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Psychology Under Fire: Adversarial Operational Psychology and Psychological Ethics

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology

November 2012
18(4):384-400

DOI:10.1037/a0030323

Authors:

Jean Maria Arrigo

Roy Eidelson

Independent Researcher

The 9/11 attacks on the United States have motivated psychologists to advance counterterrorism and related operations through psychological principles and skills. These operational psychologists seek to legitimize adversarial interventions against targets by prioritizing societal welfare over traditional, individual-focused principles of psychological ethics. In this essay, we distinguish adversarial operational psychology, which facilitates deceptive and coercive operations, from collaborative operational psychology, which optimizes personnel performance in high-risk operations. Our analysis finds that adversarial operational psychology is largely unsupported by the American Psychological Association Ethics Code, that its potential benefits are exceeded by the likelihood of irreversible harms, and that its military necessity is undemonstrated. We offer a three-factor framework for distinguishing between adversarial and collaborative operational psychology, and we recommend institutional separation of these roles so that professional psychologists do not serve in adversarial capacities.

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Psychology Under Fire: Adversarial Operational Psychology and

Psychological Ethics

Jean Maria Arrigo

Project on Ethics and Art in Testimony, Irvine,

California

Roy J. Eidelson

Eidelson Consulting, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania

Ray Bennett

Washington, D.C.

The 9/11 attacks on the United States have motivated psychologists to advance

counterterrorism and related operations through psychological principles and skills.

These operational psychologists seek to legitimize adversarial interventions against

targets by prioritizing societal welfare over traditional, individual-focused princi-

ples of psychological ethics. In this essay, we distinguish adversarial operational

psychology, which facilitates deceptive and coercive operations, from collaborative

operational psychology, which optimizes personnel performance in high-risk op-

erations. Our analysis ﬁnds that adversarial operational psychology is largely

unsupported by the American Psychological Association Ethics Code, that its

potential beneﬁts are exceeded by the likelihood of irreversible harms, and that its

military necessity is undemonstrated. We offer a three-factor framework for dis-

tinguishing between adversarial and collaborative operational psychology, and we

recommend institutional separation of these roles so that professional psychologists

do not serve in adversarial capacities.

Keywords: operational psychology, psychological ethics, APA Ethics Code, counterterrorism,

psychological torture

For almost a century, American psycholo-

gists have assisted national security opera-

tions, often outside of public awareness or

concern. The progressive social psychologist

Kurt Lewin, for example, applied group dy-

namics to survival training for spies destined

for Occupied Europe in World War II.

Lewin’s role in this training, unknown to two

generations of behavioral scientists (Cooke,

2007), is an example of operational psychol-

Since 1995 social psychologist JEAN MARIA ARRIGO has

given voice to military intelligence professionals of con-

science through oral histories and joint activities with

scholars. She established the Intelligence Ethics Collection

at Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, and

the Ethics of Intelligence and Weapons Development Col-

lection at Bancroft Library, University of California,

Berkeley.

ROY J. EIDELSON is a clinical psychologist and the pres-

ident of Eidelson Consulting, where he conducts research,

writes, and consults on the role of psychological issues in

political, organizational, and group conﬂict settings. He is

a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility,

associate director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of

Ethnopolitical Conﬂict at Bryn Mawr College, and a mem-

ber of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.

RAY BENNETT is a retired military intelligence ofﬁcer

with more than 20 years of experience in the ﬁeld of

military and law enforcement interrogation, including ser-

vice in Europe and the Middle East, and conﬂict deploy-

ments to Bosnia and Iraq.

For consultations on this article we are grateful to Juli-

anne McKinney, Case Ofﬁcer A, Commander A, David

Debatto, David MacMichael, Grant Marler, Lawrence

Rockwood, and Special Investigator A (military intelli-

gence); David Cooper and Walter Schaller (ethics); Clark

McCauley, Trudy Bond, Steven Reisner, and Stephen

Soldz (psychology); Chuck Ruby (military psychology);

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (anthropology); Chaplain A (U.S.

Army chaplaincy); Robert Shabkie (law); John Crigler

(ﬁnance); journal editor Susan Opotow, and anonymous

reviewers.

CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be

addressed to Jean Maria Arrigo, 110 Oxford Street, Irvine,

CA 92612. E-mail: peat@peat-intel.org

2012, Vol. 18, No. 4, 384– 400 1078-1919/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030323

384

ogy—the use of psychological principles and

skills to improve the effectiveness of military

and intelligence operations.

The psychological roots of operational psy-

chology in the United States lie in the mobi-

lization of American psychologists in World

War I by Robert Yerkes, then president of the

American Psychological Association (APA)

(Kennedy & Williams, 2011a). When promi-

nent noninterventionists contested U.S. entry

into the war, Yerkes maneuvered a politically

divided APA Council to “throw the machinery

of the Association behind mobilization for na-

tional service” (Camﬁeld, 1992; p. 100). Along

with like-minded colleagues, he then persuaded

reluctant military authorities to embrace psy-

chology because “(a) the human factor was as

important in warfare as the material and (b)

psychologists, as the scientiﬁc experts on hu-

man behavior, had vital contributions to make

to the war effort” (Camﬁeld, 1992; p. 102).

The operational roots of operational psy-

chology lie in the World War II Ofﬁce of

Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (Kennedy

& Williams, 2011a). A 1944 review of the

involvement of social psychologists in the

war effort named 14 OSS psychologists

drawn from the faculties of notable universi-

ties (Marquis, 1944). As one example of their

activities, these psychologists developed efﬁ-

cient methods of selection of agents for high-

risk missions (Ofﬁce of Strategic Services

Assessment Staff, 1948). The tests predicted

fairly well which recruits would complete the

costly course of training. However, illustrat-

ing the high stakes of selection, “the ability of

the tests to predict stress tolerance under com-

bat, or torture by the Gestapo, could only be

guessed” (Banks, 1995, p. 78).

Williams, Picano, Roland, and Banks (2006)

provide a useful contemporary deﬁnition of op-

erational psychology:

Operational psychology is deﬁned as the actions by

military psychologists that support the employment

and/or sustainment of military forces . . . to attain stra-

tegic goals in a theater of war or theater of operations

by leveraging and applying their psychological exper-

tise in helping to identify enemy capabilities, person-

alities, and intentions; facilitating and supporting

intelligence operations; designing and implementing

assessment and selection programs in support of spe-

cial populations and high-risk missions; and providing

an operationally focused level of mental health support

(pp. 194–195).

Although operational research is not speciﬁ-

cally mentioned, it is an inseparable compo-

nent of the actions listed.

After the 9/11 attacks on the United States,

operational psychology gained new prominence

as the particular characteristics of the terrorist

threat—cross-cultural, asymmetric, religiously

and ethnically motivated, inspired by charis-

matic personalities, networked rather than insti-

tutional, and manifested through small-group

dynamics—attracted psychological expertise to

master an unfamiliar enemy. However, opera-

tional psychology also became the center of

intense controversy and debate following media

reports that psychologists were actively in-

volved in the military’s and the CIA’s abusive

interrogations of national security detainees at

various sites including Guantanamo Bay Naval

Base in Cuba and Bagram Airbase in Afghani-

stan (e.g., Lewis, 2004).

