Turns Out There Were Two Separate CIA Torture Programs

By scouring the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report and some declassified CIA documents, reporter Jeff Kaye has confirmed that there were two separate rendition, detention and interrogation programs run by separate branches of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.

The first, which we refer to as “Program A” in this podcast, is already known. Consultants James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were paid over $80 million , we are told, to reverse-engineer torture techniques from the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program  designed to train troops and spies to resist torture.

Kaye builds a strong case that this effort amounted to human experimentation — for the purpose of designed to  identifying the most effective torture techniques.

“Program B” relied on “standard” interrogation tactics that included some forms of coercive interrogation, and it was not subject to the management and monitoring systems of the first one.

Kaye says the separate programs were “stovepiped” so that front-line personnel assigned to one program didn’t know about the other. But top CIA management, —including current director Gina Haspel, former director George Tenet, and top lieutenants Cofer Black and Jose Rodriguez  —, had to have known about both programs., Kaye argues.

 

Dr. Jeff Kaye is a retired psychologist who has been practicing journalism for 15 years. His report on the two programs is here, and the article on Gina Haspel’s role at three CIA“black” sites is here.