Majority of American Psychological Association’s legislative body votes in favor, but fails to get it on the group’s agenda

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

A longshot push to get the professional association of US psychologists to consider banning its members from providing aid to military interrogations failed on Friday, but gathered enough support to make supporters optimistic about a follow-on effort in August.

A resolution brought by University of Dallas psychologist Scott Churchill to add the interrogations ban to the agenda of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) legislative body received the support of 53% of representatives to the group’s biannual convention.

That didn’t clear the two-thirds threshold required to add the proposed ban to the agenda for this weekend’s conference. But the simple majority showing prompted Nadine Kaslow, the APA president, to express her openness to adding consideration of the proposed ban to the body’s next meeting.

“Maybe the way to think about this is how to be able to get this on the agenda for August – and I think you can work with us on how to do that,” Kaslow told Churchill.

Churchill called Kaslow’s openness, matched with the majority support, a “triumph,” saying he had managed to convert a few reluctant psychologists “last night at the bar”.

The issue of US psychologists’ involvement in military interrogations has roiled the APA for nearly a decade. Activists on Friday acknowledged the fatigue confronting APA members.

“There’s a sense in APA of ‘We’ve already done enough, why are we still talking about it, we always get bad press’,” said Dan Aalbers, who helped draft the resolution, which, among other things, calls for the immediate removal of psychologists from Guantanamo Bay.

But Aalbers, Churchill and their supporters felt the time was right to return to the interrogations question after the Guardian reported last month that the APA had declined to censure a former Guantánamo psychologist, retired army reserve major John Leso, whom Senate and other reports cited as deeply involved in the torture of suspected al-Qaida member Mohammed al-Qahtani.

The APA issued a statement ahead of Thursday’s plenary session saying that the decision not to censure Leso, following a seven-year investigation, did not amount to acquiescence in torture, which has been a persistent accusation aimed at the APA.

Churchill, who said he himself rejected the idea that the APA was soft on torture, said the heated rhetoric aimed at members had alienated potential allies within the organization.

“I’m not an activist, and I have found loathsome some of the emails we have all received from activist groups asking council to look to the past and place blame on previous council and boards of directors for decisions of policy that were ultimately used by others to justify torture,” Churchill said when introducing his resolution.

Aalbers was more pessimistic about APA considering the interrogations ban in August.

“There’s a chance that it could be modified in a way that doesn’t satisfy the community who brought it forward,” he said.

Attending the meeting was Larry James, the former chief military psychologist at Guantanamo Bay and the infamous prison Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

“I have no interest in talking with you,” James told a Guardian reporter who approached him.