August 22, 2023 • 60 mins
It's one of the most ancient practices in human civilization, and one that continues in the modern day. In recent decades experts, military officials and activists alike have argued over the definitions of torture -- and, most importantly, whether it actually works. So how much truth is there to the claims that, while unethical, torture delivers results? What's the Stuff the Authorities Don't Want You To Know about what goes on in those unobserved black sites hidden across the planet? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You see it all the time in film and fiction.
There is a ticking clock and a hard nosed law
enforcement investigator has to bend the rules, break the lines,
perhaps engage in torture for the greater good. That's what
Tonight's classic episode is about.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
That's what the series twenty four is all about.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It really is, Matt, It really is. The question though,
is in real life does torture actually work? Do all
these arguments we hear or heard about places like Guantanamo
Bay do they bear results?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
But hey, listen to the episode. Isn't torture at all.
It's quite pleasant. So let's jump right in.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
H Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel the Iron
Maiden Brown.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
They called me Ben. We are joined with our returning
super producer Paul Decant and most importantly, you are here.
You are you that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. By the self described moniker, one of
our co hosts just added you you may sense a
(01:35):
bit of foreshadowing in today's episode. Today's episode is a
little dark, but let's get into it with an anecdote.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I in the time, I get adequate fool and adequate
clothing and medical care when I require.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Voice you just heard was Admiral Jeremiah Denton of the
United States Navy. On July eighteenth, nineteen sixty five, his
US Navy jet was shot down while leading an air
attack over North Vietnam. He was captured, and he remained
in the country as a prisoner of war until nineteen
seventy three. It's quite a long time now after Like
(02:21):
during that first full year that he was a prisoner
of war, he was interviewed for this propaganda piece essentially
from the North viet Vietnamese He was filmed being interviewed
by a member of the Japanese press, and during this
interview he states several things that you heard. He's getting
adequate food and clothing and medical care, and also that
(02:44):
he supports the United States government and all of its actions.
And that's probably not something that his captors wanted him
to say, if it truly was a propaganda piece, which
it appears to be. But here's the thing. What you
can't see because you're not watching the film, is that
he is blinking all the while that he's talking, and
(03:05):
what he is spelling out is actually Morse code, and
he's spelling out the word torture. And we actually have
a quick clip here of what that would sound like.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
And this stuck out to the analyst on Uncle Sam's
side because they knew that Denton did not have some
sort of medical condition that would cause him to blink radically.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Absolutely, And when the US Naval Intelligence got ahold of this,
this was the first time they had had any kind
of communication from one of these prison camps that was
existing in North Vietnam that actually stated in any way
that they were being tortured, that the American POWs were
being tortured.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
And he's doing this repeatedly in different interviews or is
this all in one sit down?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
This is one sit down, but he is just continually
spelling the word torture.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
And these propaganda videos were relativetively common in this age
from different governments, where you would have someone say, yes,
we are being treated well, we are being taken care of,
when multiple outside sources suspected that this was not the case.
Today's episode is diving into dark and grisly territory, and
(04:20):
we would like all of you friends, neighbors, conspiracy realists,
and skeptics alike to know upfront that this show is
going to contain graphic descriptions of horrific physical and mental
abuse you see. Today we are exploring the past, the present,
and the future of torture, given the ubiquitous nature of
(04:41):
torture throughout human history, even before recorded human history, because
we were as a species torturing each other before we
were writing things down. We won't be delving into too
many specific cases, but we will inevitably run into several
strange examples of this practice. So here are the facts.
(05:04):
First things first, what's the operative definition of torture?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yeah, torture is the deliberate infliction of physical and or
I mean, I guess it could be one of the
other psychological pain with the purpose of obtaining information or
extorting a confession from the victim and thus enabling a conviction.
It can also be the penalty itself, and I get that.
That's like a good, cut and dry definition of it.
(05:31):
Don't Some people torture just for the sheer thrill of
doing it, with no end game in mind.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, a lot of this comes from the un outlining
exactly what torture is in nineteen eighty four, I believe.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Right right, the acronym uncat, which might be the only
funny thing about this episode which we will dive into.
