Crossposted at Invictus and Nion
On September 5 of this year, I posted an article, Empire Strikes Back: APA Tops Lash Out at Anti-Torture Opponents, which discussed the efforts of former American Psychological Association president Gerald Koocher and former APA Presidential Task Force on National Security (PENS) Chair Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter to counter the charges of PENS member Jean Maria Arrigo that the PENS task force was heavily loaded by U.S. Department of Defense members and supporters. The latter was to assure that psychologists would still be available to staff the abusive settings and interrogations at Guantanamo, Abu Graib, CIA secret “black sites”, etc. Both Koocher and Moorehead-Slaughter gave biased and sometimes outright false accounts of the events leading up to the 2006 resolution against torture by the American Psychological Association.
The 2006 resolution is important, as it served as the basis for the 2007 APA resolution, labeled as a “reaffirmation” and extension of the earlier text. The 2007 resolution banned some coercive interrogation techniques, while allowing wiggle room for others to persist. It also allowed psychologists to participate at settings where human rights are being abridged, i.e., where there is no right to habeas corpus.
What follows is a long letter, with accompanying documentation, by Stephen Soldz, Steve Reisner and Brad Olson of Coalition for an Ethical APA, exposing the amalgam of lies and half-truths put forward by Koocher and Moorehead-Slaughter in their recent letters. While opponents could also call Soldz et al. biased, I think we can let readers study and decide for themselves.
