We have ways to make them talk

How do interrogations work?

Officially, the U.S. government will say little, other than it is not using torture. But intelligence experts believe American interrogators are using a wide variety of mind games to elicit information about al Qaida’s structure, members, and plans. The first step is compiling a psychological profile of each prisoner, beginning with how much resistance he showed before capture. Did a fighter resist to his last bullet, or was he found cowering in a corner, clutching a photo of his family? Every detail can help interrogators find a prisoner’s weak points, or guess how much he might know, giving them leverage they can use to squeeze out the facts.

How far will we go?

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Interrogators are probably depriving prisoners of sleep, experts say. They’re also likely raising and lowering the temperature of prisoners’ cells, and using what interrogators call “modulating caloric intake”—withholding food and then offering it as a reward for cooperation. Isolation is another tool: Prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being left to stare at the sea for weeks and months on end, contemplating a lifetime in captivity thousands of miles away from their families. “It’s not pulling out fingernails,” one U.S. official told Time, “but it’s pretty brutal.” Paradoxically, such tactics sometimes cause captives to open up, as they begin to see their captors as essential to their most basic needs. If none of this works, captives are sometimes told they will be sent for questioning to their home country; this threat can be effective, because as the captives know quite well, methods there can be far more brutal.

Are any suspected terrorists talking?

Some are, some aren’t. Moroccan police say they used names from a captive questioned by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay to break up a plot to bomb U.S. and British warships. Several recent terror alerts have been linked to information provided by Abu Zubaydah, the chief of operations for Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network. The Bush administration won’t say where he is being held, or what methods are being employed to get him to talk. But intelligence sources have told various newspapers that interrogators are using sophisticated mind games to coax tidbits of information from Zubaydah; by taunting him with the idea that al Qaida has been defeated, for example, they’ve provoked him into making detailed threats about future attacks. Zubaydah, sources said, revealed that a U.S. citizen would try to plant a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the country; with this tip and information from al Qaida documents found in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence arrested Jose Padilla as he stepped off a plane from Pakistan.

What about physical torture?

Some FBI and CIA agents have hinted that this would not be such a bad idea. They complain that al Qaida prisoners have been trained to withstand modern interrogation techniques without spilling what they know. The CIA swore off physical torture after agency training manuals offering tips on its “proper use” surfaced in 1984. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says these days “the T-word” is out of the question. So does Brig. Gen. Mike Lehnert, who runs the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. “There is no torture, whips, there are no bright lights, drugging,” Lehnert said. “We are a nation of laws.”

And torture is illegal?

Yes, both under U.S. law and international treaty. The Supreme Court has ruled that “the Constitution proscribes such lawless means irrespective of the end.” Human rights activists say international treaties also forbid psychological forms of pressure, such as sleep deprivation. “You’re basically not allowed to use anything to overcome the person’s free will,” says Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch.

Do other countries use torture?

Outside the Western world, yes. Prisoners in 80 countries have died at the hands of torturers since 1997, according to Amnesty International. Captured al Qaida training manuals even include warnings about the most brutal countries—Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt. “Egyptian jails are full of guys who are missing toenails and fingernails,” former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro said in USA Today. In 1995, Philippine agents reportedly tried everything to get captured terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad to talk. They “threw a chair at Murad’s head, broke his ribs, forced water into his mouth, and put cigarettes out on his genitals,” according to Slate.com. Nothing worked, until agents pretending to be Israelis said they had arrived to take him to Israel for more questioning. Murad suddenly became a font of real information, detailing al Qaida plots to kill the pope, bomb CIA headquarters, and crash 11 U.S. passenger jets into the ocean.

Does torture work?

That is the subject of fevered debate. Torturers tend to believe it is useful, noting that intense agony always elicits a revelation. But those revelations are often false. In 17th-century Scotland, for example, hundreds of women were accused of being witches, and tortured until they confessed to such magical feats as flying and casting fatal spells. Presumably, these confessions were not wholly true. Opponents of torture say it is primarily a tool to dehumanize and punish the enemy, and that torturers are transformed from interrogators into sadists. Elaine Scarry, author of The Body in Pain, says South Vietnamese torturers had a slogan that illustrated this: “If you are not a Vietcong, we will beat you until you admit you are; and if you admit you are, we will beat you until you no longer dare to be one.”

The truth about truth serum

Former CIA and FBI director William Webster has suggested administering “truth drugs” as an alternative to torture. The best-known truth serum is sodium pentothal, a barbiturate. The drug affects neurotransmitters, opening them up to make personal inhibitions fade away. Between World War II and the 1960s, Cold War scientists experimented with drugs that could coax the truth out of uncooperative sources. Sodium pentothal is most commonly used as an anesthetic in American hospitals. Doctors who work with these and other drugs say they have their limits. Some patients have blurted out confessions to extramarital affairs and other peccadilloes, but most drift off to sleep without revealing any secrets. “All it does is disinhibit you and make you more loose-tongued,” psychiatry professor Steven J. Kingsbury said in the Los Angeles Times. “You’re not necessarily going to be telling the truth.”