And that's a great point because this sounds on the
surface like a pretty solid definition, but of course not
everyone agrees with it, because there is torture simply for
sadistic purposes, typically not from a state level actor. It
(06:10):
would be someone who wants to torture someone, and maybe
they're doing it while employed by the state, but they're
getting their own dark giggles in the process.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And then what about the difference between state sponsored torture
and enhanced interrogation? Right right?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Is this a brand name difference is there? Is it
a matter of degree, or are they fundamentally different things.
Experts like gr Scott, who in the late nineteenth century
wrote a book about torture, says that it's devilishly easy
to make a definition of torture that's either too narrow
only a specific kind of thing can be considered torture,
(06:48):
or it's too wide in scope, you know, like I
was tortured because I had to listen to someone tell
me yet again the plot of Looper, that's not quite torture.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I mean, maybe it is.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
If they just do it forever for a year. But
for today's purposes, we're going to go with the definition
that Nol just mentioned earlier. The systematic use of torture
in criminal procedures or criminal proceedings dates back to some
of our earliest civilizations. And it's creepy when you think
about it. Scenes depicting torture can be found on different monuments, right.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Oh yeah, in everywhere, in these ancient areas from Mesopotamia, Egypt,
all over.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And the first records of a legal application of torture
to prove something, to prove guilt or innocence, we're found
in the Sumerian Code of ur Nimu. It's around the
twenty first century BCE, and then the Babylonian Code of
Hamarabi in the eighteenth century BCE again, and the procedure
(07:59):
describe the divine judgment of the water ordeal, which is
what it's torture. As this practice became increasingly codified because
it was already common, right, and different raiding parties from
tribes and so on. As it became part of the
(08:19):
rule of law. The administration of torture took different directions
depending on the civilization. So ancient Greeks and Romans used
it for interrogation. And this is really interesting because this
is something that haunts us. I would argue in the
current age. Until the second century AD, torture was only
(08:40):
supposed to be used on slaves, with some notable exceptions.
In fact, a slave's testimony in any sort of legal
proceeding was only admissible if they had been tortured first.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, that's the assumption, is that you couldn't trust slaves
to reveal the truth of their own accord.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
That has messed up up on so many levels.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It is because can you imagine being a slave and saying, yes,
I know, I saw you, know, Sabat or whatever take
the water jug And I'm like, look, we believe you,
but I unfortunately, I am going to have to break
like one of your hands.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, and then are you sure you saw him take it?
Are you sure? And continue breaking until the person says no.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Well, and I'm sure we're gonna get into this later.
But it's like now, we know that torture typically renders
accounts unreliable, right because you're going to say whatever it
takes to make them stop.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Oh, we're going to get into that on exactly how
reliable or not torture techniques are.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean this idea, though, this fundamental assumption
about the efficacy of torture is like a concept that
haunts humanity like a ghost, and the consequences of this
philosophy remain with us day and have been here for millennia.
(10:02):
In some areas of the world, acts of torture were
grouped into different categories. You would have something like first, second,
or third degree, and they were they were rated in
terms of pain, and unlike the modern way that degrees
are interpreted in the legal system of the US today,
like first degree murder is worse than second degree murder. Yeah,
(10:25):
just flip that, Just flip it, flip it. So first
degree torture in this kind of system would be something
that causes pain but does not permanently mutilate the body,
such as whipping or the many variations thereof, or just
you know, beating the ever loving snot out of someone.
