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In Guantanamo testimony, CIA waterboarder says he threatened to cut throat of 9/11 mastermind’s son GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba
The man seen as the architect of the CIA’s enhanced interrogations program, who personally waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, threatened to cut the throat of the alleged 9/11 mastermind's son if another attack occurred inside the United States.
Mohammed, 55, was dubbed “KSM”and described as “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” in the 9/11 Commission Report. The man who waterboarded him, Dr. James Mitchell, who was hired by the CIA in the wake of the al Qaeda terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, sought to defend his actions during a two-week-long pretrial military court hearing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“I said that if there was another catastrophic attack in the United States — one — and I find out about it — two — and you had information about it — three — and another American child died — four — I will cut your son’s throat,” Mitchell testified on Monday, claiming he sought legal advice from a CIA attorney known in court only as “PJ1” before threatening the captured terrorist.
Mitchell, 68, dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and a blue and silver tie, claimed he was advised that “if it was a threat of imminent harm then that would not be legal” but a “conditional threat” would be — and he emphasized the four conditions in the threat he made to Mohammed.
The admission seems to match a heavily redacted section of a 2004 CIA inspector general report stating that “an experienced agency interrogator reported that … [redacted] interrogators said to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that if anything else happens in the United States, ‘We’re going to kill your children.’ … With respect to the report provided to him of the threats, [redacted] that report did not indicate that the law had been violated.”
The 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s interrogation program also includes a reference to the incident and seems to indicate that the CIA attorney who gave Mitchell the green light worked for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and “later told the inspector general that these threats were legal so long as the threats were ‘conditional.’”
The Senate report states that “according to the CIA interrogator, during KSM’s first day at Detention Site Blue, Swigert and Dunbar first began threatening KSM’s children.”
Detention Site Blue is believed to be a CIA black site in Poland. "Swigert" was a pseudonym for Mitchell, while "Dunbar" was a pseudonym for Mitchell’s business partner, Dr. Bruce Jessen, who will testify later this week.
“Dunbar had nothing to do with this,” Mitchell said from the witness stand, slipping into calling him by his codename after repeatedly calling him “Dr. Jessen” for a week.
Mitchell testified that his motivation was to "stop them from killing thousands of other people,” and “the bulk of Americans are grateful for the sacrifices that Dr. Jessen and I took to keep them safe.”
David Nevin, a gray-haired and bespectacled defense attorney for Mohammed, grilled Mitchell about his actions while Mohammed, dressed in a white tunic with a camouflage jacket and dyed-red beard, followed closely from the defense table a couple dozen feet away.
Mitchell disputed the notion that the threats to Mohammed’s children began immediately upon Mohammed's arrival at the black site in early March 2003, after being captured in Pakistan days prior. He blamed the alleged falsehood on a man known in court as “NZ7” but referred to by Mitchell as “the preacher,” a man he says was an “acolyte” of “NX2,” also called “the new sheriff” by the CIA psychologist.
“This was one of the new sheriff’s acolytes who was working to move me out of the interrogation process,” Mitchell testified. “This man exaggerated some aspects of this.”
In his testimony, as well as in his 2016 book Enhanced Interrogation, Mitchell outlined a rivalry with “the new sheriff” and condemned what he saw as abusive treatment of detainees by him and those the man trained.
Mitchell, Jessen, and “the preacher” waterboarded Mohammed together.