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by Maj. Anthony Milavic USMC(RET)
As these examples show, the use of torture and/or abusive techniques frequently fails to elicit the desired response, at times produces a false response, and can result in the death of a potential source of information: A dead source is no source of information!
WHY SOME RESORT TO TORTURE
Practitioners of torture have frequently been described as being antisocial, bullies or products of a culture of violence. There is evidence supporting the assertion that even “normal” persons will, under certain circumstances, resort to the torture or abuse of others. For example:
1. In the summer of 1991, Stanford University conducted a
psychology experiment in prison life. College students that had been screened for normalcy were broken down into two groups--one of prisoners and the other guards--and placed in a prison environment for two weeks. According to Stanford University, the experiment “had to be ended prematurely after only six days, because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” In other words, people given extraordinary power quickly turn sadistic.8
2. On 1 June 2004, the Washington Post reported that: “On May 1, a U.S. Army investigator took the stand in a criminal proceeding in Baghdad against one of the seven military police soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. There was, he said, ‘absolutely no evidence’ that military intelligence officers or the military police chain of command had authorized the abuse to aid interrogations. ‘These individuals were acting on their own,’ said Army special agent Tyler Pieron, who investigated the case for the Criminal Investigation Division. ‘The photos I saw, and the totality of our interviews, show that certain individuals were just having fun at the expense of the prisoners. Taking pictures of sexual positions, the assaults and things along that nature were done simply because they could.’”
3. Lastly, MG Antonio Taguba, USA, was tasked with investigating reports of improprieties at detention facilities in Iraq. Conclusion #1 of his report entitled, “ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE,” reads:
“Several US Army Soldiers have committed egregious acts and grave breaches of international law at Abu Ghraib/BCCF and Camp Bucca, Iraq. Furthermore, key senior leaders in both the 800th MP Brigade and the 205th MI Brigade failed to comply with established regulations, policies, and command directives in preventing detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and at Camp Bucca during the period August 2003 to February 2004.”
During his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 8 June 2004, MG Taguba said the root of the problem was, “Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision.”
Certainly, torture is not the sole property of loose canons. This technique is also advocated by those who believe it is the right thing to do. On 21 Oct. 2001, Walter Pincus reported in the Washington Post that FBI agents were becoming frustrated in their efforts to glean information from terrorist suspects and said, “it could get to the spot where we could go to pressure.” On 23 Jan. 2002, CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired two Mike Wallace interviews for a segment on torturing terrorists during interrogation—1) French Maj. Gen. Paul Aussaresses and 2) Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz:
1) Aussaresses was asked whether he would use torture to force al Qaeda suspects to talk. He answered in English and without hesitation: “It seems to me that it is obvious.” He is the author of the book, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 where he describes his use of torture against Algerian insurgents. Aussaresses had no intelligence training and his instruction in interrogation came from the Algerian Gendarmerie: "They quickly informed me that the best way to force a terrorist who refused to disclose what he knew was to torture him." Ironically, he admits, “It was the first time that I tortured anyone. But . . . the man died without talking.” The book is also replete with stories of summary executions of those who admitted to being involved with the Algerian insurgency or those who were fingered by tortured Algerians; he doesn't mention any effort to confirm an accusation before he executed the accused. Nevertheless, he justifies the use of torture by saying that it was instrumental in defeating the insurgents by 1957 even though he admits many merely withdrew to the Atlas Mountains only to return later to expedite the withdrawal of France from Algeria in 1962.
2) The self-described civil libertarian, Alan Dershowitz, published a book in 2002 entitled, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge. In Chapter Four, he calls for the use of “nonlethal” torture in “ticking bomb” situations. Unfortunately, he neither tells us how we can be sure that an event is imminent nor how we can be sure that the torture applied will not have a fatal result. On the surface, his recommendation of pushing needles under someone's fingernails appears to be a nonfatal technique. But, can we be sure of that in the case of an older source with a heart problem? As evidence that torture works, Dershowitz describes an event that took place in the Philippines in 1995. It seems the police captured one Abdul Hakim Murad after finding a bomb-making factory in his apartment in Manila. They beat him and broke his ribs, burned him with cigarettes, forced water down his throat, then threatened to turn him over to the Israelis. Sixty-seven days later he broke and told of terror plots to blow up 11 airliners, crash another into the headquarters of the CIA and to assassinate the Pope. Unsaid here is which of these purported plots were subsequently confirmed. Also, I find it curious that Dershowitz would argue for the use of torture in a “ticking bomb” situation based on a torture-interrogation example that took sixty-seven days to bring to fruition. According to WO Brian Copeland of the Navy/Marine Intelligence Training Course (NMITC), Dam Neck, Va., current Marine Corps interrogation doctrine is that detainee information is highly perishable and, in a tactical environment, has a shelf life of 24 to 48 hours.
TRAINED INTERROGATORS
It is not the purpose of this essay to demonstrate the U.S. Armed Forces’ doctrinal techniques of interrogation that have been honed over the years and are known and used by both military and law enforcement agencies worldwide. But, I do feel obliged to shine a little light on some alternatives to torturing and/or abusing detainees. For the curious, I invite you to read the basic reference for trained U.S. military intelligence interrogators, FM 2-22.3 (FM 34-52) HUMAN INTELLIGENCE COLLECTOR OPERATIONS. You would also find illuminating the book: The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns Joachim Scharff Master Interrogator of the Luftwaffe. This German interrogator purportedly gleaned information from every one of the American and British fighter pilots he interrogated without ever resorting to violence. This is not surprising when you consider: FM 2-22.3 states that direct questioning “works 90 to 95 percent of the time.” Even Gen Aussaresses admits in his book, “most of the time I didn’t need to resort to torture, but only talk to people.” Trained interrogators, of course, know this--the operant words here are, “trained interrogators.”
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