Via two posts from Sullivan, I have learned that the two most successful interrogators and spybusters from WWII, one German and one British, never harmed an inmate.
No German won as many intelligence coups as Hanns Scharff. Scharff worked for the Luftwaffe interrogating allied pilots and bomber crews, so successfully that the U.S. military taught his methods decades later.
Colonel Robin “tin eye” Stephens was a “bristling, xenophobic martinet” who ran a famously successful counterinelligence operation for MI5 out of a basement in London.
In the course of the war, some 500 enemy spies from 44 countries passed through Camp 020; most were interrogated, at some point, by Stephens; all but a tiny handful crumbled.
[…] Many became double agents, secretly working for the British and sending false information back to Germany.
Scharff and Stevens broke more prisoners than anyone else in the war on either side. Interestingly, neither one ever so much as raised their voice against a prisoner.
The terrifying commandant of Camp 020 refined psychological intimidation to an art form. Suspects often left the interrogation cells legless with fear after an all-night grilling. An inspired amateur psychologist, Stephens used every trick, lie and bullying tactic to get what he needed; he deployed threats, drugs, drink and deceit. But he never once resorted to violence. “
…
Scharff was opposed to physically abusing prisoners with the intent to obtain information. Taught on the job, Scharff instead relied upon the Luftwaffe’s approved list of techniques which mostly involved making the interrogator seem as if he is his prisoner’s greatest advocate while in captivity.
[…] After a prisoner’s fear had calmed, Scharff continued to act as a good friend to the prisoner, including sharing jokes, homemade food items, and occasionally alcoholic beverages. Scharff was fluent in English and knowledgeable about British customs and some American, which helped him to gain the trust and friendship of many of his prisoners.
…
Stephens cared not for morality but for results, and these were extraordinary. Once a prisoner in Camp 020 realised he was safe from physical violence, he tended to sing all the louder.
…
Some high profile prisoners were treated to outings to German airfields (one POW was allowed to take a German aircraft for a trial run), tea with German fighter aces, swimming pool excursions, and luncheons among other things. Prisoners were treated well medically at the nearby Hone Mark Hospital, and some POWs were occasionally taken from captivity to visit their comrades at this hospital for company’s sake as well as the better meals provided there. Scharff was best known for taking his prisoners on strolls through nearby woods, first having them swear an oath of honor that they would not attempt an escape during their walk. Scharff chose not to use these nature walks as a time to directly ask his prisoners obvious military-related questions, but instead relied on the POWs’ desire to speak to anyone outside of isolated captivity about informal, generalized topics. Prisoners often volunteered information the Luftwaffe had instructed Scharff to acquire, frequently without realizing they had done so.
…
Stephens did not eschew torture out of mercy. This was no squishy liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten. (Indeed, he was disappointed that only 16 spies were executed during the war.) His motives were strictly practical. “Never strike a man. It is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends upon the false premise.”
Confessions extracted by inflicting pain are most likely to be whatever the victim believes the torturer desires to hear, whatever is necessary to stop the agony.
…
So why do people torture? The answer is simple; when reality doesn’t suit your needs, torture lets you make your own reality. That, of course, was the goal all along.
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
None of our prisoners would validate the idea that Iraq worked with al Qaeda. Then we tortured them, and they did. Amazing.
The salient point that I take home from today’s lesson is that interrogating prisoners takes patience and skill. Stephens and Schiff had the right stuff. Sadly for everyone, the GOP cult of impatient boobs needed a plan B.
***Update***
Also see: the still anonymous interrogator who found abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Sherwood Moran, a Marine interrogator who ‘broke’ supposedly fanatical Japanese soldiers with patience and cultural awareness.
kommrade reproductive vigor
R U SAYING WE SHOULD B LIKE NAZIS AND WIMPY BRITS!Eleventy
/fReichtard
LanceThruster
Also read the story of WWII Marine interogator Sherwood Moran who was quite successful with those fanatical Japanese (I don’t think he waterboarded a single one).
http://home.comcast.net/~drmoran/home.htm
gbear
I bet he doesn’t feel so good about the ‘all of you will be left to study what we did’ part now.
