This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Even CIA Admits Torture Doesn’t Work
Seton Hall Law School Professor Jonathan Hafetz made an important point today:
CIA director, John O Brennan, admitted that the agency “has not concluded that it was the use of EITs [“Enhanced Interrogation Techniques aka torture] that allowed us to obtain useful information from detainees”.
***
The [CIA] – unlike its loudest defenders – is not endorsing torture as a means of gaining intelligence or keeping the country safe.
***
The flurry of media appearances by Cheney and other torture defenders has created a false sense that there is a genuine divide over whether torture “works”. But neither the CIA nor professional interrogators actually say that.
Indeed, the CIA has consistently said for many decades that torture doesn’t work:
- The CIA’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.
- Richard Stolz, the chief of the CIA’s clandestine service under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, testified to Congress:
Physical abuse or other degrading treatment was rejected not only because it is wrong, but because it has historically proven to be ineffective.
- 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.
***
The old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work ….
- 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 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.
Indeed, all of the top interrogation experts from the military, FBI and other American and allied services have said the same thing ... for a long, long time.
Sadly - because of a massive propaganda campaign - the American people still have no idea ...
- advertisements -


I feel tortured when I read how the bill of rights and original constitution have been hollowed out, and replaced. For decades now, whatever controls our country does not sit in the senate, house, or white house.
I eagerly await GW's expose' on the moral pitfalls of S&M and the people who practice it ;-)
This is old news. The CIA has published several papers about the uselessness of torture-thought i'd fund one more study if Richard "the dick" Cheney was one of the subjects
Your logic escapes me.
Just ask yourself what would need to happen before you gave up the PIN on your debit card. Probably not very much. Now what would have to happen to give up the address where your family lives. Could someone get that from you using any method they choose? Would you give it up? Hate to break it to ZH readers but on the vast majority of people torture works and it works fast.
That a perfect example of why torture doesn't work. What would you say if someone was torturing you for your PIN number and you didn't have a PIN number?
So from the beginning you need to be sure that 100% of the people you're torturing have the equivalent of a PIN number in this analogy (i.e. are guilty of something) but where are you getting the information on who to arrest from? You're getting it form other people you've tortured. So as soon as you make one mistake and start torturing an innocent person you generate an ever expanding tidal wave of bull**** information as these innocent people accuse whoever they can think of to stop you torturing them.
Torture doesn't work? or torture doesn't always work? Torture is not good for a broad fishing expedition so you are right about that. It's great for "you tell me where X is or else and we need all possibilities of XYZ" or "who is the guy with you in the picture". As long as the detention time period is greater than the verification period then torture works great.
I'm guessing the CIA understands the nuance better than you.
Excellent post.
if bin laden didn't do 911. if al queda is a cia proxy. if iraq had no part in 911. what kind of informatiom were they trying to extract? I'm thinking location of or identy of the guardians of hidden treasure, art pieces, and artifacts.
Bingo! i thought it fitting that after a prison riot in Iraq, the prisoners located one of the worst CIA torturers....and tortured him to death!
Now thats a good question.
If there is a "ticking bomb scenario" and one of my family members was in harm's way, I'd say "sure, hook up the electrodes and have at it. Torture the SOB until he tells you what you need to know to stop the attack." If you have trouble with that concept, you might be the kind of guy who wouldn't protect his wife from being raped because you believe that "violence never solved anything". In other words, a dalykos kinda guy.....
The exquisitely sensitive among us don't have the stomach for what needs to be done.
The Anti-DEATH penalty crowd is among the worst of them.
They think they are an advanced evolutionary species, elitists who wouldn't dare, 'be like them'.
They think ALL human beans are alike, their ability to withstand the discomfort, the pain, the psychological distress are equally experienced the same by everyone.
What their agenda is, is what's concealed and suspect.
IF torture is not working it would not be used in the first place. If torture is incorrectly performed, by idiots, then it won't likely work.
If the method is not appropriate to the situation it likely won't work.
Torture properly done, by trained interrogators works, and quite well, speedily.
Violence, Vigilantism, and taking a gun to a knife fight ALL work, better, and faster with more justice dispensed that what occurs in the Legal system, which is in reality a Lawyers and judges income enhancement program.
"If there is a "ticking bomb scenario" and one of my family members was in harm's way"
"if" so would I
but when there isn't a ticking bomb scenario you get
a) literally tons of bogus information to sift through
b) tens of thousands of new enemies.
You can get ten times more *false* information in a week from torturing people but you can get ten times more *true* information in three monthes by not torturing people.
Your response tells me you are a practical man / woman. ("If" so would I). There was a reason I specified "a ticking bomb scenario". The time constraint alone dictates the method. And, none other than Alan Dershowitz has agreed, reluctantly or not, torture is justified under those conditions.
And I would agree the use of torture under any other condition causes its "special" nature to be subject to abuse or possibly to be ineffective. However, I don't think the last point has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. I suspect it works on some and not others. But therein lies the conundrum: who is the person it works on?
The story is bogus. Torture has been found to be a fast and reliable method to get quality intel, but it needs to be applied to the right candidate and in the right method.
Waterboarding a subject doesn't work as he will tell you anything (including lies) to get the session to stop, the worst he will face is another waterboarding down the track if the intel if found to be false. But what about more extreme methods?
