What Do We Know about Interrogational Torture?

1 Paul Sonne, “Defense Chief Remains Wary of Torture,” Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2017, p. A6. Trump seems to have later recanted his position, at least in part, in response to the opposition of his then Secretary of Defense, James Mattis. Jeremy Diamond, “Trump: Defense Secretary Mattis Can ‘Override’ Me on Torture,” CNN International, 27 January 27, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/politics/donald-trump-defense-secretary-override-on-torture/index.html

2 Louis Michael Seidman, “Torture’s Truth,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 72, No. 3 (2005), p. 882.

3 The CIA Document of Human Manipulation: Kubark Counterintelligence Manual (Hawthorne, CA: BN Publishing, 2012), p. 94 [Hence: KUBARK]. This manual is based in large part on research by Albert Biderman, who interviewed prisoners of war from World War II and Korea and reached conflicting conclusions about the efficacy of torture. Albert D. Biderman, “Communist Techniques of Coercive Interrogation” (Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center: Office for Social Science Programs, December 1956).

4 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (Report),” United States Senate, 3 December 2014.

5 Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), pp. 19 and 83.

6 Philippe Sands, “The Green Light,” Vanity Fair, 2 April 2008.

7 Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Report: “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” 20 November 2008, p. 62 and note 447, my emphasis.

8 Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, “CIA’s Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described,” ABC News, 18 November 2005. Rejali is justified in pondering why it is that cellophane would lead to gagging, as opposed to asphyxiation. Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 285.

9 United States, Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee memorandum to Alberto Gonzales, “Standards for Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A,” 1 August 2002, http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.08.01.pdf. This description is in line with a declassified report from the CIA’s Office of Medical Staff that mentions a saturated cloth placed over the mouth and nose and in which water fills the nasal cavity but not the lungs. Central Intelligence Agency, “OMS Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation, and Detention,” 1 December 2004, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/0006541536.pdf

10 Jose Rodriguez, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions after 9/11 Saved American Lives (New York: Threshold Editions, 2012), pp. 236–237. Italics in the original. See also James E. Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America (New York: Crown Publishing, 2016), p. 53.

11 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 284, citing Michael Slackman, “What’s Wrong With Torturing a Qaeda Higher-Up?” New York Times, 26 May 2004, sec. 4, p. 4; and Jane Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture: The Secret History of America’s ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Program,” New Yorker, 14 February 2005.

12 Mark Benjamin, “Waterboarding for Dummies,” Salon.com, 9 March 2010. Yet the same review states that “water may enter—and accumulate in—the detainee’s mouth and nasal cavity,” with no mention of the detainee’s lungs and expresses concern that “the detainee might aspire some of the water and the resulting water in the lungs might lead to pneumonia,” language that implies that this exceptional outcome is to be avoided.

13 Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), p. 173.

14 McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 122. See also pp. 19, 59, 83, 122, and 127. McCoy does not explain how pouring water down the throat is different from actual drowning.

15 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 284.

16 Ali H. Soufan, The Black Banners: Inside the Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), p. 368; Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 177 and 236; Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 70; and Mayer, The Dark Side, pp. 172–173.

17 James Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” in Tracy Lightcap and James P. Pfiffner, eds., Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of States Repression (New York: Palgrave, 2014); Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 236; Soufan, The Black Banners, pp. 515 and 536; and Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 252.

18 The official title of this convention is “The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” In adopting a broad definition of torture that includes both physical and mental harm, my definition strays from the official position of successive U.S. governments that refused to apply the convention to mental or psychological torture. The U.S. exceptions to the international definition are designed to exclude sensory deprivation, self-inflicted pain or disorientation, the very techniques the CIA relies on. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 136; and McCoy, A Question of Torture, pp. 100–101.

19 The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, articles 31 and 32, and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, article 17, include similar definitions. For definitional issues, see William Ranney Levi, “Interrogation’s Law,” Yale Law Review, Vol. 118, No. 1434 (2009), throughout; Fritz Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 58–66; and Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Reflection on the Problem of ‘Dirty Hands,’” in Sanford Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 85–87.

