Psychological Assessment Associates

Psychological Assessment Associates was a CIA proprietary company set up in Washington in 1962 to house John Gittinger's personality assessment team after the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology was phased out. Gittinger served as president, and the company's cover was to provide psychological services to American firms overseas. He personally opened a branch office in Tokyo, later moved to Hong Kong, to service CIA stations in the Far East. The Washington staff grew to about 15 professionals during the 1960s and handled the rest of the world by sending assessment specialists on temporary visits.¹

The company received CIA funds through contracts that replaced the earlier Human Ecology grants. Hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed out to verify and expand the Personality Assessment System. The Society had given about $140,000 to David Saunders of the Educational Testing Service, who found a correlation between brain EEG patterns and results on the digit-span test, and helped Gittinger apply the system to other countries. Under Psychological Assessment Associates, this work continued on an even larger scale.¹

In 1973 Gittinger and his longtime associate John Winne published a basic description of the PAS in a professional journal. Shortly thereafter, Gittinger stopped being president but stayed on as a consultant. He took a copy of the 29,000 Wechsler results with him when he returned to Oklahoma.¹