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[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Making 'em Talk[/font]
Sunday 14 July 2002
repeated the following Wednesday at 2.30pm
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]US military interrogators are currently having a hard time extracting information from the ex-Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters detained in Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. Hardly surprising - but how do you get inside the minds of hostile captives, without going outside the constraints of the Geneva Convention? Is there such thing as a truth drug? This week we talk to two psychiatrists, as well as one military man with hands-on experience; he's the author of an interrogators' manual entitled "Make 'em Talk".[/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Transcript:
[/font]David Rutledge: Hi, David Rutledge here, welcoming you once again to All in the Mind. And itÂ’s the vulnerability and the resilience of the mind thatÂ’s our subject this week. Specifically, the minds of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters held in American captivity in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. These captives, including the two Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, live in small chain-wire cells, under constant spotlight surveillance, dressed in orange boiler suits, at times manacled and at times blindfolded. And these captives have been specifically chosen for extensive interrogation.
We don’t know exactly what’s going on inside the interrogation rooms. However, we do know that military psychologists and military psychiatrists are supporting the interrogation teams. The captives are classified as “illegal combatants” and not prisoners of war, so they’re not protected under the Geneva Convention. We can therefore assume that when it comes to their interrogation, the gloves will be coming off. Well, it was a Pentagon official who said recently that “all appropriate steps and measures are being taken to turn the interrogations up a notch”. But how exactly are such interrogations “turned up a notch”? What happens to the mind in solitary confinement? and is there such thing as a truth drug?
This week Paul Brennan has gone in search of some answers.
Paul Brennan: We have inherited from the second world war the now comic cliché ‘we have ways of making you talk.’ The interrogator’s aim is to extract from the prisoner information that can be turned against the enemy, either in the military or the propaganda war. Military interrogators work in various ways. The British, prior to interrogating some Irish insurgents, put black bags over their heads and made them stand against a wall with their hands on their heads for days. They bombarded them with 85 decibel noise of whirling helicopter blades. During the Yom Kippur War, some Israeli soldiers captured by the Russians were injected with high doses of a drug that caused screamingly painful muscle cramps and panic breathing. This helped the interrogators. Another high-tech way of giving the prisoner a pummelling without leaving too many bruises, is to use silent and low frequency ultrasound. It induces vomiting, disorientation, epilepsy and can be delivered with accuracy by laser beam.
But it’s still the good old rough-and-ready third degree that remains popular with the front line military. Bob Newman is a former US marine with some practical experience interrogating Iraqis during Desert Storm. He’s written a book about interrogation techniques – which include exhaustion, isolation, degradation and fear. Newman’s book is called Make ‘Em Talk. So what makes a good interrogator?
Bob Newman: First of all, he needs to be mature, and to be focused very tightly on objectives and goals that he wants to reach. He has to be patient and very disciplined. The information that a good interrogator can extract from a source, a prisoner of war, could really make the difference between success on the battlefield and a very bloody failure.
Paul Brennan: Now, tell us about your experience as a fighter/interrogator during Desert Storm. WeÂ’re talking Kuwait 1991.
Bob Newman: We started taking prisoners in staggering numbers, and we did not have enough interrogators, true interrogators, whose fulltime job it is in the Marine Corps to interrogate people, to process quickly enough on the battlefield all of the people we were capturing. So in part, folks up at the regimental and divisional level were relying on the very few people, such as myself, who had some interrogation experience. So we had to do very quick battlefield interrogations, where we wanted tactical information – not strategic information or biographical information, but tactical information – that could help the battlefield commander on the spot. So we wanted to know unit disposition, unit strength, weapons, unit movement, and especially immediate future plans, so that we could prevent those plans from ever taking place.
Paul Brennan: Now, in your book Make ‘Em Talk, some of the interrogation techniques sound to me like torture. Are they?
Bob Newman: No, theyÂ’re not. As a matter of fact, if you read through the book, youÂ’ll see a lot of insistence that it is absolutely unnecessary and absolutely illegal to torture somebody. Torture gains physical compliance, and if you speak to former prisoners of war such as the Americans who ended up in the Hanoi Hilton, the Hoa Lo Prison in downtown Hanoi during our Vietnam War, theyÂ’ll tell you that somebody who has physical control of you can make you do what they want you to do. It doesnÂ’t necessarily mean that torture can get good, useful, practical battlefield information. (my emphasis)
Paul Brennan: A commentator in the Wall Street Journal recently advocated the use of truth serums on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners at Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta. What do you think?
