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

This lack of good data on torture takes pride of place in the Intelligence Science Board's recent
report “Educing Information.” This project represents an admirable attempt to come to grips with the
problems for accurately assessing how well torture performs as a means of gathering intelligence. The
essays examine torture from several different perspectives, examining the behavioral, psychological
and technical underpinnings of torture. Consistently, the authors report that their investigations are
hampered by a lack of relevant data. Perhaps most crucially, the report notes that “although some
interrogators are formally trained in the techniques, there is no evidence that those techniques actually
do what they are supposed to do.” (Intelligence Science Board, p. xix) Because of this lack of direct
evidence, most investigations of torture have tended to focus on indirect examination. Research has
consequently focused on the question of how well interrogators are able to distinguish truth from
falsehood (Hazlett 2005), on technologies for detecting falsehoods (Heckman and Happel, 2005), on
the applicability of law enforcement interrogation practices (Neumann and Salinas-Serrano, 2005) and
negotiation theory (Shapiro, 2006) to intelligence-gathering, and on the historical record of
interrogation practices in the United States (Kleinman, 2006). Again and again, the scholars find little
reason to feel secure in the effectiveness of torture, and considerable reason to distrust it. Mechanical
methods of detection of lies are unreliable and atheoretical, but detection by individuals is subject to a
priori beliefs about what liars look like that are often culturally determined, easily gamed, or simply
wrong. Captives are highly likely to resist direct questioning, but coercion can easily increase their
willingness to resist. Disorientation may make the captive more willing to talk, but can also impair
their ability to speak the truth.
In his 2008 text entitled Torture and Democracy, Darius Rejali provides an interesting indirect
test of torture's efficacy: he examines by which mechanisms torture techniques have spread, and
derives from these his 'craft hypothesis'. He argues that torture is a craft (as opposed to a science),
meaning that it is governed not by an empirical process of testing and weeding out of underperforming
techniques, but whose forms are rather determined by historical memory, by which implements are to
hand, and by unsubstantiated beliefs in which forms 'work'. The fact that torture techniques do not
appear to have become more refined with the passing of time (except insofar as the 'newer' techniques
are harder for monitors to detect) thus stands as evidence that states are less concerned with the
theoretical underpinnings of coercing the truth from recalcitrant suspects than with ensuring that the
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