Focus 580; Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: the Dynamics of Torture

In this hour of focus 580 will be talking about torture. When we think about To the extent that we do I'm sure that most people think that anyone capable of torturing another human being must himself be inhuman. However our guest for this part of focus journalist John Connor Rice says there is more than ample evidence that most torturers are in fact normal people and for many perpetrators torture is just a job and nothing more. That comes from his book Unspeakable Acts Ordinary People the dynamics of torture. It's not a new book it came out first in 2000 and it is available now in a paperback edition published by the University of California Press. So if you'd like to seek it out certainly you can find it. The reason that we decide. We'd like to give John Connally a call as this book was sitting on our shelf and we think that the subject is timely right at the moment unfortunately it's we find it something that's timely and a fairly regular basis. And we'd like you to give the have the opportunity to hear

what he has to say and discuss some of the ideas in the book. So indeed the book is available in paperback University of California Press. I think that first came out in 2001. John Connor is a staff writer for the Chicago Reader. He is author of another book about Ireland titled Belfast diary war as a way of life and also his work has appeared in a number of other places including the New York Times Washington Post The Boston Globe and The Chicago Tribune including other publications and he lives in the Chicago area and he's joining us by telephone as we talk. Questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Those are the numbers to come. Mr. Conrad Hello. Hello David how are you. I'm fine thanks and yourself. I'm good. Thank you very much for talking with us we certainly appreciate it. Thanks for the the book. Maybe we should explain a little bit. Is has three sort of has three case studies which exemplify what we're talking about. And

at the same time in the introduction to the book you you give a Kavi. Because you say it's not the intention of the book is not to do something encyclopedic necessarily and that one could definitely take issue with the various places that you write about Northern Ireland Israel and Chicago. And you know people if they have no particular axes to grind will find an occasion to do that and maybe that's understandable but. Maybe you could talk a little bit about about what you set out to do how it is that you and I know for example with the Chicago case that was a story this is a story of torture at the hands of police is something that you had written about a lot and you also wrote about Northern Ireland so maybe it was natural that you should write about those places but maybe you could talk a bit about how it is you picked these three instances to concentrate on and then overall what it is that. Do you hope to accomplish. Well the good question that I set out when I when

this first swim is the idea for the book with first came to me and close in that area cannot be had read my first book and she want to do a book on torture and I didn't know quite what would be in and she wanted to do something and I was interested in working with can oppen with her I was. Frankly I thought the book on torture might be too painful for people to read but I decided I'd look into it and the more I looked into it the more interested I got and torturers and I thought as I talk to my friends and people I met that most people as you say think torturers are monsters of some other species. And so I thought when I would do would be to choose three case studies in which the American reader would identify with the torturer. If he it's not that difficult I think in many cases to identify with the victim but it's much harder to put yourself in the shoes of the perpetrator in in torture. And so I chose these

three case studies. The first one from Northern Ireland involves the case of the 14 men who were tortured by the British in 1981 and the attraction to this case was that I was writing this book I started in the late 1980s and I thought that I could track these guys down. Twenty years afterward and find out what had happened to them and it what made it interesting. That particular group was that ordinarily torturers do something different to different people so that if you come in you might get electric shock and if your sister is brought in she might be sexually abused and if your grandfather is abroad in his arms and legs might be attacked and you know different things can happen. But with these 14 men he. British security forces tortured them all simultaneously while they tortured 12 simultaneously and two later but they used the same method.

The men were from the same socio economic group. There were a variety of ages involved but none the less it was in some ways a control group of torture victims you could track these guys down after 20 years and find out what had happened to them in the techniques that had been chosen were designed to attack the mind as well as the body and its end so I could find out exactly how this played out over time. The men were subjected to what was known as the five techniques they were hooded they were deprived of food they were deprived of sleep they were forced to stand in painful positions on the wall and. They were bombarded with noise when they fell off the wall they were then beaten so that would actually be a six technique and they were also denied access to any toilet facilities. Well there's the humiliation aspect.

