How designing a CIA torture program earned 2 men millions

Watch above: There are calls for criminal charges against those behind the CIA’s torture and interrogation programs, after a damning report highlighting brutal acts carried out on behalf of the U.S. government. Jackson Proskow reports.

The names James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen don’t show up at all in the 500-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA torture program, but they’re definitely mentioned throughout it, according to multiple reports.

Even though their names and alleged involvement in the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) program have been known for some time, the CIA contractors appear in the report (respectively) under the names “Dr. Grayson Swigert” and “Dr. Hammond Dunbar.” A. U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their identities to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Although they had no first-hand experience with interrogation or no “specialized knowledge” of al-Qaeda or terrorism, as the Senate Intelligence Committee report indicated, the men had plenty of experience with “coercive interrogation techniques.”

But by the time their involvement with the CIA’s interrogation program wrapped up in 2009, they had earned millions of dollars off of the torture of detainees.

READ MORE: UN expert wants U.S. officials who authorized torture to be prosecuted

The two former contractors have a non-disclosure agreement and can’t reveal details of their involvement with the program.

But, Mitchell spoke on camera with VICE News,  in an interview posted online Wednesday, following the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report that indicated the torture techniques did not lead to interrogators extracting the information they sought.

“It was to facilitate getting actionable intelligence by making a bad cop that was bad enough that people would engage with the good cop,” Mitchell told VICE News. “I would be stunned if they found any kind of evidence to suggest that EITs, as they were being applied, yielded actionable intelligence.”

He now lives in central Florida. He likes to chill out in a canoe, watching alligators swim by.

Mitchell was careful not to say he was involved in the program, adding his “credentials have been misrepresented” and rumours he “banged on the door” of the CIA.

“Swigert” and “Dunbar” were psychologists at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program — a Washington state-based program to “expose” military personnel to torture techniques they might encounter if “taken prisoner by countries that did not adhere to the Geneva protections.” (The U.S. is a signatory of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the use of torture.)

“These techniques were designed to give our students a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless, lawless enemy so that they would be better prepared to resist. The techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody,” a footnote in the report explained.

It was the SERE program that “Swigert” drew from to come up with a list of proposed techniques to eventually try out on the CIA’s first high-profile detainee, suspected al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah.

READ: How the CIA tortured its guinea pig detainee Abu Zubaydah

The list originally included 12 techniques: attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, waterboard, use of diapers, use of insects and mock burial. Waterboarding was not initially approved, but was later on, while mock burial was not approved.

After putting Zubaydah through 20 days of the interrogation techniques, including waterboarding him 83 times, a CIA cable recommended “the aggressive phase… should be used as a template for future interrogation of high value captives.” They techniques were used several times over, in a much more severe manner in some cases, even though the interrogators determined Zubaydah didn’t “possess undisclosed threat information, or intelligence that could prevent a terrorist threat.”

READ MORE: Senate report: Harsh tactics didn’t net bin Laden

The Senate Committee report stated the training of interrogators, “who lacked relevant training and experience,” began after that.

“Mitchell and Jessen’s methods were so controversial that, among colleagues, the reaction to their names alone became a litmus test of one’s attitude toward coercion and human rights,” Katherine Eban wrote for a Vanity Fair 2007 article that linked the men to the torture program.

It was in that same article that Mitchell and Jessen said they were against torture.

“The advice we have provided, and the actions we have taken have been legal and ethical. We resolutely oppose torture. Under no circumstances have we ever endorsed, nor would we endorse, the use of interrogation methods designed to do physical or psychological harm,” the men said in a statement to the magazine.

According to a 2009 article in The New York Times, Mitchell got on the CIA’s radar in 2001 thanks to his theories that “learned helplessness” would lead to cooperation with interrogators.

READ MORE: 5 key findings from the Senate committee report on CIA interrogations

Quoting an unnamed source, The New York Times reported Mitchell told the CIA the interrogations needed “a comparable level of fear and brutality to flying planes into buildings.”

Mitchell reportedly began consulting with the CIA Counterterrorism Center in early 2002 and the early phases of the program were developed by March, when the CIA detained Zubaydah following a raid in Pakistan. The torture of Zubaydah began in August of that year, after the plan was authorized by the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

Mitchell and Jessen formed a private company in 2005, “specifically for the purpose of conducting their work with the CIA,” the Senate Committee report stated. Mitchell, Jessen and Associates would have ultimately earned $81 million from the CIA. But, had U.S. President Barack Obama not cancelled the program in 2009, the contract would have been worth more than $180 million.