CIA AND INTERROGATIONS-TODAY'S DEBATE AND THE HISTORICAL DISCUSSION

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05711430
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: August 29, 2018
• Case Number: F-2018-02370
• Publication Date: March 1, 2011

Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SETZET
Intelligence in Public Literature
CIA and Interrogations �Today's Debate and
the Historical Discussion (U)
Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the
Next Attack
by Mark Thiessen (Washington: Regnery, 2010). 388 pp, appendices and notes.
Nicholas Dujmovic
The use of coercion in interrogation is an
unsettling subject that has been the topic of
numerous emotionally laden treatments.
Though not without its flaws, Mark Thiessen's
valuable book provides a structured and
pointed contribution to much of the debate
about CIA's "enhanced interrogation tech-
niques" (EITs), particularly on two key points:
first, whether application of these techniques
ultimately resulted in useful intelligence that
saved lives, and second, the often too-casual
equation of the techniques with torture
�which exposes CIA officers involved in the
program to criminal investigation and poten-
tial prosecution. (U)
Courting Disaster is both descriptive and
polemical, and the division is reflected in the
lengthy subtitle. Thiessen's account of the
harsh interrogation methods that were part of
the Agency's Detention and Interrogation Pro-
gram is intended, he says, to illuminate an
important, successful, but grossly misrepre-
sented and misunderstood intelligence activity.
His narrative�based on an array of knowl-
edgeable sources and publicly available docu-
ments 1�in fact, is an apologia (in the old
meaning of a reasoned defense) of CIA officers
in the program who applied enhanced tech-
niques and thereby "kept America safe" by
stopping the next 9/11. They are not torturers,
Thiessen says, but heroes. (U)
The polemics are the other side of the coin,
for Thiessen essentially accuses the current
administration of malfeasance by stopping the
Detention and Interrogation Program, accus-
ing CIA officers who participated in harsh
interrogations of engaging in torture, and rais-
ing the possibility of criminal prosecutions.
That side of the book will not be treated here.
(U)
In broad outline, the history of the EITs,
according to Thiessen's account and media
reports, runs between August 2002�after the
Justice Department authorized, albeit orally,
certain coercive interrogation techniques that
CIA then used on Abu Zubaydah�and Septem-
ber 2006�when President George W. Bush
publicly acknowledged the Detention and
Interrogation Program after a media expose.2
During those years, CIA itself suspended the
use of the harsh techniques at least twice
because Agency leaders were concerned that
using them would leave CIA officers vulnera-
ble to prosecution. In both cases, the methods
were resumed after CIA received written Jus-
Thiessen, who had been a speechwriter for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfled and President George W. Bush, writes that his
sources included CIA officers who conducted the interrogations, past and present CIA leaders and senior government officials, and
documentary evidence such as the Justice Department's released memoranda on authorized interrogation techniques and a redact-
ed report on the program in 2004 by the CIA inspector general. (U)
2 Thiessen says he wrote the president's statement after receiving detailed briefings on the program. (U)
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article are those
of the author Nothing in the article should be construed as asserting or
implying US government endorsement of its factual statements and interpre-
tations.
Studies in Intelligence Vol._55, No. 1 (March 2011)
S.elfET 55
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SE916
Courting Disaster
tice Department reassurances that they were
legal. (U)
An internal report on the Detention and
Interrogation Program by CIA's Office of the
Inspector General (OIG) in 2004 alleged cer-
tain abuses, leading to abandonment of the
most controversial technique, waterboarding.
Director Porter Goss suspended the use of EITs
a final time in late 2005 with the expected pas-
sage of the McCain Amendment to the Defense
Appropriation Bill for FY 2006, which prohib-
ited any "cruel, inhuman, or degrading punish-
ment or treatment"�a development that Goss
said "wholly fails to protect CIA officers and
contractors" involved.3 (UHFOU0)
One of President Obama's first acts in Janu-
ary 2009 was to cancel the Detention and
Interrogation Program permanently; terror
suspects held at the time were transferred to
military detention at Guantanamo. In August
2009, the redacted version of the OIG report
that Thiessen often cites in this book was
released. (U)
The most notorious technique, waterboard-
ing, was applied to only three detainees. A
larger set were subjected to other methods that
included will-diminishing techniques such as
sleep deprivation or prolonged standing, as
well as physical methods designed to produce
the impression that far worse was coming, such
as slamming the detainee into a false (and
therefore somewhat elastic) wall or slapping
the detainee's abdomen. (UHFOU0)
Vocal opponents of these methods�includ-
ing members of Congress, the American Civil
Liberties Union, human rights and other activ-
ists, and journalists�insist that all these
approaches, or even any one of them, never
produced good intelligence, constituted tor-
ture, and therefore were not only unjustifiable
but must be prosecuted. Thiessen, however,
basing his case on the testimony of his sources,
argues that the techniques were not torture,
that they were conducted responsibly in the
overall detention program, and that they
yielded invaluable intelligence. (U)
The debate has intensified since the publica-
tion of Courting Disaster, with the two sides
represented by Thiessen on the one hand and
journalist Jane Mayer on the other. Mayer is
famous for her powerful critique of the Bush
administration's prosecution of the war on ter-
ror, The Dark Side (2008).4 Mayer's response to
Thiessen's book was a lengthy book review in
the New Yorker (29 March 2010), to which
Thiessen replied with a point-by-point rebuttal
(NationalReview.com, 14 April 2010). So who is
right? (U)
CIA officers presumably will want to side
with Thiessen for the same reason most
wanted to believe that Tim Weiner's so-called
history of CIA was flawed, because doing other-
wise would call into question the nature of the
organization they work for.5 Getting past insti-
tutional bias and self-interest in wanting to
believe Thiessen, it helps that his arguments
about the interrogation methods and the deten-
tion program generally are well-reasoned
(again, notwithstanding the polemics against
the current administration). Even those who
are not persuaded will be challenged by points
that deserve consideration. (U)
Thiessen says it is a fundamental misconcep-
tion that the use of the methods contravened the
Geneva Conventions. Human rights activists
charged the Bush administration with "trying to
redefine the Geneva Conventions."6 Thiessen
points out that the conventions were intended to
shield civilian populations by offering certain
protections to combatants who followed the laws
of war and by denying those protections to those
who did not. (29) Giving terrorists Geneva pro-
tections, Thiessen asserts, actually undermines
the purpose of the conventions. (U)
3 Goss memorandum for the Director of National Intelligence, 16 December 2005 (U)
'Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (New York: Double-
day, 2008). (U)
Weiner's book was seriously flawed: see my review in Studies in Intelligence 51, no. 3 (September 2007). (U)
6 Evan Thomas, -24' Versus the Real World," Newsweek, 20 September 2006. (U)
56 S,IRET Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SipeT
Courting isaster
Another misconception unfortunately comes
from the fact that the harsh approaches to inter-
rogation were called interrogation techniques.
According to Thiessen, the methods themselves
were never intended to elicit information but
rather to overcome the detainee's resistance and
to bring him to the point at which he would will-
ingly cooperate. Once the detainee was willing
to talk, Thiessen reports (45-48), the team
employing the methods would leave and a com-
pletely different people would begin questioning
or "debriefing." From that point on coercive
methods were not employed�unless the
detainee stopped talking. (U)
A third misconception is that no good intelli-
gence resulted because detainees would say
anything to stop the techniques, and therefore
use of the techniques was completely unjusti-
fied. Thiessen makes a compelling case against
those who hold this position. He offers the case
of Abu Zubaydah (83). At first, thinking CIA
knew more than it did, Zubaydah freely gave
information that led to the capture of Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the 9/11 strategist.
