openpolitics.com

Prior to settling, Mitchell and Jessen denied any legal responsibility, and their attorneys argued their inculpability by comparing them to the low-level technicians whose employers provided lethal gas for Hitler’s extermination camps.

.. The case marks the first instance of legal accountability of any kind for psychologists who abandoned ethical standards — and basic decency — while claiming they were merely following government orders on torture.

..  The perverse rationale: According to memos from government lawyers at that time, “close observation” by health professionals constituted clear evidence that there was no specific intent to cause severe pain or suffering.

.. None of these psychologists has ever been sanctioned for ethics violations by state licensing boards or professional associations — even the relative few whose identities are known. In part, this is because the American Psychological Association (APA) — the largest membership organization of psychologists in the world — did not effectively defend the profession’s bedrock do-no-harm principles.

.. In public forums, the APA’s ethics director dismissed reports of detainee abuse as “long on hearsay and innuendo, short on facts.”

.. One association president condemned dissident voices as “opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars.” Another advised us to “turn down the temperature on outrage.” A high-profile military psychologist boasted in his memoir, “I confronted one of my critics and threatened to shut his mouth for him if he didn’t do it himself.”

.. The APA commissioned a comprehensive independent review, conducted by attorney David Hoffman of the Sidley Austin law firm. The 500-page report confirmed what our own research and investigations had found. It concluded that the APA, despite growing evidence of detainee mistreatment, had secretly coordinated with Defense Department officials to promote ethics policies that matched the government’s preference

.. This was accomplished, in part, by stacking a key APA task force with military intelligence insiders and relying on Pentagon representatives

.. APA leaders took this path to “curry favor” with the military establishment — a source of lucrative grants and contracts

.. we have an authoritarian-minded commander in chief who’s insisted that “torture works.”

.. Donald Trump declared that he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

.. Since taking office, Trump has appointed both a CIA director who argued that the likes of Mitchell and Jessen are patriots, not torturers, and a deputy director who ran a CIA torture site and participated in the unlawful destruction of videotape evidence.

.. nominated for an administration position a lawyer who authored some of the infamous “torture memos

.. given serious consideration to reopening CIA black sites and expanding the use of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

.. many Americans (roughly half, sometimes more) support the torture of terrorism suspects

..  contributed to radicalizing a new generation of adversaries.

.. Psychologists understand the lasting impact of trauma very well. The demons of deep psychic wounds can continue without end. Colleagues who work with torture survivors describe the victims’ overwhelming feelings of helplessness, brokenness and disconnection from other people, direct results of having been subjected to agonizing abuse and humiliation at the hands of another human being.

..  are haunted by flashbacks and nightmares, and a lasting sense of safety seems impossible to achieve.

.. psychologists’ complicity, whether through active participation or silent acquiescence, is so egregious.