Bob Newman: Well, that’s an old ploy from Hollywood movies, frankly. There is no such thing as truth serum. But if you want to get him to blab a little bit, and feel a little more comfortable, and get him to “open up” if you will, then sodium pentathol can be useful.
Paul Brennan: A Pentagon official said recently that interrogations of Taliban and Al-Qaeda suspects were going to be “turned up a notch”, that’s his phrase. How precisely can interrogations be “turned up a notch”?
Bob Newman: Well, how about this. The first thing we’re going to do is bring in some interrogators that he has not experienced before. And here’s an example: instead of the interrogator coming in, announcing who he is and demonstrating control, that he is in charge of the situation to the source, we could bring in somebody who does not come across as an interrogator. Perhaps he’s posing as a fellow prisoner of war, and is going to use soft sell techniques to get the information out of the prisoner, the real prisoner, without him even knowing that his new room mate is ‘on the other side’. What I really like to use, and I’ve found this to be extremely useful, is sleep deprivation. But what you have to do with sleep deprivation, be very careful that the source does not become so tired that he is giving you information that he thinks is accurate, but in reality is very inaccurate. So that’s a problem there. Another thing that you can always use is the reward system. Let’s say he’s used to getting one bowl of rice and a small piece of meat and all the water he can drink every day. The second one for “turning up the notch” would be to reward him with additional food, food that he really likes. And you can find out what food he really likes by any number of sources. One is to simply ask him what he likes, find out a little bit more about his culture, where he grew up, what would be standard meals for him, and merely show him that by co-operating he will be rewarded. And finally, you can turn up the heat by a technique that refers back to his family. By letting him know and stressing to him that he will survive this situation if he co-operates, and he will be back as soon as we can possibly get him back with his family. He will be repatriated. And therefore that is a reward system as well.
Paul Brennan: Modern interrogation technology has really got the prisoner under itÂ’s thumb.
Bob Newman: Absolutely and that’s what it is: the prisoner is under the interrogator’s thumb. Look at Mr. Abu Zubaida, the number three man in Al-Qaeda, who is under US care right now. He is the guy who, under proper interrogation, gave up the name of American Jose Padilla, a Chicago gangland member who was planning to detonate a radiological or “dirty” bomb in Washington DC. Zubaida gave us Padilla’s name because Zubaida was properly interrogated.
Paul Brennan: Bob Newman, counter-terrorist consultant in Denver Colorado.
Now, even if the interrogations are carried out within the constraints of the Geneva Conventions, the sheer persistence and duration of such interrogations can still leave you in poor mental shape. Professor Derrick Silove is a consultant psychiatrist at the Sydney-based organization STARTTS, Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors. I asked him about the range of symptoms presented by survivors of interrogation.
Derrick Silove: The range is very wide, actually, because we obviously see a skewed sample. We see people who had severe reactions, and we shouldn’t forget that a lot of people go through it without too much trouble. They might have a few sleepless nights and a few bad dreams and that’s the end of it. So we see the high end of the spectrum, of people who have what we call post traumatic stress disorder and/or depression – the two often go together – and when they have the full-blown syndrome, it’s pretty serious. Because then they really have serious sleep disturbances, nightmares, flashbacks, their concentration is impaired, they may be very depressed and even suicidal.
Paul Brennan: Do you have evidence from your patients that confirms that drugs are being used by military interrogators?
Derrick Silove: Yes, thereÂ’s no doubt. ItÂ’s becoming a worldwide trend. Psychoactive drugs are available, both illicit and legal ones, across the world. And they have a very profound effect on reducing resistance.
Paul Brennan: Can you give us an example of how one or two or perhaps three drugs work and help the military interrogator?
Derrick Silove: Well, they often use combinations. So you get a combination of sedative drugs and stimulant drugs, which can be very disorientating, because on the one hand youÂ’re kind of stupefied, and half drowsy and half asleep, which reduces your resistance in a sort of drunk-like state. On the other hand, youÂ’re being aroused and stimulated, and your brain is charging very rapidly, and so you are more likely to talk a lot and spill the beans and free-associate. So it can be incredibly disorientating and undermining when you get these cocktails of drugs.
Paul Brennan: When people come to you as a result of that kind of interrogation, how do you actually pick up the pieces, psychologically speaking?