Adversarial Versus Collaborative

Operational Psychology

These activities highlight the reinvigoration,

as part of the past decade’s “global war on

terror,” of the ethically fraught category of op-

erational psychology that is the focus of this

article. Within this category we differentiate

between adversarial operational psychology

and collaborative operational psychology.As

we will argue, in most cases speciﬁc operational

activities can readily be categorized as predom-

inantly adversarial or collaborative, based on

the relationship between the operational psy-

chologists and the targets of their interventions.

Collaborative Operational Psychology

Collaborative operational psychology (COP)

encompasses the traditional operational psycho-

logical tasks of personnel assessment, selection,

training, evaluation, and overt operations re-

search to maximize personnel performance and

survivability for high-risk military and intelli-

gence operations. It accords with operational

medicine, whose ofﬁcial goal is “to maximize

performance and survivability of the warf-

ighter” (Naval Operational Medicine Institute,

2011). In COP, the targets of psychological

intervention ideally share the psychologist’s

overall mission and are party to employment or

385PSYCHOLOGY UNDER FIRE

social contracts that limit harm and permit legal

representation.

Consider, for example, a clinical psycholo-

gist instructed to evaluate the mental stability of

an employee at a nuclear weapons facility (Pi-

cano, Williams, Roland, & Long, 2011). This

activity ﬁts the proﬁle of COP. Although the

evaluation could possibly have adverse conse-

quences for the employee, it is reasonable to

expect the employee to share the overriding

commitment to the safe operation of the nuclear

facility. In addition, by accepting this position,

the employee has, more or less, agreed to such

evaluations and, in principle, judicial recourse

is available if the employee disputes a negative

assessment. Or consider a clinical psychologist

assigned to a Special Forces sniper team for

mental health care (U.S. Army Medical Depart-

ment, 2010). In this role the psychologist pro-

vides care for the sniper, which is again consid-

ered collaborative, although the sniper is in an

adversarial relationship to his target.

Adversarial Operational Psychology

In contrast with COP, adversarial operational

psychology (AOP) engages psychologists in di-

rect support of deception, coercion, and assault

in military and intelligence operations and in

covert operations research. It encompasses the

tasks of identiﬁcation and manipulation of ad-

versaries in counterintelligence and counterter-

rorism operations and of covert behavioral and

weapons research on human subjects. The tar-

gets of psychological intervention in AOP op-

pose the psychologist’s mission and/or are sub-

ject to nonstipulated harms. Examples of AOP

would be the clinical evaluation of a national

security detainee in order to uncover psycho-

logical vulnerabilities that will subsequently be

exploited in an interrogation of the prisoner for

intelligence gathering purposes (Frakt, 2009)or

the in-house psychological evaluation to dis-

credit a whistleblower or moral dissident in a

national security setting (Brewer & Arrigo,

2008).

Clarifying the Nature of Operational

Psychology

We emphasize that the COP–AOP categoriza-

tion is not simply a good-bad distinction for two

reasons. First, psychological ethics can be irrec-

oncilable with military ethics. For example, obe-

dience to superiors is a virtue in military ethics but

a source of caution in psychological ethics; phys-

ical courage is central to military ethics but largely

irrelevant to psychological ethics. Second, the

COP–AOP categorization does not precisely

demarcate ethical professional psychology

from unethical professional psychology.

Rather, this distinction is a very close approx-

imation that is comprehensible to agents and ame-

nable to institutional implementation. It thereby

meets the demands of “psychological realism” in

ethics (Flanagan, 1991, p. 32) in a national secu-

rity setting.

Thus, three clariﬁcations are important at this

point. First, operational psychology is a special-

ization area within a much broader realm of

psychological knowledge and practice relevant

to military and national security settings. Most

psychologists whose work supports the U.S.

military and other defense-related agencies are

not in operational roles. For example, the many

clinical psychologists routinely providing valu-

able psychological services to soldiers and vet-

erans in VA hospitals and other medical facili-

ties are not engaged in activities characterized

as operational psychology. Nor are those psy-

chologists who teach traditional psychology

courses at any of the military academies. In

contrast, psychologists serving in counterintel-

ligence or counterterrorism roles are working in

the operational psychology arena.

Second, we write here about collaborative

and adversarial operational psychology, not

about collaborative and adversarial operational

psychologists. For us, the key considerations

and concerns revolve around the operational

roles assigned to, or initiated by, psycholo-

gists—not the individual psychologists who

perform them. By this we mean that it is not our

intention to globally categorize people as “eth-

ical professional psychologists” or “unethical

professional psychologists.” Instead, our goal is

to provide a framework for separating speciﬁc

operational roles into ethical and unethical cat-

egories. In this regard, both COP and AOP

involve risks to psychological ethics, and COP

activities sometimes transform rapidly into

AOP activities—and vice versa—depending on

the assignment and exigencies. However, the

ethical dilemmas of COP are pliable: they yield

to planning, training, monitoring, and negotia-

tion. AOP, on the other hand, has an obdurate

386 ARRIGO, EIDELSON, AND BENNETT

core of exploitation essential to the operation

and incompatible with independent oversight.

Third, we are strictly focused on issues of

psychological ethics surrounding the use of psy-

chologists for operational roles in military and

other national security settings. We recognize

that a non-psychologist may ethically assume

certain roles that it would be unethical for a

psychologist to assume. However, with U.S.

society under terrorist threat, leading advocates

of AOP (e.g., Ewing & Gelles, 2003) argue that

the traditional psychological ethics of profes-

sional psychology must be adapted to national

security exigencies in order to protect society

and promote the greater good. In a recently

published edited book, Ethical Practice in Op-

erational Psychology (Kennedy & Williams,

2011b), seven chapters champion AOP. The

editors and many chapter authors are them-

selves operational psychologists. Three served

on the controversial 10-member APA Presiden-

tial Task Force on Psychological Ethics and

National Security (PENS), which declared that

psychologists serve to keep interrogations of

national security detainees safe, legal, ethical,

and effective (APA, 2005).

In sum, while recognizing the valuable con-

tributions of military and intelligence psychol-

ogists in COP, our purpose in this essay is to

probe and challenge the ethical underpinnings

and practical consequences of AOP. We will

argue that AOP poses irresolvable ethical con-

ﬂicts for the psychologists involved, APA’s eth-

ics code fails to support the interpretations of

AOP advocates, unintended harmful effects of

AOP are signiﬁcant, and proponents of AOP

presume its military necessity (e.g., APA, 2005;

Ewing & Gelles, 2003;Johnson, 2008;Ken-

nedy & Williams, 2011b) without providing

evidence. We conclude by offering an ethical

framework for further discussion and by empha-

sizing the urgent and critical need for institu-

tional separation of collaborative operational

roles from adversarial operational roles so that

no psychologists serve in both capacities during

any employment contract period.