Even if these guys don’t get dragged off and tried in court, the truth of what they did will emerge. It will suck to be them.
LanceThruster
Moran wrote the 1943 memo well-known in his field entitled “Suggestions for Japanese Interpreters Based on Work in the Field.” The posting drew attention because of the document’s clear, emphatic, and persuasive explanations of why sympathetic, familiarly grounded prisoner interrogation was altogether preferable to its opposite.
Brian Griffin
@gbear: even if they don’t get dragged off and tried now, there is no statute of limitations on this.
it will suck to be them. indeed.
mvr
Apart from the other good reasons not to torture, which are sufficient in themselves, there was a tiny nugget in one of the quotations about how it distorts not just what is said in immediate response to torture, but also all that follows.
The guy pointed out that once a prisoner has lied to avoid torture they have a stake in making that lie seem true from there on. So whatever they tell someone later it has to be shaped around the story told to get out of being tortured. Not only do you get bad info as an immediate response, but you get bad info from then on, or at least worse info than you might have gotten. I hadn’t thought of that bit.
Warren Terra
Pshaw. Everyone who’s watched American movies about WWII knows that not only are the Nazis the Bad Guys, but the Nazis are usually played by Brits; this holds up even better with Metaphorical Nazis, like the Imperial officers in the original Star Wars movie.
Obviously, the only way to achieve complete repudiation of Naziism is to torture everyone!
Lavocat
I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
It calls into question everything that has “happened” in the world since just before the 2000 election. The neocons took Nixonian politics to a whole new level, effectively creating a bloodless coup and subverting democracy at every turn.
Before recent events, I looked warily at those conspiratorialists among us who saw Bush/Cheney’s hand in everything from 9/11 to the financial meltdown. Now I seriously wonder.
If anything, The Bush League has taught us all to question EVERYTHING, even magical unity ponies.
But, as evil as torture was, is, and always will be, the point was that torture was used for an even greater evil: the subversion of American democracy and the co-opting and capitulation of major American media, to enable that subversion. The torture of thousands was used to get 300 million Americans to accept the deaths of a million or more Iraqis as simply “the cost of war” in the GWOT – since Iraq and Al-Qaeda were “linked”.
And here we are, still in Iraq, still with Gitmo, still with Bagram, still with Abu Ghraib, still with no war crimes investigations, and now recontemplating military commissions.
Truly, mission accomplished. How do you like your reality now?
dmsilev
But Colonel Klink once waterboarded Hogan, and got him to confess to something or another, so it’s all good.
-dms
Litlebritdifrnt
I’m squiffy! That is all!
gbear
Lavocat, you’re laying out a perversion of democracy that’s been in place for 40 years and then getting your undies bundled because it hasn’t been completely turned around (to your satisfaction) in 100 days?
To be honest, I like a lot about our reality now. I’ve found some joy in the changes that have been made so far. I don’t think I’m delusional in feeling this way.
Litlebritdifrnt
PS) Jelly Babies! Yahoo!
gbear
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Bartender, I’ll have what he’s having.
Litlebritdifrnt
@gbear:
“squiffy aside” what g-bear said, it had been 100 days, personally I think what he has achieved in said 100 days has been quite historic. I cannot even imagine what he is going to do in the rest of his presidency, but then that is just me, I am drunk on the Koolaid. hic.
Litlebritdifrnt
@gbear:
Scuse me “she” thankuverymuch. Hic.
Tattoosydney
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I don’t think you are taking this thread seriously, young lady.
(The good British kind of jelly babies with the white powdery coating? Yum.)
