HUMINT

Interrogation Study

2010-07-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

Are you an military interrogator? Have your voice heard about military interrogation techniques. Please participate anonymously in my study which requires you to complete a 15 minute questionnaire. The study is completely anonymous and asks for no classified information. If you have questions please contact me in confidence and then you can decide whether or not to anonymously participate.

The Unseen War in Iraq: Insurgents in the Shadows

2010-05-08T11:24:00.005-04:00

The Unseen War in Iraq: Insurgents in the Shadows is a book that seemed to fly under the radar when it was published in 2008. The book, written by a career counterintelligence officer who now teaches at St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania, provides an important perspective on counterintelligence in general and intelligence interrogations in particular. The author, Richard Saccone, devotes an important part of the book to interrogation techniques, torture and coercion in the HUMINT context. Dr. Saccone draws an important distinction between coercion and torture and argues that coercion is a necessary tool when interrogating hardened terrorists who have been trained to resist rapport-building and other non-coercive techniques. Dr. Saccone also believes that under supervision and with reasonable guidelines and limitations, coercion will not violate U.S. or international law. In the chapter Interrogation, Saccone offers an anecdote about using non-rapport building techniques to elicit information from a subject.

According to the author, a "suspect" was resisting "conventional means of interrogation" and interrogators needed to try alternative methods. They hood the subject and tell him he is being transported to an interrogation setting that will be less-than-friendly. When the suspect arrives at the make-shift interrogation booth, the interrogator excuses himself and goes to a room next door. In this room, the interrogator and an Arabic interpreter stage a mock interrogation. The interrogator connects two live wires from time to time and the interpreter screams in Arabic to stop. They even arrange for the lights to dim when the live wires are connected. When the interpreter pretends to confess, the interrogator returns to the room with the suspect, who now appears "sufficiently frightened." The interrogator tells the suspect that he does not want to use these methods but he will if the suspect does not cooperate. At this point the prisoner begins to reveal intelligence.

In an e-mail to me Dr. Saccone provided these insights about intelligence interrogations:

"Hardened terrorists are trained to resist interrogation so they expect much more than Coercive methods. Some of them have actually been tortured in other countries or by Iraqis, Pesh Merga or Taliban. Terrorists are created predominantly from religious reasons, the other excuses of US foreign policy, our relation with Israel and how we treat terrorists etc. is a smoke screen. I explain some if that in my book. If you think how we treat KSM would make him stop wanting to terrorize America you are mistaken. His ilk have fundamental religious and cultural differences with our way of life. They saw peoples heads off and intentionally kill thousands of innocents to achieve their goals."

Many interrogators make this mistake. "'If I am successful using one technique then it must work on everything.' It reminds me of the saying that "A fool is one who, upon observing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes it will also make better soup." There is a time and place for rapport building and good interrogators know when to use it. The reason so many fall into this trap is because by the time FBI or prison interrogators receive prisoners the urgency is likely gone. They have much more time to use rapport building and that may be appropriate. Battlefield interrogations present a different circumstance which includes urgency."

"Depending on the individual, terrorists can respond to coercion almost immediately. For those hardened terrorists it may take longer but that time will still be a fraction of the time it would take to use rapport building on that person. I have seen what I define as coercion work in as little as a few minutes or over several days. Remember, not everyone picked up on the battlefield is a hardened terrorist. As I explain in my book some are simple shepherds manipulated into the movement. Rapport building can sometimes work quickly on these people. The bottom line remains, because one technique works sometimes (or even a lot of the time) is no reason to discard other techniques completely."

"The definition of torture should remain as it has always been, techniques that do long-lasting or permanent physical harm such as maiming, burning, amputation and a few others. Everything else is coercion. So for example, sleep deprivation is not torture unless it is used to the extent that long-lasting physical harm is done to the prisoner. That could be different depending on the health of a prisoner. Each case must be dealt with separately. However, policy guidelines are needed to help interrogators stay within reasonable limits."

2010-04-14T10:34:00.002-04:00

"24 & The Efficacy of Torture" from the Journal of Criminal Justice & Popular Culture

2010-04-14T08:11:00.001-04:00

The CIA's interrogation methods during the "War on Terrorism" have focused attention on a once obscure, out of print book called the "Manipulation of Human Behavior." The book, which some have dubbed the CIA's "torture bible," was a series of articles in book form that reviewed the state of interrogation research at the time of its publication, 1961. The furor over this book and its use by the CIA has deflected attention from another highly influential book that influenced the agency's offensive interrogation of research.

Joost Meerloo, a lecturer at Columbia University, published a book, The Rape of the Mind, in 1956 that reviewed mind control techniques and explored why people falsely confess. The book was inspired, in part, by numerous "false confessions" cases both inside and outside of the American military.

American soldiers were not the only subjects who had been reportedly “brainwashed” by the communists. Others, including a Hungarian cardinal, an ITT executive, and a number of journalists, offered public admissions to espionage charges after being “brainwashed.” Michael Otterman, in his book American Torture discusses the mind control" hysteria generated in part by the rise of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China.

A 1954 story in the New York Times by Meerloo posed this lurid headline: "Pavlov’s Dog and Communist Brainwashers…totalitarians seek to enslave the human mind.” In the Times article Meerloo, a psychiatrist, describes in detail the techniques used by the Soviet Union to elicit confessions.

In stage one, the prisoner is dulled by rapid, continual questioning, forced to stand, denied access to showers, and exposed to cold, among other things. During this stage, as questioning continues, new interrogators confront the subject with errors in his statements and the subject is reduced to "an animal."

In stage two, “reconditioning” begins. For each act of compliance, his captors award the prisoner a small privilege, such as a shower, a warm cell, or a restful sleep. At this point, Meerloo writes, the victim enters a “hypnotic state” and is “ready to confess.” The interrogator can prompt the subject to "confess" to almost anything because of the breakdown in the subject's will and humanity.

Interrogation Study

2010-04-14T08:07:00.001-04:00

Interrogator Hall of Fame - Part I

2009-10-06T14:57:00.006-04:00

If there were an American Interrogator Hall of Fame surely Marine Major Sherwood Moran would be an inductee. Moran, whose letter about interrogations received a lot of press after news about Abu Ghraib broke, was an interrogator from the old school. The Atlantic Monthly ran a nice piece about Moran in 2005 and Moran's family has established a website to honor his memory. Moran died in 1983.

