Before They Ordered Up The "Legal" Memos

They readied the torture techniques they intended to use. Jane Mayer analyzes the Levin report:

On April 16, 2002a couple weeks after Zubaydah’s capture, and three and a half months before the Bybee memoa military psychologist named Dr. Bruce Jessen was already circulating a blueprint for cruelly coercive interrogations based on torture methods used by Chinese Communist forces during the Korean War. The report describes Jessen’s blueprint as a “draft exploitation plan” for U.S.-held captives. (I wrote about Dr. Jessen’s partner, James Mitchel, in the July 11, 2005, issue of The New Yorker.)

By June 2002again, months before the Department of Justice gave the legal green light for interrogationsan F.B.I. special agent on the scene of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah refused to participate in what he called “borderline torture,” according to a D.O.J. investigation cited in the Levin report. Soon after, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller commanded his personnel to stay away from the C.I.A.’s coercive interrogations.

What did the F.B.I. see in the spring of 2002?

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