I don’t know what’s worse, torture psychologist James Mitchell spending 25 or so minutes defending his practices on live television or “straight news anchor” Megyn Kelly helping him exonerate himself.

As the Los Angeles Times explains, Mitchell and his then-partner, Bruce Jessen were tapped for torture by the CIA after training U.S. military how to resist and survive if they were captured by countries that do not adhere to the Geneva Convention. The two formed a company that was paid “$75 million for services, plus $5 million in case it faced criminal prosecution or other legal liability. No one was charged, but the CIA also paid out an additional $1.1 million for the company’s legal expenses between 2007 and 2012.”

Furthermore, the Times notes that the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report also found:

Their reliance on waterboarding, especially during a June 2003 visit to the secret CIA prison in Poland to interrogate Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was “life threatening,” a CIA officer complained. The suspected architect of the Sept. 11 attacks was waterboarded 183 times.

At one point, the Senate report notes, Mitchell and Jessen — who directed Mohammed’s interrogation — used their hands to cup a pool of water around his mouth so he couldn’t breathe. At another point, they waited for him “to talk before pouring water over his mouth.”

After their visit to Poland, a CIA staff psychologist wrote that “no professional in the field would credit” their judgments. Another warned that their “arrogance and narcissism” led to conflict with CIA staff.

The Senate report also cited concern as early as January 2003 that the two psychologists had a financial and ethical conflict of interest.

But Kelly asked about none of that. "Straight news anchor" Kelly seemed to have concluded (in step with Republicans) that the Senate torture report was false. Everything Mitchell said – despite his self- interest in the matter – was accepted as true.

In Part 2 of the interview, which begins at the second video below, Kelly asked what condition KSM was in when Mitchell first encountered him. Among other things, Kelly asked what KSM was wearing.

“I don’t think he was wearing anything,” Mitchell replied.

That didn’t evoke any reaction from Kelly - other than a blatant attempt to justify the torture.

KELLY: This is the man, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks, who personally beheaded Daniel Pearl, among many other atrocities. Did you feel like you were in the presence of evil?

Later, Kelly asked about KSM, “Does this person’s humanity, whatever amount of it there is, factor in at all” to the process of waterboarding?

Yes, Mitchell said it did. But his explanation was hardly reassuring. “Those techniques are so harsh that it’s emotionally distressing to the people who are administering them. Even though you don’t want to do it, you’re doing it in order to save lives and the country. And we would just have to man up, for lack of a better term and carry forward. …I reported a lot of abuses and so did Dr.Jessen. We were reporting every single thing we saw that we thought went outside of the OLC (Office of Legal Council) guidance."

That aroused no curiosity from Kelly as to what the heck was really going on. She was not interested in finding out what those abuses were nor why there were so many. No, she was interested in doing damage control for the torturing and the torturer. “And those were investigated,” she announced.

Kelly did want to know how Mitchell got that supposedly “very useful information” out of KSM.

Mitchell said, “The other EITs. I don’t really want to say which ones they were.”

“Wow!” Kelly said. She sounded impressed, not concerned.

Kelly was extremely argumentative with a so-called architect of ObamaCare, a program to deliver health insurance for all Americans. But with the architect of a torture program, it was as if she thought, what's not to like?

Watch it below, from last night’s The Kelly File.