For all the debate about interrogation, little research exists

Barbara Barrett
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The heated debate in recent weeks about harsh interrogation treatments at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere highlights what some scientists have been warning the U.S. for years: that almost no research exists to tell interrogators the best way to get information out of suspected terrorists.

Two years ago, the Intelligence Science Board told top intelligence officials, in a report that ran nearly 375 pages, that more behavioral research needs to be done into the art and science of interrogations. In a series of chapters, researchers raised questions and laid out a strategy that included stress experiments with highly trained military forces, research into behavior in foreign cultures and analyses of historical records from prisoners of war.

However, the recommendations came years after the government had waterboarded, or simulated drowning on two suspects 266 times, after interrogators had stripped the detainees and menaced them with dogs, and after lawyers had given the go-ahead to confine one high-value detainee inside a box with a caterpillar to capitalize on the man's fear of bugs.

"This is a very nasty business with a very important purpose," said Robert Coulam, who wrote the first chapter of the Intelligence Science Board's report, "Educing Information," published by the National Defense Intelligence College.

(More here.)