National Security
Has CIA Consulting Firm Gone MIA?
by Sheri Fink, ProPublica - May 27, 2009 11:23 am EDT
Last week in Spokane, Wash., protesters rallied against torture outside the longtime offices of a consulting firm founded by two former military psychologists who reportedly helped develop abusive interrogation techniques for the CIA and the U.S. military. The psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, reportedly trained interrogators to use waterboarding on U.S.-held detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks. (See this story by Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair, this story by Mark Benjamin in Salon, and this story by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker. ABC News also recently profiled Mitchell and Jessen and has footage of the two declining to comment.)
Little did the protesters know, but the consulting firm they had come to protest was no longer there.
Last month, ProPublica reached Mitchell, Jessen and Associates at a phone number linked to the American Legion building where the company lists its official address. When we called the same number last Friday, it had been disconnected with no forwarding number.
Yesterday we called another office in the building, the Center for Personal Protection and Safety, where two officers of the consulting firm are also listed as working. The Center describes itself as an educational institution focused on preventing workplace violence and improving travel safety. The woman who answered the phone told us that Mitchell, Jessen and Associates had moved out of the building in April and closed its West Coast operation. She gave no further information ...
http://www.propublica.org/article/has-cia-consulting-firm-gone-mia-527