Torture Never Works - Is that conventional wisdom correct ?

[Reality Check]

The movie Zero Dark Thirty was ridiculed and dismissed as a candidate for many awards, not because it was not a very good movie, but because it supported the concept that torture helped locate public enemy number 1, Osama Bin Laden. Everybody knows torture never works, correct ?

The conventional wisdom, quoted again and again, by the Media, is that torture does not work "because the person being tortured will say what ever the person controlling the torture wants to hear".

Tom M. recently posted three links to a series of long posts on why superior militaries have, through out history, sometimes lost to vastly inferior mllitaries.

In that series it goes on at length about how torture never works in a war, because torture only reveals what the torturer wants to hear.

The question this always brings to mind for me is: "What if the person controlling the torture only wants to hear the truth?".

[Reality Check]

I was in the Military starting immediately before South Vietnam fell to North Vietnam.

The Vietnam war had ended with a peace treaty between North and South Vietnam and also between North Vietnam and the United States approximately 3 years before I entered the Military.

The Air Force at the time I entered had both new formal, and informal "word of mouth" training on what happens during torture from the perspective of the person being tortured.

The goals of this training was to maximize the chances of surviving torture both physically, but even more importantly, psychologically.

The U.S. had 100s of airmen, mostly commissioned officers, who had spent many years as prisoners of war in North Vietnam, and had been tortured for years.

When they returned their experience resulted in a revamping of the torture training program.

[Reality Check]

Today's "conventional wisdom", often repeated by talking heads in the Media, informs us of several "truths" about torture:

1. Torture is always morally wrong for both the persons doing the torture and those being tortured, and,

2. Torture, persistent torture, will always result in the person breaking and talking, and,

3. The person being tortured, once broken, will do, and say, anything to get the torture to stop, and,

4. The information collected by torture is worthless because the individual will lie to tell the torturer what he wants to hear.

There is wide spread agreement on the first three ( 3 ) points, both from people who have never experienced first hand torture ( from either side ) and from persons who do have first hand experience.

The persons who have actually experienced torture do NOT agree with the last point.

[Reality Check]

The U.S. Air Force taught the following about resisting torture in the years immediately after the Vietnam War:

1. Everyone will break eventually under persistent torture, their is no shame or dishonor in that, and,

2. You should resist as long as possible by refusing to talk for as long as possible during each torture session, and,

3. The primary purpose for resisting as long as possible each time is that the people doing the torture will repeatedly pick those easiest to break for subsequent torture sessions, and,

4. The military will change operational codes and other key operational information an individual may have, within hours of that individual going missing, or, at worse, withing hours of the military becoming aware the individual is missing, so if someone can hold out for a few days, he/she has gone above and beyond the call of duty.

[Reality Check]

Criminal investigators will tell you one of their most important goals is to get someone to answer probing questions for hours without pause or reservation and without objection to repetitive questioning.

Once you get him/her talking most of the battle is over.

If he/she only tells the truth that is good.

If he/she only tells lies, that is also good.

If he/she tells a mixture of truth and lies that is also good.

If the subject can be conditioned to the point that they immediately answer any question immediately after being ask without a pause to think about an answer that is even better.

If they will answer the same questions, ask minutes or hours apart, with other questions interspersed in between, with no pause between question and answer that is better still.

The key is to get them answering questions immediately, reflexively, continuously and repetitively.

Once you get them answering questions as described above all the questions and answers can be recorded. Recorded both as video images and as audio recordings.

Hours worth of such questioning can be analyzed for days by intelligence analysts and verified against previously known facts, and investigators can verify the answers to other questions, to which the truthful answer is not known, by using public records in the U.S. or by using public records in various countries around the world. Other, non-subject, individuals can be interviewed to confirm other answers that have not yet been verified as either true or false. Some answers may be unverifiable, but the subject can only guess at which ones.

[Reality Check]

The goal in any interview where the subject is suspected of telling lies is get them answering without out pause, immediately and without hesitation.

It is also critical that they answer any and all questions regardless of how off subject, out of left field, or personal the questions may appear to be. All questions answered without pause or hesitation.

The key is to get them anwering quesions immediately, reflexively, continously and repetitively.

If you can get them answering thousands of unrelated, sometimes repetitive, questions over a period of hours in "lighting round" format that is ideal.

Everyone agrees that torture is morally wrong, but as a negative feed back interviewing tool used to train an individual to answer immediately, reflexively, continually and repetitively it would appear to be an ideal, but immoral, interview tool.

