#o'mara

Interrogation is probably the scenario that comes to most Western people’s minds when torture is mentioned. The belief that torture can be used during interrogation is heavily ingrained in Western pop culture whether the story believes it ‘works’ or not.

 I’m going to go over some of the most common misconceptions about what bringing torture to the interrogation table does and does not do.

 Tell the Truth

 ‘Care must be exercised when making use of rebukes, invectives or torture as it will result in his telling falsehoods and making a fool of you.’ Japanese Kempeitai manual found in Burman 1943

 ‘The use of force often has the consequence that the person being interrogated under duress confesses falsely because he is afraid and as a consequence agrees to everything the interrogator wishes.’ Indonesian interrogation manual, East Timor, 1983

 ‘Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions concocted as a means of escaping from distress.’ CIA Kubark Counterintelligence Manual 1963

 I can’t prove conclusively that in the history of the world torture has never ever once produced accurate information. Overwhelmingly often it does not. There are several reasons why.

 Torture produces a lot of lies. Both people with information and people without information have a good reason to lie under torture. And they both do. The person with information does not want to give it up. The person without information needs to say something to make the torture stop.

 Humans are bad at telling when someone is lying. When tested even people who think they’re good at spotting lies can’t do it consistently. It can be almost impossible to tell who is hiding something and who genuinely doesn’t know what’s going on. A person under torture might have already told the truth and started lying when the interrogator didn’t believe them. Which is exactly what happened to Shelia Cassidy when she was tortured in Chile in the 70s.

 Pain and stress destroy the human memory. Experiments with willing volunteers have repeatedly shown that stress, pain and lack of sleep make it difficult for people to remember. A 2004 paper using US military survival school as the ‘high stress situation’ which simulated capture and interment as a POW (C A Morgan et al, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 27, 265-279) found that between 51-68% of soldiers identified the wrong person as their interrogator. Interrogations had lasted four hours with the interrogator shouting at and manhandling the volunteers. The low stress group identified the wrong person 12-38% of the time.

Torture results in loss of public trust. Most police and intelligence investigations live or die on public support. People coming forward voluntarily with accurate information. People reporting on suspects. In the long term torture actively recruits for the opposing ‘side’. According to the IRA this is exactly what happened in Northern Ireland when the British used torture. It also happened in Aden and to a lesser extent Cyprus.

 Torture in short produces more lies than truth and in such a mixture that it can be hard to tell which is which. Because of the pain it causes torture can make it impossible for victims who want to tell the truth to actually do so accurately. And because of the effect it has on communities it often makes it harder to gather accurate information through more reliable sources.

 Accuracy in torture is so poor it is ‘in some cases less accurate than flipping a coin’. (No that isn’t exaggeration, that’s a quote from D Rejali who literally wrote the book)

 The Ticking Bomb

 The famous ‘ticking-bomb’ scenario is a fictional situation (it literally came from a novel, written by a suspected torturer) where a disaster (such as a bomb attack) is known to be approaching and in order to save innocent lives the characters need more intel fast.

 So they start debating whether to use torture.

 Depending on the story and the characters they sometimes do torture. Usually if they do it gives them information they then use to save lives.

 There’s another problem, aside from the total lack of accuracy for information that comes from torture. Torture takes as long or longer than other interrogation techniques.

 According to the CIA’s own records detainees were put through several days of sleep deprivation before interrogation. The Senate Torture Report (testimony from Ali Soufan) estimated that their torture techniques took 30 days.

 According to British records and accounts from the IRA during the Troubles a single torture session by ‘walling’ (sleep deprivation, white noise and stress positions combined) could last between nine and forty three hours.

 I’ve selected the following quotes to give an idea of the time frame for short tortures used in interrogation. Both are from Northern Ireland by Irish men detained by the British. Emphasis is mine.

 ‘One powerfully built RUC detective would keep me pinned in a position while the other one would hold my elbow then press back on my wrist. And that could last for an hour or possibly two hours. And it’s excruciatingly painful, to the extent that I remember after three or four days I would simply go unconscious-’ Tommy McKearney

 ‘When I was taken away from Girdwood to be interned, I thought I had been there for about eight days, but it was only three. I later realised I was only being allowed to sleep for ten minutes at a time.’ Joe Docherty

 Interrogation always takes time. And that time is measured in days not minutes.

