Pay Any Price (29 page)

 

After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004 and the public first learned about prisoner abuse by both the CIA and military, the APA was forced to respond to evidence of involvement by psychologists and other behavioral scientists. The APA created a committee to study the matter, which issued a report in 2005 that provided professional cover for the psychologists who had been involved with the interrogation program. The APA's Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) concluded that it was appropriate and ethical for psychologists to be involved with interrogations, in order to ensure that they remained safe, legal, ethical, and effective—phrasing that was almost identical to the language used by the military's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams at Guantánamo.

The APA provided the Bush administration its needed cover.

Gerwehr's e-mails show for the first time the degree to which behavioral science experts from within the government's national security apparatus played roles in shaping the PENS task force. They show that APA officials were secretly working behind the scenes with CIA and Pentagon officials to discuss how to shape the organization's position to be supportive of psychologists involved in interrogations—long before the task force was even formed.

In July 2004, just months after the graphic photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib were publicly disclosed, APA officials convened a private meeting of psychologists working at the CIA, Pentagon, and other national security agencies to provide input on how the APA should deal with the growing furor, Gerwehr's e-mails show. Among those receiving private invitations to the brainstorming session were Kirk Hubbard from the CIA and Kirk Kennedy of the Pentagon. Scott Gerwehr also received an invitation through an e-mail from Stephen Behnke, the director of the APA's ethics office.

The APA's ethics office and its science directorate, the invitation stated, were holding a private lunch meeting for psychologists involved in the government's national security apparatus to discuss the “unique ethical issues” that had been raised for psychologists in the wake of the Abu Ghraib disclosures. Behnke wrote:

 

The purpose of the meeting is to bring together people with an interest in the ethical aspects of national security–related investigations, to identify the important questions, and to discuss how we as a national organization can better assist psychologists and other mental health professionals sort out appropriate from inappropriate uses of psychology. We want to ask individuals involved in the work what the salient issues are, whether more or better guidance is needed, and how best to provide guidance. . . . I would like to emphasize that we will not advertise the meeting other than this letter to the individual invitees, that we will not publish or otherwise make public the names of attendees or the substance of our discussions, and that in the meeting we will neither assess nor investigate the behavior of any specific individual or group.

 

Behnke offered sympathetically that the APA wanted to take a “positive approach, in which we convey a sensitivity to and appreciation of the important work mental health professionals are doing in the national security arena.”

Psychologists and behavioral science experts in the national security community were happy to take advantage of the APA's offer of early involvement in the organization's process of dealing with the interrogation issue.

Kirk Hubbard of the CIA replied to Behnke by saying that he would be in charge of representing both the CIA's and the Pentagon's interests at the meeting. “I just spoke with Kirk Kennedy,” Hubbard wrote in an e-mail on which Gerwehr was copied. “All the DOD shrinks will be tied up. . . . He and I decided that rather than delay the initial meeting, we should just go ahead. He and I will consult on the issues that concern CIA and DOD and I will represent both of us on July 20. I'll then brief him.”

The invitation to the lunch meeting showed that the APA was opening the door to psychologists and other behavioral science experts inside the government's national security apparatus to provide advice and guidance about how to address the furor over the role of psychologists in torture before the APA went to its own membership. The insiders were being given a chance to influence the APA's stance before anyone else.

In fact, this secret meeting of top government psychologists was held months before the APA finally began a public process among its members to address the controversy surrounding the involvement of psychologists in the enhanced interrogation program. On January 3, 2005, Gerwehr and others who had been invited to the meeting in July 2004 received an e-mail including a draft proposal for an APA task force to deal with the role of psychologists in interrogations. They were receiving the draft proposal more than a month before it was made public to APA members.

Jean Maria Arrigo, an independent social psychologist who was a member of the PENS task force, said that the first she heard about the APA's plans to deal with the interrogation issue was in February 2005, when the APA issued a public notice of its plans for a task force. Arrigo now believes she was placed on the PENS task force to give the CIA- and Pentagon-backed psychologists the cover they needed to make it appear legitimate. “I was there as a dupe, purposefully,” she said.

In fact, the deck appears to have been stacked on the task force. Of the ten psychologists appointed to it, six had connections with the defense or intelligence communities; one member was the chief psychologist for U.S. Special Forces. In addition, a senior APA official who attended meetings of the task force was married to a psychologist assigned to one of the military's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams—military units involved in interrogations.

Arrigo said that Russ Newman, then the head of APA's practice directorate and one of the most powerful officials in the organization, attended the task force sessions as an observer, but she later came to believe that he was actually helping to set the task force's agenda. He told the group that “we have to put out the fires of controversy, and we have to do it fast,” Arrigo recalled. She only learned much later about Newman's wife's involvement with the military. Newman was married to Lt. Col. Debra Dunivin, a member of the Guantánamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team. “A year after the task force, I talked to a couple of counterintelligence people I knew, who told me that this was a social legitimization process,” she added. “This was an effort by the Bush administration to gain legitimacy through the APA.”

After succeeding in getting the PENS task force to endorse the continued involvement of psychologists in the interrogation program, congratulations were in order among the small number of behavioral scientists with connections to the national security community who had been part of the effort. In a July 2005 e-mail to Hubbard from Geoffrey Mumford (on which Gerwehr was copied), Mumford thanked Hubbard for helping to influence the outcome of the task force. “I also wanted to semi-publicly acknowledge your personal contribution . . . in getting this effort off the ground,” Mumford wrote. “Your views were well represented by very carefully selected task force members.” Mumford also noted that Susan Brandon had served as an “observer” at the PENS task force meetings and “helped craft some language related to research” for the task force report.

