Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News called attention a few days ago to a little-noticed study by the Intelligence Science Board that found there was no scientific validity to the "coercive" interrogation methods that have been used against "high value" terrorist detainees held by the United States. This is not news to any professional military, intelligence, or law enforcement interrogator.Indeed it is not. So much so that I recall a briefing at the School of the Americas in Panama where an interrogator with experience in Vietnam flatly stated that information obtained by torture was unreliable, and that the process merely brutalised the torturers. It's possible he was snowing us, but he was quite vehement.
If memory serves, what he said is echoed by Liberal Curmudgeon: what works is a thorough understanding of the enemy's language and culture; hours of preparation for each hour of interview; playing on the prisoner's need to tell his story; and using knowledge to keep the upper hand at all times.
What I did not know at the time and am intrigued to learn is that this was the gospel according to Sherwood Moran, an extremely skilled interrogator who had great success with Japanese POWs during World War II.
Actually, that was not such a big deal: the Japanese had no counter-interrogation training because they were supposed to die rather than surrender, and their shame made them relatively easy subjects. But it occurs to me that the same endogenous pressures operate on captured Islamist terrorists.
Either way, there is no disputing that physical coercion simplifies the subject's psychological situation. He will volunteer nothing and will "read" his interrogators' questions for the answers that will satisfy them. Someone seeking confirmation for what is, in fact, false intelligence, will get it by torture, where more skilled and sympathetic interrogation would uncover the truth.
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