CIA Psychologist Waterboarded, Comforted, Received Poem from Accused 9/11 Mastermind

Editor's Note: This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba – Dr. Bruce Jessen – who helped design the CIA's interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects captured after the Sept. 11 attacks – testified this week that waterboarding the accused plot mastermind took “a great toll” both on himself and the detainee, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad.

“I felt it was something that had to be done,” Jessen told prosecutor Jeffrey Groharing. “But I didn’t like doing it.”

Waterboarding is “a nasty thing,” Jessen said, acknowledging he used it aggressively on Mohammad shortly after his capture in March 2003 to elicit intelligence about possible future attacks. The former CIA contract psychologist testified, however, that he and Mohammad eventually developed a relationship of trust once Mohammad began to cooperate and was transferred out of the so-called “enhanced interrogation” sessions and into conversational debriefings with CIA analysts.

Mohammad, like all CIA detainees at the black sites, was completely cut off from the outside world. He became emotional when Jessen gave him an update about his youngest child, Jessen testified: “He cried, and I held him.” 

“Even in the most austere and unpleasant circumstances, humanity can still exist,” he added.

Groharing questioned Jessen from the court’s remote hearing room in Virginia; they appeared in the Guantanamo Bay court on a large screen hung above the witness box. The testimony came during an unusual evening session on Thursday – lasting from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. – following four days of direct examination by the defense teams for Mohammad and his three alleged co-conspirators. Mohammad attended court for most of the week, sitting at the first defense table with members of his team. The defense lawyers who questioned Jessen did so from Guantanamo Bay.

Picking up the pace of the long-running suppression hearing has become a matter of urgency for the Judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall. On Wednesday evening, Jessen told the judge that he did not want to miss his Saturday flight for a long-planned trip. McCall told him not to worry, that he and the witness were on “the same page.” Even before the hearing began, McCall told the parties to be prepared to work late hours to fit the six planned witnesses into the four-week session. Jessen’s testimony had been postponed from an earlier session for unspecified health issues.

Since late last summer, McCall has pushed a witness pace that the lead prosecutor called “crushing.” The judge’s apparent goal is to leave his imprint on the historic proceedings before he retires at the end of the year by ruling on the admissibility of the government’s most important evidence – the confessions the four defendants made to FBI agents on Guantanamo Bay in early 2007, after they arrived from CIA black sites.

The defense teams want McCall to suppress those confessions on the grounds that the brutality and isolation imposed by the CIA program had devastating and lasting effects rendering all subsequent statements involuntary. On Thursday, Groharing elicited testimony from Jessen to counter that argument. Jessen said that the fear instilled by the condensed periods of harsh interrogation techniques would have dissipated during the much lengthier debriefing phases of CIA custody. The CIA program did not destroy the defendants’ “will to resist” nor their ability to voluntarily participate in interviews with U.S. agents, Jessen testified.

Jessen is one of about 30 witnesses agreed to by the government and defense teams for the crucial suppression hearing. It commenced in September 2019 under the case’s third judge, Air Force Col. Shane Cohen, before the global pandemic delayed progress for about 18 months. McCall, the fourth judge to preside over the hearings, inherited the case in September 2021. He resumed witness testimony for the suppression litigation two years later, after plea negotiations between the defense teams and the prosecution failed to result in any deals. The case itself dates to the May 2012 arraignment of five accused conspirators, one of whom McCall removed from the case after finding him mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense.

The government has the burden to establish the statements given to the FBI on Guantanamo Bay in early 2007 were made voluntarily. To support that claim, prosecutors plan to call their final witness, Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist, at the five-week session scheduled to begin in mid-September. McCall intends to hear oral arguments on whether to suppress the statements in November – a schedule that could queue up a ruling by year’s end. The judge, who has twice delayed his retirement, said at the last hearing that he may be open to another extension despite his preference to avoid one.

McCall also recently set the court calendar for next year. Absent any plea deals – which defense lawyers and prosecutors have said remain a possibility – the parties will spend close to half of 2025 in court to continue the pretrial litigation. A trial date is still not set in the case. 

Jessen’s partner in developing the CIA program, Dr. James Mitchell, testified for nine days prior to the pandemic, in January 2020, and again this past February for nearly a week. In that second round, Mitchell first raised the concept of “fear extinction” – that the fear conditioned into detainees by the early harsh techniques would have decreased over time and mostly been "extinguished" by the time of the 2007 FBI interviews on Guantanamo Bay. In May, a forensic psychiatric expert for the defense ridiculed this position, testifying that it was inconsistent with decades of research on the effects of severe trauma on the human brain. 

Jessen was on the stand for less than a full day in January 2020. His testimony this week on the CIA program echoed much of Mitchell's accounts.

At several points, Jessen testified that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” or “EITs’” developed by him and Mitchell – including sleep deprivation, walling, waterboarding, slapping and use of confinement boxes – were determined to be safe and legal by senior members of the Bush administration. He and Mitchell based the techniques on those used on trainees in the military’s survival school, or SERE, for “Survival, Evasion Resistance and Escape.”

Jessen testified the program's goal was to use the techniques for a brief period to convince detainees to cooperate with intelligence debriefings, at which point their conditions and treatment would improve. CIA personnel entered into “a social contract” with detainees that gave them a degree of “control and predictability” over their treatment through cooperation, Jessen said.