Moran's now famous epistle, Suggestions For Japanese Interpreters Based On Work In the Field, is a primer about how to gather intelligence information from a subject without using coercion. Moran, who once lived in Japan and spoken fluent Japanese without an American accent, preferred the term interviewer over interrogator. This distinction is fundamental to understanding Moran's rapport building approach to interrogations.

2009-09-24T12:01:00.002-04:00

Interrogator Study advertisement in the Fort Huachuca Scout.

Are you an military interrogator? Have your voice heard about military interrogation techniques. Please participate anonymously in my study which requires you to complete a 15 minute questionnaire. The study is completely anonymous and asks for no classified information. If you have questions please contact me in confidence and then you can decide whether or not to anonymously participate.

Please help.

2009-09-20T12:04:00.003-04:00

Thanks to waterboarding.org for reminding me that the Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association has a page on their site that discusses torture and interrogations, written by Maj. Anthony F. Milavic, USMC (Ret.).

Do harsh interrogations work? Part IV

2009-09-20T10:28:00.004-04:00

In 1957, Albert Biderman conducted a comprehensive examination of false confession cases on behalf of the United States Air Force and the CIA and he focused on one major question: what happened to U.S. personnel captured in Korea that caused them to "confess" to non-existent war crimes? (Biderman has gained renewed notoriety in the last few years as editor of "The Manipulation of Human Behavior," what some have called the "Torture Handbook.")

In accordance with the findings of other well known researchers for the CIA, Wolff and Hinkle, as well as his own work, Biderman recognized that human behavior can be "manipulated" in a "controlled" environment, such as that in which a prisoner of war may find himself. The nation that holds prisoners of war has two major goals according to Biderman: to establish compliance and, in cases where prisoners may be used for propaganda purposes, to manipulate that compliance. The North Koreans and the Chinese, like their Soviet counterparts, gained compliance by undermining the prisoner's resistance, usually without the use of physical torture. Biderman organized the Chinese methods for gaining compliance into eight categories and those eight categories include the techniques, their "effects" and "variants."

Biderman contended that of all possible techniques, isolation works best to break down resistance in prisoners. Severe isolation can achieve the same results as other methods, such as starvation and sleep deprivation and can achieve those results in a shorter period of time. When prisoners are subjected to complete or almost complete isolation, their psychological well-being rapidly deteriorates. Long term solitary confinement can eventually induce psychosis and a complete mental breakdown and isolation has an added advantage in that it leaves no marks on its victims. Biderman's findings, however, suggest that if isolation is used at all, its use must be measured and monitored. Too much isolation is not likely to produce accurate intelligence from a subject, a finding relevant to today's interrogations.

Biderman found that two other specific techniques also work well to establish compliance: threats of physical violence and the use of stress positions. Stress positions, such as sitting at attention or standing for long periods of time, are particularly effective for compliance because the prisoner himself, not the interrogator or guard, is the source of the prisoner's pain. Stress positions cause the prisoner to "exaggerate" the power of the interrogator and convince a prisoner that his captor has the ability "to do something worse to him." Stress positions also allow the interrogator to assert that physical violence never entered the interrogation room.

Regardless of the interrogation techniques used, Biderman believed that no subject could resist a determined interrogator and he supported this assertion with a review of intelligence gathering during World War II and the Korean War. The greater problem for an interrogator, according to Biderman, is evasion by a subject after he begins to talk. As a result of his findings, Biderman supported a change in the Military Code of Conduct which would allow American prisoners of war to speak to interrogators instead of simply supplying name, rank and serial number. Biderman reasoned that most subjects will eventually talk and the military is wiser to train troops to evade their interlocutors, who were generally poor at detecting evasion or deception. Biderman’s assertions are still true today and supported by law enforcement research on this subject which suggests that law enforcement officers are over-confident in their ability to detect deception.

Biderman's overall findings suggest that isolation, at least in its more extreme forms, and stress positions are not conducive to eliciting actionable intelligence during an interrogation. Training and research may be better focused on deception detection which is still subject to many myths. A search on Amazon will reveal a number of books that purport to teach the secrets of flushing out lies and liars. Most research literature to date on this subject, however, counters the view that deception is easily detected in another human being by physical cues.

Do harsh interrogation techniques work? Part III

2009-09-20T09:34:00.007-04:00

In his book, Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War, Lewis Carlson presents an oral history of American POWs in Korea. Carlson conducted interviews with Korean POWs in part to determine if the conditions of their confinement helped produce false confessions at higher rates when compared to American prisoners in other wars. Carlson finds that the North Koreans used many of the same methods as the Soviet Union, including beatings, starvation, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures and "never-ending" interrogations. Marathon interrogation sessions can cause a subject to become so disoriented that the subject can no longer distinguish what he knows from what he does not know. These conditions, notes Carlson, caused prisoners to break down and "cooperate" with their interrogators to survive. For some, cooperation included falsely confessing to war crimes.

During the Vietnam War the North Vietnamese elicited similar false confessions under similar conditions from American prisoners of war, including Senator John McCain of Arizona. Navy pilot Mike Cronin, who spent six years at the notorious Hanoi prison known as the Hanoi Hilton, was subjected to brutal interrogations during his time in captivity. Eventually Cronin did talk but, like other POWs including McCain, Cronin provided his captors with false or unimportant information. Cronin has publically insisted however that "when you put people in this position, the information you get is not reliable."

Subsequent conflicts produced similar false confessions. At the height of the Vietnam War, North Korea seized an American Naval vessel, the U.S.S. Pueblo and held the 82-member crew captive for 11 months under severe conditions. The Koreans regularly assaulted the Americans, kept them blindfolded and questioned them over long periods of time. The commander of the ship, Captain Lloyd Bucher eventually "confessed" to war crimes after the Koreans threatened to shoot the members of his crew one-by-one while he watched. The statements elicited as a result of this threat were false.

During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi television displayed several downed U.S. airmen who publicly denounced the war against the "peaceful people of Iraq." Again the statements were elicited under torture and threats of death.

These events demonstrate again and again that even members of the best and most well-trained military in the world are not immune to torture and the often debilitating effects of captivity, particularly if injured when captured. But they also demonstrate that the quality of information elicited under these conditions is suspect at best and most likely fabricated. Historically, harsh techniques seem to reliably produce unreliable information.

