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Interrogation Experts From Every Branch of the Military and Intelligence Agree: Torture DOESN'T Produce Useful Information
Virtually all of the top interrogation experts - both conservatives and liberals (except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) - say that torture doesn't work:
- Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:
"Experience
indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the
cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is
a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."
- The C.I.A.'s 1963 interrogation manual stated:
Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted
as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results,
while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue.
During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He
may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that
take still longer to disprove.
- According to the Washington Post, the CIA's top spy - Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service - said
that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since
waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. "I don’t think
we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint."
- The CIA's own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not "efficacious" in producing information
- A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) says (as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern):
It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible
story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture
has served some useful purpose.This is not just because the
old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it
doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more
terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly
neutralize.
- A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) states:
Many
governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have
abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches
actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited
torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German
Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined
that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better
intelligence.
- Another former high-level CIA official (Bob Baer) says:
And
torture -- I just don't think it really works ... you don't get the
truth. What happens when you torture people is, they figure out what
you want to hear and they tell you. - Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, says:
"I personally think that any information gotten through extreme
methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would
be someone telling you what you wanted to hear."
- A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 (Glenn L. Carle) says:
[Coercive
techniques] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy
information…Everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was
un-American and did not work.”
- A former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, and wrote a book called How to Break a Terrorist writes:
As
the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting
down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass
murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters
cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main
reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the
suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily
conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives
because of our policy of torture and abuse. But that’s only the past.
Somewhere
in the world there are other young Muslims who have joined Al Qaida
because we tortured and abused prisoners. These men will certainly
carry out future attacks against Americans, either in Iraq,
Afghanistan, or possibly even here. And that’s not to mention numerous
other Muslims who support Al Qaida, either financially or in other
ways, because they are outraged that the United States tortured and
abused Muslim prisoners.In addition, torture and abuse has made
us less safe because detainees are less likely to cooperate during
interrogations if they don’t trust us. I know from having conducted
hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and
supervising more than one thousand, that when a captured Al Qaida
member sees us live up to our stated principles they are more willing
to negotiate and cooperate with us. When we torture or abuse them, it
hardens their resolve and reaffirms why they picked up arms.
He also says:
[Torture is] extremely ineffective, and it's counter-productive to what we're trying to accomplish.
When
we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve ... The information
that you get is unreliable. ... And even if you do get reliable
information, you're able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda's then
going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members.And he repeats:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
He said last week:
They
don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the
lives of Americans.... The way the U.S. treated its prisoners "was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers.
- The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn't work
- Another FBI interrogator of 9/11 suspects said:
I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective
- A third former FBI interrogator -- who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects -- says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists
- A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states "[we]
explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for
many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing
techniques." (see also this)
- The FBI warned
military interrogators in 2003 that enhanced interrogation techniques
are "of questionable effectiveness" and cited a "lack of evidence of
[enhanced techniques’] success.
- "When long-time FBI
director Mueller was asked whether any attacks on America been
disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through “enhanced
techniques”, he responded “I don’t believe that has been the case.”
- The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found that torture doesn't work, stating:
The
administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting
controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that
could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised
our moral authority.
- The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce "unreliable information."
- General Petraeus says that torture is unnecessary, hurts our national security and violates our American values
- Retired 4-star General Barry McCaffrey - who Schwarzkopf called he hero of Desert Storm - agrees
- The number 2 terrorism expert for the State Department says torture doesn't work, and just creates more terrorists.
- Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson says:
Fundamentally,
those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain
actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that’s important, and it is,
then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is
the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.He also says:
Another
objection is that torture doesn't work. All the literature and
experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go
exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of
the prisoners.
- Army Colonel Stuart
Herrington - a military intelligence specialist who interrogated
generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated US
detention operations at Guantánamo - notes
that the process of obtaining information is hampered, not helped, by
practices such as “slapping someone in the face and stripping them
naked”.Herrington and other former US military interrogators say:
We
know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information
from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens
their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find
a way to elicit useful information.
- Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, said:
If
you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody
that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that
that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think
it’s effective.
- Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army
Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner
interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army
Intelligence School, says torture doesn't work
- The head of all U.S. intelligence said:
The
bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world
... The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever
benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national
security.
- Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America's indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool.
- A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said,
Torture
puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe,
torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool
now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them,
depicting what happened at Guantanamo.
- The first head of the Department of Homeland Security - Tom Ridge - says we were wrong to torture.The former British intelligence chairman says that waterboarding didn’t stop terror plots.