 Sanitised Portrayals

  ‘NO useful information so far….He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It’s been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing.’ Senate Torture Report, from quoted emails SSCI 2014, 41-42

 For me this is one of the most noticeable differences between torture in pop culture and torture in reality. Torture in films and books is always sanitised.

 I don’t mean that it isn’t gory or isn’t gory ‘enough’. Blood seems to be a cinematic staple and seeing the hero beaten and bloodied in a dingy lit room has become standard in a certain sort of action story.

 What I’m talking about are the body fluids and products we’re trained to think are less acceptable. Vomit. Urine. Mucus. Faeces.

 I can think of several movies where a ‘good-guy’ gets beaten to a bloody pulp on screen. I can’t think of any where they piss themselves. But losing control of bladder and bowel function seem to be pretty common in real life. A lot of the eyewitness accounts I’ve read about systematic torture mention the smell of urine and shit.

 Vomiting is something I don’t see mentioned as often in survivor accounts but I think it’s very likely to occur frequently because a lot of common methods of torture produce nausea.

The ‘Tough’ Interrogator

 ‘It may be only later, outside of that specific environment, that the torturer may question his or her behaviour, and begin to experience psychological damage resulting from involvement in torture and trauma. In these cases, the resulting psychological symptoms are very similar to those of victims, including anxiety, intrusive traumatic memories and impaired cognitive and social functioning.’ Psychologists Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity.

 ‘Those techniques [CIA ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques] are so harsh it’s emotionally distressing to the people who are administering them.’ Dr James Mitchell, psychologist involved in the CIA’s EIT program.

 ‘We are where we are- and we’re left popping our Prozac and taking our pills at night.’ Anonymous torturer quoted in Cruel Britannia

 There’s a growing body of evidence that torture has a negative psychological effect on the torturer.

 The evidence is for the most part anecdotal, based on patterns emerging across interviews. Torturers, funnily enough, don’t show up in droves for psychological studies. But there is a pattern. One of substance abuse, addiction, PTSD and suicide.

 The cause of these symptoms in torturers is the same thing that causes trauma in people who witness horrific things. It is well known that seeing violent attacks on others can cause trauma in witnesses.

 Humans are empathic creatures.

 There is a measurable, automatic response in the brain to seeing others in pain. We can not control it and we can not stop it. Even when we are told that the other person is anaesthetized our brains still respond to their perceived pain.

 This, combined with the destruction of normal social interaction and dehumanisation, appears in a very real sense to harm torturers.

 If you’re planning to use torture as part of an interrogation scene it’s worth noting that some torturers do believe torture is a useful way to get information, despite the evidence. Some of them cling to the idea that they had to torture, that what they did was useful and saved lives. Some of them seem to overplay the value of torture in order to justify their own actions and jobs.

 None of that makes them immune to the effect of torturing another human being.

 Disclaimer

[Additional Sources-

‘Torture and Democracy’, Princeton, D Rejali (Only order this if you’ll be at home to pick it up, at over 850 pages it’s a monster)

‘Accuracy of eyewitness memory for person encountered during exposure to highly intense stress’, The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry C A Morgan, G Hazlett, A Doran, S Garrett, G Hoyt, P Thomas, M Baranoksi, S M Southwick, 2004 (This team have actually done a series on high stress situations and the effects on memory. Charles Morgan is the first author on this set of papers.)

‘Audacity to Believe’ Cleveland, S Cassidy

‘Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation.’ Harvard University Press, S O’Mara (Highly recommended, reasonably accessible for a layman)

‘Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture.’ Portobello Books, I Cobain (Very good history, although the author doesn’t seem to understand many of the techniques he writes about)

There’s actually only one of me. :)

As to how- Well I suppose I’ve been reading about it for a very very long time. 

I like history and I try to keep up with the news (all of it not just the one country) and I have a decent memory. I followed the Nigerian election and the last Indian one and the fiasco in Kenya. I’ve got over a hundred books in my line of sight right now (and that’s not even the main bookcases) over half of them are history. 