20 On types of torture, see Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture, pp. 66–77. These types are analytic and are often difficult to distinguish in practice. For the claim that torture can never be purely interrogational but always includes a political and even a sadistic component, see Henry Shue, “Torture,” in Sanford Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 54.

21 Mark Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” The Atlantic (October 2003); and Seidman, “Torture’s Truth,” pp. 881–883.

22 Sanford Levinson, “Contemplating Torture,” in Sanford Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 33.

23 Philip N. S. Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective? A Response to Bagaric and Clarke,” University of San Francisco Law Review, Vol. 40 (Winter 2006), p. 485, note 26, citing Marcy Strauss, “Torture,” New York Law School Review, Vol. 48, No. 201 (2004), p. 263.

24 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” pp. 127 and 147.

25 For examples, see Mary Ellen O’Connell, “Affirming the Ban on Harsh Interrogation,” Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 66 (2005), p. 1261, note 130.

26 See Rodriguez, Hard Measures and Soufan, The Black Banners.

27 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. xiii, 103–104, and 242.

28 Hayden and Mukasey, “The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror,” Wall Street Journal, 17 April 2009; George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss, Michael V. Hayden, John E. McLaughlin, Albert M. Calland, and Stephen R. Kappes, “Ex-CIA Directors: Interrogations Saved Lives,” Wall Street Journal, 10 December 2014; and Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 112.

29 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 241.

30 Ibid., p. 250.

31 Greg Miller, “John Brennan CIA Hearing Exposes Skepticism about U.S. Antiterrorism Efforts,” Washington Post, 7 February 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/brennan-defends-drone-strike-policies/2013/02/07/

32 Spencer Ackerman, “Some Will Call Me a Torturer: CIA Man Reveals Secret Jail,” wired.com, 1 July 2011.

33 Ross and Esposito, “CIA’s Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described.”

34 Steven G. Bradbury, “Memorandum for John A. Rizzo, Senior Deputy General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency, ‘Re: Application of United States Obligations Under Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture to Certain Techniques that May Be Used in the Interrogation of High Value al Qaeda Detainees,’” 30 May 2005, p. 10.

35 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 503.

36 Ibid., pp. 508–510.

37 McCoy, A Question of Torture, pp. 120-121 and 141; and Tony Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq (New York: New American Library, 2007), p. 181.

38 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (Report),” 2014.

39 Director, Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA Comments on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 27 June 2013); and George J. Tenet et al., “Ex-CIA Directors,” 10 December 2014; Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 3–4, 91–92, and 280–281.

40 Siobhan Gorman, Devlin Barrett, Felicia Schwartz, and Dion Nissenbaum, “Senate Report Calls CIA Interrogation Tactics Ineffective,” Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2014. For additional criticisms of the SCCI report see David Cole, “Did the Torture Report Give the CIA a Bum Rap?” New York Times, 20 February 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/opinion/sunday/did-the-torture-report-give-the-cia-a-bum-rap.html; and Robert Jervis, “The Torture Blame Game: The Botched Senate Report on the CIA’s Misdeeds,” Foreign Affairs, May–June 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/2015-04-20/torture-blame-game

41 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 110; Soufan, The Black Banners, pp. 515 and 536; Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 147; and Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 164–165.

42 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 147.

43 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 58, 71, 80, and 85.

44 Soufan, The Black Banners, p. 408.

45 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 60–61; and Soufan, The Black Banners, pp. 398 and 400, 406, 413, and 423.

46 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 176 and 242.

47 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 28–43.

48 Kelly M. Greenhill, “‘24’ on the Brain,” Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2007, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/28/opinion/oe-greenhill28

49 U.S. Senate, Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, 13 December 2012, pp 384–388, http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=7c85429a-ec38-4bb5-968f-289799bf6d0e&SK=D500C4EBC500E1D256BA519211895909

50 Hayden and Mukasey, “The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror.”

51 Rodriguez suggests that Ghul offered this information under torture but a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee claims that he did so prior to undergoing torture. Mitchell provides a detailed account of what Ghul divulged prior to torture as opposed to after torture. Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 108–109; Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, pp. 387–388, note 2190; and Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 193.

52 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 111.

