FBI terrorist interrogator on the uselessness of torture and the efficacy of cookies

A former FBI interrogator who successfully extracted secrets from senior Al Qaeda members using psychological tricks has gone public with his feelings on the ineffectiveness of torture. As he explained on CBC's As It Happens, torture is especially bad when you've got a "ticking bomb" situation, as a good psychological interrogator can establish rapport in hours, while torturing Al Quaeda suspects required dozens of sessions with waterboards and days of sleep deprivation to get any intelligence (and what it got, no one trusts):

Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator, revealed in an article being released in June that Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard opened up about the 9/11 terror attacks only after being offered -- sugar free cookies.
Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Jandal is a diabetic, Soufan said, and wouldn't eat sugar cookies he'd been offered.
"Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: 'He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it,' Time's Bobby Ghosh wrote. "At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor.
"We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan told Ghosh. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures..."
"It took more questioning, and some interrogators' sleight of hand, before the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda -- including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers -- but the cookies were the turning point," Ghosh writes.
"After that, he could no longer think of us as evil Americans," Soufan said. "Now he was thinking of us as human beings."

Cookies, not torture, convinced al Qaeda suspect to talk, FBI interrogator says (Thanks, Mark!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers

So these cookies were presented sometime between Sept. 11 and Sept. 14, 2001?

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm
Anonymous

This is commonly known enough to be a children’s proverb:

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

So once again, the administration has this question to answer: Which are you, stupid or evil?
arkizzle

“If you were really there and in unimaginable pain and terror, do you really think this is what you would do? I’m curious because no one seems willing to deny that they would give the information under torture and no one seems willing to admit that they wouldn’t give the information if they weren’t under torture.”

So, you are offering:

Option 1) Protect the Sercret Information, even under threat of torture.

Option 2) Give up the Secret Information, under pain of torture.

How about the real world option:

You don’t have any secret information.

Really. When you are beaten you begin to cry, desperately. You plead with your interrogator, “I don’t know anything!”, but he doesn’t believe you. He knows you know something. You were there, weren’t you?

The beating turns to enhanced-interrogation, at which point your confused and scared mind searches manically for something to tell him.. anything. You are not lying, you are not making anything up. Whilst avoiding agreement with his accusations, you are just trying every sentence you can think of, every combination of words, that might make the horror stop.

Whatever cryptic key this man requires to stop hurting you, is the only thing that matters.

At some point, long after the pain has glossed over into a sea of noise and your shrinking sense of self has become a reason to hate your very existence, the option to lie grows steadily more agreeable. Of course, you have held onto your innocence up until now.. in your madness, you have said everything else but The Lie.

Will he think you are lying in desperation now, or that he has finally broken you? Will he hurt you more for lying this time, or because he thought you were lying up until now? Is admitting the crime, worse in the long run, than suffering this unstoppable physical terror right now?

It doesn’t matter. It can only stop or continue as it is, maybe you will die today, maybe it will be tomorrow. You will say anything for another day; impossible things, improbable things. Things you can’t have known.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump’s mother, desperate is as desperate does.
demidan

Last year a few of the surviving WW11 interrogators came forward and talked about their methods of extracting information from prisoners of war from Germany. They talked, had tea, played chess and Never tortured. The result was lots of useful intel, weird how when you treat people with respect they are respectful back.
danlalan

you forget one important step in the whole torture/not-torture decision stream…which one will make the interrogator feel more powerful and macho?

(Unfortunately, this is not as frivolous and trivial an observation as one might like…how we think the other guys on OUR side will see us plays a very powerful role in these situations. Hard as it is to believe, some segments of our society still see brutal behavior towards “them” (insert name of group you wish to behave differently) as acceptable and even desirable).
DanMV

“But the problem is that you have submitted no facts to support your claim that torture is probably effective,”

Thanks for noticing the ‘probably,’though it seems you ignore it in the same sentence. What I said was that there is no real evidence on either side, but a little introspection strongly suggests that in many cases torture will be effective. (I provided a thought-experiment/challenge that no one has accepted.) The rest of the thread has been arguing (or repeating rather) that ‘everyone knows’ torture doesn’t work. You don’t see a difference?

“and yet, you demand that others produce facts lest they be guilty of perverse anti-intellectualism.”
No, I never said that. What I said was that the repeated suggestions (and outright statements) that, for example, I’m not fully human or that I’m immoral for arguing my point of view are anti-intellectual.

“you realize, of course, that claiming “theres a number of books on the subject, please read one or two before reengaging the topic” is a “cop out!” doesnt to much in the service of your point, right?”
You could’ve said that in this book the author argues so and so, or in this book the author reports on a scientific survey of prof interrogators. You didn’t. You copped out of the argument. It would be like me telling you to read a book on logic rather than responding to your arguments. A good idea maybe, but a cop out nonetheless.

Anonymous @ 49
You’re obviously right that determining which questions to ask is all important, but how is this a problem for torture in particular? No matter how you conduct your interrogation, you need to figure out what questions to ask.
Anonymous

“the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers”

What is a 9/11 “bomber”?
Takuan

“why the US imprisons more of its population than any other country, but also has a masssive recidivism problem.” Not exactly. These people are not in fact imprisoned (or backsliders) in any sense of legal punishment for wrong doing. Rather, they are surplus population that is not required in the labor force and so are made useful by filling places in the PrisonIndustry Complex. Especially now that the infrastructure has been built, it is imperative that people occupy it. If not for the Waronsomedrugs Industry feeder laws, other “offences” would have to be found.

