In the years after World War II, the intelligence and scientific communities in the United States conducted almost no research on “offensive” interrogation techniques, those used to obtain information from prisoners of war or individuals accused of espionage (Educing Information). Most of the existing research focused on “defensive” tactics in order to train United States military personnel to withstand questioning if captured by the enemy.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) like the military, worked to develop protocols and guidelines agents could employ if captured and subjected to interrogation by foreign governments. For example, the agency’s internal journal, Studies in Intelligence, much of which was declassified in the 1990s published an article entitled Defense Against Communist Interrogation, in the fall of 1969. The author suggests that agents prepare themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally, both for the possibility of arrest and its consequences. Agents are advised that those who were “ideologically motivated” or held “strong religious beliefs” were more likely to withstand harsh interrogations and the deprivations of confinement. The author also recommends strategies for disrupting the interrogation process itself including vomiting on the interrogator or losing control of one’s bowels. It is advised without irony that no interrogator enjoys being in the same room with a subject that has lost control of his bodily functions.

In 1960, Wolff, a human ecologist based at Cornell University and a leading CIA researcher at this time, published a study that examined the behavior of American POWs in the Korean War. His sample was approximately 6,654 army personnel held in Korean prison camps. Wolff’s methodology is not clear nor is the basis of his data. During the Korean War many in the United States were alarmed when some American POWs gave statements to their captors denouncing their country or “confessing,” for example, to using munitions packed with “germs.” After the war, in conjunction with the Defense Department’s Special Advisory Committee on POWs, Wolff tried to determine the conditions under which captured soldiers cooperated with the North Koreans and mainland China. Also, in light of the propaganda and distress surrounding these “confessions,” the United States military decided to rewrite the Rules of Conduct for U.S. military personnel, if captured.

During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi television broadcast interviews of a number of captured American soldiers, several of whom spoke against the United States’ decision to go to war. One, Lieutenant Jeffrey Zaun of the Navy, stated "I think our leaders and our people have wrongly attacked the peaceful people of Iraq," prompting some in the Pentagon to question if he and the others violated the Code of Conduct. The current Code of Conduct requires that American POWS provide their captors with no more than name rank and serial number. The Code specifically states that a soldier will not make “oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to its cause” when captured.

According to Wolff, soldiers noted (it is unclear if this information comes from reports and/or surveys) that conditions at the camps themselves were designed to break down an individual’s identity and “feelings of guilt were common.” The interrogators also employed threats and exploited the American’s ignorance of their captors’ culture, “values, and attitudes.” Such ignorance increased the prisoners’ level of anxiety because they did not know what techniques might eventually be used against them, including torture and murder, and “brainwashing.” Since the rise of the Soviet Union and communist China, there had been a number of published accounts that falsely described the communists’ ability to manipulate the brains of prisoners and force them to submit to their captors’ will. Alfred McCoy, in his book about the CIA and torture, describes this concern as a “general hysteria over Communist mind control.” In his review of all data to date, however, Wolf concludes that “[b]y far the most effective way of gaining information from persons or modifying their point of view is talk under friendly circumstances, when the brain is neither damaged nor impaired in any way…”

Looking for military interrogators...

I am conducting a study designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives, based on their experiences. Kassin and his colleagues(2007) conducted the first self-report survey of best interrogation practices and beliefs of law enforcement officers and this study will follow that model, using different populations to obtain two distinct samples: military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Like that study, this survey will ask participants to address and self-report on a number of issues, some in common with law enforcement and others that apply specifically to military and counter terrorism interrogations.

Participants will be asked to estimate, rate and self-report on a number of facets of their work: (1) their ability to detect truth or deception; (2) for military interrogators, their own opinions and practices with regard to 13 of the general approach techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook; (3) the importance of rapport building to extract information from a subject; (4) the applicability of law enforcement techniques to interrogations of terrorists; (5) the frequency, length and timing of interrogations and (6) training. Like the law enforcement study, the goal here is to obtain common practices, observations, and beliefs about interrogations directly from military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Subsequent research can then test the interrogation methods that the subjects of this study believe are the most effective and focus on practices and beliefs unique to the military and counterterrorism context. This study will begin to shed light on practices currently in use by counterterrorism agents and the United States Army, provide potential empirical support for those practices that prove efficacious, and highlight those techniques that are of little value. It can dispel myths under which interrogators may operate.

Interrogators know better than I do that good intelligence obtained from human sources can save lives and win wars. Science can help point the way. Please contact me if you would like to help or participate.