[Reality Check]

Once an interviewer has a database of thousands of different questions and answers that can be verfied for veracity by many means, then:

Intelligence analysts can reveiw the video and audio recordings of the qustions and answer and verify the veracity against already known answers, verify other answers against public records in the United States and other countries, send out investigators to do witness interviews and find private records and other evidence that can verify the veracity of still other answers.

In addition the answers to the same question ask repeadetly of the subject, using both the same questioon and slightly different questions that should all have the same answer, can be checked to see if the same answer was given by the subject in every case.

The answers other subjects gave to the same questions can also be compared for indications of deception on the part of one, or both, subjects.

Using these methods, and others, any patterns of intentional deception can be located.

[Reality Check]

Once a pattern of deception by the subject has been identified.

The interviewer is able to correctly confront the subject with the fact that the interviewer knows that many of the answers given were false. The exact answers known to be false will not be identified, but the subject will be informed the interviewer can not help him unless he always tells the truth about everything.

The subject will have no way of knowing which of his "fellow travelers" have also been picked up and are talking, nor will he know what was determined to be a lie, nor how some, or all, of his lies were caught. All he will know is that he did lie ( because he knows he did intentionally give false answers to some questions ) and that his interviewer has ways of detecting at least some of his lies.

Everyone agrees that torture is not moral, but it appears it would be the ideal, but immoral, interview tool for providing negative feed back to a subject that is not always truthful, when the subject has experienced multiple more "negative feed back sessions", the subject promises he will always tell the truth from now on, and the interviewer can be reached to receive that promise.

The "negative feedback" can again be suspended while the subject is given the opportunity to answer thousands of questions again ( plus many new ones ) .. and also always answer truthfully this time, during multiple questioning sessions each many hours long.

If after answering thousands of more questions and analyzing the answers it is determined the subject is still practicing deception, "negative feed back" can be resumed for a while using a "shampoo, rinse, repeat" type method.

[Reality Check]

The movie "Zero Dark Thirty" documented the U.S. security services using the "Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat" method on many "subjects" who practiced deception.

One pattern that was detected was that subjects present at a certain meeting would agree on the approximate number of attendees, but would claim they only knew the names of individuals, who, coincidentally, were all already dead at the time he/she, the subject being questioned, was captured.

The people identified varied based on who were known dead at the time the various subjects were captured. The individuals killed more recently were only identified by those captured after they were killed.

When ask specific questions about the number of attendees in various sub-groups arriving together they would tell the truth, but also claim they only knew the names of the ones they had already given up, who also happened to all be known dead. This pattern appeared to show the attendees at this certain meeting were all high value and worth telling lies about ( except if they were already dead ).

One subject let slip that one of the dead guys came in a sub-group with one other guy, who he believed was related but knew nothing else about him.

Other subjects who had identified the dead guy by name, confirmed the arrival of the two together, but claimed they knew nothing as to the identity, or relationship, of the not-dead guy.

Analysts and investigators received permission to tap every phone of every known relative of the dead guy, including several phones in various countries in Africa and the Middle East.

This resulted in detecting periodic phone calls where one male relative was checking in with his family periodically, from the same town in Pakistan every time, but always from different locations within the town, and often from locations that changed during the phone calls.

These phone calls were not of interest based on their content, they only talked about family issues. There only interest was that he might be the high value male relative identified by those being interviewed by U.S. agents using "enhanced interrogation/torture" methods.

U.S. agents on the ground eventually spotted the man inside his vehicle driving around while he made a phone call to his family member.

Once identified this individual's movements were tracked on the ground and he repeatedly visited the compound where Osama bin Laden was later killed. The above sequence of events led directly to the U.S. Navy Seals raiding the compound and shooting Osama bin Laden dead.

Those who claim torture NEVER works, claim the above facts presented in the movie, even if true, prove that torture NEVER works, because ... not really clear on how they reach that conclusion.

[Reality Check]

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Senator John McCain was a U.S. Navy pilot during the Vietnam War.

McCain lived as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for many years.

During his years of captivity he was repeatedly tortured by the North Vietnamese,

Torture left Senator McCain's arm and hand deformed and inoperative to this day.

Those who claim torture NEVER works to obtain useful war information cite Senator McCain as proof of that.

Senator McCain did spearhead the federal law that made "enhanced interrogation" illegal and also defined such interrogation techniques as torture, however ....

Senator McCain also stated if he became President of the United States, he would order the torture of an individual who had information that could prevent the deaths of millions of Americans.

Senator McCain also said he, himself, should be prosecuted if he every ordered such torture.

Clearly Senator McCain, who personally experienced persistent, long term torture believes it can work, but that it is also immoral and should also be prosecuted whenever someone uses it.