In Guantanamo courtroom, interrogator says he denounced abusive interrogations at CIA black sites

Mitchell and a partner, psychologist John “Bruce” Jessen, once ran a Spokane, Washington state-based consulting firm, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, and are credited with developing enhanced interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation and stress positions. The two were referenced in a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report, Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. The headquarters of their now-defunct business previously drew protesters who staged an anti-torture rally.

While on the stand at Guantanamo Bay, Mitchell harshly criticized how, in 2002 and 2003, other CIA interrogators at black sites did not follow what the psychologist viewed as the careful guidelines he’d laid out for ensuring interrogations were safe. The other interrogators also violated some of the Justice Department’s authorized techniques, he said. Mitchell personally waterboarded alleged al Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and alleged plotter of the USS Cole bombing Abd al Rahim al Nashiri.

Mitchell described a “poorly run” black site believed to be in Afghanistan in late 2002, where “they left indigenous guards there overnight.” Mitchell said, “It was colder than it should’ve been” with “prisoners with various states of clothing” who were “chained in what appeared to be horse stalls.” Mitchell said he questioned Nashiri there in an interrogation room.

Mitchell pointed to the death in custody of suspect Gul Rahman, about whom he said his partner, Jessen, sent a cable to the CIA to “get him some heaters, blankets, and food.”

“I would’ve gotten him a physician,” Mitchell said, and he said a CIA official cursed him when he brought up the issue.

But he focused most of his ire on the now-deceased and unnamed chief interrogator for the CIA’s then-newly formed rendition, detention, and interrogation group of the Counterterrorism Center’s special missions department.

The chief interrogator was referred to as “NX2” throughout the military court proceedings, though Mitchell referred to him as “The New Sheriff” in his 2016 book, Enhanced Interrogations, and during his testimony this week.

“There is a new sheriff in town. I’m calling the shots now. Your services as an interrogator are no longer needed, but you can’t leave,” Mitchell quoted “NX2” as saying when they first met in December 2002 at a black site in what is believed to be Poland.

“There are some things we can’t do unless you’re here, because you’re the only one authorized to do them,” Mitchell said “NX2” told him, adding, “I had no idea what he was talking about, and to this day I still don’t know.”

Mitchell said he was disturbed by how “NX2” treated Nashiri, 55, and described how “NX2” and his “acolytes” forced Nashiri into painful stress positions.

“He was rabid about getting people to call him ‘sir,’” Mitchell said. “Everything that happened to Nashiri was because he wouldn’t call him ‘sir.’”

“What bothered me about what they taught and what I’d observed earlier with Nashiri is that they pushed his body back past the 45-degree angle with his shoulders touching the floor,” Mitchell said, describing how the interrogators jammed a broomstick behind Nashiri’s knees and two men pushed the terrorist’s body to the ground. “And he was screaming … and I was concerned they were gonna dislocate his knees.”

Mitchell “worried that [the interrogators] were gonna sprain Nashiri’s neck” when they put the man’s head against a wall during another stress position. Mitchell testified that he saw them cinch Nashiri’s elbows together behind his back, bend his waist, and raise his arms above his head.

“That’s when I interrupted,” Mitchell said, getting in a shouting match with “NX2.” “If people are unable to — or afraid to — stop someone from going too far, you can get abusive drift.”

“You’ll never work again in the agency, and you’ll never work in the interrogation program again,” Mitchell said he was told. “And I said, ‘Thank God.’”

Mitchell said he reported the chief interrogator’s behavior up the chain of command and that his superior’s deputy called Mitchell a “pussy” and a “bleeding heart.”

Mitchell said the chief interrogator told him he’d aided in interrogations alongside anti-communist rebels such as the Contras and that he planned to “use an approach he had learned in Latin America.”

James Connell, the defense attorney for Ammar al Baluchi, Mohammed’s nephew and an alleged facilitator of the 9/11 terrorist plot, asked Mitchell about multiple CIA cables detailing harsh interrogation tactics used by “NX2” and others.

One report on Baluchi, 42, from May 2003, described sleep deprivation, three facial grabs, 20 facial slaps, 10 belly slaps, one round of walling, one water dousing, 30 minutes of a stress position with his head against a wall, and 25 minutes of a stress position kneeling.

“The thing that stands out to me is 20 facial slaps — that seems excessive,” Mitchell testified. “That’s a lot of them. At my most contentious time with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, when he was looking at me like he wanted to cut my head off, I slapped him only three times. … So, that seems like a lot.”

Connell read to Mitchell from a CIA inspector general report wherein CIA interrogators described the harsh interrogation of Baluchi as a “training session” where “the new guys trained on him.”

“Is using a real human being as a training prop something you would do?” Connell asked.

“We had them practice on themselves so they would know what it felt like,” Mitchell answered. “We didn’t have them practice on detainees.”

A staff psychologist later saw the chief interrogator use a broomstick on a detainee. Back at CIA headquarters, the psychologist asked advice from Mitchell, who recommended that the incident be reported.

“Almost immediately, ‘NX2’ was removed,” Mitchell said.

In 2005, Mitchell and Jessen formed a company that was paid $81 million over four years to manage most of the CIA’s black site interrogations.