Some coercive techniques were applied when
Zubaydah resisted giving up more, and he was
brought to a state of cooperation in which he
provided information that led to Jose Padilla
and his plot to blow up apartment buildings on
KSM's orders as well as information on future
al-Qa`ida targets in the United States. Zubay-
dah then again stopped talking, so waterboard-
ing was applied, resulting in information that
led to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who had been plan-
ning to hijack airliners to be crashed into
Heathrow Airport and London. (U)
Even more productive, Thiessen shows, was
the application of coercive methods, especially
waterboarding, to KSM (89-90). When cap-
tured in 2003, KSM refused to talk, asked for
his lawyer, and responded to questions about
planned attacks by saying, "Soon you will
know." Once his cooperation was achieved,
KSM gave critical intelligence that led to the
capture of other major terrorists and to the dis-
ruption of plots, for example, to fly an airliner
into the Library Tower in Los Angeles and to
bomb the US consulate and Western resi-
dences in Karachi. (U)
Thiessen also cites or quotes (10-11) from
many senior intelligence authorities�career
and appointed, from both political par-
ties�who have stated that the use of harsh
techniques provided valuable intelligence: CIA
Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael
Hayden, and Leon Panetta; and Directors of
National Intelligence John Negroponte, Mike
McConnell, and Dennis Blair. Even John Bren-
nan, the former senior CIA official who serves
as this administration's top intelligence
adviser, said the United States would be "hand-
icapped" without these techniques. Thiessen
also cites the OIG report (111-13) as affirming
the value of the intelligence received from
those to whom EITs were applied, including
the three detainees who were waterboarded.
(U)
Director Goss in 2005 requested an indepen-
dent review of the Detention and Interrogation
Program's effectiveness from two non-Agency
national security experts, former Deputy
Defense Secretary John Hamre and congressio-
nal staffer Gardner Peckham. Both men inde-
pendently concluded that the program provided
valuable intelligence and was well regulated
(114-16). Peckham praised the program for
operating under "strict guidelines" in a "care-
fully choreographed" approach that yielded
more than half the HUMINT collected against
al-Qa`ida and that disrupted numerous plots.
"In short," Peckham told Thiessen, "the absence
of this program would be a setback of disas-
trous proportions in the war on terrorism." (U)
When the Detention and Interrogation Pro-
gram was canceled in January 2009, Hayden
(still the CIA director for a few days) called the
White House and said, "You didn't ask, but this
is the CIA officially non-concurring." Even
though the most aggressive (and controversial)
interrogation technique, waterboarding, had
7 The Peckham and Hamre reports to DCI Goss This documentary evidence is con-
sistent with Thiessen's account of the reports, which he apparently had not seen, and his interview with Peckham. Hamre declined
to be interviewed for the book. (U//FOU0)
Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
SEXET 57
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SZRET
Courting Disaster
not been conducted for more than three years
before Hayden had become director, he consid-
ered the overall program valuable and did not
want it cancelled. Hayden has since clarified
his view on the efficacy of the program's inter-
rogation techniques in these pages.8
The point I would make to folks who say, "I
don't want you doing this, and it doesn't work
anyway" [is] "Whoa. Stop. The front half of
that sentence, you can say, "I don't want you
doing that. But the back half of that sen-
tence is not yours. That's mine. And the fact is
it did work.
Hayden has made this point in several opinion
articles and in interviews since stepping down
as CIA director. After Thiessen's book
appeared, he wrote that Thiessen should not
have been able to write it "for reasons of secu-
rity and classification.... But I'm glad he did."
