PRESIDENT Donald Trump says his nation should “fight fire with fire” by using torture on terror suspects, insisting it works.
Does it? Only if you want to coerce someone into stating something they don’t believe or repudiate something they do. Or to gather material to fit a pre-determined political or legal process and spread fear. This has been known for millennia.
However, torture fails utterly as a means of getting at the truth, even more so compared with non-coercive investigative methods.
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The purpose of a modern interrogation is to get reliable, replicable and verifiable information. Professional interrogators say torture is the worst possible method for this.
Neuroscience agrees. Imposing extremes of pain, anxiety, hunger, sleep deprivation and the threat of drowning does not enhance interrogation. It degrades it. We shouldn’t be surprised. Behind the wheel of a car, mild states of sleep deprivation are as risky as drink-driving. Reactions slow, judgement is impaired, and recollection is damaged.
A torturer hopes that enough residual function is unaffected so that intelligence can be gathered. Instead,.
“Imposing extremes of pain, anxiety, hunger and the threat of drowning just degrades interrogation”
What’s the alternative? It is to talk. Humans like to talk. Perhaps 40 per cent of what we say to other people consists of self-disclosure. show that during self-disclosure, the brain’s reward system is activated. In other words, we like talking about ourselves. The legendary German interrogator Hanns-Joachim Scharff knew this, debriefing more than 500 allied airmen during the second world war. He never used coercion, but was incredibly well prepared, cross-checking information carefully. He never asked a direct question, and never indicated any interest in any answer he got. He was adept at taking the pilots’ perspective and actively listening. These skills can be learned, and are not so different from the skills of a highly trained doctor.
The lesson for Trump is simple: fighting fire with fire burns down the neighbourhood.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Pain brings no gain”
