Psychologists Told CIA Waterboarding Was Safe

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

Despite Red Flags, CIA Followed Interrogation Program of Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell


There is new scrutiny into the role of two psychologists who made an estimated $1,000 a day to oversee and advise the CIA's interrogation of captured terrorists.

Both men, doctors Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, assured the CIA that their methods could 'break' a terrorist and would be safe, according to two former high-ranking CIA officials and a collection of recently declassified Bush administration memos.

The major problem, according to those who knew the two retired military psychologists, was that neither Mitchell nor Jessen had ever conducted a real interrogation, or been involved in an intelligence operation.

When they became involved in interrogations for the CIA, "that was their first step into the world of intelligence," says Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman, a career military interrogator and former colleague of both Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen. "That was their very first experience with it. Everything else was role-play."

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7474412&page=1

[bullimiami]

1. 2 medical licenses need to be revoked. permanently.

then they should be tried with the rest for conspiracy at the least.

[JayMusgrove]

6. Psychologists don't have medical licenses, the state may issue

a license to practice psychology, but this has little to do with the practice of medicine. Psychologists and psychiatrists are always being mixed up in the minds of the public. A psychologist can't even order you an aspirin.

[Alcibiades]

14. Psychologists are licsensed by states

These two should lose their licenses, and probably will, unless they are licensed in, say, Texas. Psychologists in government service have to be licensed by some state, but not necessarily the one they are in, b/c it is expected that they will move. Lots of folks shop around for states that have more accommodating licensing procedures--Indiana is popular for some reason.

I'm not sure that the ability to write someone for meds is the most important distinction. You're right about the failure to distinguish on the part of some between psychologists and psychiatrists. What many folks don't realize, though, is that psychiatrists spend so much training becoming medical doctors that they can (depending on their program, naturally) be a little light on things such as talk therapy and diagnostic testing. A guideline would be that if you need correct diagnosis of a mental illness or non-drug therapeutic intervention, see a psychologist: if you want psychotropic medication or suspect an underlying medical issue, see a psychiatrist.

Oh, and if you want someone to sign off on torture, get a retired military psychologist, because they don't have to worry about licensure.

[LuckyLib]

20. And, there are many folks who see both a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

Both work together with the patient to maximize the benefits of both medical and talk therapy.

[Sgent]

25. Its also important to note they have very different ethical requirements

The American Psychological Association (psychologists) explicitly failed to adopt anti-torture language into their code of ethics.

The American Medical Association (psychiatrists) explicitly forbids assisting in torture in any way in its code of ethics.

Although neither organization formally sets ethics requirements for people who are not members (and membership isn't required for licensure, unlike say the bar association), most state boards of licensure adopt the respective ethics rules for those they license.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Revolting - they should be publicly drummed out of the profession

[merh]

3. This is just more proof that you had an agency and an administration

that was looking to find someone to give them the answers they wanted. They didn't care about the truth or about past research, they just wanted someone to tell them "it's okay to torture, it isn't really torture, it doesn't hurt long time."

I hope the Spanish judge reads this - +2 to his list.

[sabra]

7. indeed

- find us proof Saddam has WMD
- find us proof Iraq was connected to 9/11
- find us proof waterboarding is safe and effective

the list goes on...

[DebbieCDC]

4. Permanently lose their licenses to practice in ALL states

For a start

[truthisfreedom]

5. Then public waterboarding.

I'm just sayin'.

[texastoast]

9. Seems I heard something about an ethics proposal about that

from the APA. Something about any psych who condones that kind of stuff would get booted. Can't recall all the details of whether it got put in place or is being considered.

[Seldona]

11. The membership voted it down twice.

Third time is the charm I guess.

:eyes:

[EFerrari]

18. But the next year, they voted in the psychologist leading the protests

as president.

[Seldona]

23. Meanwhile...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KfLYU69OMc

[w4rma]

8. $125 an hour con-artists. Wow. (nt)

[LiberalFighter]

10. How does being a damn psychologist qualify them to determine it is safe?

They don't deal with the damn body. Their area is the mind. Even then they are not qualified to practice their field.


