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

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It is important to distinguish between two major sources of information that allowed the Forces of Order to penetrate and dismantle the FLN organization in Algiers. One source, the torture of suspected FLN activists, has already been mentioned. The second source came from Muslim informants operating either as block wardens or direct informants for the French. These informants tended to be FLN members who had either defected or been coerced into serving the French, and the information they gathered and disseminated to the military lay at the foundations of many of General Massu's successes. While it is impossible to completely distinguish which successes and failures resulted from which source of information, it is nonetheless possible to gain a general idea by looking at the evidence that does exist: as we shall see, the use of these informants was responsible not only for the capture of Yacef's courier (whose torture led to the identification of Yacef's hideout) but for the near implosion of the FLN organization throughout the country, as French misinformation caused the leaderships of the various wilayat (rural military districts) to turn against their own men. While torture certainly played some role in revealing important information to the military, torture's very success often depended on tips from these informants – and in at least one important instance information that had previously been revealed by informants was not taken seriously until it had been 'verified' by torture. 72 As outlined in the model in the second chapter, torturers who are able to avoid the temptation to stop checking the information they hear will also be able to minimize the likelihood of starting this vicious cycle: if an ignorant captive speaks, and his testimony is checked out, then the state will have some probability of receiving the correct signal, and dismissing the captive's story. As we have seen in Salem, when the state's ability to check this information is compromised the cycle becomes an inevitability: and in Salem, as in the Witch-hunts of Europe in the 1500s, this is precisely what occurred. This factor becomes crucial when we consider that the state has no way – a priori – of separating the ignorant from the knowledgeable captive. Whichever strategy the state chooses - whether to check information and obey the signal (torturing when it appears that the captive has lied, and imprisoning when it appears that the captive has told the truth) or to believe that torture works and fall into the temptation of accepting information uncritically simply because it has been educed under 72 Note that this presents a major problem for torture as an informational system: torture can only work when information obtained through coercion is checked out through alternative methods. To vet information in the other direction opens up the possibility of providing the captive with a preexisting storyline – i.e., it presents the captive with a narrative to either confirm or deny, and if this storyline is incorrect, it provides the captive with an easy means of lying and ending the torture. 79
torture – the state will apply it equally to both knowledgeable and ignorant captives. 73 One of the main issues with evaluating torture for information is the extreme secrecy with which states that torture treat the details: which techniques were used, how much pain was applied, what information was given up and when, and the value of that information are generally not made public record. 74 This makes it incredibly difficult to test the effectiveness of torture on knowledgeable individuals. But if the state is faced with captives of unknown type, then the rational choice is to choose a single strategy or mix of strategies according to their expected utility and apply it to any captive, knowledgeable or not. 75 And if this is so, then we may be able to draw conclusions about how effective torture was against the knowledgeable by examining how well it worked on the ignorant. In terms of the informational model of torture I put forward, we can make the following argument: 1. If the state can credibly commit to verifying the information it receives – even though it has a short-term incentive to cheat – then the state should accept more good information bad than bad on average. 2. As the state's information environment improves through the introduction of new intelligence, it should be more able to discriminate between truth and fiction. 3. Consequently, if a state can credibly commit to verification then the pool of captives should increasingly be composed of knowledgeable captives as the ignorant are weeded out. 4. If the knowledgeable are a small minority in the population of all potential captives then a large (and lopsidedly ignorant) initial pool of captives should shrink as the authorities focus their energies on the smaller number of knowledgeable captives. 5. Since the number of FLN activists during the Battle of Algiers never exceeded 6,000 (OPA and ALN membership combined) in a total population of 80,000, successful torture should have led to a smaller and smaller number of captives as the FLN organization was broken up. 73 This need not imply that this strategy is applied in all cases, but that the choice of strategy applied should be only lightly correlated with ignorance or knowledge. This analysis also presumes no agent-principle issues between state and torturer. If there are, then the likely result would be to under-check the captive's story in order to maximize the amount of raw data revealed – a similar process characterized the use of 'body counts' in the Viet Nam war, as officers acted to maximize the number of 'enemy dead' , leading to a gruesome form of inflation. (Mueller, 1980) 74 Interestingly, this is true not only for democracies: the German Geheimnisse Staatspolizei (Gestapo) in France only officially allowed a small number of 'sharpened' practices, all of which were in actuality superceded by torturers (Rejali) while Ron (1997; 2000) notes that autocracies have progressively moved towards non-scarring forms of torture as a means of limiting the fallout from discovery. 75 The state might very well prefer to choose different strategies for different captive types – such as not torturing ignorant captives – but this is unlikely to be possible with any degree of specificity. 80
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEG
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This work is dedicated to my wife,
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vii 1. T
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ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Se
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judged by their effects. The deonto
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etter than chance on average, no ma
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from fiction, and also in the time
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the cases differ in how well inform
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characterization by method. Torture
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gather such evidence was strong, to
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ineffective. Something must prevent
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The description which it would be n
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powerful themselves. 21 While histo
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known by the misnomer 'torture-ligh
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substitute for intelligence gatheri
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This lack of good data on torture t
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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
Page 81 and 82: Samuell Parris. 70 The strongest ev
Page 83 and 84: order to purge political dissidents
Page 85: torture as a failure based on this
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
Page 125 and 126: to those believed to have informati
Page 127 and 128: name for metanetwork analysis. 102
Page 129 and 130: 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
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York Times, 09/12/2005) Insofar as
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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
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Jack Bauer was used as justificatio
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Biderman, Albert D. “Effects of C
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Crelinstein, Ronald and Alex Schmid
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History Teacher. 30:4 (1997): pp. 4
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International Council on Security a
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Lewis, Neil A. “Red Cross Finds D
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Obuchowski, Chester W. “Algeria:
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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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