We would do well to read the story of Hans Sharff, the greatest interrogator ever. Incidentally, he was never known to have even so much as raised his voice, let alone lay a finger, on any Allied POW.

does anyone know what the chain of command existed from the national command down to the enhanced interrogator. the real path, not the official line...who at JCS was the go to man or woman...who knew and then condoned the activity....general officers and admirals....if it was corrupted who was the Cheney/Rummey action officer...

Ibn Shaykh Al Libi - does that name ring a bell?

The man was snatched-up in Pakistan having fled the Spin Ghar mountains, in late 2001. After initially interrogated by the U.S., he was turned over to Egypt for further "questioning."

It seems Al Libi provided information that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons production capacity and al-Qaeda. And as everyone should recall, this was cited to justify our run-up to invading Iraq. President Bush himself used this information in a speech, and Colin Powell, also noted this information among the amateurish evidence he presented to the U.N., despite concerns from some American intelligence officers that al Libi was feeding information he wanted us to hear (perhaps someone specifically wanted to hear?).

al-Libi later recanted stating he had been tortured. It would seem the information he gave turned out to be false, as some in the intelligence community suspected, since no WMDs were found in Iraq.

Rank amateurs indeed!

Can someone provide insight on this:
-The vice President is not in the Chain of Command. Anything he said, or directed, COCOMs and those in the military do not have to follow. Why is the CIA and military taking direction from a VP? From the SECDEF (Rumsfeld), yes he was in harge, but what is the VP in charge of. What military commander can say "it was the VP's policy? As detestable as he may be, are there any military officer's out there saying they took orders from the VP? I think that the VP giving orders to the military on interrrogation may be misguided, or am I way off on this?

It's weird, because there seems to be no way of knowing whether this guy is completely full of crap or not, which may say something abut the corrosive nature of secret interrogation camps.

Regardless, it seems he never had to do any actual interrogation during hostilities, so I wonder if such an experience would change his views. I mean, it would seem to me, just as an ignorant observer, that there would be a big difference in getting information from a vanquished combatant once hostilities have ceased, and one that was more motivated in the midst of hostilities. As well as distinct pressures on those trying to get the information.

I, too, am a fan of Sharff and I'm not a big fan of torture, both ethically and professionally. Torture can work and has worked. Isrealis have tortured terrorists, who subsequently gave up new information that was reliable and the US did the same thing after 9/11. The single or handful of cases where it works, however, does not justify it professionally or ethically.

The problem has been and remains that if you torture someone to get information, its difficult to determine how reliable that information is. Sometimes it is reliable, sometimes it is an intentional lie, sometimes it is a story to make the torture stop. Lawyers have noted that coersive questioning like the Reid Technique have produced false confessions. In Algeria, it was noted that false confessions obtained through torture were counter productive as the intel was useless and analysts were tied up confirming the fact that the confessions were false.

The question becomes, when you use a tool like torture are you creating more uncertainty than you are dispelling? In 98% of the cases, I'd say it isn't worth it. Ethically, the ticking time bomb scenario justifies torture, but isn't realistic. You never know exactly what another person knows or exactly what it will take to get it out of them. You are always commiting an act of certain evil (torture) with an uncertain reward (questionable intel).

Bottom line: Torture is bad.

Tom
I think you've gone overboard on Herrington - I am a fan too, but I've read Herrington's reports on interrogation in Iraq 2003 - they are strong and pointed, but are far short of pointing out abusive behavior.

HIs paper refers to the uses of music, stress positions and face slapping as unhelpful as concepts and not in terms of a first person witness account at Abu Gharib.
Sighting him as a whistle blower for Abu G is factually incorrect and if the Col is fashioning himself this way in speeches these days, he's overblowing his own horn.

His paper in 2003 site the shortcommings of FM 34-52's harsher approaches to gain positive intelligence and do recommend the types of debriefing strategies that he employed successfully in Vietnam and in the 1st Gulf War -- techniques that Hans Sharff employed well as your readers note.

I still have his papers - they are a solid primer on putting together a debriefing operation. I would be happy to e-mail them to you if your're interested or I can post them after reviewing their classification.

If torture worked for the French, why did they lose the war,? In part because the French people were appalled by the depths to which their military had sunk. Don't forget that their equivalent of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was found to be complicit in a plot against the government and that a LTC was executed for his role.
Thanks,
Tom

and a hapless AR or NG who had any knowledge. Neither Myers nor Pace(CJCS) nor Giambastiani(VCJCS) (at one time aide to Gates, Rummey and Cheney, friend to Rice, Scalia) and all those other Joint Command dukes who AORs became way stops and torturer brothel locations. Knew nothing, aided nothing or condoned anything. This doesn't match with those who are entrusted with knowing what is going on - detail oriented commanders all - All hundreds of them on the Defense payroll.

Whistlers who walk by a murder or rapr as Peggy Noonan would define a hero of her political persuasion - a German or Pole or Austrian in the land of the Third Reich who never smells the odor of burning or rotting flesh in the air of that strange facility nearby. We had none of that type among our general officer corps?

Curious?

I've known Stu Herrington for 35 years and he's an honorable man who’s well-intentioned. However, the interrogation methods that Stu espouses will only work on ninety percent of all POWs and enemy combatants. There's a ten percent element of hardcore recalcitrant fanatics who will interpret humane treatment as a sign of weakness, and dig in their heels and play hardball and never divulge any useful information. The only thing that these "ten per centers" understand is violence! And in life and death circumstances, seasoned professional interrogators must have the option of using varying degrees of violence to extract information from captured enemies known to possess valuable information that can save the lives of American citizens.