As well to this. And so I was able to find the ones who were living and talked to most of them. A couple of them didn't want to talk to me and and some of them I had to talk to their widows or offspring because they were dead. The second case is a case in Israel of a colonel who ordered his men to break the arms and legs of some Palestinians during the Intifada. And this is in the 1988 and I was attracted to this case because there was no question that it happened the men who carried out the order had stood up in court and said they had done it. So I thought that I could find the perpetrators because they had been named and have admitted what they had done because they had testified against the Colonel who gave the order. And then I could possibly find the Palestinians whose arms and legs had been broken and so I set about doing that and

that case was really about obedience to authority. The men who got the support of the captain in particular who got the order from the Colonel knew it was wrong and he couldn't carry out the order himself and in fact it was done on two nights in two villages and on the second night he had the bus driver rev the engine of the bus so he couldn't hear the screams of the men whose arms and legs were being broken. They were being broken and then they were left in the field. Where it was hoped that someone would come and rescue them or that one of the men would. It was supposed to be a system designed so that one man would just have his arms broken so that he'd be able to get up and walk out. So that was the second case it was really about how we as human beings respond when someone in authority gives us an order and the last case in Chicago involves a police commander named John Berge

who is from probably 1973 through 1991 was head of a unit that tortured suspects using electric shock and suffocation and hanging people by handcuffs burning people. Severe beatings and that case interested me for several reasons. One of them was in my home town. But to do it it really. Get to the nature of what we mean when those of us who say we're against torture. What that means because I think in many cases what it means is that we're against the torture of people we like. The man who was really in many ways responsible for exposing this torture was a man who'd shot dead two policemen. Its name was Andrew Wilson. And after he was arrested he was at last for about five days arrested

by command of birds without firing a shot and run into the police station then when he emerged from the police station he had these strange marks on his ears that looked like a little alligator had come up and bit him and he said that alligator clip sort of a test was used that he'd been shot with a hand crank device. And and also with something that might perhaps have been a cattle prod and he'd been shot down his ears and noses fingers in his genitals. And he told the story in 1982 and nobody really paid much attention to it because here was this guy who was a career criminal. And he you know he was convicted of the murder of these two cops there's no question he did murder the two cops and he was given. The death penalty but then the Supreme Court of Illinois threw out his

case saying that the state hadn't proved that his confession been given voluntarily and he was retried again without his confession convicted and given a life sentence. So he persisted in a civil suit in an 1800 against the police department saying he'd been tortured in 1909 it came to trial and during that trial anonymous letters started arriving at the offices of Endor Wilson's attorneys that said that these machines had been used before these letters by the way arrived in Police Department on the lobes. And the writer clearly knew a lot about the this particular unit was able to name people who participated and also people who did. And he directed the Wilsons attorneys to talk to a man named Melvin Jones who was then in Cook County Jail and they talked to Jones Jones said the same thing it happened to him five days and turned up five days before Wilson back in 1982. And he said

that back in 1982 when they pulled the transcript there was and Jones was asked well what do you mean a bird say to you when this was going on and he said and Jones replied Well he asked if I knew Satan and co-chief and I said I knew who they were but I didn't know him well and he said well they were crawling on the floor. When I did this to them so. So the attorneys then went and found sane and Co chiefs and sure enough they knew all about it and knew other people who had been tortured. Satan was one of them with electric shock and so this list started to build of men who had been tortured by this unit. And as a result we now have. Special prosecutor investigating it although it's 30 years after the first instance of the first allegations it is nonetheless the first time that the police are actually being investigated. So that's those are the three case studies in between them I talked to. There's a

chapter on The History and Methodist chapter on torturers in which they go around the world on TOTAN tortures from different nations. The chapter on victims in the chapter on bystanders white my torturers are rarely punished. And that's that's the book. We have a caller here and I promise I'm not going to make them too much longer but it is a to follow up on the sort of the first set of questions that you talked about during in this period that we've been in that we call the war on terror and that we've had American true. Obs in Afghanistan and in Iraq there has been now some discussion about what what techniques are appropriate to use in interrogation. And the the ruling seems to be that it's if acceptable to subject people to extreme forms of stress say for example sleep deprivation but that there is some kind of a line somewhere that when you cross it you go

