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 The two men are referred to in the report by the pseudonyms
"Dunbar" and "Swigert" but have been identified by U.S. intelligence
sources as James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The CIA outsourced more
than 80 percent of its interrogation program to the company,
Mitchell Jessen & Associates of Spokane, Washington, for its work
from 2005 until the termination of the arrangement in 2009. The CIA
also paid the company $1 million to protect it and its employees
from legal liability.
The Senate report questioned the psychologists' qualifications and
accused them of violating professional ethics as architects of a
system that Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said amounted to the torture of some CIA detainees.
"Neither of the psychologists had any experience as an interrogator
nor did either have specialized knowledge of al Qaeda, a background
in counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic
experience," according to the report.
During an ordeal at a secret prison in early 2003, Abd al-Rahim
al-Nashiri, captured in 2002 and suspected of masterminding the
bombing of the USS Cole at Aden in 2000, was waterboarded
repeatedly, forced to stand with his hands on his head for hours at
a time and once, while blindfolded, was threatened with a buzzing
power drill held near his head. Some CIA personnel involved in the
episode concluded that Nashiri was not withholding significant
information on terrorism plots.
Even after that, a psychologist present urged that Nashiri be
subjected to further harsh methods to induce the "desired level of
helplessless," according to the report released on Tuesday. The
report didn't say whether that psychologist was Mitchell or Jessen.
The CIA's chief of interrogations was so appalled when he received
the proposed interrogation plan he emailed colleagues that the
program was a "train wreck" waiting to happen, and that he no longer
wanted to be associated with it, the report said.
"Why can't you leave me alone?" Mitchell, who has retired to
Florida, asked a Reuters reporter when contacted by telephone on
Tuesday. "I can't even confirm or deny if I was even involved. Talk
to the CIA."
He was quoted as telling London's Guardian newspaper in April that
he had nothing to apologize for, and that "I did the best that I
could." His former colleague, Jessen, could not be reached for
comment.
HIGH MARKS
The two psychologists were allowed to evaluate their own work, to
which they gave high marks, the report said.
"The contractors provided the official evaluation of whether the
detainees' psychological state allowed for the continued use of the
enhanced techniques even for some detainees they themselves were
interrogating," Feinstein said.
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In her preamble to the report, Feinstein wrote that her "personal
conclusion" was that some of the CIA detainees had been tortured. On
the Senate floor, she said the arrangement under which the
psychologists appraised their own interrogation work was a "clear
conflict of interest and a violation of professional guidelines."
Brought in by the CIA to help squeeze information from suspects
after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Mitchell and Jessen drew upon
their experience in a Cold-War era program that taught U.S. airmen
to cope with harsh interrogation if captured.
Starting in 2002, the two devised an approach that essentially
"reverse engineered" the Air Force’s Survival Evasion Resistance
Escape (SERE) program.
"I'm just a guy who got asked to do something for his country by
people at the highest level of government, and I did the best that I
could," Mitchell told the Guardian in the April interview.
"I don't care what Feinstein thinks about me," he said. "I'm retired
... I served my country and now I'm done. I did what I did for
whoever I did it for, and now I'm done with that stuff."
In October 2004, 21 months after Nashiri was last subjected to
enhanced interrogation techniques, an assessment by one of the
psychologists and another CIA interrogator concluded that he had
provided “essentially no actionable information,” the report says.
It is a result that mirrors the report's overall conclusions that
interrogations at secret CIA prisons were ineffective.
Over a period of years, Nashiri, who has been held at the U.S.
military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after spending time at a
series of secret CIA jails, has accused U.S. personnel of drugging
or poisoning him and has also gone on hunger strike, the report
said.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and David
Adams in Miami. Editing by John Pickering)
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