In our analysis we include the perspectives of

several veteran military and intelligence profes-

sionals who have worked with military psychol-

ogists. Their interviews and correspondence

with the ﬁrst author (Arrigo) have been archived

as cited. These individuals offer alternative

viewpoints to the uncritical AOP stance pre-

sented by Kennedy and Williams (2011b) and

related publications (e.g., Department of the

Army, 2010;Ewing & Gelles, 2003;Shumate &

Borum, 2006).

AOP: Questions and Concerns

Which Ethical Codes Apply?

From the start, it is important to recognize

that all active-duty military psychologists are

fully deployable soldiers—soldiers ﬁrst, psy-

chologists second (Debatto, 2011;Johnson,

2008). According to the Department of the

Army (2010, January 7), U.S. law and military

regulations override the APA Ethics Code:

The [APA] Ethics Code does not supersede applicable

U.S. and international law, regulations, or DoD [De-

partment of Defense] policy . . .. The Ethics Code

pertains only to a psychologist’s activities that are

“part of their scientiﬁc, educational or professional

roles” pertaining to the profession of psychology. The

Code does not, therefore, have purview over the psy-

chologist’s role as a Soldier, civilian, or contractor

employee that is unrelated to the practice of psychol-

ogy. For instance, the dictum for beneﬁcence does not

pertain to actions against the enemy in combat (p. 19).

At the same time, the U.S. military requires

its medical corps personnel, including psychol-

ogists, to maintain professional practice licenses

with their state licensing boards. This require-

ment establishes a strong connection between

military psychology and the APA Ethics Code

because this Code is the foundation for most

state licensing board regulations. The U.S.

Army regulations for Behavioral Science Con-

sultation Teams (BSCTs) involved in detention

and interrogation operations, headed by state-

licensed clinical psychologists, foreground the

APA Ethics Code yet ultimately override it. For

operational psychologists there is no ofﬁcial

line where, in principle at least, national secu-

rity missions yield to psychological ethics. The

mission comes ﬁrst. This is why psychologists

engaged in AOP are essentially military and

intelligence professionals with a specialization

in psychology, obliged to adhere to psycholog-

ical ethics only when compatible with the mis-

sion (e.g., Olson & Davis, 2008), as illustrated

in the Mohammed Jawad case described below.

Operational psychologists who work outside

the Department of Defense (DoD) may not even

be accountable to military regulations and mil-

itary ethics. The Detainee Treatment Act of

387PSYCHOLOGY UNDER FIRE

2005 restricted DoD interrogation techniques to

the Human Intelligence Collector Operations,

Field Manual 2–22.3 (U.S. Army Headquarters,

2006), which respects the Geneva Conven-

tions—apart from the dispensation for isolation

of interrogatees in Appendix M. However, only

the discretion and authority of President George

W. Bush placed limits on CIA interrogations

(Suleman, 2006). Thus, veteran military psy-

chologists under CIA contract were able to ini-

tiate waterboarding of detainees, which military

regulations forbade but the President approved

(Shane, 2009).

Are Psychologists More Ethical Then

Doctors and Anthropologists?

We can look to the operational experience of

sister professions for useful comparisons with

operational psychology. The international his-

tory of operational medicine and psychiatry is

infamous, with the “Nazi doctors” (Lifton,

1986), tactical diagnoses of dissidents by Soviet

psychiatrists to justify forced drugging (Warren,

1975), and persistent, worldwide involvement

in torture (Vesti & Somnier, 1994). In the

United States, adversarial operational medicine

and psychiatry ﬂourished secretly in the Army’s

“man-break” biochemical weapons experiments

in World War II (Pechura & Rall, 1993), post-

war nuclear weapons development programs

(Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Ex-

periments, 2005), and the Cold War CIA behav-

ioral modiﬁcation project MKULTRA (U.S.

Senate, 1977).

Early revelations of U.S. torture interroga-

tions in the Iraq War pointed to the involvement

of operational physicians (Bloche & Marks,

2005;Miles, 2006) and aroused concern about

the psychiatrists initially assigned to BSCTs

(Department of Defense, 2002, November 11).

In May, 2006 the American Psychiatric Asso-

ciation forbade psychiatrists from “being pres-

ent in the interrogation room, asking or suggest-

ing questions, or advising authorities on the use

of speciﬁc techniques of interrogation with par-

ticular detainees” (American Psychiatric Asso-

ciation, 2006). Assistant Secretary of Defense

for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder

(2006) responded that psychiatrists could be

assigned to interrogations if no qualiﬁed psy-

chologists were available, and the DoD contin-

ued to train BSCT psychiatrists (Marks &

Bloche, 2008). As is true for psychologists, the

missions and regulations of national security

agencies can override the professional ethics

codes of medical personnel.

Historically, U.S. anthropologists subju-

gated Native Americans for the Bureau of

Indian Affairs and doubled as spies in World

WarI(Fluehr-Lobban, 2009), developed out-

rageous ruses for the OSS in World War II

(Marks, 1979); facilitated the internment of

Japanese Americans (Starn, 1986), planned

counterinsurgency research in South America

under the U.S. Army’s Project Camelot in

1964 (Horowitz, 1974), and advised the

CIA’s Phoenix Program on the capture and

killing of alleged counterinsurgents in the

Vietnam War (Gusterson, 2008).

Post-9/1l, Gusterson (2008) noted that

“The Pentagon seems to have decided that

anthropology is to the war on terror what

physics was to the Cold War.” Secretary of

Defense Robert Gates embedded armed an-

thropologists with “Human Terrain Teams” in

combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. The

goal was to improve cultural sensitivity, col-

lect intelligence from villagers, and serve as

liaisons to local authorities. In 2009, the

American Anthropological Association

(AAA) Ad Hoc Commission on Anthropolo-

gy’s Engagement with the Security and Intel-

ligence Communities emphasized the ideal of

constructive rather than adversarial engage-

ment between anthropology and the military.

The Commission nevertheless attempted to

separate professional from adversarial opera-

tional duties by declaring the Human Terrain

System inconsistent with the AAA Code of

Ethics:

When ethnographic investigation is determined by

military missions, not subject to external review,

where data collection occurs in the context of war,

integrated into the goals of counterinsurgency, and

in a potentially coercive environment . . ., it can no

longer be considered a legitimate professional exer-

cise of anthropology (American Anthropological

Association Commission on the Engagement of An-

thropology with the U.S. Security and Intelligence

Communities, 2009, p. 3).

Advocates for AOP must explain how pro-

fessional psychologists can adhere to psycho-

logical ethics in adversarial operations even

though doctors and anthropologists have been

unable to adhere to the ethics of their profes-

388 ARRIGO, EIDELSON, AND BENNETT

sions in diverse adversarial operations over

decades.

Who Is the Client of AOP?

Like the ethical principles of medicine, psy-

chiatry, anthropology, and law, the principles of

psychological ethics evolved to protect the

weaker from the stronger. They are designed to

protect the patient–client or research subject, as

the relatively unknowledgeable, vulnerable, and

exposed party, from the psychologist, as the

relatively knowledgeable, authoritative, and un-

exposed party. Indeed the APA Ethics Code

largely mandates the psychologist’s responsibil-

ity to individual patient–clients (APA, 2010).