from allowable techniques to what generally would be considered to be torture and there seems to be one of the questions that people seem to wrestle with is where is that line given away with the fact that you've thought about this. Written about these instances is it. Do you think that it's difficult or is it not difficult to decide is something torture or is it not. Well I think it's it's extremely difficult because sometimes what's torture to one person is not torture to somebody else if I put some people in a room full you know in a cell full of snakes they would they wouldn't you know be driven mad and other people enjoy snakes and you know wouldn't have any problem with that so it's different things affect different people in different ways. And so when you start talking about how much sleep deprivation can we inflict on this person without him going mad

or suffering some sort of permanent mental disability. Because of the combination of sleep deprivation and stress you know that's going to depend on the individual. And so it's extremely difficult to sort of draw that line. Well let me introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 is John Connelly. He's a staff writer for the Chicago Reader has reported on Northern Ireland and has written a book about that title Belfast diary war as a way of life. More recently Unspeakable Acts Ordinary People the dynamics of torture. It was a book that first came out I believe in 2000 and now is still available it's available in paperback it's published by the University of California Press. If you'd like to read it 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 4 people here in Champaign Urbana if you'd like to be involved in the conversation toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Here's our color line one

champagne. Oh yes I was wondering in doing your research if you ever looked back at a writer called France and all who wrote a book called The wretched of the earth. I think it was published in the 60s but he went back and talked about his experience living in Algeria and being a psychoanalyst and later joining the Algerian Liberation Front in its war against France. But he observed victims of torture or he had them as patients. And he also treated a torture. And this Frenchman who was forced to torture people are brought into this system of torture. Oh it's very. Affected by being a torture and it was affecting his relationships with his family and with his children with his wife and he was becoming very very irritable and short tempered and violent and seemed to lose all control and all patience with his family members especially children.

So did you look at the trama or the effects of being a torturer on tortures. And why are they never brought to justice. Well in two questions the first one in terms of the trauma. I did look at that. The There's a woman in Greece named Rita's footwear also psychologist who has studied the Greek torturers and she concluded that it's after the hunter had fallen. And these tortures have gone back to their villages and resume normal lives that they went on to live perfectly normal lives on. You know there was no evidence of any kind of sadism in the life beforehand and none afterwards. And I would say that of the torturers whom I met and I can't say that this is a scientific sample

because I was only able to meet once who would talk to me and they may be certain you know no no scientists would say that's a scientific sample. None of them claim to be abusing their families or anything like that. However they did they were some of the more isolated politically because of what they had done they had some of them had come forward to testify about the torture and as a result they were no longer embraced by the people whom with whom they had served nor were they embraced by the people who had been tortured because they had once been torturers themselves so. So they were one of them. Francis and Herb Graham was living in a small town in Sweden a small city in Sweden nice and. You know he may have been the only earth going in the city and he told me he couldn't go home and

he had people with whom he associated but he had no friends but you know I don't know that that was the that that was the sort of result of his actions it's not a result of his internal agony over what he had done. What was your second question. Well it would fly by wire which is really punished really punished because when they there's a few things that happen but one is that the torturers says wait a minute I was only following orders and. And you trace the orders up the chain of command they get more and more vague and people say you know I didn't favor. And I said this and say that or there is nothing. So then the people at the bottom who who did the torture are portrayed as scapegoats for the high command. And. And for a war policy this is why in the Vietnam War when the

mask was expose you had people from the right who embraced Lieutenant Calley saying he was a good soldier doing his job and people from the left who said poor Kally he was carrying out Westmoreland as a war of attrition which is based on body counts and. And he's being made the price to pay the price for what was essentially government policy so he was embraced by elements of the left and elements of the right and the same thing happens in other torture situations where you get the guys on the bottom who are being asked to pay the price. So that's one thing the the other thing is that the people who are tortured are usually an out group in the society there. Are there people with whom we have no sympathy there beyond the pale of our compassion and so the so the society really doesn't care very much if you look at what happened in Chicago I think this is a very good example. We have a man in Illinois who are

