About this item
In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qaida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training US military members to resist interrogation should they be captured, Mitchell, aware of the urgent need to prevent impending catastrophic attacks, worked with the CIA to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques" - which included waterboarding.In Enhanced Interrogation, Mitchell now offers a first-person account of the EIT program, providing a contribution to our historical understanding of one of the most controversial elements of Americas ongoing war on terror. Listeners will follow him inside the secretive "black sites" and cells of terrorists and terror suspects where he personally applied enhanced interrogation techniques. Mitchell personally questioned 13 of the most senior high-value detainees in US custody - including Abu Zubaydah; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the amir or "commander" of the USS Cole bombing; and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terror attacks - obtaining information that he maintains remains essential to winning the war against al-Qaida and informing our strategy to defeat ISIS and all of radical Islam. From the interrogation programs earliest moments to its darkest hours, Mitchell also lifts the curtain on its immediate effects, the controversy surrounding its methods, and its downfall. He shares his view that EIT, when applied correctly, was useful in drawing detainees to cooperate and that when applied incorrectly it was counterproductive. He also chronicles what it is like to undertake a several-years-long critical mission at the request of the government only to be hounded for nearly a decade afterward by congressional investigations and Justice Department prosecutors. Gripping in its detail and deeply illuminating, Enhanced Interrogation argues that it is necessary for America to take strong measures to defend itself from its enemies and that the country is less safe now without them than it was before 9/11.
About the Author
James E. Mitchell served as an interrogator for the CIA from August 2002 through January 2009. He was involved in the development of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program and was one of their interrogators from its inception until President Barack Obama shut it down by executive order on January 22, 2009. He interrogated fourteen of the most senior so-called high-value detainees in U.S. custody, including Abu Zubaydah; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the amir, or "commander," of the USS Cole bombing; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) , the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terror attacks; Hambali, the Bali bomber; and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the man who took over for KSM as the leader of terrorist attacks against the United States for al-Qa'ida, to name a few.
Dr. Mitchell served twenty-two years in the U.S. Air Force and retired as a lieutenant colonel including seven years at the USAF Survival School in Spokane, Washington.
In addition to his experiences as an interrogator, Dr. Mitchell is a law enforcement trained hostage negotiator and served on a hostage negotiation team. He has also consulted with military counterterrorist units, and the FBI, NSA, and CIA on divergent topics, including psychologically profiling war criminals, predicting violence, psychologically profiling and influencing foreign assets, surviving hostage situations, selection of individuals for high-risk missions, and handling hostages wired into improvised explosive devices during rescue.
Dr. Mitchell has a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of South Florida. He received his BS and master's in psychology from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
