How America Is Misapplying Interrogation Techniques Developed By Two Very Evil Empires

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:

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.

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.

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.

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Were Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Inspired By A Gestapo Directive?

If you want to have nightmares read Andrew Sullivan's post in the Atlantic Online entitled "Verschärfte Vernehmung." The term is German for "enhanced interrogation," "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation." It was coined by the Gestapo in 1937 to describe a series of techniques used to torture political and other prisoners without leaving embarrassing marks. The similarities between the "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved by Alberto Gonzales, and the "sharpened interrogation techniques" employed by the Nazis are simply surreal.

Sullivan says

The Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own. The "cold bath" technique - the same as that used by Bush against al-Qahtani in Guantanamo - was, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College, "pioneered by a member of the French Gestapo by the pseudonym Masuy about 1943. The Belgian resistance referred to it as the Paris method, and the Gestapo authorized its extension from France to at least two places late in the war, Norway and Czechoslovakia. That is where people report experiencing it."

Sullivan actually includes an English translation of the torture directive from Gestapo Chief Muller.

Like I said read the entire Sullivan post. It will give you nightmares. Better yet, wait tell morning to read Sullivan. I wish I had. Sweet dreams.

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