Tortured Justice:

The Science and Results

- Don Compos [pseudonym], "The Interrogation of Suspects Under Arrest," Studies in Intelligence, 2, no. 3, 1957

- CIA Training Manual, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation (July 1965), p. 94

The military commission rules and CSRT procedures permitting the admission of coerced evidence are based on misguided assumptions about the reliability of statements extracted through coercion and abuse. Historical research on coercive interrogation techniques, scientific studies, and the experiences of law enforcement and government officials expose the flaws in these assumptions.

U.S. government scientists researched the effects of coercive interrogations following the "brainwashing" of American prisoners of war held by North Korea during the Korean War. A number of these prisoners praised the Communists and announced a desire to remain in North Korea.[187] Scientists discovered that techniques employed

on a broad scale by communist forces were highly coercive and included isolation; semi-starvation and sleep deprivation; forcing prisoners to maintain stress positions, lean on sharp rocks and hold weights above their heads; putting prisoners in hangman's nooses; withholding needed medical care; threatening to harm prisoners' families; and instilling a fear of death, pain, or deformity.[188] The brutality stopped only when the prisoners "confessed" or otherwise cooperated with interrogators.[189]

American scientists determined that these methods induced compliance, but produced inaccurate and unreliable results.[190] They explained the effects with the moniker "DDD," which stands for debility, dependency and dread. The North Koreans sapped the prisoners of their physical strength; deprived them of basic necessities, thus increasing their dependency on their captors; and encouraged chronic fear by threatening the prisoners and their families. In almost all cases, the DDD approach led to total compliance.[191]

More recent reports on coercive interrogation techniques reach the same conclusions as the studies from the 1950s.[192] The Intelligence Science Board Study Report on Educing Information, Phase I (Intelligence Science Board Report), completed in 2006, is the most comprehensive scientific report on coercive interrogations to date. The report was sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Intelligence Technology Information Center, and the Defense Department's Counterintelligence Field Activity. It examines all of the existing social and behavioral science studies on effective interrogation. These studies make a number of critical findings:

• Virtually no research on torture and other coercive interrogation techniques indicates that these techniques produce accurate, useful information from unwilling sources.[193]
• Most personal accounts and anecdotes of those subjected to torture and coercive interrogation techniques indicate they are not effective.[194]
• Stress and duress techniques adversely affect cognitive functioning, in particular the ability to recall and produce accurate and helpful information, making it difficult to elicit factual information.[195]

A number of the scientific papers included in the report support the conclusion that coercive interrogations are more likely to produce unreliable results.[196] In one study, Dr. Randy Borum explains that "[p]sychological theory and some (indirectly) related research suggest that coercion or pressure can actually increase a source's resistance and determination not to comply. Although pain is commonly assumed to facilitate compliance, there is no available scientific or systematic research to suggest that coercion can, will, or has provided accurate useful information from otherwise uncooperative sources."[197]

Similarly, in another paper, Col. Steven M. Kleinman reports that "the very means by which coercive methods undermine the source's resistance posture also may concomitantly degrade their ability to report the intelligence information they possess in a valid, comprehensive fashion."[198] In an interview, Col. Kleinman told Human Rights First: "There are two things you can obtain in the case of interrogation: compliance and cooperation.Compliance is forcing them to do something against their will. But to get [useful] information, you need to get some degree of cooperation. Ninety-nine percent of all the research Americans have done is about what people do to achieve compliance."[199]

The findings in the Intelligence Science Board Report are borne out by studies of the U.S. criminal justice system, which reveal a high correlation between false confessions and lengthy interrogations during which coercive techniques are used.[200] According to psychology Professor Saul Kassin, interrogators who employ coercive techniques may compel people to talk but they "are not nearly as good at determining if what they're getting is true or not."[201] False confessions, in turn, exert a powerful influence over prosecutors, judges, the media, and even defense attorneys, and they often lead to wrongful convictions. In fact, they may be "the most incriminating and persuasive false evidence of guilt" that the government brings to bear in a criminal case.[202] Some studies suggest that four out of five people (80 percent) who make false confessions and proceed to trial will likely be convicted – notwithstanding the presumption of innocence and the lack of reliable evidence corroborating their confessions.[203]

Most of the military and intelligence communities' scientific research on communist interrogation methods was conducted with the purpose of teaching U.S. government personnel to resist coercive interrogations, rather than to develop an understanding of how to inflict such coercion.[204] The research led to the creation in the 1950s of the U.S. Military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, which prepares military personnel to survive coercive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and stressful noises.[205] However, at least by the 1980s, the CIA had begun developing "offensive techniques" based on the North Korean interrogation studies as well as its own experiments on interrogation. Also by the 1980s, CIA and Green Beret trainers reportedly began training Latin American militaries in similar techniques in places such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru, and through its School of the Americas at Fort Benning , Georgia.[206]

It should come as no surprise, then, that the coercive interrogation methods outlined in the CIA manuals mirror the North Korean and Chinese techniques, including deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods, threats of physical violence, and debility and pain.[207]

The CIA's own manuals warn against the misuse of coercive techniques, explaining that they can impair a subject's ability to accurately recall and communicate information, and may induce apathy and withdrawal.[208] Nonetheless, these same techniques have been repeatedly employed by the CIA, some U.S. military personnel, and even contractors on terrorist suspects in the last five years. (For comparison to Army Field Manual procedures, see textbox on right). Numerous credible media accounts have now made clear that U.S. military and CIA interrogators have used offensive techniques in pursuit of information from suspected terrorists, which strongly resemble or even come directly from SERE's defensive techniques.[209] Additionally, as shown in Chapter 3, many suspects have been detained for prolonged periods in conditions patently intended to create a DDD environment – the states of debility, dependency and dread.

Just as coercive techniques proved unreliable during the Cold War, many experts believe they have failed to produce reliable intelligence from al Qaeda suspects in recent years.

Shortly after U.S. military interrogators began employing coercive interrogation tactics at Guantánamo, members of the FBI and the Pentagon's Criminal Investigative Task Force voiced their objections, contending that abusive techniques produced inaccurate intelligence.[210] In December 2003, an FBI email sent to FBI officials reported that the Military Liaison Defense Unit of the Bureau "has had a long standing and documented position against use of some of DOD's interrogation practices." These interrogations tactics, the email continued, "have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date."[211]

FBI officials were further concerned that the interrogation methods employed by military personnel at Guantánamo were having an adverse impact on the FBI's own interrogations, disrupting the cooperative relationships agents were seeking to establish, and impeding the acquisition of useful and reliable information.[217] One FBI agent noted that he told high-level officials in the Justice Department's Criminal Division of his concerns: "In my weekly meetings with DoJ, we often discussed DoD techniques and how they were not effective or producing Intel that was reliable."[218]

In an interview with Human Rights First, Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent who interrogated various alleged al Qaeda members, stated that the abusive interrogations conducted at Guantánamo were "a complete and unmitigated failure."[219] Cloonan has also said that "any agent who walked into a room and saw a subject as has been described – crawled up in the fetal position, either deprived of water or subjected to unusually warm temperatures, pulling his hair out, people on hunger strikes, and so on – understands that that person is no good to you from an intelligence perspective. They've collapsed; they're not coherent. So what good is it?"[220]

Dr. Michael Gelles, the former chief psychologist for the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, also believes that coercive techniques were ineffective in eliciting cooperation at Guantánamo. Gelles has consulted with interrogators in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo, and provided training on rapport-based approaches. According to Gelles, coercive tactics are used to "gather all the information you can and figure out later" what is true and what is false. At Guantánamo, says Dr. Gelles, coercive methods "distorted information" and turned parts of the intelligence community into "a dog chasing its tail."[221] Dr. Gelles' comments echo Col. Kleiman's: "'If the goal is to get information, then using coercive techniques may be effective. But if the goal is to get reliable and accurate information, looking at this adversary, rapport-building is the best approach,'" said Gelles.[222] (See textbox below). In place of coercion, the FBI advocates a rapport-building approach.[223]