Hayden praised the book as a factual "must
read" that illuminates that "this program was
carried out by real people, acting out of duty,
not enthusiasm." 9 (U)
Thiessen includes declassified CIA analyses
in a lengthy appendix (409-37) to underscore
the value of the intelligence gained through the
use of EITs. (U)
No matter how efficacious the Detention and
Interrogation Program might have been, the
morality of the methods it used matters, and
not just for political purposes or institutional
viability. CIA officers want to know�and I
think need to know�that we are the "good
guys," that our overall cause is just, and that
our mission and methods generally are moral,
notwithstanding the occasional lapses in our
history (e.g., drug testing on unwitting individ-
uals). (U)
To answer critics of the techniques who com-
pare CIA officers to inquisitors of the Spanish
Inquisition, the Khmer Rouge, and the Japa-
nese military during World War II, Thiessen
shows that the waterboarding conducted by
CIA was a completely different activity than
the true water torture inflicted by those other
groups, the descriptions of which make for
unpleasant reading (chapter four passim).10
Here Thiessen raises the question about what
"real" torture is. People with some historical
knowledge, may well consider torture some-
thing quite beyond physical discomfort or even
moderate pain, the province of the medieval
iron maiden, the rack, the wheel, the branding
iron, the Judas chair, thumbscrews, rectal
pears, breast rippers, and other mutilating and
horrific devices." More recently, an al-Qa`ida
interrogation and torture manual found in Iraq
in 2007 shows how to use blow torches, electric
drills, head vises, and meat cleavers allegedly
to elicit information but, one suspects, simply
to torture and kill people.12 When one contem-
plates the horror of such acts, it simply might
be the case that CIA officers considered the
prospect of getting a detainee to talk using far
less drastic methods quite tame. (U)
Thiessen relates the story of journalist
Christopher Hitchens, who in 2008 asked to be
waterboarded by Army Special Forces so he
could see what it was like before writing about
it. The waterboarding was duly conducted by
specialists in SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resis-
tance, and Escape) training�the model used
by CIA. Hitchens found the experience panic-
inducing and proclaimed it "torture." Interest-
ingly, because in his own mind he had not
lasted long enough, he asked to be water-
boarded again to see whether he could improve
his record. Thiessen asks, What kind of person
requests to be tortured and then asks for it
again? His answer is that Hitchens actually
demonstrated that the procedure cannot be
considered torture. (U)
� Thiessen also cites Department of Justice's
figures that 26,829 US military personnel were
Mark Mansfield, "A Conversation with Former CIA Director Michael Hayden," Studies in Intelligence 54, no 2. (June 2010): 67. (U)
9 Michael Hayden on DailyCaller.com, 15 February 2010. (U)
i� A typical equation of CIA's program with 20th-century war crimes is the Boston Globes editorial, "The CIA's criminal admission,"
7 February 2008. (U)
" See Robert Held, Inquisition: Torture Instruments from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era (Florence: Qua d'Arno, 1985). (U)
12 http://thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/torture-al-qaeda-style (U)
58 SE ET Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
ET
Courting Disaster
waterboarded as part of SERE training from
1992 to 2001 and asks, Can it be contemplated
that we torture our own troops? There is, he
points out, no "training exemption" for torture
in US law. Legal experts say torture requires
intent to cause severe pain or suffering, a point
made by Attorney General Holder in 2009
when asked to explain why waterboarding US
troops in training was not torture (164). Thies-
sen concludes that�as a matter of law, experi-
ence, and common sense�waterboarding as
conducted by US Special Forces or CIA does
not constitute torture. Tough, Thiessen says,
definitely "tough, but not torture." (U)
Thiessen also wonders (216-27) why, if
waterboarding were torture, Congress would
not have outlawed it. He suspects Congress is
afraid of taking a stand for which it would be
blamed after another devastating terrorist
attack. He also disputes that the Obama
administration has made a moral progression
in preferring to kill or repatriate terrorists
rather than interrogate them, and he argues
against the idea that waterboarding and other
harsh techniques serve to help al-Qa`ida's
recruiting, pointing out that CIA's Detention
and Interrogation Program came after 9/11, the
embassy bombings in Africa, the USS Cole
attack, and the first World Trade Center bomb-
ing. The evidence indicates that successful ter-
rorist attacks, not waterboarding, win recruits
for al-Qa`ida. (U)
Were there abuses? Yes. According to CIA
Inspector General John Helgerson, one
detainee was threatened inappropriately by a
CIA debriefer (i.e. not an individual responsi-
ble for EITs). That abuse was reported, investi-
gated, and referred to the Department of
Justice, which declined to prosecute; the indi-
vidual was administratively disciplined and
resigned from the Agency. An even more egre-
gious incident�a CIA contractor's beating of a
detainee who later died�happened outside the
Detention and Interrogation Program, which
contained controls and procedures designed
specifically to prevent such abuses.13 Nonethe-
less, there was a third case of the inadvertent
freezing to death of a detainee in Afghanistan
(Thiessen errs here in saying this case occurred
outside the Detention and Interrogation Pro-
gram, though it was very early in the program
and the result of negligence). Investigation of a
fourth case, involving the death of an Iraqi
detainee who had been beaten in US military
custody, found no CIA culpability. These four
are tragic cases, to be sure, but three were out-
side the program and cannot be used, as many
do, to disparage that program, and the other,
the unfortunate result of inattention to deten-
tion conditions, was an anomaly. (U)
Thiessen also rejects the charge that CIA
"excessively" waterboarded Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed by subjecting him to the proce-
dure 183 times, the OIG report defined a
waterboard application to constitute "each dis-
crete instance in which water was applied for
any period of time during a session." Since each
waterboarding session would involve as many
as six applications of water lasting from 20 to
40 seconds, a more accurate count of KSM's
waterboarding session would be in the 30s.
