10 ms·

Psychologists Shielded U.S. Torture Program, Report Finds

205 points by mcgwiz 11y ago

nickbauman 11y ago
Before anyone gets into the morality of torture. Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence that shows that torture yields good human intelligence?
- nabla9 11y ago
  Guy Fawkes - he was tortured and gave up his his true identity, the plot and his conspirators.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Giles Corey - tortured by peine forte et dure to extract a plea of "innocent" or "guilt", but only responded with "More weight". Margaret Clitherow in the UK also failed to admit guilt or innocence under the same torture. Rebecca West - under torture admitted she had 'carnal copulation with the Devil'.
    - nabla9 11y ago
      Giles Corey was not tortured for information. Neither was Rebecca West.
      - dalke 11y ago
        You are right. I was thinking the torture was to extract information of a guilty/innocent plea. I see now that it was because the court system required that the defendant "submit to it by entering a plea seeking judgment from the court". (Quoting Wikipedia). By not entering a plea, the person has not entered the court system and no judgement can take place.
- ipsin 11y ago
  What, exactly, are you looking for? Clinical trials of torture? I'm willing to grant that torture will get you some mix of true and false utterances, and then I'd very much like to get into the immorality of torture.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    Well, they've done trials of torture (as the article points out). Maybe he should survey those who were tortured? "I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering." — John McCain http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/John-Mccain-Speech-Senate-Republican-CIA-Torture-Report/383589/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/John-Mcc...
- BonsaiDen 11y ago
  Torture is by definition neither open (you're not going to tell the public "Oh we just tortured X") nor idependently verifiable (for this multiple entities would need to torture the same person for the same information), so this kind of evidence would be really hard to obtain. Also given the fact that you can't know whether the person you're torturing for intelligence actually knows anything, they might (and probably will) eventually tell you "something" you want to hear, just in order for the torture to stop. At this point though, you'll don't know whether the information is actually viable, you still have to confirm it somehow, which might be difficult depending on what kind of information it is. In case of "The weapons are hidden at X" this is relatively easy to do, you send some agents to check that place out. In the case of "Who do we need to drone strike?" it's not as easy, because you can either kill them or not.
  - alejohausner 11y ago
    Back in Roman and Medieval times, torture was not considered inappropriate. There was no need to conceal it. Typically the accused was assumed to be guilty, and torture was a just a way to get him to confess to what the court already "knew" was true. Otherwise the trial could not proceed.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  When I hear things like Mohammad Atta was waterboarded over 400 times, that very number tells me that it couldn't have been very effective.
  - disposition2 11y ago
    I believe you mean KSM, Atta was one of the pilots on 9/11.
    - nickbauman 11y ago
      Yes my bad: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
  - guelo 11y ago
    I'm sure a few hundred of those times was just for sadistic purposes. Look what they did to Bradley Manning.
    - MBlume 11y ago
      Chelsea, but yes, agreed.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      KSM was a really, really bad guy though. Manning didn't cause any deaths.
- disposition2 11y ago
  I don't have an answer to the specific question but there are many people, specific to the case(s) surrounding the original 'justification' for using torture, that say just the opposite. Edit: see Frontline (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-politics-and-torture/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-politics-and...) or The Black Banners by Ali Soufan Edit 2: warning on the Frontline doc, it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    > it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know.
    - itistoday2 11y ago
      > It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know. Some people really are sadists and derive pleasure from the suffering of others. Others are fools or are too apathetic or cowardly to do anything about it. This may very well be the reality of our government. Signs seem to point in that direction.
    - a3n 11y ago
      > It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Because they're thugs.
    - asgard1024 11y ago
      > It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. I think people have very strong convictions (maybe even inborn in us) about how the society should be organized, that contradict empirical evidence. One example is emphasis on punishment, rather than on consensus or other form of persuasion. There is just another article on HN about how psychotherapy may be a better tool for young criminals than putting them into jail. Torture falls into a similar category, IMHO. From evolutionary standpoint, this is perhaps understandable. Punishment is good enough strategy and evolution probably didn't have time/resources to come up with something better, such as more complicated systems of therapy and intelligence gathering and whatnot. Huge societies of today can however afford such advances and don't have to rely on these crude methods.
- deleted 11y ago
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- littletimmy 11y ago
  This is a wrong question. Even if torture yielded absolutely vital information, it would still not be OK.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    While I admire and am grateful for your sentiment on this, if torture did yield "absolutely vital information", the party that uses it would vanquish those who didn't. The fact that we still wonder about this question may indeed prove that it's wrong from a utilitarian point of view.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      That assumes that torture which reveals reliable information doesn't have significant bad effects. For example the police could put away more criminals if they could just torture anybody, but then nobody would ever risk talking to the police, which might mean crime would go up.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence What do you want? Some twins studies where one is tortured and the other isn't? Maybe look in Mengele's papers. And why do you want to know? Would it be okay if torture "worked"? It's an immoral question if the answer is Yes, let's torture people. Because it does "work". People will tell their secrets, the practical problem is that people who don't have anything to tell will do their best to make up a convincing lie in the hope that the torture will stop.
