Head psychologist defends CIA waterboarding of inmates in 9/11 case
6 Min Read
Mohammed is the only prisoner to have been subjected to this technique that many times in US history.
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In this Aug. 29, 2021, an American flag flies as seen from Camp Justice in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. (AP)
The New York Times released a report about the waterboarding frenzy that the CIA went on during its imprisonment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the man accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, detailing how the psychologist who witnessed it 183 times defends it.
During the case hearing this week, Mohammed's attorney, Gary D. Sowards, questioned the psychologist who administered the waterboarding and provided a different version of events.
Mohammed is the only prisoner to have been subjected to this technique that many times in US history, and last week's testimony included a clinical overview of how CIA officers frequently employed waterboarding and assessed its effectiveness in a secret jail in Poland in March 2003.
The appointed military court is attempting to determine whether or not torture affected Mohammed's confessions and those of the other defendants from September 11, 2001. If so, their admission at a capital trial would be barred.
According to psychologist John Bruce Jessen, Mohammed "yelled and writhed" while the guards "were trying to put him on the waterboard," and Jessen concurred with CIA cables to headquarters. Jessen attested to the fact that Mohammed "would sob when he was taken off the waterboard" throughout the first month of his detention.
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However, Jessen also noted that, as the CIA frequently stated, Mohammed was "extremely, uncharacteristically resilient on the waterboard" and "defeated it quite early."
In waterboarding, the prisoner is first restrained and then water is poured onto a cloth placed over his face, suffocating him for a sufficient amount of time to cause him to experience the sensation of drowning.
It is defined as torture by international law, and the United States has denounced its application to prisoners of war.
However, the CIA was given permission to waterboard detainees in its covert foreign network by attorneys working for the George W. Bush administration. After that, President Barack Obama ruled it unlawful.
Dr. Jessen directed Defense Department programs that prepared American personnel to withstand and survive captivity prior to September 11, 2001. He claimed to have witnessed drills in which individual US military members were waterboarded only once. However, he stated in his testimony that he had never done or encountered it before he suggested it to the CIA to employ it on "terrorism" suspects.
Officially, the CIA has acknowledged that it was used on three detainees before their September 2006 transfer to Guantanamo.
During his "enhanced interrogation" in Thailand during the summer of 2002, Jessen doused a prisoner known as Abu Zubaydah. In August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times and placed in a coffin-sized box for days on end.
Additionally, the team attempted to do so during their questioning of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of organizing the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole off the coast of Yemen. Mr. Nashiri, however, slid off the waterboard because he was too small.
This week, Jessen testified that he believed the words of Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a fourth man, when he said the technique was applied to him at a CIA prison in Afghanistan, and maintained that he reported it. Hawsawi is also facing charges in the Sept. 11 case.
Read more: 'Cruel, inhuman, degrading': UN demands US apology over Guantanamo Bay
Jessen stated that the president "on down" put pressure on the waterboarding team—currently in Poland—to extract information from Mohammed following his imprisonment in 2003. Mohammed was deprived of sleep during that period, at one point being held naked and made to stand in shackles for a week.
Regarding the inmates, Jessen claimed, "You're not there to hurt them."
Jessen was perplexed on multiple occasions during the hearing when the defendant was called by his last name, Mohammed as he was used to his initials, K.S.M., in the CIA prison network, also known as the black sites.
“I had no personal animosities towards Mr. K.S.M.,” Jessen claimed, adding, “But he was a lethal enemy. And my job was to do the best I could, along with the rest of the people, to find out if these attacks were real.”
According to Jessen's professional background, "moral compass," and legal counsel, he felt confident that the methods he assisted in developing did not amount to torture.
Jessen worked as a contractor for the CIA as part of a consulting partnership with James E. Mitchell, another psychologist, with whom he conducted interrogations and waterboarding of inmates. They established a company in 2005 for which the US government paid $81 million in order to supply all of the contract guards at the black sites and 80% of the agency's questioners.
According to the psychologists, they aimed to get him to provide specifics about upcoming attacks.
Dr. Mitchell had testified earlier that during his “enhanced interrogation", Mohammed tried to offer information about the 9/11 attacks, which they interrupted by ramming him backward into a wall as they were more interested in getting details of future plots.
Jessen provided a slow-motion demonstration of the "walling technique" on one of Mohammed's attorneys on Wednesday in video evidence from Virginia. He took the lawyer's dark hood off his head and gently wrapped a duct-taped towel around his neck while he stood against a wall in an annex of the courthouse. Subsequently, the questioner gradually pressed the attorney's head, shoulder blades, and back up against a wall.
According to interrogators, the towel has two purposes: it shields the prisoner from whiplash and provides a means for a captor to grab hold of a naked or only diapered prisoner when he "bounces off the wall."
In light of the hearing this week, Jessen declined to go back to Guantanamo. He was seen on a big screen across from Mohammed in the courtroom, above the witness stand.
