Gov. DeSantis to hold news conference in Cape CanaveralLee County School Board to hold a transportation workshop
Cape Canaveral Gov. DeSantis to hold news conference in Cape Canaveral Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to hold a news conference in Cape Canaveral.
WINK News Lee County School Board to hold a transportation workshop With one month left for the academic year, parents’ concerns have turned to frustration as buses struggle to get kids to and from school.
Readying for hurricane season with Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday Hurricane season is rapidly approaching as Floridians prep for potential storms with the upcoming Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday.
NAPLES Increasing amount of homeless seniors in SWFL Saint Matthew House told Wink News that 20% of the people they shelter are over 60 years old.
NAPLES Man suspected of threatening pickelballers with machete A man has been arrested after authorities say he chased a group of pickleball players off a Naples court. “I don’t know. It just seemed like he snapped,” said William Nehrkorn, father of one of the pickleball players. 53-year-old Pelican Marsh maintenance worker Joseph Devalle ran toward Nehrkorn’s son and friends, not with a paddle […]
NAPLES Turtle Club in Naples reopens Following a 19-month closure because of Hurricane Ian, the Turtle Club has reopened.
FORT MYERS BEACH Hurricane season preparations at Lee County construction sites Many already know the drill when hurricane season is around the corner.
SANIBEL Bones found on Sanibel concern beachgoers A husband and wife found what appeared to be bones. What type and where they came from is being investigated.
FGCU FGCU president reflects on first year with graduating class Alico Arena was packed this weekend as Florida Gulf Coast University graduated 1,900 students in four ceremonies.
Reverse shoulder replacement offers new approach to pain management Shoulder replacement is the third most common replacement in the US, following hip and knee replacement.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Lee County teachers bargain for new raises Kevin Daly is the voice of the Lee County Teachers Union, and he says he knows firsthand the struggle teachers experience across the state.
FORT MYERS New Starbucks off Colonial expected to add to traffic headaches It’s a venti-sized traffic nightmare. That’s how Gina O’Donnell envisions the future of this plaza.
NAPLES Feeding families through Meals of Hope They’re a Naples-based non-profit organization whose mission is to alleviate hunger both locally and throughout the country.
Family dealing with two losses in quick succession A teenager will not get to celebrate turning 21 years old with friends, can’t put a smile on his family member’s faces and will never get to see his mother again.
JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli leaders have approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah Israeli leaders approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, and Israeli forces were striking targets in the area, officials announced Monday, hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal.
Cape Canaveral Gov. DeSantis to hold news conference in Cape Canaveral Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to hold a news conference in Cape Canaveral.
WINK News Lee County School Board to hold a transportation workshop With one month left for the academic year, parents’ concerns have turned to frustration as buses struggle to get kids to and from school.
Readying for hurricane season with Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday Hurricane season is rapidly approaching as Floridians prep for potential storms with the upcoming Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday.
NAPLES Increasing amount of homeless seniors in SWFL Saint Matthew House told Wink News that 20% of the people they shelter are over 60 years old.
NAPLES Man suspected of threatening pickelballers with machete A man has been arrested after authorities say he chased a group of pickleball players off a Naples court. “I don’t know. It just seemed like he snapped,” said William Nehrkorn, father of one of the pickleball players. 53-year-old Pelican Marsh maintenance worker Joseph Devalle ran toward Nehrkorn’s son and friends, not with a paddle […]
NAPLES Turtle Club in Naples reopens Following a 19-month closure because of Hurricane Ian, the Turtle Club has reopened.
FORT MYERS BEACH Hurricane season preparations at Lee County construction sites Many already know the drill when hurricane season is around the corner.
SANIBEL Bones found on Sanibel concern beachgoers A husband and wife found what appeared to be bones. What type and where they came from is being investigated.
FGCU FGCU president reflects on first year with graduating class Alico Arena was packed this weekend as Florida Gulf Coast University graduated 1,900 students in four ceremonies.
Reverse shoulder replacement offers new approach to pain management Shoulder replacement is the third most common replacement in the US, following hip and knee replacement.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Lee County teachers bargain for new raises Kevin Daly is the voice of the Lee County Teachers Union, and he says he knows firsthand the struggle teachers experience across the state.
FORT MYERS New Starbucks off Colonial expected to add to traffic headaches It’s a venti-sized traffic nightmare. That’s how Gina O’Donnell envisions the future of this plaza.
NAPLES Feeding families through Meals of Hope They’re a Naples-based non-profit organization whose mission is to alleviate hunger both locally and throughout the country.
