Internal Rifts on Road to Torment - Interviews Offer More Nuanced Look At Roles of CIA Contractors

[kpete]

Source: Washington Post

Internal Rifts on Road to Torment
Interviews Offer More Nuanced Look At Roles of CIA Contractors, Concerns Of Officials During Interrogations

By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 19, 2009

In April 2002, as the terrorism suspect known as Abu Zubaida lay in a Bangkok hospital bed, top U.S. counterterrorism officials gathered at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., for a series of meetings on an urgent problem: how to get him to talk.

Put him in a cell filled with cadavers, was one suggestion, according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the brainstorming sessions. Surround him with naked women, was another. Jolt him with electric shocks to the teeth, was a third.

One man's certitude lanced through the debate, according to a participant in one of the meetings. James E. Mitchell, a retired clinical psychologist for the Air Force, had studied al-Qaeda resistance techniques.

"The thing that will make him talk," the participant recalled Mitchell saying, "is fear."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/18/AR2009071802065.html