Tortures

CIA documents expose internal agency feud over psychologists leading interrogation program

Newly released CIA documents expose a bitter internal feud over the qualifications and ethics of two former military psychologists who pushed the agency to adopt interrogation methods widely condemned as torture.

A series of internal emails reveal that the CIA’s own medical and psychological personnel expressed deep concern about an arrangement that put two outside contractors in charge of subjecting detainees to brutal measures including waterboarding, then also evaluating whether those methods were working or causing lasting harm.

In one of the more prescient warnings, an agency official wrote that “if some untoward outcome is later to be explained, their sole use in this role will be indefensible.” The message was dated June 2003, but seemed to anticipate the controversy that would engulf the agency when the details of the interrogation program were exposed.