The American Psychological Association and the Hoffman Report

Abstract

Based on findings documented in the Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Investigations, and Torture, more commonly known as the Hoffman report, this guest editorial describes how the American Psychological Association (APA) colluded with the Department of Defense during the Bush administration to provide ethical cover for the Department of Defense’s interrogation program and for psychologists working in the program. Describing the actions of APA as “one of the greatest ethical breaches in the history of psychology,” the article discusses APA’s offenses, what has been done about them to date, and what remains to be done.

Keywords

American Psychological Association detainee abuse Hoffman report PENS psychological ethics torture

In July 2015, one of the greatest ethical breaches in the history of psychology came to light. An independent investigation led by David Hoffman, a former federal prosecutor and attorney with the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago, found that the American Psychological Association (APA) colluded with the Department of Defense (DoD) during the Bush administration to craft an APA ethical policy that placed no significant restraints on the DoD’s interrogation program or on psychologists who worked in the program. APA then engaged in a public relations campaign over several years to deny that it had engaged in collusion or other offenses. This article summarizes major findings of the Hoffman report and describes what has been done and what remains to be done to restore APA’s integrity and credibility. An afterword describes recent actions by the APA Board of Directors that raise serious questions about the board’s ability to lead APA in new directions.

The Hoffman Investigation

David Hoffman and his team of six other attorneys were hired by the APA Board of Directors in November 2014 to conduct an independent review of various allegations that had been made against APA. Over a period of almost 8 months, Hoffman and his team reviewed over 50,000 documents and conducted more than 200 interviews with 148 people (Hoffman et al., 2015, pp. 6-7). On July 2, 2015, Hoffman submitted his 542-page report to the APA Board of Directors.

A Media Firestorm

The Hoffman report was leaked to The New York Times on July 10, 2015, while APA officials were still reviewing the report and preparing a public response. The Times quickly posted articles describing major findings of the report (see The Editorial Board, 2015; Risen, 2015). Other news media, along with social media, picked up the story. Articles appeared in The Guardian, USA Today, The Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Forbes, Harper’s, The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other media. Within a short time, news that APA had committed serious ethical offenses was known around the world.

APA’s Response

On July 10, 2015, the APA posted a response to the Hoffman report in the form of a press release on the APA website (APA, 2015a). In the response, Nadine Kaslow, past president of APA and chair of APA’s Independent Review’s Special Committee, acknowledged the disturbing nature of the Hoffman findings and offered an apology on behalf of APA. She said, “We profoundly regret, and apologize for, the behavior and the consequences that ensued. Our members, our profession and our organization expected, and deserved, better.”

On July 13, 2015, 3 days after the Hoffman report became public, the APA Board of Directors announced that Norman Anderson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of APA, and Michael Honaker, Deputy CEO, would retire and that Rhea Farberman, Communications Director, had resigned. Earlier, on July 8, after APA had received the Hoffman report but before it was made public, Stephen Behnke, APA Ethics Director, whose actions were strongly criticized in the Hoffman report, had left APA.

Magnitude of the Crisis

For 9 years, Stephen Soldz and Steven Reisner, members of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, had criticized APA and worked to get psychologists removed from abusive national security situations. The APA Board of Directors invited Soldz and Reisner to comment on the findings of the Hoffman report before the report and APA’s response were released to the public. The meeting took place on July 2, 2015. In their opening comments to the board, neither Soldz nor Reisner pulled any punches (see Soldz & Reisner, 2015). In his comments, Soldz described the magnitude of the crisis and what was in store for APA:

I suspect that some of you have not yet fully grasped the magnitude of this crisis. As the result of its collusion, the APA is likely to become the public face of torture. The press storm will be fierce. Editorials will condemn the Association’s actions. Congress members will weigh in. Human rights groups, frustrated with the lack of accountability for torture, will be lining up to raise money off of suing the APA. There may be a decade of lawsuits, draining the budget and staff and elected officials’ time. Members will flee and young psychologists will be even more reluctant to join. And the Association’s 501c(3) nonprofit status may be threatened. More importantly, if not handled correctly, torture collusion will become the public face of the profession we love. There is little doubt that the APA’s actions will go down in history books next to the chapter on the Tuskegee and Guatemalan syphilis experiments. The actions we take in the coming weeks, months, and years will determine how that chapter ends.

