A Veteran Intelligence Operative On The Great American Interrogation Disaster

Foreign Policy ^ | 1/27/10 | Thomas E. Ricks

[steve-b]

When retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington talks about intelligence, and especially about interrogation issues, I listen. His time in Vietnam was captured well in his book Silence was a Weapon also published under the title Stalking the Vietcong. He ran a secret interrogation operation on an island off the coast of Panama after the invasion of Panama, where, he says, much was learned about Noriega's relations with Cuba and the PLO. He ran a similar secret operation after the 1991 Gulf War. In 2004, he was asked to look into U.S. intelligence operations in Iraq and produced a scathing report that, to my knowledge, has never been released. (As I understand it, the report wasn't classified, but only two copies were made of it.) To my knowledge, he was one of the first people to blow the whistle on Abu Ghraib and on the broader abuse of prisoners that was occurring in many locations in Iraq back then.

Last November, Herrington gave a speech at Fort Leavenworth, sponsored by the CGSC Foundation, in which he explored how U.S. interrogation operations went badly off track after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, becoming both abusive and counterproductive....

One of the most striking aspects of his talk is the cold professional contempt he has for Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who not only encouraged a brutal approach, but were amateurish in doing so....

His bottom line:

"There was no room on our team for charlatans who believed in sleep deprivation, inducing hypothermia, stress positions, face slapping, forced nudity, water boarding, blaring heavy metal music, or other amateurish, ineffective and ethically flawed tricks."

[rlmorel]

"...he was asked to look into U.S. intelligence operations in Iraq..."

By whom?

cui bono...

[tweakDU]

Either the editor of this article misrepresented the source, or the source is lying (I doubt this considering his resume). When sources are first brought into an interrogation they are screened to ascertain their level of resistance, needs and wants, or anything else they may divulge that will give the interrogator an edge in the approach to actual interrogation. The appropriate methods are then employed by the interrogator based on the initial interview. Sources are NEVER automatically given food, water, tickets to Disneyland, or anything until this inital interview is done and the psychological state of the source is determined.