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

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absence of an investigative apparatus, are best off torturing as doing so results in a greater number of guilty captives being punished, even if this is at the cost of tortured and imprisoned innocents. Arrigo (2004) argues that torture, however conceived, is not useful due to the unintended inputs and outputs necessary to make it work: for example, the need for trained medical personnel to prevent the captive from dying or going unconscious during questioning, or of creating a professional cadre of torturer's who must be separated from society, with all the dangers for a democratic government that his entails. My approach differs from Wantchekon and Healy in that torture, as a process for generating information, is necessarily marked by an information asymmetry between the captive and the state: not only does the state lack knowledge of whether or not the captive is knowledgeable, it also cannot necessarily tell whether the captive's information (when he speaks) is true or false. I differ from Chen et al. in examining torture for information, and not judicial torture: the state seeks not simply a confession, but information that it intends to use, potentially in further torture proceedings. Finally, I differ from Arrigo, in holding that torture, no matter the necessary indirect costs associated with its institutionalization, cannot be considered useless unless there exists something in the torture process itself that injures the state that uses it – otherwise, apologists for torture would be able to argue that torture simply needs the correct institutional setup and safeguards in order to work correctly. 29 For arguments against torture to succeed, it must be shown that torture fails at its appointed task – systematically gathering useful and true intelligence for the state that utilizes it. 2.4. A Model of Torture Let us begin by considering torture as a rational process, as an informal game with two players: the captive and the state. The state holds in its power a captive who may or may not have intelligence that the state desires, and it is assumed that the value of the information is zero-sum for the captive and the state: whatever the value of the information the state gains, the captive loses by an equal amount. The captive is faced with a choice to either reveal information to the state, or keep silent – however, the knowledgeable captive can choose to reveal information that is either true or false. 30 The state may then choose to either torture or imprison the captive – it is assumed that the state will never release a 29 This is the approach taken by Dershowitz (2002) when he argues for torture warrants, as well as by Guazzini et al. in the centuries before him. 30 For simplicity's sake, assume that false information has an equal and opposite value for the state and captive. The zero- sum aspect remains. 27
captive who has faced torture, and that the captive knows this. We can see immediately that the state will always choose to torture whenever the captive remains silent: to do otherwise would remove all incentive for knowledgeable captives to tell the truth, thus ensuring that the state would not gain from torture. The ignorant captive will then lie under all circumstances, since telling the truth would appear to the state as holding out – at worst the state will recognize the lie, and the captive will be tortured, but at best the state will mistake the lie for truth and end the torture. Similarly, the knowledgeable captive will lie under all circumstances: since the state has no means of distinguishing truth from lies in this model, telling the truth cannot make the captive any better off. The state would then be best off torturing under all circumstances – it would not accept any misinformation, but neither would it gain from torture. Let us now assume that the state has the option to investigate the captive's story, distinguishing truth from falsehood with some probability greater than chance, but that this choice is costly: the more resources the state pays in investigation, the more likely it is to distinguish truth from fiction. These costs might be financial (investing in a professional police or intelligence gathering apparatus) or temporal (spending time on investigating rather than accepting the information directly). When the state is likely enough to catch the captive in a lie, and the torture threatened is great enough, then the ignorant captive will find revealing the truth to be optimal, while the ignorant captive will still be best off lying: if this is an equilibrium outcome, then torture will be successful: the state will be best off accepting the captive's story when it receives a signal that he has told the truth, and torturing when it appears that the captive has lied. How likely is this outcome? Consider first that the state must choose some positive combination of costs for both threatened torture and investigation: even if the state knows with certainty when the captive has lied or told the truth, the state must still threaten the captive with pain that outweighs the disutility of revealing true information – captives who are either insensitive to pain or deeply committed to their cause are then less likely to fold under torture, even when the state's investigative capacity is perfect. Likewise, the state must investigate enough that the signal it receives is better than chance at distinguishing between truth and fiction – otherwise no amount of pain will convince the captive to tell the truth, as we saw from the prior model where the state could not investigate. Since both investigation and torture are costly to some degree, the joint costs necessary to create this equilibrium would have to be smaller than the benefit to be gained from torturing: therefore torture should be less useful, ceteris paribus, in cases 28
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 and 12: etter than chance on average, no ma
Page 13 and 14: from fiction, and also in the time
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: found that the procedure can cause
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
Page 81 and 82: Samuell Parris. 70 The strongest ev
Page 83 and 84: order to purge political dissidents
Page 85 and 86:
torture as a failure based on this
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
Page 101 and 102:
one that would turn the dangers of
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 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
Page 121 and 122:
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
Page 127 and 128:
name for metanetwork analysis. 102
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other words, the CIA High Value Det
Page 131 and 132:
Padilla was accused by KSM of plott
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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:
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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