Last December, a Senate Intelligence Committee report laid bare the extensive involvement of individual psychologists in the CIA’s black-site torture program. Then, in early July, a devastating independent report by a former federal prosecutor determined that more than a decade ago APA leaders — including the director of ethics — began working secretly with military representatives. Together they crafted deceptively permissive ethics policies for psychologists that effectively enabled abusive interrogation of war-on-terror prisoners to continue.
These revelations have shocked and outraged not just psychologists but also the public at large. After all, the APA’s ethics code for psychologists governs not only its 80,000 members but also underlies the policies of most state licensing boards.