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The CIA Psychologist Who Designed the Torture Program Claims It Was Not Torture

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Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Weekend Contributor

We have seen and heard the claims from Donald Rumsfeld and others that the leaked Senate torture report is off base because the enhanced interrogation techniques were not only legal according to the Office of Legal Counsel, but they also produced results.  Putting aside the idea that just because an allegedly illegal act is claimed to have been successful in producing actionable intelligence, does not make it any more legal or illegal, is there a reason why we should listen to the participants who authorized the waterboarding and other torture procedures when they claim that all is well?

Now it seems that Donald Rumsfeld has company.  “In an uncompromising and wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, his first public remarks since he was linked to the program in 2007, James Mitchell was dismissive of a Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture in which he features, and which is currently at the heart of an intense row between legislators and the agency.

The committee’s report found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell, a retired air force psychologist, were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls.

But Mitchell, who was reported to have personally waterboarded accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remains unrepentant. “The people on the ground did the best they could with the way they understood the law at the time,” he said. “You can’t ask someone to put their life on the line and think and make a decision without the benefit of hindsight and then eviscerate them in the press 10 years later.” ‘  Reader Supported News 

Mr. Mitchell makes some claims that confuse and disturb me.  He seems to link being a torturer to a field agent or a soldier or Marine who puts his/her life on the line.  While many CIA and other defense agency agents do indeed put themselves at risk, I fail to see how waterboarding someone in a secure prison or base is putting your life on the line.

Mr. Mitchell also claims that anyone or any governmental oversight agency that is reviewing the actions of these heroes of torture is merely using hindsight years after the events occurred in order to go after these agents credibility.  Of course, Mr. Mitchell chooses to ignore or has conveniently forgotten that he and his superiors kept these activities secret from Americans for years.  Can someone please remind Mitchell that waterboarding has been illegal in the United States for decades?

Has Mitchell decided to speak out because he is worried about possible legal ramifications of his allegedly heroic torture activities that may be more fully disclosed in the Senate Report if it is declassified?   If Mr. Mitchell personally waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, maybe he should be worried.  Does it surprise anyone that Rumsfeld, Mitchell and Jose Rodriguez are all going on the record in the last year or two in attempt to whitewash their involvement in allowing, authorizing and undertaking illegal torture procedures?

If you don’t remember who Jose Rodriguez is, he is the CIA supervisor who authorized the destruction of the video tapes of the torture techniques in use and could have proven who said what and what was actually done.  So why would Rodriguez destroy the video tapes if he did nothing wrong and his allegedly illegal efforts produced results?  I think Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Mitchell protest too much.

What do you think should be done with the Senate Report?  Should it be fully declassified?  If the report does prove that agents of the government, no matter how high up, were involved in illegal activities, should they be prosecuted if the law still allows it?  If the CIA and other defense intelligence agencies are allowed to torture an accused prisoner, is any dissenter safe?  What do you think?

 

67 thoughts on “The CIA Psychologist Who Designed the Torture Program Claims It Was Not Torture”

  1. Paul Schulte @ 8:49pm: “Nuremburg is victor’s justice.”

    I hope everyone read that statement because out of everything I have read on these posts THAT is the most salient comment made on this topic. I have long held that the exclusion of the ‘Nuremburg Defense’ was wrong. Imagine that you were a German soldier who felt that killing Jews was wrong and refused to carry out your orders. Instead of six million dead, there would have been six million and one. Having served in the Navy for four years, we were always told that if you disagreed with an order you carried it out and THEN protested to your C.O. Now. Should Cheney, Rumsfield, John Yoo, and Bush be tried as war criminals. Of COURSE they should. Should the soldiers and the CIA personal that carried out the orders? Of COURSE they should. After all, the Allies set a precedent at Nuremburg. Isn’t that what jurisprudence is all about?

  3. I am astounded that Paul takes up for Nazi war criminals by echoing their cry that Nurenburg was victors justice. Churchill wanted real victors justice by simply hanging the leading Nazis with no trial at all. He also does not know that a number of the defendants were ACQUITED! That is called justice by the way.

    It gets even worse as he tries to hew to the GOP party line and justifies criminal acts and war crimes. If the US could execute a number of Japanese generals and officers for waterboarding US POWs, the US has an obligation to apply the SAME law and principles of justice to our own criminal officials. I hope that the International Criminal Court will issue warrants for their arrest since there is scant chance they will be brought to justice by the US. At least we can make sure that they will be hunted and taken prisoner if they ever leave the US.

  4. Enough! Let’s use the ‘techniques’ he designed on the ‘designer’ for 100 days straight, then ask him again, whether he thinks his ‘techniques’ are torture or not. And then, let’s push him out of a plane, with a parachute of course…. over Iraq.

  6. Darrel,
    What you are suggesting lowers us to the level of the criminal. Or worse. We have to maintain rule of law, or we become that which we loathe. One criminal act does not justify another.

    Anyone with any sense of history knows that criminal acts occur in any war, and are committed by members of all parties. That is one reason we must be vigilant, trying to stamp out criminality when we find it, no matter where we find it. In any war or armed conflict, men and women are called on to do things they would never have imagined when they were younger. The greatest danger is if they get to liking it. That is what seems to have happened with James Mitchell and his cohort, Bruce Jessen.