That knowledge....adds up. Don’t get me wrong I do have a couple of books specifically on torture and some on specific scientific studies that are relevant to the area but most of this came from the news and history books. 

If the question is also why I’ve spent so long reading about all this stuff, why I need to know what’s going on in Kashmir or Sri Lanka or Syria-

I feel like the short answer is ‘I grew up in Saudi Arabia’.

 We were robbed once and I remember my mother saying (ratherinstinctively) to my father that we should call the police. ‘They’d just arrestthe driver.’ He said and I knew that was true. And after a couple of hours maybe days in jail he’d have ‘confessed’.

 I’ve been living in the UK for 18 years. I still haven’tquite gotten over the idea that the police exist to make people disappear.

 I’ve never been tortured. I’ve never seen anyone torturedand as far as I know no one I know has been tortured. But I knew growing upthat it was something that couldhappen. To me and the people around me. And there was really nothing anyonecould do about it.

 I won’t say it’s been a conscious effort to understandtorture but over the years I have learnt a lot. It is, in a very real way, partof my family history. My great-grandparents were on opposite sides during thedays of the British Empire. I’ve wondered occasionally whether they shot at ortortured each other.

 I’ve read an awful lot on the subject; from newspaperarticles to books to academic studies. Torture shows up in everything. It’s aregular feature in children’s movies. According to Amnesty International around 44% of people think they would be torturedif they were arrested.

 I guess I just think as writers, as creators, we should bedoing better by that 44%.

I’m notentirely sure. As far as I know no one’s done any experiments that might shedany light on that.

 TheMorgan experiments were all done with people who didn’t know each other.

 It’spretty widely accepted that trauma and stress effect memory. And the memoriesthat are most affected are the ones that are most recent. People don’t tend toforget things like their name, or their first pet, they forget where they wereyesterday or what happened an hour ago.

 So my instinct is that they’d be more likely to recognise and remember someone they’d previouslyknown well.

 However- Their memories would still be affected by tortureand memories, especially new ones, areeasily edited. If they were given a line up and there were several similarlooking people, they might point to someone who looks like the interrogator instead of the interrogator.

 I thinkthis would be more likely if they were interrogated by multiple people forshort stretches of time.

 I hopethat helps. :)

I broughtthis one up with the rest of the Script Family and it generated some prettylively debate.

My firstinstinct was that this wouldn’t work at all. Waterboarding is not ‘simulated’drowning. Waterboarding is near-drowning. So if the victimcan breathe the liquid then by definition waterboarding couldn’t work.  

But thenmembers of the family pointed out that lungs aren’t designed to move liquid.Liquid breathing requires a pump to move fluid in and out of the lungs,otherwise carbon dioxide isn’t removed and oxygen eventually runs out.

Whichmeans that yes, you could drownsomeone this way. If someone else was manipulating the pump and hence thesupply of oxygen and the concentration of carbon dioxide. It wouldn’t bewaterboarding but like waterboarding this could bring someone to the brink ofdeath over and over again.

Psychologically,and in terms of effects on the victim, I don’t think it would functiondifferently to waterboarding.

Drowningis still drowning, whether it’s in a lake or a puddle. The liquid required todrown an adult human is about the amount in a can of soft drink.

There’sstill a build up of carbon dioxide so the victim would definitely feel pain(unlike suffocation in a nitrogen atmosphere). Something that might be relevantto this is that breathing in 5% CO2 can cause panic attacks. 7.5%inhaled for twenty minutes gives the same symptoms as general anxiety disorder,something that’s now used to help find new anxiety drugs. (Alison Diaper, 2012)These effects seem to get worse with the length of exposure and repetition.

Thevictim would feel panic. In the case of any drowning based torture it’s aparticular sort of panic. It’s primal, consuming and not something that can besuppressed. It’s the panic you feel when you start to drown.

Thanks toGuantanamo there are now quite a few descriptions of the sensation around. ChristopherHitchens voluntarily underwent waterboarding and his account is also availablebut since I haven’t read it I can’t comment on how good it is.

