For most Americans, torture is something remote, abstract, reprehensible, but in the eyes of some, perhaps necessary — when the bomb is ticking, for example, or when interrogators are trying to get information from terrorists willing to kill Americans in huge numbers.
Interrogators were trying to find out whether there might be another attack planned against the United States.
Interrogators will certainly be trying to figure out whether weapons of mass destruction were being produced and stockpiled.
The photos were a line-up of random people and suspected interrogators; the attorneys were trying to identify potential witnesses who could testify about abusive treatment, as mitigating evidence against death sentences.
The inquiry traces back to the spring of 2009, after government officials learned that Guantánamo defense lawyers were trying to identify C.I.A. interrogators — including the discovery of 32 pages of photographs in the cells of several Guantánamo detainees.
If, for instance, a prisoner of war is trying to avoid revealing secrets to enemy interrogators, he is much less likely to succeed if he has been deprived of sleep or is struggling to ignore intense pain.
They were trying to place limits on how far interrogators could go, but to do that, they needed to know what techniques had been used in the past and with how much success, and the White House wouldn't tell them.
The plotters behind the attack in Bali were trying to kill Americans, a suspect is reported to have told his interrogators.
The possibility that the female interrogator, too, could feel like a worn-out cog in that system and might simply be trying to earn a living, like Dan, is not explored.
"But that's precisely what interrogators are doing, in order to try to get people to talk".
For six days, Ms. Roxas says, she was interrogated, drugged, tortured and smothered to near death, with her interrogators trying to force her to admit she was a communist guerrilla.