Warren Terra
For anyone else also unfamiliar with the term “Squiffy”, some some help:
P.S. “Squiffy” and “Jelly Babies” in one thread? Are you trying to qualify to become “VeryBritDiffrnt”?
gbear
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Oops, pardon me. The lighting is so bad in here….
smiley
Let’s be real: Those people will never be held accountable. That’s not how it’s done here.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Tattoosydney:
Yup the kind of Jelly babies that can’t be made in the US due to some sort of Nazi prohibition about some sort of red coloring because it cause a nasal drip in someone of 20 million persons who ate Jelly Babies but with a disclaimer and a new ingredients label glued over the original label they can sell Jelly Babies at World Market. There is something seriously wrong with a world that has a problem with Jelly Babies, Jelly Babies are the most inocuous entities on the planet, but for some reason they have to sell Jelly Babies at World Market with the warning label that if you eat said Jelly Babies your chance of dying is lesser than driving a car, flying on a plane, eating spinach, breathing anything etc,
Bostondreams
Man, I can’t believe our government approved methods rejected by the freaking Germans.
First a German Pope, now this. This poor Polish Catholic is so confused…
Litlebritdifrnt
@Warren Terra:
There is an online reference to “squiffy” I am beside myself with glee, in all those online discussions I have had and told people I am “squiffy” I can now refer them to the source…. yeah good times, and Jelly Babies.
Mike P
Every time I read the “we create our own reality quote” (which is widely attributed to Karl Rove), I have to shake my head. It never loses the ability to floor you with its profound misguidedness or delusion.
gbear
@Litlebritdifrnt:
George Harrison would beg to differ:
Litlebritdifrnt
@Warren Terra:
Warren to be totally honest, “squiffy” is the point at which one is just “squiffy” one is not “blind drunk” it is the intermediate point between “buzzed” (a mild alcoholic feeling), “squiffy” (getting a better buzz but still able to have a half rational discussion) to “blind drunk” which results in one singing “God Save the Queen” in a very loud voice to an audience who does not care;.
someguy
Chemical substances, and coercion.
The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Amnesty assert these things are either torture under the Convention Against Torture, or at best are activities that are otherwise prohibited by international law, hence warcrimes. They are in the class of things John Yoo asserted were cruel or inhuman but not rising to the level of torture because they do not cause permanent mental or psychological damage.
I’m a little surprised to see our gracious host speaking glowingly of torture lite and warcrimes in lieu of full on torture. I guess it’s really hard to give up those old Republican habits. Keep working on it, John.
gbear
@Litlebritdifrnt:
open thread now open.
2th&nayle
@Mike P: Is it just me, or does Karl Rove remind anyone else of the Gestapo weasel, Maj. Toht, in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, that got his head melted when they so foolishly opened the Ark? What is it they say about art imitating life? I need a drink.
Tattoosydney
@gbear:
Wheeeeeee!
Warren Terra
@ Litlebritdifrnt
Whom am I to believe, you or The Internets?
iluvsummr
@someguy: You do realize this is a Tim F post right?
2th&nayle
@someguy: For whatever difference it makes to you, this ain’t John’s post! Keep working on it though, guy.
SGEW
I hope you caught the President’s presser the other day, when he said:
(emphasis added)
[Yes, Obama reads the Daily Dish, according to Ambinder.]
Also, re: “Then we tortured them, and they did. Amazing.” Have you ever heard the foxhunting joke?
iluvsummr
What’s amazing is that none of the actors saw the parallels between their certainty/certitude and that of OBL and Al Qaeda. And they still don’t. At least Cheney doesn’t. Not so sure about Bush now.
Wile E. Quixote
@Ron Suskind in The New York Times
@George Orwell in 1984
Wile E. Quixote
@Ron Suskind in The New York Times
@George Orwell in 1984
kay
@Mike P:
If the quote is Karl Rove’s, it amazes me for it’s extreme stupidity and arrogant, delusional pompousness.
He didn’t create any “new reality”.
In fact, “old reality” smacked him in the ass less than 4 years later, when he almost single-handedly drove both the Bush Administration and the Republican Party into a ditch.
His big claim to fame is getting a 3rd generation politician, one who was wealthy, extraordinarily well-connected, and the governor of Texas, elected.
