CIA hires "expensive private counsel to deal with mounting legal concerns over interrogation"(Salon)

[kpete]

CIA hires "expensive private counsel"

When the CIA set up the interrogation program in early 2002 it turned to two psychologists linked to the military's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program. Last June, Salon reported that two CIA-employed psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were central to the genesis of that program, which likely violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners.

Mitchell and Jessen had been affiliated with the military survival school that teaches elite U.S. soldiers to resist stress positions, isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, sexual humiliation and waterboarding.

Attorneys familiar with the interrogation issue told Salon that in recent months the CIA has moved to hire expensive private counsel to deal with mounting legal concerns over interrogations. The CIA would not confirm to Salon whether the agency would pay for private attorneys to represent the two psychologists, Mitchell and Jessen, who were employed as contractors by the agency. But CIA spokesman George Little said, "Quite apart from any specific instance, it should not surprise anyone that the CIA would, in appropriate cases, assist with the legal fees of those who have worked with the agency."

The brutalizing of detainees in U.S. custody has been incredibly frustrating to experienced interrogators from outside the agency, who say decades of experience show that rapport-building leads to the best intelligence. "It is out of ignorance if you ask me," Steve Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator, told Salon recently about the CIA program. "They seem to have bought into this erroneous presupposition that it works and that (physical) coercion really is an effective way of getting information."

more at:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/08/cia_tapes/

[aquart]

1. They don't have in house lawyers?

[babylonsister]

2. They're in trouble now, and know it. nt

[spanone]

3. wow, we will fund their lawyers (tax money) to defend them against us.....????

[bullimiami]

4. our whole government and monetary machinery is a corrupt mess.

there is always enough money and benefits to care for the wealthy and connected insiders but never enough to care for the masses.

[hisownpetard]

5. That's what I was thinking. How insane is that?!

[librechik]

6. Isn't that the Justice Department's job? Oh yeah

they're incompetent criminals. Better to use taxpayer cash to pay for the defense of our torture team.

Oh, we shouldn't find it odd that the CIA would pay for the defense of someone who worked with the agency? Like a patriotic hero who sacrificed for the good of the Constitution? Kinda the opposite is the case, don't you think? These professional collaborators are ENEMIES OF AMERICA!!! And, they are QUACKS, with no idea apparently of actual human psychology.

Do we have to put up with this?

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R