Do harsh interrogation techniques work? Part II

2009-09-19T12:13:00.003-04:00

Experienced interrogators know the history of their art and this history is replete with narrative accounts about the ineffectiveness of harsh techniques and torture. The historical record describes the experiences of American POWs during four major wars: World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. In addition, numerous books and articles depict how American interrogators treated enemy prisoners of war and many of these accounts have been cited by journalists and others reporting about this issue, in print and on the internet.

It bears repeating here that rapport-building, like the use of harsh techniques, has not been scientifically validated. I do not intend to endorse any one interrogation technique but seek to examine the evidence that exists about the efficacy of various interrogation practices used subsequent to September 11th, 2001.

Probably the most famous World War II interrogator was a Luftwaffe officer named Hanns Scharff, the subject of a book written by Raymond Tolliver called The Interrogator. Much has been written about Scharff who used charm, wit and cunning to extract information from the mostly American airmen he interrogated and Scharff is often cited as a counter to those who advocate harsh techniques. The coda to the Scharff story is that later in life, he moved to the United States and spoke to many military audiences about his methods. The Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association includes a small tribute to Scharff on its web site.

Scharff was atypical and accounts of the treatment of U.S. POWs in World War II and the Korean War illustrate the defensive challenges of interrogation faced by prisoners. Both the Germans and the Japanese tortured Allied POWs captured over the course of the conflict and some estimate that after being tortured ten percent of American prisoners of war held by the Nazis cooperated in some way with their captors. Cooperation consisted primarily of confessions to fabricated war crimes.

During the Korean War, thirty-six American airmen confessed to a plot to bomb civilian targets after undergoing what was then called touch-less torture. These high value prisoners were isolated from all human contact but for their interrogators and at least one airman was held in solitary confinement for 10 months. The North Koreans and the Chinese subjected these prisoners to stress positions, such as standing at attention for hours, repeated beatings and prolonged interrogation sessions during which questions were repeated over and over to disorient the subject. During the winter, prisoners were marched barefoot in the snow. Guards regularly threw food at prisoners and forced them to defecate in public. After becoming exhausted and demoralized, some airmen's resistance was overcome and they eventually "confessed" to war crimes. All the confessions elicited under these conditions were false and were procured primarily for propaganda purposes.

The historical record is clear about one overall fact. The Koreans and the Chinese did not torture their American captives to elicit intelligence. They tortured U.S. soldiers in the hopes that they would convincingly confess to false charges or renounce the American political system. In some cases the soldiers did and did so plausibly, much to the shock of many Americans at home.

Do harsh interrogation techniques work?

2009-09-16T15:07:00.000-04:00

With the release of new revelations about the Bush Administration's policy on interrogations and a pending investigation by Attorney General Eric Holder, several points have not been refuted by news reports. First, whether you agree or disagree with the Administration's policies, there appears to be no evidence, other than some anecdotal reports, that harsh interrogations produced good intelligence information.

For example, former Vice President Dick Cheney insists that harsh interrogations led to actionable intelligence. Cheney's contention is countered by experienced interrogators, some of the most prominent of whom have been two Air Force interrogators, Steve Kleinman and Matthew Alexander(a pseudonym), and former FBI special agent Ali Soufan. Recently Soufan wrote in the New York Times that supporters of harsh techniques have yet "to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism." Soufan has been a frequent critic of the Bush policy both in print and as a witness before Congress. (It should be remembered however that rapport-building techniques themselves have not been validated scientifically in the intelligence context even if the narrative and historical record overwhelmingly supports their effectiveness.)

The vice president has yet to clearly describe how harsh interrogations produced good intelligence or prevented an act of terror. Supporters have pointed to the interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohamed as an example of extreme techniques producing good intelligence. As has been reported widely, Mohamed was water-boarded dozens of times and reportedly gave up good information. (Some have disputed the efficacy of water-boarding Mohamed including Mohamed himself. He now claims he told his interrogators what they "wanted to hear," not the truth.)

The bottom line? We don't know if torture or harsh techniques work and chances are we will never have a definitive answer. There may be cases where harsh techniques actually "work" and succeed in extracting valuable information but this does not mean that rapport building techniques are deficient in comparison.

The reverse engineering of the SERE program and the subsequent use of its techniques on detainees provides no scientific evidence of its effectiveness in producing intelligence and supporters of SERE abhor its use on prisoners.

If rapport-building techniques and harsh methods work equally well it is axiomatic that the United States not endorse methods proscribed by U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions. To do otherwise diminishes the moral standing of the U.S. and puts our troops in harm's way. This is not an endorsement of rapport-building; it is an acknowledgement that we do not have scientific evidence that validates one approach over another.

A second point seems undeniable. The Bush Administration did not ask seasoned interrogators what they believed were the most effective methods for gathering actionable intelligence. The irony in this fact is that the Administration sought the advice of so many individuals without consulting front-line, experienced interrogators. I have spoken with dozens of interrogators from the Air Force, Army and Marines and most of these experienced interrogators eschew the harsh tactics advanced by President Bush and his administration. They insist that rapport-building methods work best.

Looking for military interrogators

2009-09-12T15:22:00.001-04:00

I am conducting a study designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives, based on their experiences. You can help by completing an anonymous, 15 minute on-line survey

Kassin and his colleagues(2007) conducted the first self-report survey of best interrogation practices and beliefs of law enforcement officers and this study will follow that model, using different populations to obtain two distinct samples: military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Like that study, this survey will ask participants to address and self-report on a number of issues, some in common with law enforcement and others that apply specifically to military and counter terrorism interrogations.

Participants will be asked to estimate, rate and self-report on a number of facets of their work: (1) their ability to detect truth or deception; (2) for military interrogators, their own opinions and practices with regard to 13 of the general approach techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook; (3) the importance of rapport building to extract information from a subject; (4) the applicability of law enforcement techniques to interrogations of terrorists; (5) the frequency, length and timing of interrogations and (6) training. Like the law enforcement study, the goal here is to obtain common practices, observations, and beliefs about interrogations directly from military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Subsequent research can then test the interrogation methods that the subjects of this study believe are the most effective and focus on practices and beliefs unique to the military and counterterrorism context. This study will begin to shed light on practices currently in use by counterterrorism agents and the United States Army, provide potential empirical support for those practices that prove efficacious, and highlight those techniques that are of little value. It can dispel myths under which interrogators may operate.