 

At the time of the release of the task force report, Hubbard had just retired from the CIA to begin consulting for Mitchell and Jessen. “Now I do some consulting work for Mitchell and Jessen Associates,” Hubbard wrote in a mass e-mail to many of his friends and colleagues in June 2005.

Hubbard tried to recruit Gerwehr to join him. In a May 2006 e-mail to Gerwehr, Hubbard told him there was an opening for a psychologist at Mitchell and Jessen's firm, and that he would be the ideal candidate. “I have attached a position description in the event you know of someone who might fit the bill,” Hubbard wrote. “You would be perfect, but you probably wouldn't want to relocate to Spokane! Obviously candidates cannot be extreme liberals as some psychologists seem to be.”

Gerwehr was intrigued, even though he knew full well by then what the firm did. He responded that “I must say that does sound like a dream job that was tailor made for me! I would be very interested in discussing it, though the Spokane thing is probably a non-starter. If they'd let me stay in LA though. . .!”

But by late 2006, Gerwehr was talking to Katherine Eban for her
Vanity Fair
article about the role of psychologists in interrogations, particularly Mitchell and Jessen. And there was one final twist for Gerwehr: Geoffrey Mumford and Susan Brandon were desperately trying to conduct spin control on Eban's story, and consulted with Gerwehr about how best to answer her questions. In an e-mail, Gerwehr disarmed Mumford and Brandon by blithely responding that he had already talked to Eban. “While there is always the chance that reporters will take quotes out of context, or arrange facts in a way that is sensationalist or suggestive of something sinister, I have nothing to hide here and feel transparency on this topic is a good thing.”

8

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House was built more than a century ago to stand as a monument to the enduring friendship between the United States and Canada. The late-Victorian-era building, with a two-tone façade of gray granite and brown brick, was purposely constructed so that it literally straddles the international border, with the front door in the United States and the library's circulation desk and the opera house's stage in Canada. It was meant to encourage people from both countries to read books and enjoy musical performances side by side.

The Haskell is the best-known landmark in the small, adjoining towns of Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, and its quirky status—a black line marking the border runs along the floor through the library—has for generations lent the twin communities their special charm. The Haskell's staff comes from both countries. The collection has books in English and French. The building has official addresses in both the United States and Canada, on the streets that intersect beside the library—Caswell Avenue in Derby Line and Church Street (or Rue Church) in Stanstead.

Indeed, the Haskell's historic role as a symbol of openness and shared democratic values along the world's longest undefended border was the root cause of the 2010 Battle of Derby Line. The battle was an American classic—a little guy taking on cold and powerful interests. It galvanized an entire town and started a local grassroots rebellion against the excesses of the war on terror and the nation's post-9/11 fear-driven obsession with security.

 

A decade of fear-mongering has brought power and wealth to those who have been the most skillful at hyping the terrorist threat. Fear sells. Fear has convinced the White House and Congress to pour hundreds of billions of dollars—more money than anyone knows what to do with—into counterterrorism and homeland security programs, often with little management or oversight, and often to the detriment of the Americans they are supposed to protect. Fear is hard to question. It is central to the financial well-being of countless federal bureaucrats, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, analysts, and pundits. Fear generates funds.

One of the most baleful consequences of the toxic combination of fear and money in the post-9/11 era has been the constriction of the physical landscape of the United States. Freedom of movement—one of the greatest attributes of life in the expanse of the United States—has been curtailed. Money has flowed from Washington and corporate America to finance security guards, security gates, metal detectors, and Jersey barriers; bit by bit, the United States has become a nation whose watchwords are now “authorized access only.”

It is enough to make a lot of Americans claustrophobic and angry. Including Buzz Roy of Derby Line, Vermont.

Buzz Roy is an institution in Derby Line. Born in 1942, he has lived virtually his entire life in the village, with the exception of his five years as a student at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. Since 1964, he has been the owner of Brown's Drug Store, which his father owned before him. He can still be found each day personally filling prescriptions at the store's counter, coming to work dressed in a dignified button-down oxford shirt and tie, looking trim and much younger than his age. He has long been an active community leader, serving as both a member of Derby Line's elected board of village trustees and a trustee of the Haskell Library.

Growing up in Derby Line in the mid-twentieth century meant that Roy was used to crossing the U.S. border whenever he pleased. The border between the United States and Canada was nothing more than a line on a map, two blocks down Main Street from the drug store. Americans crossed it to shop for groceries or to go to the barbershop or beauty salon; Canadians crossed to buy cheaper gas and milk. There was a lightly manned U.S. Customs office on Main Street in Derby Line, just one block from Brown's, but Derby Line and Stanstead really were one community. “Before 9/11 it was very open, it was just a wave and a hi at the customs officer,” recalls Roy.

But the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed everything. To the new bureaucratic behemoth in Washington, the Department of Homeland Security, America's 5,500-mile-long border with Canada was a vulnerability that had to be sealed. It didn't matter that there was no evidence that the Canadian border had become a real threat; Homeland Security could find statistics to prove that it had. What's more, Homeland Security was flush with cash, and it was searching for ways to spend it.

Meanwhile, counterterrorism experts, many with lucrative government contracts or consulting deals with television news networks—in short, with an incentive to generate public fear and foreboding—had joined forces with zealous anti-immigration advocates to warn that the Canadian border was a dangerously unsecured back door. Members of the Minutemen, the anti-immigration organization that usually focuses on the Mexican border, even showed up in Derby Line. “They were not well received,” says Buzz Roy.