A British psychologist is receiving sharp criticism from some professional peers for providing expert advice to help the U.K. surveillance agency GCHQ manipulate people online.
The debate brings into focus the question of how or whether psychologists should offer their expertise to spy agencies engaged in deception and propaganda.
Dr. Mandeep K. Dhami, in a 2011 paper, provided the controversial GCHQ spy unit JTRIG with advice, research pointers, training recommendations, and thoughts on psychological issues, with the goal of improving the unit’s performance and effectiveness. JTRIG’s operations have been referred to as “dirty tricks,” and Dhami’s paper notes that the unit’s own staff characterize their work using “terms such as ‘discredit,’ promote ‘distrust,’ ‘dissuade,’ ‘deceive,’ ‘disrupt,’ ‘delay,’ ‘deny,’ ‘denigrate/degrade,’ and ‘deter.’” The unit’s targets go beyond terrorists and foreign militaries and include groups considered “domestic extremist[s],” criminals, online “hacktivists,” and even “entire countries.”
After publishing Dhami’s paper for the first time in June, The Intercept reached out to several of her fellow psychologists, including some whose work was referenced in the paper, about the document’s ethical implications.
One of the psychologists cited in the report criticized the paper and GCHQ’s ethics. Another psychologist condemned Dhami’s recommendations as “grossly unethical” and another called them an “egregious violation” of psychological ethics. But two other psychologists cited in the report did not express concern when contacted for reaction, and another psychologist, along with Dhami’s current employer, defended her work and her ethical standards.
A British law firm hired to represent Dhami maintained that any allegations of unethical conduct are “grossly defamatory and totally untrue.”
The divergent views on the paper highlight how the profession of psychology has yet to resolve key ethical concerns around consulting for government intelligence agencies. These issues take on added resonance in the context of the uproar currently roiling the American Psychological Association over the key role it played in the CIA torture program during the Bush administration. The APA’s Council of Representatives voted Friday to bar psychologists from taking part in national security interrogations or to advise on confinement conditions. Dhami’s consultation with JTRIG and the APA’s role in support of the CIA torture program are disparate — there is no suggestion that Dhami advised on interrogations involving torture nor that her paper was part of an ongoing relationship with JTRIG — but Dhami’s GCHQ work, like the APA scandal, provokes heated disagreement and criticism.
Psychologists respond strongly to ethical issues
Some peers are outspoken against Dhami’s paper. They do not believe it is possible to engage ethically with the deceitful activities of a unit like JTRIG at any level. Arguments in defense of assisting psychological operations, meanwhile, include the notion that doing so helps ensure they are conducted in a responsible fashion and can help obviate the need for operations that are violent.
Dr. Stephen Soldz, director of Center for Research, Evaluation and Program Development at Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.
Photo: Alamy
Dr. Stephen Soldz, co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and co-author of two reports from Physicians for Human Rights on health professionals’ role in the CIA torture program, told The Intercept that the recommendations in Dhami’s report highlight the moral hazard of “operational psychology,” in which psychological expertise is used to further military and intelligence operations.
Soldz condemned the “deeply disturbing and grossly unethical recommendations” in Dhami’s JTRIG report. He added that “the psychology profession and the public must grapple with developing proper ethical constraints on the activities of operational psychologists.”
For Dr. Bradley Olson, who is past president of APA Division 48, which studies peace, conflict, and violence, using one’s training to assist in a mission like JTRIG’s, which involves the deception and manipulation of unsuspecting targets, is inherently problematic. Using one’s “expertise, research, or consultation to guide deceptive statements, even the statements of others, when the deceptive intentions are clearly documented … that is against psychological ethics,” according to Olson, who has collaborated with Soldz, including as a co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. “This is a terrible, terrible violation of psychological ethics” and a violation of the APA’s ethical standards, he added.
Dhami is not currently a member of the APA, but was a member of an APA Division at the time the report was written. According to APA bylaws, “Divisions must comply with all APA Bylaws, Association Rules and current policies.” Her online profile at Middlesex University, where Dhami is a professor, currently lists her as a member of APA Division 41 and a fellow of Division 9. A representative of APA Division 9, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, said that Dhami stopped paying dues in 2013 and is therefore no longer a member. The APA and an officer of Division 41, the American Psychology-Law Society, acknowledged receiving but did not respond to questions from The Intercept.
Dr. Christian Crandall, a professor in the University of Kansas’ social psychology program, disagrees with Dhami’s critics. “In my perusal, it seemed that she was writing a brief that would lead to research opportunities, consulting opportunities, and the like,” he said. “Because this brief was commissioned and written prior to the Snowden revelations … we might give Prof. Dhami the benefit of the doubt, that she might not [have] know[n] or anticipate[d] the extent of misconduct in the intelligence agencies.”
Crandall is also a council member at SPSSI, the APA division that honored Dhami as a fellow in 2007, and, emailing in that capacity, said he sees nothing unethical about Dhami’s report for JTRIG. After a “fairly quick look at the document,” he said the report did not merit an investigation. “What should SPSSI do? Nothing. Nothing at all, until evidence of actual unethical conduct appears. And we have not seen it.”
“It is certainly possible that JTRIG acts badly, spies on domestic (or American) targets, or even breaks international law. It is a stretch to hold Prof. Dhami responsible for this,” Crandall wrote. “[The report is] quite a bit like what the U.S. Army teaches their strategic communication officers. It’s less offensive than the behaviors of Karl Rove. It’s not benign. But Dhami specifies two relevant ethical codes … and two relevant UK laws … and recommends that JTRIG follow the relevant laws.”
“I do not think that JTRIG requires a set of ethical guidelines that is different from those that are relevant to the rest of humanity.”
Dhami was contacted for this article and responded to questions from The Intercept through Schillings, a British law firm, and Culhane Meadows, a U.S. firm. A letter from Schillings said that Dhami had “upheld the highest ethical standards” throughout her academic career and had never sought to hide her association with GCHQ. “The work undertaken by our client has been focused on helping GCHQ to accurately understand and responsibly apply psychological science,” the letter stated. “In working with the government our client typically provides advice on how to improve specific aspects of their work” and is “not therefore actively engaged in the day-to-day business of these departments, but rather an independent observer/commentator” with a “strong track record of publishing critiques of existing Government policies.”
Schillings also said Dhami was “legally restricted in terms of the responses that she is able to give” to The Intercept’s questions “by virtue of the government agency involved,” adding that no “adverse inferences” should be drawn from this. Asked about Dhami’s report, GCHQ said in a statement that the agency is “aware of the responsibility that comes with the nature of its work and in addition to the legal accountability we also take the ethical considerations surrounding our mission seriously.”
Middlesex University defended Dhami’s work, writing: “Middlesex University has robust ethical procedures and is committed to operating in an ethical way to ensure the highest possible standards of decision-making and accountability. Professor Dhami’s work for Middlesex University is carried out in strict accordance with the ethical codes of the organisation, which in turn conform to the standards laid down by the British Psychological Society.”
Psychological advice for covert propaganda unit
Dhami appears to have been a senior lecturer in criminology at Cambridge University when she wrote the report, as well as a social psychologist with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, an agency sponsored by the U.K. Ministry of Defence. During this period, she was temporarily transferred, or “seconded” to GCHQ, according to a version of Dhami’s CV posted online.
The top-secret document, titled “Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’s (Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group’s) Effects and Online HUMINT Operations,” appears to have been written during this stint at the spy agency. (The term “HUMINT” commonly refers to human intelligence.) It was based on interviews with 22