Top psychologists worked with Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon on torture at Guantanamo

He went on to own part of a company founded by two leaders of the interrogation program.

The association indicated in a statement to The Post Friday it plans to adopt sweeping changes across the board, including potentially banning psychologists from participating in future interrogations of people held in custody by the military or intelligence officials.

The report found no evidence “that APA officials actually knew about the existence” of the CIA program, but noted that a longtime agency contractor and psychologist, Mel Gravitz, was enlisted to work with the association’s ethics panel.

Some members of the American Psychological Association (APA), including senior staff, sought to “curry favor” with defense officials, according to the 542-page probe commissioned by APA’s board.

The involvement of psychologists in the interrogation programmes has been a source of contention within the profession for years.

The document adds to an expanding list of damning assessments of one of the more controversial periods in recent USA history, including an exhaustive study issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee past year that accused the CIA of downplaying the brutality of its methods and exaggerating their results.

The goal of the collusion was to ensure that APA ethics policies were consistent with Bush administration policies on interrogation techniques.

The report said that in 2005, the APA created a task force to review the association’s ethical guidelines that determined when its psychologists could participate in interrogations.

“The largest association of psychologists in the United States is on the brink of a crisis”, writes Spencer Ackerman at the Guardian, “as an independent review prepares to reveal that medical professionals lied and covered up their extensive involvement in post-9/11 torture”. The group has rejected media reporting on psychologists’ complicity in torture; suppressed internal dissent from anti-torture doctors; cleared members of wrongdoing; and portrayed itself as a consistent ally against abuse.

The report found that the ethical guidelines “prioritized the protection of psychologists – even those who might have engaged in unethical behavior – above the protection of the public”.

A spokesman for the association did not respond to a request for comment on the Hoffman report, and a CIA spokesman said that agency officials had not seen it and so could not comment.

The CIA chose Mel Gravitz, a prominent psychologist who was also a member of the agency’s advisory committee.

After the Hoffman report was made public on Friday, the American Psychological Association issued an apology. In March 2004, other insiders at the agency emailed the psychological association to say that they had concerns that psychologists were assisting with interrogations in ways that contradicted the association’s ethics code.