Torture has a number of definitions under U.S. and international law, and treaties to which the United States is a signatory. In addition, all members of the United Nations, by virtue of their membership, are bound by the United Nations Charter including the United States. The United Nations Charter does not specifically ban torture but implies its prohibition in the document's Preamble. Byers argued that special, jus cogens rules, internationally accepted principles of fundamental human rights, overrule conflicting treaty provisions and include a ban on torture. The most universally accepted definition comes from the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The treaty, which has not been ratified by the United States Senate, defined torture as follows:

[A]ny act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

A number of federal laws have also codified a definition of torture. For example, United States Code, Title 18, chapter 113c, section 2340, (2004), makes it a federal crime to torture outside of the U.S. and applies to citizens of the U.S. as well as torturers “present” on U.S. soil. Section 2340 defines torture as “an act committed under the color of law specifically designed to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering…” The law goes on to define “severe mental or physical suffering” as prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from…the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.” The use of drugs and threats are also covered under the statute, as are “procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality…” According to a legal memo prepared for the White House, the law had not been applied in the context of interrogations, either military or law enforcement. Cases by which persons have challenged confessions because of the actions of police officers are usually ultimately decided based on the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution and the rules announced by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). It is noteworthy that the federal law on torture requires that the action be “specifically designed” to inflict the harm, which is not necessarily the case when questioning a suspected terrorist.

Military personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (2006) and, although no specific provision of the code prohibits torture, a number of sections are applicable to the use of violence during an interrogation. For example, Article 93 of the code sanctions “cruelty and maltreatment” and Article 128 punishes “assault.” Article 93 states anyone who is “guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression, or maltreatment of any person” is subject to court-martial.

It is difficult to determine what constitutes a “harsh,” “high pressure,” or “enhanced” technique. All of these terms have been used by political leaders when they have discussed how to interrogate suspected terrorists, with perhaps “harsh” the most frequent term. For example, in 2004 the CIA suspended self-described “enhanced interrogation techniques." “Enhanced interrogation techniques,” according to an unnamed CIA official, are “stress positions,” “light and noise bombardment,” “sleep deprivation,” denial of pain medication,” and what was called “feigned drowning” or what has become known as waterboarding.

The Human Rights First and Physicians Against Torture organizations co-authored a report about the use of enhanced “enhanced” techniques used by the CIA but their report did not specifically define the term. Despite this, the report gave examples of “enhanced” techniques that included “water-boarding (sic), hitting, induced hypothermia, and stress positions, total and long-term isolation, and constant bombardment with loud music and flashing lights.” Their report emphasized that tactics that do not leave physical marks, like many of the “enhanced” techniques, are none-the-less torture and in violation of U.S. and international law. Rejali, author of a history of torture and democracy, calls this “clean torture” because of the absence of marks and the fact that this treatment does not “fit” commonly held ideas about what constitutes torture. Andrew Sullivan found that the term “enhanced interrogation” comes from the German Verscharfe Vernehmung, a phrase used in a Nazi interrogation methods memo (1937) that suggests practices, similar to those endorsed by the CIA, to break uncooperative subjects.

To add to the confusion, a recent Washington Post article covered the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes depicting the questioning of two of Osama Bin Laden's reputed lieutenants. The Washington Post described the content of the tapes as examples of "harsh" interrogation methods. During the Republican presidential candidate debate in South Carolina, the candidates used a number of terms when discussing techniques that go beyond those formally authorized for use in interrogations, including “every method but torture,” “enhanced interrogation techniques, “very high pressure techniques,” and, to “respond in a way to make them [terrorists] fearful.” In response to the remarks of the other candidates, Representative Ron Paul of Texas stated, “it’s interesting talking about torture here in that it’s become enhanced interrogation techniques. It sounds like Newspeak (sic).” To Paul and many others, the words “enhanced techniques” mean torture.

It is unlikely that leaders of democratic countries, like President Bush, would authorize harsh practices and torture unless they believed such practices work. The judiciary of one democratic country, Israel, decided that the effectiveness issue was moot in light of the high cost of using questionable practices. In 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an opinion that outlawed torture even in the “ticking time bomb” scenario (Judgment on the interrogation methods applied by the GSS, 1999). In that opinion, Justice Aharon Barak wrote that while a “democracy must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back, it none-the-less has the upper hand” (23). This decision was probably, in part, a response to sharp international criticism of Israel’s security agencies. It also likely reflected soul-searching on the part of Israeli political leaders that the value of information obtained by torture was not worth international opprobrium. There is a wide range of positions on the efficacy of torture. Greenberg (2006) reviews a number of positions from support to limited use to total ban. Debate about the use of torture still avoids or ignores threshold issues that should be of concern to social scientists and interrogators who operate in the field. These questions include: Does torture work? Do harsh interrogation methods extract reliable actionable intelligence that could not be obtained without it? Do the techniques currently authorized by the United States military and federal agencies succeed in producing accurate, actionable information? What do the experts in the field believe are the most effective methods for getting information? Is torture one of them?

The question of torture's efficacy may be hypothetically answered in a number of ways: it works; it does not work; it only works with specific personality types; only certain types of torture work. The use of what are called "harsh" techniques deepens the problem. To some, the term "harsh methods" is a euphemism for torture (e.g. Claude & Weston, 2005). To others, the term appears to describe practices that fall somewhere between torture and techniques formally authorized for use by the United States military and other federal agencies such as the FBI or the CIA. For example, Ross and Esposito (2005) wrote that the CIA exposed detainees to repeated listenings of "The Slim Shady" album by Eminem, which made many nervous and anxious. Is that torture?