Rationale and Efficacy of Torture During Interrogation

Introduction

"Although information from interrogational torture is unreliable, it is likely to be used frequently and harshly." — John W. Schiemann, 2012

The epigraph above reflects the growing consensus concerning the lack of efficacy of torture in providing interrogators with reliable concealed information. Concealed information is the foundation of the majority of security issues. In most cases, it is a situation wherein one individual knows something that someone else does not know. Consequently, the majority of security issues could be resolved if there were a dependable method of determining when an individual was concealing information and of extracting that information effectively. To date, however, no such dependable method has been developed. For instance, polygraph research has been unable to achieve an accuracy level that would make results acceptable in American courtrooms, even though the federal government continues to use polygraph screening. These limitations have contributed to the reintroduction of various types of physical and mental torture during interrogations of terrorist suspects, despite the practice being outlawed in the United States for centuries.

From a strictly pragmatic perspective, it is important to determine whether torture is producing the desired outcomes, given the violative nature of the practice. To this end, this paper reviews the relevant literature to describe what practices constitute torture during interrogations and whether those practices are efficacious in producing reliable intelligence. A summary of the research and important findings is presented in the conclusion.

Background and Overview

A number of aspects of the global war on terrorism, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the use of torture, represent major issues for concerned American citizens. The use of torture for intelligence-gathering purposes has also become an increasing focus for researchers. As Schiemann emphasizes, "To the degree that political philosophy is concerned with the proper balance between legitimate state authority, including violence, on one hand, and individual autonomy, including autonomy of the body, on the other hand, then interrogational torture is also an important problem in normative political theory."

Despite growing concerns, proponents of the global war on terrorism maintain that the use of torture is justified given the potential for future terrorist attacks on the scale of September 11, 2001, and the need to protect the country's interests at home and abroad. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, acknowledged in an exit interview that he was directly responsible for authorizing the CIA's use of torture. When questioned about the CIA's treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — a terrorist suspect incarcerated in a clandestine CIA prison who was waterboarded more than one hundred times — Cheney conceded that he was not only aware of the program but had authorized the use of these methods. According to the former vice president: "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared. That is, the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it." When asked if he believed the CIA's methods were too extreme, he simply replied, "I don't."

Although the former vice president supported the use of torture because of the importance of the intelligence to national security, the harsh reality is that even the more benign types of torture used in the global war on terrorism can be regarded as inhumane and humiliating. According to the former chief of training at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school, waterboarding is a "controlled drowning" that "occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team." A team doctor watches the quantity of water ingested and monitors physiological signs that indicate when the drowning effect progresses from a painful psychological experience to a horrific, suffocating punishment, and eventually toward death. While these methods may not rise to the level of the rack or thumbscrews, any practice capable of producing these reactions must be regarded as torture. As Howes notes, "We know that the reasons for torture's ineffectiveness stem from the fact that it is different from other forms of coercion."

There are also numerous venues for CIA-sponsored torture to take place, all out of the sight of ordinary citizens. Some facilities, such as Guantanamo, have become widely known due to high-profile media reports, but others are less well known — including a CIA interrogation center near Kabul, an airbase on British Diego Garcia, and a sea-borne interrogation facility on a U.S. naval vessel in the Indian Ocean casually referred to as "Hotel California" by CIA operatives. Even these facilities, however, are not the worst. Grey emphasizes that, "Of those operated by America's allies, the worst prisons include the Scorpion jail and the Lazoghly Square secret police headquarters in Cairo, and the Far' Falastin interrogation centre in Damascus, Syria."

Notwithstanding the former vice president's admitted support of CIA torture, other public authorities have characterized the use of torture by the federal government as "disgraceful conduct" that cannot be condoned by a civilized society. In April 2003, the American public witnessed a series of shocking photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, 20 miles west of Baghdad. An investigation by Major General Antonio Taguba of the 800th Military Police Brigade identified the following methods used at that prison:

• Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet.
• Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees.
• Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing.
• Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time.
• Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear.
• Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped.
• Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them.
• Positioning a naked detainee on a box with a sandbag on his head and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture.
• Writing "I am a Rapest [sic]" on the leg of a detainee accused of rape, then photographing him naked.
• Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture.
• A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.
• Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee.
• Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

Clearly, these tactics went far beyond the more benign waterboarding methods the former vice president had approved. Moreover, the photographs were shocking to the American public, but even more disturbing was the revelation that these torture methods had been developed by the CIA over the preceding fifty years. According to Hodge and Cooper, "The Bush administration worked overtime to convince Americans that what they were seeing was the work of a 'few bad apples,' whom the president said exhibited 'disgraceful conduct' that 'dishonored our country and disregarded our values.'" Likewise, in July 2003, the U.S. Army Inspector General, Paul Mikolashek, characterized the Abu Ghraib incidents as "abuses [that] should be viewed as what they are: unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals."

