The (non)science of interrogations
January 24th, 2007
The debate about psychologist’s participation in interrogations has taken a new turn with the release last week of the new report Educing Information: Interrogation Science and Art — Foundations for the Future. Phase I. Apparently the report was secretly published in December by the Intelligence Science Board but was recently leaked to the Federation of American Scientists, which publicly posted it. [UPDATE May 14, 2007: Charles Morgan claims in the comments that the group preparing this always intended to publish it. I have no reason to doubt him. Evidently I misinterpreted the Nature comment below that the report was leaked.]
It was compiled by a team of Advisers and a Government Experts Committee on Educing Information. Interestingly, these groups include three of the 10 members of the American Psychological Association’s Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security, the so-called PENS Task Force that contained six of nine voting members (there was a non-voting chair) from the military and intelligence communities; half of those six are involved here. The project was directed by Robert Fein, a member of the PENS Task Force.
The report give the Mission
“The Intelligence Science Board was chartered in August 2002 and advises the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and senior Intelligence Community leaders on emerging scientific and technical issues of special importance to the Intelligence Community. The mission of the Board is to provide the Intelligence Community with outside expert advice and unconventional thinking, early notice of advances in science and technology, insight into new applications of existing technology, and special studies that require skills or organizational approaches not resident within the Intelligence Community. The Board also creates linkages between the Intelligence Community and the scientific and technical communities.”
The PENS Task Force, therefore, was not just stacked with military and intelligence officials, but with extremely high-level officials. The choice of these individuals as the people to advise the APA on ethics clearly means that the decision regarding the Task Force’s recommendations was made in advance and members were chosen that would come up with the requisite recommendations. No wonder the Task Force membership was kept secret for as long as possible. There could not possibly be even a hint of legitimacy in a statement by this group that psychologist participation in interrogations was ethical.
It is far past time for the APA to set aside the PENS report, declaring it unacceptable due to the composition of the Task Force and the numerous procedural irregularities that occurred in the preparation of the report.
As for the Educing Information report, it concludes that there is no science-base for interrogations. No expert “knowledge” for the so-called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) of psychologists to use in consulting to interrogators. The BSCT interrogators were just using common sense, and the military’s own SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) experiences as they strove to figure out how to use detainees’ personal weaknesses to break them down.
The Washington Post reported on the Educing Information report last week in their article Interrogation Research Is Lacking, Report Says.
And the journal Nature today published an article online, which I reproduce here:
Interrogation comes under fire; Tough questioning tactics lack scientific foundation, intelligence agencies told
by Geoff Brumfiel
There is no scientific basis for current interrogation techniques, a US government-funded study has found. The report has stirred up controversy by calling for more research into the matter, angering many psychiatrists who believe such work is unethical.
The 374-page study on “educing information” was conducted by the Intelligence Science Board, an independent panel that advises the government’s intelligence agencies. The report concludes that “virtually none of the interrogation techniques used by US personnel over the past half-century have been subjected to scientific or systematic enquiry or evaluation”.
First published in December, the report became public last week after it was leaked to the Federation of American Scientists, a watchdog group based in Washington DC. Members of the study group declined to comment, citing the sensitive nature of their work.
The report provides a comprehensive review of military and law- enforcement interrogation techniques and finds numerous misperceptions, both within and outside professional circles. For example, it concludes that the belief that torture breaks down a subject’s resistance is without technical merit, as is the effectiveness of strategies such as sleep deprivation. It also finds that professional interrogators have as many erroneous beliefs as novices about how to use body language to spot liars, and concludes that current lie-detection technology is still highly unreliable.
In a controversial final chapter, the report calls for a systematic investigation of interrogation techniques to determine which yield the best information, and suggests reviewing the testimonials of former US prisoners of war to understand whether and how torture worked on them.
Finally, it calls for controlled studies on soldiers undergoing survival training and on college students willing to participate in “benign” research.
Such studies might be useful if they are conducted safely and ethically, says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. He points out that regardless of scientists’ position on the matter, US soldiers and intelligence officers seem to be engaging in harsh interrogation practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, so they need to know what works, and what doesn’t. “We have not done very well in the absence of research,” he says.
Others disagree. “I doubt very much that any research could be done in a university setting or that any ethical person would do it,” says Alan Stone, a psychiatrist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Stone points out that interrogation is often designed to induce stress, and that raises a host of “intractable” ethical issues, such as how to gain consent from study subjects.
The fields of psychology and psychiatry are split over whether to carry out such work. In 2005, the American Psychological Association stated that psychologists could participate in interrogation, but not torture.
The American Psychiatric Association, meanwhile, has condemned any such work by its members. Gregg Bloche, a lawyer and psychiatrist at Georgetown University in Washington DC, says: “This underscores the need to make some rules.”