Proponents of AOP though interpret the govern-

ment as an appropriate client and recipient of

the operational psychologist’s protection.

For example, Dunivin, Banks, Staal, and Ste-

phenson (2011) defend the role of BSCT psy-

chologists in detainee interrogations, arguing

that a balance “must be established between

ethical responsibilities to an individual and eth-

ical responsibilities to the larger society” (p.

87). Acknowledging that Principle A of the

APA Ethics Code—Beneﬁcence and Nonma-

leﬁcence—calls upon the psychologist to “do

no harm” to the individual being questioned,

they claim that Principle B—Fidelity and Re-

sponsibility—provides a key counterbalance by

protecting the interests of other individuals and

the general public.

A full reading of Principle B, however, belies

this narrow interpretation. Principle B refers not

only to psychologists’ being “aware of their

professional and scientiﬁc responsibilities to so-

ciety,” but also emphasizes that psychologists

“establish relationships of trust with those with

whom they work,” “uphold professional stan-

dards of conduct,” “accept appropriate respon-

sibility for their behavior,” “seek to manage

conﬂicts of interest that could lead to exploita-

tion or harm,” and are “concerned about the

ethical compliance of their colleagues’ scien-

tiﬁc and professional conduct.” Standard 3.08

of the APA Ethics Code on Exploitative Rela-

tionships is especially germane here as well

(APA, 2010). It states speciﬁcally, “Psycholo-

gists do not exploit persons over whom they

have supervisory, evaluative, or other authority

such as clients/patients, students, supervisees,

research participants, and employees.”

Although disarming, the government-as-

client analogy is spurious. The reversal of

power relations whereby the psychologist

serves to protect the collective, stronger party

at the expense of the individual, weaker party

is a profound alteration—not merely an ex-

tension—of traditional ethical practice in

psychology.

The government-as-client analogy also fails

as a practical matter when conﬂict emerges be-

tween government authorities. Consider an ex-

ample from military court records. In 2003,

BCST psychologist “X” advised on the interro-

gation of the teenager Mohammed Jawad at

Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. Jawad’s de-

fense attorney, Maj. David Frakt, subsequently

subpoenaed Dr. X for the 2008 trial of Jawad by

the Guantanamo Military Commission. Frakt

(2009, p. 22) later wrote:

I also was provided records showing that Mr. Jawad

was placed in isolation for two 30-day periods . . .. The

[second] period of isolation was ordered by intelli-

gence ofﬁcials upon the recommendation of the Be-

havioral Science Consultation Team psychologist [X]

to socially, physically and linguistically isolate this

teenage boy in order to create complete dependence on

his interrogator . . . and to break Mr. Jawad and to

devastate him emotionally.

At the time, Frakt and the psychologist for

the defense reported that Dr. X refused to tes-

tify, invoking the right to remain silent to avoid

self-incrimination by Section 831, Article 31, of

the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Soldz,

2008; S. Soldz, personal communication, May

11, 2011). The government-as-client analogy

offers no ethical remedy in this case of conﬂict-

ing obligations to different government clients

such as the local commander and the military

court.

Veteran U.S. Army case ofﬁcer Julianne

McKinney (2011, July 9) raised an additional

point: “Dr. X worked ‘against’ U.S. service

members as much as he or she worked against

Jawad” through “the lowering of standards and

ethical compromises inﬂicted on inexperienced

interrogators who complied with Dr. X’s ad-

vice.” This case may represent rarer abuses of

AOP, but proponents need to address the lack of

a systematic means of addressing excessive

zeal. Williams and Kennedy (2011) seem to

incorporate this fervor into the AOP program

with alarmist exaggerations such as this: “If

psychologists view [the extremists] as individ-

389PSYCHOLOGY UNDER FIRE

uals, they are terrorists, but if psychologists

view their larger true intent, they are genoci-

dists” (p. 137).

Can Current APA Ethical Guidelines

Regulate AOP?

Even without the extrapolation of the APA

Ethics Code to the government as client, AOP

exacerbates current vulnerabilities of the Ethics

Code to government discretion. APA Ethics

Code Standard 8.05, as adopted in 2002, trans-

fers the “informed consent” obligations of re-

search scientists to government discretion. It

states: “Psychologists may dispense with in-

formed consent only (1) where research would

not reasonably be assumed to create distress or

harm . . . or (2) where otherwise permitted by

law or federal or institutional regulations”

(APA, 2010). Case Ofﬁcer A (2011, July 4)

remarked: “Government agencies will pass

whatever institutional regulation needed to ac-

complish the mission.”

Historically, routine clinical and research ac-

tivities have provided opportunities and cover

for adversarial operations research. For exam-

ple, clinical psychologist Mitchell Berkun,

known for his psychological stress experiments

on soldiers in maneuvers at the Nevada Test

Site (Berkun, Timiras, & Pace, 1958) and Pre-

sidio of Monterey (Berkun, Bialek, Kern, &

Yagi, 1962), also secretly conducted a medical

mock-death experiment on untrained Army

recruits in the course of apparently routine

inoculations (Secord, Backman, & Arrigo,

1997–1998). Military experts consulted on this

experiment deemed the experiment operation-

ally useless and ethically dubious (e.g., Rood,

2008). For a more current illustration, the Air

Force Research Laboratory, Sandia National

Laboratories, and Raytheon Company have de-

veloped an electronic-beam weapon that causes

the skin of human targets to feel unbearably hot,

yet purportedly inﬂicts no injury if the person

runs away promptly. One purpose of this Active

Denial System—crowd control, as in repelling

intruders at nuclear energy facilities (Sandia

National Laboratories, 2005)—would seem to

encourage AOP involvement. However, the se-

cretive nature of the project precludes inquiry

into the identities and techniques of researchers.

As the acknowledged experts on mind and

behavior, psychologists can stretch the range of

acceptable conduct in ﬁeld situations where in-

dependent monitors are forbidden access and

evidence. An army commander described his

harrowing experience of Survival, Evasion, Re-

sistance, and Escape (SERE) training in the

mid-1970s, where trainers convincingly feigned

the death of a disobedient trainee. Afterward the

commander set up a SERE training program in

his own division, noting, “[i]t was easygoing

compared to that [training] because we didn’t

have the psychologists and physicians . . .” to

cover the program risk of staging extreme pun-

ishments (Commander A, 2008). That is, the

absence of health professionals led the com-

mander to reduce—not increase—the harshness

of the exercises.

AOP advocates underestimate the extent to

which adversarial operations can draw the psy-

chologist into ethical entanglements that can be

difﬁcult to escape. Consider the law enforce-

ment hostage negotiation scenario presented by

Gelles and Palarea (2011). To minimize ethical

quandaries posed by dual relationships, differ-

ent operational psychologists take on separate

responsibilities. As multiphased operations

move from one phase to the next, these respon-

sibilities can include the selection and training

of negotiators, stress management for the nego-

tiators, assessment of the hostage taker’s course

toward violence, and debrieﬁng and counseling

of crisis team members. However, such parti-

tioning is impractical or impossible in many

military settings because multiple operational

psychologists with the requisite clearances and

competencies are typically unavailable on ships,

at outposts, in high-risk and secret facilities

requiring special clearances, or at similar sites

(Johnson, 2008).

