Why there would have been no torture without the psychologists.
Two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jesse, were paid $81 million by the CIA to come up with the torture program.
excerpt:
Thanks to revelations in the newly released report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, it is now widely known that the CIAs torture program was created, supervised, and implemented by two licensed clinical psychologistsJames Mitchell and Bruce Jessenwho were paid millions of dollars for their efforts. Less widely known is that the Bush administrations torture operation, at both the CIA and the Pentagonat black sites and at Guantanamowas devised and supervised largely by clinical psychologists. These psychologists used their knowledge of the workings of the human mind and psychological mind-control research to induce learned helplessness and debility, dependency, and dread, aiming to destroy the minds of detainees in the hope that actionable intelligence and critical threat information could be sifted from the wreckage.
The psychologists were vital to the torture program for one additional reason: The Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel had determined that the presence of psychologists and physicians, monitoring the state and condition of the prisoner being tortured, afforded protection for the CIA leadership and the Bush administration from liability and potential prosecution for the torture. Later, the OLC applied the same rules to the Defense Departments enhanced interrogation program, which, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, was created and overseen by a team led by a clinical psychologist, and eventually overseen exclusively by clinical psychologists.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/12/psychologists_role_in_the_cia_s_torture_why_these_medical_professionals.html