Shrinks Fault CIA Torture Tactics

Psychologists first known waterboarders in secret prisons

(NEWSER) - The CIA secretly agreed to pay at least $5 million in legal fees for two contractors who designed interrogations and repeatedly waterboarded detainees, say former US officials. Whereas CIA agents generally receive agency-paid insurance for potential legal bills, psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the first individuals to have been confirmed as having carried out waterboarding sessions, wanted extra coverage as public citizens. So the CIA agreed to pay Mitchell and Jessen’s firm’s legal fees directly. More»

Special prosecutor will pursue agents who took things 'too far'

(NEWSER) - Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to name a special prosecutor to probe cases of alleged CIA torture of terror suspects, the Los Angeles Times reports. Insiders say the narrowly focused inquiry will aim to determine "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in the so-called torture memos, but will not challenge the legal basis of the interrogation program itself. More»

Operation's architects lacked training in conducting interrogations, say CIS records

(NEWSER) - Two US psychologists with no training in conducting interrogations boasted of earning $1000 a day designing and helping to implement use of waterboarding techniques on CIA detainees, reports ABC News. Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, are considered the architects of the interrogation operation that Barack Obama has labeled torture. More»

(NEWSER) - A report long suppressed by Bush administration officials set to be released next week says the CIA used mock executions as part of post-9/11 interrogations, Newsweek reports—though federal law prohibits threatening prisoners with “imminent death,” and the practice wasn’t authorized by the Justice Department, unlike other “enhanced” techniques like waterboarding. More»

Post: Higher-ups pushed interrogators for harsher methods than they wanted

(NEWSER) - The FBI was already getting information out of a suspected terrorist in a series of relatively friendly interrogations in 2002 when the CIA stepped in, a former US official tells the Washington Post. Agency contract psychologists escalated the techniques to sleep deprivation, extreme cold, and waterboarding, which the FBI interrogators called "borderline torture." Then, CIA higher-ups escalated the process further. More»