Someone needs to experiment on these quacks. Cutting the bottom of their feet with razor blades about a 1/16 inch deep 20 or 40 times. Tubing about a gallon of vodka into their bladder. Inserting bugs into their ears. Staking them out in the desert and applying honey to their naked bodies and let loose fire ants. Staking them out in the desert with wet leather strips under a scorching sun.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

12. The Spanish Inquisition probably thought it was safe too!

[marshall]

13. I don't understand the part about it being "safe"

Nobody that we know of died from it, so in that sense it was safe. But why would a psychologist be the one to make that kind of observation? Shouldn't that be a medical doctor, saying something like it was not likely to cause a heart attack or fluid buildup in the lungs or whatever other scenario might occur?

[Alcibiades]

15. This is par for the course for the Bush administration

Get someone who will say what you want them to say and then pay them to say it. Now these assholes can take the hit while the criminal ringleaders set off scot free.

We need a special prosecutor, or someone, empowered to cut deals with folks such as this in exchange for testimony.

[underpants]

27. There you go

as Suskind pointed out in the Paul O'Neill book competence is useless only loyalty to these people. If you show your loyalty you will be taken care of and THEN they come back for you to prove it one more time. This time they had loyal psychologists on the payroll and they utilized them. Yes men-it is also has a lot to do with what happened on Wall Street.

[WatchWhatISay]

16. The APA's hands are very dirty here, despite the attempts by

many of its members to have the APA join doctors and psychiatrists in not participating in these interrogations. These members tried but failed to dissociate the organization with their involvement in torture.

Salon has many good articles about this controversy among psychologists, and about the involvement of Mitchell and Jessen in torture, written by Mark Benjamin, who has followed this issue for some time.

Here is a link to one of these articles:


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/21/psychologists/index.html

and here is a clip from that article:

In 2005, Banks helped draft ethical guidelines for the APA that say a psychologist supporting an interrogation is providing "a valuable and ethical role to assist in protecting our nation, other nations, and innocent civilians from harm." But as Salon reported last summer, six of the 10 psychologists who drafted that policy, including Banks, had close ties to the military. Some psychologists worry that the APA policy has made the organization an enabler of torture. Those ethics guidelines "gave the APA imprimatur to any of these techniques," says Steven Reisner, an APA member who has been closely tracking psychologists' role in interrogations. The policy, Reisner says, was developed by "psychologists directly involved in the interrogations."

Another of the six psychologists on the panel that drafted the guidelines who had ties to the military was Shumate. His bio for that APA task force said he worked as a "director of behavioral science" for the Defense Department. It never mentioned that he also worked for the CIA.

[Alcibiades]

19. The APA needs to cover their asses

Their policy smacks of endorsement, particularly given that these assholes did continuing education bearing the imprimatur of the APA!

"Mitchell, Jessen, and Associates, LLC (MJA) is an executive consulting firm specializing in the area of understanding, predicting, and improving performance in high-risk and extreme situations. MJA develops specialized assessment and selection programs for high-risk occupations, devises and conducts tailored training for related, high-risk programs, and is additionally approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing professional education for psychologists."

[EFerrari]

17. Baloney. No one needs to teach CIA torture or tell them what is "safe".

They've been torturing for decades and teach it at SOA.

Second, this is probably Tenet and Goss pushing everything off on these two psychologists because they know they've already lost to Cheney/Rumsfeld.

[Solly Mack]

21. "they" told me it was legal and "they" told me it was safe

and I didn't tell myself anything so I did everything "they" said I could


snort

[Trajan]

22. Let me guess .....

They were associated with the American Enterprise Institute .... (just a guess) ....

Two fucking Mengeles .... (not quite that bad, but certainly undesireable)

[sattahipdeep]

24. Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell= Cofer Black Erik Prince.

The CIA's $1,000 a Day Psychopaths

Psychologists Called the 'Architects' of the CIA's Techniques

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7471217&page=1

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7473528

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7473637

[mbperrin]

26. It WAS safe! Their checks cleared, right?

Immoral money grabbing motherfuckers!

Apologies to all those who actually performed a voluntary sex act with a woman with children.....

[underpants]

28. *DING*

see post 27 also

spot on perrin