Nathan Vardi of Forbes reports:
The CIA program was devised by two contract psychologists, who had retired from the U.S. Air Force and played a “central role in the operation, assessment, and management of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” the report says.
The two psychologists, James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, are identified in the report under the pseudonyms Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar. They set up a company in 2005 in order to facilitate their CIA work, around the time the CIA effectively outsourced operations related to its detention and interrogation program, the report says. In 2006, the company got a CIA contract valued at more than $180 million and the contractors received $81 million before the contract was terminated in 2009. The CIA also provided the company and its employees with an indemnification agreement as protection from lawsuits and has paid out $1.1 million under the deal to cover legal expenses. The company hired former CIA officers and under the contract the company provided interrogators, operational psychologists, debriefers, and security personnel at CIA detention sites.
The CIA also paid millions to foreign government officials “to get foreign governments to host and support secret CIA detention sites.” See Vardi’s article for more ways that money was spent according to the Senate’s report on CIA torture.
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