Karl Rove is wildly, insanely, over-rated. I hope like hell Republicans keep hanging on his every word. In any real-world job, he’d be out on his ass.
The only “reality” he created is the one where he is a genius.
Wile E. Quixote
@Ron Suskind in The New York Times
@George Orwell in 1984
iluvsummr
@SGEW: I’d heard a variation on that joke focusing on police extraction of false confessions in different countries.
Ron Beasley
As I wrote here I attended the DIA interogation school in the late 60s. The first thing they taught us is that torture does not work if you are trying to get real information but it does work if you are trying to get the prisoner to tell you what you want to hear. Since the Bush/Cheney cabal was only interested in hearing what they wanted to hear it’s not surprising they would use torture. Just another way to “create reality”.
Just Some Fuckhead
Karl Rove’s genius was selling the religious right a crude dry-drunk and failed scion of blue-blood establishment as some sorta outsider born-again authentic Christian, so much so they still believe it.
SGEW
@iluvsummr: Yeah, as a “joke” it has a long history. The sad thing is that when I originally heard it, the KGB agents were the torturers, and MI-5 and the CIA were the “good guys.”
[when i was a child i thought we were the good guys]
grumpy realist
It’s not “creating reality”, it’s “creating reality inside your own head.”
Akin to waterboarding someone so he will tell you it’s really true, the CIA is in fact broadcasting radio signals to the fillings in your teeth and the world is under the secret control of the Lizard People.
You can torture as many people as you want to get “data that confirm” your suspicions; it still doesn’t make it true.
omen
according to this, britain did torture nazis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/apr/30/obama-administration-torture
Wile E. Quixote
What does that quote from the Ron Suskind article remind me of? Oh, yeah, it reminds me of this:
D. Mason
I think you meant that the mothers of the impatient boob cult needed Plan B, right?
Wile E. Quixote
What does that quote from the Ron Suskind article remind me of? Oh, yeah, it reminds me of this:
omen
No German won as many intelligence coups as Hanns Scharff. Scharff worked for the Luftwaffe interrogating allied pilots and bomber crews, so successfully that the U.S. military taught his methods decades later.
operation paperclip?
after the war, we absorbed a number of nazi scientists into government agencies like the cia. wonder why israel didn’t go after these people like they did others.
Wile E. Quixote
@Ron Beesly
George Orwell wrote about that in 1984
EJ
Worth noting though that Scharff did on occasion threaten to turn captives over to the Gestapo – so, even though there’s no evidence he ever did so, the threat of torture was still there.
neither one ever so much as raised their voice against a prisoner
Are you serious? Stephens was known to oppose physical violence against prisoners, but he used every verbal and psychological trick in the book. Including threats and intimidation if he felt it would work.
Not to mention Stephens was implicated after the war as the administrator of the horrendous Bad Nenndorf interrogation camp.
None of this is an argument for torture, but these guys are hardly an argument against it.
Enlightened Layperson
‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?
I have long thought this was basic to the Bush Administration’s approach to foreign policy. You have to give offense and throw your weight around and force other countries do things they don’t want to do. How else can you be sure they are obeying your will and not their own.
Sort of first cousin to Machiavelli’s famous piece of advice that it is better to be feared than loved because love depends on others and fear depends on you. What they forgot was another important piece of advice from Machiavelli — don’t make enemies unnecessarily.
Enlightened Layperson
The real message from these successful interrogators is that everyone really wants to get along and be friends with the people around them. Nothing is more basic to human nature. The whole point of toughening up and training is fanaticism is to overcome this very basic impulse. And it is never altogether successful.
omen
@Wile E. Quixote:
orwell himself wasn’t above inflicting pain and humiliation. he submitted to the government a list of names of fellow writers he wrongly suspected of being communists.