In fact, you should be grateful that there is a plentiful supply of poor minorities to fill the prisons. Otherwise your political views might become the next supply.
DanMV

Arkizzle,
“How about the real world option:

You don’t have any secret information.”

In that case, they obviously can’t get it from you. I think I’m missing the point of your post. If the point is that information gathered by torture is unreliable, please respond to my post @ 19. Thanks.
Lysy404

@2
Yep.. we needed intelligence, but we were looking in the wrong place…I’m talking about people in charge at White House having some… The best case scenario they got educated on torture by Jack Bauer. But that was par for the course on everything White House did, no experts were harmed in process of establishing any type of policy or decision.
I’m against prosecuting guys that actually did the torture, only WH lawyers and Dick should be punished for this nonsense.
Dewi Morgan

No, antonious: I simply excluded morality and legality from consideration.
I included all possible methods, legal, illegal, moral and immoral, so long as they are physically possible, in the scenario.

Rape, murder, castration: these are methods of torture, and so fall under the “torture” heading.

Murder was not excluded, it was included (as option d), but it just prevents the lifesaving information from being accessed EVER. Doesn’t seem a great option, when you still have ways to get to the information available.

Needs a better answer than “zomg but it’s illegal and immoral.” That’s MY answer, and it annoys me that I don’t have a better, more decisive one.

Because, faced with saving lives of multiple of “our” people, and the life of a single one of “them” who is known to have the information, morality no longer becomes black/white. Not that it ever is.
arkizzle

“In that case, they obviously can’t get it from you.”

Does the torturer know this before he starts?

You are basing your argument on a theoretical detainee who has information, and your question is: can we get it or not. But you are leaving out the fact that there may be no information to get, and it requires the violation of a likely-innocent person, just to find out (unreliably) whether they know anything or not. In other words, if we knew what people knew before we hurt them, we wouldn’t have to hurt them.

Is it acceptable to commit torture, just to find out whether or not there is information worth pursuing?
Schmorgluck

@Tezcatlipoca (#70)
“My position is that torture should not be used, because there is no evidence that it works well enough (if at all) to be worth the cost.”
To be fair, DanMV’s position is not that different from yours. See post #57: “No, it’s not acceptable to commit torture. Period.”
As I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong, DanMV), his point is that discussing of torture in terms of its effectiveness to get information is something we should avoid, because that’s not what’s really important on the matter. You’re stating it’s not proven it works enough to be worth the cost, while he argues the cost is too high anyway, efficient or not.

I’m reasonably sure you agree with him that torture is immoral, but what I think he objects to is insisting on the matter of efficiency, which is an amoral way to consider the issue of torture. Now I understand why you (and others) make so much efforts to elaborate on the question of efficiency: you’re not so much discussing the issue as polishing strategic rhetorics, to be used to change the mind of people who have been (or let themselves been) convinced that torture could be accepted in terms of efficiency. I understand, but I don’t approve. Pardon my Nietzsche (sorta), but by doing so you’re not only fighting a monster, but you’re accepting to fight it on its own terms. I’m not sure you really want to do that, do you?
Takuan

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/britain/stop_the_us_torture_ship
DanMV

rageahol @ 27
You don’t contradict anything I said, except to reinsert the word “known” where I suggested “believed.” Any justification for that? Because that’s the point of disagreement.

“and everyone with a working moral compass can see clearly why someone would want to suggest that there is controversy about whether it “works” or not.”

Is there an argument here, or just an insult? I don’t mind, but if I’m missing the argument, I would like to respond. You can analyze my motivations if you want, but it won’t take the place of an on point argument.

Nehpetse @ 29
To your first point, are we the good guys? For any example of beauty or decency in the actions of the American (or any other) government or society, one can name some action that is horrendous beyond comprehension. But even if America were the Promised Land that it is sometimes portrayed as, I still don’t think you would get very far with most detainees. How often do people change deeply held beliefs?

To your second point,
“…you would know that you were going to die no matter what said, so you might as well spit out as much misleading information as possible and with luck you’d enrage your interrogator so much he’d lose control and kill you before he meant to.”

Yeah, a *lot* of luck. I wouldn’t bet on it. If you were really there and in unimaginable pain and terror, do you really think this is what you would do? I’m curious because no one seems willing to deny that they would give the information under torture and no one seems willing to admit that they wouldn’t give the information if they weren’t under torture.

“On the the other hand, if you had a personal hatred of jews and communists, and your Nazi interrogator were clever enough to figure that out, it might be quite easy to convince you…”

That’s an excellent point. Likewise, any suspected Islamic radical that is pro-American and/or thinks violence against infidels is unIslamic, would be a great candidate for the “good cop” approach.

Antinus @ 35

“Well, if that’s your position, then I certainly hope that you loudly condemn the use of an unproven (and unethical) method. Because the alternative is to say, we don”t know if it works but let’s torture him anyway.”

Of course, that is one of the many sufficient reasons to be against torture. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but you seem to be suggesting that if I’m against torture, then I shouldn’t be arguing that it’s probably effective. Is that right? If so, that’s anti-intellectualism as perverse as anything on the right. Morality is not incompatible with a dispassionate analysis of the facts. To hide oneself from the facts in order to protect one’s ideals is simple cowardice and it does no service to your ideal, to you or to anyone else. (My apologies if I misunderstood you.)
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but you seem to be suggesting that if I’m against torture, then I shouldn’t be arguing that it’s probably effective.
  
