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'The Agency Erred'
Only one detainee is known to have died while in custody at any of the CIA's secret prisons, and he died shortly after being interrogated by Jessen.

Gul Rahman was an Afghani arrested by U.S. agents and Pakistani forces during an attack inside Pakistan. His capture took place on Oct. 29, 2002. Less than a month later he was found dead at the notorious "Salt Pit" detention site in Kabul, Afghanistan—stripped from the waist down and shackled to a wall in such a way that he would be forced to sit on the concrete floor in freezing conditions.

Jessen personally interrogated Rahman days before he was found dead, on Nov. 20, 2002, using methods that were not authorized, according to the Senate report. Jessen had traveled to the Salt Pit at the request of the CIA's ALEC Station—which was tasked with locating Osama bin Laden—where he determined the types of interrogation techniques that should be used on Rahman.

According to the report, those techniques included the "insult" slap, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, cold showers, 48 hours of sleep deprivation and "hard" or "rough" takedowns, which included being dragged outside where his clothes were cut off. Restrained with Mylar tape and wearing a hood, Rahman would be forced to run up and down a long hallway, with CIA personnel slapping and punching him along the way.

Jessen reportedly told CIA officials during an investigation into Rahman's death that "although it was obvious [the CIA officers] were not trying to hit him as hard as they could, a couple of times the punches were forceful. As they ran him along the corridor, a couple of times he fell and they dragged him through the dirt. ... Rahman did acquire a number of abrasions on his face, legs and hands, but nothing that required medical attention."

When Rahman's body was discovered, he was found to have abrasions on his shoulder, pelvis, arms, legs and face. A CIA autopsy report said his cause of death was "undetermined," but the Senate report notes that the "clinical impression" of the medical officer who performed the autopsy was that Rahman died of hypothermia.

His death ushered in a phase of increased scrutiny of the detention and interrogation activities from CIA headquarters, but, the report notes that many of those involved with Rahman's interrogation "remained key figures in the CIA."

In 2005, Jessen and Mitchell established their firm—Mitchell, Jessen & Associates—in Spokane, which from 2005-2009 was paid $81 million for its services. Prior to 2005, the pair was being paid a reported $1,800 per day.

In 2013—more than a decade after Rahman's death—the CIA issued a response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as part of a report on the rendition, detention and interrogation program:

"We acknowledge that the Agency erred in permitting the contractors [Jessen and Mitchell] to assess the effectiveness of enhanced techniques. They should not have been considered for such a role given their financial interest in continued contracts from CIA."

'Uncharted Territory'
With a freshly minted doctorate from Utah State University, Jessen went to work in the SERE program, helping train airmen to "survive, evade, resist and escape" the interrogation methods used by Cold War-era Communist countries and enemies who could not be expected to abide by the Geneva Conventions. By 1980—around the time Jessen was working as an operational psychologist with the Air Force—SERE curriculum had become standardized across all the branches of the military.

It is brutal training. Over a multi-week series of sessions, soldiers are taught the academics of survival and evasion skills, then taken into the field to learn practical survival techniques. The final phase of the program includes setting trainees loose in the field to evade searchers. Once captured, they are imprisoned in a mock POW camp and subjected to even harsher conditions, including verbal abuse, sexual humiliation, painful stress positions and, in some cases, waterboarding.

Jessen was stationed primarily at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Wash., where he and Mitchell were colleagues. According to the Senate report, the pair would go on to develop "theories of interrogation based on 'learned helplessness,'" drawn from their experiences with SERE.

"Neither psychologist had any experience as an interrogator, nor did either have specialized knowledge of al-Qa'ida, a background in counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise," the report noted.

Jessen's résumé, submitted to the CIA in 2003, contained redacted examples of his role as a "debriefer" as well as details of a one-week defense interrogation course in 2002. He and Mitchell had drafted academic and research papers on various psychological aspects of interrogation as they related to the Air Force's SERE program, "all of which were relevant to the development of the program," according to a 2013 response to the investigation by the CIA.

"Drs. [Mitchell] and [Jessen] had the closest proximate expertise CIA sought at the beginning of the program, specifically in the area of non-standard means of interrogation," the CIA wrote. "We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program [italics and emphasis in original]."

