Lawyers argue psychologists not liable for CIA methods

SEATTLE — The two psychologists who helped craft the CIA’s harsh interrogation methods used in the war on terror should be as free from liability as a worker for a company that supplied the Nazis with poison gas used in concentration camps, defense lawyers said in a motion to dismiss a lawsuit from former detainees.

The American Civil Liberties Union challenges that claim, saying the psychologists should be held accountable for the methods they designed following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, including waterboarding and beatings. The sides plan arguments Friday in U.S. District Court in Spokane, Wash.

The outcome will determine whether the lawsuit will go to trial.

Spokane psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were independent contractors who lacked authority to “control, prevent or modify” the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques, their lawyers said.

Challenging that argument is Dror Ladin, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who sued on behalf of three former detainees: Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud and a representative of Gul Rahman, who died in custody.

They were subjected to physical assaults and sleep deprivation, forced to stand for days in diapers with their arms chained overhead, doused with icy water and stuffed into boxes.

“In fact, the Nuremberg tribunals that judged the Nazis and their enablers after World War II established the opposite rule: Private contractors are accountable when they choose to provide unlawful means and profit from war crimes,” Ladin said.

The owner of the company that developed the poison gas for the Nazis was executed after World War II.