- colechristensen 11y ago
  Of course, people sometimes miss the forest for the trees and forget about the obvious. Torture is very effective when you are certain the subject actually knows the target information and the information is easily verifiable. For example, I have a copy of your encrypted hard drive (a copy to prevent self-destructs) and I beat you with a rubber hose until you give me a password that works. This is pretty simple and obviously effective. The ease of verification and quick consequences eliminates the value of lying. If I'm mistaken and it isn't your hard drive, this is treated as a separate failure. I can even see (a very small number of) morally justifiable situations in which this is acceptable. There's a difference when you can't be certain the subject knows the information you want – or if that information isn't easily verifiable. (Where's the leader of your cell going to be next Thursday?) It's often the case that being nice to folks is a whole lot more effective. Especially with the "death to America" kinds of subjects. Kind words, a soft bed, and a hot meal given to a person who was raised in an environment where Americans were believably depicted as monsters can do a lot to make a person cooperative. Especially if you show it as an opportunity to 'get out'. You can hear compelling stories to this effect in many places.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    The point is that torture: 1. Is not helpful or useful even if, by chance, accurate information is given [1,2]. 2. Hurts our national security [2]. 3. Is unnecessary. Given that torture is one of the most harmful options to pick from, it's likely there are other, less harmful options available, and if so, the logical and ethical action is to pursue those instead. On that third point I challenge you to prove me wrong. You won't be able to, however, because we have no meaningful oversight of these practices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867266 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868400
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      It's been understood since at least WWII that the best way to get information from an interrogation is focussed conversation and active listening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff The corollary is that if prisoners are being tortured, the aim is not to get information from them.
- alejohausner 11y ago
  I think that intelligence gathering is just a cover, or a rationalization, for something more base: some nasty muslim guys killed 3000+ Americans on 9/11, so let's get some revenge on another set of muslims and torture them. It's tit for tat.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
  I'm not sure this is the right question. Even if torture worked 100% of the time, and by "worked" I mean: * provided the intelligence quickly * was 100% accurate * and significant Even then, it's not fucking worth it. There's simply no possible intelligence that can outweigh the disadvantages. We stop some roadside IED maybe... and what do we pay for that? We lose the moral high ground, we teach our enemies (not even sure that word is right) that they have nothing to lose by being suicidal in their attacks, that there's nothing to lose in torturing Americans that they themselves capture, and we create 10 more "terrorists" in all his cousins and brothers that arguably have an excuse for what they do. That's not a sustainable model of terrorism reduction. And that's supposing that the intelligence is good. So there's no point in asking whether it works or not.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    Excellent answer. Thank you.
- natermer 11y ago
  > Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence that shows that torture yields good human intelligence? No, of course not. The thing that governments find desirable about torture is that you can make anybody say anything. That way you can get 'proof' to support your systematic (and highly profitable) murder of people around the world. USA's various drone program is ~4000 lives and counting! We are now having entire generations of people across the world whose sole experience of the USA is the image they seen on a regular basis as children is USA drones terrorizing their country. Not through television or images on reddit, but in the skies above their home towns.
- deleted 11y ago
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- discardorama 11y ago
  There is evidence to the contrary. The FBI, for example, recommends against torture. They say it is ineffective. I can't find a scholarly publication, but this news item can help: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-fbi-interrogator-torture-ineffective/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-fbi-interrogator-torture-inef...
c_prompt 11y ago
A few related articles of interest: Why I Am Not a Member of the American Psychological Association - http://www.chalquist.com/apa.html http://www.chalquist.com/apa.html EMAILS REVEAL CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY GROUP AND CIA - https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/emails-show-close-relationship-psychology-group-cia/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/emails-show-cl...
itistoday2 11y ago
I would like to take this moment to point out that John Kiriakou is doing an Indiegogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-whistleblower-who-won-t-be-silenced#/story https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-whistleblower-who-won... It's because of people like him that we know about this at all. He put his life on the line for us. Only he was imprisoned. The torturers [1,2] are still free. Until there are consequences to torture it will continue to happen, and Kiriakou's sacrifice will be in vain. Think about what the pizza delivery man has done for you, and compare that to what Kiriakou did for us all. Consider sending him a monetary thank you for his service to you, to our country, and to humanity. I did. [1] http://www.ibtimes.com/who-cia-torture-report-george-tenet-hassan-ghul-6-other-names-know-senates-1745209 http://www.ibtimes.com/who-cia-torture-report-george-tenet-h... [2] http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/12/15221/whos-responsible-cias-torture-policy http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/12/15221/whos-respons...
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  My word. That is embarrassing. This guy spent years in prison on our behalf, and his campaign is getting nowhere.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    Well, we can all chip in to help move it forward. Behavior like his should be rewarded, and the behavior of those he outed should be punished. How else are we going to stop torture? To send Kiriakou $USD is to take real, meaningful action against torture. There is something to be said for doing good for goodness sake, but wouldn't it be great if people knew that honorable behavior could also be rewarding in both senses of the word?
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      To Twitter! and Friendface!
  - meowface 11y ago
    I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to (partly) side with the CIA here. He was not charged due to his reveal of CIA torture in the form of waterboarding. http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news/john-kiriakou-cia-officer-turned-whistleblower-shares-his-story.php http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news... >Months after the ABC interview, a reporter working on a book about the CIA’s rendition practices asked Kiriakou to confirm the name of a covert officer. The book was never published, but the reporter passed the name to an investigator who worked for lawyers defending Guantánamo detainees. Radack maintains that the operative’s name was already an open secret among journalists and human-rights advocates. Revealing the name of a covert agent can jeopardize their life and the lives of others. The claim that it's an "open secret" doesn't exactly hold water (being an oxymoron and all). >John. A. Rizzo, a former lawyer at the Agency, says: “My sense is [Kiriakou] is not a bad man. But he did a bad thing and a stupid thing. The bad thing is that he disclosed the name of at least one covert CIA operative to a reporter via e-mail. The stupid thing is that he lied to the FBI about having done so. These are not trivial criminal offenses.” Kiriakou alleges that his prosecution was retaliation for his leaking of the CIA's waterboarding tactics. And that's certainly possible. Waterboarding is wrong, and I do think he was in the right for admitting that the CIA used waterboarding. But if you reveal the name of someone undercover, you should be aware of the consequences. He served 23 months for leaking the name and for perjuring himself, which doesn't seem unreasonable.
chrisbennet 11y ago
What ever happened to "do no harm"?
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  Psychologists are not psychiatrists, so they are not really part of the medical world. And, anyway, we already gave up this principle when we started doing live donor transplants.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    It's one thing to rationalize "live donor transplants", quite another to make excuses for torture.
    - dalke 11y ago
      More specifically, medical ethics work under the Declaration of Helsinki, and not "first, do no harm". For example, the Declaration says "In medical practice and in medical research, most interventions involve risks and burdens." That is not the same as "do no harm." Also, "While the primary purpose of medical research is to generate new knowledge, this goal can never take precedence over the rights and interests of individual research subjects." and "Appropriate compensation and treatment for subjects who are harmed as a result of participating in research must be ensured." and "No national, ethical, legal or regulatory requirement should be allowed to reduce or eliminate any of the protections for human subjects set forth in this declaration." On the specific topic of the medical ethics of live donor transplants, see http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/1089.full http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/1089.full .
      - Semiapies 11y ago
        The Declaration of Helsinki has to do with medical research ethics specifically, not the broad field of medical ethics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki
jimrandomh 11y ago
Go straight to page 12 of the report, the section titled "key players". Every person named in that section should be brought before a court of law, to determine the truth or falsehood of the accusations in this report. The US criminal justice system has taken a lot of blows to its credibility recently; this is a chance to demonstrate that it still does what it's supposed to... or that it doesn't. > The APA official who led this behind-the-scenes coordination with the DoD officials was the Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke, and the key DoD official he partnered with was Morgan Banks, the chief of psychological operations for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the head of the Army SERE Training program at Ft. Bragg. During the task force’s premeeting communications, during its three-day meetings, and in preparing the task force report, Behnke and Banks closely collaborated to emphasize points that followed then-existing DoD guidance (which used high-level concepts and did not prohibit techniques such as stress positions and sleep deprivation), to suppress contrary points, and to keep the task force’s ethical statements at a very general level in order to avoid creating additional constraints on DoD. They were aided in that regard by the other DoD members of the task force (who, for the most part, also did not want ethical guidance that was more restrictive than existing DoD guidance), and by high-level APA officials who participated in the meeting. > Other leading APA officials intimately involved in the coordinated effort to align APA actions with DoD preferences at the time of PENS were then-APA President Ron Levant, then APA President-Elect Gerald Koocher, and then-APA Practice Directorate chief Russ Newman. Then-APA Board member Barry Anton participated in the selection of the task force members along with Levant, Koocher, and Behnke and in the task force meeting, but was involved substantially less than the others. Other members of the APA executive management group—namely, CEO Norman Anderson, Deputy CEO Michael Honaker, General Counsel Nathalie Gilfoyle, and communications director Rhea Farberman were involved in relevant communications, as described below. > The other DoD official who was significantly involved in the confidential coordination effort was Debra Dunivin, the lead psychologist supporting interrogation operations at Guantanamo Bay at the time who worked closely with Banks on the issue of psychologist involvement in interrogations. At times, they were coordinating their activities with the Army Surgeon General’s Office. There is evidence that Banks was consulting with other military leaders, likely in the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Task Force – Guantanamo, although this was not the focus of our investigation, in part because of our limited ability to access DoD documents and personnel. Another important DoD official involved in some coordination with Behnke was PENS task force member Scott Shumate, a former CIA official who was head of behavioral sciences for a newly-created counter intelligence unit (CIFA) within DoD, which reported to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. > For Banks, Dunivin, and others at DoD, the attention on the abusive treatment of detainees as a result of the media disclosures of Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, the DoD working group report, and other related events created uncertainty and worry about whether the involvement of psychologists in interrogations would be deemed unethical. Some in DoD, such as civilians Shumate and Kirk Kennedy at CIFA, were pushing APA to move forward with action that would show support for national security psychologists and help end the uncertainty by declaring that psychologists’ participation in interrogations (with some then-undefined limits) was ethical. Others, like military officers Banks and Dunivin, reacted to APA’s movement toward the creation of the task force with concern that APA could head in a negative direction if the task force was not properly set up and controlled, and with awareness that this was an opportunity for DoD. Stephen Behnke. Morgan Banks. Ron Levant. Gerald Koocher. Russ Newman. Barry Anton. Norman Anderson. Michael Honaker. Nathalie Gilfoyle. Rhea Farberman. Debra Dunivin. Scott Shumate. Kirk Kennedy.
shadowmoses 11y ago
American style corruption.
littletimmy 11y ago
It is enlightening to see that the Joseph Mengeles and Shiro Ishiis of our times are not subject to any sanction. Remember folks, this is only the torture that we know. There are dozens of CIA black-sites around the world about which we know next to nothing. It is not too hard to imagine a regime that can torture people via waterboarding can also torture people by, say, forced heroin withdrawal and then just kill them. Just goes to show, the only morality is that of the victor.
- themeek 11y ago
  To expand on the bit about there being more torture than we know: 80% of the CIA report was censored from public view.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  It is enlightening to see that the Joseph Mengeles and Shiro Ishiis of our times are not subject to any sanction. Mengele was actually pursued, but Shiro Ishii is (in)famous precisely for getting away scot-free in the most nonchalant manner possible: simply by releasing the data.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Ishii also threatened to break a jar of cholera in a room full of people. Dude was evil but at least he understood himself.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      Really? Then he was stupid. Breaking a jar of cholera in a room full of people does jack shit and nothing, at most the people would need to shower. At best they should wash their hands before eating. Cholera causes diarea, but that is about it. It is only dangerous when you don't have access to clean drinking water. Also it spreads orally.
      - natermer 11y ago
        If his threat worked then it doesn't mean he is stupid. The people that were stupid were the ones that took it seriously.
coldcode 11y ago
When people in charge of ethics have no ethics where does that leave us?
louithethrid 11y ago
Im wondering, if this could be prevented by providing acountability across generations. If we where to store the names of torturing individuals - and generate a civilian resistance- by refusing to employ, buy and sell to those who engage in torture and everyone decending from them, pressure could be applied. "Im not going to the prom with you, cause your father/grandfather was a torturer" - sounds like something that could hit home. And goverment seems to have escaped all (self)controll otherwise.
- steve19 11y ago
  So don't punish the individuals but punish their grandchildren because they share 1/4 of thier grandparents DNA. Sounds fair. Now how about we make a family tree of all the anti gay marridge activists so we can punish thier great-grandchildren in 80 years time. That will teach them not to be born share DNA with thier great-grandparents.
- polymatter 11y ago
  Social condemnation of torture would be a great start. But unfortunately the average Joe strongly believes that its easy to tell if someone is holding out and that torture is an effective way of extracting information if they were. Programmes like 24 reinforce this image (but are not really to blame - they would hardly be popular if they were realistic). Extending such social ostracism to descendants is ridiculous though. It wouldn't deter the torturers (many of whom probably believe they are doing what is necessary) and would just lead to witch hunts. You'd have better luck with "I'm not going to the prom with you, cause you support torture, so I have no idea what other perverse ideas you think are ok".
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Is this satire? What are you getting at? Stephen Behnke has a PhD and a JD, and he used this amazing education to enable and excuse torture and torturers, and to be besmirch America. Shouldn't he be infamous?
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fredgrott 11y ago
Now for a little more background..you may not like to hear this... The reason for all this is the NSA and CIA and DCI, etc can only brute force break 5% of the Elliptical keys used to encrypt messages. No I will not explain the math behind this as it is very long and long-winded, suffice it to say that instead of the RSA style prime key being the one-way function some characteristics of the curve also become the the one-way function which is why its harder to brute force Elliptical keys than RSA keys.. That being said when dealing with real hard bad guys and gals its often the ugly parts of military that are used to meet the treat. This 'torture' processes were approved under Reagan, including using black sites some what 40 years ago just after a brief rise in terrorism in the 1970s.

205 points by mcgwiz 11y ago

Before anyone gets into the morality of torture. Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence that shows that torture yields good human intelligence?

nabla9 11y ago
Guy Fawkes - he was tortured and gave up his his true identity, the plot and his conspirators.
- dalke 11y ago
  Giles Corey - tortured by peine forte et dure to extract a plea of "innocent" or "guilt", but only responded with "More weight". Margaret Clitherow in the UK also failed to admit guilt or innocence under the same torture. Rebecca West - under torture admitted she had 'carnal copulation with the Devil'.
  - nabla9 11y ago
    Giles Corey was not tortured for information. Neither was Rebecca West.
    - dalke 11y ago
      You are right. I was thinking the torture was to extract information of a guilty/innocent plea. I see now that it was because the court system required that the defendant "submit to it by entering a plea seeking judgment from the court". (Quoting Wikipedia). By not entering a plea, the person has not entered the court system and no judgement can take place.
ipsin 11y ago
What, exactly, are you looking for? Clinical trials of torture? I'm willing to grant that torture will get you some mix of true and false utterances, and then I'd very much like to get into the immorality of torture.
- itistoday2 11y ago
  Well, they've done trials of torture (as the article points out). Maybe he should survey those who were tortured? "I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering." — John McCain http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/John-Mccain-Speech-Senate-Republican-CIA-Torture-Report/383589/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/John-Mcc...
BonsaiDen 11y ago
Torture is by definition neither open (you're not going to tell the public "Oh we just tortured X") nor idependently verifiable (for this multiple entities would need to torture the same person for the same information), so this kind of evidence would be really hard to obtain. Also given the fact that you can't know whether the person you're torturing for intelligence actually knows anything, they might (and probably will) eventually tell you "something" you want to hear, just in order for the torture to stop. At this point though, you'll don't know whether the information is actually viable, you still have to confirm it somehow, which might be difficult depending on what kind of information it is. In case of "The weapons are hidden at X" this is relatively easy to do, you send some agents to check that place out. In the case of "Who do we need to drone strike?" it's not as easy, because you can either kill them or not.
- alejohausner 11y ago
  Back in Roman and Medieval times, torture was not considered inappropriate. There was no need to conceal it. Typically the accused was assumed to be guilty, and torture was a just a way to get him to confess to what the court already "knew" was true. Otherwise the trial could not proceed.
nickbauman 11y ago
When I hear things like Mohammad Atta was waterboarded over 400 times, that very number tells me that it couldn't have been very effective.
- disposition2 11y ago
  I believe you mean KSM, Atta was one of the pilots on 9/11.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    Yes my bad: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
- guelo 11y ago
  I'm sure a few hundred of those times was just for sadistic purposes. Look what they did to Bradley Manning.
  - MBlume 11y ago
    Chelsea, but yes, agreed.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    KSM was a really, really bad guy though. Manning didn't cause any deaths.
disposition2 11y ago
I don't have an answer to the specific question but there are many people, specific to the case(s) surrounding the original 'justification' for using torture, that say just the opposite. Edit: see Frontline (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-politics-and-torture/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-politics-and...) or The Black Banners by Ali Soufan Edit 2: warning on the Frontline doc, it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    > It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know. Some people really are sadists and derive pleasure from the suffering of others. Others are fools or are too apathetic or cowardly to do anything about it. This may very well be the reality of our government. Signs seem to point in that direction.
  - a3n 11y ago
    > It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Because they're thugs.
  - asgard1024 11y ago
    > It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. I think people have very strong convictions (maybe even inborn in us) about how the society should be organized, that contradict empirical evidence. One example is emphasis on punishment, rather than on consensus or other form of persuasion. There is just another article on HN about how psychotherapy may be a better tool for young criminals than putting them into jail. Torture falls into a similar category, IMHO. From evolutionary standpoint, this is perhaps understandable. Punishment is good enough strategy and evolution probably didn't have time/resources to come up with something better, such as more complicated systems of therapy and intelligence gathering and whatnot. Huge societies of today can however afford such advances and don't have to rely on these crude methods.
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littletimmy 11y ago
This is a wrong question. Even if torture yielded absolutely vital information, it would still not be OK.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  While I admire and am grateful for your sentiment on this, if torture did yield "absolutely vital information", the party that uses it would vanquish those who didn't. The fact that we still wonder about this question may indeed prove that it's wrong from a utilitarian point of view.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    That assumes that torture which reveals reliable information doesn't have significant bad effects. For example the police could put away more criminals if they could just torture anybody, but then nobody would ever risk talking to the police, which might mean crime would go up.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
>Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence What do you want? Some twins studies where one is tortured and the other isn't? Maybe look in Mengele's papers. And why do you want to know? Would it be okay if torture "worked"? It's an immoral question if the answer is Yes, let's torture people. Because it does "work". People will tell their secrets, the practical problem is that people who don't have anything to tell will do their best to make up a convincing lie in the hope that the torture will stop.
colechristensen 11y ago
Of course, people sometimes miss the forest for the trees and forget about the obvious. Torture is very effective when you are certain the subject actually knows the target information and the information is easily verifiable. For example, I have a copy of your encrypted hard drive (a copy to prevent self-destructs) and I beat you with a rubber hose until you give me a password that works. This is pretty simple and obviously effective. The ease of verification and quick consequences eliminates the value of lying. If I'm mistaken and it isn't your hard drive, this is treated as a separate failure. I can even see (a very small number of) morally justifiable situations in which this is acceptable. There's a difference when you can't be certain the subject knows the information you want – or if that information isn't easily verifiable. (Where's the leader of your cell going to be next Thursday?) It's often the case that being nice to folks is a whole lot more effective. Especially with the "death to America" kinds of subjects. Kind words, a soft bed, and a hot meal given to a person who was raised in an environment where Americans were believably depicted as monsters can do a lot to make a person cooperative. Especially if you show it as an opportunity to 'get out'. You can hear compelling stories to this effect in many places.
- itistoday2 11y ago
  The point is that torture: 1. Is not helpful or useful even if, by chance, accurate information is given [1,2]. 2. Hurts our national security [2]. 3. Is unnecessary. Given that torture is one of the most harmful options to pick from, it's likely there are other, less harmful options available, and if so, the logical and ethical action is to pursue those instead. On that third point I challenge you to prove me wrong. You won't be able to, however, because we have no meaningful oversight of these practices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867266 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868400
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    It's been understood since at least WWII that the best way to get information from an interrogation is focussed conversation and active listening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff The corollary is that if prisoners are being tortured, the aim is not to get information from them.
alejohausner 11y ago
I think that intelligence gathering is just a cover, or a rationalization, for something more base: some nasty muslim guys killed 3000+ Americans on 9/11, so let's get some revenge on another set of muslims and torture them. It's tit for tat.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
I'm not sure this is the right question. Even if torture worked 100% of the time, and by "worked" I mean: * provided the intelligence quickly * was 100% accurate * and significant Even then, it's not fucking worth it. There's simply no possible intelligence that can outweigh the disadvantages. We stop some roadside IED maybe... and what do we pay for that? We lose the moral high ground, we teach our enemies (not even sure that word is right) that they have nothing to lose by being suicidal in their attacks, that there's nothing to lose in torturing Americans that they themselves capture, and we create 10 more "terrorists" in all his cousins and brothers that arguably have an excuse for what they do. That's not a sustainable model of terrorism reduction. And that's supposing that the intelligence is good. So there's no point in asking whether it works or not.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  Excellent answer. Thank you.
natermer 11y ago
> Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence that shows that torture yields good human intelligence? No, of course not. The thing that governments find desirable about torture is that you can make anybody say anything. That way you can get 'proof' to support your systematic (and highly profitable) murder of people around the world. USA's various drone program is ~4000 lives and counting! We are now having entire generations of people across the world whose sole experience of the USA is the image they seen on a regular basis as children is USA drones terrorizing their country. Not through television or images on reddit, but in the skies above their home towns.
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discardorama 11y ago
There is evidence to the contrary. The FBI, for example, recommends against torture. They say it is ineffective. I can't find a scholarly publication, but this news item can help: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-fbi-interrogator-torture-ineffective/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-fbi-interrogator-torture-inef...

