According to a passage in Vice-Admiral Church’s report that is unclassified but has not been released to the public, in December, 2002, Dr. Michael Gelles, the chief psychologist at the N.C.I.S., spoke with Alberto J.Mora,the Navy’s general counsel, saying that, in his professional opinion,“abusive techniques” and “coercive psychological procedures” were being used on Qahtani at Guantánamo. Gelles warned of a phenomenon known as “force drift,” in which interrogators encountering resistance begin to lose the ability to restrain themselves.
In July, 2004, Mora wrote a memo to Church’s investigative team, in which he encounted his discussion with Gelles.He said that he had found the tactics he had read about in the Qahtani interrogation logs to be “unlawful and unworthy of the military services.” Mora argued that these practices “threaten the entire military
commission process.” According to the Church report, an N.C.I.S. official subsequently said that if the abusive practices continued “N.C.I.S. would have to
consider whether to remain co-located” in Guantánamo. According to a recent ABC News report, in January, 2003, Mora also told William J. Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel, that “the use of coercive techniques” could expose both interrogators and their administrators to criminal prosecution.
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