In his first on-camera interview, which Vice News posted to You Tube on Dec. 10, 2014, Mitchell called the idea that he and Jessen "reverse-engineered" SERE into a torture program a "myth" but, citing a nondisclosure agreement, wouldn't go into detail on the origins of the program, his role in it or even whether he was the psychologist referred to in the Senate report as "Dr. Swigert."

Meanwhile, he told The New York Times in December 2014 that he was "just a cog in the machine."

In the Vice interview, Mitchell mentioned Jessen by name, referring to their work together in the SERE school and describing the thrust behind enhanced interrogation techniques.

"It's almost like a good cop/bad cop kid of set up, you know, with a really bad cop," he said. "It was to facilitate getting actionable intelligence by making a bad cop that was bad enough that the person would engage with the good cop."

While Mitchell has been public with his attacks on the Senate report, Jessen has kept a low profile, refusing to speak with reporters other than to repeat, as he did to Reuters news service that "it's a difficult position to be in. You want to set the record straight."

A call to Jessen's Spokane phone number went unanswered, but, in the days after the release of the Senate report, staff writer Jacob Jones, of the Spokane-based Pacific Northwest Inlander, confronted Jessen outside his $1.2 million home south of Spokane.

"There's a lot going on," he told Jones. "It's a difficult position to be in."

Jessen wouldn't go into detail about the contents of the report, also citing a nondisclosure agreement, but told Jones that media reports had contained "distortions." He noted a "No Trespassing" sign and told the reporter, "You know, they didn't prosecute Zimmerman."

"In hindsight, this seems like a clear reference to the legality of deadly force in so-called 'stand your ground' situations," Jacobs wrote. "So that's where his mind went."

'Where His Mind Went'
"This is a train wreak [sic] waiting to happen and I intend to get the hell off the train before it happens."

Those words were written by the CIA's chief of interrogations in a 2003 email to colleagues, announcing he would be "retiring shortly," before Jessen could reportedly renew interrogation of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, one of the alleged plotters in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and East African U.S. Embassy in 1998.

By then, al-Nashiri had been in U.S. custody for about a year, bounced from CIA black site Cobalt in Afghanistan to Detention Site Green and, finally, Detention Site Blue—secret facilities later identified as being located in Kabul; Udon Thani, Thailand; and Szymany, Poland, respectively.

In Thailand and Poland, al-Nashiri had been waterboarded and was judged "compliant" by interrogators. Regardless, according to records cited in the report, CIA Headquarters pushed for continued use of enhanced techniques despite a recommendation that they be discontinued.

"[The] bottom line is that we think [al-Nashiri] is being cooperative, and if subjected to indiscriminate and prolonged enhanced measures, there is a good chance he will either fold up and cease cooperation, or suffer the sort of permanent mental harm prohibited by the statute," interrogators wrote in a cable from the detention site.

A CIA officer was dispatched to administer enhanced interrogation, which included stress positions, blindfolding, and threats with an air pistol and cordless drill. At one point he was reportedly told that his mother would be brought to the site and sexually abused.

In January 2003, about three months into al-Nashiri's interrogation, Jessen was called to assess whether the detainee could withstand any more interrogation and, if so, give recommendations on what techniques should be used.

Jessen's opinion was that interrogators should have the "latitude to use the full range of enhanced exploitation and interrogation measures."

To CIA headquarters, the chief of interrogators wrote a cable intended to be shared among officers at Detention Site Blue—however, according to the Senate report, it does not appear to have been disseminated.

"[W]e have serious reservations with the continued use of enhanced techniques with [al-Nashiri] and its long term impact on him," he wrote, adding that "continued enhanced methods may push [al-Nashiri] over the edge psychologically."

The chief of interrogations was concerned about Jessen's role specifically: Not only was he administering the interrogation, but assessing its success. "The role of the ops psychologist is to be a detached observer and serve as a check on the interrogator to prevent the interrogator from any unintentional excess of pressure which might cause permanent psychological harm to the subject," the chief interrogator wrote. "Therefore, the medical officer and the psychologist should not serve as an interrogator, which is a conflict of responsibility. We note that [the proposed plan] contains a psychological interrogation assessment by [redacted] psychologist [Jessen] which is to be carried out by interrogator [Jessen]. We have a problem with him conducting both roles simultaneously."

