Today, the American Psychological Association voted to ban any collaboration between psychologists and national military and intelligence interrogators. The vote came in the wake of an independent report, released by the APA in July, that revealed that members of the association had colluded with government officials to remove the ethical and legal barriers preventing psychologists from participating in torture programs. The decision was passed almost unanimously at the association’s annual meeting, with one dissenting vote from Col. Larry James, who has led psychology operations for detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The so-called Hoffman report released in July primarily looked into the drafting of a 2005 APA publication called the Psychology Ethics in National Security document. That document was a critical piece of the regulatory puzzle that allowed the government to claim its interrogation techniques were safe, legal, ethical, and effective. Before PENS, the APA’s ethical rules would have prevented psychologists from working with government interrogators. But the document’s language allowed for psychologists to vet interrogation techniques, establishing whether or not they were likely to cause the long-term mental health effects that would qualify a technique as psychological torture. 

The ban instituted by the APA today will keep psychologists from being involved in national security interrogations—no matter how severe—carried out by US military and intelligence agencies or any other group outside of standard domestic criminal law enforcement. It will go into effect as soon as a new ethics code is drafted to reflect the decision.

Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.