GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — A former CIA waterboarder appeared in the same military courtroom on Friday as some of the alleged terrorists he’d interrogated at black sites years ago, wrapping up two weeks of testimony about the agency’s response to the 9/11 attacks.
Dr. John “Bruce” Jessen, a former Air Force survival school psychologist, helped design the CIA’s so-called enhanced interrogation program after the 2001 al Qaeda terrorist hijackings that left 3,000 people dead. Jessen, 70, testified for one day at the end of a two-week pretrial hearing in the death penalty case being tried in Guantanamo Bay against five of the alleged plotters.
The interrogator’s court appearance followed more than eight days of testimony by his fellow psychologist and business partner, Dr. James Mitchell. The two men used their experience with the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program to help the CIA interrogate detainees. Their company was paid $81 million.
The duo waterboarded a number of terrorists in 2002 and 2003, including Osama bin Laden deputy Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was present in court.
“I don’t recognize these guys anymore — they’ve all grown up. I think I recognize Mukhtar in front with his red beard,” Jessen said, referring to the name Mohammed, 55, used for himself during interrogations. The self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, sitting at the first defense team table clad in a white tunic with a dark turban-like scarf and a camouflage jacket, was joined in court by three of his four co-defendants: Mohammed’s nephew Ammar al Baluchi, alleged 9/11 hijacker trainer Walid bin Attash, and 9/11 facilitator Ramzi bin al Shibh. Al Qaeda money man Mustafa al Hawsaw declined to attend.
The then-Democratic-led Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report criticized Jessen, referring to him by the pseudonym “Hammond Dunbar,” and termed the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program ineffective and torture. The CIA, for its part, countered that the techniques had disrupted plots and saved lives.
Alka Pradhan, a lawyer on Baluchi’s legal team, pressed Jessen about the CIA’s interrogation program as she and the other defense teams sought to connect the agency’s activities to the FBI and to persuade the court to toss out the confessions their clients made to the bureau.
Jessen, dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and no tie, said he’d been to at least eight of the CIA’s secretive black sites over the years. His testimony touched on Jessen’s input into the design of the interrogation program in late 2001 and 2002, first as a member of the Pentagon’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency and then as a CIA contractor. He discussed the influence of his SERE training experiences in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques and the flaws he saw at a grim site known as “Location 2,” where suspected Afghan militant Gul Rahman was held and died of hypothermia in 2002. He also talked about the ACLU lawsuit against himself and Mitchell brought on behalf of Rahman and two other former detainees, and much more.
“After KSM was through with the enhanced interrogation techniques, which included waterboarding … he, more than anyone else I’ve ever seen, was most effective at diminishing the effects of the waterboard,” Jessen said. “He was a strong guy and a resilient guy … And he was able to thwart the effect of the waterboard by the second time … I know he didn’t like it, but he coped with it very effectively.”
Mohammed was waterboarded in 15 sessions, with water poured onto his face at least 183 times.
Jessen defended the use of SERE techniques in the interrogation program.
“The U.S. government wouldn’t torture their own people,” he said, noting the techniques used against U.S. special forces “were designed to teach students they could handle tough times.” The psychologist said the techniques “weren’t tortuous, but they were difficult.”
And he also said he understood the difference between a SERE training session and a waterboarding of a detained captive.
“Obviously, detainees couldn’t quit the detainee program … But they could stop the administration of the techniques at any time by talking,” Jessen said. “What the program was designed to do was to gather intel. We weren’t concerned about confessions … The objective was to get the detainees to willingly engage in dialogue with the CIA analysts at some level.”
“If at any time, they didn’t want the techniques to be applied, all they had to do was talk, and most of them did that right away,” Jessen said. “We weren’t naive enough to think they would tell the truth all the time.”
Elsewhere in his testimony, Jessen detailed his experiences at the black site believed to be in Afghanistan where Rahman died in late 2002. The psychologist said he’d interrogated the prisoner a number of times, but he also had pushed many officials and a medical officer to improve the treatment of Rahman and to fix the flaws at the dark and cold facility. Rahman was subjected to hard takedowns, cold showers, and short-chaining in his cell.
“They were not authorized in the program I was working in,” he said, claiming, “I wasn’t in charge, and I didn’t know what was going on.”
Jessen recounted learning of Rahman’s death by phone.
“This is the CIA. We want to talk with you about Gul Rahman. And I said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ … That was the first thing that came to my mind — that he died of exposure,” Jessen said. “I’m not trying to sensationalize it … It’s just the first thought that came to me.”
The grey-bearded and bespectacled psychologist hinted that his Friday testimony might be the defense team’s one and only bite at the apple with him at the island court. “I’m here to answer questions truthfully,” Jessen said near the start of his testimony, later adding, “I said I would come for two weeks and testify, and then, I’d be done. So, I hope you remember that.”
After Jessen was dismissed from the courtroom, a clash between a few defense teams and the judge ended the hearings on a contentious note.
Gary Sowards, Mohammed’s lead counsel and a former defense attorney for “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, wanted the judge to bring Jessen back into the courtroom to order the psychologist to return to the naval base for future testimony “while he is still here and physically within the jurisdiction of the commission.”
“If I have to get him down to a foreign country, that is beyond my jurisdiction,” Cohen replied. There are jurisdictional problems with our subpoena power because of the jurisdiction.”
Sowards countered that the judge had been given the power to hold witnesses in contempt and urged him to use it, referencing Jessen’s comments about not coming back.
“I understand what he said. We’ll see if he has a change of heart,” the judge replied.
Sowards pressed the issue, and Cohen said that “based on my 21-plus years in the military,” he didn’t think Mohammed’s defense lawyer was right about the judge’s authority. “I get it, and I will take it under advisement,” Cohen said, adding, “I have held him subject to recall, sir. I have already told him that.”
“I object that the commission is not doing all that is necessary,” Sowards said.
“We’ll see, sir,” Cohen said.
Members of the other defense team signaled that they were joining the Mohammed team’s position.
“You can join all you want,” the judge said and abruptly left the courtroom.
