What Science Can Teach Us about “Enhanced Interrogation”

Abstract

The recent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program sheds light on the practice of "enhanced interrogation" while countering CIA claims about the effectiveness of these methods. This article relies on the science of interrogation to evaluate those claims. Five hypotheses about the (in)effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation techniques" are generated based upon empirical research on interrogation practices. The article concludes that evidence-based, non-coercive methods of interrogation are likely to be more, or equally, as effective as "enhanced interrogation" in obtaining accurate information from detainees. THE SCIENCE OF INTERROGATION 2 In November 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released a report on its inquiry into the Detainee and Interrogation Program conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 1 The report describes how the CIA detained 119 prisoners and subjected 39 of them to methods dubbed "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EIT). The approved list of EIT encompassed waterboarding, sleep deprivation, isolation, confinement in small spaces, body slap, face grab (holding the prisoner's head immobile), facial slap, walling (pushing the prisoner against a flexible wall), sensory over-stimulation, and forced standing and other stress positions. 2 The report also points to evidence that the CIA repeatedly used EIT not approved by the Department of Justice or the White House Office of Legal Counsel, such as forced standing with arms shackled above the head, exposure to extreme cold when partially nude, and a more extreme version of walling (slamming a prisoner against concrete walls). 3 The CIA repeatedly made claims to the White House, the Department of Justice, and the media that EIT were effective in providing intelligence that was used to save American lives and that this information could not have been obtained any other way. 4 However, the SSCI report provides evidence that these claims may have been overstated. 5 Following requests from White House officials, at least three attempts were made by the CIA to conduct studies of the effectiveness of EIT: a CIA Office of Inspector General Special Review, an internal review conducted by two CIA officers not employed within the Counterterrorism Center, and a review conducted by two non-CIA employees. 6 The data reviewed in each case included interviews with CIA personnel and documents provided by the CIA. None of these evaluations provided substantive evidence to support the CIA's claim that EIT are effective. Any resolution of the disagreement about the effectiveness of EIT should center around evidence of their effectiveness in obtaining accurate, actionable intelligence from detainees. If

Persuasive and Unpersuasive Critiques of Torture

“…Yet the scholarship on torture continues to focus the bulk of its attention on the efficacy and inefficacy of torture (Pfiffner 2014, 138–140, 145; Budiansky 2005; Duke and Van Puyvelde 2017, 312–314, 327; Costanzo and Gerrity 2009, 183; Rumney 2006, 479). Many scholars privilege the claim that “torture never works” as their primary critique of torture (Schiemann 2016; O’Mara 2015).…”