Report Claims American Psychological Association Secretly Supported Torture Policy

The American Psychological Association secretly worked with the George W. Bush administration to justify a post-9/11 torture policy, says a new report released Thursday.

The report, written by six health professionals and human rights activists, analyzed over 600 e-mails that they claim show how the group assisted in morally and ethically justifying the Bush-era interrogation program after graphic photos surfaced in 2004 showing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq tortured by U.S. Army personnel.

“The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program,” the report concludes.

A spokeswoman for the American Psychological Association denied the accusations in the report, stating that there “has never been any coordination between A.P.A. and the Bush administration on how A.P.A. responded to the controversies about the role of psychologists in the interrogations program.”

The interrogation program has since been discontinued and was criticized by the extensive Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture last year.

[NYT]