The Tape is rolling

HOST: Welcome, General. I understand as the candidates cruise across the state you and other members of the military, retired Generals, and Admirals as I understand, are trying to talk with them about issues basically that affect the military. What in particular are your sources of concern?

DI: We’re hoping to engage with as many of these men and women as we can, because one of them is going to be the next Commander in Chief. And we feel that it is very important that they understand what are national policy ought to be regarding the treatment of prisoners and torture.

HOST: Now you realize that you are going to get a number of people who are questioning why should we be, as they say, soft on these people. For goodness sake they weren’t terribly diplomatic with our people.

DI: Well I appreciate that sentiment, however, historically and as recently as our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture is unnecessary, it produces unreliable information, it’s legally and morally wrong and its dangerous to the army and to the nation. We need information and intelligence that we can rely upon as being reliable. Torture doesn’t produce that its not an issue of just because someone treats us badly we should treat them badly, its more of a question of maintaining our commitment to the values and standards that have historically made us strong as a nation.

HOST: But you bring up and interesting point there when you talk about the reliability of information, because many people that are tortured will confess to things that they have never heard of prior to. If I recall correctly there was a fellow down in Guantanamo Bay who confessed to everything except having a hand in the Lusitanian.

DI: Well that’s true and there are a number of instances in our recent experiences that demonstrate that. One of the most unfortunate is the Al Libby case. This was a fellow who was arrested and suspected to be a key Al Qaeda figure. He was rendered to Egypt, where he was tortured and while he was there he confessed, made statements that, he had personal knowledge of the relationship between Sadam Hussein and the instructions given to Al Qaeda about the use of chemical weapons. This information made its way back, through the CIA, to Secretary Powell who incorporated it into his speech to the United Nations. Unfortunately, when Al Libby later was released from Egyptian custody he recanted everything that he had said and stated that he had made those comments only because he thought it was necessary for him to save his life he wanted to tell people whatever he thought they would want to know to make the pain stop.

HOST: Now when it comes to getting intelligence from prisoners, I’m just trying to figure out, we’re looking of course, there is the need of course to get this intelligence quickly and reliably. How do you balance the two, what methods of interrogation has proved effective over the years? We are talking about methods that do work that do not employ, well, getting someone to talk about things that they never did.

DI: If you were to go though the army field manual on interrogation you would find the methods and practices that are pretty common in most police departments throughout the country. It is an art to be able to interrogate someone effectively, particularly at a strategic level. Really the most successful interrogators tell us that they need three things to be effective: 1) They need to know what the rules are. 2) They need a quiet room. 3) They need enough time to become their subject’s best and only friend. When someone is taken into custody, particularly as a prisoner of war, the stress level that individual is operating under is unbelievable. He or she doesn’t know what is going to happen to him they have lost all control over their lives and circumstances and we can exploit that significantly without being inhuman.

HOST: You could become the straw they clutch.

DI: Yes, absolutely! And there is a lot of psychology involved. We can either can build their ego up, and let them know that we think that they are terribly important people and encourage them to talk through that mechanism or we can take it down. We can make them believe that we think that they are relatively insignificant and try to play off that as a way of getting them to open up about what they have done that is so important. We’re not talking about superman here, we’re talking about people who are people like anybody else. We all like to talk and eventually, this doesn’t happen in the space of a half and hour, but eventually a good interrogator using some sophistication and being clever can get all of the information that he or she needs.

HOST: My final question for you sir and this is, of course slightly off topic, any plans between you gentlemen in the military to trying to broker some peace talks between Obama and Clinton or are you going to stay clear of that particular war zone?

DI: We are staying clear of that war zone. We’re not endorsing any candidate, we’re a non partisan group, I’m not even sure what the political persuasions of what these other officers are. We haven’t even begun to get into that.

HOST: Thank you very kindly for your time. How much success are you meeting thus far?

DI: We are very encouraged we have met with seven of the presidential candidates so far. I think in each instance we have been very encourage by what they have said. Many of them have recited publicly the points that we discussed with them. When we get together with these folks it on an understanding that we will keep confidential anything they may say or ask us, we encourage them to be public about what we say to them. And many of them have used information that we have shared with them in their campaigns and hopefully we can depoliticize torture as an issue in this campaign. It is very tempting for candidates, in a display of testosterone perhaps, to get in a race to the bottom to see who can talk the toughest about dealing with this enemy. We have to be smart we have to be strategic but there is ultimately no conflict between defending and protecting national security and respecting human rights.