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APA Backs CIA Detainee Abuse Claim/Dr. James Mitchell’s Design and Implementation of CIA Torture Methods

Alex Constantine - July 13, 2010

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS | July 10, 2010 | AP

James Mitchell torture - APA Backs CIA Detainee Abuse Claim/Dr. James Mitchell’s Design and Implementation of CIA Torture MethodsDr. James Mitchell

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Psychologists in the United States have been warned by their professional group not to take part in torturing detainees in U.S. custody. Now the American Psychological Association has taken the unprecedented step of supporting an attempt to strip the license of a psychologist accused of overseeing the torture of a CIA detainee.

The APA has told a Texas licensing board in a letter mailed July 1 that the allegations against Dr. James Mitchell represent "patently unethical" actions inconsistent with the organization's ethics guidelines.

If any psychologist who was a member of the APA were found to have committed the acts alleged against Mitchell, "he or she would be expelled from the APA membership," according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. APA spokeswoman Rhea Farberman confirmed its contents.

The letter is the first of its kind in the board's history, Farberman said.

"The allegations put forward in the complaint and those that are on the public record about Dr. Mitchell are simply so serious, and if true, such a gross violation of his professional ethics, that we felt it necessary to act," Farberman said.

Mitchell is a retired Air Force psychologist who participated in the 2002 CIA interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Mitchell is not a member of the American Psychological Association.

Interrogators in Thailand subjected Zubaydah to severe cold, food and sleep deprivation, confinement in a narrow box and, with Mitchell participating, a simulated form of drowning known as waterboarding, according to the complaint filed with the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists.

"Regardless of what legal categories these techniques fall within, one conclusion is clear: a psychologist who helps inflict such cruel and shocking abuse on a defenseless human being would appear to have violated basic standards of conduct of the profession," according to the complaint by Northwestern University law professor Joseph Margulies and filed on behalf of a Texas psychologist.

"Obviously, I'm not free to discuss any work I may have done for the CIA," Mitchell told the AP. He called the complaint libelous and said it is "riddled throughout with fabricated details, lies, distortions and inaccuracies."

Sherry Lee, the Texas board director, said complaints are shielded under Texas law and she could not comment.

The APA is monitoring similar filings in Ohio and New York made Wednesday against psychologists who oversaw detainee interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, but has no plans to back those efforts.

The accusations against Mitchell are "at a level of seriousness and credibility that we think is different than any other allegations against other psychologists that we know of," Farberman said.

The San Francisco-based Center for Justice & Accountability filed a complaint against Dr. John Leso with the New York Office of the Professions, alleging professional misconduct. Leso led a behavioral science consultation team at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2003.

The complaint said Leso developed abusive interrogation techniques based on Army survival methods. Those methods, "Survive Evade Rescue and Escape" or SERE, teach soldiers how to withstand physical and psychological abuse they might face if captured by the enemy, according to the complaint against Leso.

In a second complaint, Harvard University's International Human Rights Clinic alleges that retired Army Col. Larry James observed abusive interrogations and didn't do anything to stop them.

The complaint says James, dean of professional psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, oversaw abuse at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2003, 2007 and 2008 when he served with the base's Behavioral Science Consultation Team.

The complaint against Leso says he is stationed at Fort Rucker, Ala. He could not be immediately reached. Messages were left Wednesday and Friday with the fort's public affairs office. James has declined to comment. The Ohio board declined to pursue a similar complaint filed against James in 2008.

Boards in California, Louisiana and New York have rejected similar complaints in the past. But new sources of information, such as the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report, provide details that make the new complaints stronger, said Kathy Roberts, staff attorney with the Center for Justice & Accountability.

In 2008 the APA voted to ban its members from taking part in interrogations at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention sites where it believes international law is being violated.

The APA has also condemned the use of sexual humiliation, allegations of which are included in both the James and Leso complaints.

As a result, the Harvard clinic expects the APA to follow suit with those complaints, said Deborah Popowski, of the clinic.

Steven Reisner, a New York psychologist who brought the complaint against Leso, urged the APA to support an investigation, saying the case was similar to the Mitchell complaint.

Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002 on suspicion of being a top al-Qaida official. He was the first detainee subjected to Bush administration-approved harsh interrogation techniques, which included waterboarding, slamming the suspect into walls and prolonged period of nudity.

