CIA documents expose internal agency feud over psychologists leading interrogation program
By Greg Miller January 19 at 7:00 AM
Newly released CIA documents expose a bitter internal feud over the qualifications and ethics of two former military psychologists who pushed the agency to adopt interrogation methods widely condemned as torture.
A series of internal emails reveal that the CIA’s own medical and psychological personnel expressed deep concern about an arrangement that put two outside contractors in charge of subjecting detainees to brutal measures including waterboarding, then also evaluating whether those methods were working or causing lasting harm.
In one of the more prescient warnings, an agency official wrote that “if some untoward outcome is later to be explained, their sole use in this role will be indefensible.” The message was dated June 2003, but seemed to anticipate the controversy that would engulf the agency when the details of the interrogation program were exposed.
A highlighted portion of the email exchanges among CIA personnel. (The Washington Post)
The files, which also include documents that shed light on the death of a CIA prisoner in Afghanistan, were made public as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the two contract psychologists, James Mitchell and J. Bruce Jessen, by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Jim and Bob have both shown blatant disregard for the ethics shared by almost all of their colleagues,” a second CIA memo concluded. The records reveal that internal opposition to the agency’s reliance on the two men was more extensive and intense than has been previously disclosed. More than 13 years after those emails were sent — and eight since the program was dismantled — the controversy has yet to fully subside.
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