Second CIA contractor testifies in 9/11 case at Guantanamo

FORT MEADE, MD. >> A former CIA contractor who helped design a harsh interrogation program following the the Sept. 11 attacks sought Friday to minimize the severity of techniques used on the men facing war crimes charges for their alleged roles in the plot.

John Bruce Jessen, testifying in public for the first time about an interrogation program long shrouded in secrecy, told a military court at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that the techniques used against detainees had been shown to have no lasting effects and were used only a small portion of the time they were in captivity.

Jessen said the techniques, which included waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation, were employed only to gather intelligence aimed at preventing another terrorist attack.

“If at at any time they didn’t want the techniques to be applied, all they had to do was talk, and most of them did that right away, “said the retired Air Force psychologist.

Jessen took the stand after eight days of testimony by James Mitchell, also a retired Air Force psychologist. The pair are considered the architects of the interrogation program, which was used on detainees in clandestine CIA facilities around the world, and which are now largely viewed as torture.

Their testimony comes as lawyers for the five men charged in the attacks seek to exclude a key piece of evidence against them: statements the defendants gave to FBI agents after they were moved from CIA custody to Guantanamo in September 2006. Their death penalty trial is scheduled to start at the base next January.

Jessen, as Mitchell did before him, described how Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, learned to withstand the waterboarding and eventually began to volunteer information, including his role in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.