CIA Interrogations - Enhanced, or Torture

Enhanced Interrogation:  AKA - TORTURE

We've noted the circulation of what purports to be a CIA public service announcement regarding the value of "Enhanced Interrogation" of "Terrorist Prisoners" which allegedly produced extraordinary and actionable Intelligence.
[We've attached an extract of this report at the bottom of this blog post.]

Much of the published information is true, but it was definitely not produced from enhanced interrogation, but rather via different sourcing, much of it from unclassified, open-source newspaper accounts.  So, you may discount the origin of the data.

We are very familiar with all forms of interrogation and have conducted hundreds of interrogations, both tactical and strategic in war zones and  special facilities, as well as CounterIntelligence interrogations to determine espionage threats..  

We never had a prisoner who couldn't be broken -- and turned, to include NVA Political Officers and hardened guerrilla fighters.  And they were tougher than Taliban. At no time did we ever have to use other than normal interrogation techniques, and at no time, did we ever have to use torture to obtain results.  Essentially, torture routinely gives false results and misleading information -- and bad intelligence.

Successful interrogations come from sophisticated conversations, rather than beating information out of a prisoner.  Most prisoners willingly provide as much information as is requested or demanded, and a professional interrogator is prepared with background and confirmed data to determine how truthful the subject is.  

Essentially, there are three forms of interrogation:

1)  Simple debriefing is for prisoners who have no resistance training.  They'll be happy to chatter away and disclose everything they know, and often, information they were unaware they have/had.  Handled properly, they can be enormously helpful.  In one case, a teenager, illiterate and fairly simple, provided the location of the master logistics center for the Spring Offensive - allowing us to capture it, and essentially ending that war, at least for a while.

2)  Professional interrogations, which require the interrogator to be  trained in psychology and who looks for nuances in the subject's eyes, facial movements, body moisture, voice rhythms, etc., to determine attempts to mislead the interrogator.  The interrogator begins with a number of folders on his/her desk, and accepts the prisoner who, through psychological manipulation, assumes and fears torture.  The folders contain parameters of verified information to answer key questions which can lead to new questions and sophisticated [though non-violent] techniques.  For the most part, the subject is unaware of the true objectives of the interrogation.

3)  Hostile interrogations are used to break down the  subject through disorientation, fear of the unknown, various forms of psychological techniques, and special manipulation techniques, augmented by input from HUMINT, IMINT, SIGINT, COMINT, ELINT, etc.  

Again, opening folders with information the subject believes was provided by other prisoners weakens his/her resistance.   Add in fear of being caught lying, and the fear of the unknown becomes far more effective than actual torture.  

[See Room 101 in the Orwell's book, 1984].  This process requires a great deal of sophistication and education on the part of the Interrogator, but, again, includes absolutely NO TORTURE.]

FITD [Forscom Intelligence Training Detachment] - the unit we formed at Ft Bragg [1976] trained all USFORSCOM [Forces Command] tactical units and strategic Reserve units in proper interrogation methods; we created SOPs and manuals, most of which were incorporated years later in TRADOC [Training & Doctrine Command]. 

FITD was later converted to the 111th MI Brigade which took over the mission.

[Notably, Enhanced Interrogation techniques were legalized, and added to the Army's Field Manual, though still regarded as extreme, and unnecessary for the most part]

Unfortunately, as we learned from many years of association with, and assignments to the CIA, their approach to interrogations was unique.  

Since they lacked professional interrogators, they would draw on the Military for both SpecOps and mundane things like interrogations.  Unfortunately, the CIA would secretly coordinate with the Pentagon for untrained Warm Bodies to conduct these ops, and they would frequently end up with unskilled Marines or Army Infantry troops unskilled in interrogation, but who learned their trade by watching TV programs like Jack Bauer's skill sets in 24, in which torture was routinely used -- with very poor results.  Although the Military had trained, linguistically skilled professional interrogators, the CIA would ignore them and frequently depend on local nationals who had knowledge of either psychology or interrogation skills.

The greatest issue we have with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" technique is that other countries [hostile and friendly] follow our lead.  If the US does it, it must be OK.  Worse, our adversaries/enemies look at us as the penultimate bad guys reflected in their propaganda themes, and use those techniques when interrogating US soldiers.  We were briefly captive of the Pathet Lao in southern Laos near the end of the war and were not amused by these techniques, which included fairly crude attempts at torture, before we found a way to exit the situation.  Later, we were interrogating an NVA captain at one point and asked him why the NVA treated our soldiers so viciously when they were captured.  He was astonished at the question and admonished me, saying, 

"We simply imitate your atrocities. Why, your troops mutilate our troops!  Your newspaper - Stars & Stripes herald such actions of one of your colonels."