  7. Platos Cave and others as well. You all seem to have forgotten about the war crimes committed against thousands of Innocent American Citizens, our Military people, innocents of all other countries including their own by these horrible torturing and murdering serial killers. MAYBE they got a microscopic amount of what they dump trainloads of on innocents and brag about their brutality with pride!
    W.T.F. is the matter with all of you? War criminals of their ilk do not respect the Geneva Accords or deserve to be protected by them and here you are bending over backwards to have the heads of the very least of such offenders?????
    There is nothing that can be done to them that would scratch the surface of the horrible crimes these monster’s are responsible for committing and continue to inspire even after death.
    Yeah, right – they are all innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
    They are guilty of what they have done, period!
    Courts do not change that fact, but their butterfinger-decisions let a LOT of the obviously guilty return to commit their crimes again and again.

  8. Paul, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association, not the American Psychological Association. Besides the DSM-5 is the current edition, and homosexuality has not been listed as a mental disorder since the DSM-II came out in 1968. I imagine the people involved in that publication are probably dead by now.

    Anyone who tries to “cure” bipolar disorder with psychotherapy alone has no understanding of the disorder. Counseling can help them to come to grips with the idea they are going to have to be on medication and other life issues. But cure? No.

  10. This is kinda what the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials in post WWII stated as their defenses.

  11. I have a real problem with the APA. Every member who voted on the DSMs that decided that homosexuality was a mental disease that could be cured by members of the APA should be jailed. Any member who tried to cure homosexuals using the DSM diagnosis criteria should be jailed. Anyone who tried to cure bipolar with counseling should be jailed.

  12. Mr. Mtichell’s pathetic attempt to link torturers with “those who risk their lives” has it backwards. In fact by using torture he puts the soldiers risking their lives at risk for the same treatment from our enemies. It makes it impossible to complain about others committing torture when you are doing it yourself.

  13. Just had surgery on my left eye to repair a torn retina followed by two sessions of lasers being shot into the eye (100 to 150 times)to tack- weld the retina in place …. Forget the Waterboarding — piece of cake swallowing the water …

    The laser shots ride right down the optic nerve which runs straight out of the eye into the central brain area … Feels like someone is whacking the length of the nerve with a 5 lb. sledgehammer … Very painful

    Have contacted Cheney about substitution at Guantanamo … Those prisoners will talk yet ….

    Cheney hasn’t responded … Though I am sure he’s researching this .

  14. “In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists & I didn’t speak up because I’m not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews & I didn’t speak up beacuse I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists & I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics & I was a Protestant so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for me. By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone.”
    — Martin Niemoller

    “There are seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice & politics without principle.”
    — Mahatma Gandhi

  15. The principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles
    Principle I

    Principle I states, “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.”
    Principle II

    Principle II states, “The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.”
    Principle III

    Principle III states, “The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”
    Principle IV
    Main article: Superior Orders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Orders

    Principle IV states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”.

    This principle could be paraphrased as follows: “It is not an acceptable excuse to say ‘I was just following my superior’s orders'”.

  16. When politicians and politics infiltrate the administration of justice or the law, bad outcomes often follow. I think that is the core as to what happens at macroscopic levels such as this.

    Retroactive twisting of the law is a sign it is happening, eg: Commmitting an act, then minipulating the law to justify the action.

  18. “should they be prosecuted if the law still allows it?”

    Isn’t torture a war crime? Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes? I don’t think so – else why would be still be seeking those from WWII.

    An I think you have raised a good question, why would the tapes and other materials have been destroyed if they were exculpatory? That may not be evidence at a trial. But there is no reason that common sense inferences should not guide our investigation and understanding of those sad events.

    As for being guided by hindsight, I am pretty sure we can find statements from the time by military men who were flabbergasted by the claim that water boarding and other activities were not clear violations of the military code of justice.

    These people created a sophists interpretation of the law and now they have every reason to fear having their deeds clearly documented for all to see.

  19. James Mitchell is a total embarrassment to the entire field of psychology. If he truly believes what he is saying, it means that he knows squat about, 1) Psychology, and 2) Interrogation.

    Furthermore, the ethical standards of everyone even remotely involved in the torture program don’t register on any known scale of measurement.

    Here is the official statement from the American Psychological Association, written by the (then) President, Dr. James Bray in 2009. Quoting in part:

    APA has declared that psychologists have an obligation to intervene to stop torture or abuse, and a further obligation to report any instance of torture or abuse. In fact, the public record includes examples of psychologists behaving precisely how APA would expect. Unfortunately, two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, have been identified in media reports as proponents of using “reverse-engineered” SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) military training techniques for detainee interrogations. These techniques, when applied in this manner, are tantamount to torture as defined by APA and international law. Mitchell and Jessen are not members of the APA, and therefore the association has no jurisdiction to investigate their activities. The APA Code of Ethics however, should be a guidepost for the behavior of all psychologists regardless of the issue of membership status with APA, and we have a responsibility to voice our dismay at any psychologist’s reported role in detainee mistreatment. Furthermore, APA stands ready to adjudicate reports that any APA member has engaged in prohibited techniques.

    https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2009/04/editorial-bray.aspx

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