This is the clearest statement that I have seen about the magnitude of the crisis and what the future may hold for APA. Of course, it’s difficult to know exactly how the crisis will unfold and what the history books will say, but Soldz’s predictions seem reasonable at this point in time.

APA’s Offenses

The heart of Hoffman’s investigation was a 2005 APA task force named the Presidential Task Force on Ethics and National Security, or “PENS.” In 2005, the task force issued a report containing 12 ethical guidelines for psychologists working in national security settings (APA, 2005). Hoffman and his associates said, “The heart of our inquiry relates to APA’s issuance of ethical guidelines that determined when psychologists could ethically participate in such interrogations” (p. 2). Thus, to understand APA’s offenses, we must take a look at the PENS task force and its report.

Purpose of the PENS Task Force

Purportedly, the purpose of the 2005 PENS task force was to clarify and determine APA ethical policy for psychologists working in national security settings. However, when the task force met in 2005, it did not conduct a careful ethical analysis to determine what psychologists could ethically do and not do in those settings. The task force was composed of nine members, six of whom were DoD officials. When the nonmilitary members of the task force pushed for definitions of abuse based on the Geneva Conventions and for specificity of ethical and unethical behaviors for psychologists working in national security settings, “their efforts were rejected by DoD members of the task force, the APA Ethics Director, and other key APA officials who were included in the meeting” (Hoffman et al., 2015, p. 12).

What the three nonmilitary members of the task force did not know was that the APA Ethics Director and other APA officials were engaging in secret conversations with DoD officials to ensure that the task force gave DoD the ethical policy that it wanted. And what DoD wanted was an APA ethical policy that would place no significant restraints on DoD’s interrogation program and techniques. Hoffman and his associates found that the APA Ethics Director talked on a regular basis with a senior official in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command “before determining what APA’s position should be, what its public statements should say, and what strategy to pursue on this issue” (Hoffman et al., 2015, p. 9).

The PENS Report

The PENS task force issued its report in 2005. However, as noted previously, the report was not based on critical ethical thinking about the issues involved. Instead, it was a product of secret conversations and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. The report’s 12 ethical guidelines for psychologists working in national security settings were carefully worded to ensure that they placed no significant restraints on DoD’s interrogation program or on psychologists working in the program. As Hoffman and his associates said, the PENS report contained “loose, high-level ethical guidelines that did not constrain the DoD in any greater fashion than existing DoD interrogation guidelines” (Hoffman et al., 2015, p. 9).

APA’s Motives

Why did APA officials collude with DoD? The Hoffman Report (Hoffman et al., 2015) said, “APA’s principal motive in doing so was to align APA and curry favor with DoD. There were two other important motives: to create a good public-relations response, and to keep the growth of psychology unrestrained in this area” (p. 9). The report goes on to say that APA wanted to please DoD “because of the very substantial benefits that DoD had conferred and continued to confer on psychology as a profession” and because APA wanted to secure a prominent place for psychologists in intelligence activities (p. 11). There’s nothing wrong, of course, with APA officials wanting to secure benefits for psychology unless they lose their moral compass and betray APA’s core values in the process. Unfortunately, that is what happened. APA sold out for a mess of military pottage.

Other Offenses

The Hoffman Report described other, related offenses by APA officials. These included the following: APA engaged in a campaign over several years to deny that it had done anything wrong; APA attacked critics of the PENS task force and report; APA thwarted efforts by the APA Council of Representatives to stop psychologists from participating in detainee abuse; and the APA Ethics Director interfered with the ethical investigation of psychologists who were alleged to have participated in detainee abuse. These are all serious offenses, and I refer readers to Hoffman’s executive summary for more information (see Hoffman et al., 2015, pp. 1-72).

Did APA Enable Torture?

What happened at APA was not simply another corporate scandal. What made APA’s actions especially egregious is that they may have enabled detainee abuse, or what the Geneva Conventions and other international laws call “torture.” So it’s important to ask and examine the question: Did APA enable torture?

