Interrogation in War and Conflict: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Analysis

by Christopher Andrew (editor), Simona Tobia (Editor)

This edited volume offers a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of interrogation and questioning in war and conflict in the twentieth century.Despite the current public interest and its military importance, interrogation and questioning in conflict is still a largely under-researched theme. This volume's methodological thrust is to select historical case studies ranging in time from the Great War to the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, and including the Second World War, decolonization, the Cold War, the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland and international justice cases in The Hague, each of which raises interdisciplinary issues about the role of interrogation. These case-studies were selected because they resurface previously unexplored sources on the topic, or revisit known cases which allow us to analyse the role of interrogation and questioning in intelligence, security and military operations.Written by a group of experts from a range of disciplines including history, intelligence, psychology, law and human rights, Interrogation in War and Conflict provides a study of the main turning points in interrogation and questioning in twentieth-century conflicts, over a wide geographical area. The collection also looks at issues such as the extent of the use of harsh techniques, the value of interrogation to military intelligence, security and international justice, the development of interrogation as a separate profession in intelligence, as well as the relationship between interrogation and questioning and wider society.This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, counter-terrorism, international justice, history and IR in general.

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 12, 2013

About the author

Christopher Maurice Andrew, FRHistS is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services. (military.wikia.org)

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read for this old Army HUMINTer. A collection of essays ranging widely, but leaning heavily toward the Brit experience in WW1, the Malayan Emergency, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland, with touches on the Gestapo, the NKVD, Rhodesia, and Algeria, along with the war crimes investigations post-WWII, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and the ICC. The only one I found hard to get through - I felt like waterboarding the author when I finished it - was the piece on Algeria. The crystal-gazing hippy wrote about the torture conducted by French soldiers in a flighty pseudo-intellectual narrative using metaphor and allegory for white colonial oppression of native peoples, but without any actual substantive discussion of interrogation planning, methods, or uses of the information thus gained.

And that was really the value of the rest of the book: Solid substantive discussion of organization for interrogation, interrogation planning and preparation, the evolution of interrogation methods and methods used by specific organizations or in specific campaigns, as well as the operational value of the information thus gained.

There was a particularly thoughtful piece by a former interpreter who worked in support of suspect interrogations at the ICTY about the use of translators in interrogation. The discussion of neutrality, objectivity, and real and perceived bias is well worth the read, not just lending emphasis to the discussion of language challenges in the articles on Cyprus and Rhodesia, but also the difficulties in using language-capable translators from different ethnic groups, as we experienced with Sunni vs Shi'a vs Kurd vs other minorities in Iraq.

A common thread through much of the book was discussion of whether or not torture extracted valid information - torture in the broadest sense, with many different methods discussed. The consistent judgment was that torture may work in extracting simple confessions, albeit always with the uncertainty about the validity of the response, given the subject's desperation to stop the torture. But in cases where the goal is the acquisition of detailed intelligence information, it is both ineffective and counterproductive.

The final piece covered the evolution of international law regarding torture in interrogation as a war crime. The author traced its evolution from the post-WWII tribunals, to the ICTY, the ECCC, and the ICC in eminently readable detail. Unsurprisingly for a legal review, this was the most heavily footnoted and referenced chapter in the book.

Overall, a very good read.

[Derek Nudd · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and useful review in thirteen separately authored chapters of the development and use of interrogation in the twentieth century. It covers both intelligence sought from servicemen, who were protected to some extent by the Hague and Geneva conventions, and from insurrectionists (or dissidents) who were not. More might have been made of this point.
In a surprising statement Christopher Andrew's introduction states that the WW2 Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) 'still awaits its historian'. Neitzel's Tapping Hitler's Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations 1942-45 (2007) and Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS (2011), and Fry's The M Room: Secret Listeners who Bugged the Nazis in WW2 (2012) all predate this book, and the good coverage elsewhere is the only excuse for omitting CSDIC's remarkable work from this account. Moreover Andrew repeats the frequent (but incorrect) assertion that the controversial London Cage was part of CSDIC - a surprising slip from an intelligence historian of his calibre.
Heather Jones' chapter on the development of interrogation techniques in WW1 is a valuable contribution to a topic which has received too little attention. Its main focus is on the military aspect in forward areas with a couple of pages on naval technical intelligence toward the end. As such I feel it misses one of the most significant developments: the joint service centre set up at Cromwell Gardens in 1917. As a central facility backed by a comprehensive filing system this was the essential template for CSDIC.
Much of the rest of the book covered areas where I am unqualified to comment, except to note the frequency with which the lessons, mistakes, and sometimes people from earlier conflicts pop up again.
I must however offer a final word for Simona Tobia's concluding review, which I thought excellent.
As a private buyer it took me a while to chase down a paperback copy of this at a halfway acceptable price. As for the hardback - Routledge, who are you kidding?