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CIA Fired Firms Aiding Questioning (waterboarding)
Washington Post ^ | June 15, 2009 | Walter Pincus

Posted on 06/15/2009 10:34:35 AM PDT by reaganaut1

Weeks after President Obama took office, the CIA extended its contract with a firm run by two psychologists who helped introduce waterboarding and other harsh methods to the agency's interrogation techniques, according to a news report.

Two months later, CIA Director Leon Panetta fired Mitchell, Jessen & Associates and all other contractors that aided the CIA in its interrogations of alleged terrorists, the New Yorker reported this weekend.

The firings took place in April, around the same time the Senate Armed Services Committee reported on the role played by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in developing "countermeasures to defeat" the resistance of captured enemy detainees from whom intelligence was being sought.

Mitchell and Jessen, who run the firm, had worked on a Pentagon program that taught U.S. service members how to survive harsh enemy interrogation methods. They relied on elements of that training in proposing an interrogation program for the CIA. It included methods such as sleep deprivation and other actions based on "theories of 'learned helplessness,' " the New Yorker reported.

Panetta told the magazine he "didn't support these methods that were used, or the legal justification for why they did it." He also said he supported at one time the creation of a "truth commission" to look into the subject. But after Obama said in late April that he did not want to look as if he was going after either former president George W. Bush or former vice president Richard B. Cheney, Panetta said, "everyone kind of backed away from it."

Panetta said that once he was assured there was no criminal liability associated with current CIA employees, he "didn't want to spend a lot of time dealing with the past and what mistakes were made."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cia; interrogations; leonpanetta; mitchelljessen; panetta
Let's see how gentler treatment of terrorists works.
1 posted on 06/15/2009 10:34:35 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

We are far too PC to attack them by their other vulnerability, their religion. Some Koran toileting (with fake Korans, no need to go to the expense of real ones) might work even better than waterboarding did.


2 posted on 06/15/2009 10:42:16 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (In only 19 weeks, 0 has enabled us to agree with the Taliban [his empty speechifying] - Iron Munro)
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To: reaganaut1

Yeah we see how compassionate warfare works, lets reward terrorists while we are at it.


3 posted on 06/15/2009 10:43:32 AM PDT by Cheetahcat (Zero the Wright kind of Racist! We are in a state of War with Democrats)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Throw some pork into the mix too.


4 posted on 06/15/2009 10:46:11 AM PDT by eureka! (Elections have consequences, boy howdy. *sigh*)
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To: reaganaut1; SumProVita; HardStarboard; BradyLS; Ernest_at_the_Beach; dervish; Twotone; ...

The list, ping


5 posted on 06/15/2009 10:46:20 AM PDT by Nachum (The complete Obama list at www.nachumlist.com)
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To: reaganaut1
When does the water boarding of Congress start?...
No water boarding the Senate should be first..
6 posted on 06/15/2009 12:55:47 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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