John Bruce Jessen (born July 28, 1949) [1] is an American psychologist who, with James Elmer Mitchell, created the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that were used in the interrogation and torture of CIA detainees [2] and outlined in the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on CIA torture. [3] In that report, he was mentioned under the pseudonym "Hammond Dunbar." His company, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, earned US$81 million for its work. [4]
Jessen attended then-Ricks College, now Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho. He graduated cum laude from Utah State University in 1974, where he majored in psychology. He earned his PhD in psychology, with an emphasis in professional-scientific psychology, from Utah State University in 1979. During that time he was commissioned in the Air Force and completed an internship in clinical psychology at Wilford Hall USAF Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. [5]
A United States Air Force retiree, Jessen, along with James Mitchell, was hired in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency to design the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" program. [6] [7] The objectives of the program were not merely to obtain intelligence, but to also break down detainees in order to get them to be compliant and submissive to authority. [8]
In 2005, Jessen and Mitchell formed a company called Mitchell Jessen and Associates, with offices in Spokane and Virginia. [9]
On October 15, 2012, Jessen was sustained as bishop of the Spokane 6th Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [10] He resigned as bishop one week later. [11]
On December 9, 2014, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report confirming the use of torture and SERE tactics in interrogations. [12] The contractors that developed the "enhanced interrogation techniques" received US$81 million for their services, out of an original contract worth more than US$180 million. NBC News identified the contractors, who were referred to in the report via pseudonyms, as Mitchell, Jessen & Associates from Spokane, Washington, which was run by two psychologists, John "Bruce" Jessen and James Mitchell. The report states that the contractor "developed the list of enhanced interrogation techniques and personally conducted interrogations of some of the CIA's most significant detainees using those techniques. The contractors also evaluated whether the detainees' psychological state allowed for continued use of the techniques, even for some detainees they themselves were interrogating or had interrogated." Mitchell, Jessen & Associates developed a "menu" of 20 enhanced techniques including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions. John Rizzo, CIA acting general counsel, described in his book Company Man, that the techniques were "sadistic and terrifying." [13]
In 2014, The New York Times Editorial board called for the investigation and prosecution of Mitchell and Jessen for their role in developing the torture practices used by the CIA. [14] In 2015, Human Rights Watch called for the prosecution of Jessen "for [his] alleged direct participation in torture, often applied in ways beyond how it was authorized, but also for [his] role in the initial conspiracy to torture as well." [15]
On October 13, 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen on behalf of Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, and the estate of Gul Rahman, three former detainees who were subjected to the interrogation methods they designed. [16] The suit alleges that the defendants' conduct constituted torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; non-consensual human experimentation; and war crimes –"all of which are violations of 'specific, universal, and obligatory' international law norms, as evidenced by numerous binding international treaties, declarations, and other international law instruments". [17] A trial was set for June 2017. [18] On July 28, 2017, U.S. District Judge Justin Lowe Quackenbush denied both parties' motions for summary judgment, noted that the defendants are indemnified by the United States government, and encouraged the attorneys to reach a settlement before trial. [19] A settlement was reached in August 2017. [20]
Jessen was portrayed in the 2019 film The Report by T. Ryder Smith.
Abu Zubaydah is a Palestinian citizen and alleged terrorist born in Saudi Arabia currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, alias Zubair Zaid, is a Malaysian who is alleged to be a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah and al Qaeda. He is currently in American custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He is one of the 14 detainees who had previously been held for years at CIA black sites. In the ODNI biographies of those 14, Amin is described as a direct subordinate of Hambali. Farik Amin is also a cousin of well-known Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
Deuce Martinez is an American intelligence professional. "Deuce" is not his given first name, but a nickname that was used in the first newspaper article naming him. He was involved at the start of the Central Intelligence Agency's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program of "high-value detainees," including Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Torturing Democracy is a 2008 documentary film produced by Washington Media Associates. The film details the use of torture by the Bush administration in the "War on Terror."
James Elmer Mitchell is an American psychologist and former member of the United States Air Force. From 2002, after his retirement from the military, to 2009, his company Mitchell Jessen and Associates received $81 million on contract from the CIA to carry out the torture of detainees, referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" that resulted in little credible information.
Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi citizen who helped manage the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan. Captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, he has since been held by the United States as an enemy combatant. Beginning in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was the first prisoner to undergo "enhanced interrogation techniques." Since the Spanish Inquisition, these practices have been characterized as torture by many familiar with the techniques. There is disagreement among government sources as to how effective these techniques were; some officials contend that Abu Zubaydah gave his most valuable information before they were used; CIA lawyer John Rizzo said he gave more material afterward.
Gul Rahman was an Afghan man, suspected by the United States of being a militant, who was a victim of torture. He died in a secret CIA prison, or black site, located in northern Kabul, Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. He had been captured October 29, 2002.
John Anthony Rizzo was an American attorney who worked as a lawyer in the Central Intelligence Agency for 34 years. He was the deputy counsel or acting general counsel of the CIA for the first nine years of the War on Terror, during which the CIA held dozens of detainees in black site prisons around the globe.
Michael J. Quigley is a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. He is a former member of the United States Army and an officer in the United States Navy Reserve. Once a senior high-value detainee interrogator, he now addresses the human rights implications of counter-terrorism operations and the USA's use of torture and other inhumane and coercive interrogation techniques. Quigley enlisted in the United States Army in 1989, becoming a military policeman after a short time as a foot soldier. After transferring from the military police corps to military intelligence, Quigley became one of the Army's most skilled and experienced interrogators and experts in counter-terrorism. In 1998 Quigley served as an advisor to Senator George Mitchell, when Mitchell was assisting in the negotiations that ended the United Kingdom's strife with the Irish Republican Army—resulting in the "Good Friday Peace Accords".
The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program is a report compiled by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detention and Interrogation Program and its use of torture during interrogation in U.S. government communiqués on detainees in CIA custody. The report covers CIA activities before, during, and after the "War on Terror". The initial report was approved on December 13, 2012, by a vote of 9–6, with seven Democrats, one Independent, and one Republican voting in favor of the report and six Republicans voting in opposition.
Suleiman Abdullah Salim is a citizen of Tanzania who was held in extrajudicial detention, for five years, in secret CIA black sites. Salim was one of the individuals the United States Senate Intelligence Committee's inquiry into the CIA's use of torture identified as having been subjected to the most brutal torture. According to James Risen, in the New York Times CIA interrogators tortured him, even though he was a black African man, and the Suleiman Abdullah Salim they had intended to capture was an ethnically Arab man from Yemen.
Gina Cheri Walker Haspel is an American intelligence officer who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from May 21, 2018, to January 20, 2021. She was the agency's deputy director from 2017 to 2018 under Mike Pompeo, and became acting director on April 26, 2018, after Pompeo became U.S. secretary of state. She was later nominated and confirmed to the role, making her the first woman to become CIA director on a permanent basis.
Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud was held, and tortured, in the CIA's archipelago of black sites, where it tortured individuals.
James Cotsana is a security consultant, and former official of the Central Intelligence Agency whose testimony has been sought over how the CIA authorized, and implemented the clandestine use of torture, in its network of secret interrogation sites, commonly known as "black sites".
The Report is a 2019 American historical political drama film written and directed by Scott Z. Burns that stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, and Maura Tierney. It depicts the efforts of staffer Daniel Jones as he led the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture following the September 11th attacks, covering more than a decade's worth of real-life political intrigue related to the contents, creation, and release of the 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Charlie Wise was a Central Intelligence Agency official who played a role in the agency's torture program. Prior to his resignation, in 2003, Wise was the CIA's Chief of Interrogations.
The CIA controls black sites used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain people deemed to be enemy combatants.
Media related to Bruce Jessen at Wikimedia Commons