Former Interrogator: Torture Report Makes Us Safer

Posted by | December 11, 2014 14:00 | Filed under: Radio Interviews Top Stories War & Peace

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Tony Camerino was a military interrogator who used to write under the pseudonym Matthew Alexander. How to Break a Terrorist explains that you don’t do it by torture. Camerino believes you gain much more information by developing a rapport with your subject. And he believes George W. Bush and Dick Chaney should be prosecuted.

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Copyright 2014 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

51 responses to Former Interrogator: Torture Report Makes Us Safer

  1. Anomaly 100 December 11th, 2014 at 14:04

    “you gain much more information by developing a rappor..”

    So you play them rap music until they give up the info, right?

  2. Anomaly 100 December 11th, 2014 at 15:04

    “you gain much more information by developing a rappor..”

    So you play them rap music until they give up the info, right?

  3. tiredoftea December 11th, 2014 at 14:05

    He, and other of the FBI interrogators who got the valuable information from captives, without torturing them, are being drowned out by the voices who prefer the use of it. Jack Bauer is more than a TV character.

    • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 19:40

      Above, I posted some lengthy quotes from Camerino. Sorry for the length, but they provide a window into the thinking of an interrogator, what works, what doesn’t, and he speaks to the moral aspect as well.

      • tiredoftea December 11th, 2014 at 20:10

        I read it, thanks! I have followed him, and Ali Soufan for some time and admire their courage for speaking out for humane interrogations of suspects.

  4. tiredoftea December 11th, 2014 at 15:05

    He, and other of the FBI interrogators who got the valuable information from captives, without torturing them, are being drowned out by the voices who prefer the use of it. Jack Bauer is more than a TV character.

    • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 20:40

      Above, I posted some lengthy quotes from Camerino. Sorry for the length, but they provide a window into the thinking of an interrogator, what works, what doesn’t, and he speaks to the moral aspect as well.
      Sorry for the length, but it’s just all so good.
      Plus, having done the work beforehand, I want to give y’all material to use elsewhere.

      • tiredoftea December 11th, 2014 at 21:10

        I read it, thanks! I have followed him, and Ali Soufan for some time and admire their courage for speaking out for humane interrogations of suspects.

  5. William December 11th, 2014 at 15:09

    And he believes George W. Bush and Dick Chaney should be prosecuted

    Seriously…..what good would it do?

    • Larry Schmitt December 11th, 2014 at 16:00

      It would never happen. Their friends in the republican congress wouldn’t let it happen.

      • rg9rts December 11th, 2014 at 17:03

        Not if there is an international warrant from the Hague…they will be stuck in the peoples paradise.

        • Larry Schmitt December 11th, 2014 at 18:09

          But I think we both know that won’t happen either. It’s one thing for a leader of Yugoslavia, like Milosevic, to be tried there, but it wouldn’t happen with the leader of a major country when there is doubt in some people’s mind whether he committed crimes at all.

    • rg9rts December 11th, 2014 at 17:02

      We could test the efficacy of rectal feeding on getting to the truth

    • cecilia December 11th, 2014 at 20:28

      we should ALWAYS try to do what’s right.

    • fancypants December 12th, 2014 at 05:37

      the only regrets would be the cost of putting these clowns (above ) on trial. Unfortunately gitmo will be closed soon so we would be burdened with the cost to jail them too.
      Maybe sheriff joe has room in Arizona ?

  6. Larry Schmitt December 11th, 2014 at 15:00

    It would never happen. Their friends in the republican congress wouldn’t let it happen.

    • rg9rts December 11th, 2014 at 16:03

      Not if there is an international warrant from the Hague…they will be stuck in the peoples paradise.

      • Larry Schmitt December 11th, 2014 at 17:09

        But I think we both know that won’t happen either. It’s one thing for a leader of Yugoslavia, like Milosevic, to be tried there, but it wouldn’t happen with the leader of a major country when there is doubt in some people’s mind whether he committed crimes at all.

  7. rg9rts December 11th, 2014 at 16:01

    These monsters condone …even extol..their behavior which we sent men to prison for 70 years ago. Nazis one and all I do hope that the UN does get the warrants for all of them starting with George II

  8. rg9rts December 11th, 2014 at 17:01

    These monsters condone …even extol..their behavior which we sent men to prison for 70 years ago. Nazis one and all I do hope that the UN does get the warrants for all of them starting with George II

  9. rg9rts December 11th, 2014 at 16:02

    We could test the efficacy of rectal feeding on getting to the truth

  10. R.J. Carter December 11th, 2014 at 17:10

    In a way, he’s right. Now other terrorists know, “Holy crap, they really did it!”

  11. R.J. Carter December 11th, 2014 at 18:10

    In a way, he’s right. Now other terrorists know, “Holy crap, they really did it!”