Thiessen notes that KSM, the mastermind of
9/11 and the butcherer of Daniel Pearl, was
very tough and that he could shut off the
waterboarding at any time just by talking,
which he eventually did after a total, in all
those sessions, of just 12 minutes of water
application. (U)
The value of Thiessen's book is that it brings
facts and an understanding of the challenges
and pressures faced by CIA officers to the dis-
cussion. Even so, there are problems with
Thiessen's account that prevent an uncritical
embrace of all its findings and that suggest
reasons to be less than confident that he has
the full story. When I read the 2004 IG report"
(the redacted version, since the original
remains compartmented), I found some trou-
bling aspects of the program that Thiessen
doesn't mention or downplays. (UHFOU0)
'3 This case was also referred to the Justice Department and the individual involved was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed. (U)
14 The redacted version of the CIA Inspector General's 2004 report is available on many websites like this one: http://washington-
independent.com/56175/the-2004-cia-inspector-generals-report-on-torture (U)
Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
SET 59
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SEp4T
Courting Disaster
Thiessen's portrayal of CIA officers who
applied EITs to detainees is favorably one-
sided�implying they all supported all aspects
of the Detention and Interrogation Pro-
gram�but the CIA inspector general under-
took the investigation that led to the May 2004
report as a result of a request from the
National Clandestine Service, together with
expressions of concern by employees involved in
the program as early as January 2003 that the
interrogation techniques were going too far.
After interviewing more than 100 persons and
reviewing more than 38,000 documents, the
OIG concluded that "there were few instances
of deviations from approved procedures" but
that early in the program "there were
instances of improvisation and other undocu-
mented interrogation techniques." CIA interro-
gators were new and untrained�the Agency's
established cadre of professional interrogators
had left after the Vietnam War�and CIA did
not begin training the new ones until Novem-
ber 2002. 15 (UHFOU0)
With regard to waterboarding, the OIG con-
cluded�after its review of the famous video-
tapes that are now destroyed�that CIA
interrogators in one location, contrary to what
Thiessen asserts (129), used more water than
that used by SERE instructors. The OIG also ,
found that waterboarding was conducted in a
frequency of applications inconsistent with
Justice Department guidelines that repetition
of EITs "not be substantial"�a conclusion with
which CIA's Office of General Counsel dis-
agreed. The OIG report also documents unau-
thorized techniques, like the use of a stiff brush
to produce abrasions and the use of pressure
points to induce unconsciousness, although
these appear to have been isolated incidents. 16
One can doubt whether these abuses individu-
ally or even collectively rise to the level of tor-
Interrogation in CIA's History (U)
After CIA's use of enhanced interrogation
15 OIG report, 5-6, 25 (U)
i6 Ibid. 37, 44, 69-70. (U)
60 SET
ture�and could argue that they are the sort of
anomalies that almost always occur in com-
plex programs carried out in wartime�but the
question cannot be ducked. (UHFOU0)
Herein lies a cautionary tale for all CIA
employees. CIA personnel throughout the
Agency's history have often found themselves
doing things they believed were right and were
told were right in the pursuit of national secu-
rity but for which they later found themselves
criticized�if not in a court of law, then in the
court of public opinion. The conclusion of Gard-
ner Peckham's investigatory report to Porter
Goss in 2005 spells out the dilemma for CIA
officers:
One gets the sense that there is great pride
felt by those who built and participate in the
program. They know they are doing impor-
tant work that is producing enormously
useful results. It is clear that in some respects,
it is grim work, and no one with whom we
met seems to take joy in it. In fact...eagerness
to participate in EITs by applicants for
[these] jobs is an immediate disqualifier But,
there is also a deep concern expressed...that
as the events of 9111 recede into the past, they
