Group Calls for Annulment of the APA’s Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics & National Security (PENS) Report

From Boiling Frogs:

Leading scholars and human rights groups from a range of fields — including psychology, medicine, law, military, and intelligence — have joined together in spearheading a broad-based effort to annul and delegitimize the American Psychological Association’s deeply flawed 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report). In a joint declaration the coalition states:

Despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.” With this stance, the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged- the “do no Harm” standard.

Further, the coalition points out the inherent bias in the Presidential Task Force membership, where six of the nine voting members were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies, and five having served in chains of command accused of prisoner abuses. The group cites other significant conflicts of interest by the Task Force’s unacknowledged participants, such as the spouse of a Guantánamo intelligence psychologist and several high-level lobbyists for the Department of Defense, and direct funding for psychologists by the CIA.

The Coalition has launched a petition calling for the annulment of the APA’s PENS Report as part of their joint effort to remove psychologists from torture and abusive interrogations.

FBI Supervisor Calls for Prosecutor in Edmonds Case

From BradBlog.com:

An 18-year Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Manager for the FBI has called for a Special Counsel to be appointed to investigate the allegations of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. John M. Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, made his comments during an audio interview released late last week with radio journalist Peter B. Collins.

Read the rest here.

Brad “Blog” Friedman will be joining me on Antiwar Radio Tuesday at 12:00 pm, Pacific, 3:00 in the East – right after Gareth Porter – to discuss the Edmonds case.

Sibel Edmonds’s Big Day

Sibel Edmonds, former contract-FBI translator/whistleblower and “most gagged person in U.S. history” has finally told all – to Antiwar.com’s Philip Giraldi. It’s all in the cover story for November’s issue of The American Conservative magazine, “Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?” which hits the stands (and Website) on Tuesday.

Last month, Edmonds was deposed in a civil lawsuit for 6 hours (video and transcript here), and told as much of her story as she ever has, and all together in one place. Now, however, she has gone much further and apparently told Giraldi everything, less sources and methods.

For those who’ve been waiting for the day when this story would break back into the mainstream media, this may be the time to get out your trusty old letter-to-the-editor pen, set your speed-dial to the local morning news radio stations, and make sure to Facebook friend your 2nd cousin at CNN so you can send him a message when the article goes online.

How could they possibly continue to ignore such tales of drugs, guns, spies, lies, bribes, sex, blackmail, terrorism and the nuke black market from such an inside source?

Tuesday on Antiwar Radio, I’ll be speaking with Giraldi, David Rose and Joe Lauria – the journalists who’ve done the best and most “credentialed” reporting on her case – about all of Edmonds’ explosive allegations. Listen live 2-4 Eastern at Antiwar.com/radio.

Update: Brad Friedman has more details here.

Update II: The interview is now online here.

Update III: My interview of Philip Giraldi and Joe Lauria here.

Update IV: Brad Friedman has much more on this developing story here.

(Cross-Posted at Stress.)

Sibel Edmonds Testimony

Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI-contract translator under a gag order for her whistleblowing, has testified under oath numerous times – in secret. She has told much of her story in bits and pieces appearing in articles, interviews and .jpg files over the years, but, for whatever technical reasons, she was finally allowed, on August 8, to talk openly about what she knows despite the “state’s secrets” doctrine – all under oath, at one time and place, and for the public record.

Let’s take a look at what was so important that the previous administration turned their own employee into the “most gagged person in U.S. history.”

A brief summary, the full video and transcript [.pdf] are now available at BradBlog.com.

Sibel Edmonds’ Story Makes the MSM!

Thanks very much to O.E., who writes:

It was shocking, but a pleasant surprise, to find Philip Giraldi’s “Found in Translation” article reprinted, at least in part, in today’s Dallas Morning News. They did leave out the part about the Valerie Plame, but with graphics the article does fill the entire back page of the opinion section.

(Also, Marc Grossman’s name does not make it into article and the DMN article is over 1000 words shorter than what appeared in the American Conservative article.)

Even with the heavy editing, the DMN version of Giraldi’s American Conservative article should be enough to get the main point across. It should also prove to other media organizations in this country that they CAN touch this story – if only with a ten-foot pole…