Honestly, this doesn't bother me at all. I thought it was common knowledge this kind of thing happened. I mean, if you ran the CIA you'd probably do this too.

This article states:

In 2003, the APA and CIA even cohosted a conference on “The Science of Deception,” ... The topics covered included “research challenges,” such as the reliability of lie-detecting technology, what pharmacological agents were “known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior,” and “how might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?”

At first I thought, big deal. Of course the CIA is going to want to consult with APA. If you want information from someone, what's the best way to go about getting it? Makes perfect sense the APA would be brought in on those talks. I don't smell conspiracy. Then they amend their ethics code to say it's ok to violate the ethical codes if from “governing legal authority”. Ok, that's shitty, but still, there's nothing super nefarious, is there? All they are saying is that it's ok to ignore your ethical obligations (I'd assume like the hippocratic oath, something along the lines of 'do no harm' or 'always help' or something similar) when you're working with the CIA and their enhanced interrogation program. Then another article I read regarding this states:

The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe.

That's the red fucking flag right there. "No, it's ok, these people really aren't being 'hurt'. We have doctors right there with us monitoring them, so we're good, right?" It would seem that the CIA and APA had some ideas of 'tests' they wanted to try (based on titles form that '03 conference) and used their cushy allegiance to convince the Justice Dept that everything was, in fact, good. When in reality, the APA and CIA conducted trials on best practice procedures to streamline the whole "torture process" to its most effective capacity.

That's a nice thought to have this early in the morning. I never really wanted to buy into the whole "medical establishment is in on it", but shit like this doesn't help in the slightest.