Family dealing with two losses in quick succession A teenager will not get to celebrate turning 21 years old with friends, can’t put a smile on his family member’s faces and will never get to see his mother again.
JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli leaders have approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah Israeli leaders approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, and Israeli forces were striking targets in the area, officials announced Monday, hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal.
MGN Online WASHINGTON (AP) – When the CIA set out to design a program to elicit intelligence from captured terrorists, it turned to two former Air Force psychologists with no practical interrogation experience and no specialized knowledge of al-Qaida, according to a Senate investigation released this week. What the two men did have was an understanding of the brutal methods employed on American prisoners of war by governments such as North Korea and Vietnam, methods that were later used to help train U.S. soldiers and airmen to resist torture. The spy agency ended up outsourcing much of its interrogation program to the pair, who formed a company that ultimately was paid $81 million, the Senate report says. The report adds new details to what has long been known about the integral role the two psychologists played in some of the harshest treatment of CIA detainees. The report refers to the men using pseudonyms, Grayson Swigart and Hammond Dunbar. But current and former U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about information that is not public, have identified them as James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The CIA told Congress in 1989 that “inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers,” the report notes. But Mitchell and Jessen convinced top officials at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, then run by Cofer Black and Jose Rodriguez, that breaking people was the key to unraveling terror plots. They reverse-engineered the military training techniques, which had never been studied as a form of interrogation. Among their recommendations was humiliation, painful stress positions, confinement, sleep deprivation – and waterboarding. “On the CIA’s behalf, the contract psychologists developed theories of interrogation based on ‘learned helplessness,’ and developed the list of enhanced interrogation techniques that was approved for use against Abu Zubaydah and subsequent CIA detainees,” the Senate report said, referring to the first significant al-Qaida figure captured, taken to a secret prison and subjected to a battery of techniques. The psychologists personally conducted interrogations of Zubaydah and other significant detainees using these techniques. They also evaluated whether detainees’ psychological state allowed for the continued use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.” Some CIA officials were troubled by the conflict of interest, the report notes. One CIA officer emailed that the pair had a “vested interest” in waterboarding. Another accused them of “arrogance and narcissism.” The CIA, in its response to the Senate report, acknowledged that the conflict “raised concerns and prompted deliberation,” leading to a new rule in early 2003 that no contractor could issue a definitive psychological assessment of a detainee. But the agency defended hiring the two psychologists. “We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program,” the agency said in its written response. Jessen helped interrogate detainee Gul Rahman at a dungeon-like Afghanistan prison called the Salt Pit, the report says, a session that included “48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment.” A few days later, after Jessen left, Rahman was found dead of hypothermia. Both men helped waterboard 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and threatened his children, the report said. Rodriguez, who has criticized the Senate report, said he had nothing to add beyond the account of his 2012 memoir, “Hard Measures,” which says he asked the psychologists to help interrogate Zubaydah days after he was captured – before it was known whether he would cooperate. The Senate report says Zubaydah offered useful intelligence to FBI agents before he was tortured. Black, in an email, said he never met Mitchell and Jessen, and declined further comment. Reached at his home in Florida, James E. Mitchell said he could not confirm his involvement with the CIA, citing a secrecy agreement. But he challenged the Senate report as inaccurate in its assertion that the brutal tactics did not produce unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence. “I completely understand why the human rights organizations in the United States are upset by the Senate report,” he said. “I would be upset by it too, if it were true.” “What they are asking you to believe is that multiple directors of the CIA and analysts who made their living for years doing this lied to the federal government, or were too stupid to know that the intelligence they were getting wasn’t useful.” The report said Mitchell “had reviewed research on ‘learned helplessness,’ in which individuals might become passive and depressed in response to adverse or uncontrollable events. He theorized that inducing such a state could encourage a detainee to cooperate and provide information.” University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman, who has written on “learned helplessness,” said in an email, “I am grieved and horrified that good science, which has helped so many people overcome depression, may have been used for such dubious purposes.” Joe Margulies, a Cornell University law professor who unsuccessfully sought to have Mitchell’s Texas psychologist license revoked, said, “There’s something particularly vile about misusing a skill that’s meant to help people.” Mitchell asserted, as have former CIA officials who ran the interrogation program, that the current policy of using CIA drones to kill terrorists overseas with Hellfire missiles is more troubling than subjecting them to harsh interrogation measures. “It’s a lot more humane, even if you are going to subject them to harsh techniques, to question them while they are still alive, than it is to kill them and their children and their neighbors with a drone,” he said.