may be held accountable to a changing stan-
dard of behavior As memories of thousands
of innocent lives being snuffed out by terror-
ists grows dimmer with time, they wonder
how the future will judge them and their
actions. (UHF OU0)
For the present, the facts presented by
Thiessen's book and other evidence like the
OIG report suggest the judgment of history will
be that those involved in the Detention and
Interrogation Program, even those few who
applied enhanced interrogation techniques,
were not torturers�and if not heroes, then at
least honorable defenders of our country. (U)
techniques was revealed in 2006, numerous
writers asserted the Agency had never dealt
with coercive interrogation before and there-
Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SE,PRET
Courting Disaster
fore didn't know what it was doing. Jane Mayer
writing in the New Yorker said: "What you need
to know is that the CIA had no experience
really in interrogating prisoners. They had
never really held prisoners before. And so, they
really had no idea how to go about getting
information out of people." 17 (U)
Some commentators�bloggers, mostly
�assumed in the absence of evidence that CIA
was unrestrained in its conduct of such tech-
niques and even gleeful about it. Even Evan
Thomas of Newsweek said the Agency had lit-
tle experience but was "gung ho" for coercive
interrogations.18 CIA, in other words, was por-
trayed as a small child tasting ice cream for the
first time�not knowing what it was but liking
it very much. (U)
This was a caricature, more revealing of
anti-Agency bias than reflective of history. The
actual Agency experience regarding interroga-
tion goes back more than 50 years, and that
record makes clear two things: first, that coer-
cive methods have always been considered
effective to some degree; second, that they have
to be used carefully and not devolve into tor-
ture. (U)
In CIA's infancy, little thought was given to
the issue of coercive methods in interrogation,
other than to assume that such methods would
work. New officers in 1951, for example, were
assured during their operational training that,
if they were to fall into the hands of commu-
nist forces, they would eventually talk.19 Like-
wise, an medical study on
interrogation from 1953 found that, though
"high morale and firm discipline" are the best
defenses against coercive interrogation, "every-
one has his breaking point." 20 Among the tech-
niques thought to work to bring the individual
to this "breaking point" were exhaustion and
sleep deprivation, the administration of pain or
drugs, and creation of a feeling of isolation or
abandonment�all considered part of the eper-
tory of communist security services.21
To validate agents or to collect information
from less-than-willing subjects, CIA in its first
decade found itself in the interrogation busi-
ness and thinking and writing about it in
sophisticated ways. 22 A 1958 Studies in Intelli-
gence article that purported to reflect the col-
lective state of the art said "An interrogation
yields the highest intelligence dividend when
the interrogee [sic] finally becomes an ally,
actively cooperating with the interrogator to
produce the information desired." Torture must
not be used, the article said, not only for moral
and legal reasons but because it risks produc-
ing bad information and rendering the subject
unfit for further use. But the article also made
it clear that "intensive" interrogation occasion-
ally was needed, a "softening up process"
intended to "break" the detainee's will, but not
by crossing the line into physical abuse or tor-
ture. "The recalcitrant subject of an intelli-
gence interrogation must be 'broken,' but
broken for use like a riding horse, not smashed
in the search for a single golden egg." 23
Jane Meyer interview on the Democracy Now! program, 18 July 2008, at http://www.democracynbw.org/2008/7/18/
the_dark_side_jane_mayer_on (U)
IS Evan Thomas. (U)
Is This is the testimony of paramilitary officers John Downey and Richard Fecteau, who were captured by the Chinese communists
in 1952. See Nicholas Dujmovic, "Extraordinary Fidelity: Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952-1973," Studies in Intelligence 50, no. 4
(2006): 21-36. (U)
20 Report of Ad Hoc Medical Study Group, 15 January 1953 Declassified Docitmenrs Reference System IrMRS1 nn CK3100398426.
