The Unseen War in Iraq: Insurgents in the Shadows

The Unseen War in Iraq: Insurgents in the Shadows is a book that seemed to fly under the radar when it was published in 2008. The book, written by a career counterintelligence officer who now teaches at St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania, provides an important perspective on counterintelligence in general and intelligence interrogations in particular. The author, Richard Saccone, devotes an important part of the book to interrogation techniques, torture and coercion in the HUMINT context. Dr. Saccone draws an important distinction between coercion and torture and argues that coercion is a necessary tool when interrogating hardened terrorists who have been trained to resist rapport-building and other non-coercive techniques. Dr. Saccone also believes that under supervision and with reasonable guidelines and limitations, coercion will not violate U.S. or international law. In the chapter Interrogation, Saccone offers an anecdote about using non-rapport building techniques to elicit information from a subject.

According to the author, a "suspect" was resisting "conventional means of interrogation" and interrogators needed to try alternative methods. They hood the subject and tell him he is being transported to an interrogation setting that will be less-than-friendly. When the suspect arrives at the make-shift interrogation booth, the interrogator excuses himself and goes to a room next door. In this room, the interrogator and an Arabic interpreter stage a mock interrogation. The interrogator connects two live wires from time to time and the interpreter screams in Arabic to stop. They even arrange for the lights to dim when the live wires are connected. When the interpreter pretends to confess, the interrogator returns to the room with the suspect, who now appears "sufficiently frightened." The interrogator tells the suspect that he does not want to use these methods but he will if the suspect does not cooperate. At this point the prisoner begins to reveal intelligence.

In an e-mail to me Dr. Saccone provided these insights about intelligence interrogations:

"Hardened terrorists are trained to resist interrogation so they expect much more than Coercive methods. Some of them have actually been tortured in other countries or by Iraqis, Pesh Merga or Taliban. Terrorists are created predominantly from religious reasons, the other excuses of US foreign policy, our relation with Israel and how we treat terrorists etc. is a smoke screen. I explain some if that in my book. If you think how we treat KSM would make him stop wanting to terrorize America you are mistaken. His ilk have fundamental religious and cultural differences with our way of life. They saw peoples heads off and intentionally kill thousands of innocents to achieve their goals."

Many interrogators make this mistake. "'If I am successful using one technique then it must work on everything.' It reminds me of the saying that "A fool is one who, upon observing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes it will also make better soup." There is a time and place for rapport building and good interrogators know when to use it. The reason so many fall into this trap is because by the time FBI or prison interrogators receive prisoners the urgency is likely gone. They have much more time to use rapport building and that may be appropriate. Battlefield interrogations present a different circumstance which includes urgency."

"Depending on the individual, terrorists can respond to coercion almost immediately. For those hardened terrorists it may take longer but that time will still be a fraction of the time it would take to use rapport building on that person. I have seen what I define as coercion work in as little as a few minutes or over several days. Remember, not everyone picked up on the battlefield is a hardened terrorist. As I explain in my book some are simple shepherds manipulated into the movement. Rapport building can sometimes work quickly on these people. The bottom line remains, because one technique works sometimes (or even a lot of the time) is no reason to discard other techniques completely."

"The definition of torture should remain as it has always been, techniques that do long-lasting or permanent physical harm such as maiming, burning, amputation and a few others. Everything else is coercion. So for example, sleep deprivation is not torture unless it is used to the extent that long-lasting physical harm is done to the prisoner. That could be different depending on the health of a prisoner. Each case must be dealt with separately. However, policy guidelines are needed to help interrogators stay within reasonable limits."