53 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 191–192.

54 Ibid., p. 196.

55 Owais Tohid, “Bin Laden Bodyguard’s Satellite Phone Calls Helped Lead US Forces to Hiding Place,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 May 2011.

56 Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, p. 390. The report places some of this information in doubt.

57 Stephen Budiansky, “Truth Extraction: A Classic Text on Interrogating Enemy Captives Offers a Counterintuitive Lesson on the Best Way to Get Information,” The Atlantic, June 2005; and Ackerman, “Some Will Call Me a Torturer.”

58 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 463; and John W. Schiemann, Does Torture Work? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), throughout.

59 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 463, citing U.S. Army Field Manual 30-15 Intelligence Interrogations.

60 Philip N. S. Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective? A Response to Bagaric and Clarke,” University of San Francisco Law Review, Vol. 40 (Winter 2006), p. 496.

61 Ross and Esposito, “CIA’s Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described.”

62 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 488 and 500; Neil Boorman, “5 Arguments against Torture,” 28 July 2011, amnesty.org.uk; and sources cited in Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device: Using Research to Inform the Policy Debate,” Social Issues in Policy Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2009), p. 183.

63 I thank Dolye Hodges for bringing this point to my attention.

64 Samantha Newbery, Bob Brecher, Philippe Sands, and Brian Stewart, “Interrogation, Intelligence, and the Issue of Human Rights,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 24, No. 5 (October 2009), p. 642.

65 Aldert Vrij, Detecting Lies and Deceit: The Psychology of Lying and the Implications for Professional Practice (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), and Ariel Neuman and Daniel Salinas-Serrano, “Custodial Interrogations: What We Know, What We Do, and What We Can Learn from Law Enforcement Experiences,” in Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art (Washington, DC: National Defense Intelligence College, 2005).

66 Contrast, for example, Rodriguez’s description of cross-checking during coercive interrogation, quoted below, with Soufan’s nearly identical description of the same process during non-coercive interrogation. Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 233; and Soufan, The Black Banners, p. 317.

67 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 233; Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 66; and Hayden and Mukasey, “The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror.”

68 Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation.”

69 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 233.

70 Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation.”

71 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 461.

72 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 233.

73 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 166–168.

74 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 147. For similar claims regarding the torture of al-Qahtani, see Mayer, The Dark Side, p. 211.

75 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” pp. 489–490, citing B’Tselem, “Legislation Allowing the Use of Physical Force and Mental Coercion in Interrogations by the General Security Services” (2000), p. 50.

76 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 474; Soufan, The Black Banners, p. 425. For a rare dissenting opinion see Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture, p. 146.

77 The timelines do not suffice to ascertain precisely how much of this time consisted of torture as opposed to nonviolent interrogation prior to torture or pauses between torture sessions. Mitchell proposes that thirty days usually suffice for torture to reveal whether a detainee “would be willing to cooperate” but he also notes that most detainees “started trying to cooperate” after seventy-two hours of torture. Since he does not define successful cooperation, and since the protocol he developed for the CIA assumes that non-coercive methods are attempted prior to torture, there may be no tension between his briefer timelines and the longer timelines proposed by others. Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 43, 157, and 201.

78 McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 70.

79 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 507–508; and Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 488.

80 Raymond Bonner, Don Van Natta Jr., and Amy Waldman, “Threats and Responses: Interrogations; Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal World,” New York Times, 9 March 2003. Rodriguez proposes that AZ was tortured even longer—for five months—before he cooperated. Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 62, 80–81, and 183–184.

81 Ibid., pp. 92 and 104.

82 Sands, “The Green Light”; and Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 130.

83 Bonner, Van Natta Jr., and Waldman, “Threats and Responses.”

84 Steven Erlanger and Chris Hedges, “A Nation Challenged: The Trail; Terror Cells Slip Through Europe’s Grasp,” New York Times, 28 December 2001.

85 Mayer, The Dark Side, p. 269; and Erlanger and Hedges, “A Nation Challenged.”

86 See, for example, Martin Edwin Andersen, “Is Torture an Option in the War on Terror?” Insight on the News, 17 June 2002; Mirko Bagarig and Julie Clarke, “Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture is Morally Justifiable,” University of San Francisco Law Review, Vol. 39 (Spring 2005), p. 612.