Interrogators know better than I do that good intelligence obtained from human sources can save lives and win wars. Science can help point the way. Please contact me if you would like to help or participate: msemel@stac.edu

Videotaping intelligence interrogations

2009-07-24T11:07:00.004-04:00

According to The Hill the Obama Administration objects to any amendment to the 2010 defense authorization bill currently under debate requiring the videotaping of intelligence interrogations. This is a little discussed aspect of military interrogations and remains controversial in the law enforcement context.

According to the Justice Project, 450 departments in 50 states have "independently adopted recording procedures." Alaska, Illinois, Maine Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico and Wisconsin all mandate recording under certain circumstances. Experts believe requiring the recording of custodial interrogations could help reduce convictions based on false confessions and provide powerful evidence of guilt where appropriate.

Is videotaping practical and desirable for intelligence interrogations? It is likely impossible (and dangerous) in a battlefield setting. Off the field of battle the videotaping of interrogations raises a number of issues and presents the risk that valuable intelligence could be prematurely disclosed and endanger lives. News reports have revealed that the CIA videotaped the interrogations of two al Qaeda operatives. Is there value in this practice for the military?

Lessons from Law Enforcement

2009-07-24T09:39:00.004-04:00

Social scientists have studied law enforcement techniques for a number of years and the law enforcement literature has dispelled many myths about police interrogation practices. The research has also helped to highlight more reliable and efficacious techniques. And while the goal of counterterrorism and military interrogations differ from those in law enforcement, military techniques and those of other agencies are based in part on a law enforcement model and personnel may be subject to the same myths that affect police interrogators.

Investigators, police officers and/or detectives routinely interrogate people suspected of committing crimes. Research has examined procedures used by law enforcement, the perspectives of investigators conducting an interrogation, (for example confidence that the person they are interrogating is the perpetrator), police officers’ ability to detect truth from non-truth, and the psychology and state of mind of the person under interrogation. Literature also exists about the impact of “confession” evidence on prosecutors, judges, and juries. Sources for studying police interrogation techniques have included both archival or real-life material and experiments. There are also training manuals including Criminal Interrogations and Confessions (Inbau, Reid, Buckley and Jayne, 2001) which features the Reid Technique. Hundreds of thousands of police officers have trained in the Reid Technique.

Research into the psychology of interrogations shows that seasoned investigators assume deception in the target of an investigation, disbelieve people who assert their innocence, are prone to false positives, and yet, are highly confident in their assessments of guilt or innocence. They also tend to believe that the focus of their investigation is "guilty" despite protestations to the contrary. Police investigators often isolate a suspect, confront him or her with evidence of guilt, try to build rapport, and highlight contradictions in a suspect's statements.

American criminal law permits use of the ruse, to which teenagers and the mentally disabled are especially susceptible. These law enforcement strategies can push vulnerable and impressionable suspects to internalize belief in their culpability and cause them to “confess” to crimes they did not commit. The case of the "Central Park jogger," which resulted in 5 false confessions, is a notorious example of this phenomenon. There is also significant anecdotal evidence, drawn from well-known and sometimes sensational cases, where graphic, detailed “confessions” were later proved false. One quarter of the wrongful convictions uncovered by the Innocence Project were based on or included false confessions.

Saul Kassin has long researched why suspects confess to crimes they did not commit. Kassin, who reviewed the Central Park jogger case for ABC News, has also demonstrated that even well-trained law enforcement investigators are unreliable in judging the truth or falsity of suspects’ statements. In 2006, Dr. Kassin published the first self-report study of best practices in police interrogation. One of the highlights of the study was that the police investigators surveyed remain overconfident in their ability to detect deception.

Does the law enforcement research apply to interrogations in the military context? It is unclear. Despite the fact that military and law enforcement interrogations are generally conducted with different goals, there may be some applicability. For example, are military interrogators overconfident in their ability to detect deception? How good are they at detecting deception? These questions need to be answered.

Interrogation Techniques Study

2009-07-23T09:28:00.007-04:00

I am looking for military interrogators to participate in a study about military interrogation techniques. Participation is anonymous and easy. All you need do is follow a link, provided by me, to a 5 page survey posted on-line. The survey collects no personal identifying information and is encrypted. ISP addresses are not saved. The survey takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. The survey does not ask for classified information. Questions are based primarily on the suggested approaches in the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook.

Research can help advance the art (and science) of human intelligence collection and identify the most effective techniques for extracting information from human subjects. By participating in this study you will insure that the United States military gathers human intelligence in the most effective way possible.

I need your participation and expertise. Please contact me at msemel@stac.edu and I will provide you with the information required to participate in the study. With your help we can move beyond the politicization of intelligence gathering.

Thank you.

Looking for military interrogators...

2009-07-06T19:28:00.000-04:00

I am conducting a study designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives, based on their experiences. Kassin and his colleagues(2007) conducted the first self-report survey of best interrogation practices and beliefs of law enforcement officers and this study will follow that model, using different populations to obtain two distinct samples: military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Like that study, this survey will ask participants to address and self-report on a number of issues, some in common with law enforcement and others that apply specifically to military and counter terrorism interrogations.

Participants will be asked to estimate, rate and self-report on a number of facets of their work: (1) their ability to detect truth or deception; (2) for military interrogators, their own opinions and practices with regard to 13 of the general approach techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook; (3) the importance of rapport building to extract information from a subject; (4) the applicability of law enforcement techniques to interrogations of terrorists; (5) the frequency, length and timing of interrogations and (6) training. Like the law enforcement study, the goal here is to obtain common practices, observations, and beliefs about interrogations directly from military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Subsequent research can then test the interrogation methods that the subjects of this study believe are the most effective and focus on practices and beliefs unique to the military and counterterrorism context. This study will begin to shed light on practices currently in use by counterterrorism agents and the United States Army, provide potential empirical support for those practices that prove efficacious, and highlight those techniques that are of little value. It can dispel myths under which interrogators may operate.

Interrogators know better than I do that good intelligence obtained from human sources can save lives and win wars. Science can help point the way. Please contact me if you would like to help or participate.

