James Mitchell, the psychologist who devised the CIA’s post-Sept. 11 interrogation program, is a complicated figure. Mitchell has become the face of the interrogation program that critics have deemed torture in large part because of a combative personality. He acted, he said, out of a deep sense of loss and for those whose relatives were killed on Sept. 11. After Sept. 11, the entirety of the American national security apparatus was reoriented to a single task: stopping the next attack. He said the CIA threw him and Jessen “under the bus,” basically blaming them for the torture program.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 01, 2020 02:37 UTC