WHICH IS WHY WE'LL DO IT AGAIN WHEN WE NEED TO:

Now, for the first time, one of the lead interrogators is attempting to tell the other side of the story. Writing under the pseudonym Jason Beale, he has produced a provocative 39-page document in an effort to counter the narrative pushed by Democrats and amplified by journalists eager to discredit the program. The document--which Beale says was reviewed, redacted, and cleared by a U.S. government agency--does not reveal Beale's precise role in the program. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency would not confirm that the CIA was the agency that reviewed Beale's document. And in an email interview, Beale refused even to acknowledge that he conducted interrogations in the CIA program. "The opinions I expressed on interrogations in the document I sent you," he wrote, "are representative of the insight I've gained during my career as an interrogator. While I am aware that you and others may draw some inference from the approved portion of the text as to the basis of my arguments regarding enhanced techniques, I am not presently in a position to elaborate on how I formed those opinions."

Sources familiar with the program independently confirm that Beale served as a senior interrogator beginning in 2004.

Beale's document covers many aspects of the debate over enhanced interrogation--the morality of enhanced interrogation techniques, the use of EITs on U.S. servicemen and women during their survival training, the hypocrisy of public officials who approved the program and later pretended that they opposed it, the unearned authority of several top critics of the program, and, most important, the effectiveness of the techniques. 

News accounts of the forthcoming Feinstein report make clear that a central claim of that narrative will be its most contentious: The techniques didn't work. Beale challenges that contention on the basis of his experience in the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) course taken by intelligence and military personnel exposed to a high risk of capture. Tens of thousands of Americans have been subjected to EITs as part of their SERE training. Beale participated in the course first as a student, then as an interrogator.

As a student, I learned that I could resist, and occasionally manipulate, a talented interrogator during my numerous "soft-sell" interrogations--the rapport-building, we-know-all, pride-and-ego up/down, do-the-right-thing approaches. I had my story relatively straight, and I simply stuck to it, regardless of how ridiculous or implausible the interrogator made it sound. He wasn't doing anything to me--there was no consequence to my lies, no matter how transparent.

I then learned the difference between "soft-sell" and "hard-sell" by way of a large interrogator who applied enhanced techniques promptly upon the uttering of my first lie. I learned that it was infinitely more difficult for me to remember my lies and keep my story straight under pressure. I learned that it became difficult to repeat a lie if I received immediate and uncomfortable consequences for each iteration. It made me have to make snap decisions under intense pressure in real time--and fumble and stumble through rapid-fire follow-up questions designed to poke massive holes in my story. 

I learned that I needed to practically live my lie if I were to be questioned under duress, as the unrehearsed details are the wild-cards that bite you in the ass. I learned that I would rather sit across from the most talented interrogator on earth doing a soft-sell than any interrogator on earth doing a hard-sell--the information I had would be safer because the only consequences to my lies come in the form of words. I could handle words. Anyone could. 

Ask any SERE Level C graduate which method was more effective on him or her--their answer should tell you something about the effectiveness of enhanced techniques, whether you agree with them or not. In my case, I learned that enhanced techniques made me want to tell the truth to make it stop--not to compound my situation with more lies. The only thing that kept me from telling the truth was the knowledge that at some point it had to end--that there were more students to interrogate and only so many hours in a day. Absent that knowledge, I would have caved.

As a TDY [temporary duty] interrogator in the SERE course, I learned that the toughest, meanest, most professional special operations soldiers on earth had a breaking point. Every one of them. And of all the soldiers I interrogated, all of the "breaks" came during hard-sell interrogations--using as many enhanced techniques as necessary to convince the soldier that continuing to lie would result in immediate consequences. It worked--time and again, it worked.

The techniques were effective, Beale claims, not only with U.S. soldiers being prepared for what they might encounter if captured by an enemy, but also with senior al Qaeda prisoners. Defenders of EITs point to the extraction of important information on al Qaeda's couriers to make their case. The information on one courier in particular--Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti--led to the location of Osama bin Laden's safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In a heavily redacted section of his document, Beale writes that the EITs were essential to obtaining that information. Others have reported that two high-value detainees subject to enhanced interrogation--Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi--went to great lengths to conceal information about the courier. That they did so after providing a steady stream of accurate and valuable information suggested to interrogators and analysts that the information about al-Kuwaiti was important.

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