Torture and Terrorism

by John Thompson

December 21, 2002

Torture as an asset in the battle against terrorism? Some government officials in both the United States and Great Britain have muttered aloud that they would like to add this tool to the inventory of techniques to gather information on Al Qaeda. There are plenty of people who privately approve of the notion, but they don’t know what they are talking about.

I have cracked the will of men and pulled information out of them. Of course, my time as a military interrogator was brief and limited to a few peacetime military exercises — where the means to extract information are carefully limited. I was not a torturer, but perhaps know a little more about it than other people.

While the boundary between interrogation and torture is a vague and indistinct one, torture is not a reliable method for gathering information -- not least because it demeans those who use it and strips their cause of any legitimacy it might have held.

Amnesty International (AI) and I would probably disagree on where the boundary lies between torture and legitimate interrogation techniques. Basically, an interrogation is a hard-edged interview or a series of the same, where the subject is repeatedly questioned. As cracks and holes develop in his story, these are repeatedly probed to get at the kernel of truth beneath his shell of denials, deceits and intractability.

For almost all police and most military purposes, talking to a subject is all that is necessary. One of the most effective interrogators in military history, a Luftwaffe Officer assigned to acquiring information from downed US bomber crewmen, got more intelligence material from offering them tea and sympathy than any amount of bullying ever would. Police officers usually find that the majority of their arrests cannot keep their stories straight — which makes their task much easier.

Torture involves the use of physical and mental suffering, and might not even be used to gather information as it is often used merely to degrade the subject. Some things are unequivocally torture, such as the use of electric shocks, beatings and whippings, rape, witnessing these things being used on your family and friends, and so on. The wide number of techniques and instruments used in torture are a sad testimony to the ignoble side of human ingenuity.

There is no clear distinction between torture and interrogation as the boundary between them is a wide gray zone. The interrogator knowingly takes full advantage of the psychological dislocation that affects his subjects, but sometimes it helps to increase that sense by blindfolding a subject, using overt intimidation, and keeping the prisoner physically off-balance when being brought to his sessions. AI often regards these practices as torture and defence lawyers can raise a stink if police used them. Yet most people would not think of these as torture and they are right to do so.

Other techniques are of a darker shade of gray, yet still might be sometimes short of actual torture. Denying a subject sleep altogether for days on end is torture; but occasionally interrupting his sleep for an interview before he can groggily summon his wits and willpower is (to me anyway) something short of torture.

In the interrogations I undertook in peacetime military exercises, the blindfolded prisoners were kept completely intimidated by their ferocious-acting MPs and were forced into a series of intense exercises to rapidly tire them out before a little chat with me. The MPs were closely monitored (not least by themselves) to keep that unhealthy human instinct for cruelty suppressed, and the health of our prisoners was carefully watched. If techniques like these are used for stubborn ideologues like Al Qaeda members, it should be acceptable. Anything darker than this is unpalatable.

Real physical torture has never been regarded as a trustworthy way to gain information from subjects — even the Medieval Church and most civil magistrates knew that a confession acquired this way was seldom worth the parchment it was written on. It is far too easy for the torturer to develop a complete contempt for his subjects, and too many people with a sadistic appetite for inflicting cruelty have been drawn to this work. The US aviators in North Vietnamese captivity knew that worst rats in their prisons walked on two legs. Do we want the same sort of people working to protect us?

A police or military intelligence officer who is a successful interrogator needs empathy, must be able to project genuine sympathy, and yet must be intelligent and willful enough to draw what he needs out of his subject. To use torture is to substitute contempt for empathy, sadism for sympathy and the interrogator’s wits and willpower atrophies by relying on a cruel crutch for success. If you need real torture to get information, you aren’t worth spit…

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca