Hat Tip to Phil Carter and Stu Herrington for bringing this U.S. Government Printing Office (Government Book Talk) book review to our attention.Interrogation: World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq is an absolutely fascinating read. This book from the National Defense Intelligence College takes both an historical and policy-oriented view of prisoner of war interrogations in three wars. The World War II section examines the Army's use of Japanese Americans -- Nisei -- as interrogators in the Pacific, along with incisive discussions of why Japanese soldiers seldom were taken prisoners, why a relatively high percentage of such POWs cooperated with their interrogators, and why they furnished such a significant amount of intelligence to their captors (the Japanese military hierarchy assumed that their men would not become prisoners and so did not indoctrinate them about the importance of not giving up information if they were.) This part of the book also analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the Army and Navy Japanese language training both services provided during the war.
The Vietnam section focuses on profiles of the most able interrogators in World War II (the wonderfully named R.W. G. "Tin Eye" Stephens for the British and Hans Scharff for the Germans) and a number of successful American officers during the Vietnam conflict. Throughout the book, the authors make the point that linguistic ability, a deep understanding of the captives' culture and worldview, and a perception that torture or other violent methods were useless in soliciting information of value are the hallmarks of a successful interrogator of prisoners. This part of the book also describes these individuals' occasional conflicts with the military bureaucracy, such as Sedgwick Tourison's experience in reporting more information about the Tonkin Gulf incident than his superiors wanted to hear.
The final section, on Iraq, focuses on policy issues -- specifically, whether Army doctrine should permit Special Operations personnel to interrogate prisoners. Again, real-world examples from personal experience provide a study that is both gripping and insightful.
Interrogation: World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq is a thoughtful and provocative analysis of what any army confronts in war -- the need to gather intelligence from prisoners, the most effective way to do that, and the ineffectiveness of "harsh methods" in delivering useful information.
You can read the book here or get a copy from GPO here.
Comments
This isn't a bad read, but it is essentially just a compilation of three student papers from NDIC, not a true in-depth historical study of interrogation in the three title conflicts. Some of the source material cited in the papers are the truly valuable read, if you're squeezed on time.
The first paper is focused on interrogation in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Not bad, but Major Moran's 1943 memo (referenced several times in the piece and can be downloaded here: http://www.w-z.com/articles/article023.pdf ) despite its age and brevity, remains an even more insightful and useful read for those interested in interrogation methodology and techniques.
The second piece on Vietnam-era interrogation is also a decent read, but of the three main sources cited, Tourison's "Talking with Victor Charlie: An Interrogator's Story" is perhaps the best read for today's military interrogators. As a Vietnamese linguist who worked the spectrum in-country from tactical interrogation with the 173rd to Strategic Debriefing at the JIC, Tourison does a great job of describing the language, intelligence and methodological challenges of conducting interrogations in that environment.
The final paper is simply a narrative recounting an SF team's attempt to conduct interrogations in Iraq. Although an interesting read, there is little in the way of substantive interrogation lessons to be gained from the story of amateurs floundering about trying to elicit information. More of a cautionary than an instructional tale.
1. Maybe all commenters should read Herrington's out of print book "Silence Was A Weapon" before anyone makes any comments on Pop-centric COIN. I have repeatedly mentioned it here but there was a surprising lack of interest in the book-does not surprise me as Stu mentions things that have a strong parallel to the current Afghan COIN environment.
Maybe they should also read his critques of the interrogation processes/problems found at Abu G in 2004-but basically ignored by the Army.
2. Do we really want to open up a discussion on the constant failure/poor quality of Army/service wide interrogators starting at Abu G and going down to the BCT levels?
3. Do we really want to open up a discussion on the failures of a robust HUMINT exercise package which has been lacking at all CTCs including Ft. Irwin since 2006 and is still lacking? Theses failures were even briefed to the former G-2 of the Army in June of 2007 at Ft. Irwin.
4. Do we want to open up a very detailed lack of quality real world focused training of new interrogators at Ft. H that at least up through 2008 refused to teach the "direct approach" to young interrogators as TRADOC felt that it was a to difficult approach to teach although it had the most success in Iraq and Afghanistan.
5. Do we want to reopen a former SWJ thread on the concept of different types of new and innovative interrogation techniques discussed in a Military Science Boards discussion on interrogation?
This would include a thorough discussion of the concept of "spiral questioning" which was panned in a SWJ thread even though it had been taught for a long number of years to EAIT interrogation graduates and strategic debriefers.
Based on previous SWJ threads on this tropic I would say the tropic has been "cussed, discussed and dismissed"-simply because all talk about the issue, but nothing inherently changes.
Prove me wrong-especially after reading Stu's out of print book and his Abu G critque.
It should be noted that the CTC's especially Ft. Irwin never did not update their MSO scenario package until Jan 2010---how many years after Iraq and Afghanistan were in progress?
An old thread on a similar topic <a href="http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=76829#post76829">h…;.