The US's top psychology association colluded with the Pentagon and the CIA to devise ethical guidelines to support interrogation techniques used after the September 11 attacks that have since been labelled as torture, a report says.
The American Psychological Association sought to "curry favour" with defence officials by issuing an ethics policy in line with government interrogation techniques post 9/11, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, the report commissioned by the body's board found.
The association colluded with several government agencies, including the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, to devise ethical guidelines for the interrogation program under former president George W Bush, according to the 542-page review released on Friday.
The government agencies "purportedly wanted permissive ethical guidelines so that their psychologists could continue to participate in harsh and abusive interrogation techniques being used by these agencies after the September 11 attacks," the report said.
"APA's principal motive in doing so was to align APA and curry favour with DoD (Department of Defence). There were two other important motives: to create a good public-relations response, and to keep the growth of psychology unrestrained in this area."