87 Ron Hassner, “The Myth of the Ticking Bomb,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1 (March 2018), pp. 83–94.

88 Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, p. 140.

89 See, for example, Mark Mazzetti, “Panetta Open to Tougher Methods in Some CIA Interrogation,” New York Times, 5 February 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/politics/06cia.html; Adam Serwer, “Did General Petraeus Change His Position on Torture?”  Washington Post, 24 June 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/did-general-petraeus-change-his-position-on-torture/2011/03/04/AGxR04iH_blog.html?utm_term=.178e9811b622; Memorandum from Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, “Regarding application of 18 U.S.C. Sections 2340-2340A to Certain Techniques that May Be Used in the Interrogation of a High Value al-Qaeda Detainee,” May 2005, p. 41; Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 231 and 253; and Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, pp. 60 and 246.

90 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 476 citing Djilas, Of Prisons and Ideas (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), p. 5.

91 KUBARK, p. 90.

92 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 95.

93 Shane O’Mara, Why Torture Doesn’t Work (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015); Duke and Van Puyvelde, “What Science Can Teach Us about ‘Enhanced Interrogation,’” pp. 316; and Peter Aldhous, “Here’s What Actually Gets Terrorists To Tell The Truth—And It’s Not Torture,” Buzzfeed, 16 August 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/torture-doesnt-work

94 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 71.

95 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 103; and Charles Fried and Gregory Fried, Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), p. 69.

96 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 159–161.

97 McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 42.

98 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 64, 115, and 233; and McCoy, Torture and Democracy, p. 10.

99 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 33.

100 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” pp. 142 and 151–152; Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 462; and Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture.”

101 Costanzo and Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device,” p. 182.

102 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 491.

103 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 462–463.

104 KUBARK, p. 94.

105 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 488.

106 Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), p. 102.

107 Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture.”

108 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 97.

109 Hayden and Mukasey, “The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror.”

110 Soufan, The Black Banners, pp. 293, 309, 312, and 445.

111 Ibid., p. 22.

112 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 27.

113 McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 139.

114 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, pp. 112, 181, and 246; Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 139; and Schiemann, Does Torture Work? p. 89.

115 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 71.

116 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 494.

117 Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, pp. 134 and 282–283, cited in Schiemann, Does Torture Work? p. 242.

118 Soufan, The Black Banners, p. 423.

119 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 504–505; and Mayer, The Dark Side, pp. 105–106, and 135.

120 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 454–455 and 486–487; and Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 498.

121 Sands, “The Green Light.”

122 McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 209.

123 Sands, “The Green Light.”

124 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, pp. 244–245; Alexander and Bruning, ibid., p.75; Costanzo and Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device,” pp. 196–198; David Luban, “Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb,” in S. P. Lee, ed., Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2007), pp. 256–258; and McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 128.

125 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, pp. 244–245.

126 Levi, “Interrogation’s Law”; and Mayer, The Dark Side, p. 248.

127 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 85.

128 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 152.

129 Mayer, The Dark Side, p. 195.

130 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 486–487. For evidence to the contrary, including the cessation of torture by France and Britain and the regulation of torture by Israeli courts, see Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, “Should Coercive Interrogation Be Legal?” Public Law and Theory Working Papers (University of Chicago Law School, 2005), p. 17; and Joseph Lelyveld, “Interrogating Ourselves,” New York Times Magazine, 12 June 2005.

131 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 454–455.

132 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” pp. 129–131.

133 Ibid., pp. 129–131.

134 Seymour Hersh, “The Grey Zone: How a Secret Pentagon Program Came to Abu Ghraib,” New Yorker, 24 May 2004; Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” p. 139; and Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 246.

135 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 92.

136 Ibid., pp. 47 and 160; and McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 124.

137 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” pp. 129–131; and Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 35. Mitchell contests this account, and argues that the military became interested in “enhanced interrogation” in December 2001, long before the CIA did. Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 258.

