What is the appropriate way to interrogate detainees? There are those who would say, "These people destroyed the World Trade Center" -- putting aside, for the moment, that these aren't those people -- "and there's nothing we could do that would be too harsh if it will prevent another attack."

International law and domestic law are absolutely clear: You can never torture a detainee regardless of the circumstances, even in the midst of a war. Similarly, you can never engage in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment ... My fear is that the military has clearly gone over the line. Our understanding is that the military has adopted a 72-point matrix of different forms of stress that can be imposed upon a detainee as part of "stress and duress" interrogation techniques...

I haven't seen the matrix. But we understand it to describe different kinds of stress that can be put on a detainee -- how much sleep deprivation, how much sensory deprivation, how much sensory overload, what kind of handcuffing you can use -- a variety of different ways of putting pressure on a detainee to try to force him or her to cooperate with an interrogator. Obviously, while there is always some pressure inherent in being questioned or detained, this idea of ratcheting up the pain in various ways is a dangerous process that, I fear, almost inevitably will bring the U.S. government over the line into the area of prohibited cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment.

But imagine for a moment that you're an interrogator, and that you have in front of you a person who has information about an imminent attack on the United States. What would you do to get that information?

That is the classic "ticking bomb" scenario that proponents of torture always bring forward ... But what we've found is that it puts you on a slippery slope that leads to extensive torture. If you can use torture against somebody who today you believe knows where the ticking bomb is, why not use torture on the person who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows where the ticking bomb is going to be in two weeks?

But again, if you are that interrogator, what do you feel comfortable doing to obtain the information you need?

I was a federal prosecutor in a prior life, and I actually dealt with a domestic terrorism case. It's something I've confronted. In these situations, you can offer incentives, you can do plea bargaining, you can engage in very tough questioning. And in fact, witnesses flip. Witnesses cooperate. And all you need is one on the inside, and then you can open everything up.

There are lots of ways you can put pressure on a detainee simply by describing the situation that they're in -- the consequences that are going to result from cooperating and from not cooperating, in a strictly legal sense.

In December, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski told the St. Petersburg Times that conditions at Abu Ghraib were so good that, for the Iraqis being held there, "living conditions now are better in prison than at home." Could she really have been that clueless about what was happening under her command?

I know that she's trying to simply blame military intelligence. I don't fully accept that. If she was the commander of the prison facility, she had not only the power but also the responsibility to ensure that international standards on the proper treatment of prisoners were respected in every part of that facility...

But it was a shared responsibility. She had a duty to ensure that the soldiers under her command respected the basic humanity of the prisoners. But the interrogators also had a responsibility to not be giving orders or suggestions to soldiers to engage in this kind of mistreatment.

An investigation should go up the various chains of command. One clearly has to go up in the direction of Karpinski. The other has to go up the intelligence chain of command.

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