This excellent op-ed piece by Stuart Herrington describes how interrogation really works:
In interrogation centers I ran, we called prisoners "guests" and
extended military courtesies, such as saluting captured officers. We
strove to undermine a prisoner's belief system, which we knew
instructed him that Americans are unschooled infidels who would bully
him and resort to intimidation, threats and brutality. Patience was
essential. We rejected the view that interrogators could merely "take
off the gloves" and that information would somehow magically flow if we
brutalized our "guests." This notion was uninformed and
counterproductive, not to mention illegal, and we made sure our chain
of command understood that bowing to such tempting theories would
result in bad information.
In other words, you want to "turn" someone, to increase the amount and reliability of information. You don't want to turn them into someone who will lie to you, just to get the excruciating pain to stop. If you doubt Herrington, first go read his book about his experience as a military intelligence professional during the Vietnam War (link to your right).
[Thanks to Misfire! Misfire! Misfire! for the pointer.]
One of my professors was a former CIA analyst who had worked as an interrogator for North Koreans who had defected across to the South, and he made exactly the same points. Careful cultivation will eventually elicit a response; abuse and torture get you nothing.
You've probably already seen this, but related is this piece from another actual professional, Malcom Nance, former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE): "Waterboarding is Torture.. Period."
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding-is-torture-perio/
Posted by: mc_masterchef | 10/30/2007 at 07:26