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

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where the costs of investigation are high, such as when the information sought is highly time-sensitive, as in the 'ticking bomb' scenario. Finally, the state must believe that the captive is a priori likely enough to be knowledgeable that it is willing to imprison given a signal of 'truth' – if the captive is certain to be ignorant, and the state's investigative signal is at all noisy, then the state is best off torturing no matter what signal it receives. If all of these conditions are met, then the knowledgeable captive will find himself in a situation where he is best off telling the truth in order to escape torture – but only if the state's expected strategy is to play according to the signal it receives, torturing when it receives the signal that the captive has lied, and imprisoning when it appears that the captive has told the truth. If the state plays any other strategy, either imprisoning or torturing without investigating, or regardless of the signal it receives, then the necessary link between lying and torture is broken, and the captive is once again best off lying under all circumstances. How likely then is the state to play this strategy? Paradoxically, just as the state must not be too convinced that the captive is ignorant, neither can the state be too convinced that the captive is knowledgeable. If the state believes the captive to be knowledgeable with certainty, and the other conditions noted above hold, then the state cannot credibly commit to acting according to the signal it receives: if the captive is knowledgeable, and is threatened with sufficient pain with a high enough likelihood of being caught in a lie, then he will certainly tell the truth – meaning the state is best off believing the captive even when he appears to have lied! To do otherwise would be to ignore truthful information – a dead loss to the state. But if the state cannot credibly commit to playing according to the signal, then the knowledgeable captive no longer has any incentive to tell the truth since the state will believe his lies regardless – the separating equilibrium collapses. Even worse, because investigating is costly, the state may even lack the incentive to investigate in the first place, meaning that the state may never have reason to doubt that the captive has told the truth. In this case, the logic of torture would be stood on its head: rather than being a mechanism for extracting true information for the state, it would become a means for the captive to inject misinformation against the state. In other words, successful torture depends on the state knowingly torturing ignorant captives, and on not being certain which captives are which. If the probability that the captive is ignorant rises too high, then the state is best off torturing regardless and cannot gain from torture – the rare knowledgeable captive will be tortured however he behaves: if the probability sinks too low, then the 29
state cannot credibly commit to playing according to the signal, and is at risk of accepting false information from both the rare ignorant captive who must lie, and from the common knowledgeable captive who prefers to. In other words, the crucial moment in torture is not the one most often seen in films and television shows, where the captive, after suffering to the limit, 'breaks' and offers the unvarnished truth – rather, the crucial moment occurs when the interrogator believes that the captive has broken. At that moment, the state loses its ability to credibly commit to investigating the captive's story – and the knowledgeable captive is presented with a perfect opportunity to lie. The prospects for successful torture diminish as well when we consider that there is very likely to be an agent-principle dilemma between the state and its interrogators: if interrogators are rewarded by the amount of information they bring in, and not the quality of that information, then we can expect even conscientious torturers to eventually cease investigating (and throwing away good information) or be weeded out of the system as cynical torturers proliferate. Furthermore, if knowledgeable captives are able to coordinate a false story in case of capture, then each subsequent knowledgeable captive will find it easier and easier to feed misinformation to an increasingly credible state. 31 This incentive structure derives precisely from the difficulty in judging empirically the information given under torture, and provides us with another way to judge the utility of a torture regime. Where torturers are rewarded for quantity over quality, this is an indication that the state is not in a position to distinguish between good and bad information; where this is the case, not only does the torturer have the incentive to cheat, so too does the knowledgeable captive. If we extrapolate from an individual instance of torture to a campaign, where each previous round of torture affects the following one, then we find a further complication. If the prior round of torture has resulted in the state gaining useful information, then we can assume that the state is in a better position to investigate in the next round, while previous misinformation would negatively affect the state's investigative ability (as its priors become farther removed from reality, other forms of misinformation should appear more plausible, and true information that does not fit the (false) priors should appear less trustworthy. Thus, we would expect two evolutionary equilibria in the long term: a 31 There are in fact examples of exactly this phenomenon. Commander James Stockdale instructed his fellow PoWs during the Viet Nam War, to “resist to the point of permanent injury or loss of mental faculty, and then fall back on deceit and distortion.” (Arrigo, p. 12) This strategy was successful enough that, according to him, only 5% of his men ended up cooperating with the enemy. (p. 7) Similarly, Rejali argues that members of the FLN, when tortured by the French in Algeria, were instructed to name members of the moderate opposition (the MNA) as their confederates – leading the French to help eliminate the FLN's main rival in the Nationalist movement. (pp. 481-2) 30
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 and 34: found that the procedure can cause
Page 35: captive who has faced torture, and
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
Page 123 and 124:
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
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:
Page 163 and 164:
Schiemann, John W. “Interrogation
Page 165 and 166:
Barack Obama is Inviting the Next A
Page 167 and 168:
United States, Department of Defens
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Patrick Armshaw
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