Hatchet Hank Emerson

We were astonished, but placed a secure call to Saigon to a trusted friend at MACSOG who verified the torture and mutilation, and even shipped a copy of the Stars & Stripes which headlined this local hero, Lt Col Henry Emerson, thus affirming that we were, in fact, bad guys, leading to the torture of our own soldiers.  Such incidents continue today where we have fought.

We have enough enemies around the world now; we don't need more but we create enemies with the concept of torture.

In short, we do not support "enhanced" interrogation, a technique of negative value falsely touted by the CIA as a productive tool. We guarantee Enhanced Interrogation techniques will be/has been used against US PWs as a retaliatory measure.  

Ultimately, we are not labeling the US as the BAD GUY; but, we very much wish to see the CIA removed from such operations, particularly from controlling our Special Operations forces and Military Intelligence operations -- the actual trained Professionals in Military Operations and Human Intelligence programs!  

Below is an extract of the CIA's claim to intelligence production gained through, and which they claim justifies "Enhanced Interrogation".  

Keep in mind that virtually all of this information was 

published in the US News Media or on the Internet.

How Tactical Intelligence Works

Follow @SpookdBlog I was made aware recently that the majority of folks -- particularly those in the intelligence and law enforcement fields, don't really have a grasp of how the tactical intelligence field functions.  So, I offer an example, from nearly 50 years in the past [now unclassified] which is just as valid today as it was then.  Some of the resources and technology have improved, but the basics remain the same.
Briefly, there are a variety of forms of intelligence, and I'll use only a few of those forms in this description.

To define, before we start
HUMINT:  One human collects directly from another
COMINT:  The monitoring of Communications
SIGINT:     The monitoring of all communications signals or transmissions.
PHOTINT/IMINT:  Overhead Photography, aka Imagery, from balloons, aircraft, or satellites.

[There are many other INTs, but, this is just a primer, and too much information would confuse you]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/US_Intelligence_Community_members.gif
So, we begin. 

A long time ago, in a place far, far away .....

I interrogated a Pathet Lao prisoner [PW] in Laos who had made it through several echelons before he reached me; he was tagged as low/no value because he was illiterate, had very little knowledge of military units of interest, and and had no ability to communicate in temporal or spatial terms.

But, I worked with him to improve my language skills, and because I thought the earlier interrogators had missed something.

NVA Soldiers in Laos

Backtracking him a few years, I learned he had been a guard at a supply cave; I determined [with some difficulty] the dimensions and content of the cave -- which were huge.  I then had USAF fly reconnaissance [PHOTINT/IMINT] over the area the PW described and used the color photos to help the PW show me the exact location.   
To assist him in gauging distances, I gave him a cigarette and asked him how far into the cave he could walk before the cigarette burned out; measuring that distance as we walked together, I learned that the cave was approximately 200 meters deep.

Supplementally, he revealed that there was a small NVA contingent at the cave with a radio to coordinate incoming deliveries, so we used COMINT and SIGINT to track their communications and break their code, through which we established their delivery schedules.

Cave storage

This became "actionable intelligence" when we infiltrated the location, capturing the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] cadre and replacing them with our NVA doubles, maintaining normal communications with the NVA Binh Tram [logistics unit] which made regular deliveries. 

We landed Air America cargo planes nearby, stripped the cave of its contents, and departed, after which we wired the cave for voice-activated audio [more COMINT] so that if the cave were recaptured by the NVA, we could monitor all conversations.  Our last act was to strafe/bomb the incoming convoy -- destroying it and all its contents.

Thus, the little PW who had been passed through several echelons after his capture and tagged as "no value", turned out to be one of the most valuable prisoners of the war since the information he revealed allowed us to destroy the NVA capability to launch their Spring Offensive.  c

Ultimately, the combat which was avoided saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives, the integrity of villages, and ended the war fairly quickly.

The victory, however, was pyrrhic since Henry Kissinger had bargained away the region to the Chinese in 1972. The US was forced to withdraw as if we had been defeated.  The crowning blow was that Kissinger, speaking for President Nixon, forced us to close down all agent nets in Southeast Asia,  and destroy all communications links with them -- apparently as part of his bargain with the Chinese.

-------

Kissinger -- Chinese Hero

Recently released National Archive documents recorded Kissinger's unilateral concessions to Zhou on 22 June 1972:

In Kissinger's words:

"... the US respects its Hanoi enemy as a 'permanent factor' and probably 'the strongest entity in the region'.  And, we have no interest in destroying it or even defeating it." 

Note:  This was well over a year before Congress, via the Case-Church Amendment, declared the end to US Military involvement in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia in August 1973 --  and nearly three years before Saigon was turned over to North Viet Nam in 1975.