It should be noted that Educing Information is described on the title page as “Phase 1 Report.” Presumably Phase II will report on research studies on the most effective ways to “educe” information. Does waterboarding work better than threatening to kill family members? How effective is using a fear of spiders to break an individual? Should you allow no more than two hours of sleep a night, or is four ok, as stated in the new Armed Forces Manual on interrogations. Or, just perhaps, the good cop, bad cop routine is as effective as these more experimental techniques.
There is a real danger from “terrorists,” albeit an overblown one. Getting information is important, sometimes. But I, for one, do not trust the “intelligence community,” dirtied by involvement in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Baghram, extraordinary renditions, and the secret CIA prisons, to develop “ethical” and “scientifically-supported ways of educing information. By its nature, there will be no public oversight or control of such research as it will, undoubtedly, be classified. After all, we can’t let our enemies know what to expect when captured. And we certainly wouldn’t want other countries using our taxpayer-funded research to “educe information” from their rebels, or even, heaven forbid, from captured Americans.
Of course, the APA will be delighted to have yet another opportunity to demonstrate the importance of psychology to the “national security” effort. They’ll be hoping that those fat research grants will go to psychologists — and not to their arch-rivals, the psychiatrists — as the profession has demonstrated its loyalty.
The lack of scientific knowledge on how to “educe information” will, no doubt be trotted out by the APA leadership as yet another reason why psychologists must “engage” with the intelligence community by participating in interrogations. This call for “scientific eduction” will likely ignite the next phase of our battle against the use of psychological knowledge for human destruction rather than healing.
Entry Filed under: Research Methods, Rights and Liberties, Science, Social Issues, Torture
8 Comments Add your own
1. charles morgan | January 25th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
you are either a scientist or an advocate; you cannot be both. As a scientist you have to check your beliefs at the door and accept that is through the acquisition of empirical evidence that we are able to support or refute a proposition. The absence of evidence for the efficacy of a particular method used by interrogators is not evidence that their methods do not work. this is a question that can be answered empirically. Finally, if we in academia mindlessly adopt the proposition that we can have nothing to do with the national security of our nation, we are as unwise as those who believe that their work in security is exempt from critical analysis and validation.
2. Stephen Soldz | January 26th, 2007 at 9:22 am
You are right that when we are conducting science, our conclusions need to be based on the data, not our prior beliefs. However, scientists remain citizens and choose which topics to pursue and which questions. We do not give up our responsibilities as moral creatures when we undertake science.
Those behind Educing Information are NOT “pure” scientists. They are advocates for aiding the “national security” efforts of one country, the US. They play major policy-making roles in the administration and are actively involved in the interrogation process. this is not science.
We can debate the role of science in regards to our “national security,” and, indeed, what “national security” means. But meaningful debate can only occur in the full light of public discourse, not in secret, classified venues. given the sorry record of our government and of its intelligence establishment in terms of human rights (and in terms of protecting the countries citizens instead of magnifying the number of enemies exponentially), there is no reason to believe these people will do a reasonable job here.
I am not “mindlessly adopting” anything, but, rather, being quite mindful of decades of history and experience.
3. Jeff Kaye | January 29th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Mr. Morgan, you worship at the altar of empiricism, and yet you seem to have very little understanding of the complexity of the subject. The nature of psychological “evidence” has a long and controversial history, but suffice it to say that “testing the efficacy of a particular method” is not a simple matter. There are simple some tests that one cannot do, unless one is a Nazi, and your subjects are in concentration camps.
Stephen, you have hit the nail on the head in your conclusion, but it should have been highlighted at the beginning:
Touting the “lack” of knowledge means tons of big bucks for psychologists, and organizations like Mitre Corporation, as government contracts are made to explore evidence that is already more than sufficient.
The least read portion of the report will likely be its Bibliography. I suggest all read it. It lists over 50 years of such evidence, going back to our studies on POWs returning from North Korea, where, through the Chinese, we discovered a kind of torture (consisting of sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation/isolation, and inducement of fear) that was extremely effective in breaking down individuals. There has been a tremendous amount of research done over the years, much of it still classified. The proposition that there has not been enough research on interrogation methods is a bald lie.
The search of information through torture is a misunderstanding. Torture is almost never about educting information. The unreliability of the technique has been demonstrated over and over. It is about evincing total control and rule by fear.
Volume II of the report should be titled, “Eliciting Control”, a worthy follow-up to the Orwellian-named first volumen, “Educing Information”.
4. charles morgan | May 14th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
It is true that I prefer “empiricism.” However, I do not worship it; I find it compelling as a model of understanding the world around us. It is likely we may differ in our professional training; I do believe that my formal education as a historian of medicine and science does indeed give me the ability to appreciate the complexity of the subject.
Frankly I look forward to hearing more substantive remarks about the issue of educing information as it is larger than the circumscribed issue of interrogation.
I also look forward to you correcting the errors in your blog. You imply that the report has been made available through being leaked; Although some information about the report was available prior to final edits, the report was, as originally intended, published.
