CIA Agreed to Pay Legal Fees of Waterboarding Psychologists
The CIA agreed to pay at least $5 million in legal fees for two psychologists who created the CIA’s waterboarding and interrogation program, according to a published report.
The psychologists, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, personally conducted waterboarding sessions, the Associated Press reports. The promise to pay legal fees was more generous than the one given to the CIA’s own officers, who had to cover half of their insurance premiums after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The AP story was based on interviews with former U.S. intelligence officials who remained anonymous.
Mitchell and Jessen had taught military officials how to resist interrogations, and were tapped to oversee the interrogation of al-Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah in a secret CIA prison, the story says. The psychologists waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times and “did the bulk of the work,” the story says.
They also waterboarded USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Nashiri twice in Thailand and provided support for the waterboarding of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, according to the AP report.
Prior coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “2 Psychologists With ‘Famously Little Experience’ Engineered Post-9/11 Tactics”