serving very long sentences life terms. Some of them for crimes they confessed to under torture. Now there is no mass movement in Chicago or Illinois to reopen their cases. They're all fighting them individually one by one. No government official has been appointed to review all of the cases that came through that. I'm touched by these torturing detectives so we frankly don't have any idea how many people were tortured by Chicago police who could be a hundred and ten. It could be six hundred fifty It could be fifteen hundred We have no idea. But there is no clamor here to reopen. And you know to just wipe the slate clean and give these guys new trials. And it's in part because they're there from the group they're

all African-American. Many of them have criminal records are accused of heinous crimes and so they rot away in jails some of them for crimes they probably they may not have committed. Things like Kerry is still being outed for having talked about some of the massacres and torture that went on in Vietnam and he has the power structure is trying to out him for his past speech on that topic. But and so what do you think about the whole Abu Ghraib thing and Rumsfeld. To me I mean he already sent out the message long before Abu Ghraib that torture was all right. I mean that's the message he was saying when we're going to take these people to other Arab countries and they know how to get these. Able to talk with that's basically what he said in news conference. Yes I would agree that there was a tone set at the top and Guantanamo that it's carried over into Iraq and

that anyone who might be thinking about it using methods that wouldn't be allowed in the United States on prisoners here you know mass murders multiple murderers and serial killers. They aren't subject to these methods. But we might suggest them do the civilians over there who haven't been charged or convicted of anything. And I think that that decision you know if the interrogator sitting there with somebody in front of him is going to make that decision knows what the climate is and if the climate is one of tolerance for abuse than than there will be abuse if the climate is one of intolerance for abuse there won't be abuse. About a month ago there was an article in The New York Review of Books that basically defended torture has the necessary aspect of getting

information quickly and it went back and talked about the Algerian situation. Did you happen to see that article. No I didn't. OK. Well do you think that torture is a necessary evil or that it is an effective method. Well that I have no doubt that torture produces information. People talk when they are tortured to stop the torture and they'll say anything. And that's why it's an unreliable source of information because people will say whatever they think. Whatever they can think of if they think it will stop the torture. The other problem with using torture to get information is one of the other problems is that when I torture you and it becomes public is it you know always be your brother and cousin and

sister. Join the resistance. And and my people who are captured by your people are then going to be subjected to the same you know and who will who will say well we know we shouldn't torture them because they treat our prisoners over on the other side so well. It also exists. You know when in Vietnam when soldiers were after but 19 I think it was 1968 and I be wrong on the date. Everybody who was ground forces in Vietnam was given a pocket. Which was which said the enemy in your hands. And it was guidelines for treating the enemy and it made the point that if you abuse suspects. And that the other forces will fight to the death rather than surrender because they know they will be tortured and they won't

split from our casualties. Then if they think they're going to be treated fairly if they give up. So when you embark on a course of torture you are embarking on a real slippery slope that's going to cost you a whole lot more than you're probably bargaining for. And as a caller sort of suggests the. People speaking for those individuals who have been charged in the Abu Ghraib situation have said that these these individuals that the soldiers fought believed that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing that they had permission to do that they were being encouraged to do that. The response of the military on the other hand has been. And the bad apple responds saying well no there was no encouragement of this. People weren't ordered to do this what we have here is a handful of

individuals that are essentially bad people that they just decided to do this given again the fact that you've thought about this and talked to some people who were torturers and looked at the subject I guess what I wonder what you think about the bad apple defense and whether that seems to make sense the idea that you could have a situation here where you just happened to have in this place people who are sadistic psychopaths who take it upon themselves to torment the people that they're there in their custody. I think that that's possible in you know any sort of incarceration situation you can have been apples who can go haywire. I don't think that happened in a game. I think that when. You have and you know Abu Ghraib some people who I think were bad apples you know I

think you know someone who is a cleric who comes over to hang out with her boyfriend and ends up you standing on people's fingers and you know. Walking people around on a leash you know that's not it. I don't think she has a defense for saying that she was ordered to do it by military intelligence. But I think that the context of the situation was such that we are arresting people and the Red Cross estimated that 80 or 90 percent of these people were innocent. So we've picked up these people in sweeps we've stripped them of their clothes and now they are being held and interrogated late at night. And it's a situation that you know is ripe for disaster.