Finally, you imply that Volume II of the report should be titled, “Eliciting Control”; This misrepresents both the purpose and content of the report. It is unworthy of you (and reveals a non-scholar approach) to misrepresent the careful work performed by the authors who contributed to the EI report.
5. Jeff Kaye | May 14th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Dear Dr. Morgan,
My education, too, is in the history of science and psychology, although I am now mainly a clinician by training and predilction. By worshipping at “the altar of empiricism”, I did not mean to derogate empiricism, per se. I meant a narrow empiricism that is, ironically enough, given your statement, ahistorical and unattached to real-world concerns and research contexts. I think this is what Dr. Soldz was also getting at.
My quip about “Eliciting Control” gets to the heart of my critique. It was Watson who said psychology was about prediction and control, so I am not so very far off, am I? The new version of “educing information” is precisely about controlling those from whom one wishes to obtain information. Otherwise you could call it, “Asking Politely for Information.”
Your version of empiricism touts an objectivism that lies above the question of research programs and the construction of scientific projects.
For instance, why should, say, studying the stress of capitivity and capture, or of neurophysiological correlates of battlefield stress be questions of empirical concern? Such a question is relevant to how this research is done, what paradigms are used, what assumptions are made, etc. This was true in the 19th century as well, when medical researchers studied tendencies of slaves to run away (”drapetomania”), or measured empirically the head circumferences of different races to look at questions of so-called racial differences.
Also, I think that much of your indignation stems from the fact that your job and research might be at stake if psychologists were to leave the field of national security interrogations. I could be wrong, but if so, it would be honest to say it. As for myself, I profit neither way, from the existence of coercive interrogations, or their banning, from the participation of psychologists in BSCT teams, or from their absence from same, from government funding, or a paucity of the latter.
6. charles morgan | September 3rd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Dr. Kaye,
After seeing your response to our letter from the National Center for PTSD regarding our work, and after seeing your display of behavior at the APA, I am convinced that you are not interested in a curteous or reasonable dialogue. I cannot see any point in continuing a conversation with you. If at some point you are more interested in conversing as a colleague and less as an activist or grand inquisitor, I’d be happy to resume a dialogue.
7. charles morgan | September 3rd, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Dr. Kaye, after seeing your response to the letter I and my colleagues sent to you from the National Center for PTSD regarding our work, and after experiencing your display of behavior during the session in which I spoke at the APA meeting in August of 2007, I am convinced that you are not interested in a curteous or reasonable diagloge. I cannot see any point in continuing a conversation with you. If in the future you are interested in conversing as a colleague and less as an inquisitor, I’d be happy to resume a dialogue.
8. Jeffrey Kaye | September 5th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Dr. Morgan, I take offense at your casting doubts about my integrity and ability to conduct courteous or reasonable dialogue.
I for the life of me cannot see what you found offensive about the letter in response to a letter by you and your colleagues to myself. The latter originated in a query I directed toward you and your co-authors because you had done research on the effects of SERE training. I wondered whether this training could have been used to somehow train others in abusive techniques. You and your colleagues replied in the negative. But later documentation in the form of a report by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense verified my worst fears.
At the time, I suggested that given the circumstances you may wish to consult your university department about any ethical concerns that therefore could arise in your work with SERE. It seems you took offense at this. I am thinking of publicizing the letters now, as it may be the only way I can counter the charges you have made publicly about me.
Perhaps you are upset because I also have a blog and write about the politics in APA around torture. While doing so, I have never broken a confidentiality, or made a false charge. I have never mentioned any correpsondence between us. I was honest with you and your colleagues. I am writing a scholarly article, now near completion, on the history of psychological research and abusive interrogations. I gave an abstract of this at the same “mini-convention” where you spoke, but I don’t remember seeing you in the audience. You can read my presentation online at the Invictus blog.
I am also perturbed that you would say you couldn’t “trust” me (as you told me and a huge audience at the APA convention). I find that you have not always been straightforward yourself. I challenged you on your credentials at the APA convention, because I thought you were hiding associations that were very relevant to the occasion. I did not make anything up. I suggest that you go to the webpage http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/lawenforcementintuition.pdf. When it comes up, do a search on “Charles A. Morgan”. (Remember the conference on the “Nature and Influence of Intuition in Law Enforcement, June 2004 at Marymount University?) I think you’ll see that it was yourself or APA that outed you, not me.
While both involved in the area of behavioral science (although I am much more involved from a clinical aspect), we are on oppositie sides ideologically, as well as on the specific issue of interrogations. As such, you are correct, we don’t have much basis for a “conversation”.
You were right about one other matter as well, and I’d like to correct myself. In my letter that you found so infamous I suggested that you did not have much experience in psychological research around deception. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and hereby take back that characterization. I am sure you are an expert on the subject.
Oh, and by the way, under whatever credentials, you were at that APA/CIA/Rand workshop on deception that looked at how to use sensory overload to overwhelm someone’s system, weren’t you? Now that is one subject I would have a conversation about, if you were ever up to it.
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