According to current and former government officials cited by ABC News, the CIA doled out responsibility for waterboarding to a private contractor, Mitchell Jessen and Associates. Waterboarding of detainees was designed to be "safe" by the two men running the firm, Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell.
The two worked out of an unmarked office in Spokane, Washington, according to ABC.
Both men refused to speak on the record — and their refusals (here and here) have been captured on videotape.
"It's clear that these psychologists had an important role in developing what became the CIA's torture program," Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, was quoted as saying.
Ex-U.S. officials told the network the two were the architects of the CIA's 10-step interrogation plan.
"Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites," ABC notes.
"The whole intense interrogation concept that we hear about, is essentially their concepts," according to Col. Steven Kleinman, an Air Force interrogator.
But, the network's reporters add, "it turns out neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them.
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