ACLU Brings Lawsuit Against Two Psychologists Who Ran CIA’s Post-9/11 Interrogations

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced last month that it has filed a lawsuit against two psychologists who designed and implemented the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s post-9/11 program of “enhanced interrogation” on behalf of three victims of the program.

Gul Rahman, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud—three of more than 100 victims and survivors of the CIA program—are suing psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, who helped convince the CIA to adopt as official policy the use of harsh and extreme interrogation techniques, which the ACLU in its suit refers to as “torture.”

“Mitchell and Jessen conspired with the CIA to torture these three men and many others,” said Steven Watt, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program, in a statement. “They claimed that their program was scientifically based, safe, and proven, when in fact it was none of those things. The program was unlawful and its methods barbaric. Psychology is a healing profession, but Mitchell and Jessen violated the ethical code of ‘do no harm’ in some of the most abhorrent ways imaginable.”

Under Mitchell and Jessen’s interrogation program that was adopted by the CIA in 2002, the plaintiffs were subjected to severe physical and psychological conditions including sleep deprivation, starvation, sensory deprivation, extreme temperatures, and waterboarding, according to the ACLU. One of the victims, Gul Rahman, died in his cell while being detained by the CIA; his family is bringing the suit on his behalf.

Mitchell and Jessen trained and supervised other CIA personnel in their methods, according to the ACLU. In 2005, they founded a company named Mitchell, Jessen & Associates with which the CIA contracted to run its interrogation program, including supplying interrogators and security for black sites and rendition operations.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington state, where Mitchell, Jessen & Associates was based and where Jessen currently lives. The plaintiffs are suing Mitchell and Jessen under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows federal lawsuits for gross human rights violations.

In July, a report commissioned by the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association found that key officials at the American Psychological Association colluded with Department of Defense (DoD) officials to have the association issue “loose, high-level ethical guidelines that did not constrain DoD in any greater fashion than existing DoD interrogation guidelines” (Psychiatric News, August 21). The report concluded that the psychological association’s “principal motive in doing so was to align [the association] and curry favor with DoD. There were two other important motives: to create a good public-relations response, and to keep the growth of psychology unrestrained in this area.”

The report also found that “[American Psychological Association] officials engaged in a pattern of secret collaboration with DoD officials to defeat efforts by the American Psychological Association Council of Representatives to introduce and pass resolutions that would have definitively prohibited psychologists from participating in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention centers abroad.”

In 2006, the American Psychiatric Association approved a policy strictly prohibiting psychiatrists from participation in interrogations. That position was reaffirmed by the Board of Trustees and Assembly in 2014. ■

The ACLU suit can be accessed here. The “Report to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association: Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics, Guidelines, National Security Interrogations and Torture” is available here.