  I was simply pointing out that you’re driving down a blind alley. It doesn’t really matter whether the car keeps moving if you’re just going to hit a wall at the far end. You keep making a point which, besides being almost universally contradicted by professional interrogators, can only be used to justify a practice which is unjustifiable on innumerable other grounds. It’s scarcely anti-intellectual to point that out.
Anonymous

Wonder why the Israelis don’t use torture? Because it doesn’t work! They use the “buddy” system and get all the accurate information they need.

BTW, we had two Japanese soldiers tried and executed for water boarding our troops so those who approve it are saying it is fine for us, but not for others.

Also harms our troops as we no longer have the moral authority to object to torture.

There is nothing positive about torture.
DanMV

“Is it acceptable to commit torture, just to find out whether or not there is information worth pursuing?”

No, it’s not acceptable to commit torture. Period.
As to the question of how we know what to ask them or whether it’s even worth talking to them, see my response to Anonymous at 54.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  DanMV,
  
  You have no discernible point and yet you keep repeating it over and over. If you don’t have anything new to add, please stop.
Takuan

it’s simple and absolute: good doesn’t torture. If you torture, you are no longer good. I want to be good. Do you?
Trevel

I’m for prosecuting the people who actually did the torture. How else are they going to learn that “I was under orders” is no excuse?
DanMV

Imagine you were an Allied soldier captured by the Germans or Japanese during WWII. How would you react to different sorts of treatment by your captors? Surely, they could win you over on a personal level. Your interrogator could probably make you think of him as your friend. Would you then give up information that would help one of the most despicable, murderous governments in history to kill your fellow American (or British, or whatever) soldiers? Just because you like the guy who asked? I think very few would.
What if they tortured you? If you were courageous and trained, you might lie to them. But when they tell you they know you’re lying and start torturing you again, what then? I’m fairly certain I would give up whatever info I had.
(Of course, the two methods are hardly mutually exclusive. Combining them as a good cop/bad cop strategy would presumably be more effective than either by itself.)
I’m as against torture as anyone; but the claim we keep hearing that torture doesn’t work, doesn’t really seem plausible to me.
Clif Marsiglio

Torture is only effective in allowing the administrator to feel the power lacking in themselves. It is retributive and self serving.

Anyone with a background in psychology that isn’t a quack knows this stuff doesn’t work. Sure, there are techniques that can be used sparingly that will give you some info…punishment is a learning technique but reward is a far greater one.

Punishment teaches one how to avoid punishment…not to elicit the desired behavior. The desired and observed behaviors are often two separate things (i.e., giving up true information vs. giving up uncertain but false info…both have the client speaking).

Reward, however, generally teaches toward the desired behavior. Cheating occurs…but just like is school, most people don’t cheat to get an A, they cheat not to fail.

Is there any question as to why conservative Christians like torture? It fits into their ideology of punishment…if pressed, even they know the inefficacy of this. It is just that rewarding someone they despise is something they can’t bring themselves to even if minor and for the greater good.
Zergonapal

You are not seeing the point. The torture victim will say ANYTHING in order to stop the torture. In fact its difficult to stop a torture victim from talking and essentially what you get is an awful jumble of truth and lies which you then need to spend time trying to verify.
But if you show the prisoner that you are human and not the monster the propaganda makes you out to be then you sow doubt and you put the first crack in their defenses that you can work at to pry their secrets out.
nerak

@9 – Torture: Jesus liked it!
rageahol

danmv: i directed you to read something other than my own assertions. comment threads on a popular website are not well suited to scholarly arguments. if you need a starting point, i will recommend “Torture” by Edward Peters, http://www.amazon.com/Torture-Edward-Peters/dp/0812215990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243726426&sr=1-1 as a starting point.

let me know when you rejoin humanity.
Takuan

any tax auditor knows more about getting information.
Anonymous

Holy shit, Eddie Izzard was right. Cake or Death!
Snig

#8
Had a classmate once from a largely Muslim nation. After I knew him for a couple years, we somehow got on the subject of religion. He was against it. Asked why, he said something like the following:
“When I was younger, I was taught over and over in school that Jews are evil Devils who should be killed. Then I got here, and I met you and (the other Jews in the class). If I had a question or a problem you’d try to help, and you never treated me different. I realized I’d been lied to.” He was very angry at his teachers and his faith, and felt very betrayed by them.

When this nation acts like Nazis, we are teaching people the same things about us as the Imams who preach hate.

Aside from the moral argument(!), the functional argument doesn’t really hold. People lie when tortured. People who don’t know anything say “I don’t know anything.” People who know stuff then say “I don’t know anything.” Both groups will then give fantastic tales when tortured. If it turns out that the US tortured people into disclosing a lie connecting Iraq and 9/11, and then went to war over it, would that change your mind? Cause it doesn’t seem that we’re that far from connecting the dots on that.
arkizzle

Danmv,

I believe you missed, or dodged, my only point.

Any realistic critique of torture must not only account for its reliability in extracting information from people who have it, but also count a negative against the amount of people it is applied to, who have no information to give.

They are not seperate issues. They are intrinsically the same thing.

You must account for the positives and the negatives, the false-positives and false-negatives.
Takuan

how about the DEA’s method: threaten family members to get a confession.
okcalvin

Hmm – here’s a thought: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Tdawwg

Torture IS effective. It’s effective in forcing false confessions to trumped-up bullshit charges: like, say, the nonexistent links between al Quaeda and Iraq during Saddam’s regime.

Read the news that’s gushing forth re: this issue. The Bushies knew torture doesn’t yield true confessions. Why would they have wanted that? They wanted false confessions to bolster Iraq II, and they got some.

