Has Consulting Firm For CIA Gone MIA?

by Sheri Fink, ProPublica

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.

A woman who answered the phone at the Center for Personal Protection and Safety, which is located in the same building, told us that Mitchell, Jessen and Associates had moved out of the building in April and closed its office there. She gave no further information.

Two employees of the Center, which describes itself as an educational institution focused on preventing workplace violence and improving travel safety, are listed by the Washington Secretary of State as "governing persons" in Mitchell, Jessen and Associates. We left a message for the two men, Roger Aldrich and Randall Spivey, at the Center on Wednesday.

The management company for the building, SDS Realty, confirmed that Mitchell, Jessen and Associates had moved out in April and left no forwarding address. In late March, the real estate company was listing the 4,100-square-foot suite being vacated by the consulting firm as available for lease at $7,346 per month.

An employee of the Washington secretary of state's corporations division told us that Mitchell, Jessen and Associates was still registered as a business in the state. The company's next annual report is due to the state in September.

Mitchell, Jessen and Associates is also incorporated in good standing in Delaware, but does not have a current phone number listed there. Its only listed address is that of a business service provider, National Registered Agents, Inc.

Also, a corporate database lists an Alexandria, Virginia address for Mitchell, Jessen and Associates. The phone number listed there doesn't work. But another corporation listed at the same address is Tate Incorporated, a business consulting firm. According to information on Tate's Web site, the firm's president is David Ayres, another "governing person" of Mitchell, Jessen and Associates. The phone number for Tate works, and we left a message for Mr. Ayres on Wednesday.

Interestingly, Tate's Website lists two open positions for a "SERE Instructor." SERE refers to "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape," a training program the U.S. military offers to help personnel prepare for enemy capture.

Mitchell and Jessen were formerly SERE psychologists and reportedly helped "reverse-engineer" SERE techniques – such as slapping, stress positions, and waterboarding – for use on detainees held in U.S. custody. For more detail, see our previous story.

Lisa Schwartz contributed research to this post.

Sheri Fink is a reporter for ProPublica, America's largest investigative newsroom.

Comments

[demfriend]

Just like Blackwater changing their name so they could move on into another middle east country these guys are slime and they from all over the world who for a price will do and teach the people paying how to do torture or whatever they call it. Name changes does not change the nature of the beast they are. Why is this not the focus of a special investigator appointed to get to the bottom of the torture? Is it because both the republicans and dens played too much into what happened and Obama is hiding this or is it simple enough to protect the guys still high up in power to prevent them from public opinion meltdown? Whatever the reason I believe as many do we need to have a way to clean out the dirt and the bad guys where they are. The low ranks should not be paying for what the people who wrote the orders and memos did. These companies were right in the middle of the torture. KBI never will pay for the deaths by electrocution of our soldiers either....

[tel8034]

The war criminals may run but they cannot hide.

[SueInCA]

Mitchell was the physchologist who was sending several emails daily from Gitmo to ask for permission to go further with interrogations. Of course he is now in hiding. Perhaps the net is closing in and he knows it is a short time to blast off?

[finishcurve]

Hunt them down. We need to know who told them to do what they did, etc.

[naschkatze]

ProPublica is doing an excellent job. We need to get evidence from anywhere we can to force this administration to face the war crimes of the previous one and not cover them up.

[StillAmused]

Mitchell and Jessen join the rest of the trembling fugitives.

Someone send for a bigger life boat... this one's overcrowded and about to sink.

[brandnewstuff]

Well their names have been made public - SERE - question for DOJ when the Victims file lawsuits phone records prove the "bad actors or agents involved" Is that when more hell breaks loose?

[Budokan]

How convenient.

http://kennethmarkhoover.com

[lagumbo]

Cowards. Please continue to track these cowards down. They shouldn't be able to run any business in this country. Track these cowards down please.

[whitehawk]

Absolutely right!! They are coward's, Cheney and Rumsfeld are cowards.

[wordvarc]

"Unlicensed" Psychologists

[tippydog11]

Ask Cheney he knows where they are at..you thing....funny cheney saying torture good but the bad and ugly are now hiding scared.

[aznurse]

check his man-safe.

[ThinkCreeps]

I'm sure the FBI and Interpol will be able to turn them up. I imagine they're not exactly the toast of the CIA either.

[LeeCalif]

They probably moved near Portland, OR. That's where Evergreen Aviation is. My guess is that's the front company that provides aircraft and/or flights for the CIA. How do you spell rendition?

Evergreen has a couple public hangars that house public displays of military aircraft
and also owns and houses Howard Hughs' Spruce Goose.

There was also a female psychologist who was really smarmy and she was a director of sorts. I remember reading about her about 6 months ago. You could google her. I forget her name.

[Icantbelieveher]

Cowards!

[Rog49Thomas]

The research that is the foundation of the current methods began in 1947 and was basically "perfected" by 1960 or so when the Kubark manual was compiled.

The major "advance" since then has been the development of additional techniques related to sexual humiliation of prisoners. Ground breaking research on this was conducted in the Philippines (Marcos) and Iran (under the Shah) along with several of our brave allies in Latin America (Argentina, Chile, Honduras, etc).