South Carolina Trial Law Blog

Another off-topic interrogation story. I left the Army as an interrogation instructor at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona in 1989. During my time in service, I revamped and wrote (along with 2 others) an interrogation course for the Marine reserves. At that time, the interrogation course was eight weeks long and included one month of platform instruction and one months of (ahem) …’hands on’ interrogation, with the instructors roleplaying as the interrogees/prisoners.

By the time that the students had finished the course they had completed 15 full interrogations and about 5 partial interrogations that focused on specific areas. They were graded on all of the interrogations and tested on three of them. The students would have observed and critiqued 10 interrogations and had a month of classroom instruction on questioning techniques, approaches, mapreading and map tracking, report writing, document exploitation, opposing force battle strategies and order of battle and other topics.

Before teaching at the Intelligence Center and School, I was at the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky (which oddly enough is in Tennessee). I went on a training exercise working with some reservists at Ft. Bragg. Observing and critiquing one young interrogator was excruciating. He was horrible and didn’t seem to know the first thing about interrogation. I asked him where he got his training. His response? He hadn’t been trained, but he had watched a lot of war movies. Ouch.

It’s distressing to read this account from Pratap Chatterjee who is the Managing Editor of CorpWatch that our government has outsourced interrogation duties to the private sector and Lockheed Martin. Not surprisingly, a lot of abuse has taken place by people without proper interrogation training:

A subsequent report in July 2004 by Lieutenant General Paul Mikolashek, on behalf of the Army Inspector General, found that a third of the interrogators supplied in Iraq by CACI had not been trained in military interrogation methods and policies. The same report mentioned that of the four contract interrogators employed by Sytex in Bagram, Afghanistan, only two had received military interrogation training, and the other two, who were former police officers, had not.

It also emerged that no one knew what laws applied to private contractors who engaged in torture in Iraq or whether they were in fact accountable to any legal authority or disciplinary procedures. When the media began to question the role of the private contractors and the legality of their presence under unrelated information technology contracts from non-military agencies, the Pentagon swiftly issued sole-source ("no bid") military contracts to CACI and Lockheed.

That’s the problem. Civilian interrogators are not subject to a chain of command and are not part of the command structure. They are not subject to the same rules as the military. We have a lot of untrained people running around there with no accountability and noone knowing even what laws apply to them.

[Update]: From an article written last year when Abu Ghraib became public knowledge. Maj. Gen. James "Spider" Marks, commander of the Army Intelligence School, "I'm disgusted (by the Abu Ghraib allegations). It's simply not how we train."

I agree the optimum is not some untrained civilian interrogator just flaying around - but even you have to admit that torture CAN work if you have a specific piece of tactical information, and you are certain that the interrogee has the correct information to prevent some catastrophe - we should not rule THAT out.

Kathy,

About the only time that works is with the ticking nuclear bomb and you have the guy you know who placed it. I don't know anytime that that scenario has actually played itself out in history other than an episode of '24' on tv.

Would I rule it out? No. Would I make it official policy? Absolutely not.

Would I envision that we ever encounter this type of scenario? Most likely not, and certainly not on a regular or consistent basis.

Thanks for your thoughts.

I play chess.

Chess puzzles are, well, puzzles that people create on the chessboard. Typically , they are "mate in one move" or "mate in two move", etc. type puzzles. The funny thing about chess puzzles is that they involve constructed situations that one would *never* encounter in the course of an actual chess game.

Chess puzzles are fun to try to solve, but they are not real chess.

The thing, however, is that people who don't actually play chess, would probably mistake a manufactured chess puzzle for the real thing.

Good points Disputo.

It's possible to conceive of situations where torture might be useful, but in the real world it's almost always a bad idea for more than one reason.

Torture is not an effective tool for gathering information. People will say anything under torture. It is especially useless as used on a population arrested in area sweeps as is the case in Iraq. It makes people who otherwise would not be terrorists, become terrorists. It has fueled terrorist recruitment. It endangers our own Troops and our Civilians working abroad. It is against US Federal Law, US Military Law and International Law. When we signed the Geneva Convention we were bound to that agreement as if it were part of the Constitution. It is morally wrong and disgraces the United States our Soldiers and all US citizens.

I'd rather be safe than sorry, so I think I'll side with Dershowitz's view about "torture warrants" being legal, safe, but rare:

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith//courses01/rrtw/Dershowitz.htm

Written By:Kathy
On November 7, 2005 05:04 PM

I'd rather be safe than sorry, so I think I'll side with Dershowitz's view about "torture warrants" being legal, safe, but rare:

Derschowitz Makes Apologies for Torture

_________

Kathy:

Better safe than sorry, right?

So would you give the OK to torture Scooter Libby?

Would that be acceptable to you?

