The CIA's Interrogation "Menu"

According to Walid Bin Attash, who was captured in Pakistan in April 2003, “On a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets.” One U.S. intelligence official, however, said that men like Bin Attash could not be trusted: “The ICRC document is based in large part on the recollections of the terrorists themselves. There were certainly cases in which they either stretched the truth or made things up.”

Agency officials made first contact with the SERE trainers during April 2002, not long after Abu Zubaydah was captured. “Interrogation wasn’t a big deal until we got a big deal guy,” said the former intelligence official. Some techniques were demonstrated to CIA officials in a two-day tutorial beginning on July 1 with SERE instructors playing the roles of “beater” and “beatee,” as one of them told congressional investigators. Following the tutorial, a CIA lawyer decided that "[t]he CIA makes the call internally on most of the types of techniques," but that "[s]ignificantly harsh techniques are approved through the DOJ.” That set in motion the process that led to the infamous Justice Department memos that led to approving the menu of techniques.

Senior CIA officials were comforted by the fact that the proposed techniques had been used by the U.S. against its own servicemen, said the former official. “A big factor in people’s thinking was that these techniques were used in the training of U.S. Special Operations Forces,” the former intelligence official told me about SERE training. “If it was something that had been done to U.S. forces… although admittedly very tough… then it couldn’t be considered torture.”

But the CIA dismissed several of those proposed, he added. “There were legal tests…does it shock the conscience? Does it lead to deep long-lasting injuries?” The official said he is unaware of which techniques had been rejected or why.

Calls to Mitchell and Jessen were not returned. Their phone has been disconnected and ProPublica reports they have moved out of the building they occupied in Spokane and closed their office. The CIA declined to comment on any of the specifics of their interrogations. A spokesman said, “The agency’s past interrogation practices were guided by legal opinions from the Department of Justice.” These opinions that were ultimately rejected by the Bush administration.

Robert Windrem is a senior research fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security. For three decades, he worked as a producer for NBC News. He is the winner of more than 40 national journalism awards for his work in print, television, and online journalism, including a Columbia-duPont Award, mostly for his work on international security issues.