Meanwhile in other legal proceedings

Giving evidence at a military commission on Guantánamo Bay, James Mitchell [a CIA contract psychologist who helped draft the US programme of “enhanced interrogation”] gave a detailed account of the 2002 decision to interrogate suspected al-Qaida leaders using waterboarding and other techniques which the US later admitted constituted torture.

[...]

In testimony which veered from the gruff to jokey to tearful, Mitchell said the methods he had recommended were based on a course given to US armed services to help them withstand enemy interrogation, known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE).

The measures [...] had been approved by the justice department in July 2002 under the George W Bush administration.

Mitchell claimed those measures were within the limits of what was legal, and were designed to force detainees to give up information rapidly that could help prevent a further attack, possibly involving a nuclear weapon.

“The CIA was never interested in prosecution,” he told the court. “They were going to go right up to the line of what was legal, put their toes on it, and lean forward.”

  Guardian

And small but important detail he left out - he helped.

Mitchell, who was recruited by the CIA in 2002 to first observe and then apply coercive measures, said the agency was determined to “get tough” and he wanted to make sure it was done within limits.

“What I was told was: ‘The gloves were off’,” Mitchell.

Doesn't sound like much limitation.

“They were going to use some form of physical coercion ... My concern was that they were going to make it up on the fly.”

Which is where Mitchell came in...to design something they could get away with.

Mitchell has accused other CIA interrogators of using waterboarding far in excess of guidelines as well as other unauthorised interrogation techniques. In court on Tuesday he described these excesses as “abusive drift”.

“When people are left to make up coercive measures, it tends to escalate over time,” Mitchell said. “They dehumanise the detainees. They think they are justified in using a higher level of pressure. They think: If a little is good, a lot is better.”

He said he had tried to stop several interrogations that had got out of hand, in particular by the head of CIA interrogations of the CIA’s newly formed rendition, detention and interrogation group, an unnamed officer he referred to by the nickname, the “new sheriff”.

A case of Einstein's remorse.

“The agency had not approved the techniques he was using,” Mitchell said. He described the approach underlying the abuses as: “Hurt the person until they tell you what you want to know and then you hurt them some more, to find out if they are lying to you.”

[...]

On entering the plain square courtroom lined with military police guards, Mitchell appeared to make eye contact with [Khalid Sheik] Mohammed who he had subjected to multiple waterboarding sessions and with whom he claimed to have long discussions about Islam.

[...]

[Mohammed's] fellow defendants, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, sat in successive rows behind him, each with their own bench of lawyers. The pre-trial hearing have been underway since May 2012 and the trial itself is not expected to start until 2021 at the earliest.

[...]

[Mitchell] was initially asked to observe Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation by CIA officers and FBI agents and make suggestions. But when he returned to CIA headquarters at the beginning of July, he was asked to carry out the “enhanced” interrogations himself.

He said he was highly reluctant but there was a prevalent fear of an imminent second wave of attacks, possibly including an nuclear weapon.

Choking his words and tearing up as he defended his actions, he told the court: “I felt my moral obligation to protect American lives outweighed the temporary discomfort of terrorists who had taken up arms against America.”

Awwww, poor baby. I wonder...did he shed a tear for the men he was torturing?

If you haven't already, check out "The Report" on Amazon Prime.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.