Clearly Scooter knows plenty he's not saying. He's got info that's crucial to our national security and we gotta get it.

Is there anything more serious than a government official lying about national security for selfish political reasons?

Fitzgerald has already indicted Scooter on obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements, but where has that gotten us? Clearly Scooter has deliberately undermined national security. In a time of war no less. Libby has betrayed the trust of the entire American people.

We *know* Scooter's guilty, right? So let's just skip the formalities and save everyone a lotta time.

So is it a go, Kath? When do we start torturing Scooter?

Or how about Karl Rove?

Gotta know he's hiding something.

And Ahmed Chalabi's coming to town, too, so we might as well make it a trifecta, right?

Let's finally get to the bottom of this politicization of national security so we don't "embolden" the wrong-doers.

Gosh, it sure simplifies everything being safe not sorry.

Tx. Kath.

----

(Very nice, succinct recap on the profound wrong-headedness -- moral and pragmatic -- of torture, MPARKER.)

It's not that we KNOW terrorists, or Libby, Rove, or Chalabi for that matter, are guilty of some crime so we are punishing them through torture - it's the information we KNOW they have that would prevent another 9/11 - if Libby, Rove, or Chalabi have that info, then get a warrant to torture them too. Legal, safe, but rare.

As an ex-interrogator and a current trial lawyer, I am very wary of things like the 'torture warrants'.

Once they start being used, how rare would they be?

In the law, we talk about 'slippery slopes'. Meaning once you start down a path, it becomes harder and harder to stop.

I would fear more for our souls, than really what happened to terrorists.

I am very wary too - again I would rather be safe than sorry - and in the law, when we talk about 'slippery slopes' isn't that to point out a logical fallacy?

Kathy,

The term 'slippery slope' is an often abused shorthand for ideas that 'sound' good, but lead to bad policies.

For example, with the First Amendment. I personally don't mind if we keep Nazis from demonstrating in public because they're very nearly intolerable.

I don't think many people would disagree with me on that. However, once we start making value judgments on what *is* acceptable and what is *not* acceptable, where do you draw the line?

Once you start going down that road, are Protestants allowed to decide that Catholics opinions are noxious? Are Christians allowed to decide that the opinions of Jews are noxious?

And once we start deciding what opinions are acceptable, what is to stop the majority from determining what opinons are and are not acceptable and censoring any minority (african-americans, women...)?

The term slippery slope means that once you start going that road (sliding down the slope), you might end up slipping down it much faster than you thought and end up on the bottom.

Here is a good response to your Alan Dershowitze argument:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/11/7/174124/680

Thanks for the comments and your opinion.

I agree with Dave having been an interrogator myself. I believe creating a warrant is asking for trouble on more fronts than you can count. The hardest question of all is after you give the warrant do you want the torturer as a neighbor? Keep the law as is. If an interrogator takes it on himself/herself to get the ticking bomb trial bu jury or court martial is appropriate.

Thanks for the insight Greg. I was an interrogator for 7 years and taught for 3 years (from 1986-1989), but from your website it looks like you have more experience in that field than I do.

Also, I did a search and did an update to this post with the Commanding General of the Intelligence School saying 'trained interrogators don't act this way'.

Kathy seems hell bent on her own security without any consideration for morality, justice, or plain human decency. Remember what the United States used to stand for? It's all gone to hell. I would like to remind Kathy that the Government she expects to protect her has done nothing that the 911 Commission had determined were necessary for that security. No inspection of shipping containers at our ports or cargo on planes or a single database to track even known terrorists. The National Guard and the rest of Military at the breaking point and this Government can't fight a hurricane with weeks to prepare. For the first time Iraqi suicide terrorists operate abroad. Is it better safe then sorry? Do you feel safer that this Government rather then take steps to make you safe have instead gone headlong into fascism. Your rights are being "rendered" back to the time of French kings and Spanish Inquisition. No judge or jury or evidence needed. Your files lay open and built upon the slightest suspicion. Your guilt will be based on your confession brought under torture. Sorry it is Kathy.

The following are from a NY Times article from today which shows that the methods we use are not for gathering intelligence but for breaking the human spirit. They will make a person confess to anything. What use might such methods be to Our Government on our Citizens?

From The NY Times 11/14/05

SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners, SERE was intended to train American soldiers to resist the abuse they might face in enemy custody.

[...]

The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE's teachings on their head, mining the program not for resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guant?°namo went "up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques" for "high-profile, high-value" detainees. General Hill had sent this list - which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees' phobias - to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.

[...]

the Pentagon cannot point to any intelligence gains resulting from the techniques that have so tarnished America's image. That's because the techniques designed by communist interrogators were created to control a prisoner's will rather than to extract useful intelligence.

We are all sorry now Kathy and not at all safer.