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

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notions about how liars 'act' – looking away, fidgeting – are unsupported by any evidence, while others are positively backwards: liars for instance blink less. (Mann et al., 2002) Perhaps the torturer knows the captive speaks the truth because she has 'broken' – but since another's pain is ultimately unknowable, the torturer can only know a captive has broken when she tells the truth. (Scarry, 1985) Pain is a purely subjective experience, and even small children have been known to lie about how much pain they are feeling in order to get what they want. Adults, knowing this, may find it difficult to conceive of another's pain as being real and not imagined or misrepresented. A good example can be found in the story of a right-wing radio show host in the US who subjected himself to waterboarding in order to prove that it is not torture, only to find the experience unendurable. 6 Moreover, pain is not a simple process of addition: a US prisoner of war reported being grateful for otherwise unendurable mosquito bites as a distraction from the pains of torture. (Rejali 2007, p. 448) The essential issue is that torturers cannot even be certain of how much pain they are actually inflicting. In other words, there is nothing in the logic of torture alone that allows this dramatic 'breaking' to occur: the captive may pretend to have broken, and the torturer can have no idea whether or not the pain really was unendurable. The very act of torture lends credence to this potential fraud, as the torturer has done everything in his power to make that suffering unendurable. The issue is that torture can only work when the torturer can distinguish truth from lies – something he is unable to do on his own, or with the help of technology. There is nothing in the behavior of the tortured to act as a guide either. Instead, the torturer must be in a position to compare the captive's revelations to some alternative body of knowledge: either the stories of other captives, or to empirical facts. Comparing stories is problematic in its own way: the torturer may be in a position to know when two stories are not consonant, but he has no way of judging a priori which of the two (if either) is correct. Torture must rely on empirically known information (documents, physical evidence, time-tables etc.) in order to get around this issue – in other words, successful torture is predicated on investigation and verification. Rather than acting as a short-cut for time-pressed interrogators, torture instead presupposes exactly those forms of investigation for which it is meant as a substitute. But verification is costly, both in terms of the intelligence apparatus necessary to separate truth 6 The experience, and the radio hosts conversion, were reported by the local Chicago NBC news affiliate in an online article by Ryan Pollyea. Available online at http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/Mancow-Takes-on- Waterboarding-and-Loses.html 5
from fiction, and also in the time necessary to do so. This is important, since it is not enough for the state to be able to verify information – the state must credibly threaten to do so, and to condition torture on whether or not the captive appears to have lied. If the captive expects to be tortured regardless of what he says, then he has no reason to cooperate at all. If the state cannot credibly threaten to verify his story, then the captive is best off revealing information consonant with the torturer's prior beliefs, regardless of truth. But if the torturer believes that the captive has told the truth, especially when the information is time-sensitive, then he is best off not verifying once the captive appears to have broken – making the threat to verify incredible. This is true as well when the state rewards torturers for the quantity – as opposed to the quality – of information they generate. Torture acts as an inversion of the lie detector, which only works when the subject believes that it does: torture only ends when the interrogator believes that it has worked. In the following pages, I attempt to come to grips with the logic of interrogational torture by examining it as a rational process and creating an informal model in order to make testable predictions about how torture operates, when it should be likely to succeed or fail, and what success or failure will look like. I then test these predictions against three primary cases: the Salem Witch-Trials, the contest between the FLN (National Liberation Front) and the French army during the Algerian War for Independence, and the War on Terror. The goal of this exercise is to lay bare the contradictions that ensnare interrogational torture, and reveal the ways in which the information asymmetries that exists by necessity – whether the captive knows some useful truth, what the nature of that truth is, and how much pain the captive is actually undergoing – undermine and harm the state that makes use of it. In this way, I hope to contribute something to the ongoing debate over whether, and under what circumstances, torture can be justified by a state under threat: rather than argue that torture is immoral (as it certainly is), I wish to show how it can become counterproductive. At the extreme, torture in practice stands the drama of torture on its head: rather than forcing the captive to reveal the unvarnished truth to the eager interrogator, torture under the wrong circumstances can become a means of transmitting misinformation from the captive to the state. Above all, torture relies on the state having access to strong information in order to catch the captive when he lies: but this reduces at the same time the potential for torture to teach the state anything new at all. Torture is simply subject to the logic of coercion more broadly: the threat of punishment must be credible, and must be predicated on misbehavior. If the subject can lie and get away with it, then no amount of torture will suffice to reveal 6
Page 1 and 2: THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEG
Page 3 and 4: This work is dedicated to my wife,
Page 5 and 6: TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vii 1. T
Page 7 and 8: ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Se
Page 9 and 10: judged by their effects. The deonto
Page 11: etter than chance on average, no ma
Page 15 and 16: the cases differ in how well inform
Page 17 and 18: characterization by method. Torture
Page 19 and 20: gather such evidence was strong, to
Page 21 and 22: ineffective. Something must prevent
Page 23 and 24: The description which it would be n
Page 25 and 26: powerful themselves. 21 While histo
Page 27 and 28: known by the misnomer 'torture-ligh
Page 29 and 30: substitute for intelligence gatheri
Page 31 and 32: This lack of good data on torture t
Page 33 and 34: found that the procedure can cause
Page 35 and 36: captive who has faced torture, and
Page 37 and 38: state cannot credibly commit to pla
Page 39 and 40: incentive not to present as favorab
Page 41 and 42: units, those engaged in the applica
Page 43 and 44: of causal mechanisms in a very dire
Page 45 and 46: the threats they face are real, whe
Page 47 and 48: 3.1. Introduction. CHAPTER 3 THE WI
Page 49 and 50: discovered by Sir Thomas Newton and
Page 51 and 52: two, and the execution of the convi
Page 53 and 54: years preceding the outbreak at Sal
Page 55 and 56: these women - non-Church members, p
Page 57 and 58: Hubbard) and four grown and married
Page 59 and 60: 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
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Samuell Parris. 70 The strongest ev
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order to purge political dissidents
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torture as a failure based on this
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torture - the state will apply it e
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time, the government in Paris was c
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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
Page 101 and 102:
one that would turn the dangers of
Page 103 and 104:
dismantling of the ZAA organization
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found in the literature: the revela
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In fact, the use of torture did hav
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e.g.), by March (when the DPU had b
Page 111 and 112:
Paul Teitgen appears to have been c
Page 113 and 114:
the French public. 95 Secondly, the
Page 115 and 116:
conditions theoretically necessary
Page 117 and 118:
the reasons for holding the detaine
Page 119 and 120:
y military interrogators. (Washingt
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fact come verbatim from a 1957 jour
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ole in the acquisition of intellige
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to those believed to have informati
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name for metanetwork analysis. 102
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other words, the CIA High Value Det
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Padilla was accused by KSM of plott
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and an enemy of the United States,
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alternative mechanism) by Darius Re
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York Times, 09/12/2005) Insofar as
Page 139 and 140:
these interrogations were conducted
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al-Qaeda is structured, names of in
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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION: The Misleadin
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problem by the authorities - and ye
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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
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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:
Page 163 and 164:
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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