2009-04-16T07:39:00.003-04:00

Alfred Biderman, under the auspices of the C.I.A., conducted a comprehensive examination of the false confession cases on behalf of the United States Air Force and the CIA and he focused on one major question: what happened to U.S. personnel captured in Korea that caused them to "confess" to non-existent war crimes? Biderman was the editor of the infamous book, "The Manipulation of Human Behavior," that gained notoriety when questions were raised over current interrogation techniques. In accordance with the findings of the Hinkle and Wolff and Wolff, as well as his own work, Biderman recognizes that human behavior can be "manipulated" in a "controlled" environment, similar to one in which a prisoner of war may find himself. The nation that holds prisoners of war has two major goals according to Biderman: establish compliance and, in cases where prisoners may be used for propaganda purposes, manipulate that compliance. The North Koreans and the Chinese, like their Soviet counterparts, gained compliance by undermining the prisoner's resistance, usually with "touch-less torture."

Biderman contended that of all possible techniques, isolation works best to break down resistance in prisoners. Severe isolation can achieve the same results as other methods, such as starvation and sleep deprivation and can achieve those results in a shorter period of time. When prisoners are subjected to complete or near complete isolation, their psychological well-being rapidly begins to deteriorate. Long term solitary confinement can eventually induce psychosis and a complete mental breakdown but isolation leaves no marks on its victims. Biderman's findings suggest, however, that if isolation is used at all, its use must be measured and monitored. Too much isolation will not produce accurate intelligence from a subject, a finding relevant to today's interrogators.

Biderman found that two other specific techniques also work well to establish compliance: threats of physical violence and the use of stress positions. Stress positions, such as sitting at attention or standing for long periods of time, are particularly effective for compliance because the prisoner, not the interrogator or guard, is the source of his own pain. Stress positions cause the prisoner to "exaggerate" the power of the interrogator and convince a prisoner that his captor has the ability "to do something worse to him." Stress positions also allow the interrogator to assert that physical violence never entered the interrogation room.

Regardless of the interrogation techniques used, Biderman believeed that no subject can resist a determined interrogator and he supports this assertion with a review of intelligence gathering during World War II and the Korean War. The greater problem for an interrogator, according to Biderman, is evasion by a subject after he begins to talk, a problem that confronts interrogators today. As a result of his findings, Biderman supported a change in the Military Code of Conduct which would allow American prisoners of war to speak to interrogators instead of simply supplying name, rank and serial number. Biderman reasoned that most subjects will eventually talk and the military is wiser to train troops to evade their interlocutors, who were generally poor at detecting evasion or deception. Biderman’s assertions about deception detection are still true today and supported by law enforcement research on this subject.

2009-03-30T12:02:00.003-04:00

In the years after World War II, the intelligence and scientific communities in the United States conducted almost no research on “offensive” interrogation techniques, those used to obtain information from prisoners of war or individuals accused of espionage (Educing Information). Most of the existing research focused on “defensive” tactics in order to train United States military personnel to withstand questioning if captured by the enemy.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) like the military, worked to develop protocols and guidelines agents could employ if captured and subjected to interrogation by foreign governments. For example, the agency’s internal journal, Studies in Intelligence, much of which was declassified in the 1990s published an article entitled Defense Against Communist Interrogation, in the fall of 1969. The author suggests that agents prepare themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally, both for the possibility of arrest and its consequences. Agents are advised that those who were “ideologically motivated” or held “strong religious beliefs” were more likely to withstand harsh interrogations and the deprivations of confinement. The author also recommends strategies for disrupting the interrogation process itself including vomiting on the interrogator or losing control of one’s bowels. It is advised without irony that no interrogator enjoys being in the same room with a subject that has lost control of his bodily functions.

In 1960, Wolff, a human ecologist based at Cornell University and a leading CIA researcher at this time, published a study that examined the behavior of American POWs in the Korean War. His sample was approximately 6,654 army personnel held in Korean prison camps. Wolff’s methodology is not clear nor is the basis of his data. During the Korean War many in the United States were alarmed when some American POWs gave statements to their captors denouncing their country or “confessing,” for example, to using munitions packed with “germs.” After the war, in conjunction with the Defense Department’s Special Advisory Committee on POWs, Wolff tried to determine the conditions under which captured soldiers cooperated with the North Koreans and mainland China. Also, in light of the propaganda and distress surrounding these “confessions,” the United States military decided to rewrite the Rules of Conduct for U.S. military personnel, if captured.

During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi television broadcast interviews of a number of captured American soldiers, several of whom spoke against the United States’ decision to go to war. One, Lieutenant Jeffrey Zaun of the Navy, stated "I think our leaders and our people have wrongly attacked the peaceful people of Iraq," prompting some in the Pentagon to question if he and the others violated the Code of Conduct. The current Code of Conduct requires that American POWS provide their captors with no more than name rank and serial number. The Code specifically states that a soldier will not make “oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to its cause” when captured.

According to Wolff, soldiers noted (it is unclear if this information comes from reports and/or surveys) that conditions at the camps themselves were designed to break down an individual’s identity and “feelings of guilt were common.” The interrogators also employed threats and exploited the American’s ignorance of their captors’ culture, “values, and attitudes.” Such ignorance increased the prisoners’ level of anxiety because they did not know what techniques might eventually be used against them, including torture and murder, and “brainwashing.” Since the rise of the Soviet Union and communist China, there had been a number of published accounts that falsely described the communists’ ability to manipulate the brains of prisoners and force them to submit to their captors’ will. Alfred McCoy, in his book about the CIA and torture, describes this concern as a “general hysteria over Communist mind control.” In his review of all data to date, however, Wolf concludes that “[b]y far the most effective way of gaining information from persons or modifying their point of view is talk under friendly circumstances, when the brain is neither damaged nor impaired in any way…”

Looking for military interrogators...

2009-03-24T08:45:00.000-04:00

I am conducting a study designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives, based on their experiences. Kassin and his colleagues(2007) conducted the first self-report survey of best interrogation practices and beliefs of law enforcement officers and this study will follow that model, using different populations to obtain two distinct samples: military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Like that study, this survey will ask participants to address and self-report on a number of issues, some in common with law enforcement and others that apply specifically to military and counter terrorism interrogations.

Participants will be asked to estimate, rate and self-report on a number of facets of their work: (1) their ability to detect truth or deception; (2) for military interrogators, their own opinions and practices with regard to 13 of the general approach techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook; (3) the importance of rapport building to extract information from a subject; (4) the applicability of law enforcement techniques to interrogations of terrorists; (5) the frequency, length and timing of interrogations and (6) training. Like the law enforcement study, the goal here is to obtain common practices, observations, and beliefs about interrogations directly from military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Subsequent research can then test the interrogation methods that the subjects of this study believe are the most effective and focus on practices and beliefs unique to the military and counterterrorism context. This study will begin to shed light on practices currently in use by counterterrorism agents and the United States Army, provide potential empirical support for those practices that prove efficacious, and highlight those techniques that are of little value. It can dispel myths under which interrogators may operate.

