In How to Interrogate Terrorists, Heather MacDonald explains the futility of the 16 approved interrogation approaches (e.g., Pride and Ego Down and Fear Up Harsh):
But the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. ?Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,? writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors ?not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.?Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture — a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.
One “stress technique” is to make a detainee stand. The interrogator simply reads a book until he’s willing to talk:
The prisoner starts to fall; the guards stand him back up. If he falls again, and can?t get back up, Martin can do nothing further. ?I have no rack,? he says matter-of-factly. The interrogator?s power is an illusion; if a detainee refuses to obey a stress order, an American interrogator has no recourse.Martin risks a final display of his imaginary authority. ?I get in his face, ?What do you think I will do next?? ? he barks. In the captive?s mind, days have passed, and he has no idea what awaits him. He discloses where he planted bombs on a road and where to find his associate. ?The price?? Martin asks. ?I made a man stand up. Is this unlawful coercion??