138 Mayer, The Dark Side, pp. 189, 235, and 241.

139 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p .31.

140 Stephen Budiansky, “Truth Extraction: A Classic Text on Interrogating Enemy Captives Offers a Counterintuitive Lesson on the Best Way to Get Information,” The Atlantic, June 2005.

141 Joseph Lelyveld, “Interrogating Ourselves,” New York Times Magazine, 12 June 2005.

142 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, pp. 118–119. See also pp. 30, 36, 50, and 63.

143 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 505, citing Human Rights Watch, “Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division 1-2” (2005), p. 12.

144 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 478.

145 Ross and Esposito, “CIA’s Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described” and Schiemann, Does Torture Work? pp. 48–58.

146 Ross and Esposito, “CIA’s Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described” and Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 42.

147 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, pp. 67, 80–83, and 119.

148 Hersh, “The Grey Zone”; and Sands, “The Green Light.”

149 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 500; Hina Shamsi, Command’s Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: Human Rights First, 2006).

150 Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, pp. 111–122 and 130–135; and Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 84.

151 Costanzo and Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device,” p. 202, citing John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People (New York: Knopf, 2000); and Andersen, “Is Torture an Option in the War on Terror?”

152 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” pp. 492–493.

153 Ursula E. Daxecker and Michael L. Hess, “Repression Hurts: Coercive Government Responses and the Demise of Terrorist Campaigns,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 43, No. 3 (2013), pp. 559–577.

154 Christopher Michael Sullivan, “The (In)effectiveness of Torture for Combating Insurgency,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2014).

155 Robert Pape, “Review by Robert Pape, University of Chicago,” in ISSF Forum on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Report and the United States’ Post-9/11 Policy on Torture, H-Diplo, ISSF Forum, No. 5 (2015), https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/61352/issf-forum-senate-select-committee-intelligence-ssci-report-and#_Toc411763046; and Costanzo and Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device,” p. 202.

156 Amanda Murdie, “It Works on 24 but Not in Real Life: Peer-Reviewed Evidence That Torture Will Increase Terrorism,” Duck of Minerva, 25 January 2017, http://duckofminerva.com/2017/01/peer-reviewed-evidence-that-torture-will-increase-terrorism.html

157 Michael P. O’Connor and Celia M. Runmann, “Into the Fire: How to Avoid Getting Burned by the Same Mistakes Made Fighting Terrorism in Northern Ireland,” Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 24, No. 1657 (2002–2003), p. 1750; and Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 493.

158 Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture.”

159 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 498.

160 Pape, “Review by Robert Pape, University of Chicago.”

161 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 493 and 503.

162 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 99.

163 For an overview of this argument, see Douglas A. Johnson, Alberto Mora, and Averell Schmidt, “The Strategic Costs of Torture: How ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Hurt America,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2016, pp. 121–132; Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 503; and McCoy, A Question of Torture, pp. 201–202; Posner and Vermeule, “Should Coercive Interrogation Be Legal?” p. 21; Boorman, “5 Arguments against Torture” and Mayer, The Dark Side, pp. 330–331.

164 James I. Walsh and James A. Piazza, “Why Respecting Physical Integrity Rights Reduces Terrorism,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 43, Iss. 5 (March 2010), pp. 551–577; Mary Manjikian, “But My Hands Are Clean: The Ethics of Intelligence Sharing and the Problem of Complicity,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2015), pp. 692–709; and Jason Vest, “CIA Veterans Speak Out Against Torture,” Government Executive, 23 November 2005.

165 Asa Hutchinson and James R. Jones, “The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment” (Washington, DC: The Constitution Project, 2013), p. 279.

166 Hutchinson and Jones, “The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment,” p. 244, citing Peter Baker, “Banned Techniques Yielded ‘High Value Information,’ Memo Says,” New York Times, 21 April 2009.

167 William R. Johnson, “Tricks of the Trade: Counterintelligence Interrogation,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1986), pp. 103–113; Vest, “CIA Veterans Speak Out Against Torture”; and Costanzo and Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device,” pp. 193–196.

168 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 493 and 502; and Mayer, The Dark Side, pp. 119 and 174.

