Group rules out detainee methods

SAN FRANCISCO -- The American Psychological Association ruled yesterday that psychologists can no longer be associated with several interrogation techniques that have been used against terrorism detainees at US facilities because the methods are immoral, psychologically damaging, and counterproductive in eliciting useful information.

Psychologists who witness interrogators using mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions, or sleep deprivation are required to intervene to stop such abuse, to report the activities to superiors, and to report the involvement of any other psychologists in such activities to the association. It could then strip those professionals of their memberships.

The move by the association, the nation's largest of behavioral specialists, is a rebuke of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies because many of the techniques deemed unacceptable have been widely reported to be used at military facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq and several CIA detention centers.

But it also has practical effects. Psychologists who have their membership revoked can lose their licenses, because many state licensing boards require psychologists to be in good standing with the national association.

Also ruled out of bounds are the exploitation of prisoners' phobias, the use of mind-altering drugs, hooding, forced nakedness, the use of dogs to frighten detainees, exposing prisoners to extreme heat and cold, physical assault, and threatening the use of such techniques against a prisoner or a prisoner's family.

Several psychologists declared that these methods are not only physically and psychologically damaging to inmates and captors, but also counterproductive for obtaining intelligence. Data from several wars and from a range of criminal justice settings show that once prisoners start to fear for their lives and safety, they start trying to guess what their captors want to hear, and the resulting bad information is often worse than having no information at all, several psychologists said.

The move follows similar decisions by other professional associations, such as the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. But psychologists play an unusual role in that they widely serve in a clinical role -- involving the treatment of sick prisoners -- and as researchers of human behavior.

The association decided against a blanket measure that would have kept psychologists from participating in interrogation facilities altogether. Many critics of that measure, including several government specialists, said that psychologists play an essential role in these settings.