This last category includes the infamous waterboarding technique, which has -- in subsequent evaluations -- been labeled illegal torture. An important consideration in the evaluation of these techniques has been the additive impact of combining techniques to achieve an enabling condition or objective. In other words, in its 2002 memo to John Rizzo, the Acting General Counsel of the C.I.A., the U.S. Justice Department specifically prohibited some combinations of techniques and specifically permitted other combinations. In the period following 9/11 through 2005, revolving officials in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Justice Department issued radical memos supporting or opposing the standard imposed by Congress for identifying torture. The harsh interpretation in 2005 asserted that the techniques used by the C.I.A. were not "cruel, inhuman or degrading," and so could not be considered to be torture. How would you validate the information received from a suspect that was deprived of sleep for a prolonged period of time?

It would be important to seek...

The presenting problems are that a person deprived of sleep for a prolonged period of time can suffer hallucinations and severe disruption of the senses. Where other forms of approved harsh and brutal treatment might elicit information from a detainee, these techniques are less likely to produce distorted thinking of the sort produced through sleep deprivation. The detainee himself might corroborate the information once he is rested. Other detainees or sources of information can be utilized to triangulate data in order to gauge its reliability.