The Hoffman Report’s Conclusion

The Hoffman Report stopped short of saying that APA enabled torture. The report did say, however, that APA colluded with DoD to craft an ethical policy that placed no significant restraints on DoD’s interrogation techniques, even though APA officials knew “that there likely had been abusive interrogation techniques used and that there remained a substantial risk, that without strict constraints, such abusive interrogation techniques would continue” (Hoffman et al., 2015, p. 9). Although they did not say that APA enabled torture, Hoffman and his associates wrote a scathing conclusion about APA’s actions:

Thus, we conclude that in colluding with DoD officials, APA officials acted (i) to support the implementation by DoD of the interrogation techniques that DoD wanted to implement without substantial constraints from APA; and (ii) with knowledge that there likely had been abusive interrogation techniques used and that there remained a substantial risk, that without strict constraints, such abusive interrogation techniques would continue; and (iii) with substantial indifference to the actual facts regarding the potential for ongoing abusive interrogations techniques. (p. 9)

Why I Believe APA Enabled Torture

The following is my opinion and should be read as such. I believe APA officials enabled torture. I am not alone. Several media reports have proffered the same conclusion (e.g., Boyd, 2015; Kory, 2015; Ladin & Watt, 2015; Risen, 2015). However, my conclusion is not based on media reports but on the Hoffman report itself. At the risk of being redundant, I want to underscore the findings described previously: APA officials knew that abusive techniques had likely been used and that there was a substantial risk that they could be used in the future unless ethical restraints were imposed. Yet, knowing this, APA officials placed no significant ethical restraints on the DoD’s interrogation techniques. In fact, APA officials did not even examine or raise concerns about detainee abuse. As the Hoffman report (Hoffman et al., 2015) said, “Based on strategic goals, APA intentionally decided not to make inquiries into or express concern regarding abuses that were occurring, thus effectively hiding its head in the sand” (p. 11). The bottom line is this: APA had an opportunity to impose ethical restraints on DoD’s interrogation techniques and on psychologists working in national security settings, but they chose not to do so, even though they knew that without such restraints, there was a substantial risk that detainee abuse would continue. When I read these findings, I cannot come to any other conclusion than that APA officials enabled torture—even if that was not their focal motivation or intent.

During their investigation of APA, Hoffman and his associates heard from psychologists who use their training and skill to heal psychological pain. The Hoffman report (Hoffman et al., 2015) said, “The prospect of a member of their profession using that same training and skill to intentionally cause psychological or physical harm to a detainee sickens them. We find that perspective understandable” (p. 69). Hoffman and his associates went on to describe the societal value of a profession that can heal emotional trauma and make other positive contributions but then gave this warning: “When that profession allows for the potential that psychologists will intentionally inflict pain on an individual with no ability to resist, regardless of the individual’s background or motives, faith in the profession can diminish quickly” (p. 72).

What Has Been Done?

At the 2015 APA convention held in Toronto, the APA Council of Representatives, in direct response to the findings of the Hoffman report, voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution that prohibited APA members from taking part in U.S. military and national security interrogations (see Eidelson, 2015). The vote was 156 to 1, with 7 abstentions and 1 recusal. The principal author of the resolution was Scott Churchill, the Council representative from Division 32, Society for Humanistic Psychology. The Council of Representatives is composed of psychologists who are elected by members of APA’s 54 Divisions. Thus, the Council represents APA members. The overwhelming vote at Toronto to ban psychologists from taking part in government interrogations was a huge step in the right direction. Also, as noted previously, four top officials at APA have either left APA or are leaving. At the time of this writing—these are the two major remedial actions that have occurred.

What Remains to Be Done?

Although the steps described above were important, much remains to be done. The following is my opinion of what must be done to restore APA’s integrity and credibility. Others have also addressed this issue, and some of their ideas are reflected in my own (e.g., see Eidelson, 2015; Soldz & Reisner, 2015; Woolf, 2015).

A Thorough Housecleaning

First, there must be a thorough “housecleaning” at APA. The fact that four top officials are either leaving or have already left is an important first step. However, at the time of this writing, others implicated by the Hoffman Report are still at APA (e.g., see Eidelson, 2015). A thorough housecleaning means that everyone—whether elected, appointed, or hired—who was implicated in the scandal must go. APA can never move forward as a credible organization as long as implicated individuals remain in leadership positions at APA.

