Psychologists to Obama: Don't Name Torture Apologist John Brenner CIA Director

November 22, 2008

Dear President-Elect Obama,

We are writing to urge you not to select John Brennan as Director of the CIA. We are psychologists and allies who have long opposed the abuses of detainees under the Bush administration. We are just concluding a successful several-year struggle to remove psychologists from their roles in aiding or abetting these abuses. It has been a distressing fact that, while the Bush administration resorted to abuse and torture of those in our custody, often psychologists have been put in positions to use their psychological expertise to guide these unconscionable practices.

We look forward to your administration as an opportunity for genuine change -- in this case for our country to take a new direction in its treatment of prisoners. We applaud your commitment to closing Guantanamo and are encouraged by your clear statement from your “60 Minutes” interview last Sunday, “America doesn’t torture, and I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture.” This fuels our hope for a decisive repudiation of the “dark side” -- the willingness to use or abet illegal and unethical coercive interrogation tactics that sometimes amount to torture and often constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

We are concerned, however, by reports that you may appoint John Brennan as Director of the CIA. Mr. Brennan served as a high official in George Tenet’s CIA and supported Tenet’s policies, including “enhanced interrogations” as well as “renditions” to torturing countries. According to his own statements, Mr. Brennan was a supporter of the “dark side” policies, wishing only to have some legal justification supplied in order to protect CIA operatives. In describing Director Tenet’s views he stated during a March 8, 2006 Frontline interview:

I think George [Tenet] had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice review.

We know, of course, that “the appropriate Department of Justice review” means that torture was authorized and conducted by our government.

The use of these tactics goes against the moral fiber of our country and is never justified. This is true whether these “enhanced interrogation” techniques are used directly by U.S. forces, as in the CIA’s “black sites,” or by other countries acting as our surrogates, as in the “renditions” program where individuals are taken to countries practicing torture, resulting in suffering inflicted by that country’s forces.