If you’reable to get it I’d recommend Shane O’Mara’s book ‘Why Torture Doesn’t Work: TheNeuroscience of Interrogation.’ He covers waterboarding in some detail and thesensation and physiology of drowning is something he particularly focuses on.It’s not a large chunk of the book in terms of page count but it really is thebest thing on waterboarding I’ve read so far.

In termsof the psychological effects, emotional effects and pain the research O’Maraquotes would hold true to your scenario.

Feelingsof dread, panic and as O’Mara puts it ‘fear of imminent death’ are normal. Ahost of normal bodily responses to low oxygen, high CO2, cold, andshock combine to make the whole experience worse.

Thepracticalities of how this is set up would be a little different and that meansthere’d be a few changes in the physical effects.

Thevictim would have to be restrained, probably tied down, as in waterboarding. Inorder to make sure it’s their lungs not their stomach that fills with theoxygenated liquid at least one tube is going to be inserted into theirwindpipe, either through the mouth or nose. They’re also going to need somesort of apparatus to ensure the pump can circulate the liquid in to and out oftheir lungs.

Thesetubes are going to be reallyuncomfortable and might increase the sensation of panic. If the victim was ableto fight when the tubes were being inserted they might have sustained somedamage to the lining of their mouth, nose, windpipe and oesophagus.

A goodplace to look for the effects of these sorts of injuries would beforced-feeding through the nose. Historical accounts from suffragettes wouldprobably be the best source as forced-feeding is generally conducteddifferently now and would be less injurious/traumatic in most cases.

I’m notsure how the risk of infection would change. The liquid and tubes should besterilised or the victim would get aninfection but they’re going to be opened in an unsterile environment andinserted by force into a person who will be fighting every way they can.

Nausea,vomiting and coughing all seem to be more likely, given that the victim willneed to have the fluid pumped out at the end of the session and then have thetubes removed. The liquid itself might also be irritating to the lungs, noseand airway.

The tubesand possible injuries caused by them means that vomiting or coughing up bloodwould be much more likely.

The riskof passing out, brain injury and death is probably about the same.

And ofcourse the victim won’t be able to talk throughout, so if the torturer wantsthem to communicate they’d either need to drain the fluid and take everythingapart again or have an alternative method of communication in place.

Insertingand draining the fluid (adult lungs can hold 4-6 litres), setting up theequipment, inserting the tubes- It’s all going to take a lot of time. Waterboardingsessions themselves aren’t very long, they’re usually in the region of 30minutes for a single session. At a wild-guess-timate I think getting hold ofthe victim, restraining them and setting up the equipment would easily take twice as long as the session itself. Andall of that would then have to be repeated when the equipment is dismantled.

On apractical level that means a lot of time when your torturers aren’t doinganything to the victim.

And thatseems like a good place to put in a note of realism. This would never become a real torture method.It’s too complicated, too expensive and would take far too long. The complexityand expense aren’t just in the equipment itself but things like having tosterilise the tubes and liquid, acquiring the liquid and so forth. Using actualwaterboarding is just easier and cheaper.

Whichdoesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it inyour story. As I said, with the right set up it could work, and fiction doesn’t haveto reflect reality all the time. But it’s probably good to be aware that thisisn’t a realistic torture method and that high-tech torture devices are a stereotype that crops up again andagain in fiction.

I hopethat helps. :)

In the study I’m referring to the men were put through afake capture scenario. They were exercised to exhaustion before being locked up,restrained, deprived of sleep and put on reduced diets for 48 hours. The ‘highstress’ group then went through an ‘interrogation’ where they were shouted atand physically manhandled in ways the US forces allow. Slaps and being grabbedby the collar and shaken mainly.

 The study itself was concerned with memory. Most of thepeople in the ‘high stress’ group couldn’t identify their interrogator the nextday. In fact most of them pointed to the wrong person and insisted that *that*was the interrogator. The figures for incorrect identification were, dependingon the way they were asked to pick the interrogator, between 51 and 68%

 If you’re interested in an in-depth discussion of this andother studies ‘Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation’ byShane O’Mara is a good and reasonably accessible book to start with.