According to Human Rights Watch, despite President Bush's apology and the launch of military investigations, the United States made no formal commitment to prosecute those involved, and the Abu Ghraib incidents may represent only the tip of the iceberg given the existence of other venues where torture methods can be applied with little or no scrutiny from international organizations or the media. Human Rights Watch emphasized that "the number of such incidents reported in the media since 2002, confidential and internal reports of abuse to superior officers with responsibility for prison policies, and statements that guards were instructed to 'soften up' prisoners for interrogation, all suggest that these incidents are indicative of a policy condoning or tolerant of torture, official denials notwithstanding."

In August 2003, two additional federal government reports — one from an Army panel headed by Major General George Fay and a second by a commission headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger — confirmed that the seven military policemen implicated in the Abu Ghraib episodes were indeed just the tip of the iceberg. The Fay report indicated that more than two dozen military intelligence officers as well as a number of military contractors were involved. The report catalogued 44 specific torture incidents, including "the stripping, hooding and sodomizing of detainees; subjecting them to temperature extremes; leading them around naked on leashes; and attaching electrical wires to their genitals. In one case, two naked youths were terrorized by snarling, unmuzzled military dogs held by military personnel who competed to try to make the teenagers defecate."

The Fay and Schlesinger reports have been widely regarded as confirmation of the ongoing use of torture by the federal government, but some observers maintain that even these damning reports failed to expose the true extent of the problem. Human Rights Watch stated the reports "utterly fail to assess the obvious: the role that official government policies played in bringing about the horrendous abuse." Even when the two reports did identify the source of the problem, they failed to explore how the abuses were allowed to occur in the first place. For instance, the Schlesinger report noted the August 1, 2002, Justice Department opinion that redefined torture as pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," yet failed to evaluate whether that policy contributed to the abuses.

A special counsel for Human Rights Watch, Reed Brody, suggested that the Schlesinger panel — whose members were selected by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — intentionally avoided making any connections between the Abu Ghraib abuses and interrogation policies approved by the defense secretary. The Schlesinger report "seems to go out of its way not to find any relationship between Rumsfeld's approval of interrogation techniques designed to inflict pain and humiliation and the widespread mistreatment and torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo."

Alfred McCoy, a professor of history and author of Closer Than Brothers — an analysis of the effects of CIA torture methods on the Philippine military — suggested that the Fay and Schlesinger reports confirmed what many people already believed: that the CIA is torturing suspects with virtual impunity. McCoy characterized the Abu Ghraib photographs as "snapshots of CIA torture techniques that have metastasized over the last 50 years like an undetected cancer inside the U.S. intelligence community."

According to McCoy, the CIA has been refining its torture techniques since the 1950s, and an enormous amount of resources have been devoted to the enterprise. By the late 1950s, CIA investments in torture research amounted to more than $1 billion a year, with a half-dozen research firms actively involved. As Hodge and Cooper note, "The research ranged from using electric shock, to giving LSD to unsuspecting subjects, to employing sensory deprivation. It was the latter experiments that bore fruit, producing a revolutionary new psychological torture paradigm that was superior to various physical methods that had been used for 2,000 years, from ancient Rome's hot irons to the medieval rack and wheel."

The CIA reduced its findings to writing in 1963 in a manual entitled KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. The 125-page manual includes instructions on using various forms of interrogation and torture, including so-called "silent drugs" administered to detainees without their knowledge or consent, as well as other psychological techniques. Although psychological interrogation and torture methods may appear less harmful than physical methods, these techniques can produce long-term adverse effects in both detainees and their interrogators. Hodge and Cooper report that "the basic techniques — the use of stress positions, sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation — are aimed at making victims feel responsible for their own pain and suffering," while also causing deep psychological damage to interrogators, who "can become capable of unspeakable physical cruelties."

Following publication of the KUBARK manual, the CIA installed at least 40 interrogation centers throughout South Vietnam pursuant to its Phoenix Program. From these beginnings, CIA interrogation centers were established in countries around the world through U.S. Army Mobile Training Teams and the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety program. In 1983, the KUBARK manual incorporated a "Human Resource Exploitation Training" component that outlined physical torture methods employed by the U.S.-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16. At that time, the CIA also published the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare manual for the Nicaraguan Contra commandos, aiding their efforts against the Sandinista government with the assistance of the Reagan administration. During the 1980s, six additional CIA manuals were used at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and distributed throughout Latin America by Army Mobile Training Teams; these manuals "advocated everything from executions of guerrillas to extortion, coercion and false imprisonment." The results of a 1992 Department of Defense investigation into these manuals were kept secret on the order of Dick Cheney, who was then secretary of defense.