Derrick Silove: The core strategy is still a counselling approach. That is to re-engage the person; they often feel very cut off from humanity as a consequence, and everything else really flows from that engagement in terms of providing practical assistance, medication sometimes, psychological support of various kinds, and a willingness to actually listen to the story as it unravels. Because people feel very lonely and isolated with this knowledge which theyÂ’ve never often been able to communicate to anybody else, out of shame and guilt and many other reasons.
Paul Brennan: In addition to drugs, military interrogators use – and have used for years – solitary confinement. How does that actually work on the mind?
Derrick Silove: People firstly become very disorientated. They lose track of time, day and night, especially if the lights are left on all the time or they are in dark all the time, so they lose track of time. That in itself is very psychologically undermining. ItÂ’s something that none of us really experience, but if you lose track of time you really get very distressed and disturbed. You also lose a spatial orientation. You start losing track of where you are, what the place is and so on. So you start developing what is almost like a delirium, you really feel like youÂ’re out of touch with reality. People get paranoid, they misinterpret everything as threatening, they become very focused on obsessional thoughts. For example, the next meal becomes the key issue. So their mind become very constrained in its capacity to think widely and broadly, and the sense of loneliness, being cut off from the world is immense.
Paul Brennan: WhatÂ’s the difference in long-term prognosis between those whoÂ’ve survived interrogation without spilling the beans, and those who have in some way either compromised themselves or their friends?
Derrick Silove: I think that makes a huge difference. But I should also say that with so-called modern techniques, very few end up not spilling the beans. Because if the interrogators are well-versed in their trade, it is actually almost impossible to resist. But those who have spilled the beans under certain circumstances, are those people who are very racked by guilt, shame, a sense of being completely devastated by the experience. And they feel that their integrity has been destroyed. I’ve had one patient say “there are just bits and pieces of me left scattered around the interrogation room, I just don’t exist any more as an integrated human being”, and I thought that was a very stark illustration of what it feels like. Especially if you’ve been a militant or someone with very strongly held ethical standards prior to that.
Paul Brennan: Professor Derrick Silove.
Military interrogations hold prisoners in solitary confinement where everything is controlled: the prisonerÂ’s lighting, the noise, the temperature, their air supply, their total visual environment, as well as their access to food, water and ablutions. On top of all this are many possibilities for medical, chemical and electrical interventions into the prisonerÂ’s body and into the prisonerÂ’s mind. So with all this physical and psychological power in the hands of the interrogators, the crucial question is: isnÂ’t it really just a matter of time before the prisonerÂ’s mind is destroyed? Derrick Silove again.
Derrick Silove: I wouldnÂ’t go as far as to say that the mind is destroyed totally or forever. I think people can recover from this. I think they always say theyÂ’ve changed as a person, theyÂ’re not the same person. But I think the key lesson is that there is a threshold beyond which people canÂ’t resist, and the modern techniques very quickly reach that threshold.
Paul Brennan: How important, then, is religious belief?
Derrick Silove: Well, the research certainly shows that adherence to religion can be a very protective factor. There’s no doubt that people who have the comfort of religion – because that’s something that you can take with you into any situation, including solitary confinement – it can make a huge difference. But I also have to say that there are those people who, at the end of these processes, give up on their religion or on any spiritual faith, because they’ve kind of lost faith. And that’s a very devastating experience. They just cannot believe a true god or gods could sanction such a thing, and therefore it actually destroys their faith.
Paul Brennan: If you were trying to help somebody who was perhaps going to go into military interrogation, what kind of advice could you give them as a psychiatrist?
Derrick Silove: Well, it’s interesting that it’s not just psychiatrists, but actually some militant groups in various parts of the world actually do train their cadres to do precisely that. So we have some knowledge about that, and it’s the obvious: the one is to try to draw on the experiences of those who have been through it, to prepare the person exactly for all the variations of interrogation that they’re likely to go through. The second thing, and I think that’s the most helpful, is to tell them to spill the beans – and groups do that nowadays. They say, they tell them quite precisely “don’t spill the beans too quickly, otherwise they won’t believe you. Put up a sham resistance, and then pretend that it’s all over, calmly, and tell them whatever you know”. And the way they prepare them for that is by giving them as little information as possible, in other words make sure that each individual knows very little, and basically elaborate if you need to, with a bit of imagination to satisfy whatever they want. Because basically, withholding that information just doesn’t help in the end.
Paul Brennan: So thereÂ’s no future for the tight-lipped hero?
Derrick Silove: Very little, unfortunately. I think they are more the substance of novels nowadays, rather than reality.
