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The first installment of this three-part series on the origins of the Mitchell-Jessen torture program concentrated on the insufficiency of reducing our understanding of the spread of torture during the Bush administration to the interventions of just two men. This is essentially the way the story was presented in a 12 August New York Times article by Scott Shane, leaving the question unanswered: how did Mitchell and Jessen get involved in constructing an offensive torture program to begin with?
The documentary record demonstrates that Mitchell and Jessen were not alone in proposing that military survival and resistance (SERE) psychologists and trainers be used to lead interrogations of the flood of prisoners in the new "war on terror." How could Mitchell and Jessen be seen as the prime proponents for the program when in December 2001, according to released materials in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s report on prisoner abuse, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), Lt. Col. Dan Baumgartner, wrote to Richard Shiffrin, who worked for Jim Haynes in Don Rumsfeld’s Office of Legal Counsel for the Defense Deparment:
Here’s our spin on exploitation. If you need experts to facilitate this process, we stand ready to assist. There are not many in DoD outside of JPRA that have the level of expertise we do in exploitation and how to resist it.
[JPRA is the umbrella program for the different SERE programs organized by the various military services.]
While the New York Times article makes almost no attempt to link the Mitchell-Jessen episode to the larger spread of torture throughout the U.S. armed forces, or to describe the actual role of the CIA in fostering it, Mitchell and Jessen’s influence is assumed. It is no surprise, and in fact is pointed out by Mr. Shane, that a decision by Attorney General Eric Holder whether to pursue criminal charges for the torture program is pending, and that the CIA contract psychologists are in the crosshairs of such a potential investigation. The latter make uneasy game for the Obama administration’s insistence that those who believed they were acting in good faith upon legal permissions will not be prosecuted. No doubt, Mitchell and Jessen will pursue just such a defense. (See the recent Joby Warrick/Peter Finn article in the Washington Post, which describes the persistent "permissions" for each torture interrogation secured by Abu Zubaydah’s interrogators.)
But worse, perhaps, than the article’s elisions are its misrepresentations. And none stand out more clearly than the relegation of "legendary military survival trainer," Roger L. Aldrich, to that of mere employee of Mitchell, Jessen and Associates (MJA). While mentioning that MJA had five shareholders, "four of them from the military’s SERE program," Scott Shane never mentions that Aldrich was one of the five.
Roger Aldrich was, as Col. Steven M. Kleinman told me in a telephone interview, "one of the founding fathers of the survival program in this country." (Kleinman was also a source for the Shane article.) He fashioned SERE into "the best [survival] program in the world." Kleinman denied any knowledge of Aldrich’s role in the Mitchell-Jessen torture enterprise, nor that of other MJA shareholders, also SERE players or contractors, Randall Spivey and David Ayers.
Yet another insider, who says he has some knowledge of the individuals involved, has indicated that it was Roger Aldrich, Mitchell and Jessen’s superior officer, the man who indeed hired them in the 1990s, who was responsible for the idea of reverse-engineering SERE techniques and contracting out services to the government.
Aldrich was an officer in the Air Force Reserve, who was also civilian chief of the Air Force’s Special Survival Training Program (SSTP), which was later folded into the JPRA agency. From this position, the source says, he hired "many people into lucrative civil service jobs at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, paying from $75K to $150K per year plus fantastic benefits." Aldrich used his influence and position to dole out patronage, and gained a loyal, devoted following. He took Mitchell and Jessen and promoted them. After 9/11, he hatched a scheme with the two men to offer interrogation and training services to the military and CIA for a great deal of money.
Next up in the series, Part Three: Roger Aldrich, the Al Qaeda Manual, and the Origins of Mitchell-Jessen
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thank you for digging out the info jeff.
Good stuff… but I wish I’d waited til tomorrow to read it, ’cause I can’t wait for the next installment!
Why is the New York Times ignoring these relationships, Jeff?
Thank you, terrific work in this series you’re doing.
That’s a good question. It could be that they feel they don’t have enough info. But I think they swallow the spin too easily, of guys like Kleinman.
thanks for bringing more clarity to these important points.
Thanks, Jeff, for another insightful piece. Two dynamics stand out for me.
One, each service battled to develop its own version of a SERE, just as each battled to have its own Specia Ops unit, so as not to be beholden on another service for its special needs. Each SERE team was fostered by its own brood of psychologist-cum-special warfare specialists. From a taxpayers’ perspective, this seems like wasteful duplication of effort, since the scenarios to be trained in seem to have more similarities than differences. This might be put down to traditional, inter-service rivalry, always expensive for taxpayers.
Two, the “first to torture” appears to have been the Air Force. The service that always seems to be third place, after the institutionally older Army and Navy seems to have an Avis-size chip on its shoulder boards. That was especially true after the demise of the Cold War, around which the AF built its missiles, bombers, fighters, bases and budgets. After that no longer provided a reason for being, or for gigantic budgets, the AF needed a new enemy worthy of attacking (or “defending” ourselves from) by using the Air Force’s men, women and machines.
It suggests a deep-seated cultural problem beyond inter-service rivalry. The Air Force’s super macho fighter jock model seems more strained that its service rivals. It may be the least adaptable of its peers. The AF’s service academy in Colorado Springs is also home to an ueber-Christian, sexist sect that produces officers in its image and denigrates those without it.
I don’t have time for long answer. Historically, the Navy came first with research into coercive interrogations and mind control (Project Chatter or its predecessors in late 1940s).
The Air Force got involved in 51-52 when its flyers got shot down in Korea/China, and “confessed” to dropping bio weapons on Korea/China, an accusation which may or may not have been “false.”
The Office of Naval Research sponsored a lot of the MKULTRA research, or the CIA filtered it through Navy auspices. The Army had its own programs, but they are less known.
One problem in our understanding what occurred in the 1950s and 1960s is that many of the documents were destroyed, or remain classified.
It’s hard to say where torture started, since it has such an octopus-like existence. D. Rejali’s book Torture and Democracy shows how the spread of torture, like any other cultural phenomenon, is difficult to trace, and is idiosyncratic in its development.
The background on SERE training – potentially useful in preparing service personnel for what to expect if captured – is useful, as is the background on torture programs – which we presumably developed and used primarily under CIA auspices before 9/11. But my comment was about the first to propose torture as official policy and practice in response to 9/11. My question is really whether it came from personnel associated with the Air Force or whether it leaked out of many pores, having been developed and used clandestinely in the past. I gather from your response that it was probably the latter. My surmise is that after thirty plus years in govt, Dick Cheney knew that history and helped make clandestine programs official and more widely used.
Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side sure does open anyone’s eyes that read it. So many questions are answered. The OLC (Office of Legal Council)is the most dangerous group in government. Every player in this puzzle is pegged.
Oh, I misunderstood your question.
Cheney would have turned to the CIA. He might have, on his own initiative, spoken to Special Forces officers. But the interconnections between CIA and SF on a covert level are quite tight. It’s my belief the CIA was in charge of setting up Mitchell-Jessen, or setting those wheels in motion. Later, when they asked for OLC opinions for cover, they withheld information about what they were doing and what they already knew about SERE techniques. OLC could then say, “we’re relying on what you tell us.” The whole thing was a shadow play.