CIA torture psychologists compare selves to Nazi gas makers as "defense"

[Tanuki]

Link to tweet

.... "Psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen were the architects of the CIA’s torture program. Now, in a groundbreaking lawsuit, three survivors and victims of the torture program are seeking to hold Mitchell and Jessen accountable.

This Friday in federal court in Spokane, Washington, Mitchell and Jessen’s lawyers will argue that they can’t be held responsible for their actions. In an extraordinary legal filing, Mitchell and Jessen claim they aren’t legally responsible to the people hurt by their methods because they “simply did business with the CIA pursuant to their contracts.”
.......

In fact, the Nuremberg tribunals that judged the Nazis and their enablers after World War II established the opposite rule: Private contractors are accountable when they choose toprovide unlawful means for and profit from war crimes. In the same case that Mitchell and Jessen cite, the military tribunal found the owner of a chemical company that sold Zyklon B to the Nazis guilty — even though only the Nazis had final say on which prisoners would be gassed.

The military tribunal made clear that “knowingly to supply a commodity to a branch of the State which was using that commodity for the mass extermination of Allied civilian nationals was a war crime, and that the people who did it were war criminals for putting the means to commit the crime into the hands of those who actually carried it out.”

This conclusion applies in our clients’ case, as we explained in a court filing. Mitchell and Jessen came up with the torture methods used at secret CIA prisons, personally tested their methods on the CIA’s first prisoner, and formed a company that took in $81 million in taxpayer money to run the torture program. Making money by choosing to supply the tools for torture isn’t “simply doing business.” It’s illegal.
.......

Having failed in two previous attempts to shut down the lawsuit against them, Mitchell and Jessen are now also making one last effort to avoid a trial — presently scheduled for early September — for their actions. The two psychologists will argue again that no court has the power to judge them, and that they’re immune from having to account for the profits they made."....(more)

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

Fuckers.

[gratuitous]

2. "Nothing personal, just business"

Dear Drs. (for now) Mitchell and Jessen: There's a reason that "nothing personal" line is always falling out of the mouth of some criminal psychopath. Can you guess what it is? Yes? No? The "nothing personal" line is spoken by criminal psychopaths because they're criminal psychopaths. I don't suppose that even in the movies they receive a cool $80 million for their criminal actions, but you two sure as the fuck did.

I hope you're stripped of every asset by the plaintiffs and you spend the rest of your days naked on some street corner begging passersby for pennies. I hope you both end your days in such abject misery, isolated from the rest of humanity in a spectacle that would make Rudolf Hess shake his head and say, "Harsh, man."