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US interrogation dilemma

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The CIA abuse scandal raises questions about how US authorities should go about conducting interrogations of terrorism suspects. The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp. This is The World. Special prosecutor John Durham is just starting his investigation into alleged CIA interrogation abuses. And in the end there may not be a single prosecution out of the case. But the Department of Justice has opened the door to the possibility that CIA officials could face criminal charges for their harsh treatment of terrorism suspects. The move coincides with yesterday’s release of documents on the handling of terrorism suspects by the CIA. Predictably these events have fueled a political fight in Washington over national security. And the Obama administration’s already planning changes in the interrogation procedures it will use. The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

MATTHEW BELL: One question the CIA documents do not answer is whether those so-called enhance interrogation techniques actually produced valuable intelligence.

PHILIP HEYMANN: Nobody knows whether highly coercive things were necessary or not necessary. But they’re going to go to.

BELL: Philip Heymann is a professor of law at Harvard. He’s advised the Obama administration on how to revamp the way it carries out interrogations of terrorism suspects. Heymann says the biggest change President Obama has made is to ban the kinds of coercive interrogation methods that were used during President Bush’s first term.

HEYMANN: If you’re going to renounce coercive ways you want to substitute something that would be the world’s best non-coercive interrogation.

BELL: Some professional interrogators will be uncomfortable with this change but they’re in the minority, says Mark Bowden of the Atlantic Monthly. He’s been writing about interrogations of high-level terrorism suspects since soon after the attacks of September 11.

MARK BOWDEN: Most of the people who work in these institutions and agencies I think understand that when we live in a democracy and the perception of what we do is sometimes more important than what we do and that there’s a huge downside to crossing the line in interrogating prisoners and I think recognize that the approach being taken by the Obama administration is probably a more sensible one for now.

BELL: Bowden says he supports President Obama’s decision to ban coercive interrogation techniques but he also sympathizes with those CIA interrogators who found themselves face-to-face with terrorist suspects back in 2002/2003.

BOWDEN: The kind of thing that I’m reading about today, you know having a gun shot go off in the next room to make a person believe that he might be executed or threatening him with physical torture. These are repellent things but they are, when you get right down to it, simply efforts to frighten the person that you’re talking to. And given the consequences of the sort of attacks that these terrorists make, I for one, am not going to lay awake at night worrying about them having been frightened during questioning.

BELL: What emerges from the CIA documents released yesterday was a lack of clarity early on about where to draw the line during interrogations. Some agents even expressed concerns about breaking the law. The Obama administration has decided to draw the line by using guidelines spelled out in the US Army field manual. But those are basic guidelines meant to be easily understandable to the average GI. The key to getting interrogations right say Mark Bowden will be to put the right people in charge.

BOWDEN: Interrogation is not a science. There’s no gimmicks. There’s no drug that you can give somebody that’ll make them tell the truth. There’s no you know manual that says you know do steps one, two, and three and the person will begin spilling his guts.

BELL: Bowden says most big police departments have one or two people that are recognized as great interrogators and they don’t tend to be the toughest or meanest of detectives. Rather he says they’re usually the most perceptive and the most clever. For The World I’m Matthew Bell.

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