Interrogators know better than I do that good intelligence obtained from human sources can save lives and win wars. Science can help point the way. Please contact me if you would like to help or participate.

2009-03-23T12:13:00.001-04:00

Torture has a number of definitions under U.S. and international law, and treaties to which the United States is a signatory. In addition, all members of the United Nations, by virtue of their membership, are bound by the United Nations Charter including the United States. The United Nations Charter does not specifically ban torture but implies its prohibition in the document's Preamble. Byers argued that special, jus cogens rules, internationally accepted principles of fundamental human rights, overrule conflicting treaty provisions and include a ban on torture. The most universally accepted definition comes from the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The treaty, which has not been ratified by the United States Senate, defined torture as follows:

[A]ny 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.

A number of federal laws have also codified a definition of torture. For example, United States Code, Title 18, chapter 113c, section 2340, (2004), makes it a federal crime to torture outside of the U.S. and applies to citizens of the U.S. as well as torturers “present” on U.S. soil. Section 2340 defines torture as “an act committed under the color of law specifically designed to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering…” The law goes on to define “severe mental or physical suffering” as prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from…the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.” The use of drugs and threats are also covered under the statute, as are “procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality…” According to a legal memo prepared for the White House, the law had not been applied in the context of interrogations, either military or law enforcement. Cases by which persons have challenged confessions because of the actions of police officers are usually ultimately decided based on the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution and the rules announced by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). It is noteworthy that the federal law on torture requires that the action be “specifically designed” to inflict the harm, which is not necessarily the case when questioning a suspected terrorist.

Military personnel are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (2006) and, although no specific provision of the code prohibits torture, a number of sections are applicable to the use of violence during an interrogation. For example, Article 93 of the code sanctions “cruelty and maltreatment” and Article 128 punishes “assault.” Article 93 states anyone who is “guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression, or maltreatment of any person” is subject to court-martial.

2009-03-15T09:25:00.003-04:00

It is difficult to determine what constitutes a “harsh,” “high pressure,” or “enhanced” technique. All of these terms have been used by political leaders when they have discussed how to interrogate suspected terrorists, with perhaps “harsh” the most frequent term. For example, in 2004 the CIA suspended self-described “enhanced interrogation techniques." “Enhanced interrogation techniques,” according to an unnamed CIA official, are “stress positions,” “light and noise bombardment,” “sleep deprivation,” denial of pain medication,” and what was called “feigned drowning” or what has become known as waterboarding.

The Human Rights First and Physicians Against Torture organizations co-authored a report about the use of enhanced “enhanced” techniques used by the CIA but their report did not specifically define the term. Despite this, the report gave examples of “enhanced” techniques that included “water-boarding (sic), hitting, induced hypothermia, and stress positions, total and long-term isolation, and constant bombardment with loud music and flashing lights.” Their report emphasized that tactics that do not leave physical marks, like many of the “enhanced” techniques, are none-the-less torture and in violation of U.S. and international law. Rejali, author of a history of torture and democracy, calls this “clean torture” because of the absence of marks and the fact that this treatment does not “fit” commonly held ideas about what constitutes torture. Andrew Sullivan found that the term “enhanced interrogation” comes from the German Verscharfe Vernehmung, a phrase used in a Nazi interrogation methods memo (1937) that suggests practices, similar to those endorsed by the CIA, to break uncooperative subjects.

To add to the confusion, a recent Washington Post article covered the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes depicting the questioning of two of Osama Bin Laden's reputed lieutenants. The Washington Post described the content of the tapes as examples of "harsh" interrogation methods. During the Republican presidential candidate debate in South Carolina, the candidates used a number of terms when discussing techniques that go beyond those formally authorized for use in interrogations, including “every method but torture,” “enhanced interrogation techniques, “very high pressure techniques,” and, to “respond in a way to make them [terrorists] fearful.” In response to the remarks of the other candidates, Representative Ron Paul of Texas stated, “it’s interesting talking about torture here in that it’s become enhanced interrogation techniques. It sounds like Newspeak (sic).” To Paul and many others, the words “enhanced techniques” mean torture.

2009-03-05T15:40:00.002-05:00

It is unlikely that leaders of democratic countries, like President Bush, would authorize harsh practices and torture unless they believed such practices work. The judiciary of one democratic country, Israel, decided that the effectiveness issue was moot in light of the high cost of using questionable practices. In 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an opinion that outlawed torture even in the “ticking time bomb” scenario (Judgment on the interrogation methods applied by the GSS, 1999). In that opinion, Justice Aharon Barak wrote that while a “democracy must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back, it none-the-less has the upper hand” (23). This decision was probably, in part, a response to sharp international criticism of Israel’s security agencies. It also likely reflected soul-searching on the part of Israeli political leaders that the value of information obtained by torture was not worth international opprobrium. There is a wide range of positions on the efficacy of torture. Greenberg (2006) reviews a number of positions from support to limited use to total ban. Debate about the use of torture still avoids or ignores threshold issues that should be of concern to social scientists and interrogators who operate in the field. These questions include: Does torture work? Do harsh interrogation methods extract reliable actionable intelligence that could not be obtained without it? Do the techniques currently authorized by the United States military and federal agencies succeed in producing accurate, actionable information? What do the experts in the field believe are the most effective methods for getting information? Is torture one of them?

The question of torture's efficacy may be hypothetically answered in a number of ways: it works; it does not work; it only works with specific personality types; only certain types of torture work. The use of what are called "harsh" techniques deepens the problem. To some, the term "harsh methods" is a euphemism for torture (e.g. Claude & Weston, 2005). To others, the term appears to describe practices that fall somewhere between torture and techniques formally authorized for use by the United States military and other federal agencies such as the FBI or the CIA. For example, Ross and Esposito (2005) wrote that the CIA exposed detainees to repeated listenings of "The Slim Shady" album by Eminem, which made many nervous and anxious. Is that torture?

