Ethics Director Among Top Psychologists Who Aided CIA Torture and Cover-UpAn alarming recent report revealed not only that prominent psychologists colluded with the Department of Defense and CIA to create a framework of justification for appalling and inexcusable torture, but the person heading that partnership was none other than Stephen Behnke, the Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association. Acting in concert with DoD officials, the APA became the de facto PR strategy [read: propaganda campaign] that sanitized gross human rights abuses in order to curry favor with the DoD. Sleep deprivation, waterboarding, stress positions, and other forms of torture were both spuriously justified and allowed to continue through the creative editing and generalization of the very ethics standards that should have prevented any torture from taking place. According to the report: The 542-page report, first obtained by the New York Times, resulted from seven months of investigation by a team headed by David Hoffman of the law firm Sidley Austin, at the request of the APAs board. Physicians for Human Rights summarized the overwhelming evidence of criminal activity by APA staff and officialswhose involvement is evidenced in the report by the following four key conclusions: Hoffmans report posits several motivesall with organizational conflict[s] of interestthat the APA had for its rather astonishing partnership: Further, the group of DoD and APA officials who crafted the laughable ethics policy actively dodged international law of the Geneva Convention, where its strictures were tighter than U.S. law. [I] cannot take a stand opposed to the U.S. government, said one. Even the APAs president-elect called it a distraction to draw international law into APAs ethics guidance. This falls in line with President Bushs outright rejection of the conventions following 9/11 as a deplorably whimsical way to land al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in a legal black hole, as human rights groups and U.S. allies described it. In a press release, former APA president Dr. Nadine Kaslow stated, The actions, policies, and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values. We profoundly regret, and apologize for, the behavior and consequences that ensued. Listing adopted and proposed strategies to prevent the possibility of a recurrence of such abhorrent ethics violations, Kaslow also admitted, This bleak chapter in our history occurred over a period of years and will not be resolved in a matter of months. Resolved? For whom, exactly? PHR has called for the APA to change its policies for a full decade nowand has pleaded for a federal investigation for at least as long. Despite the execrable abuses in the CIA torture reportthe entirety of which hasnt even been fully disclosedone simple, and utterly indefensible, fact overshadows every new revelation. Something that appears to be a minutiae from the torture report is, in actuality, a glaringly tragic prediction. One interrogator told a detainee that he would never go to court because, he explained, we can never let the world know what I have done to you. But we do know. The entire planet knows. And all those who suffered or died, enduring unspeakably heinous crimes at the behest of the U.S. governmentknow. Yet no onenot a single personhas ever even been charged for their crimes. Also see: Claire Bernish writes for theAntiMedia.org, where this article first appeared. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. 