169 Costanzo and Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device,” p. 154, note 54.

170 Hutchinson and Jones, “The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment,” pp. 276–278; Carol Rosenberg, “Guantanamo Hearing: Ex-Interrogator Felt Sorry for Khadr,” Miami Herald (5 May 2010); Justine Sharrock, “Am I a Torturer?” Mother Jones (March 2008); James Randerson, “Guantanamo Guards Suffer Psychological Trauma,” Guardian (UK), 25 February 2008; and Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, pp. 236–237.

171 Jennifer S. Bryson, “My Guantanamo Experience: Support Interrogation, Reject Torture,” Public Discourse, 9 September 2011, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/09/3934, cited in Hutchinson and Jones, “The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment,” p. 276.

172 Vest, “CIA Veterans Speak Out Against Torture,” citing Albert Camus’s “Preface” in Algerian Chronicles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

173 Pfiffner, “The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” pp. 138–140 and 145; Matthew Alexander and John Bruning, How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 83; Stephen Budiansky, “Truth Extraction: A Classic Text on Interrogating Enemy Captives Offers a Counterintuitive Lesson on the Best Way to Get Information,” The Atlantic, June 2005; and Hutchinson and Jones, “The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment,” pp. 263–266.

174 Naturally, these experiments have not explored the effects of torture. See sources cited in Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device: Using Research to Inform the Policy Debate,” Social Issues in Policy Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2009), p. 183; Aldert Vrij, Christian Messiner, Ronald P. Fisher, Saul M. Kassin, Charles A. Morgan III, and Steven M. Kleinman, “Psychological Perspectives on Interrogation,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 12, No. 6 (2017); and Hutchinson and Jones, “The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment,” p. 259.

175 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 458.

176 Rumney, “Is Coercive Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects Effective?” p. 497, citing Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

177 Misty C. Duke and Damien Van Puyvelde, “What Science Can Teach Us about ‘Enhanced Interrogation,’” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 30 (2017), pp. 312–314 and 327; Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity, “The Effects and Effectiveness of Using Torture as an Interrogation Device: Using Research to Inform the Policy Debate,” Social Issues in Policy Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2009), p. 183; Simon Oleszkiewicz, Pär Anders Granhag, and Sebastian Cancino Montecinos, “The Scharff-Technique: Eliciting Intelligence from Human Sources,” Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 38, No. 5 (2014); Laurence J. Alison, Emily Alison, Geraldine Noone, Stamatis Elntib, and Paul Christiansen, “Why Tough Tactics Fail and Rapport Gets Results: Observing Rapport-Based Interpersonal Techniques (ORBIT) to Generate Useful Information from Terrorists,” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2013); and Robert Fine, ed., Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art: Foundation for the Future (Washington, DC: National Defense Intelligence College, 2006).

178 Duke and Van Puyvelde, “What Science Can Teach Us about ‘Enhanced Interrogation,’” p. 312.

179 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 458–459, 476, and 503.

180 Rodriguez, Hard Measures, p. 87.

181 Jason Vest, “CIA Veterans Speak Out Against Torture,” Government Executive, 23 November 2005.

182 Ackerman, “Some Will Call Me a Torturer.”

183 Glenn Carle, The Interrogator: An Education (New York: Nation Books, 2011), p. 74, cited in Schiemann, Does Torture Work? p. 170.

184 Schiemann, Does Torture Work? p. 171.

185 Soufan, The Black Banners, pp. 375, 395–409, and 414–423.

186 Mitchell goes further and argues that CIA and FBI agents sometimes interrogated AZ at the same time. Mitchell, Enhanced Interrogation, p. 25.

187 Soufan, The Black Banners, p. 430.

188 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 505.

189 Doug Struck, Howard Schneider, Karl Vick, and Peter Baker, “Borderless Network of Terror,” Washington Post, 23 September 2001.

190 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 507–508; and McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 112.

191 Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture, p. 166.

192 Matthew Brzezinski, “Bust and Boom,” Washington Post, 30 December 2001.

193 Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture, pp. 159–160, citing (and attacking) Matthew Alexander and John R. Bruning, How to Break a Terrorist (New York: Free Press, 2008).