As a result, both the Fay and Schlesinger commissions were unable to assess the actual role played by the CIA in the Abu Ghraib incidents because they lacked access to the agency. Nonetheless, both reports do make the connection between those incidents and the CIA. The Fay report pointed out that "the CIA's detention and interrogation practices led to a loss of accountability, abuse, reduced interagency cooperation, and an unhealthy mystique that further poisoned the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib." The Fay report also noted that CIA officers held so-called "Ghost Detainees," including an Iraqi detainee who subsequently died in a shower and was found "handcuffed with a sandbag over his head." The U.S. Army permitted the CIA to detain unaccounted-for and unidentified individuals, allowing the agency to avoid reporting requirements under the Geneva Conventions.

Likewise, the Schlesinger panel determined that the "CIA's detention and interrogation practices contributed to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib," though it maintained it lacked sufficient access to CIA information to investigate the matter fully. The Fay report characterized some of the torture methods used at Abu Ghraib — including "removing clothing, isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs and implementing sleep and light deprivation" — as "new ideas" learned on the job by U.S. interrogators. These methods, however, are certainly not new; their origins can be traced to the CIA's role in the Vietnam War, and the only truly "new" aspect of the Abu Ghraib incidents was that they were captured on film and made public. Given that the federal government has actively promoted the use of coercive interrogation methods that may be tantamount to torture, it is important to determine whether these methods are achieving their desired outcomes.

Efficacy of Torture in Interrogation

Since time immemorial, a number of methods have been used to obtain reliable information from individuals who are unwilling to provide it, including interrogation, torture, polygraphs, and even brain-imaging technologies. All of these techniques have their respective disadvantages and limitations in extracting concealed information and verifying it. The Spanish Inquisition proved that it is possible to compel people to confess to virtually anything if sufficiently painful torture techniques are employed — and that remains the case today. As Hodge and Cooper point out, "People will say anything to stop pain. The information extracted is inherently unreliable. And that's the problem the CIA solved with these psychological methods."

More importantly, even when detainees are compelled to divulge information, that information may not be reliable, timely, or actionable. As Wynia emphasizes, "When the victims of torture do 'talk,' they often — and perhaps intentionally — provide unreliable as well as true information. In fact, there is very little evidence that torture is effective as an interrogation technique, and some evidence that it can backfire dramatically." Therefore, even when the rationale for torture during interrogations rests on the overarching need to prevent future terrorist attacks on the scale of September 11, 2001, the efficacy of these methods must be taken into account. As Schiemann points out, "The pragmatic defense of limited, last-resort interrogational torture rests on certain constraints on the way in which torture is employed as well as the expectation it will be effective in revealing valuable information."

In order for torture to be regarded as effective, it must satisfy four fundamental conditions:

1. The information must be true;
2. The information must be current;
3. The information must be actionable; and
4. There must be no alternative, equally efficient means of gathering the intelligence available.

Taken together, these are legitimate criteria for evaluating the efficacy of drastic practices such as torture, but it is unlikely that intelligence-gathering agencies take all of these factors into account when weighing the appropriateness of torture or the value of the information obtained.

The overarching constraint is that any information derived through torture may simply reflect an attempt by detainees to say anything that will stop the pain, including outdated or false information that does not satisfy the foregoing criteria. As Wisnewski points out, "Quite obviously, it is not sufficient that one speaks when tortured. It is highly likely that this will happen. If the information given is false, however, this can hardly be considered an instance of torture 'working.'" Moreover, even if intelligence gathered through torture is true, the practice cannot be regarded as effective without the other qualifying criteria. As Wisnewski emphasizes, "The truth of what a person says, though, is not sufficient for showing that torture works. The information acquired must also be current information — not simply something that used to be true."

The penultimate qualifying condition is that any information obtained must be actionable. It is certainly conceivable that detainees will first attempt to provide outdated or inaccurate information — or information of little or no value — in the hope of ending the torture without unnecessarily compromising their cohorts. As Wisnewski notes, "For torture to 'work,' the intelligence acquired must also be actionable — that is, one must be able to act on the information acquired in such a way that the action in question would make the torture worth the serious wrong committed to acquire the information."

