Architect of CIA’s Torture Program
Testifies Before Man He Waterboarded
183 Times
By Margot Williams
January 22, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
A psychologist
who helped to design and execute the
CIA’s “enhanced interrogation
techniques” testified in open court for
the first time on Tuesday in connection
with the trial of five men accused of
planning the 9/11 attacks.
“I suspected from the beginning that
I would end up here,” James Mitchell
told a Guantánamo Bay courtroom. Dressed
in a charcoal suit and bright red tie,
Mitchell stated that although he could
have testified over a video link, he had
chosen to come in person. “I did it for
the victims and families,” he told James
G. Connell III, an attorney for Ammar
al-Baluchi, one of the accused plotters.
“Not for you.”
He added: “You folks have been saying
untrue and malicious things about me and
Dr. [Bruce] Jessen for years.”
Mitchell and his colleague Jessen
were previously questioned in
videotaped depositions in a civil
case, but the proceedings underway at
the military court complex in Guantánamo
represent the first courtroom
appearances by the two psychologists as
witnesses. On Tuesday, the accused
architect of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, sat just yards from the
men who waterboarded him 183 times in a
CIA black site in Poland in March 2003.
The topic of Tuesday’s hearing was a
motion to suppress statements made by
the 9/11 defendants while they were
being held in detention, even after they
were brought from the CIA’s black sites
to Guantánamo. The defense attorneys
allege that the statements the men made
at Guantánamo were not voluntary because
of the profound impact of
their prior torture, which was
overseen by Mitchell and Jessen.
The torture techniques, approved by
the George W. Bush administration, were
used by the CIA as part of the
rendition, detention, and interrogation
program from 2002 to 2008. These
methods, including waterboarding, were
designed to “condition” prisoners to
provide information to interrogators and
debriefers.
The CIA renounced the harsh
interrogation techniques in 2009, and
the Senate’s torture report later
found that the program was a violation
of U.S. and international law that
failed to generate usable information
for counterterrorism operations.
Mitchell and Jessen ran a contracting
company that provided interrogators and security
personnel to the CIA program at a cost of $81
million over several years. During that time, the
psychologists personally conducted interrogations,
trained interrogators, participated in debriefings,
and observed interrogations.
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In 2015, the American Civil Liberties
Union sued the pair in federal court in
Spokane, Washington, on behalf of two former
detainees, as well as the family of another
prisoner who died in custody at a
black site. The two psychologists provided
testimony in that case, which was
settled out of court in 2017. The terms
of the settlement remain confidential. In a
joint statement released by the parties,
Mitchell and Jessen acknowledged “that they
worked with the CIA to develop a program …
that contemplated the use of specific
coercive methods to interrogate certain
detainees,” but asserted that the abuses
occurred without their knowledge or
involvement and that as a result, they were
not responsible.
Mohammed’s co-defendants Walid bin Attash, Ramzi
bin al-Shibh, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and Mohammed’s
nephew Baluchi also endured torture techniques
proposed by Mitchell and Jessen, and they, too, were
present in the courtroom on Tuesday. There were no
audible reactions from the defendants during the
morning testimony, which is expected to continue
through next week.
Questioning on Tuesday morning focused on
Mitchell’s 2016 book “Enhanced Interrogation,”
written with former CIA chief spokesperson Bill
Harlow, in which Mitchell vehemently objects to
the findings of the Senate’s 2014 torture
report. In a bizarre twist, the book contains
information that defense attorneys in the 9/11
case may be barred from using under a new
“classification guidance” delivered by the
government last Thursday and revised Tuesday
morning. The guidance — which is itself
classified — contains a restriction on
presenting information deemed a threat to
national security. For example, although the
names of countries where black sites were
located are now known from books and European
court proceedings, they cannot be mentioned in
the courtroom at Guantánamo.
Mitchell proved an antagonistic witness. He
confirmed that his book had undergone an
intensive pre-publication review by the CIA and
the Department of Defense, and said that prior
to the new restrictions, no one had suggested
that he had disclosed classified information.
The book has sold 40,000 to 50,000 copies,
Mitchell estimated.
When asked what his reaction would be to the
claim that the information in his book could
harm national security, he responded, “My
reaction would be: Buy the publication rights
and take it off the market.”
Separated by a curtain from the press and
observers from nongovernmental organizations,
relatives of 9/11 victims could be heard voicing
their agreement with some of Mitchell’s testy
responses. This article was
originally published by "The
Intercept" -
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