Just How Useful is Torture to US Counterterrorism Efforts?

Upon examining U.S. counterterrorism policies in practice, it has been discovered that very little intelligence was obtained from torture. Moreover, it is hard to overlook the other effects of such harsh methods, including the extraction of false confessions and a significant moral cost.

According to reports, on Dec. 9 the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee issued a Central Intelligence Agency torture investigation report detailing sexual abuse threats, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture exercised upon detainees within secret prisons in Asia and Europe. The report immediately seized the attention of the international community and began a global discussion of the value of torture on intelligence gathering.

Within U.S. politics as well, factors such as the partisan divide have made the issue even more contentious. The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the CIA’s extraction of confessions failed to provide key pieces of intelligence that would otherwise have been unobtainable through conventional interrogation. The CIA’s response, however, was that the intelligence obtained through those means was in fact extremely valuable. To make a proper judgment, one must analyze the merits of each with an eye to interrogation techniques and efficacy.

One should find that in light of the unique threat presented by terrorist bombers and the urgency of stopping attacks in a timely manner, more than a few Western nations have permitted the use of special measures — including torture — on suspects based on the principle of “facilitating the collection of evidence.” But judging by the results of declassified interrogations from the United States, United Kingdom, Israel and other countries, intelligence obtained through torture has proven to be of little use thus far. For example, with the U.S. military operation to kill bin Laden, none of the intelligence was obtained through the torture of captured terrorists, but rather through standard interrogation techniques.

Some experts have pointed out that people who exhibit violent terrorist behavior are usually under the hold of certain extremist ideas and philosophies, so bodily suffering will not necessarily be successful at coercing them into cooperating with national agencies. In fact, torture will at times result in false confessions. France’s crackdown on Algerian terrorists was clear evidence of this.

The torture report also pointed out that out of 20 successful counterterrorism operations, not a single one resulted from these brutal interrogation methods when the intelligence would have been otherwise unobtainable. As a matter of fact, even former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clark has in the past stated that the torture methods utilized by the United States were “disgusting” and ineffective. He pointed out that the U.S. government’s source of information linking al-Qaida, Iraq and weapons of mass destruction was likely a forced confession, and that this information led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It is also found that in the United States, according to the interrogation memoranda of U.S. detention center personnel, unconventional methods in counterterrorism interrogations are categorized into two types; the first requires standard approval, while the second can only be applied after approval and with sufficient reason to believe that the detainee holds key intelligence. From the torture report, however, it is evident that many of those interrogation methods can be marked down as decidedly inhumane. The findings further revealed that among the 119 known detainees of the program while it was active, at least 26 were wrongfully held.

The use of torture in counterterrorism interrogations is now being called into question due to its lack of efficacy and high moral cost. Interrogation practices in Japan, the United Kingdom and other nations show that useful information can be gleaned from terrorists’ minds through hypnosis and analyzing brain waves. This is yet another point to consider when weighing the value of torture to U.S. counterterrorism efforts.