2th&nayle
@kay: Kay, I think you make a mistake if you under-rate Rove’s “genius”, if you want to call it that. He had the smarts to realize that he could take a under- achieving frat boy, and sale the ‘good ole boy’ image to the ‘less than room temperature’, American public, and at the same time make himself one of the most powerful politicos in the country. And he pulled it off; twice! The trick was to get a certain segment of America to vote against their own interest, which he knew was possible, because he’d seen it done up close and personal with Reagan. I think the other thing that allowed him to be successful was, he’s a ‘dyed-in-the-wool sociopath. All that ever made any difference to him, was getting what Karl wanted! And it didn’t make any difference how dirty he had to play to get it, he never had any integrity to lose. He’s never cared what anybody else thought except to whatever extent they could be used to further his agenda. Sadly, his kind ain’t rare, particularly in politics, in fact, there’s more than enough to go around in both party’s. I can agree that he’s arrogant, pompous and perhaps even delusional, to some degree, but the one thing Karl ain’t, is stupid. IMO, he’s dangerous.
omen
@kay:
the powers that be have been manipulating reality for a long time.
http://phoenixwoman.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/robert-parry-speaks-you-listen/#more-6976
Phoebe
Wile E., it’s the same thing with cops beating confessions out of suspects. They – and prosecutors – have an insane amount of three things: the desire to catch the perp, the ability to justify anything to themselves in the service of that goal, and the ability to delude themselves that they have the right guy, sometimes even after a DNA exoneration. That last is helped along by confirmation bias, which is, as you probably know, a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
So: you have the answer before you even start asking questions. Before your search for information begins. And then everything that comes down the pike, if it confirms your answer you snatch it and put it in your basket, and if it contradicts your answer – no matter how glaringly – you let it float on by. You never saw it, you never tell the defense attorney, you don’t think it’s important, it might not even register.
I hate these people so much it scares me.
John O
Tim, that was very, very good.
What kind of moron thinks they can get honest information from someone by abusing them?
Thanks.
John O
Phoebe, I wonder if you’d be able to relate.
AnneLaurie
The Irish Catholic priests & nuns of my childhood (I was raised at the other end of the Grand Concourse from the parochial school in DOUBT) would aver that the crafty Gui– Italians who run the Vatican didn’t expect the Global Mother Church to survive the new millenium, and therefore had no intention of letting “one of their own” be the figurehead atop the implosion for the history books. Fatuous old JP George Ringo stumbled along for yeeeeears beyond his sell-by date, and the only way to make the Permanent Bureaucracy’s lack of faith in the future more obvious was to elect an *actual* ex-Nazi.
It’s a parallel to the moonbat pessimists who believe that Obama got elected because The THEY knew everything was about to go to shite, so there might as well be an African-American patsy in the Oval Office to get blamed for it all!
John O
Anne Laurie, you really should get yourself a blog.
John Brown
A rose by any other name –
With the expanded executive powers unapposed by law, some future presidential fan of Dick Cheney could take us to another level of centralizing federal power. Once torture is accepted and suspension of habeas corpus is on the books there isn’t much a determined facist couldn’t accomplish.
kay
@2th&nayle:
I think you can date the end of the current run of the Democratic Party to the day a quote like that is attributed to Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod.
When they announce “we create our own reality” that means it’s over.
Karl Rove somehow missed the part where you have to keep getting elected.
I was getting dressed for work the morning prior to the 2006 midterm elections when I heard Karl Rove tell NPR “I have my own math”, explaining how Republicans were going to pick up seats in Congress.
I thought, “yeah, sure you do”.
He doesn’t have special Karl Rove math or a special Karl Rove reality, or we’d still be subjects of the permanent Republican majority. We were sold Karl Rove’s alleged genuis, along with the rest of this crazy dogma.
2th&nayle
@kay: I could be wrong, but I think he said, “I have my own numbers.” Which I’m sure he probably did. They just weren’t able to steal as many votes as they had in the previous elections due to the closer scrutiny at the polling places and the unprecedented voter turnout. But I digress…I don’t disagree with what your saying, and I hope we’ve seen the last of the lyin’ snake. But I doubt it.
kay
@2th&nayle:
He knew they were going to lose. I don’t even blame him for saying it.