It’s not because they “liked it”: it was a policy decision made by the Administration, not by black-hooded executioner-types. Torture happened because it’s devastatingly effective and supremely useful.
DanMV

“I was simply pointing out that you’re driving down a blind alley. It doesn’t really matter whether the car keeps moving if you’re just going to hit a wall at the far end.”

You say it doesn’t matter, but are quite insistent that I’m wrong. If it’s a blind alley, it’s two-way. It seems to me that whether it’s true or not, it’s just a meme, repeated until everyone’s sure. When everyone seems to agree about something without any evidence, it should be questioned, vigorously.

“You keep making a point which, besides being almost universally contradicted by professional interrogators…”

Aha! This is evidence for your claim. Or would be if there were any support for it. Is there?
Some scientific poll that you know of? Most, but not all, professional interrogators who appear on popular news shows and write popular books seem to say it’s not effective. Do you take that to mean anything?

Rage @ 45
“[I] directed you to read something other than my own assertions. comment threads on a popular website are not well suited to scholarly arguments.”

Cop out!

“let me know when you rejoin humanity.”

I’ll let you know when I agree with you. That’s what you mean, right?
DanMV

“People lie when tortured.”
“The torture victim will say ANYTHING in order to stop the torture. In fact its difficult to stop a torture victim from talking and essentially what you get is an awful jumble of truth and lies which you then need to spend time trying to verify.”

Of course, they are likely if not certain to lie under torture. When cops interrogate people with ordinary means, do the suspects ever lie? With or without torture, you obviously can’t take the subjects word for it. That’s why it’s called an interrogation and not a simple interview or debriefing. You take what the subject says, you compare it to what else he’s said and whatever other information you have and determine the likelihood that he’s bsing you on any given point.
Dewi Morgan

Five years ago, New Scientist had a great interview (creepy, but great) with an Israeli interrogator, Michael Koubi, who had nothing but contempt for the brutal and bumbling interrogation methods of the US.

It’s not torture OR cookies. It’s knowing your opponent: knowing they are diabetic, for example.

The US interrogators started out with no intelligence about their opponents, so he felt it was to be expected that they had to resort to more brutal methods: after all, they’d been occupying Iraq for only a year or so: their interrogators wouldn’t have much to go on.

That they still needed these methods after six years of occupation is just laughable, though.

The full interview is behind a paywall:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18424745.700-interview-michael-koubi-israeli-interrogator.html

But the NY Times has some excerpts:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/weekinreview/12word.html

[Captcha before I signed in: "Nixon's Satire"]
Tezcatlipoca

@DANMV

Thanks for noticing the ‘probably,’though it seems you ignore it in the same sentence.

I did not ignore the ‘probably’. When testing a hypothesis, it is possible that the data will not prove that the hypothesis (in this case, “torture is effective”) is true, but still suggest that the hypothesis is probably true.

What I said was that there is no real evidence on either side,

I would agree with you if your claim were: “We do not know if torture works.” Yet, you propose that “torture probably works” without evidence, and yet demand evidence from those of us who propose that torture does not work.

but a little introspection strongly suggests that in many cases torture will be effective. (I provided a thought-experiment/challenge that no one has accepted.)

And yet you ignore examples such as Nehpeste @31 who has set up a little thouht-experiment of his own that strongly suggest that in many cases torture will NOT be effective.

If that still does not convince you, let me take the challenge. I am such a coward and have such low pain tolerance that torture will not work with me. I will tell everything if you just point a gun at my head. But, if you still do not believe me, and start torturing me, I will go mad in pain and start inventing whatever I imagine you want to hear just to make the pain stop. Because of this, the information I give under torture will be more unreliable than the information I give without torture, merely under the threat of a gun. Conclussion: torture is a less effective interrogation technique.

Just as you assume in your version of the experiment that most people will behave as you do, I will assume in mine that most people will behave as I do. Hence, my thought-experiment strongly suggests that torture does NOT work.

The rest of the thread has been arguing (or repeating rather) that ‘everyone knows’ torture doesn’t work. You don’t see a difference?

Many examples, admittedly anecdotical, including the article originating this thread, do not argue that “everyone knows torture doesn’t work”, but rather that “many professional interrogators claim that torture doesn’t work”. Given that the job of these people is interrogation I am willing to consider that their opinions are good, if limited, evidence in favor of the torture does not work hypothesis, while you seem to dismiss these opinions with ease. I am really curious why you are not willing to accept these opinions as valid evidence.
Dewi Morgan

(apologies for doublepost) Found the full Koubi interview: http://antiprotester.blogspot.com/2004/11/tales-of-master-interrogator.html
Anonymous

Look, dude, we don’t actually care whether you, personally, think torture is an effective and valuable tool to get information from people. Most professionals who interrogate prisoners for a living don’t agree with you. Everybody is interested in their informed opinion, nobody is interested in your empty speculation. Let it go.
Anonymous

The real lesson here is one every net privacy advocate knows already: if you don’t want to give away more information than you intend, you should always refuse cookies!
Tezcatlipoca

@DANMV

“… you seem to be suggesting that if I’m against torture, then I shouldn’t be arguing that it’s probably effective. Is that right? If so, that’s anti-intellectualism as perverse as anything on the right. Morality is not incompatible with a dispassionate analysis of the facts. To hide oneself from the facts in order to protect one’s ideals is simple cowardice and it does no service to your ideal, to you or to anyone else.”

But the problem is that you have submitted no facts to support your claim that torture is probably effective, and yet, you demand that others produce facts lest they be guilty of perverse anti-intellectualism.

