petition initiative (www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens), we and many other individuals and organizations strongly believe that annulment is a necessary and urgent step.

For those of you who are still undecided, we encourage you to consider a brief “What Would You Have Done?” thought experiment. Imagine that you personally had been in charge of creating the PENS Task Force in mid-2005, amid reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the New York Times, and other media outlets that psychologists were involved in abusive and torturous interrogations of national security detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Imagine that it was your responsibility to bring together a small group to examine the key question of whether the APA Ethics Code adequately addressed the ethical dimensions of psychologists’ involvement in such interrogations and other national security-related activities.

Placing yourself in that decisive leadership role, how would you have answered these seven questions?:

1. In creating a task force of nine voting members, would you have selected six individuals who were on the payroll of the military/intelligence establishment, including several who worked in the chains of command when and where instances of abuse and torture had reportedly occurred?

2. Would you have given leadership responsibility to a senior APA staff member whose spouse had been a Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) psychologist at Guantanamo, and was therefore a member of the cohort of psychologists for whom the Task Force was to provide guidance?
   

3. Regarding issues of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, would you have agreed that U.S. law, as reinterpreted by the Bush Administration, should supersede longstanding international human rights standards in the PENS Report?

4. Given that the task force’s mandate included examining the role of psychologists in investigations related to national security, would you have permitted a Board Liaison to prevent task force discussion of reported instances of psychologists' involvement in abusive interrogations of national security detainees?
   

5. As the task force leader, would you have considered it appropriate to incorporate key language into the APA report drawn directly from military BSCT documents –namely, that psychologists serve to keep interrogations "safe, legal, ethical, and effective”?

6. Given that psychologists faced strong situational pressures (without access to independent outside consultants) and were subject to a military code that prioritized military orders over psychological ethics, would you have concluded that “a central role for psychologists working in the area of national security-related investigations is to assist in assuring that processes are safe, legal and ethical for all participants”?
   

7. Would you have supported the Board’s decision to approve the report through “emergency” procedures, bypassing the standard governance process of review and acceptance by the full Council of Representatives, which was set to meet within six weeks?

At the time, the APA Task Force leadership opted for “Yes” in response to all seven of these questions, and they have defended those answers ever since. As a result, the PENS Report continues to be an authoritative and influential document in military/intelligence and psychological settings. The report is used by the Department of Defense as guidance for BSCT psychologists; by military psychologists seeking to advance “operational psychology” as an area of specialization including aggressive counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations; and by the APA Ethics Committee as a guide to ethical behavior in national security settings.

If, like many other concerned psychologists and human rights advocates, you would have answered "No” to some of these questions, please review the petition materials at www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens and consider joining the 1,000 individuals and 22 organizations that have already signed on. Your personal support for annulment of the PENS Report can make a difference. We would certainly welcome your sharing this email and thought experiment with the general membership of your divisions as well. Thank you.

Sincerely,

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

P.S. Our great thanks to those of you who have already signed the petition.

Note: Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of APA), based on a vote of the Executive Committee, is proud to have signed the petition to annul the PENS Report, initiated by Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, and we are grateful for the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology for their continued vigilance with regard to issues of human rights that bear upon the field of psychology.