Rove can’t appear publicly and say “get out there and vote because we are going to LOSE!”
What bothered me was that liberals bought it. I read comments on liberal blogs that day. There was hand-wringing.
“Karl Rove has a secret plot to throw the midterms!” I wanted to scream. Talk about buying the fear they’re selling.
Rove “The Genius” and Cheney were making regular Wednesday trips to Congress, to give Republicans political directives.
The GOP Congress between 2004 and 2006 was the most politically tone-deaf and inept in my memory.
Rove ran that mess. Why is he a genius, again? Because we’re told over and over that he is?
I read his columns in the WSJ. It’s warmed over tripe from 2004.
kay
Karl Rove probably approved the decision to make Terry Schiavo’s personal tragedy a political wedge.
I mean, that was a really, really bad decision. Yet, he’s the political genius of our time. It’s like results don’t matter. President Bush had a 90% approval rating after 9/11. Karl Rove’s careful handling took him to 25%.
I put Rove in the same category as the ill-fated financial titans of 2001-2007.
Over-hyped, and (should be) exposed as charlatans.
Results are supposed to matter. The end result of Karl Rove’s genius is the implosion of a national Party. Compare that to Howard Dean’s results. One of these people is called a “genius” and, inexplicably, it is Karl Rove. I don’t get it.
Mike in NC
Turdblossom’s so-called genius was an ability to cobble together a strategy to pick up 51% of the vote, no matter what lies and smears had to be deployed. Bash the opposition for being pro-gay, or for not earning that Purple Heart, or being soft on Bin Laden. For scum like Rove, the end justifies the means.
Tsulagi
And don’t forget these guys…
Even before WWII we knew torture didn’t work. And plenty of research and evidence in five decades after WWII supported that. Military and CIA interrogators understood that and were taught techniques that did work.
Then the Party of Bush stupid collective arrived, the divining rods of pure idiocy and incompetence. In a battle of wits, they were way outgunned. Of course, though, for the reality makers doing the stupidest thing possible beyond measure meant they were brilliant. Wingnut Math 101.
kay
@Mike in NC:
I’m harping on this, but what if it’s simply not true?
What if Rove is a terrible political operative? Despite the hype?
Exhibit A: Immigration reform. Supposed to be Bush’s big domestic policy initiative. Beloved of free traders and the real power in the GOP: the cheap labor coalition.
Rove botched it. He lost Latinos AND he lost on free-trader/Grover Norquist-style immigration reform.
Massive blunder. How does someone from Texas manage to completely misread Latino voters?
Yet, he’s a “genius”. I don’t see it.
johnf
Squiffy.
The word squiffy was coined after Prime Minister Asquith who was often – squiffy.
His most famous phrase was ¨Wait and See.¨ A particularly bad brand of matches was named ¨Wait and Sees¨because you had to wait for quite a time after you´d struck them to see if they were going to catch alight.
That´s all the useless information I can remember about Asquith today.
John T
You forgot to mention people’s primitive need for vengeance.
It’s funny when torture apologists try to downplay torture by saying “waterboarding isn’t that bad, it’s actually sort of fun, like frat hazing or a spa treatment” — but then out of the other side of their mouth they’ll say “we have to show those foreign brown people who’s boss by any means necessary and punish them like the animals they are, or else they’ll think we’re pussies.”
someguy
Sorry to impugn you, John. You obviously didn’t root in favor of warcrimes and possible torture (which is how Amnesty and the UN Special Rapporteur and others describe threats and forcibly applied drugs) as a good alternative to beyond-a-fucking-doubt torture. Tim did.
Way to go Tim. I guess you can always argue that it’s how far Bush moved this country to the right, that somebody advocating mere warcrimes in preference to crimes against humanity, is what liberalism is left with.
LanceThruster
If only those in the Shrub Administration would have thought to, “Get a brain [like] Moran!”