The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

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CHAPTER 5 TORTURE AND TERRORISM: Coercive Interrogation in the War on Terror 5.1. Introduction In the preceding chapters, I have examined the role of coercive interrogation in the Salem Witch Trials and in the Algerian revolution and analyzed them according to how well they support my theory of torture for information. Salem offered us a picture of how the primary danger that underlies informative torture operates – the deceptive cycle that becomes established when the authorities are unable to verify the information they educe through force, leading to a circle of misinformation leading to misinformation. In Algiers, we saw how the authorities are in danger of this cycle even when they face an actually existing threat, and have the means of potentially verifying this information. It is not enough for this ability to verify to exist: the state must be in a position credibly to threaten to do so. In turning to the War on Terror, we are presented with the strongest test yet of the theory's viability. The United States faced existing threats from a transnational terrorist organization globally as well as from a well-equipped nationalist insurgency in Iraq. The United States provides an important test for my theory: in contrast to France in Algeria, the United States faced this threat without the benefit of a local and loyal settler population in Iraq; unlike the FLN, the US was correct in its general understanding of the threat it faced; and unlike the magistrates in Salem, the US was in a position to verify the information it gathered under torture. While the cases of the United States and France have considerable similarities – both are highly developed and industrialized states facing a conspiracy in a semi-colonial situation – they differ quite profoundly on the issue of how strongly we can expect the agent-principle issue to be. This is so because the United States wields a professional army, in contrast to the conscripted army France made use of in Algeria. The structure of the armed forces is important for two reasons. Firstly, the political costs involved with torture were strong for France in large part due to the widespread participation by conscripts in interrogations: this ensured that elements of the French military drawn from the anti-war segment of the population would be in a position to disseminate information on the torture regime to 105
the French public. 95 Secondly, the conscripted nature of the French army meant that those soldiers involved in interrogations would have been less likely to reflect the institutional incentives of the French state – acting like 'sadists' or 'professionals' as opposed to 'zealots', in the Crelinstein and Schmid (1995) sense of these terms. The greater the professionalism of the military, the more individual soldiers can be assumed to have been trained to reflect these institutional incentives. Consequently, a comparison of the US and the French cases allows us to gain traction on the final major question involved in my theory: was the failure by the French military to make positive use of torture the result of the inherent nature of torture, or did the use of a conscripted (and therefore less reliable) soldiery allow an agent-principle dilemma to appear? The US case is particularly useful in this regard because there are really three cases of US torture for information. Firstly there is the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by members of the regular US armed forces. These are professional soldiers who can be assumed to more or less reflect the incentives of their superiors, and the government above them. Secondly, the US also used torture at Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq. While the interrogations were conducted by military intelligence, along with Other government Agency representatives (a phrase referring to the CIA), the abuse itself was carried out by members of the National Guard – non-professional soldiers whose role is most analogous to the conscripts of the French army in Algeria. Finally, the US also made use of torture in the so-called CIA 'blacksites' – secret prisons run throughout the world where torture could be carried out by highly professionalized agents. In this last case, the torturers are most likely to have been 'zealots' – identifying themselves with the state they serve, and neither activated by sadism nor inhibited by empathy. So far, we have seen that torture is a difficult process to control. The magistrates in Salem were unable to prevent themselves from accepting misinformation in a deceptive cycle because the threat they faced was imaginary, and the means they had for verification non-existent. The FLN were much better placed to verify information, but the rotten foundation laid by French misinformation led them into deception as well. The French army in Algiers faced a real threat, and were armed with an intelligence apparatus that should have allowed them to verify any misinformation to enter the system: the result was a deceptive cycle that lost strategically what little it gained tactically. By examining the 95 The primary example of how this process operates is the story of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the editor of the antiwar newspaper L'Express who was called up to serve in the conflict. While Servan-Schreiber's experiences were atypically publicized, the large number of conscripts who served and then returned home to share their experiences in letters to editors and the antiwar movement increased the political costs of both torture, and the war more broadly. 106
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEG
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This work is dedicated to my wife,
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vii 1. T
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ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Se
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judged by their effects. The deonto
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etter than chance on average, no ma
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from fiction, and also in the time
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the cases differ in how well inform
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characterization by method. Torture
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gather such evidence was strong, to
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ineffective. Something must prevent
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The description which it would be n
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powerful themselves. 21 While histo
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known by the misnomer 'torture-ligh
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substitute for intelligence gatheri
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This lack of good data on torture t
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found that the procedure can cause
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captive who has faced torture, and
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state cannot credibly commit to pla
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incentive not to present as favorab
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units, those engaged in the applica
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of causal mechanisms in a very dire
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the threats they face are real, whe
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3.1. Introduction. CHAPTER 3 THE WI
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discovered by Sir Thomas Newton and
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two, and the execution of the convi
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years preceding the outbreak at Sal
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these women - non-Church members, p
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Hubbard) and four grown and married
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innocent, and recalled that when he
Page 61 and 62: crowd was deeply and troublingly mo
Page 63 and 64: it was precisely in these terms tha
Page 65 and 66: came to an end. Misogyny was all to
Page 67 and 68: only the witch-trials that brought
Page 69 and 70: partners in their own (apparent) de
Page 71 and 72: possibility would be to question th
Page 73 and 74: John Bridges (whose own wife and da
Page 75 and 76: she again broke down and named seve
Page 77 and 78: forcing the already convicted to re
Page 79 and 80: We can thus see Tituba's confession
Page 81 and 82: Samuell Parris. 70 The strongest ev
Page 83 and 84: order to purge political dissidents
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Page 87 and 88: torture - the state will apply it e
Page 89 and 90: time, the government in Paris was c
Page 91 and 92: for two reasons - first, because Me
Page 93 and 94: The Soummam conference in the Summe
Page 95 and 96: one of the primary justifications f
Page 97 and 98: DOP in particular is instructive fo
Page 99 and 100: us stops in the city center. These
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Page 103 and 104: dismantling of the ZAA organization
Page 105 and 106: found in the literature: the revela
Page 107 and 108: In fact, the use of torture did hav
Page 109 and 110: e.g.), by March (when the DPU had b
Page 111: Paul Teitgen appears to have been c
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Page 117 and 118: the reasons for holding the detaine
Page 119 and 120: y military interrogators. (Washingt
Page 121 and 122: fact come verbatim from a 1957 jour
Page 123 and 124: ole in the acquisition of intellige
Page 125 and 126: to those believed to have informati
Page 127 and 128: name for metanetwork analysis. 102
Page 129 and 130: other words, the CIA High Value Det
Page 131 and 132: Padilla was accused by KSM of plott
Page 133 and 134: and an enemy of the United States,
Page 135 and 136: alternative mechanism) by Darius Re
Page 137 and 138: York Times, 09/12/2005) Insofar as
Page 139 and 140: these interrogations were conducted
Page 141 and 142: al-Qaeda is structured, names of in
Page 143 and 144: CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION: The Misleadin
Page 145 and 146: problem by the authorities - and ye
Page 147 and 148: situations (France in Algeria and V
Page 149 and 150: Jack Bauer was used as justificatio
Page 151 and 152: Biderman, Albert D. “Effects of C
Page 153 and 154: Crelinstein, Ronald and Alex Schmid
Page 155 and 156: History Teacher. 30:4 (1997): pp. 4
Page 157 and 158: International Council on Security a
Page 159 and 160: Lewis, Neil A. “Red Cross Finds D
Page 161 and 162: Obuchowski, Chester W. “Algeria:
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Schiemann, John W. “Interrogation
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Barack Obama is Inviting the Next A
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United States, Department of Defens
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Patrick Armshaw
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