CIA headquarters ignored the chief interrogators' cable and went forward with Jessen's plan for al-Nashiri.

Between June 2003 and September 2006, al-Nashiri was moved to five different CIA sites around the world and diagnosed by some CIA psychologists with anxiety and major depressive disorder.

In 2004 Jessen and another interrogator wrote in a report that al-Nashiri had given "essentially no actionable information."

Al-Nashiri is currently on trial before a military tribunal in Guantanamo on charges that carry the death penalty.

'No Comment'
Along with finding that the psychologists helped inflict "immeasurable damage to the United States' public standing, as well as to the United States' longstanding global leadership on human rights in general and the prevention of torture in particular," the Senate report called into question the fruits of their interrogations. The CIA "never conducted a credible, comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness" of the enhanced techniques, the report stated. What's more, almost no one involved in the interrogations was ever "held accountable or removed from positions of responsibility," despite "significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systematic and individual management failures."

Dating back at least to 2009, with the release of memos detailing the interrogation program, The American Psychological Association has repeatedly issued statements condemning both Jessen and Mitchell, though neither are members of the organization and the APA's own role in facilitating the establishment of enhanced interrogation methods has been called into question.

"If the allegations are true, what this pair did was pervert psychological science to break down and dehumanize detainees in a misguided effort to extract information. It is clear to me that their actions constituted torture," 2014 APA President Nadine Kaslow wrote in a statement issued Dec. 23, 2014.

As recently as Feb. 18, 2015, Jessen held a current, though inactive, license to practice psychology in Idaho. Though not due to expire until July 28, 2015, a check of the Idaho Bureau of Occupational Licenses in early April showed that his licensure—formerly PSY-195—had disappeared. It is still unclear on what grounds Jessen is no longer licensed in the state.

"I do not have any other information regarding Dr. Jessen other than he is not currently licensed under the Board of Psychological Examiners, therefore he will not appear on our website," Bureau of Occupational Licenses Management Assistant Cherie Simpson wrote in an email.

According to Idaho Statute, a psychologist's license may be "revoked, suspended, restricted or otherwise disciplined" if the holder is "[f]ound by the board to have been unethical as detailed by the current, and future amended, ethical standards of the American Psychological Association."

Jessen was appointed in 2012 to serve as bishop of an LDS congregation in Spokane, but resigned shortly thereafter amid protests from human rights groups.

At the time, Spokane Stake President James Lee, who proposed Jessen for the office, stood by him.

"He'll take a beating in the press before he sets the record straight," he told The Spokesman-Review, which has routinely reported on Jessen since his identity was revealed. "The whole story has not been told."

Meanwhile, calls for accountability have come from around the world, including Amnesty International, which advocated in December 2014 for "a full investigation, prosecution and remedy for victims," and the United Nations.

"It is now time to take action," stated Ben Emmerson, U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, in a statement issued in Geneva following release of the Senate report. "The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today's report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes."

The U.S. Justice Department has already said it does not plan to pursue charges against those named in the report, which notes that pre-emptive protections from legal fallout came as early as 2002, when the CIA drafted a letter to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft asking the DOJ for "a formal declination of prosecution, in advance, for any employees of the United States, as well as any other personnel acting on behalf of the United States, who may employ methods in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that otherwise might subject those individuals to prosecution." The report mentions that there are no records indicating whether the letter was ever actually sent to the attorney general.

Asked if it had a stance on the APA's statements regarding the allegations against Jessen, the Idaho Psychological Association drew a blank. "We haven't been involved in any of that, and his name does not ring a bell for me," said IPA Executive Director Deborah Katz.

That appears to be the case with Bruce Jessen, generally: referred to as "Dr. Dunbar" in the Senate report, holder of a vanished Idaho psychology license, living quietly in a rural mansion in eastern Washington and part of a small-town family that everyone—from the local librarians to the city archivist—seems to know, except for him.

Asked to respond to the report and give some insight into their brother, one of Jessen's sisters did not respond. The other, reached by phone at her home, was quick to answer:

"I have no comment." CW

This story was originally published in the Boise Weekly.