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Military
Commission
Issues Final
Report on HTS
Program
Given this confusion, any anthropologist considering
employment with HTS will have difculty determining
whether or not s/he will be able to follow the disciplinary
AAA Code of Ethics.
I
n December of 2008, the Executive Board of the American
Anthropological Association asked the Commission on the Engagement
of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities
(CEAUSSIC) to thoroughly review the Department of Defense (DoD)
Human Terrain System (HTS) program, so that the AAA might then
formulate an ocial position on members participation in HTS activities. In
December 2009, during a press conference at the AAA Annual Meeting,
the CEAUSSIC ocially issued its report.
Te report, which was widely covered in the
mainstream media, addressed a number of
key points.
First, the
report noted
that HTS
and similar
programs
are moving
to become a
greater xture
within the US military. Given still outstanding
questions about HTS, such developments
should be a source of concern for the AAA
and also for any social science organization
or federal agency that expects its members or
employees to adhere to established disciplinary
and federal standards for the treatment of
human subjects.
Second, the current arrangement of HTS
includes potentially irreconcilable goals which,
in turn, lead to irreducible tensions with
respect to the programs basic identity. Tese
include the HTS attempt to concurrently
fulll a research function, serve as a data and
intelligence source, and perform a tactical
function in counterinsurgency warfare. Given
this confusion, any anthropologist considering
employment with HTS will have diculty
determining whether or not s/he will be able to
follow the AAA Code of Ethics.
Tird, although HTS managers insist the
program is not an intelligence asset, the report
authors noted that the program is housed
within a DoD intelligence asset, that it has
reportedly been briefed as such an asset,
and that a variety of circumstances of the
work of Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) on
the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan create a
signicant likelihood
that HTS data will
be used as part of
military intelligence,
advertently or
inadvertently.
Fourth, HTTs
collect sensitive
socio-cultural
data in a high-
risk environment
while working for
one combatant in
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ongoing conicts. Given the lack of a well-
dened ethical framework of conduct for the
program and inability of HTT researchers
to maintain reliable control over data once
collected, the program places researchers and
their counterparts in the eld in harms way.
Fifth, when ethnographic investigation is
determined by military missions, is not
subject to external review, data is collected
in the context of war, in a potential coercive
environment, and results are integrated
into the goals of counterinsurgencyall
characteristic factors of the HTS concept
and its applicationit can no longer be
considered a legitimate professional exercise
of anthropology.
In summary, the report stresses that
while constructive engagement between
anthropology and the military is possible,
CEAUSSIC suggests that the AAA emphasize
the incompatibility of HTS with disciplinary
ethics and practice for job seekers and that it
further recognize the problem of allowing HTS
to dene the meaning of anthropology within
the DoD.

MEMBER PROFILE: ROBERT ALBRO

Robert Albro received his PhD in socio-cultural
anthropology from the University of Chicago
in 1999. He is a widely published expert on
social and indigenous movements in Latin
America, transnational civil society, cultural
rights frameworks and global cultural policy.
Since 1991 Rob has maintained long-term
ethnographic research on popular and
indigenous politics in Bolivia, including his
book Roosters at Midnight: Indigenous Signs
and Stigma in Local Bolivian Politics (SAR
Press, 2010).
His current research concerns global cultural
policy making, as it meaningfully shapes the
ongoing terms of globalization, including the
relevance of culture in contexts of security.
Robs research and writing have been
supported over the years by the National
Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American
Council for Learned Societies, among others.
Rob has also been a Fulbright scholar, and
has held fellowships at the Carnegie Council
for Ethics in International Affairs, the Kluge
Center of the Library of Congress, and
the Smithsonian Institution. Rob has held
several leadership positions in the American
Anthropological Association, including Chair
of the Committee for Human Rights and Chair
of the Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement
on Anthropology with the Security and
Intelligence Communities. He was honored
with the AAAs Presidents Award in 2009 for
outstanding contributions to the Association.
Most recently he has taught at Wheaton College
and at George Washington University. He
currently teaches in the School of International
Service at American University.
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