If you are so concerned about a dispassionate analysis of the facts as you claim, then perhaps you could take the time to search for facts supporting your argument instead of submitting an entertaining fictitious scenario in which dastardly nazis make you confess and betray your fellow countrymen.

When everyone seems to agree about something without any evidence, it should be questioned, vigorously.

I agree with you, but you are guilty of the same sin you so loudly denounce. You have not provided any evidence and yet, demand that others provide it.

So, DANMV, I ask you: Is there any scientific poll that supports your hypothesis that torture is probably effective?
rageahol

danmv:

yes. you won this argument on the interwebs, and you are the dopest torture advocate that ever set finger to keyboard.

you realize, of course, that claiming “theres a number of books on the subject, please read one or two before reengaging the topic” is a “cop out!” doesnt to much in the service of your point, right? it just makes you look like a dumbass. quelle surprise.
Roach

Most torturers don’t feel macho for doing it. They do it because they’re ordered to, or because other people are doing it and they don’t want to be the guy left out, or because they’re desperate and they think it will work. If you read accounts by them, or watch documentaries like Taxi to the Dark Side, what comes out is a group of young men who are on the whole ashamed of what they did. It reads like a less intense version of soldier talking about My Lai. We should have compassion for the torturers as well as the tortured. It’s the ones who set up the rules and are divorced from the actual doing of the act who, as with all such “policymakers” and “administrators,” are the ones who desire torture.
DanMV

Thanks, Tez.

“Consider instead a deal not unlike the one Distric Attorneys currently use with murderers: Cooperate and we will not seek the death penalty. I still think I and many others will cooperate to avoid death.”

It’s certainly a great point that there are many coercive measures short of torture. But I wonder about this example too. The deal the DA offers you is cooperate or *go to trial.* Everything hangs on the nature of the trial. If I’m being threatened with a kangaroo court as a formality before being strung up, I’m not sure that’s not torture. (It’s certainly pretty shitty!) If I’m being threatened with a reasonably fair trial and an execution a minimum of several months away should I lose, I would at least like to think that I and most others would not fold. But, that’s admittedly a much harder choice than anything that would be presented by a friendly SS officer with sugar-free cookies.

“True enough, but it would help your argument if you kindly comment or give links to the anecdotal evidence for your position.”

If you know it’s true, why would you want a link?
If it’s anecdotal, which it is, it doesn’t do much of anything to help my argument. Seeing a white swan is technically evidence that there are no black swans, but it’s pretty poor evidence.

“As for the bias the profesional interrogators have to say torture does not work, it can be argued that for those who do torture, there is also a strong motivation to say that it did work. After all, they have a vested interest in saying that they were able to get the information needed and hence, that they are efective interrogators.”

Good point. But I think it really only applies to people like Cheney who publicly wedded themselves to torture (excuse me, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) while it was still a fairly popular position, rather than to interrogators themselves. If you had tortured someone and the public didn’t know about it, isn’t that the way you would like to keep it?

“Yes, indeed, but your objection does not hold at least for those cases like the one described in the article at the beginning, where the interrogator is saying not only that torture is unreliable, but that there are methods which are more reliable and which should be used instead of torture.”

It doesn’t? Did the interrogator in the posted article know that after he gave the suspect the cookie, he could trust everything he said? Did he not bother to confirm it with other sources or check it for internal consistency? Of course he did.
In any case, I’m not the one taking the absolutist position. (At this point I’m not sure you are either, but most here have been.) No one would claim that you should (in any sense of the word) limit all interrogations to torture. Of course, you would want to take everything on a case-by-case basis. My claim has just been that a lot of those cases will give up information under torture and not otherwise.
busydoingnothing

I cannot believe that we (the US, possibly the rest of the world) are still having this torture debate. To me, the answer is simple: the ends do not justify the means. The Geneva Convention exists for a reason. How could we let this happen when we prosecuted the Japanese for using the same or similar techniques during World War II? For fuck’s sake, that was only 64 years ago.
Anonymous

Re: DanMV

Here’s the core problem: say it’s October 15, 2001. You’re a contractor to the CIA in an undisclosed location. 75th RGR RGT has just dropped a guy off who was caught in the Afghan combat zone and sold with a promise that he’s al-Qa’ida to the Rangers for five hundred bucks and a shiny new goat. You’ve got all the instruments at hand: you can waterboard him, deprive him of sleep, bombard him with sonic attacks, force him into stress positions, whatever you want.

So, what do you ask?

The popular idea of torture comes from “24″ — we know the bad guy is a bad guy; we know what the plot is; and Jack Bauer always knows what questions to ask and what the answers should be. In reality, that’s not the case: if we knew what questions to ask, then the entire process of HUMINT exploitation would be trivial. Consider the case of al-Libi, who actually *was* a terrorist, but the torture of whom ended up “proving” a nonexistent operational link between AQ and Saddam Hussein. By interrogators going down the wrong path in questioning, the information elicited was wrong, and it formed a cornerstone in the Bush Administration’s move to war in Iraq.

In a world of perfect information, torture might actually work. But when we have more “unknown unknowns” than “known unknowns,” it’s a recipe for blindness.
Daemon

It’s not that it doesn’t work at all… It’s that it’s terrifically unreliable. Any info you get is likely to be fragmentary, disjointed and a mixture of truth, lies and delusional half-truths. Heavy emphasis on the latter – people who are being tortured tend not to be in an ideal mental state.

About the only thing it’s reliably good at is getting people to admit to being guilty of any crime you want them to be guilty of.
Dewi Morgan

A devil’s advocacy pro-torture argument. Please knock it down, because I hate that it works.