And so I think that you can't argue that it was a few bad apples I think you can. I think you know more to the point is that you've created a situation in which the this sort of behavior doesn't seem farfetched to the people who indulge in it because they're already in you know in a place where bizarre things are being allowed. We have other callers let's go to champagne. Line to the next. Hello. Hi I just have one question. I have not read the book by the way. But anyway my question is do you think there is pleasure is or evidence that there is pleasure I as a nurse I know by the same pleasure concept but in torturing people who think there is pleasure now going up in the interior. Well before you bring up tell me about the in the plane pain pleasure concept.

Yeah well the concept is that if it doesn't create pain for example when you're exercising a muscle you know exercise to the point that that concept really simply stated. So I wonder if it well I think in that sort of situation when I think of in terms of the any pleasure would would more be the torturers who spoke to me about it talked about doing a good job. They thought that they were doing a job that most people if they knew about it would would appreciate them defending the nation and they were on the front lines in this battle against subversion and. And so they were doing their job trying to do it well and some of them said to me you know if there's nothing personal you know and I remember a guy named Hugo Garcia and Herb gray and saying to me you know nothing personal in fact when we were finished

torturing them we often use our own money to go my own hamburger or pick cigarettes with them and with a hammer and hammer away. But you get the idea. And so I think that there. And this is a feeling of power as well that's you know I would think somewhat intoxicating when you have complete power over a human being you can do whatever you want with them. I think that can come into play here. Do you think it's naive to expect the best. I tend when I found this shop I wouldn't torture you Betty. Well that's what most people think but placed in the situation. You know the Stanley Milgram experiments. Well I'll explain it for the listeners who don't. In the 1960s Stanley Milgram professor at Yale devised a series of experiments in which the he recruited volunteers who were told that they were participating in an experiment to test

the effects of punishment on learning and the volunteers came to an office where they were led into a room and seated at an instrument panel. They were told that the switches on the panel generated electric shocks ranging on the left from very mild shock to the far right which was severe dangerous shock. And there is another volunteer it was actually a confederate of the experimenters who was the learner and the real volunteer was the teacher. And so the teacher was to ask questions and when the learning got a question wrong he was given electric shock and the teacher was to proceed all the way up the scale. Until the experiment ended and what Milgram found was that more than 60 percent of people will go all the way to the end of the scale as long as there's an authority figure there saying the experiment must continue and they do this even

though in the person receiving the shock is begging for mercy pleading seemingly for their lives. People will proceed all the way to the end of the scale. You know a majority of people will do that and and in fact it goes much higher if you have two teachers one reading the question and one flipping the switch is the one reading. Then you get like 92 percent obedience because the one reading the the questions feels no responsibility for the one flipping the switches and the one flipping the switches thinks the other one is responsible and so they the obedience rate is much higher. It's horrible. Yes it is. So I think that a lot of us think we couldn't do it but in fact a lot of us can. And in the right circumstances. Thank you. Thanks for the call. That I guess is where as you suggest in the call I suggest what

the difficult thing to understand you could I suppose one could understand what could imagine a torturer being someone who was a psychopath and got pleasure out of inflicting pain on another person. But it seems the much more difficult to imagine the person who could say as you'd said one of the torturers you talked to had said it's nothing personal it's just a job and that they would be they would take some satisfaction in a job well done. It's hard to imagine one would feel that way considering what the job is. That is the job would be inflicting physical pain on another person. Well that's that's one way to find a job but another way to define it is that you are saving lives. I'm saving lives on my side. And whatever information I get from this person will contribute to the preservation of civilization as I know it.

This threat be it religious or political that exists out there in the society. Or a labor union or whatever it is. We'll be put down and we will all be happier and society will you know be much better off for what I'm doing today. Well I guess that gets us the. That gets us to the extreme hypothetical. The terrorist who put say an atomic bomb in the middle of downtown Chicago and we have the person and they know where it is and the question is what is it appropriate for us to do to that person to try to get him to tell us where the bomb is. Well let's say this we torture this person and we get nothing. So now however we know the guy is married so maybe his wife to us when we torture is why I meet the same

