We Have Ways of Making You Talk

I was driving and I may have misheard, but I think NPR rather sat on the real story in its interview this afternoon with Col. Steven Kleinman, the Air Force Reserve Officer who says he protested harsh treatment in Iraq.

If I understood him right, what he observed was not waterboarding and such but rather particular techniques developed, as they say, by the Russians and used by the Chinese.

But the point that got buried, I think, is that these were techniques designed not to extract the truth, but to get the subject to lie--Commie show-trial style, to get him to confess to everything. Here's Kleinman:

Even before the Korean War, during the Soviet show trials that occurred shortly after World War II, we as the U.S. government observed very odd and inexplicable behavior — people claiming to be CIA agents who weren't on the CIA payroll. More intelligence came in to describe these … interrogation methods that were being used to compel people to produce what can be described as propaganda — a mixture of truth with a heavy overlay of falsehoods.

The interviewer (Robert Siegel) appeared to ignore the point, but I think it is huge. Compelling people to lie? Why could we possibly want a subject to lie? Certainly not for show trials (or at least not yet). The only reason I can think of is bureaucratic: somebody was demanding information and the interrogators (or their handlers) wanted to provide it.

So, aside from torture we've got the problem of a bureaucracy gone mad.