Last week we reported that Andrew Sullivan has produced convincing evidence that America's Alberto Gonzales approved torture, er "enhanced interrogation" techniques are nearly identical to the "sharpened interrogation" techniques introduced by the Gestapo in 1937.
Today the New York Times has published an article demonstrating that the administration reverse engineered the Soviet Union's "Communist Interrogation" techniques used against foreign prisoners, such as downed United States airmen. As outlined in the Times article the similarity between "Communist Interrogation" and both Alberto Gonzales' approved "enhanced interrogation" methods and the Gestapo's "sharpened interrogation" techniques is striking.
Both stories are probably accurate. The Soviets and Nazis where intensely interested in the subject and they were both shrewed students of each other's techniques. After 9/11 changed everything, our people were, no doubt, instructed to play catch up.
According to the Times article and as John McCain would probably attest:
Communist-style interrogation routinely produced false confessions:So much for the argument the techniques are necessary to save us from a ticking atomic time bomb. Unless the interrogator is the bomber and he wants to make a confession through his prisoner, it is unlikely anybody interrogated using the techniques will ever provide actionable intelligence.
The cumulative effects of the entire experience may be almost intolerable. [The prisoner] becomes mentally dull and loses his capacity for discrimination. He becomes malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate. By suggesting that the prisoner accept half-truths and plausible distortions of the truth, [the interrogator] makes it possible for the prisoner to rationalize and thus accept the interrogator’s viewpoint as the only way out of an intolerable situation.
If you think about it it is not surprising that false confessions are the principal result of both the Gestapo and Soviet methods. Both the Nazis and the Soviets wanted to coerce "confessions" from "enemies of the state" for use in show trials and international propaganda. Actionable intelligence was never the objective.
In the name of freedom we are misapplying the torture techniques developed by the two most evil empires in the last thousand years. Who said the neo-cons don't have a sense of irony.
UPDATE: It just struck me that regardless of what the law might provide, any confession secured using enhanced interrogation techniques can't be considered reliable by any honest trier of fact.