Zubaydah later told a military tribunal he suffered physical and mental torture and nearly died four times. Zubaydah claimed that after many months of such treatment, authorities concluded he was not the No. 3 person in al-Qaida as they had long believed.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8DoAB4F9sh3gUB6xZ5c-NwTmWTAD9GSEREG0

James Mitchell

Torture Connection: Designing and implementing CIA torture methods
  • Retired from U.S. Air Force in May 2001 as an officer administering SERE training--programs training military personnel to withstand possible enemy torture
  • June 2001-April 2002, operated several firms providing services associated with "extreme situations." Contacted CIA with torture contract proposal.
  • April 2002-?? as principal in new company, Mitchell Jessen & Assocs., contracted with CIA to provide torture services

Mitchell proposes torture program to CIA as a money-making contract for his private firm

Shortly after 9/11, James Mitchell asked Air Force psychologist Bruce Jessen to let him see a top secret document, believed to be the al Qaeda training manual. Based on its contents, he wrote a proposal for a torture interrogation program, which he and Bruce Jessen offered to run for the CIA as private contractors, to be paid "more than $1,000 a day" plus expenses, tax free. In April 2002, when an al Qaeda prisoner being held at a CIA safe house in Thailand began talking to FBI interrogators, contributing "actionable intelligence" about al Qaeda personnel and activities, the CIA took Mitchell up on his offer and invited him to try his methods on the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah. Mitchell showed up in Thailand, announced to FBI interrogators that he was taking over, with the blessing of top officials in Washington, and ordered that Zubaydah be confined "like a dog" to a small box. When Zubaydah ceased cooperating with interrogators, Mitchell ordered waterboarding and other torture. He videotaped the process and submitted daily email reports to Washington, apparently to Alberto Gonzales, who at the time was serving as Bush's personal lawyer. Mitchell is believed to have received daily authorization from Gonzales to continue and/or ramp up the torture.

Mitchell's torture methods had no basis in experience, training, or science

Mitchell and Jessen had never before conducted a single interrogation. Jessen's military assignment--and Mitchell's former assignment, before he retired from the air force in mid-2001--was to monitor mock interrogations and torture sessions for training purposes (military SERE training), so that military personnel tmight get a taste of possible mistreatment they could expect if they fell into enemy hands. Mitchell and Jessen had persuaded the CIA and/or the White House that suspected terrorists detained in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere were different from all previous prisoners that military and FBI interrogators had handled in the past; the new prisoners, Mitchell insisted, had been trained to resist ordinary interrogation methods and would respond only to torture. Mitchell explained to experienced interrogators on the scene that this theory was "science," but no scientific data has ever emerged in its support. Mitchell's methods, administered by civilian contractors he hired and "trained" on the job, became the standard approach for handling high-value prisoners and many ordinary detainees as well. Torture videotapes he produced (for "training") were later destroyed by the CIA.

Washington torture memos aimed specifically at protecting Mitchell

His work with Zubaydah and apparently also with a second prisoner preceded official legal clearances for torture. Paperwork associated with the legal maneuvering suggests that some of the lawyers and other top-level officials were familiar with Mitchell's program and wished to establish it on secure legal footing. The firm Mitchell Jessen and Associates still operates out of Spokane, Washington, It advertises its expertise in "understanding, predicting and improving performance in high-risk and extreme situations."


Sources on James Mitchell

der Spiegel Online The Torture Business: CIA Outsourced Development of Interrogation Plan by John Goetz and Britta Sandberg, transl. Christopher Sultan
Vanity Fair.com Rohrschach and Awe by Katherine Eban
salon.com The CIA's Torture Teachers by Mark Benjamin
Salt Lake Tribune LDS lawyers, psychologists had a hand in torture policies by David R. Irvine, Brig. Gen., ret.
NPR.com / All Things Considered Did White House OK Earliest Detainee Abuse? by Ari Shapiro
Fire Dog Lake Did Abu Zubaydah’s Torture Begin After May 28, 2002? by Marcy Wheeler
salon.com The 13 People Who Made Torture Possible by Marcy Wheeler
American Torture Expose (Part 2): Roger Aldrich, the Al Qaeda Manual, and the Origins of Mitchell-Jessen by Jeff Kaye
American Torture Expose (Part 2) : Expanding the Investigation into SERE Torture by Jeff Kaye
American Torture Expose (Part 1): NYT Misses Full Story on Mitchell-Jessen by Jeff Kaye
The Washington Independent James Mitchell Asked, ‘Please Can I Torture Abu Zubaydah?’; Did Alberto Gonzales Say Yes? by Spencer Ackerman
AmericanTorture.com NYT Misses Full Story on Mitchell-Jessen (Expose Part 1) by Valtin (Michael Otterman)
AmericanTorture.com Expanding the Investigation into SERE Torture by Valtin (Michael Otterman)
AmericanTorture.com Roger Aldrich, the Al-Qaeda Manual, and the Origins of Mitchell-Jessen by Aldin (Michael Otterman
Global Research The CIA's Torture Teachers by Mark Benjamin

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