In Guantanamo courtroom, interrogator says he denounced abusive interrogations at CIA black sites
The man widely seen as the architect of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques used in the wake of 9/11 testified about the existence of what he viewed as abusive CIA interrogation operations outside his control.
James Mitchell, 67, a clinical psychologist formerly of the Air Force Survival School, was hired as a contractor by the CIA in 2002. The agency asked him to apply his experiences as a survival, evasion, resistance, and escape instructor toward developing an interrogation program. The program was formed in response to al Qaeda attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Mitchell appeared this week before a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to give dayslong testimony in a 9/11 death penalty case this week.
Mitchell and a partner, psychologist John "Bruce" Jessen, once ran a Spokane, Washington state-based consulting firm, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, and are credited with developing enhanced interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation and stress positions. The two were referenced in a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report, Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. The headquarters of their now-defunct business previously drew protesters who staged an anti-torture rally.
While on the stand at Guantanamo Bay, Mitchell harshly criticized how, in 2002 and 2003, other CIA interrogators at black sites did not follow what the psychologist viewed as the careful guidelines he’d laid out for ensuring interrogations were safe. The other interrogators also violated some of the Justice Department’s authorized techniques, he said. Mitchell personally waterboarded alleged al Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and alleged plotter of the USS Cole bombing Abd al Rahim al Nashiri.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/in-guantanamo-courtroom-interrogator-says-he-denounced-abusive-interrogations-at-cia-black-sites
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf