> he later became the first military officer to speak out against such practices. He did so not just because he thought they were wrong, but because he thought they were stupid.

You know, just in case you were tempted to think he was a morally decent human being. I still can't believe how casually people talk about one of the shameful human rights abuses in recent history as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked.

If you look at a presidential election as a negotiation between the political class and the electorate, or at the most recent one as an election that became a negotiation or interrogation, then the Trump voters who went for him as a “fuck you” to the system are better understood in this framework. So are the Clinton voters who reportedly stayed home. They felt victimized by the system, like their vote was a bargaining chip that the political class wanted to manipulate them into casting, and not a token to use to communicate their needs to their supposed representatives.

Clinton’s and her supporters’ hectoring about being the lesser of two evils (voter-blaming, the Bernie Bro smear, and not-really-a-progressive who gets things done come to mind) suddenly seem especially inept. The bad news is that the parties seem to want to continue in their disdain for voters, which will continue to be reciprocated. The good news is that even Bernie could come up with a message that resonated enough to get as far as he did with as few connections as he had. Someone else could do the same.

Horrifyingly enough, extracting the truth isn't always the point of these interrogations. In conversations with my friends about this (when I can hold my composure well enough), the main objective of "enhanced interrogation" is to terrify the target population into compliance, or failing that extract bloody satisfaction on the victim.

Not like this is without precedent, Vlad the Impaler is named for his negotiation tactics, and the Roman Empire would on occasion react to a lawbreaker by murdering the city, crucifying the entire population. Modern Westerners (to our credit) don't have the stomach for such shocking brutality anymore, but I don't believe this vicious urge has completely gone away.

> “The last time the US government invested in studying interrogation was 1956,” Steven Kleinman, who works with the HIG, told me. “Great leaps forward in behaviour science have just passed us by,” he said. “Imagine using 1956 technology for signals intelligence!”

Seems odd the article doesn't mention the nazi interrogator Hanns Scharff[h], who was invited to talk in the US after ww2, at all - as the scientist seem to be rediscovering his approach.

Although doing some actual research to document what works is good, obviously....

[h] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff

Before you debate torture, consider what has been done in your name already. Torture is wrong. We should not do it. If you wouldn't want it done to an innocent person, because eventually our faulty systems will scoop up an innocent.

"In November 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-t...

The interviewer, who has remained heroically calm in the face of Diola’s verbal barrage, is not able to move the encounter out of stalemate, and eventually his bosses replace him. When the new interviewer takes a seat, Diola repeats his promise to talk “openly and honestly” to the right person, and resumes his inquisitorial stance. “Why are you asking me these questions?” he says. “Think carefully about your reasons.”

The new interviewer does not answer directly, but something about his opening speech triggers a change in Diola’s demeanour. “On the day we arrested you,” he began, “I believe that you had the intention of killing a British soldier or police officer. I don’t know the details of what happened, why you may have felt it needed to happen, or what you wanted to achieve by doing this. Only you know these things Diola. If you are willing, you’ll tell me, and if you’re not, you won’t. I can’t force you to tell me – I don’t want to force you. I’d like you to help me understand. Would you tell me about what happened?” The interviewer opens up his notebook, and shows Diola the empty pages. “You see? I don’t even have a list of questions.”

“That is beautiful,” Diola says. “Because you have treated me with consideration and respect, yes I will tell you now. But only to help you understand what is really happening in this country.”

This reinforces my belief that there is a sincere, rational (whether you agree or not) reasoned motivation for terrorist attacks, at least in some cases. We in the West just aren't interested in listening to those who we don't agree with.

The Atlantic had a good article on this back in 2003:

The Dark Art of Interrogation

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dar...

OK... How did they measure "rapport"?

The most important relationship he measured was between “yield” – information elicited from the suspect – and “rapport” – the quality of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. For the first time, a secure, empirical basis was established for what had, until then, been something between a hypothesis and an insider secret: rapport is the closest thing interrogators have to a truth serum.

Above all, rapport, in the sense used by the Alisons, describes an authentic human connection. “You’ve got to mean it,” is one of Laurence’s refrains.

"The interviewer, who has remained heroically calm in the face of Diola’s verbal barrage, is not able to move the encounter out of stalemate, and eventually his bosses replace him."

For all we know, the first interviewer was key in setting up Diola's mood such that the second interviewer would be a relief to him, leading to him opening up.

> The suspect, who had a criminal history, had posted messages on social media in support of violent jihad. In a search of his residence, the police had found a bag containing a hammer, a kitchen knife and a map with the location of a nearby army barracks.

I'll be honest, I kind of wish the police hadn't stopped him, because I would love to read a report of how this Mister Bean plan would have worked out for him.

What a hopelessly uninformative title. It's not even taken from the article, which has a far better title.

All scientists are in the business of extracting truth, no?

Well, what was Diola's reasons? I would have loved to be his interrogator! I would have let it take days of him explaining his views to me, if that's what it would have taken. I want to know!

I have noticed a change in the interview techniques portrayed in some police shows. Gibb's team in NCIS is one of those but the British TV series Scott and Bailey really comes closest to what is discussed in this Guardian article. Sometimes Soren in Law and Order comes close as well.

Any police officer who wants to try this could get started by learning some basic psychology and watching a few episodes of these TV series. And also, you need to fix your own psychological issues because these techniques work best when you are not choked up with hate or other emotions. They require empathy for the criminal and to do that, you need to have firm control of your psyche otherwise it will break you to try it.

I am reminded of one of those Sales empowerment books of the 60s and 70s written by a luxury car salesman. He said that you could not be successful unless you genuinely liked your customer, and only then could you help him to spend his money on what you are selling. Part of the book was exercises on how to turn on that "genuine like" within your own psyche.

Let's face it, it takes years of daily practice to become a skilled musician, or a skilled skateboarder or a skilled parcour athlete or... Humans can do amazing things if only they apply themselves with a few years of daily practice. Stage magic is even more so because those folks never stop practicing the most impossible actions.

Actually good article, especially with the disgusting reports about the torturer pseudoscientists that the CIA contracted for their walling and sensory deprecation torture techniques

The truly sad thing is that all these interviews actually go to waste. Their only point is to prove the interviewee guilty, try and then punish them.

I imagine that they have something to tell, time to time, about the reasons why they did what they did and comment on the state of the society. And I don't believe that we gather the findings and then communicate them back to the policy makers so that we are actually able to heal the society.

Oddly enough, while reading this I had a thought about how interrogations are like poking at non newtonian fluids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid

If you push too hard, too fast the particles resist the most. Pushing slowly and gently through yields likes hot butter.

To me - and this is completely anecdotal - is that there usually seems to be 3 criteria that strangers look for before they open up. They are somewhat overlapping, at least in the way that you can use these them to your advantage: Empathy; being impressionable; appearing weak/ignorant in one or more aspects relating to the topic.

So, you don't ask what they did or why they did it. You ask about topics that they may have led them to doing something that they did. Better still, don't ask. Lead the conversation in a way that will make the question will seem more natural.

Then you respond with something like:

"Wow! How on Earth did you handle that? (Impressionable) If that were me (Empathy) I would have [something outlandish]!!! (Weakness/Ignorance)". So now you seem relateable, and somewhat flawed, even moreso than they themselves. Often, they will try to "teach" you about why your reaction is bad, and what a better reaction would be - often with a "real life" scenario as an example.

"Aaah! That's pretty smart! (Impressionable) But I'm not sure I'd be able to handle it as well as that (Weakness)"

From here they feel they are in a position of power. Especially if you seem more impressed by some more arbitrary aspect, than concerned about the more obvious implications (Weakness/Ignorance). They often open up more about other things they've done, which may or not be related to the original question. But you're still gaining their trust. Eventually you subtly stopped being impressed by what they are saying. And this is just by body language, not words. Your eyes don't light up when they are "expected" to (Impressionable). You don't smile wryly before they end their sentences as if to say you know you know where it's heading (Empathy).

The other person starts thinking:

"Why is he/she impressed any more? Is it because they're really that ignorant? Or maybe what I'm saying isn't really that impressive to them? Perhaps I should fill in more details, and maybe I'll tell about some other thing I did"

Now I'm not saying this will work interviewing terrorists/criminals. But this has been my own experience for as long as I can remember. People tend to tell me their darkest secrets (even without me asking) within about 30 minutes of meeting me for the first time, especially when alcohol is involved. I rarely ask directly. People just end up telling me things.

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There's no mention in the article of how likely or unlikely this technique is to produce false confessions when innocent people are interviewed. People do like to talk, and if you make them relaxed an innocent person might be more apt to say something stupid.

The parallels with interviewing engineers are pretty clear to me, there is so much more information exchanged when interviewer and candidate work together than when the interviewer is confrontational and has a “prove that you’re good enough” approach.

My problem with torture is the same I have with death penalty: how would you live with yourself if you later find you got an innocent by mistake?

I don't think you can just apologize and say you had the best of intentions.

I was very glad to read that has finally been scientifically proven that a non-coercive style of interviewing that focuses on establishing rapport works better than a coercive style.

It's definetly interesting, but if this was the secret behind something as important, would it be published ? Why ? '

So a good cop. After this article was published I am sure this is going to work well in the future...

I've heard many times that "torture doesn't work" but I never understood how or why. In my naive mind, if someone pulls out my fingernail and threatens to pull out more if I don't talk, I doubt I would have the courage or resilience to stay silent and take the torture.

Remember your training. STFU. Name, rank, serial number. @retard mods jumping to conclusions: US Army manual dickheads.

Unthinkable ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914863/ ) is a good film with Samuel L Jackson that covers torture and how far is it 'right' to go.

Torture is a form of terror and generally used for its side effect on a target population. Terror as a form of psychological deterrent.

Guardian kindly reframes it as a quest for "truth" complete with cartoon plot of knife and map in kitchen.

"Extracting truth" ?

http://images.gawker.com/18k1yee5hy13mjpg/c_scale,fl_progres...