False Confessions & Torture - Part 2

Most of the existing literature about interrogations in a military context supports five overall principles: the stresses of war and capture generally have a negative effect on a prisoner's ability to provide truthful and accurate statements to his or her interlocutor; both the conditions of confinement and the application of psychological pressures, such as isolation or sensory deprivation, negatively affect a prisoner's ability to provide accurate and actionable intelligence; rapport building, while often time consuming, is the best technique for extracting accurate intelligence from a prisoner; historically, many individual interrogators generally claim that rapport building is the best technique for eliciting accurate intelligence from a prisoner; there is no "magic bullet" that quickly induces compliance and cooperation in an interrogation subject.

In the current debate about interrogation methods, much of this history appears to have been ignored.