An example, who will tell a lie if the interogators (torturers) will torture to death a family member if the intel is false or not verifiable? That requires the torturers being willing to kill whole families to get suspects to talk. Yes some fanatics will let their whole family die but other prisoners will see those dead families and decide to avoid that fate for their family.
You know what they say. If its being done right here or anywhere else. Its not the US doing it. That line is funny because its true. Been true my whole life.
By the way your other example is actualy called blackmail. Tell me or I will do things to your children? Thats not torture its blackmail. Just so you know.
Torture has been found to be a fast and reliable method to get quality intel,
Do you have any links? names? quotes? that backs up what you say? Or do we just take you at your word? i'm willing to accept the possibility that you are right, but you need to provide more info from better sources than the article. Otherwise you are just spouting off BS.
but it needs to be applied to the right candidate and in the right method.
ummm...that's kind of the reason why they torture. It's not the movies. The problem with torture is that they don't know who the right candidate is or what is the right method. The reason why there are cells is so that if caught they cannot give up more critical information. At that poiint even if the tortureres have a known terrorist they don't know what information they have so any information would have to be considered suspect.Further a terrorist who is willing to kill and die for their cause will likely endure torture, give false info and more. As torture increased the information would be a mix of truth and lies.
Finally, The 'bomb in the stadium' is strictly from the movies. There is no countdown timer that allows torture to get there in the nick of time. They park the car, truck, or van walk away then it blows up. There is only an emergency shut off in 24, James Bond movies, and Austin Powers.
And what if they don't know anything? You can kill their whole family one by one and they still won't know anything.
Turn off the TV. Really it shows.
So why torture? 3 possible reasons.
a) to turn people into informers or patsies
b) as a result of functionaries not understanding why they are at war and so acting sadistically, the way soldiers in Iraq or Vietnam used racist terms for the locals, justifying the war in their own minds on racist grounds
c) the renditioning program was a cover for moving drugs and drug proceeds around the globe, and the CIA are such complete psychopaths that torturing people makes a good cover story for this. The CIA replaced the renditioning program with drones as a way of moving drugs, so now they randomly kill people as a cover instead of torturing people, not really an improvement.
"3 possible reasons"
Four. Individuals who want to torture looking for an excuse.
Divorce attorneys already knew that mental torture does not work, excet to increase their business. Try tickeling your wifes feet if she is naughty. If a wife wants to torture her husband, take him shopping. If you want to torture a politician, make him read the US bill of rights and explain what it means today on camera.
There are some people that want permission to be beastly. And others glad to give it to them because they don't have the balls to do it themselves.
It's all about inflicting hurt on some hated person. And there is something terribly wrong mentally with someone who could do that in a sustained, methodical fashion, regardless of who's side they're on.
Tomas de Torquemada, Queen Isabella's most-trusted advisor, used torture to extract confessions. "Under Torquemada’s torture guidelines, blood and death was forbidden. Torquemada mandated that a physician be present in the chambers during torture, ensuring the victim wasn't close to death and that they remained coherent—only a coherent person could confess." http://deni-edwards.hubpages.com/hub/Torquemadas-Spanish-Inquisition-Fro...
Stalin's show trials used confessions extracted by torture. http://www.trotsky.net/trotsky_year/moscow_trials.html
As always, the sheeple trust their Queen and her adviser, or their Chairman and his advisers, or our President and his advisers to torture the guilty without killing them to protect the sheeple. Why have trials, when we can trust government advisers to identify the guilty with torture? Would trusted government advisers lie, or make mistakes? If we cannot trust Obama or Bush and their advisers, who can we trust? If we cannot trust confessions extracted by torture, what can be believed? Neither Torquemada, nor Stalin, nor Bush, nor Obama killed with torture.
Trust in leaders or their torturing is the opiate of the sheeple.
....so I guess fucking 11 year old little boys in the ass in front of their mothers gains you no actionable intelligence?
Gee, I wonder why that is? I wonder if they'll change that policy for 2015.
" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/05/14/731112/-Seymour-Hersh-Children-...
dailykos? LMMFAO.
See you at netroots.
Do you think nice sane people can torture long term? The sane people are gradually filtered out because a) they can't stand it and b) they realise that it is worse than useless as the bogus information it produces wastes thousands of man/hours. So who's left doing the torturing after you filter out all the sane people?
The sort of people who'd make Satan look away.
Dickless Cheney would be one of the sort of people
There are a slew of other sources where he was quoted as saying the same thing. DK just happened to be the first one on the list. A simple search will provide you with 2, 3, 4...
Video taping it would be pretty hard to squerm out of. Some brazen shit.
Let's give anarchy a go.
Torture "works" if what you desire is torture.
The banksters need to repay us.
Authority that tortures is not authority.
Or building monsters capable of some major vileness.
The reason why I rarely post to your articles is because you usually make my comments redundant. Thanks for your Herculean efforts mate and happy new year.
Happy new year, mate!
CIA should privately contract out their tortures. That method removes them from any culpability for war crimes. Hey, if they can do it with the prisons home and away, let's load the boat for the corporations! The foreign central banks will welcome the rise in their US defense stocks.Oh good.....more guilt for the poor lil terrorists.
Cause we obviously don't have anything else to talk about.
Howsa bout we just kill them from now on......oh wait.....that's what we are doing now.
Cause we just don't hear about it anymore.