Does torture work?

The British successfully used precisely this strategy with German spies during World War II. British counterespionage managed to identify almost every German spy without using torture -- not just the 100 who hid among the 7,000 to 9,000 refugees coming to England to join their armies in exile each year, not just the 120 who arrived in similar fashion from friendly countries, but also the 70 sleeper cells that were in place before 1940. Only three agents eluded detection; five others refused to confess. Many Germans chose to become double agents rather than be tried and shot. They radioed incorrect coordinates for German V missiles, which landed harmlessly in farmers' fields. But for this misdirection, British historian Keegan concludes, in October 1944 alone close to 1,300 people would have died, with 10,000 more injured and 23,000 houses destroyed.

The U.S. Army's field manual for intelligence (FM34-52) notes that simple direct questioning of prisoners was 85 percent to 95 percent effective in World War II and 90 to 95 percent effective in the Vietnam War. What about those 5 percent at the margin? Couldn't savage, unprofessional, hit-or-miss torture yield some valuable information from them? Actually, there was one case in the Battle of Algiers in which torture did reveal important information.

In September 1957, in the last days of the battle, French soldiers detained a messenger known as "Djamal." Under torture, Djamal revealed where the last FLN leader in Algiers lay hidden. But that wasn't so important; informants had identified this location months before. The important information Djamal revealed was that the French government had misled the military and was quietly negotiating a peace settlement with the FLN. This was shocking news. It deeply poisoned the military's relationship with the civilian government, a legacy that played no small part in the collapse of the Fourth Republic in May 1958 and in the attempted coup by some French military officers against President De Gaulle in April 1961.

The French won the Battle of Algiers primarily through force, not by superior intelligence gathered through torture. Whoever authorized torture in Iraq undermined the prospect of good human intelligence. Even if the torture at Abu Ghraib served to produce more names ("actionable intelligence") and recruit informants, torture in the end polarized the population, eliminating the middle that might cooperate. Dividing the world into "friends" and "enemies," those who are with us or against us, meant that we lost the cooperation of those who wished to be neither or who were enemies of our enemies.

Whoever authorized torture in Afghanistan and Iraq also destroyed the soldiers who were ordered to perform it. Studies of torturers show that they would rather work as killers on death squads, where the work is easier. Torture is hard, stressful work. Many torturers develop emotional problems, become alcoholics, beat their families and harbor a deep sense of betrayal toward the military brass that hangs them out to twist in the wind. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib had dreams, dreams that democracy promised to fulfill, dreams that now may never be fulfilled thanks to the arrogance of their superiors.

Those who authorize torture need to remember that it isn't something that simply happens in some other country. Soldiers trained in stealthy techniques of torture take these techniques back into civilian life as policemen and private security guards. It takes years to discover the effects of having tortured. Americans' use of electric torture in Vietnam appeared in Arkansas prisons in the 1960s and in Chicago squad rooms in the 1970s and 1980s.

Likewise, the excruciating water tortures U.S. soldiers used in the Spanish-American War appeared in American policing in the next two decades. For those who had been tortured, it was small comfort when, on Memorial Day 1902, President Roosevelt regretted the "few acts of cruelty" American troops had performed.

Some believe that judges can issue selective torture warrants to security officers in important cases. But the rapid increase in the number of torture warrants issued during the Battle of Algiers is evidence enough that civil servants can exercise little selective control once they have licensed unlimited power.

Others believe that torture occasionally is necessary and that when it is, one should have to answer for one's actions before the law. But "morally justified" torture does not resemble morally justified civil disobedience. Civil rights protesters break the law in public and then submit their behavior to juries and courts. But I know of no modern torturer who voluntarily submitted to public scrutiny and took the heat. Like boasts of bravery, this opinion is too easy to hold when there is no danger of it being tested. Modern torturers operate in secrecy and specialize in techniques that leave no marks. What would we really know of Abu Ghraib in the absence of the photographs?

And once soldiers get away with torture, they repeat it. Few things predict future torture as much as past impunity.

It is easy to criticize the leaders and torture apologists who misled us and continue to do so. What is harder is to determine how to repair the damage. One crazy man can block the well, but it takes the whole village to remove the stone, an Iranian proverb says.

We can learn from the mistakes of other democracies that have tortured. These democracies lost their wars because the brutality they licensed reduced their intelligence, compromised their allies and corrupted their military and government, and they could not come to terms with that.

When the politicians first heard of the torture, they denied it happened, minimized the violence and called it ill treatment. When the evidence mounted, they tried a few bad apples, disparaged the prisoners and observed that terrorists had done worse things. They justified the torture as effective and necessary for the extreme circumstances and countercharged that critics were aiding the enemy. As time passed, they offered apologies but accepted no consequences and argued that there was no point in dwelling on past events.

The torture continued because these democrats could not institutionally recommit themselves to limited power at home or abroad. The torture interrogations yielded the predictable results, and the democracies remained mired in their wars despite overwhelming military superiority against a far smaller enemy. Soon the politicians had to choose between losing their democracy and losing their war. That is how democracies lose wars.

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