Given:
1) Torture is bad, mm-kay.
2) All interrogators know it’s bad.
3) All interrogators have a limited arsenal of techniques, including torture and drugs.
4) There exists a percentage of subjects who will have their identities reliably known and confirmed by multiple sources, and so will be *known* to posess valuable, life-saving information.
5) With the subjects in 4, the “knows nothing” scenario is meaningless.
6) At some point with each subject, all non-torture techniques will have been tried.
7) There will be a percentage of subjects in 4 who are still reliably believed to be withholding information.
8) The question is then: what do we do with these detainees?
9) The options to 8 seem to be:
a) Release them, and follow them [Risks martyrdom, losing them, and permitting them to plan/perform atrocities: really awful PR. Also loses any access to the known-to-exist lifesaving information];
b) Hold them indefinitely, but give up on expensive interrogation [Pointless waste of taxes];
c) Continue interrogating by repeating the failed interrogation methods [Endless repetition of methods will inform the subject that you're out of ideas, and they've won];
d) Execution [Cheap, economical];
e) Torture/drugs [MIGHT cause them to say stuff they wouldn't have otherwise said from other methods. This will then at least be further data, able to be passed on for further verification, like all other maybe-truths obtained from the other methods of interrogation].

In this scenario (which I find believable, though feel it would be only a very small minority of cases), option ‘e’ seems the most potentially fruitful and least risky of the options listed. Am I missing any options? Or is there some reason this scenario can never occur? Is one of the givens false?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  3) All interrogators have a limited arsenal of techniques, including torture and drugs.
  
  A strange point. You’ve accorded them an illegal method, torture, as part of their arsenal of techniques. Why not include other illegal methods? Rape? Killing innocent family members in front of the detainee? Castration? These are all techniques used by interrogators worldwide, so they’re up for grabs, right?
  
  There’s your false given. You’re too much of a wimp to go the whole nine yards and just murder innocent people to get the results that you want.
Takuan

Translation: they do it because they lack the moral fibre not to do it.
rageahol

confessions that result from coercive interrogations (i.e. torture) have been known to be unreliable (at best) at least as far back as the Roman Empire.

let’s apply the same underlying logic to medicine. if you know that, statistically, the chances of a particular drug helping your condition are no better than random chance, would you take it?*

*yes, i know, people believe in homeopathy and other quackery.
minTphresh

all involved should recieve some sort of punishment/ be held accountable for their actions. from the lowly private on up to bush/cheney/rummy/rice/etc…
DanMV

It’s become popular to assert that everyone knows that torture doesn’t work, but there is very little evidence – almost always anecdotal and unsubstantiated – offered by either side of the debate.
A hint of honest introspection wouldn’t hurt us here. Can someone answer my WWII question? If you were being interrogated by the Nazis for critical information about the D-Day landing, could they get it from you by getting to know you and trying to make friends? Will anyone here answer that in the affirmative? Could they get it from you by torture (even if a lot of red herrings came with it)? Will anyone here answer that in the negative?

“confessions that result from coercive interrogations (i.e. torture) have been known to be unreliable (at best) at least as far back as the Roman Empire.”
It has been *believed* by *some* people since the Roman empire that…probably so. It has, without any doubt, been used since long before the roman empire to actually extract information (successfully or not). Our ancestors come down on both sides of this issue. Too bad, since that’s usually such a great way to settle disputes.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  there is very little evidence – almost always anecdotal and unsubstantiated – offered by either side of the debate.
  
  Well, if that’s your position, then I certainly hope that you loudly condemn the use of an unproven (and unethical) method. Because the alternative is to say, we don”t know if it works but let’s torture him anyway.
  
  You can’t have your human suffering cake and eat it too.
Tezcatlipoca

There is an old mexican joke regarding the widespread use of torture by a branch of mexican police popularly called “Judiciales”. It starts as follows:

The Easter Bunny is missing and the FBI, Scotland Yard and the Judiciales are called in to find him. The FBI comes takes samples, goes to the lab but is unable to find him
Scotland Yard comes, looks for clues, does field work interviewing witnesses, but also fails.
Then the Judiciales come and announce: We found the Easter Bunny! After which they proceed to bring a handcuffed elephant. The FBI and Scotland Yard stare in disbelief, but before they can say anything, one Judicial menacingly shows a taser to the elephant saying: Tell them who you are!

The elephant cries pitifully: I am the Easter Bunny! Please believe me! I confess! I am the Easter Bunny!

End of joke.

I am still amazed at how many people believe you can get usefull information by torture….
rageahol

danmv @ 22:

wrong. read some history.

roman jurisprudence began to disallow testimony gained through coercive methods at the same time that those methods gained widespread adoption, specifically because it was known to be unreliable.

evidence gained through the use of torture has been known to be unreliable for at the very least a millenia and a half.

and everyone with a working moral compass can see clearly why someone would want to suggest that there is controversy about whether it “works” or not.
Takuan

just read the last line
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/30/gustavo-villoldo-man-who-_n_209370.html
nehpetsE

Re: DanMV

two points

first one of the advantages of being the good guys is that you actually can make a convincing argument to prisoner that you hold the moral highground. This can be a surprisingly convincing tactic. Most people, do at some level want to be on the “good” side.

secondly,
If you were being interrogated by the Nazis for information about the D-Day landing, i hope you would know that you were going to die no matter what said, so you might as well spit out as much misleading information as possible and with luck you’d enrage your interrogator so much he’d lose control and kill you before he meant to.