In reviewing Gelles and Palarea’s (2011)

seemingly straightforward, win–win, crisis ne-

gotiation scenario—the hostages will be res-

cued and the hostage-taker will survive–Case

Ofﬁcer A (2011, April 19) identiﬁed a potential

ethical problem:

So the hostage negotiator going to violence probably

wants to enable a kill shot for his SWAT team. And

how is he going to get the terrorist—let’s say it’s a

terrorist—over to a window? He can ask the psychol-

ogist to help him cause that guy to come to the win-

dow. Now does the psychologist do that or not? Is he

just helping to get someone to the window, or does he

get someone to the window to have him killed? I

believe the psychologist would be fully engaged be-

cause that’s his job.

390 ARRIGO, EIDELSON, AND BENNETT

This scenario shifts the focus from the poten-

tially manageable issue of multiple relation-

ships to the deeper moral question of when

“enabling” becomes “doing.” It is also impor-

tant to recognize that even if there is consensus

that drawing the hostage taker to the window for

a “kill shot” is desirable, it is a separate matter

as to whether a licensed clinical psychologist—

committed to a code of professional ethics—

should be permitted this responsibility.

Can AOP Be Monitored and Deterred?

The ethical risks associated with AOP are

further magniﬁed by the absence of a reliable

system for monitoring and deterring wrongful

behavior. AOP advocates themselves have

noted, “there must also be established proce-

dures for monitoring and observing the actions

of those within the profession along with the

sanctioning mechanisms for those who deviate

from the accepted standards” (Williams & Ken-

nedy, 2011, p. 132). However, there is no pro-

vision in military regulations for the indepen-

dent monitoring of BSCT psychologists in

regard to psychological ethics (Department of

the Army, 2010), no recommendation for inde-

pendent monitoring in the APA PENS Report

(APA, 2005), and no advocacy for independent

monitoring of which we are aware from any of

the proponents of AOP we have cited.

State licensing boards in Alabama, Louisi-

ana, Ohio, and New York have declined to

adjudicate well-documented complaints submit-

ted against operational psychologists purport-

edly involved in abusive interrogations of

national security detainees (Eligon, 2011). In

particular, the Alabama Board of Examiners did

not accept jurisdiction of the 2008 complaint

against Dr. X, the BSCT psychologist whom

Maj. Frakt implicated in the torture of Jawad at

Guantanamo Bay (Lodge, 2009). David Debatto

(2011, April 6), a retired police investigator and

counterintelligence operative who had worked

with psychologists, remarked that if state licens-

ing boards tried to investigate, “The military

would throw up as many roadblocks as it

could.”

Case Ofﬁcer A (2011, April 19), himself

trained in psychology, pointed to another obsta-

cle to monitoring: the potential use of subordi-

nates as proxies for psychological interventions.

He said: “In the military, you have many people

with psychological training at the masters level.

They have in essence the training that is neces-

sary [for adversarial psychological operations].

I don’t see how you can monitor them.” In fact,

the 2010 BSCT instructions call for an enlisted

Behavioral Science Technician team member

with at least 10 years of experience to serve

under direct supervision of a clinical psycholo-

gist (Department of the Army, 2010). Any re-

alistic monitoring procedures, therefore,

would have to link state licensing boards to

judicial procedures in the security sector, pen-

etrating as far as mental health personnel su-

pervised by operational psychologists. This

would be an unprecedented incursion of mi-

nor civilian authorities into critical operations

of the security sector.

Some AOP advocates assert that operational

psychologists simply cannot be bound by un-

derstandings of psychological ethics that they

now consider outdated. Ewing and Gelles

(2003) argue, “we cannot continue to place [op-

erational psychologists] in situations where the

ethics of their conduct will be judged, post hoc,

either by rules ‘irrelevant’ to their vital govern-

mental functions or by professional organiza-

tions or licensing authorities” (p. 106). Morgan

et al. (2006) further warn: “Efforts to prohibit

these professionals from engaging in their work

are more likely to alienate them from existing

professional organizations rather than inﬂuence

them to seek new professional roles” (p. 27).

Does Military Necessity Justify AOP?

Proponents of AOP hold that societal welfare

must often take priority over the welfare of the

individuals with whom the operational psychol-

ogist engages. The crux of this utilitarian ethical

argument is military necessity, the principle that

a nation at war may use any means permitted

under the laws of war that are indispensable to

a military operation (Forrest, 2007). But estab-

lishing military necessity requires advocates to

demonstrate that the use of psychologists sub-

stantially improves the success of operations in

comparison to the use of other military and

intelligence specialists. After all, military ne-

cessity is the justiﬁcation for the unique ethical

risks associated with AOP. Two examples are

instructive.

In the realm of counterterrorism and counter-

intelligence, Kennedy, Borum, and Fein (2011)

391PSYCHOLOGY UNDER FIRE

describe an ethical dilemma in recruiting a U.S.

service member to collect intelligence from a

childhood friend who is part of a possible ter-

rorist cell. An operational psychologist is en-

gaged to assess the soldier’s suitability for the

assignment, provide behavioral information

useful in managing him, and monitor his man-

agement. Two former case ofﬁcers consulted

for this essay were skeptical of the operational

value and ethical standing of the operational

psychologist.

Presented with this scenario, Case Ofﬁcer A

(2011, April 19), who ran agents in the Middle

East in the 1980s, posed an irresolvable conﬂict

with psychological ethics: “but suppose the per-

son [the soldier] has decided his loyalty is really

with his friend. And now he starts working

against you in the operation . . . . You’ll set traps

for him. The psychologist could be involved

laying the traps.” As a functional objection to

AOP involvement, Case Ofﬁcer A (2011, July

4) also observed that, in contrast with AOP

practitioners, the case ofﬁcer’s skills involve

interpersonal communications, persuasion, and

operational planning. Moreover, these skills are

employed in the ﬁeld, at risk, not in the con-

trolled environments of professional psychol-

ogy. A talented psychologist might be ade-

quately trained, but then he or she would essen-

tially be a case ofﬁcer, bound by the national

security agency’s mission, regulations, and eth-

ics, not primarily by psychological ethics.

Case ofﬁcer McKinney (2011, April 11), who

ran agents against the Soviet Bloc in the 1980s,

regarded all of the psychologist’s actions—

from the initial test of the service member’s

cooperation to the amelioration of con-

science—to be elementary moves for highly

trained case ofﬁcers. McKinney acknowledged

that a battery of remotely evaluated psycholog-

ical tests could be helpful in the initial proﬁling

effort, but she noted that trained case ofﬁcers

are as capable as psychologists of determining

whether the potential asset’s aberrations can be

exploited for operational purposes—and such

exploitation could generate irresolvable prob-

lems in psychological ethics. She particularly

objected to Kennedy et al.’s (2011) successful

manipulation of the service member as the mea-

sure of AOP value, whereas she regarded ac-

quisition of useful intelligence as the only rel-

evant measure of value.