Paul Brennan: Derrick Silove, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.
For many months now, prisoners have been held for interrogation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. TheyÂ’ll all Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters and theyÂ’re all Muslims. What can we surmise about the vulnerability and resilience of their minds in the face of modern interrogation methods? Dr. Malik Badri is Professor of Psychology at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur. HeÂ’s held academic positions in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and has also written a book on contemplation in Islam. Dr. Malik Badri describes the ordeals of Bilal, one of IslamÂ’s first political prisoners during the seventh century.
Malik Badri: Bilal was an Ethiopian slave in Mecca. And his master used to, when he accepted Islam and rejected the bowing to their stone carved gods, he was taken in the hot sun and they would put very heavy stones on them and he would beat him and tell him, “just say something to say that you have refused Islam, and say something good about our gods” but he would only repeat the words ahadun ahad, God is only One. And he was able to feel that all the pain that he received was something that would bring him nearer and nearer to God, since he is sacrificing for the sake of God.
Another prisoner in Islamic history, a man who was put in prison a few centuries ago, was Ibn Taymiyyah. And he was put in prison in Cairo, he was from Damascus. Ibn Taymiyyah was very famous for having said the very famous sentence when he was arrested. He said, “What are they going to do to me? If they put me in prison then this is a chance for me for contemplation. If they send me out of the country, to deport me, it would be like tourism. And if they kill me, I will be a martyr. What can they do to me?”
Paul Brennan: Now, while a Muslim warrior can no longer continue his jihad of the sword, in prison he must continue his mental and spiritual jihad. What does this actually involve?
Malik Badri: They say when the Prophet came from a battle, he said to his companions, “We have returned from the small jihad to the major jihad.” They asked him, “What is the major jihad? What is more than what we were doing?” He said, “The jihad of the soul, the jihad of your desires that take you away from God, is a greater jihad. This is the major jihad.” Prayer is very important, the repetition of certain exhortations to Allah is very important. This by itself will bring about a form of relaxation. It can increase the hormones that are related to relaxation, and make the person in a happy state which cannot be described by words.
Paul Brennan: Would a Muslim see their survival in prison as a kind of divine test, a divine lesson?
Malik Badri: Yes indeed. You see, if man can actually transcend himself to a higher level of reality, then indeed, whatever happens to man in terms of something which is painful, can be explained cognitively by him in two ways. Either this is a way by which God is helping him to forgive his sins, or else it is a way by which God elevates his position spiritually. So people who are in prison, who have this kind of conception, will actually be able to tolerate their imprisonment very well. And they can see that the prison is something which God has sent them in order to improve their status.
Paul Brennan: Now, while solitary confinement can separate every single prisoner from every other prisoner, do you think in some way they can communicate through something like a common heart or a common spirit?
Malik Badri: People when they are in prison, and when they are in solitary confinement, it seems that their psychic ability will be sharpened. I have known of a number of cases in which people who came out of prison, they would say they would actually know about what is happening in their homes, by their dreams. And at times, while they are awake, they would get this kind of – what we call inspiration. I feel that those people who have a belief in a hereafter, and the ability actually to communicate, these people are the ones who can tolerate quite a lot of psychological stress in prison. Even they can tolerate physical stress which does interfere chemically with their brains.
Paul Brennan: How can they spiritually transcend a truth drug?
Malik Badri: When it comes to the chemical, then the bodies of all people are the same. We must say that even we, in the field of psychiatry, we are using these drugs already. And a patient who has a lot of pent up feelings, maybe he has secrets which he cannot say to the doctor, is given a drug at times, and this drug will make him speak. This is what is known as catharsis, or abreaction, and in this sense we are actually using something which can also be used in prisons, to let those in prison who know certain information, can bring it up. Modern technology has actually been able, and modern medicine and modern biochemistry, if used in this manner, it can actually wreck anybody.
Paul Brennan: Dr. Malik Badri, Professor of Psychology at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur.
So there it is: according to one interrogator, one psychiatrist and one Muslim psychologist, all human beings, when subject to the vast battery of interrogation techniques, can be threatened, bribed or just pharmaceutically steered into spilling the beans. This surely dispels forever the romantic vision of the human mind as the resilient repository of the sacred self. The biotechnologies of interrogation, it seems, are heralding the post-human future, where your mind is not necessarily your own.
David Rutledge: Paul Brennan there, reporting on military interrogation.