(U)
icate a efficacy of coercive methods include "Interrogation Guide for Indi-
the Soviets or Their Satellites," 29_M
(b)(3)
(b)(3)
(b)(3)
Because the use of drugs, hypnosis, and the (b)(3)
polygraph in interrogations constitute a parallel but separate history from the use of physical and mental coercion, they are not
addressed here. (U)
(b)(1
22 CIA's reflection on interrogation mirrored a parallel public treatment of the subject�no doubt sparked by interest in interrogative s
methods in the aftermath of the Korean War and communist show trials�in specialized journals; see for example, The Bulletin of (b)(3)
the New York Academy of Medicine 33 (September 1957). (U)
23 Don Compos tpseucil, "The Interrogation of Suspects Under Arrest," Studies in Intelligence 2, no. 3 (Summer 1958): 51-61. (U)
Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
SydT 61
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SZRET
Courting Disaster
CIA's leading interrogators, with their prac-
tical experience, agreed in subsequent Studies
articles, writing in 1960 on
the interrogation of defectors, emphasized the
need, when conducting an "unfriendly interro-
gation," to use the gamut of methods "from
mildly unpleasant ones to measures just short
of violence"�but not to cross that line.
Approved "psychological pressures" included
isolation, irregular sleep schedules, uncomfort-
able temperatures, minimal sustenance, and
"jostling without actual nhvsical harm." Career
interrogator writing just a few
years later, acknowledged the occasional need
for threats and confrontation under strict con-
trols in a contrived, almost theatrical setting,
but recommended against violence, which "cor-
rectly applied, often gets crude results quickly"
because it "lowers the moral caliber of the orga-
nization employing it and soon corrupts the
interrogation staff." 24
The evidence suggests CIA took this admoni-
tion against physical abuse seriously. In 1960,
a CIA employee beat a Soviet bloc defector
undergoing interrogation, and DCI Allen
Dulles summarily dismissed him.25 When coer-
cive methods needed to be used, the strictest
control was the norm. In 1963, the Counterin-
telligence Staff prepared an interrogation man-
ual to provide guidelines, particularly for
"resistant sources," that included a section on
coercive methods that is not very specific about
what procedures work but rather provides an
almost academic discussion of the pros and
cons of their use in general. Most of the discus-
sion concerns psychological stresses, such as
the arrest itself, with only a short general dis-
cussion on the infliction of pain that empha-
sizes its potential to be counterproductive.
Most interesting is the warning that no CIA
interrogator can unilaterally use any form of
coercion and that prior approval mu t be
obtained from the CIA director.28
During the Agency's experience in Vietnam,
CIA officers repudiated physical coercion in
interrogation on practical and moral grounds.