c_prompt 11y ago

A few related articles of interest: Why I Am Not a Member of the American Psychological Association - http://www.chalquist.com/apa.html http://www.chalquist.com/apa.html EMAILS REVEAL CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY GROUP AND CIA - https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/emails-show-close-relationship-psychology-group-cia/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/30/emails-show-cl...

itistoday2 11y ago

I would like to take this moment to point out that John Kiriakou is doing an Indiegogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-whistleblower-who-won-t-be-silenced#/story https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-whistleblower-who-won... It's because of people like him that we know about this at all. He put his life on the line for us. Only he was imprisoned. The torturers [1,2] are still free. Until there are consequences to torture it will continue to happen, and Kiriakou's sacrifice will be in vain. Think about what the pizza delivery man has done for you, and compare that to what Kiriakou did for us all. Consider sending him a monetary thank you for his service to you, to our country, and to humanity. I did. [1] http://www.ibtimes.com/who-cia-torture-report-george-tenet-hassan-ghul-6-other-names-know-senates-1745209 http://www.ibtimes.com/who-cia-torture-report-george-tenet-h... [2] http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/12/15221/whos-responsible-cias-torture-policy http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/12/15221/whos-respons...

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
My word. That is embarrassing. This guy spent years in prison on our behalf, and his campaign is getting nowhere.
- itistoday2 11y ago
  Well, we can all chip in to help move it forward. Behavior like his should be rewarded, and the behavior of those he outed should be punished. How else are we going to stop torture? To send Kiriakou $USD is to take real, meaningful action against torture. There is something to be said for doing good for goodness sake, but wouldn't it be great if people knew that honorable behavior could also be rewarding in both senses of the word?
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    To Twitter! and Friendface!
- meowface 11y ago
  I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to (partly) side with the CIA here. He was not charged due to his reveal of CIA torture in the form of waterboarding. http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news/john-kiriakou-cia-officer-turned-whistleblower-shares-his-story.php http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news... >Months after the ABC interview, a reporter working on a book about the CIA’s rendition practices asked Kiriakou to confirm the name of a covert officer. The book was never published, but the reporter passed the name to an investigator who worked for lawyers defending Guantánamo detainees. Radack maintains that the operative’s name was already an open secret among journalists and human-rights advocates. Revealing the name of a covert agent can jeopardize their life and the lives of others. The claim that it's an "open secret" doesn't exactly hold water (being an oxymoron and all). >John. A. Rizzo, a former lawyer at the Agency, says: “My sense is [Kiriakou] is not a bad man. But he did a bad thing and a stupid thing. The bad thing is that he disclosed the name of at least one covert CIA operative to a reporter via e-mail. The stupid thing is that he lied to the FBI about having done so. These are not trivial criminal offenses.” Kiriakou alleges that his prosecution was retaliation for his leaking of the CIA's waterboarding tactics. And that's certainly possible. Waterboarding is wrong, and I do think he was in the right for admitting that the CIA used waterboarding. But if you reveal the name of someone undercover, you should be aware of the consequences. He served 23 months for leaking the name and for perjuring himself, which doesn't seem unreasonable.

chrisbennet 11y ago

What ever happened to "do no harm"?

stefantalpalaru 11y ago
Psychologists are not psychiatrists, so they are not really part of the medical world. And, anyway, we already gave up this principle when we started doing live donor transplants.
- itistoday2 11y ago
  It's one thing to rationalize "live donor transplants", quite another to make excuses for torture.
  - dalke 11y ago
    More specifically, medical ethics work under the Declaration of Helsinki, and not "first, do no harm". For example, the Declaration says "In medical practice and in medical research, most interventions involve risks and burdens." That is not the same as "do no harm." Also, "While the primary purpose of medical research is to generate new knowledge, this goal can never take precedence over the rights and interests of individual research subjects." and "Appropriate compensation and treatment for subjects who are harmed as a result of participating in research must be ensured." and "No national, ethical, legal or regulatory requirement should be allowed to reduce or eliminate any of the protections for human subjects set forth in this declaration." On the specific topic of the medical ethics of live donor transplants, see http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/1089.full http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/1089.full .
    - Semiapies 11y ago
      The Declaration of Helsinki has to do with medical research ethics specifically, not the broad field of medical ethics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki

jimrandomh 11y ago

Go straight to page 12 of the report, the section titled "key players". Every person named in that section should be brought before a court of law, to determine the truth or falsehood of the accusations in this report. The US criminal justice system has taken a lot of blows to its credibility recently; this is a chance to demonstrate that it still does what it's supposed to... or that it doesn't. > The APA official who led this behind-the-scenes coordination with the DoD officials was the Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke, and the key DoD official he partnered with was Morgan Banks, the chief of psychological operations for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the head of the Army SERE Training program at Ft. Bragg. During the task force’s premeeting communications, during its three-day meetings, and in preparing the task force report, Behnke and Banks closely collaborated to emphasize points that followed then-existing DoD guidance (which used high-level concepts and did not prohibit techniques such as stress positions and sleep deprivation), to suppress contrary points, and to keep the task force’s ethical statements at a very general level in order to avoid creating additional constraints on DoD. They were aided in that regard by the other DoD members of the task force (who, for the most part, also did not want ethical guidance that was more restrictive than existing DoD guidance), and by high-level APA officials who participated in the meeting. > Other leading APA officials intimately involved in the coordinated effort to align APA actions with DoD preferences at the time of PENS were then-APA President Ron Levant, then APA President-Elect Gerald Koocher, and then-APA Practice Directorate chief Russ Newman. Then-APA Board member Barry Anton participated in the selection of the task force members along with Levant, Koocher, and Behnke and in the task force meeting, but was involved substantially less than the others. Other members of the APA executive management group—namely, CEO Norman Anderson, Deputy CEO Michael Honaker, General Counsel Nathalie Gilfoyle, and communications director Rhea Farberman were involved in relevant communications, as described below. > The other DoD official who was significantly involved in the confidential coordination effort was Debra Dunivin, the lead psychologist supporting interrogation operations at Guantanamo Bay at the time who worked closely with Banks on the issue of psychologist involvement in interrogations. At times, they were coordinating their activities with the Army Surgeon General’s Office. There is evidence that Banks was consulting with other military leaders, likely in the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Task Force – Guantanamo, although this was not the focus of our investigation, in part because of our limited ability to access DoD documents and personnel. Another important DoD official involved in some coordination with Behnke was PENS task force member Scott Shumate, a former CIA official who was head of behavioral sciences for a newly-created counter intelligence unit (CIFA) within DoD, which reported to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. > For Banks, Dunivin, and others at DoD, the attention on the abusive treatment of detainees as a result of the media disclosures of Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, the DoD working group report, and other related events created uncertainty and worry about whether the involvement of psychologists in interrogations would be deemed unethical. Some in DoD, such as civilians Shumate and Kirk Kennedy at CIFA, were pushing APA to move forward with action that would show support for national security psychologists and help end the uncertainty by declaring that psychologists’ participation in interrogations (with some then-undefined limits) was ethical. Others, like military officers Banks and Dunivin, reacted to APA’s movement toward the creation of the task force with concern that APA could head in a negative direction if the task force was not properly set up and controlled, and with awareness that this was an opportunity for DoD. Stephen Behnke. Morgan Banks. Ron Levant. Gerald Koocher. Russ Newman. Barry Anton. Norman Anderson. Michael Honaker. Nathalie Gilfoyle. Rhea Farberman. Debra Dunivin. Scott Shumate. Kirk Kennedy.

