The marine often visited the city of Nis, and he said that his superiors regularly provided him with a thousand dollars to elicit intelligence from local Serbs.
Some who have seen the movie say the harrowing repeated opening sequences of waterboarding, beating and degrading a detainee in a C.I.A. black site to elicit intelligence puts "a thumb on the scale for torture," as Slate's Emily Bazelon writes.
"Our debriefers are subject-matter experts who question detainees to elicit intelligence," Panetta wrote.
While we speak only for ourselves, we have seen firsthand that many standard approaches are rarely useful in eliciting reliable intelligence, and often serve only to harden a detainee's resistance.
Torture does probably elicit useful intelligence some of the time.
Interrogators who were familiar with the detainees' language and culture, and who exhaustively studied each prisoner's case, used charisma and empathy to patiently elicit vital intelligence.
In an effort to elicit fresh intelligence, the United States government last week said it was offering a reward of up to $5 million for help in capturing five leaders of Abu Sayyaf.
"Wherever possible," the statement said, "our first priority is and always has been to apprehend terrorist suspects, and to preserve the opportunity to elicit valuable intelligence that can help us protect the American people".
Some former Bush administration and CIA officials have defended waterboarding and other EITs, denying they are torture and saying they elicited valuable intelligence.