Second, once the housecleaning is complete, the vacancies must be filled by new leaders who are genuinely committed to change. They must not be “cronies” of those who left, and they must not be from the same “administrative culture.” They must have a documented record of moral and ethical leadership, along with proven organizational abilities. Also, a bit of outrage at what has happened at APA would be another positive qualification.

Third, the APA must end its affair with the U.S. military. The “new” APA must stand on its own feet as an independent association dedicated to human rights. Instead of using their training and skills to abuse or destroy human beings, psychologists must “do no harm” and use their clinical abilities to heal military families and soldiers who have been damaged by the trauma of war. The Hoffman report specifically targeted APA’s dependency on governmental agencies as a major area of concern. Hoffman and his associates said, “Our investigation uncovered serious concerns about the ability of APA officials—and APA itself—to act independently from the presidential administration in power, and from powerful government agencies that provide the profession of psychology with very substantial benefits” (p. 72). If APA had not been so dependent on the military, so eager for the benefits it could bestow on psychology, this scandal would not have occurred. In a time of national darkness, APA could have been a shining light for human rights and ethical behavior but chose, instead, to be part of the darkness.

Fourth, potential ethical violations by APA members who worked in U.S. government interrogations must be revisited and properly investigated. The Hoffman Report showed that the APA Ethics Director interfered with the investigation of psychologists who may have participated in detainee abuse. If the current APA Ethics Office is to restore its credibility, it must correct these wrongs.

Fifth, we should honor the whistleblowers and dissidents among us who, for years, presented evidence that APA was culpable on this issue. Despite efforts by APA and others to stifle them, these heroic psychologists continued to insist that APA had acted wrongly and must be held accountable. These individuals include, but are not limited to, Jean Maria Arrigo, Trudy Bond, Roy Eidelson, Brad Olson, Steven Reisner, Stephen Soldz, and Scott Churchill. The APA Board, along with Divisional boards, should recognize these individuals with citations and other awards. If the APA Board and Divisional boards want to create a “new” APA, embracing and honoring the whistleblowers and dissidents would be an excellent way to demonstrate that APA is truly changing.

To summarize, I believe the future of APA as a credible organization depends on (a) carrying out a thorough housecleaning, (b) hiring leaders who are truly committed to change, (c) ending APA’s affair with the U.S. military, (d) properly investigating potential ethics violations by APA members who worked at interrogation sites, and (e) honoring the whistleblowers and dissidents who, as it turns out, were right.

If these things happen, the phoenix might yet rise from the ashes. If they do not happen, I believe APA will be an albatross around the neck of American psychology for years to come.

Afterword

While finalizing this article, I learned that the APA Board of Directors had appointed a search committee for an interim CEO at APA. Astonishingly, three people appointed to the committee were criticized, to one degree or another, in the Hoffman report. One of the three is president and CEO of a company that has major military contracts with the national security and intelligence establishment. Once again, some APA members were outraged and immediately mobilized efforts to pressure APA to change the composition of the search committee (e.g., see Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, 2015). As a result, the composition of the committee was revised. The three questionable members are no longer on the committee, and more appropriate individuals have been appointed (see APA, 2015b).

APA’s actions in this matter raise serious questions: Did the APA Board of Directors fail to get the message of the Hoffman report? Did board members actually think they could appoint these three people to an important search committee—and no one would object? And perhaps the most important question of all: Are members of the current APA Board of Directors, some of whom were criticized in the Hoffman report, genuinely committed to change? The answers to these questions are not yet clear. Corporate cultures do not change easily, and powerful boards can be very resistant to change. Thus, it remains to be seen whether the current APA Board of Directors will have what it takes to restore APA’s integrity and credibility. For the sake of American psychology, I hope so.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank Roy Eidelson for reading an early draft of the article and making helpful suggestions. He is not responsible, of course, for any limitations of the article. I also thank Stephen Soldz for permission to quote from his comments to the APA Board of Directors and David Hoffman for permission to quote from his report.

Author’s Note

The article represents the author’s personal views and are not necessarily those of individuals associated with Journal of Humanistic Psychology or Sage Publications.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

David N. Elkins, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a Professor Emeritus of Psychology in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and has served twice as president of Division 32, Society for Humanistic Psychology of APA. Recently retired, he now lives in Carefree, Arizona, with Sara, his wife, and their little Yorkie named Peanuts.

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