Evidence of military necessity is similarly

lacking in regard to the involvement of opera-

tional psychologists in the interrogations of na-

tional security detainees. This controversial

topic has risen to the level of national debate

(e.g., Physicians for Human Rights, 2010) be-

cause some of the psychological techniques

used are tantamount to torture. The third author,

a retired senior interrogator, attested that even

though Guantanamo Bay Detention Center was

(incorrectly) said to hold the “worst of the

worst” terrorists, the Army nevertheless relied

on inexperienced interrogators. At a minimum,

the BSCT psychologists involved should

have—and may have—insisted on well-trained,

mentored, experienced interrogators as critical

to the operation (Arrigo & Bennett, 2007). The

participating psychologists’ inability to accom-

plish this obvious and essential improvement

over the course of years begs explanation.

Bennett also points to the institutional capac-

ity of staff ofﬁcers, such as BSCT psycholo-

gists, to override the expertise of the lower-

ranking military specialists who opposed

interrogation techniques of the Bush Adminis-

tration (Arrigo & Bennett, 2007). At the very

least, within their utilitarian framework, advo-

cates for AOP need to provide evidence that the

contributions of psychologists actually produce

incremental value in operations in which they

compete for resources, inﬂuence, and prestige

with established military specialists. Beyond

that, military necessity must be of sufﬁcient

magnitude to compensate for the harmful unin-

tended consequences of AOP that we discuss

next, because the ethics of military necessity

requires minimization of harms (Forrest, 2007).

What Are Unintended Harmful

Consequences of AOP?

Among those unintended harmful conse-

quences of AOP to psychology as an interna-

tional profession and as a science are the mili-

tarization of psychology, degradation of the sci-

entiﬁc method, jeopardy of the public trust, and

damage to COP. We brieﬂy consider each here.

Militarization of psychology. Signiﬁcant,

and potentially irreversible, unintended adverse

consequences present another troubling dimen-

sion of the legitimization of AOP. As the largest

and most inﬂuential psychological association,

APA’s support for AOP would tend to encour-

392 ARRIGO, EIDELSON, AND BENNETT

age the nationalization and militarization of

psychology around the world (Moghaddam,

2007). This is especially evident with the visible

deployment of U.S. operational psychologists to

Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq and

with retirees hiring out as contractors. Indeed,

this was one of the concerns that led the Puerto

Rican Psychological Association—upon the

initiative of a member who had served in the

Iraq War—to reject a planned visit in 2010 from

the Director of the APA Ethics Ofﬁce, a notable

public advocate for psychologist-assisted inter-

rogations (Rivera-Santana, 2010).

Any militarization of psychology is likely to

have domestic consequences as well because

defense against foreign enemies is not well dis-

tinguished from state control of internal dissi-

dents. This reality was highlighted by news of

the detention conditions of U.S. Army Pfc.

Bradley Manning, alleged leaker of U.S. intel-

ligence data, which pervaded the media in late

2010 and early 2011. At Marine Corps Base

Quantico, Manning reportedly endured domes-

tic application of abusive AOP techniques of

detention developed for terrorist suspects in

Guantanamo (Pilkington, 2011). David MacMi-

chael, a former commander of the Marine head-

quarters unit at Quantico, wrote a personal letter

to the current Quantico commander recom-

mending court martial of Manning, if merited,

but deploring Manning’s “invidious” illegal

conﬁnement (MacMichael, 2011).

Degradation of scientiﬁc method. A fur-

ther consequence of psychology’s militarization

is the politicization and degradation of scientiﬁc

method. Transparency, data sharing, peer re-

view, and independent monitoring all drop

away under military necessity. Former APA

President Martin Seligman, a proponent of

AOP, took this position in 2003:

The civilized world is at war with Jihad Islamic ter-

rorism. It takes a bomb in the ofﬁce of some academics

to make them realize that their most basic values are

now threatened . . .. If we lose the war . . ., ﬁghting

fatwahs and no education for women will displace

grousing about random assignment of schoolchildren

to study education. If we win this war, we can go on to

pursue the normal goals of science (Seligman, 2003).

Seligman’s argument assumes cessation of

AOP violations of scientiﬁc method after defeat

of Jihad Islamic terrorism and a subsequent

reversal of the degradation of psychological sci-

ence. Social science historian Ellen Herman ar-

gues to the contrary that, since World War II,

those who interpret war as a psychological con-

ﬂict have “bonded psychological knowledge to

political power,” in “peacefare” as well as war-

fare (Herman, 1995, pp. 306–307).

Jeopardy of the public trust. Taking an

historical perspective, Walsh (2012) ventured

that “American intelligence work can taint an

entire profession . . ..” and noted that CIA spies

are forbidden to pose as Peace Corps volun-

teers, Fulbright Fellows, or accredited Ameri-

can journalists. A Special Operations chaplain,

pressed for collection of intelligence on Muslim

religious authorities, objected: “We are there to

hold to a higher moral ground. You take off

your cross and you step down” (Chaplain A,

2010). An author of the American Psychiatric

Association’s 2006 Position Statement on Psy-

chiatric Participation in Interrogation of De-

tainees said, “The whole issue of psychiatrists

getting into deceptive positions with people was

unacceptable to most of us” (Zonana, 2009).

The legitimization of AOP also crucially risks

jeopardizing the public trust in the clinical

work, human subjects research, and leadership

roles of psychologists.

For good reason, judicial codes of ethics typ-

ically caution against even the appearance of

impropriety. Impropriety can be understood as

“whether a person aware of the facts might

reasonably entertain a doubt that the judge

would be able to act with integrity, impartiality,

and competence” (California Supreme Court,

2009, p. 7). For decades, appearances of impro-

priety have cost U.S. anthropologists the trust of

indigenous peoples. A member of the American

Anthropological Association’s Commission on

Engagement of Anthropology with the Military

and National Security Agencies, 2006–2010,

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (2009) complained:

“Most people think I’m a CIA agent anyway.

What else would I be doing coming into the

Sudan and learning Arabic and hanging

around?”

Appearances of impropriety are easily found

in the AOP realm. For instance, Seligman re-

sponded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by conven-

ing a counterterrorism and psychology meeting

in his home. The psychologist who subse-

quently created the CIA waterboarding program

attended with the CIA Director of Behavioral

Sciences Research. In 2002, Seligman lectured

CIA interrogators and psychologists on his

393PSYCHOLOGY UNDER FIRE

technique of inducing “learned helplessness” in

dogs, a technique subsequently applied to “en-

hanced interrogations” of detainees and desig-

nated a required core competency of the BSCTs

(Department of the Army, 2006). In February

2010, the Army awarded Seligman’s research

group a no-bid contract of $31 million for pos-

itive psychology-based resilience training of

soldiers (Benjamin, 2010). Critics might rea-

sonably entertain a doubt about the impartiality

of the contract. Because of secrecy and the

deliberate strategic dissemination of false or

inaccurate information (i.e., disinformation) in

the security sector, there is no way to resolve

appearances of impropriety in AOP.