South Vietnamese authorities, aware of the
Americans' antipathy to mistreatment or tor-
ture, strove to hide from them what was an
endemic practice that included electric shock,
beatings, and starvation. Vietnamese commu-
nists who went from South Vietnamese to CIA
custody went from brutal to noncoercive, but
nonetheless skillful, interrogators who often
extracted better information.28
24 Stanley Farndon [pseud.] "The Interrogation of Defectors," Studies in Intelligence 4 (Summer 1960): 9-30. C.N. Geschwind
[pseud], "Counterintelligence Interrogation," Studies in Intelligence 9, no. 1 (Winter 1965): 23-38. (U)
25 This incident was related to the Rockefeller Commission by former Director Richard Helms in 1975: E.H. Knoche memorandum
for Director William Colby, cogf
26 "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation," July 1963,
more Sun through the Freedom of Information Act in 1997. (11)
27
This manual was obtained by the Balti-
28 Thomas Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam (Washington: CIA History Staff, 2001), 283-85. Merle Pribbenow,
"Limits to Interrogation: The Man in the Snow White Cell," Studies in Intelligence 48, no. 1 (2004): 59-69. (U)
62 SE2AT Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430
SET
Courting Disaster
Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko was on the
receiving end of coercive techniques while in
extrajudicial CIA solitary confinement between
April 1964 and October 1967. CIA personnel
hoped to "break" Nosenko to reveal that he was a
dispatched agent, not a genuine defector. Most of
the effort to "break" Nosenko manifested itself in
his spartan living conditions�he was isolated,
subjected to temperature extremes and constant
light, and denied basic comforts, reading materi-
als, and cigarettes. Nosenko lost between 20 and
30 pounds on a severely reduced diet. Question-
ing was intense but involved solely psychologi-
cal pressure: the interrogators verbally
assaulted Nosenko, yelling at him, calling him a
liar, ridiculing him, and threatening him with
unending imprisonment. The interrogations also
were sporadic. One coercive technique, oddly
enough, was not to interrogate him for long
stretches of time, even months. Contrary to the
fictional portrayal of Nosenko's interrogation in
the 2006 film The Good Shepherd, no physical
methods were used, nor were drugs adminis-
tered.29 In the end, Nosenko remained "unbr
ken," and CIA came to believe his story.39
When CIA officers John Downey and Rich-
ard Fecteau were finally released from two
decades of Chinese captivity in the early 1970s,
CIA at last learned from their debriefings what
they had experienced in the early years of their
incarceration: solitary confinement with sen-
sory deprivation, lack of sleep, and repeated,
often threatening interrogations.3' Both men
had talked as a result of these coercive meth-
ods, and their experience was subsequently
used in Agency training courses. (U)
What is interesting in the internal CIA docu-
mentation about Downey and Fecteau is that,
though the Agency described their treatment
as "harsh," not once was it described as "tor-
ture." One may conclude, albeit from an
absence of evidence, that these coercive meth-
ods simply did not qualify, in the minds of CIA
officers, as torture. This is consistent with an
early CIA "interrogation guide" for questioning
individuals who had been in communist captiv-
ity, in which a distinction is made between "tor-
ture" (defined as physical abuse) on the one
hand, and the enduring of loud or continuous
sounds, constant bright light, dietary manipu-
lation, sleep deprivation, prolonged standing,
or extreme hot or cold temperatures on the
other.32 (U)
But that does not mean that all methods
short of physical abuse would be approved in
CIA's ex erience.
So, contrary to Jane Mayer, Evan Thomas,
and others, at the time of the 9/11 attacks CIA
actually had a great deal of institutional expe-
rience with coercive methods, considered coer-
cion efficacious in producing reliable
information, recognized and enforced limits
beyond which interrogators should not go, and
imposed accountability for violations. (U)
Historical knowledge is hardly ever harm-
ful. This context might have been useful for
CIA interrogators after 9/11 who, because of
the threat of imminent follow-on attacks,
sought methods that not only produced reli-
able information but did so quickly. It might
also have comforted them to know they were
not the first to face the challenges.
29 See the CIA History Staff critique of the film in Studies in Intelligence 51, no. 1 (March 2007). (U)
39 A detailed but lurid account of the Nosenko affair is Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), chapters
12 and 13. Nosenko's interrogation records and results
31 Dujmovic, "Extraordinary Fidelity" (U)
32 See "Interrogation Guide." (U)
33
Studies in Intelligence Vol. 55, No. 1 (March 2011)
SR(11- 63
Approved for Release: 2018/08/28 C05711430