A shocking new report has brought the ghosts of the Bush administration back from the grave this time haunting the American Psychological Association or A.P.A. which is the biggest professional organization for psychologists in the country.

The report by a group of psychologists, health professionals and human rights researchers claims that:

"The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program.”

So essentially the APA allegedly adjusted their own ethics guidelines to help the Bush Administration justify its lovely “enhanced interrogation” program and in the process allow any ethically challenged psychologists who were involved with the torture to no longer be ethically challenged.

The report also claims that the APA tried to conceal and hide ties to the two psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jesson who, if you remember, were the private contractors that helped develop and run the CIA torture program.

One email revealed in the report shows that a CIA psychologist told an A.P.A. official that Mitchell and Jesson “are doing special things to special people in special places.”

So essentially the APA allegedly adjusted their own ethics guidelines to help the Bush Administration justify its lovely “enhanced interrogation” program and in the process allow any ethically challenged psychologists who were involved with the torture to no longer be ethically challenged.

Well isn’t that special.Of course the APA is issuing denials through their spokeswoman Rhea Farberman stating that there “has never been any coordination between A.P.A. and the Bush administration on how A.P.A. responded to the controversies about the role of psychologists in the interrogations program.”  But those denials have not stopped the board of the A.P.A. back in November to initiate an independent review of their role in the interrogation program.

I believe that this is once again another example of people and organizations sacrificing their morality in the face of power.  It seems lately that morality is the first thing to go, especially when people and business are confronted by the power of the state. 

We’ve learned time and again that all it takes to change history is one person making the right choice at the right time so when the time comes for you to make the choice between power and morality I hope you make a better choice than the psychologists in the A.P.A. did and help change our future history in the process.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ora Media, LLC its affiliates, or its employees.

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