194 Frank Snepp, “Tortured by the Past,” L.A. Times, 27 April 2009.

195 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, p. 452, citing Biderman, March to Calumny: The Story of American POWs in the Korean War, p. 136.

196 McCoy, A Question of Torture, p. 46, citing Lawrence E. Hinkle and Harold G. Wolff, “Communist Interrogation and Indoctrination of ‘Enemies of the State’: Analysis of Methods Used by the Communist State Police (a Special Report),” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Vol. 76 (1956).

197 Soufan, The Black Banners, pp. 374–376.

198 Ibid., pp. 382–384.

199 Ibid., pp. 384 and 390. By one account, AZ was also denied painkillers but it is not clear by whom. Raymond Bonner, Don Van Natta Jr., and Amy Waldman, “Threats and Responses: Interrogations; Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal World,” New York Times, 9 March 2003.

200 For a rare exception see Chris Einolf, “Does Torture Work? An Empirical Test Using Archival Data,” paper presented at the September 2018 conference of the Association of Human Rights Institutes in Edinburgh, Scotland. Relying on seventy testimonies from individuals tortured by the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, Einolf finds that 42% of those who had acted to undermine the regime also admitted to providing accurate information about their activities during torture.

201 Lagouranis, Fear Up Harsh, p. 244.

202 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, pp. 465–466.

203 For criticisms of this absolutist Kantian view, like the claim that absolute rights are unjustifiable or that they clash with competing absolute rights, such as the right to self-defense, see Bagarig and Clarke, “Not Enough Official Torture in the World?” pp. 601–602; Oren Gross, “The Prohibitions on Torture and the Limits of the Law,” in Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection, pp. 229–253; Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 10; Jan Goldman, ed., Ethics of Spying: A Reader for the Intelligence Professional (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006); and Robert D. Chapman, A Review of: “Lies, Torture, and Humanity,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2007), pp. 188–194; Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time Bombs, and Torture, p. 121; Posner and Vermeule, “Should Coercive Interrogation Be Legal?” p. 5; and Seidman, “Torture’s Truth,” pp. 895–897.

204 The most eloquent defense of this position appears in Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), especially pp. 27–59.

205 Bagarig and Clarke, “Not Enough Official Torture in the World?” p. 599, citing Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, 4th ed. (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1978), p. 198; and Fried and Fried, Because It Is Wrong, p. 55.

206 David Sussman, “What’s Wrong with Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 33 (2005), pp. 4, 8, and 21–29.

207 Seidman, “Torture’s Truth,” pp. 905–907.

208 Henry Shue: “Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Winter, 1978), pp. 127–130; and Sussman, “What’s Wrong with Torture,” p. 6. For the contrary argument, that terrorists are not innocent and can escape torture by cooperating, see Miriam Gur-Arye, “Can the War against Terror Justify the Use of Force in Interrogation? Reflections in Light of the Israeli Experience,” in Levinson, Torture: A Collection, p. 192; and Sussman, “What’s Wrong with Torture,” p. 18.

209 Luban, “Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb.”

210 Sanford Levinson, “Contemplating Torture: An Introduction,” in Levinson, Torture: A Collection, p. 33.

211 Supreme Court of Israel, “Judgment Concerning the Legality of the General Security Service’s Interrogation Methods (September 6, 1999),” in Levinson, Torture: A Collection, p. 172. On the stance of Israeli courts regarding torture see also Assaf Meydani, “The Interrogation Policy of the Israeli General Security Service: Between Law and Politics,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2008), pp. 26–39; and Daphna Sharfman and Ephraim Kahana, “Combating Terrorism With Intelligence: The Normative Debate in Israel,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2012), pp. 546–570.

212 Mary Ellen O’Connell, “Affirming the Ban on Harsh Interrogation,” Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 66 (2005), p. 1256; Kira Vrist Ronn, “Intelligence Ethics: A Critical Review and Future Perspectives,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2016), pp. 760–784; and Sir David Omand and Mark Phythian, “Ethics and Intelligence: A Debate,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2013), pp. 38–63.