Leaked Guantanamo Manual Reveals Prisoner Isolation Was Official Army Policy, What Role do Psychhologists Play?

The 238-page manual titled "Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta," is dated March 27, 2003, and signed by Army Major General Geoffrey Miller, who was then the commander of the prison.

The document shows that the military had an official policy of denying some prisoners any access to independent monitors of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, something the military has repeatedly denied.

Another disclosure is the use of isolation and sensory deprivation techniques as a means of "preparing" detainees. It says incoming prisoners are to be held in near-isolation for the first two weeks to foster dependence on interrogators and "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process."

This disclosure has strong relevance to the debate within the American Psychological Association which continues to condone psychologists" work on interrogations at Guantanamo and CIA black sites. Its counterparts, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, have both banned their members from participating in interrogations.

• Dr. Stephen Soldz, a psychologist, public health researcher, and professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He joins me from now Boston. Dr. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and maintains the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.