shadowmoses 11y ago

American style corruption.

littletimmy 11y ago

It is enlightening to see that the Joseph Mengeles and Shiro Ishiis of our times are not subject to any sanction. Remember folks, this is only the torture that we know. There are dozens of CIA black-sites around the world about which we know next to nothing. It is not too hard to imagine a regime that can torture people via waterboarding can also torture people by, say, forced heroin withdrawal and then just kill them. Just goes to show, the only morality is that of the victor.

themeek 11y ago
To expand on the bit about there being more torture than we know: 80% of the CIA report was censored from public view.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
It is enlightening to see that the Joseph Mengeles and Shiro Ishiis of our times are not subject to any sanction. Mengele was actually pursued, but Shiro Ishii is (in)famous precisely for getting away scot-free in the most nonchalant manner possible: simply by releasing the data.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Ishii also threatened to break a jar of cholera in a room full of people. Dude was evil but at least he understood himself.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Really? Then he was stupid. Breaking a jar of cholera in a room full of people does jack shit and nothing, at most the people would need to shower. At best they should wash their hands before eating. Cholera causes diarea, but that is about it. It is only dangerous when you don't have access to clean drinking water. Also it spreads orally.
    - natermer 11y ago
      If his threat worked then it doesn't mean he is stupid. The people that were stupid were the ones that took it seriously.

coldcode 11y ago

When people in charge of ethics have no ethics where does that leave us?

louithethrid 11y ago

Im wondering, if this could be prevented by providing acountability across generations. If we where to store the names of torturing individuals - and generate a civilian resistance- by refusing to employ, buy and sell to those who engage in torture and everyone decending from them, pressure could be applied. "Im not going to the prom with you, cause your father/grandfather was a torturer" - sounds like something that could hit home. And goverment seems to have escaped all (self)controll otherwise.

steve19 11y ago
So don't punish the individuals but punish their grandchildren because they share 1/4 of thier grandparents DNA. Sounds fair. Now how about we make a family tree of all the anti gay marridge activists so we can punish thier great-grandchildren in 80 years time. That will teach them not to be born share DNA with thier great-grandparents.
polymatter 11y ago
Social condemnation of torture would be a great start. But unfortunately the average Joe strongly believes that its easy to tell if someone is holding out and that torture is an effective way of extracting information if they were. Programmes like 24 reinforce this image (but are not really to blame - they would hardly be popular if they were realistic). Extending such social ostracism to descendants is ridiculous though. It wouldn't deter the torturers (many of whom probably believe they are doing what is necessary) and would just lead to witch hunts. You'd have better luck with "I'm not going to the prom with you, cause you support torture, so I have no idea what other perverse ideas you think are ok".
Zigurd 11y ago
Is this satire? What are you getting at? Stephen Behnke has a PhD and a JD, and he used this amazing education to enable and excuse torture and torturers, and to be besmirch America. Shouldn't he be infamous?

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fredgrott 11y ago

Now for a little more background..you may not like to hear this... The reason for all this is the NSA and CIA and DCI, etc can only brute force break 5% of the Elliptical keys used to encrypt messages. No I will not explain the math behind this as it is very long and long-winded, suffice it to say that instead of the RSA style prime key being the one-way function some characteristics of the curve also become the the one-way function which is why its harder to brute force Elliptical keys than RSA keys.. That being said when dealing with real hard bad guys and gals its often the ugly parts of military that are used to meet the treat. This 'torture' processes were approved under Reagan, including using black sites some what 40 years ago just after a brief rise in terrorism in the 1970s.