Potential damage to COP. According to

military-intelligence sources interviewed by the

ﬁrst author (Arrigo), concealed AOP tactics can

interfere with and override more appropriate

COP approaches in some situations. These tac-

tics can threaten morale and good order in the

military, which depend on commanders’ fair

and impartial treatment of subordinates (Rock-

wood, 2011). For example, commanders use of

psychological evaluations to control dissident

or disliked subordinates is widely rumored, de-

spite regulations forbidding inappropriate refer-

rals for evaluation (Lauretano, 1998). A veteran

of the Air Force Ofﬁce of Special Investigations

stated that investigators are often rewarded for

convictions rather than for comprehensive and

impartial investigations—and an unfavorable

psychological diagnosis of the suspect is a

shortcut to a conviction (Special Investigator A,

2010).

Mission goals can therefore sometimes moti-

vate invalid evaluations by operational psychol-

ogists, a looming threat that alone can damage

performance and morale. A former counterin-

telligence ofﬁcer similarly warned, “the military

has always used the nut ward as a hanging

sword over each agent” (Brewer & Arrigo,

2008, p. 15). Legitimization of clinical psy-

chologists in deceptive and manipulative

AOP tactics would further erode trust in COP

evaluations of personnel, where high stakes

and secrecy can amplify the role of trust.

Relevant here as well are reports of psychol-

ogists diagnosing veterans as having person-

ality disorders in order to avoid the more

costly disability payments associated with the

diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (e.

g., Union of Concerned Scientists, 2009).

As we have indicated, our concerns about the

professional ethics of AOP are deep and multi-

faceted. To be clear, our discussion of the AOP–

COP divide has explicitly focused on whether

professional psychologists should engage in

particular operational activities. By professional

psychologists, we mean individuals who hold

recognized professional degrees in psychology

as clinicians, researchers, teachers, trainers,

consultants, administrators, or other specialists.

We do not address broader questions of whether

certain operational activities should or should

not be undertaken regardless of who is in-

volved, nor do we question the uses of psycho-

logical science in national security arenas. Here

we question only the extension of professional

psychology to include AOP.

A Framework for AOP

The negative consequences of psychologists’

participation in AOP activities highlights the

need for greater clarity in distinguishing be-

tween AOP and COP. With this goal in mind,

we have developed a three-factor framework for

judging whether a particular activity should be

categorized as AOP or COP, recognizing that

we have oversimpliﬁed matters by imposing

dichotomous distinctions onto factors that are

sometimes more nuanced than this representa-

tion allows. Nevetheless, we believe our frame-

work establishes grounds for constructive dis-

cussion and debate. The three key questions are

as follows:

1. Is there a sufﬁcient measure of voluntary

informed consent from the target of inter-

vention, including speciﬁc contracts or

broader agreements in regard to potential

harms (i.e., stipulated harms)?

2. Does the action plan of the operation in-

volve either the intent to cause nonstipu-

lated harm, or the expectation of nonstipu-

lated harm greater than any beneﬁt to the

target of intervention?

3. Is the action plan of the operation reason-

ably accessible to the participating psy-

chologist(s) and to ethical oversight and

accountability by institutions, boards, or

groups beyond the purview of the national

security establishment?

394 ARRIGO, EIDELSON, AND BENNETT

In our view a psychological operation is col-

laborative (COP) only if there is voluntary in-

formed consent by the targets of intervention

(Question 1), there is not intended or foresee-

able nonstipulated harm (Question 2), and there

is effective outside ethical oversight and ac-

countability (Question 3). If any of these three

conditions is not met, we categorize the psycho-

logical operation as adversarial (AOP).

Question 1: Is there a sufﬁcient measure of

voluntary informed consent from the target

of intervention? If the intervention target has

not freely agreed to participation in the opera-

tion (directly or through an ongoing contractual

arrangement), then the psychological operation

cannot be considered collaborative. In general,

this means that operational psychology activi-

ties that target individuals designated as “ene-

mies” will be categorized as AOP, because con-

sent is highly improbable in these cases. Issues

of consent are therefore most salient when mak-

ing AOP–COP determinations in situations

where the target of intervention is “one of our

own.”

For example, a disguised or remote psycho-

logical evaluation of an unsuspecting individual

to determine whether he might be an attractive

recruit for a national security assignment would

qualify as an AOP activity because of the lack

of consent. If this target instead agreed to the

evaluation, then it would be accurately viewed

as COP, assuming the other necessary condi-

tions were also met. Freely given informed con-

sent is often the basis for distinguishing be-

tween stipulated harm and nonstipulated harm.

The former refers to those risks the target has

knowingly accepted, such as the dangers of

combat duty for an enlisted soldier; the latter

refers to potential harms of which the target was

unaware, such as torture upon capture.

Question 2: Does the operation involve the

intent or expectation of nonstipulated harm

greater than any beneﬁt to the target of

intervention? The question of whether a psy-

chological operation subjects the target to non-

stipulated harm—intended or merely foresee-

able—is usually a relatively easy determination

to make. If the psychologist is involved in an

activity that runs contrary to the profession’s

guiding ethical principle of “do no harm” to-

ward the target of intervention, then the action

plan is an instance of AOP. One clear example

would be a psychologist’s participation in, or

consultation to, the interrogation of a detainee

that involves exploitation of his psychological

vulnerabilities, intentionally causing him psy-

chological distress and possibly inducing him to

act contrary to his interests. Another would be a

psychologist working to draw a hostage taker to

a window for a kill shot by a sniper. A third

example is a situation where the psychologist

knowingly gives an unwarranted psychiatric di-

agnosis to a whistleblower in order to punish

her and discredit her claims.

In contrast, the psychologist who conducts

personnel evaluations for security clearances at

a nuclear weapons facility is not engaging in an

activity in which his or her intent is to harm the

interviewees, even though some of them may

mistakenly be denied clearance as a result of

these evaluations. It is important to note here

that an action plan designed to subject the in-

tervention target to nonstipulated harm is cate-

gorized as AOP even if the participating psy-

chologist personally has no knowledge of this

intention (e.g., due to lack of requisite clear-

ances or a cover story from superiors). This is

necessary to discourage cover stories in the

tasking of psychologists for adversarial opera-

tions. A psychological operation is AOP if the

participating psychologists are not cleared to

know the full scope of the operation as relates to

nonstipulated harms to the intervention targets.

Consultation to case ofﬁcers in recruitment of

spies is AOP.

Question 3: Is the action plan of the oper-

ation reasonably accessible to the participat-

ing psychologist(s) and to outside ethical

oversight and accountability? We consider

a psychological operation to be AOP if it does

not readily permit state licensing boards, insti-

tutional review boards, professional association

boards, the U.S. Ofﬁce of Research Integrity, or

other appropriate professional agencies to over-

see or monitor these activities. The necessary

accountability to a professional code of ethics is

diminished or eliminated when the review of

evidence of possible ethical wrongdoing is

hampered by claims that the work is of a clas-

siﬁed nature or that revelations would pose risks

to national security.