number of people are going to be killed whether we torture him or his wife so that source and his wife and you know what she doesn't she dies before she tells her that. Oh no one we can. But he's got a daughter 12 years old. I bet she might know. And if she doesn't know she might know who else is in this group. So let's you know why why not. We better do the daughter and and you know what we have the security film of this guy. When he walked into this building he nodded at one of the security guards. Let's get the security guard in here we don't have much time let's torture that security guard and see if we can get him. What do you stop. Yeah it's gets to be. I think you get in as many words say that. That's one of the problems with using torture it is to be very seductive. Let's continue talking with other people who are listening. Next caller up is in Belgium Illinois on our line for. Hello hello. I think we need to get to the basics of what we're talking about here and that is just what is torture you haven't really

defined it. You know there's a 6 year old boy that might pull the wings off a fly. That's a form of torture. All of us are. In a strange sort of way not just somebody evil but we want to get information from. Isn't it pretty much just a human condition that we sometimes your wife tortures you to get the work done. You know there's many many forms of it. Well there are there is a formal definition of torture which I will have to read to you because it's pretty complicated. In 1975 the United Nations defined torture as quote any act by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or third person information or a confession punishing him for an act he has committed or intimidating him or other persons torture

constitutes in the aggravated and deliberate form of Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The definition goes on to state that the torture. Can be it was it was revived an added discrimination of any kind was eds a list of motivations and also it was clarified sort of expanding the people who might do it. When such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. And that also includes people who are in terrorist groups. People recognize that guerrilla groups also torture cells. So they're also covered by the definition. The problem with the definition is that. And it's you know and a

lot of work went into this and it's a remarkable thing that the UN was able to agree on it but the problem is that when you get to court you have to what exactly you have to prove what exactly. It is cruel inhuman or degrading treatment when does pain or suffering become severe. And you know as you may have discovered that certain kinds of pain are more intense for some people than for others. Some people you can bend the finger back and hurt so an awful lot other people have em bend their fingers back pretty far and it doesn't hurt. So our pain thresholds are different and so this became a problem in the in the Belfast case in which I write about in my book one that I went to the European court the European Commission on Human Rights ruled that it was torture but it was appealed and the

higher court ruled that it was a moneths to inhuman and degrading treatment but not torture because it didn't constitute severe enough suffering and they made that decision without really any notion that the suffering was going to last for the rest of these people's lives and and as I point out in my book at quite a few of them died quite early death as a result I think of the torture. Thanks very much. We have about 10 minutes left in this part of. Focus 580 I think I should introduce Again our guest John Conn Ryan is a staff writer for the Chicago Reader and is author of a book that explores the dynamics of torture the title is Unspeakable Acts Ordinary People was first published by Konami in 2000 and is still available in the paperback edition that's published by the University of California Press. If you would like to read it. Questions are welcome. We have several. We'll try to get everybody in before we find ourselves out of time 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free

800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have someone in Chicago next in line. Line 1. I guess I want to go back to the suspect on the torturers. I find it really hard to accept that there's no effect on the tortures and I'm wondering how the doctor in Greece did her study and even in your conversation because obviously these people have. Distinct point of view after the fact and most of them are in denial just as we have even today. That trance denying that there was torture in Vietnam. There's been documentaries about the Dutch experience in Indonesia and how they don't even want to use the same word they used for the Nazis and the not just tortured the Dutch they refused to use that word in terms of their own actions in Indonesia. So you have a strong denial so if you asked these people if there was an effect I think they would

deny it and that denial in itself and the ability to live a life in denial. I think it's one effect on the torturers. The other thing that I think. Probably you'd really have to struggle to find is that. I suspect a lot of their actions are having unrealistic expectations of compliance with them and I think that would be the effect on the children and the wife. Very harsh punishments for not complying and possibly types of physical and sexual abuse which I don't see these people saying to us that this is the effect that I am abusing my wife or my child so I think that there really needs to be a very careful study but I think that somehow when people say there's no effect I've never gotten the impression that they've looked into any of those aspects. And the only one I think that might be observable is perhaps a certain rigidity that these people might like