24, Torture & the American Military

2009-01-23T10:08:00.002-05:00

Counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer, the chief protagonist in the Fox Television Network series “24,” rarely holds back when trying to extract information from a suspected or confirmed terrorist or to protect the United States from disaster. Over the course of his “career,” federal agent Bauer breaks a drug lord out of a federal prison, causing a riot and the death of at least one corrections officer. He assaults and seriously injures his partner to protect his undercover operation. He shoots and kills a known terrorist, even though she is no longer a threat. He interrogates a suspected terrorist while his partner cuts the suspect’s wrist. He fights heroin addiction after using the drug to convince drug cartel members that he has joined them. Again, to protect his cover, he points a gun at his partner’s head and squeezes the trigger, guessing, correctly, that the gun is not loaded. He tells a potential source of information that, if she does not cooperate, she will be sent to a foreign country for interrogation where her constitutional rights do not apply. He points a gun at a military pilot and orders the pilot to stay on course after the pilot has been given orders to turn the plane around. In an interrogation room, he fires a gun at a prisoner and all of these events occur in less than twenty-four hours during Season Three of the show. Season after season Bauer averts the country from disaster of apocalyptic proportions with derring-do and tactics that almost certainly violate U.S. and international law. And, he usually gets results.

Bauer's colleagues also resort to extreme measures in the face of serious threats to the country, even against other members of their unit. Twice, when the agency suspected a mole among the ranks, the director called in "Richards," the unit's resident torture expert. When summoned to the interrogation room, Richards, who rarely speaks, carries the tricks of his trade in a silver attaché case, the full contents of which we never see although his weapon of choice is usually a needle. All of this leads to an obvious question: does torture work? The experts say it does not.

A successful interrogation is one that extracts actionable, accurate intelligence from a subject and the lives of American troops and their allies may hang on the quality of the intelligence they have. Unfortunately, the value of intelligence tends to diminish over time and, usually within 24 hours, the enemy has adjusted to the capture of one of its operatives and the trail goes dead. Like other interrogation techniques, if torture works it must work fast before the enemy can react.

The question of torture's efficacy may be hypothetically answered in a number of ways: it works; it does not work; it only works with specific personality types; only certain types of torture work. The use of what are called "harsh" techniques deepens the problem. To some, the term "harsh methods" is a euphemism for torture. To others, the term appears to describe practices that fall somewhere between torture and techniques formally authorized for use by the United States military and other federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency.

While 24 suggests that torture works, no research has tested the efficacy of torture and ethical constraints prevent scientists from doing so. Even harsh interrogation techniques, however one defines them, cannot be measured in an experimental setting for the same reasons. And, although the methods formally authorized by the United States military have never been empirically tested, they share some common themes with the techniques used by law enforcement officers: isolation, fear, and rapport.

Law enforcement officers have known for years that building rapport with a suspect is the swiftest way to extract a truthful confession. Fear of what might come and isolation from friends, family, and lawyers can help speed the process and result in a suspect's confession, sometimes even before the paperwork is completed. The U.S. military has embraced these methods and if you talk to interrogators themselves they will forcefully argue that once violence enters the interrogation booth, the interrogation has failed.

The military trains intelligence personnel at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, home of its intelligence school, and graduates say that instructors emphasize the Military Code of Justice and the Geneva Conventions as much as they do specific intelligence and interrogation strategies. Intelligence soldiers themselves, like good detectives, know that those who do not follow the rules do great damage to both the United States military and the country itself. The interrogators that I have spoken with view interrogations as a battle of wits, like a good chess game, and gather information in accordance with U.S. and international law.

There is no doubt that problems persist. False confessions are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions in the United States and many of those confessions are the result of questionable practices by police officers. Some military interrogators still use methods that unquestionably violate U.S. and international law and the American military needs to do a better job of weeding out those who are unfit to serve. Their presence does a disservice to the intelligence corps members who serve honorably and effectively.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram have become symbols of all that is wrong with American policy in the fight against terrorism but they do not tell the whole story. Evidence suggests that the vast majority of federal counterterrorism agents and military interrogators pride themselves on obtaining information by following the rules.

2009-01-13T09:13:00.006-05:00

Looking for military interrogators...

2009-01-09T11:49:00.002-05:00

I am conducting a study designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives, based on their experiences. Kassin and his colleagues(2007) conducted the first self-report survey of best interrogation practices and beliefs of law enforcement officers and this study will follow that model, using different populations to obtain two distinct samples: military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Like that study, this survey will ask participants to address and self-report on a number of issues, some in common with law enforcement and others that apply specifically to military and counter terrorism interrogations.

Participants will be asked to estimate, rate and self-report on a number of facets of their work: (1) their ability to detect truth or deception; (2) for military interrogators, their own opinions and practices with regard to 13 of the general approach techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook; (3) the importance of rapport building to extract information from a subject; (4) the applicability of law enforcement techniques to interrogations of terrorists; (5) the frequency, length and timing of interrogations and (6) training. Like the law enforcement study, the goal here is to obtain common practices, observations, and beliefs about interrogations directly from military interrogators and counterterrorism agents. Subsequent research can then test the interrogation methods that the subjects of this study believe are the most effective and focus on practices and beliefs unique to the military and counterterrorism context. This study will begin to shed light on practices currently in use by counterterrorism agents and the United States Army, provide potential empirical support for those practices that prove efficacious, and highlight those techniques that are of little value. It can dispel myths under which interrogators may operate.

Interrogators know better than I do that good intelligence obtained from human sources can save lives and win wars. Science can help point the way. Please contact me if you would like to help or participate.

2009-01-09T09:20:00.005-05:00

In their article "Brainwashing, Conditioning and DDD," Farber, Harlow, and West (1957) examined the techniques used on American POWs to elicit false confessions, self-denunciations, or propagandistic statements in support of their captors during the Korean conflict. Invictus has a lengthy discussion of the article that is an excellent read.

Joseph Margulies, in a controversial piece in the Washington Post, draws an analogy between the methods used by the North Koreans and the Chinese and those approved by the Bush Administration today. Margulies, a law professor at Northwestern University and author of "Guantanamo and the Abuse of Power," argues that history has been ignored by U.S. policy makers and the "touchless torture" employed by the Communists is effective only for producing false confessions. Many disagree with Margulies and object to the moral equivalency he appears to draw between the U.S. and those regimes.

