A prominent psychologist ousted from the leadership of the the US’s largest professional psychological association for his alleged role in enabling and covering up torture has enlisted a former FBI director to fight back.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Louis J Freeh, Bill Clinton’s FBI director, rejected an independent report begrudgingly embraced by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a politicized smear job.

The report, which leaked on Friday, is a “gross mischaracterization” of the “intentions, goals and actions” of former ethics chief Stephen Behnke, Freeh said. He threatened unspecified legal retaliation on Behnke’s behalf.

“Dr Behnke will consider all legal options in the face of this unfair, irresponsible and unfounded action by a select few APA board members,” Freeh said.

Former federal prosecutor David Hoffman, who spearheaded the 542-page investigation, found that Behnke was an instrumental figure in more than a decade’s worth of institutional enablement by the APA of torture conducted by the CIA and US military.

Hoffman concluded that Behnke, along with others, concealed close ties to colleagues in the military in order to maneuver the APA into softening its traditional rejections of torture – thereby enabling psychologists to participate – and suppressing internal dissent.

The APA disclosed on Friday that it parted ways with Behnke, its ethics director for 15 years, on 8 July in an apparent firing. Nadine Kaslow, the chair of the special committee APA created to aid Hoffman’s inquiry, told the Guardian she supported changing APA policy to end psychological cooperation with US military and CIA detention and interrogation operations, undoing one of Behnke’s main achievements that Hoffman criticized.

The APA convenes in Toronto next month, where the Hoffman report is expected to dominate the agenda.

Behnke has maintained public silence since the Hoffman report became public. Attempts by the Guardian to contact him through email and phone messages have not been fruitful.

But through Freeh – whose presence on Behnke’s team is likely to be interpreted as an attempt to get the Justice Department to stay out of the imbroglio – Behnke, “a distinguished and dedicated APA senior staffer”, has now gone on the offensive.

Freeh painted Kaslow as a hypocrite, saying the “chairwoman of the so-called ‘special committee’” voted with the APA’s other leaders to “adopt and implement these policies over a series of years with full knowledge of Dr Behnke’s role in the resolution drafting process”.

In the statement, Freeh does not offer any specific denials of the facts Hoffman marshalled. Instead, he portrays the APA as complicit, self-servingly sacrificing Behnke as a convenient scapegoat. Freeh’s statement does not use the word “torture”.

The APA seeks to wash its hands of Behnke and the organization’s interrogations era, Freeh charged, by way of the Hoffman report.

“They seek to effect this change by targeting Dr Behnke for his role in drafting APA policy, by falsely claiming that Dr Behnke conducted ethics workshops for military psychologists unbeknownst to APA, and by absurdly casting Dr Behnke as the individual responsible for APA’s policy development on the issue of interrogations,” Freeh said.

Behnke has longstanding connections to the FBI. His CV cites his work since 2001 on an FBI child-abduction and serial murder research advisory panel. A John D Behnke, who appears to be his brother, served as a long-time and distinguished FBI agent before joining Freeh’s risk-management firm as a managing director.



The Defense Department and FBI have yet to respond to the Guardian’s inquiries over whether they will end the participation of psychologists at Guantánamo Bay and in President Barack Obama’s “High Value Detainee Interrogation Group”.

A National Security Council spokesman, Myles Caggins, said the White House would have no comment.