to display. OK well Mr. gun right. I'm not quite sure what the question is I guess the question is simply that you know that this one is that there's no effect on the torturers and that they're leaving normal lives and the only possible thing is that they're politically isolated. And I I find that very hard to believe for the reasons I just gave. Well there you have it. You find it hard to believe. You know I will only have to repeat what I said earlier which is as the work of a some say the colleges they make a resource for tourists who study the Greek torturers and found there's no evidence of sadistic abusive or authoritarian behavior in the Greek torturers before they enter the army there's nothing in the family personal history and histories to differentiate them for the rest of the nation's male population of their age at that time. And that years after they stop torturing they lived what seemed to be normal lives. I think that you

are going do you know I have no doubt that there are torturers who. I feel remorse for what they did. I met some who did feel remorse for what they did but I don't think that it's we all feel remorse for things that we have done and we go on and live what seem to be normal lives. Some people feel remorse for things that are crimes against humanity and some people feel remorse for the things that are crimes of the heart or crime you know other crimes and so I don't know how I you know you could hire some of the finest Fadi this except by finding some group of. You know you know you and I have to the the woman in recovery just the tourist was lucky in finding she was

able to find one former torturer who brought in some of the others. And as a result she was able to get something of a sample of a group of torturers and draw her conclusions. I think that you know as far as I know it's the only study out there and maybe there are others but I don't think it's unusual I think that Dr. Lifton finds it in in the doctors at Auschwitz. He talks about this concept of doubling being able to. The you know to work at Auschwitz and feel sorry for yourself for having such a terrible posting and and then go on and be kind to your wife and kids you know. The question is the element of denial I think that's why many of them the ones who feel remorse of Admit it. But I think the overwhelming majority of them have denial about the

degree. Just as our society reacted by saying well this this wasn't torture or what they did was it wasn't that bad it was just hazing. The level of denial I think is what enables these people quote unquote not to have an effect because they have never admitted to themselves what they've done. OK. Well again I think the caller for the comments I have some of the. Still here I'd like to try to include Let's go to Indiana for our next. This is going to follow oh a quickie that lady a talk about the New York Review of Books article were the person said torture was it was necessary or in some sense could be done. I've learned very difficult to believe considering the political stance of the New York Review of Books. I have subscription to and I don't remember reading anything like that but it's basically anecdotal. The question I had is something you brought up a short time ago and it's I've read in The New York Times in the Tribune and in the New York Review of Books is that torture is not effective

anybody you know if you know when it's torture is a capital T. People admit to anything and we mean as always was concern about when I heard about the singing Abi Gray is that you know are you a blah blah blah. Yes I am you know I mean what information you know. Wow and you know I was evaluated we're not dealing with dumb people. They must know that torture you know brings forth this kind of confession you know to get the pain to stop and stuff so I only think of the lady had just talked and I think there is more going on and just go in a clock and leave it for I think we're dealing with a psychological type that couldn't be in a sense discovered through the tests that the Army gives to people. Thanks a lot. Again because you can respond any way you like. Well I think that the psychological type is really not supported by what studies there are there's another study though.

By a psychologist named Molly Farrow or who studied the Rorschach records of Nazi war criminals 30 years after they were tried and she reported that 10 experts could not distinguish the Rorschach test results of high ranking Nazi war criminals from those of normal Americans. And Douglas Kelly the psychiatrist who examined the Nuremberg defendants who gave the test in 1946 also concluded that. He said quote such personalities are not unique or insane and could be duplicated in any country in the world today. Hair or the one who did the test 30 years later concluded that well integrated productive and secure personalities are no protection against being sucked into a vortex of myth and deception which may ultimately erupt into the commitment of horror on a grand scale. Milgram So the same thing he says with with rapidity. With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under to the demands of

authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who were in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority by the control of their perceptions and by the uncritical acceptance of the experiment's definition of the situation into performing harsh acts. This is perhaps the most fundamental lesson of our study. Ordinary people simply doing their jobs without any particular hostility on their part can become agents in a terrible destructive process there. On that note we're going to have to end because we've used our time if you want to explore the subject further you can look for the book that we have talked about Unspeakable Acts Ordinary People by our guest John Conrad he's a staff writer for the Chicago Reader also author of the book Belfast diary war as a way of life in this convoy. Thanks very much for talking with us thank you nothing.