Psychologists ‘met in secret with Bush officials’ to help justify post 9/11 torture

The leading American professional group for psychologists secretly worked with the Bush administration to help justify the post-9/11 US detainee torture programme, according to a watchdog report.

The report, written by six leading health professionals and human rights activists, is the first to examine the alleged complicity of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the so-called "enhanced interrogation" programme.

Based on an analysis of more than 600 emails, the report found the APA coordinated with Bush-era government officials to help ethically justify the interrogation policy in 2004 and 2005, when the programme came under increased scrutiny for prisoner abuse by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Clandestine meetings with US officials led to the creation of "an APA ethics policy in national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorising the CIA torture programme," the report's authors found.

The APA is the largest organisation representing psychologists in the US, with more than 122,500 members. That mental health professionals - let alone members of the APA itself - played any role in the justification or enhancement of the interrogation programme, undoubtedly lent it an air of legitimacy, if even only behind closed doors.

In secret opinions, the US Department of Justice argued that the torture programme did not constitute torture and was therefore legal, since it was being monitored by medical professionals.