On the the other hand, if you had a personal hatred of jews and communists, and your Nazi interrogator were clever enough to figure that out, it might be quite easy to convince you it was your patriotic duty divulge the D-day info to prevent the Jew-commie conspiracy from conquering the world.

No enemy is a fully unified monolith, and a good interrogator knows this.
Takuan

even if the US buries it internally, it isn’t going away:
http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2009/05/29/un_report/
nehpetsE

All people who believe torture works are terrorists.

Allow me to demonstrate.

If you believe torture works,
I must ask you:
“Are you a terrorist?”

If you deny the charge,
you are a fair target for torture.
(After all, think of the lives that could be saved by taking just one terrorist of action.)

with time, you WILL admit to everything….
Falcon_Seven

The Nazis would have just used scopolamine to extract what they needed, without torture.
I wonder what we could use on ex-Pres. Bush to get him to tell us the truth -maybe tacos.
Takuan

without torture? They loved torture.
DanMV

Ark @ 58
I referred you to my post 54 where I point out that these considerations apply equally to torture and to other interrogation methods. If you don’t choose your subjects carefully, you will waste your time interrogating a bunch of people who don’t know anything, torture or not.

Tez @ 59

“Just as you assume in your version of the experiment that most people will behave as you do, I will assume in mine that most people will behave as I do. Hence, my thought-experiment strongly suggests that torture does NOT work.”

I think it’s probably true that most people would fold under torture in my scenario and not without it, but far from assuming it, I have been asking over and over whether anyone disagrees. You are the first one to take me up on it. Thank you. However…

“I will tell everything if you just point a gun at my head.”

You don’t consider this torture? If not, I’ll readily concede that this is an instance wherein I, and probably most others, would fold “without torture.” But, that seems like semantic gymnastics to me.

“Given that the job of these people is interrogation I am willing to consider that their opinions are good, if limited, evidence in favor of the torture does not work hypothesis, while you seem to dismiss these opinions with ease. I am really curious why you are not willing to accept these opinions as valid evidence.”

They are valid, but anecdotal evidence.
The second problem is that there is anecdotal evidence on the other side. (I would argue every instance in which a professional interrogator tortured someone on his own authority or advised that a subject be tortured for actionable intelligence is evidence on the other side. In any case, there are, of course, some experts who will state publicly that torture can work.)
The third problem is that they have a heaping helping of motivations to say that it is ineffective, especially if they think it’s immoral. By saying torture can be an effective technique, 1) they could increase the possibility that they or other members of their organization would be the subject of an investigation. 2) They and their organization would most certainly face condemnation and demonization that would likely extend to their personal lives. 3) Because of 1 and 2, anyone who works for any organization that could possibly be accused of torture (CIA, say), would probably face, at least, an extremely unpleasant meeting with his boss. 4) Because of 1 and 2, anyone who had political ambitions or, more probably, advising and lobbying positions could see his hopes dashed. 5) They could increase the likelihood that more torture will actually be committed in the future. 6) They could even increase the likelihood that they personally will be asked to torture…etc.
The fourth problem is that the reason they invariably give that torture doesn’t work is that the information it gets is unreliable. But this ignores the painfully obvious objection I made in post 19.

Antinous @ 61
It would help if you told me what’s not clear. I made a point that you understood well enough to object to @ 35 and 44. I responded to your objections, but you didn’t reply.

Anonymous wins the thread at 60.
Anonymous

True story from a political refugee friend of mine who had to get information out of enemy captives.

He didn’t like torture, felt it was unreliable and ineffective. So here’s what he would do instead:

Make the prisoner comfortable, provide the prisoner with cigarettes, if the prisoner was a smoker.

Speak courteously to the prisoner.

Place a loaded weapon within easy reach of the prisoner. Let the prisoner know it was loaded.

(Of course, there were always guards around, and the prisoner wouldn’t have been able to kill the questioner with the weapon, but it tended to give the prisoner a feeling of control nonetheless.)

Question the prisoner for a while, not an excessive length of time. This was not an endurance test. The questioning was always courteous.

When the prisoner told a lie about something the questioner already knew the truth of, the questioner would stop the interrogation, politely inform the prisoner that he knew he was lying, and then release him for the day to his quarters.

The quarters were designed to be reasonably comfortable.

The questioning would resume the next day. Again, courteously.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

My friend tells me he nearly always got the truth within five days.
Shay Guy

So…what, we induce Stockholm syndrome?
Tezcatlipoca

@DANMV

You don’t consider this torture? If not, I’ll readily concede that this is an instance wherein I, and probably most others, would fold “without torture.” But, that seems like semantic gymnastics to me.

I think the gun to the head scenario was a bad choice, and I grant that you can argue that this and other execution style secenarios are also torture. Consider instead a deal not unlike the one Distric Attorneys currently use with murderers: Cooperate and we will not seek the death penalty. I still think I and many others will cooperate to avoid death.

The second problem is that there is anecdotal evidence on the other side.

True enough, but it would help your argument if you kindly comment or give links to the anecdotal evidence for your position.

As for the bias the profesional interrogators have to say torture does not work, it can be argued that for those who do torture, there is also a strong motivation to say that it did work. After all, they have a vested interest in saying that they were able to get the information needed and hence, that they are efective interrogators. (this is true regardless of the techniques used)

The fourth problem is that the reason they invariably give that torture doesn’t work is that the information it gets is unreliable. But this ignores the painfully obvious objection I made in post 19.

