[lbo-talk] Re: CIA torture techniques

[Bill Bartlett]

At 2:58 AM -0700 1/6/04, Chuck Grimes wrote:

>Most of it was pretty convincing to me. Also remember that the methods
>were preparation for interrogation and didn't deal with interrogation
>as such.
>
>So, add both parts up. The basic outline of the process is trauma,
>disorientation, confusion (to induce to regression) followed by
>questioning, questioning, questioning, which usually leads to
>compliance. Just repeat the same steps as necessary and pretty soon
>you get what you want.

Well, in some cases. I can only judge by my own personal experience, 
I was put through such an interrogation technique by some cops many 
years ago when I was a kid. It simply made me very angry and I 
refused to exchange any conversation with them at all.

I got the "preparation" treatment, a police sergeant without warning 
smacked me around the head and knocked me to the floor while I was 
sitting there waiting. Then, after a bit more of a wait the 
interviewing officers took me to a room, pushed me around and knocked 
me to the floor a few more times while loudly threatening to throw me 
out a window and bashing the table with a big stick. Then came the 
threats to verbal me with with a concocted confession if I didn't 
give them a statement.

The trouble is that I was so angry that none of the threats, let 
alone the physical abuse, had the desired effect. I felt no fear at 
all, just rising hatred. The very fact that they wanted me to talk 
gave me an avenue of revenge, I could not talk. So I literally didn't 
speak, except to repeat my name whenever they asked. This seemed to 
upset and frustrate them.

However I gather my accomplice, who was questioned separately, did talk.

So perhaps this technique works on weak personalities, but that isn't 
much of an accomplishment is it?

And of course these cops weren't after anything complicated, like 
actual information. They already knew all they needed to know, they 
just wanted a confession. Because the offense was too trivial to 
justify a contested prosecution. I think it is readily conceded that 
any mug can usually extract a confession with torture, but if this 
technique can't even get a confession except from weak personalities, 
it is probably quite over-rated.

Now my treatment was relatively mild, but then I was only about 13 or 
14 at the time. I certainly lacked the strength of character and 
mature personality of an adult. (Maybe that was the problem, maybe I 
"regressed" too far? ;-)

So from my experience, I can't believe that any sort of reliable 
information can be gained this way. Which is consistent with the fact 
that the US occupying army in Iraq seems to be chronically short of 
intelligence. My father liked to exaggerate that some people were so 
useless they couldn't get a fuck in a brothel. Basically, the US 
military intelligence system seems to be so useless the army probably 
can't even locate the brothels.

[...]
>There is also a basic concept as well as a process. The idea is to use
>the person's own emotional state against them. In effect, make them
>their own tormentor.

Its hard for me to understand how you can use the person's emotion 
against them if the emotion is hatred of you. What does the manual 
say about that?

Anyhow, keep in mind that the interrogator can also be manipulated 
emotionally. In fact that's the only potential weapon the victim has, 
while the interrogator has many. If your interrogator wants to play 
that game, then he is virtually levelling the playing field, giving 
away all his advantages.

>Everybody has emotional reactions to these situations. From the
>interrogators point of view these reactions are the key to how to
>conduct the questioning. The basic idea is to use whatever the
>subject's normal reactions are, against them, so that their own
>emotions and their ability and inability to control them are the
>source of the torment. It's a little difficult to understand how this
>works unless you've had this technique used against you in a
>systematic and deliberate fashion.

But you have to co-operate, on some level, for that to work. So the 
trick is total non-co-operation, from the very beginning. 
Intelligence gathering tactics which depend on co-operation would not 
seem the most dependable.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas