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

intelligence gathering operation that has benefited the War on Terror, even as it has denied any
systematic abuse has occurred. The Department of Defense website in fact offers a release by JTF-
GTMO dated March 4 th , 2005, listing the information derived from interrogations at GTMO. 98 At that
time, approximately 550 detainees were being held at GTMO, the vast majority of whom would later
be transferred of released outright. Examples include identifying operatives, giving insights into the
logistics and structure of al Qaeda, and “locations of training compounds and safe houses, terrain
features, travel patterns and routes used for smuggling people and equipment, as well as (…)
identifying potential supporters and opponents.” (p. 1) However, this release also asserts that
“[d]etainees were either actively involved in operational planning for terrorist attacks or had already
participated in attacks in Europe, the United States, and/or central Asia at the time of detention,” an
argument that seems hard to square with the large number of subsequent releases. (p. 2) At no point is
it argued that interrogations at GTMO had resulted in the disruption of imminent terrorist plots.
Indeed, while many former administration officials have argued that the use of coercive interrogations
has saved lives, their arguments have tended to be vague in the extreme.
Perhaps most disturbingly, the methods developed for use by interrogators at GTMO in fact had
been derived from an unlikely source: Communist China. While researching more aggressive tactics
that might be used in the War on Terror, the CIA had decided to make use of the expertise of the US
military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape course (SERE), a special training program created in
the aftermath of the Korean War to prepare US soldiers for abuse at the hands of enemy governments.
(CIA-OIG, pp. 13, 14) During that conflict, the US government had been shocked by videos of
captured US airmen confessing to a variety of war crimes on camera, without apparently having been
tortured. While the CIA had come to the conclusion at the time that the Chinese government had
perfected the art of brainwashing, subsequently spending millions of dollars attempting to learn the
trick themselves, the truth was far more prosaic: the airmen had been tortured into confessing falsely,
but using methods that did not leave marks. (Rejali, pp. 86-7; 368-9) The techniques used against US
airmen had been repurposed in order to inoculate soldiers against torture: now they were being
repurposed again, but this time to inflict pain once more.
Crucially, the CIA then lent its newly acquired expertise back to the military, through training
courses at GTMO, completing the circle. One chart used during this training of interrogators had in
98 Available at http://www.defense.gov/news/Mar2005/d20050304info.pdf
113