  12. AnthonyLook December 11th, 2014 at 18:26

    We The People Petition

    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/prosecute-bush-administration-officials-cia-officials-and-all-participants-violations-laws-banning/LGWDKxLw

  13. AnthonyLook December 11th, 2014 at 19:26

    We The People Petition

    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/prosecute-bush-administration-officials-cia-officials-and-all-participants-violations-laws-banning/LGWDKxLw

  14. burqa December 11th, 2014 at 19:17

    Camerino is correct.

    We should look to professional interrogators such as he, because they are the most expert authorities on what works best in interrogation.

    Alexander, er Camerino wrote KILL OR CAPTURE How A Special Operations Task Force Took Down A Notorious Al Qaeda Terrorist, (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). The following from page 287 of his book was submitted testimony read by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on May 13, 2009: “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration.”:

    “What works best in the ticking time bomb scenario is relationship building, which is not a time-consuming effort when conducted by a properly trained interrogator, and noncoercive deception. By reciting a line from the Quran at the beginning of an interrogation, I often built rapport in a matter of minutes. Contrary to popular belief, building a relationship with a prisoner is not necessarily a time consuming exercise.
    I also conducted point-of-capture interrogations in Iraqi homes, streets and cars, and I discovered that in these time constrained environments where an interrogator has ten or fifteen minutes to assess a detainee and obtain accurate intelligence information, relationship building and deception were again the most effective interrogation tools. It is about being smarter, not harsher.”

    • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 19:28

      The following is from an op-ed written by Camerino, under the Alexander pseudonym, “Torture’s the Wrong Answer: There’s a Smarter Way,” by Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) Washington Post, November 30, 2008, page B1. I shall break the quote up into 3 posts:

      “I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I’m still alarmed about that today.
      I’m not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me — both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn’t work….
      … Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators’ bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules — and often break them. I don’t have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse. …

      [continued, below]

      • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 19:34

        “… I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology — one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi….
        … Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war’s biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi’s associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader’s location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders. But Zarqawi’s death wasn’t enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.
        I know the counter-argument well — that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that’s not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.” ….
        [continued below]

        • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 19:37

          “… Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche
          still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles.
          And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.
          I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans….
          …Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress — at considerable personal risk.
          We’re told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations — and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror.
          I’m actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We’re better than that. We’re smarter, too.”

  15. burqa December 11th, 2014 at 20:17

    Camerino is correct.

    We should look to professional interrogators such as he, because they are the most expert authorities on what works best in interrogation.

    Alexander, er Camerino wrote KILL OR CAPTURE How A Special Operations Task Force Took Down A Notorious Al Qaeda Terrorist, (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). The following from page 287 of his book was submitted testimony read by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on May 13, 2009: “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration.”:

    “What works best in the ticking time bomb scenario is relationship building, which is not a time-consuming effort when conducted by a properly trained interrogator, and noncoercive deception. By reciting a line from the Quran at the beginning of an interrogation, I often built rapport in a matter of minutes. Contrary to popular belief, building a relationship with a prisoner is not necessarily a time consuming exercise.
    I also conducted point-of-capture interrogations in Iraqi homes, streets and cars, and I discovered that in these time constrained environments where an interrogator has ten or fifteen minutes to assess a detainee and obtain accurate intelligence information, relationship building and deception were again the most effective interrogation tools. It is about being smarter, not harsher.”

    • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 20:28

      The following is from an op-ed written by Camerino, under the Alexander pseudonym, “Torture’s the Wrong Answer: There’s a Smarter Way,” by Matthew Alexander (pseudonym), Washington Post, November 30, 2008, page B1. I shall break the quote up into 3 posts:

      “I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I’m still alarmed about that today.
      I’m not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me — both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn’t work….
      … Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators’ bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules — and often break them. I don’t have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse. …

      [continued, below]

      • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 20:34

        “… I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology — one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi….
        … Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war’s biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi’s associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader’s location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders. But Zarqawi’s death wasn’t enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.
        I know the counter-argument well — that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that’s not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.” ….
        [continued below]

        • burqa December 11th, 2014 at 20:37

          “… Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche
          still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles.
          And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.
          I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans….
          …Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress — at considerable personal risk.
          We’re told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations — and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror.
          I’m actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We’re better than that. We’re smarter, too.”

  16. cecilia December 11th, 2014 at 19:28

    we should ALWAYS try to do what’s right.

  17. fancypants December 12th, 2014 at 04:37

    the only regrets would be the cost of putting these clowns (above ) on trial. Unfortunately gitmo will be closed soon so we would be burdened with the cost to jail them too.
    Maybe sheriff joe has room in Arizona ?

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