He added that his role during this phase was to be an “advocate” for detainees by helping them secure certain amenities and maintaining constructive relationships with debriefers at the various black sites. He acknowledged that the detainees were intermittently reminded that unsatisfactory participation could send them back to “the hard times” of enhanced measures.

Jessen also acknowledged that CIA interrogators applied the enhanced techniques far more aggressively than SERE instructors. On Tuesday, Gary Sowards, the lead lawyer for Mohammad, referred Jessen to a CIA cable describing an interrogation of Mohammad that followed a full week of sleep deprivation.

“That’s a long time, isn’t it,” Jessen responded.

He said he was unaware of any empirical studies concluding that a more extreme application of SERE techniques was safe. As did Mitchell, Jessen testified that some CIA interrogators used unauthorized techniques on detainees. An interrogation team led by a CIA officer known in court by his code identifier, “NX2,” subjected Mohammad to rectal rehydration prior to his transfer to the black site where he first met Jessen and Mitchell. Sowards asked Jessen if “forcible sodomy” was an approved technique.

“Of course not,” Jessen answered.

Jessen described Mohammad as both intelligent and resilient, noting that he withstood enhanced techniques longer than most detainees. Jessen testified that, later in his captivity, Mohammad wrote him a poem that was unrelated to any topics covered in interrogations or debriefings.

“It was a personal thing,” Jessen said.

On Wednesday, Sowards asked Jessen to demonstrate the technique of walling on Nicholas McCue, a civilian lawyer on Mohammad’s team who was in the remote facility. Jessen took off his suit jacket and walked from the witness box to a column behind the podium, where McCue wore a purple ski mask as a hood. Jessen used a rolled-up towel wrapped with duct tape and placed it around the back of McCue’s neck. He lifted the hood and came within inches of McCue’s face as he gripped both ends of the towel, pulling McCue slightly forward and upward. He would typically pause in this position to instill more anxiety in the detainee, Jessen told the court.

Jessen did not push McCue against the wall. He explained that the shoulders, neck and head should hit the wall at the same time to lessen the impact on the head and brain.

“You don’t want the head flopping around,” he said.

This was the second time that Jessen has demonstrated interrogation techniques in the Virginia facility. In April 2023, he did so with Annie Morgan, a lawyer for Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who faces the death penalty in a separate military commission for his alleged role in the October 2002 USS Cole bombing. In that session, Jessen ordered Morgan – playing the role of her client – into a wooden confinement box about three-feet tall. Morgan complied, and folded herself into the box, where she remained for several seconds.

The judge in that case suppressed al Nashiri’s confessions to the FBI in early 2007, concluding that his prior torture by the CIA made his participation in the interviews involuntary. A prosecution appeal of that ruling is pending before the military commission’s appellate court, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review.

Jessen had comparably less interaction with the other 9/11 defendants, including Mohammad’s nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, as well as Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi. Jessen told the lawyers for each of those teams that he did not personally subject their clients to any enhanced techniques. Instead, he met with the detainees in what he described as “maintenance visits” to hear their concerns and check in on their relationships with debriefers. At various points, Jessen acknowledged that the lawyers would be better off talking to actual witnesses to their interrogations than to him.

The government has agreed to make only Jessen and Mitchell available as CIA witnesses. Most of the witnesses in the suppression litigation have been current or former FBI employees who participated in the CIA program or who conducted the January 2007 Guantanamo interrogations that the government hopes to use at trial. Another FBI witness is scheduled to testify next week. At the last session, McCall heard oral arguments on defense motions to compel testimony from a covert CIA officer referred to as “SG1.” The judge has not indicated whether he will order additional defense witnesses prior to hearing oral arguments on the suppression dispute in November.

In late 2017, the government prohibited defense teams from independently attempting to contact CIA witnesses who might have knowledge of the black site program. McCall will factor that and other restrictions imposed on the defense teams when ruling on whether to admit or suppress the FBI statements. He also could issue another sanction against the government.

Prosecutors have long contended that the investigative restrictions related to the CIA program are necessary to protect current and former covert operatives. In his exchanges with both Groharing and Sowards, Jessen recalled receiving a credible threat from ISIS that forced him and his daughter’s family – who was living with him at the time – to leave their home with just a 15-minute warning.

Jessen, who was mostly cordial on the stand, appeared irritated on Friday morning when McCall ordered him to answer additional questions from Sowards about other threats he and his family have received over the years.

“Really, judge?” Jessen asked, prompting McCall to order him again.

Jessen finished his testimony before the lunch break on Friday, somewhat earlier than expected. McCall contemplated hearing oral arguments on pending legal motions before breaking for the day and allowing the teams to prepare for week two.

About the author: John Ryan (john@lawdragon.com) is a co-founder and the Editor-in-Chief of Lawdragon Inc., where he oversees all web and magazine content and provides regular coverage of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. When he’s not at GTMO, John is based in Brooklyn. He has covered complex legal issues for 20 years and has won multiple awards for his journalism, including a New York Press Club Award in Journalism for his coverage of the Sept. 11 case.  His book on the 9/11 case is scheduled for publication early next year.