Lewis Carlson provides a less heated accounting of the experience of American POWs in the Korean War. His book Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War is an oral history of American POWs during that conflict.Carlson conducted interviews with Korean POWs in part to determine if the conditions of their confinement helped produce false confessions at higher rates when compared to American prisoners in other wars. Carlson found that the North Koreans used many of the same methods as the Soviet Union, including beatings, starvation, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures and "never-ending" interrogations. Marathon interrogation sessions, according to his accounts, caused subjects to become so disoriented that they could no longer distinguish what they knew from what they do not know. These conditions, writes Carlson, caused prisoners to break down and "cooperate" with their interrogators to survive. For some, cooperation included falsely confessing to war crimes.

False Confessions & Torture - Part 2

2009-01-07T14:03:00.003-05:00

Most of the existing literature about interrogations in a military context supports five overall principles: the stresses of war and capture generally have a negative effect on a prisoner's ability to provide truthful and accurate statements to his or her interlocutor; both the conditions of confinement and the application of psychological pressures, such as isolation or sensory deprivation, negatively affect a prisoner's ability to provide accurate and actionable intelligence; rapport building, while often time consuming, is the best technique for extracting accurate intelligence from a prisoner; historically, many individual interrogators generally claim that rapport building is the best technique for eliciting accurate intelligence from a prisoner; there is no "magic bullet" that quickly induces compliance and cooperation in an interrogation subject.

In the current debate about interrogation methods, much of this history appears to have been ignored.

False Confessions & Torture - Part 1

2009-01-04T09:48:00.007-05:00

In 1954, Marine pilot Colonel Frank H. Schwable appeared before a Naval Board of Inquiry investigating his behavior while held captive by North Korea. Schwable was shot down on July 8, 1952 near Hwachon Reservoir. In the winter of 1952-1953, after undergoing both physical and psychological torture, Schwable "confessed" that the United States was using germ warfare against its adversaries. After a show trial, Schwable was ultimately convicted of war crimes by the Chinese. This confession came after months spent trying to break Schwable's will. During his confinement, at various times, Schwable was kept in solitary confinement, forbidden from shaving or washing himself, starved, forced to maintain stress positions, slapped and denied medical care. The North Koreans and Chinese did not subject Schwable to stereotypical types of physical torture (for a good history of torture, read Torture & Democracy by Darius Rejali)but Schwable and other U.S. airmen claimed that the psychological pressure applied by the Communists had a greater effect on their well-being than any physical techniques they employed. It was the psychological pressures that eventually "broke" some American P.O.W.s.

Success with rapport building techniques.

2009-01-02T19:11:00.003-05:00

Cloonan and Alexander, interrogators with 50 years of experience between them, both attest to the effectiveness of building rapport with an interrogation subject. History supports their position. Most of the existing literature about interrogations in a military context supports five overall principles: the stresses of war and capture generally have a negative effect on a prisoner's ability to provide truthful and accurate statements to his/her interlocutor; both the conditions of confinement and the application of psychological pressures, such as isolation or sensory deprivation, negatively affect a prisoner's ability to provide accurate and actionable intelligence; rapport building, while often time consuming, is the best technique for extracting accurate intelligence from a prisoner; historically, many individual interrogators generally claim that rapport building is the best technique for eliciting accurate intelligence from a prisoner; there is no "magic bullet" that quickly induces compliance and cooperation in an interrogation subject.

Jack Cloonan on interrogating terrorists - Part 2

2009-01-02T11:03:00.002-05:00

Retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan discusses interrogating terrorists - Part 1

2009-01-02T10:08:00.007-05:00

The Use of Music to Soften Up Detainees

2008-12-31T17:00:00.003-05:00

News reports about the conditions of confinement in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have highlighted the use of music to break interrogation subjects. Some have argued that repetitive and loud music can disorient and shock a subject, break down his will and eventually induce cooperation.

Army Times reports, that a wide variety of music was used to break the will of detainees including the themes from Barney and Sesame Street. It is possible that using music to break an interrogation subject will lead to actionable intelligence from that subject but there is no scientific support for such an approach. Sixty years of research, both in a military and law enforcement context, suggests that disorienting a subject will lead to educing false information from that subject or information of little value. A disoriented subject makes for bad information.

Soliciting MIs...

2008-12-31T11:55:00.003-05:00

I am looking for military interrogators willing to participate in a study about interrogation methods. Participation requires anonymously completing a 15 minute survey/questionnaire. If interested please e-mail me. If you are willing to support my work I would appreciate hearing from you.

Matthew Alexander on Fox News

2008-12-31T09:11:00.000-05:00

Excellent new book

2008-12-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

An recently published book, "How to Break a Terrorist," by Matthew Alexander, discusses the importance of effective interrogation methods in the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Alexander, a military interrogator, describes how a rapport building approach to interrogations secured the critical piece of intelligence that led to finding and killing the leader of Al Qaida in Mesopotamia. You can find the book here at Amazon!

Military Interrogations Study

2008-12-30T21:06:00.000-05:00

I am conducting a study to determine what MIs believe are the best interrogation methods for gaining cooperation from a subject. My study is designed to address some of the gaps in knowledge about interrogations conducted by military interrogators and their counterparts in federal counterterrorism agencies in the United States and provide information about methods from their perspectives and based on their experiences.

I plan to post a survey on a secure web server and solicit MIs to complete the 15 minute survey anonymously. I will collect no personal information other than branch of service and gender. If you are a MI and are interested in participating in this study in any way please contact me.

Participants will be asked to estimate, rate and self-report on seven facets of their work: (1) their ability to detect truth or deception; (2) for military interrogators, their own opinions and practices with regard to 13 of the general approach techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook; (3) the importance of rapport building to extract information from a subject; (4) the applicability of law enforcement techniques to interrogations of terrorists; (5) the frequency, length and timing of interrogations; (6) training, and (7) their observations, if any, of others using unapproved techniques during interrogations and, if so, with what frequency. The goal here is to obtain common practices, observations, and beliefs about interrogations directly from military interrogators and counterterrorism agents.

Social science can help establish what are the most effective techniques and can be of great benefit to U.S. human intelligence gathering.

HUMINT & Science

2008-12-30T17:16:00.000-05:00

Methods employed by the United States to procure intelligence from human subjects have undergone increasing attention since September 11, 2001. The process of obtaining intelligence from captured subjects is known in the military as human intelligence collection or HUMINT and the practice has undergone unprecedented attention and review. While there is self-reported, official, and anecdotal evidence of practices and procedures approved for use and allegations about techniques actually used, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. What is clear, however, is that there appears to be little empirical support for any of the interrogation practices officially approved by the United States military and other federal agencies for personnel who interrogate prisoners of war or suspected terrorists.