1. Keep Waterboarding Locked in the Broom
Closet
With the upcoming change in
Presidential administrations, we hear
chatter among some future policymakers
that raise the specter of waterboarding and
associated enhanced techniques reentering
the arsenal of our interrogation
programs. Such excessively coercive tactics
have no place in the Trumph administration
nor do they have a place in the toolbox of
our nation’s professionally trained
interrogators. In fact, the nation put its
torturous history of waterboarding and
other forms of enhanced interrogation
December 12, 2016 by Paul Charles Topalian

2. techniques in a locked broom closet a
decade ago. Such techniques need to
remain there.
Why? Aside from opposing arguments
as to their efficacy, waterboarding and
other associated forms of excessive
coercion and torture are unlawful and
violate our nation’s values, laws, and
Constitution; remain in conflict with many
of the international human rights
agreements for which we are signatories;
and are an affront to the norms of human
decency and ethics.
Unfortunately, though, interrogation
and torture remain synonymous in the eyes
of many misinformed people, though the
practices are distinctly dissimilar. Torture,

3. along with other forms of cruel, inhumane,
and abusive mistreatment or punishment,
is recognized as international human rights
crime. On the other hand, interrogation
tradecraft remains a legitimate and
essential military, law enforcement, and
intelligence skillset. Where interrogation
and torture, such as waterboarding, are still
conjoined throughout the globe, they
remain the expedient tool of ill-trained
practitioners.
Today, we know through a number of
landmark studies that exerting torture and
other extreme forms of mental and physical
coercion during an interrogation produce
unreliable results. In fact, harsh
mistreatment decreases the reliability of

4. information collected from a prisoner. Of
course, there are exceptions, like with all
generalizations, but they are not
common. Rather, the likelihood that
waterboarding, and other forms of coercive
mistreatment, will produce accurate
information from a detainee is low. In fact,
in some cases, excessive pain and mental
suffering may further harden defensive
resistance among some uncooperative
subjects and, in others, result in the victim
saying whatever it takes to stop the mental
and physical pain and suffering.
As a nation of laws, we need to put talk
of reviving waterboarding and its
companion pieces of enhanced
interrogation techniques behind us at the

5. start of the new Presidency. Importantly,
too, our nation has already entered a new
era in our nation’s interrogation
programs. Spearheaded by the High Value
Detainee Interrogation Group, leading
behavioral scientists and methodologists
from around the world are researching
creative techniques that prove far more
effective in gathering reliable and useful
information from detainees than previous
coercive methodologies, such as
waterboarding. What was once thought to
be valid is giving way to new findings,
demonstrating former professed experts
did not always know what they thought
they knew.

6. The lessons from the past decade and
half are clear. Waterboarding has no place
in our nation’s arsenal of national security
weapons or in the toolbox of our
interrogators. Our nation and its next
generation of interrogators are far better
without it and are proving it on and off the
battlefield. Let’s keep the broom closet
sealed. And, by the way, throw away the
key.
About the Author
Paul Charles Topalian is the author of the 2016
book, “Tradecraft Primer: A Framework for Aspiring
Interrogators.” In it, Paul advances a credo for all
interrogators ‘Do No Harm – Respect Human
Rights,’ a pledge all responsible interrogators
should adopt and help promote throughout their
careers. Find Paul at tradecaftprimer@gmail.com.