- A spokesman for the National Security Council (Tommy Vietor) says:
The
bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence
from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in
2003.
- The Marines weren't keen on torture, either
- As Vanity Fair reports:
In
researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist
officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion
is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate
significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the
squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads,
chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts...
Here, they say,
far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more
torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some
misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for
invading Iraq.
- Neuroscientists have found that torture physically and chemically interferes with the prisoner's ability to tell the truth
- An Army psychologist - Major Paul Burney, Army’s Behavior Science Consulting Team psychologist - said (page 78 & 83):
It
was stressed to me time and time again that psychological
investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At
best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to hear
to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly
likely to be false.***
Interrogation techniques that
rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner
inaccurate information and create an increased level of
resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort
evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the
volume or quality of information obtained.
- An expert on resisting torture - Terrence Russell, JPRA’s manager for research and development and a SERE specialist - said (page 209):
History
has shown us that physical pressures are not effective for compelling
an individual to give information or to do something’ and are not
effective for gaining accurate, actionable intelligence.
And - according to the experts - torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation
Indeed, it has been known for hundreds of years that torture doesn't work:
- In the ancient Far East, torture was used as a way to intimidate the population into obedience (rather than a method for gaining information)
- As a former CIA analyst notes:
During
the Inquisition there were many confessed witches, and many others
were named by those tortured as other witches. Unsurprisingly, when
these new claimed witches were tortured, they also confessed.
Confirmation of some statement made under torture, when that
confirmation is extracted by another case of torture, is invalid
information and cannot be trusted.
- Top American World War 2 interrogators got more information using chess or Ping-Pong instead of torture than those who use torture are getting today
- The head of Britain's wartime interrogation center in London said:
“Violence is taboo. Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.”
- The national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush (Donald P. Gregg) wrote:
During wartime service with the CIA in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, I
was in charge of intelligence operations in the 10 provinces
surrounding Saigon. One of my tasks was to prevent rocket attacks on
Saigon's port.
Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence,
most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how
North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese
colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured
prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I
argued for better treatment and pressed for key prisoners to be turned
over to the CIA, where humane interrogation methods were the rule -
and more accurate intelligence was the result.
The colonel
finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying,
"This man knows a lot, but he will not talk to me."
We
treated the prisoner's wounds, reunited him with his family, and
allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city's
affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a
flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned
operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.
Admittedly, it would be hard to make a story from nearly 40 years ago
into a definitive case study. But there is a useful reminder here. The
key to successful interrogation is for the interrogator - even as he
controls the situation - to recognize a prisoner's humanity, to
understand his culture, background and language. Torture makes this
impossible.
There's a sad twist here. Cheney forgets that the
Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A
high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an
Arabic-speaking FBI agent yielded highly useful information, including
the final word on Iraq's weapons programs.
His name was Saddam Hussein.
-
Top interrogators got information from a high-level Al Qaeda suspects
through building rapport, even if they hated the person they were
interrogating by treating them as human
Postscript:
Even if - despite the above - you still believe that torture produces
helpful information, you should note that the U.S. government used Communist torture techniques specifically designed to produce FALSE Confessions.
- advertisements -
Without clearly defining torture and the circumstances of its employment, you are simply leading your readers into a forest of mirrors. You are empowering the current administration of State to build upon the infrastructure and policies codified into law under the previous administration of State. Regardless of how any specific policies are codified into paper laws, career professionals will often make terrible sacrifices in defense of their nation.
Most often it is the power the office that corrupts the occupant, not the transient occupant who corrupts the office. They have moved far beyond petty debates on "torture", authored joke resolutions "forbidding" specific practices but leaving the entire framework intact. They have empowered the State to "legally" authorize the assassination of US citizens. Where does it stop?
The actors you rail against have exited stage left and you follow them into the alley, ignoring the actors remaining on stage, which is exactly what they want...
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Dead horse, meet the beater. He takes the name of our greatest President in vain.
If you keep redefining what torture is, everything is torture.
Scaring an enemy soldier by saying something is now considered torture.
Playing music over and over is considered torture. Yet not letting my son do it is also
considered torture.
At this point, I really don't give a shit. I do know that if you scare a person with the words you say, you do get useful, truthful information. How do I know it? Because I did it many years ago. I used nothing but my mouth. It worked and the information was true. But it is considered torture today. I consider myself brave and honorable. But if I was physically tortured I would tell the truth to make it stop.
What fool wouldn't?
Only in the movies does it seem like a good idea to lie or 'hold out' under torture.
You can tell me, over and over and over again, my friend, that fire is not hot.
Bring out all the 'experts' you want.