Yes, indeed, but your objection does not hold at least for those cases like the one described in the article at the beginning, where the interrogator is saying not only that torture is unreliable, but that there are methods which are more reliable and which should be used instead of torture.
Tezcatlipoca

@DANMV

Everything hangs on the nature of the trial. If I’m being threatened with a kangaroo court as a formality before being strung up, I’m not sure that’s not torture. (It’s certainly pretty shitty!)

But if you go that route then one can end arguing that any judicial process in which the defendant may fear there is a prejudice against him is torture. (Starting with black persons in the south of the US, christians in muslim countries, muslims in christian countries, etc. etc.) Or even worse, end arguing that any interrogation technique is torture! After all having people asking you questions over and over causes mental anguish.

In any case that belongs to the related debate about what is torture, which is a different can of worms.

If you know it’s true, why would you want a link?

Sorry if I was not clear enough. I agree it is true that there is anecdotical evidence in favor of the hypothesis of “torture works”. But if our purpose is to examine the facts, however few or anecdotical they are, it is still important to see this evidence.

It doesn’t? Did the interrogator in the posted article know that after he gave the suspect the cookie, he could trust everything he said? Did he not bother to confirm it with other sources or check it for internal consistency? Of course he did.

Let me try to clarify my position on this. Given that we expect that the subject will lie, no matter what technique is used, (and If I understood what you are saying, I think you agree with this) then the fact that subjects lie is only relevant for assesing the effectivity of torture if torture is the best, or among the best techniques to prevent the subjects from lying. I do not think that we can claim that, but you may think differently of course.

In any case, I’m not the one taking the absolutist position. (At this point I’m not sure you are either, but most here have been.) No one would claim that you should (in any sense of the word) limit all interrogations to torture. Of course, you would want to take everything on a case-by-case basis. My claim has just been that a lot of those cases will give up information under torture and not otherwise.

Thanks for the courtesy. I do not consider your position to be absolutist either, only different from mine. My position is that torture should not be used, because there is no evidence that it works well enough (if at all) to be worth the cost. I consider it to be like treating a rabid dog bite by cauterization with a red hot iron. It is brutal, unreliable and totally unecessary given that we have the rabies vaccine that actually works. As with torture, I can imagine scenarios in which I will cauteurize a bite, (stranded in an island with no access to rabies vaccine) but these scenarios are so extreme that no sane health department uses them to shape its antirabies guidelines.

In short, I think that there are much better and efficient ways of obtaining information than torture even if we admit that torture sometimes seems to produce results. Where I differ from you, I do not believe that there exist cases in which torture is the only possible way to obtain the information needed.
Eulalumel

Well, yeah. If you do something so specific that shows you see them as a person, of course they’ll start seeing you as a person.

If, instead, you waterboard them and show that you see them only as information to be extracted, you may as well be wearing a hood and calling yourself Jack Ketch.

Is it any surprise that one’s more effective than the other?
woid

@#7:

the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers
So these cookies were presented sometime between Sept. 11 and Sept. 14, 2001?

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm

Exactly! I remember the NY Times printing passport-style pictures of all of the hijackers within a couple of days after 9/11, which seemed seriously fishy at the time, and more so after the years have passed. Our government knew nothing about these guys for months… but then were able to come up with pictures, (real) names, and detailed backgrounds for all of them in practically no time.

Sends the needle on the ol’ BS detector into the red.
Takuan

bottom line: they did the torture because they liked it. The minds that ordered it, the minds that obeyed. “Intelligence” was a distant second, if that.
Takuan

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/petraeus-says-us-violated_b_209215.html
jackie31337

It’s not a question of cookies OR torture. Anyone who has ever been conned or otherwise manipulated can tell you how effective psychological coercion can be in getting you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t/don’t want to. A skilled manipulator will be able to figure out what motivates a person and use that to persuade them. Offering cookies (or providing some other comfort/filling some need) is one of many possible approaches to interrogation that rely on psychological manipulation. Surprisingly often, though, just asking for information is enough to get it.

Example: in high school, a friend of mine admitted to me that he had hacked my ex-boyfriend’s bbs. I promised not to tell, and didn’t intend to. When my ex-boyfriend asked if I knew anything about it, I pretty quickly told him who had done it. I’m sure our past relationship and my feelings about him at the time had a lot to do with it, but more or less I told him simply because he asked.
Roach

Disclaimer: I am 100% anti-torture in all forms, and want it ended and the people involved prosecuted.

However, as I’m obsessive and absolutist on this issue, I’ve read all sorts of stuff on it. Over and over again, Ali Soufan is the only named FBI source. From what I know about him, he’s pretty amazing – but he’s also the only source for this sort of information, which worries me.
Anonymous

“the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers”

Do these include the ones who are still, miraculously, alive?
rageahol

anonymous @ 34:

this also perfectly illustrates why the US imprisons more of its population than any other country, but also has a masssive recidivism problem.
VICTOR JIMENEZ

So, making a good research on what suspects like is more useful to sympathize with suspects than choking them to death… hum, interesting line of thought…
minTphresh

it’s nice that someone who is involved in the nuts-and-bolts of interrogation is finally going public on this BS! WOID, do you mean those 18 hijackers who flew large commercial arcraft into tall buildings, but are still somehow alive ( at least 8 of them are) in the middle east, some of whom(2) actually are pilots of commercial aircraft TO THIS DAY? you mean those guys? and RAGEAHOL, do you realize that most of our prisons are full with drug offenders? and of those drug offenders, over a million of them are in there for cannabis offenses? over 800,000 of them arrested last year for mere possession. the netherlands are now contemplating CLOSING some of their prisons, or importing prisoners from surrounding countries due to it’s LACK of crime there. go figger.