Consider, for example, a psychologist in-

volved in a top-secret military research project

testing an experimental drug judged not to have

adverse effects. Although the “do no harm”

principle is met here, the lack of transparency

395PSYCHOLOGY UNDER FIRE

means that this psychologist could violate other

standards of professional ethics (e.g., acting

outside of areas of competency) without sufﬁ-

cient likelihood of repercussions from civilian

agencies. This case highlights a key point: some

instances of AOP are unethical for psycholo-

gists solely because the actions are taken with

the knowledge that they are beyond ethical

monitoring and scrutiny by the profession. In

short, the presumption that professional over-

sight and accountability are unnecessary is in-

herently objectionable on an ethical basis.

Conclusion: A Proposal for Protecting

Professional Ethics in Operational

Psychology

Our analysis of professional ethics and oper-

ational psychology leads us to a clear conclu-

sion: the ethical practice of psychology requires

institutional separation of COP from AOP in

national security contexts.

Proponents of AOP anticipate that operational

psychology will become an ofﬁcial APA area of

specialization (Estrada, 2012), similar to the status

sought by police and public safety psychology

(Stewart, 2012). If operational psychology attains

this status, then AOP goals, methods, and legiti-

mization would pertain not only to psychologists

employed by the military but equally to clinicians,

applied researchers, and trainers employed by ci-

vilian intelligence agencies and to academic re-

searchers funded under security-sector grants or

contracts. Legitimization of AOP would entitle all

of these full-time, part-time, and occasional oper-

ational psychologists to work in AOP without risk

of stigma and censure—and without oversight by

the profession as a whole. One immediate conse-

quence would be the curtailment of ethics com-

plaints against operational psychologists to state

licensing boards (Eligon, 2011) and the APA Eth-

ics Committee. In addition, some strategic and

ﬁnancial relationships of the APA with the secu-

rity sector that are now in a gray zone—such as

CIA-funded, invitation-only, APA symposia (e.g.,

Davis, 2008)—would be normalized.

Our study though points to the importance of

excluding AOP from professional psychology.

Acknowledging the subordination of AOP to the

requirements of national security missions and

regulations, we propose that psychologists in-

volved in adversarial operations should serve as

intelligence ofﬁcers or national security contrac-

tors with special expertise in psychology, not as

professional psychologists. Intelligence ofﬁcers

regularly specialize in related ﬁelds such as cul-

tural anthropology and political science. Although

lesser steps may create fewer immediate chal-

lenges, the third author (Bennett) and military

and intelligence advisors insist that only a ﬁrm and

complete institutional divide between COP and

AOP can sufﬁce. If psychologists choose to en-

gage in AOP roles, where professional ethics are

secondary to command orders, they must not hold

state licenses as clinicians committed to a profes-

sional code of ethics. For similar reasons, AOP

psychologists must not work in academic or re-

search settings undercover and must not hold po-

sitions of inﬂuence in professional associations

undercover.

We recognize that these proposed changes

carry with them signiﬁcant unsettling ramiﬁca-

tions. Professional psychology and the security

sector now have a century of institutional and

career entanglements. For the security sector, the

exclusion of AOP from professional psychology

could hinder ease of recruitment of psychologists

and the efﬁciency of deployment in dual roles. For

individual psychologists, exclusion could limit

funding, research, and career opportunities. For

American psychology in general, and the APA in

particular, exclusion could impede expansion into

the security sector and diminish government fund-

ing. Historians of psychology attribute the rise of

American psychology to World War II and post-

war militarism (e.g., Herman, 1995). The 9/11

attacks created another stimulus for national ser-

vice and entrepreneurial expansion into AOP for

psychologists and others.

The beneﬁts of our proposal should carry

much greater weight when considering the in-

evitable and irreversible trade-offs. Exclusion

of AOP from professional psychology can pre-

vent the disastrous unintended consequences we

have described, including militarization of psy-

chology internationally, degradation of scien-

tiﬁc method in psychology, loss of public trust

in psychology, and damage to COP. At the same

time, institutional separation of AOP and COP

can protect psychologists who work in COP

from AOP pressures and preserve their valuable

national security roles as evaluators, trainers,

therapists, and researchers.

A key purpose of this article is to initiate a

fruitful and multidimensional discussion be-

tween advocates and critics of AOP, including

396 ARRIGO, EIDELSON, AND BENNETT

those in the national security system whose

work is affected by the unsubstantiated claim

that AOP is a military necessity. Toward this

end, and prior to this much needed discussion,

we recommend that the APA Commission for

Recognition of Specialties and Proﬁciencies in

Psychology deny efforts to promote operational

psychology, including AOP, as a recognized

specialty area in psychology (e.g., Kennedy,

2010). We also recommend that practitioners

not be eligible for certiﬁcation through the

American Board of Professional Psychology

(ABPP) as operational psychologists.

The issues we have explored in this essay are

matters of great consequence, not only for op-

erational psychologists, the APA, the behav-

ioral sciences, and the health professions. They

are also of great consequence for all national

security personnel whose work is directly or

indirectly affected by AOP. Representatives

from the ﬁelds of military ethics, civil–military

relations, international law, and international

psychology are crucial voices in this much

needed dialogue about psychological ethics.

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Psychological and Physiological Responses in Observers of An Atomic Test Shot

Article

Dec 1958

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

Article

Apr 1989

Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo

Article

WASHINGTON -The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo. The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics." Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said. The United States government, which received the report in July, sharply rejected its charges, administration and military officials said. The report was distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at Guantánamo, Gen. Jay W. Hood. The New York Times recently obtained a memorandum, based on the report, that quotes from it in detail and lists its major findings. It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has been conducting visits to Guantánamo since January 2002, asserted in such strong terms that the treatment of detainees, both physical and psychological, amounted to torture. The report said that another confidential report in January 2003, which has never been disclosed, raised questions of whether "psychological torture" was taking place. The Red Cross said publicly 13 months ago that the system of keeping detainees indefinitely without allowing them to know their fates was unacceptable and would lead to mental health problems.

The Military Whistleblower Protection Act and The Military Mental Health Evaluation Protection Act

Article

The Army Lawyer is published monthly by The Judge Advocate General's School for the official use of Army lawyers in the performance of their legal responsibilities. The opinions expressed by the authors in the articles, however, do not necessarily reflect the view of The Judge Advocate General or the Department of the Army. Masculine or feminine pronouns appearing in this pamphlet refer to both genders unless the context indicates another use. The Army Lawyer welcomes articles on topics of interest to military lawyers. Articles should be submitted on 3 1/2" diskettes to Editor, The Army Lawyer, The Judge Advocate General's School, U.S. Army, ATTN: JAGS-ADL-P, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-1781. Article text and footnotes should be double-spaced in Times New Roman, 10 point font, and Microsoft Word format. Articles should follow A Uniform System of Citation (16th ed. 1996) and Military Citation (TJAGSA, July 1997). Manuscripts will be returned upon specific request. No compensation can be paid for articles. The Army Lawyer articles are indexed in the Index to Legal Periodicals, the Current Law Index, the Legal Resources Index, and the Index to U.S. Government Periodicals.

Psychology Under Fire: Adversarial Operational Psychology and Psychological Ethics

Abstract

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