But it does not change the fact that fire really is hot.
Torture works.
Just ask the KGB.
Sure... you have to do it right, not half-assed, american style.
I am tortured everyday when I accidentally turn on CNBS, FOX, MSNBC, CNN ... I demand compensation
Torture helped the Catholic Church eradicate warewolfs and witches . If tortured long enough all warewolfs and witches will confess. Peter Wolf is an example of the success of torture by the church.
Torture helped the Catholic Church eradicate warewolfs and witches
It's true! How many werewolves do you see today?
The appropriate answer to this loaded question is:
I don't give a damn whether torture works or not - torture is utterly wrong and completely unacceptable.
Look. Let's face it. If you have a problem with your neighbor (say, playing loud music at night), murdering him is effective. It flat out stops him. However, how many people justify murder because "it works"?
The fact that people are even willing to debate the "torture works" claim shows how utterly and completely clueless and insane human beings are. Anyone who proposes, approves or practices torture should be immediately locked away or executed.
Your "remedy" is torture to me.
Should you be locked up or executed?
To lock up a criminal does not constitute torture. Your logic is just amazing... the kind of logic torture advocates employ.
People who demand torture are no better than the SS, Stalin's killer commando's, Pol Pot, Saddam or Gaddhafi.
They are mostly sadists who like to watch others suffer.
Most of the people who advocate torture are utter cowards, who'd immediately break out in tears if only one hair was pulled from their heads, not even speaking of a fingernail pulled out with some pliers without anesthetics.
Briliant article, George, and don't feed the trolls that have infiltrated this board.
These armchair soldiers are the first to piss their pants in case of war.
Read: "Nothing new on the Western front" by Remarque and you'll know what I'm talking about.
Well, I have been to war, I don't piss in my pants, and I don't agree with your statements.
I think you paint an overly broad stroke with your brush.
My problem is this constant comparison to the SS etc, and the redefinition of torture.
One man's torture is another man's pleasure. I have seen torture defined as speech. Playing loud music has been called torture. A bug in a room with a person was called torture.
This redefinition has made the term meaningless.
Just like calling someone a racist.
Haven't read the article YET George, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in before I run out. Since WE have interrogation/torture, why in the HELL not use it! This fucking bleeding heart liberal shit is going to sink this damn ship, if it already hasn't! If you believe "THEY" wouldn't, and don't use it, then you are just full of shit. I guess cutting the heads off innocent people, AND video taping it so the horror could be relived thousands upon thousands of times (torture), by the world and loved ones, isn't in your realm of brutality? Fuck the bastards, this is a new world, and we, the survivors, are playing by a much newer game plan. and it's not from the Pelosi era of bullshit! Get with the game plan, or else it just might be your head next time. Have a great day.
Abraham Lincoln and others were correct
We can only be destroyed from within.
I have faith in a neutral America, like Switzerland, being a shining light upon a hill.
If we weren't controlled by a small middle eastern country we wouldn't need to be arguing about torture.
By the way? How many terrorist organizations are targeting the swiss?
Cretin.
Whew! another generalized cut and paste job.
Define torture.... Define prisoner of war. Define terrorist.
You may have a salient point, but the generality and jingoism of the article doesn't actuallly create a point. Just a rant.
"Define torture.... Define prisoner of war. Define terrorist."
Torture is defined as what I feel each time I see the evil Rummy or Chaney on the television. Terrorist is what I see when I see Rummy or Chaney. Prisoner of war? Have to think about that one a bit.
"Prisoner of war? Have to think about that one a bit."
A terrorist doesn't wear a uniform. Without it, he claims no priveldge as a warrior when captured by another warrior and is treated as such in most places on earth.
Civilized nations can indeed ascribe to the "terrorist code" if they choose but its kinda rough on the civilian populations of all civilized nations involved as all civilians will be seen as terrorists.
Choices bitchez! ;-)
GW is so pissed that we didn't all agree with him yesterday he thought he'd run 'er up the ole flagpole again. Lets all just say what he wants to hear and be done with it!
It worked just fine George. Got a lot of false intelligence to get us into a war which we should have never started so if that was the plan then it worked really well.
++
Torture is bad.
Torture is good.
"Even if - despite the above - you still believe that torture produces helpful information, you should note that"
...you are beyond the reach of facts and reason. Admit it, you want to torture for your own pleasure.
Even if - despite the above - you still believe that there wouldn't be a shitload of foreign fighters in Iraq without any "torture" or Abu Ghraib-
...you are beyond the reach of facts and reason.
EPIC CHERRYPICKING
It produces helpful testimony though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rcBM_w-2K8