The final qualifying condition involves the rationale used to support the selected method. If torture is used to extract intelligence that could have been obtained through other means, then torture cannot be considered an effective approach. As Wisnewski emphasizes, "Torture 'working' could not possibly be justified if there were other means of acquiring the same intelligence that did not involve the use of this dark method." Even if information extracted through torture is true, current, and actionable, it cannot be characterized as effective if it could have been obtained in some equally effective fashion. Wisnewski clarifies: "By 'equally effective' we do not simply mean that said information could be acquired . . . To be 'equally effective,' the alternative means of intelligence gathering must be such that it could also prevent what is putatively prevented by the use of torture."

Based on the foregoing constraints and considerations, it is reasonable to conclude that few incidents of torture can truly be regarded as effective. Despite assertions by law enforcement authorities and the federal government that coercive interrogation methods have produced actionable information that prevented terrorist attacks, the fact remains that this information may have been available elsewhere. In response to a question about whether "enhanced interrogation" had saved lives, former Vice President Dick Cheney told a CNN interviewer: "I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think that's a great success story."

Certainly, it is difficult to argue with claimed success, but the former vice president's characterization must be viewed in light of the criteria for effectiveness outlined above. Many security analysts believe this information could have been developed through other sources or other methods. As Wisnewski concludes: "In assessing the effectiveness of torture, are we to believe that practitioners of torture have considered the available alternatives to intelligence-gathering (such as standard interrogation techniques, which have been shown to work in many cases), and have determined with sufficient assurance that these will be ineffective in this case? This seems possible, but doubtful."

In this context, how is torture defined? According to Article 1 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984):

[T]he term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Likewise, according to Black's Law Dictionary, torture is "to inflict intense pain to body or mind for purposes of punishment, or to extract a confession or information, or for sadistic pleasure." These definitions are congruent with the guidance provided by Faulkes, who advises that "interrogation or torture are rational attempts to get or verify information." As the historical record shows, however, torture is typically not used in rational ways and frequently escalates with dire consequences for both the tortured and their interrogators. As Faulkes emphasizes, "Unfortunately, torture is rarely used in detached, rational ways; claiming that its only purpose is to elicit information is 'the interrogation fallacy.'" Likewise, Howes emphasizes that not only is torture likely to be ineffective when intelligence is most desperately needed — such as on the battlefield or during times of emergency — but a growing body of evidence indicates that intelligence gathered through torture is unreliable and can have serious consequences for interrogators and victims alike. In this regard, Howes notes that, "The sources of error in organized torture are systematic and ineradicable . . . [torture] yields poor information, sweeps up many innocents, degrades organizational capabilities, and destroys interrogators."

Indeed, torture is also intentionally used to create fear and terror in groups of people, or simply to satisfy the sadism of those involved — which is also consistent with the legal definition. Any information extracted during torture, moreover, is not admissible in American courts, causing many observers to question both its utility and its legality. According to Faulkes, "Even a strict utilitarian argument hinges on the idea that useful information can be gained from torture. There is little research on the effectiveness of torture to elicit information from unwilling participants and there are no rigorous laboratory studies, for obvious reasons."

Despite the paucity of relevant research, scientific studies have provided a number of reasons why information derived from torture is not reliable. Not only will people say anything to stop the pain, but torture also produces impaired cognitive functions that may skew any information obtained. The global war on terrorism has been the catalyst for the use of torture, but in many ways the practice places the United States on the same moral level as those it is trying to defeat. As Faulkes points out, "Furthermore, human rights declarations by the United Nations (UN) (1984) also prohibit torture and banning torture, rather than trying to justify it, is regarded as a mark of civilized society." Given these adverse views, it is little wonder that many American citizens and policymakers who believe the United States is a "civilized society" are concerned about the practice.

Conclusion

The research showed that torture is defined as an attempt to extract concealed information from someone through coercive means that can include both physical and mental techniques. Although interrogation and torture can be regarded as rational efforts to obtain or verify concealed information, the research showed that torture is an ineffective approach to information gathering. Moreover, torture violates U.S. law and an enormous body of international law, and the research was consistent in showing that the United States must pursue a course of action in which torture and coercive interrogation are completely unacceptable.

Given the exigencies of the global war on terrorism and continued support from some federal government authorities for the practice, however, it is reasonable to conclude that the United States will continue to engage in torture methods as long as the perception exists that this is an effective intelligence-gathering technique. The research also showed that in order to be considered effective, torture must produce information that is true, current, actionable, and which could not be obtained through equally effective alternative means. Therefore, in the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that even in those rare instances where torture achieves the desired outcomes, the moral price paid for this information is far too high to justify its continued use, and torture must be viewed as an ineffective alternative to intelligence gathering.