One variation of whipping would be something called bastinado or
(10:47):
phallic of foot whipping. So it sounds silly at first
when when you're thinking and you're just slapping someone's feet. No,
if you were rip to shreds and they needed these
to walk. So that's the first degree.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And the second degree ups the ante quite a bit,
I would say, And this is where you'll find things
like vices or racks, things that either crush or you know,
like stretch to the point of not killing but pretty
much mutilating someone. These are like screw presses, yeah, where
(11:23):
where your thumbs would be crushed, or toes or really
any knees, feet, teeth, any kind of way. Basically, that's
where you get to second degree, where you're not going
to look and function the same after you've been tortured.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And you may well die, but they're not purposely they're not.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
And that's like when where they would put you on
the rack and like stretch you to the point where
your bones would break, and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right as a second or what yeah, or what would
be called maybe a restraint position like the so called
Palestinian hanging there. But these both well horrific pale in
comparison to the third degree.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, the third degree is where it really starts to
make your skin crawl. This is the kind of torture
that was the most insidious and dangerous of all, utterly
nightmare fuel, the kind of stuff that you hear in
fiction that you're you would almost question who would come
up with this idea. It's all very creative stuff too,
So we're talking spikes and blades and boiling oil and
(12:33):
fire and things with names of that alone will just
send shivers up your spine, like the serrated iron tongue.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Shredder not an ironic name.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Oh, the hot copper basin for abascination.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
That's the word of the day, destroying someone's eyesight, that's right.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And oh and the stocks that forcably held the victim's
feet over red hot coals and then yeah, until the
skin and the foot muscles were burnt black and the
bones completely turned to powder.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Wow, the feet were the skin of the few were
also coated and lard beforehand, which is an extra gruesome detail.
And what we just described on that third degree, it's
very clear that, especially before the advent of modern medicine,
someone's chances of surviving any of those was remarkably slim,
(13:31):
just the infection. Can you imagine the infection, the bleeding
out from these various wounds.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
And it's one of those things too, where unless they
needed to keep you alive because they really wanted to
continue to extract information from you, it's not like they
were going to give you any kind of medical attention
right away unless it was, you know, worth their while
to do so.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Right they might have someone pray for you, but that
person might be praying while they're doing that thing.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
The worst thing is that it's not for me. The
worst thing is that it's not just for interrogation purposes.
Sometimes the whole reason that a human being would have
to go through this is so that whatever group is
doing the torturing can set an example for what happens
if you either defy the group in power, or even
(14:22):
just some kind of dissenter from the group in power,
that bothers me to no end.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
The people are starving and there's a widespread theft of grain,
and someone says, well, we need the bulk of these
serfs or peasants or whatever to survive and to farm land,
so let's just publicly eviscerate one of.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Them, just so they know literally not just give them
a good talking to, vesceerate their.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Flesh, leave the head somewhere visible, a pike perhaps, And.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
You know, you can get into arguments about controlling a
population through fear or through you know, the various ways
that you can do that from a high level, but man,
it just seems too brutal to make much sense.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And the type of abuse administered here would typically depend
on the setting, the transgression, the social status of the victim. So,
for example, in Europe, Elizabeth Bathory or is Bet Bathory,
because of her high station, was not murdered or burned
(15:28):
at a stake or impaled. She was walled into a
room where she didn't start to death, she was fed
until she died. She was put on, not to be
too glib about it, permanent time out or solitary confinement.
And people would argue that that sort of injustice or
inequality of consequence occurs today. I think that the four
(15:53):
of us would largely agree that is the case, at
least here in the States, and for centuries and entries
various civilizations across the globe, we all just sort of
took it for granted that horrific physical degradations mutilations and
abuses were par for the course when it came to
dissent a crime or even rubbing the wrong important person
(16:17):
the wrong way. And if we fast forward to the
modern day, humanity started to realize this is a problem.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah. Where did he get clicked for humanity, Ben in
the World Wars?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, yeah, in the World Wars. That's I believe when
the public around the world said, what Charnel houses? What
avatoirs are we building? You know, and that was a
primary impetus for the United Nations to codify protections against torture.
And as you had said, Matt, this didn't happen, actually
(16:53):
happen or get adopted into law until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Okay, So it took a long time for it to
click for humanity.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Right, Well, it took a long time for them to
make it official.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
There.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
You know, there are things before. There are rules of
Engagement for war treatment a POW's But the Convention against
Torture another cruel in human or degrading treatment or punishment,
commonly known as UNCAT or the United Nations Convention against
Torture wasn't adopted until nineteen eighty four. It was ratified
in nineteen eighty seven, and so they used a definition
(17:27):
that's a little bit different from the one we used
at the top.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, this comes from Article one of the Convention. Quote
for the purpose of this Convention, the term torture means
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical
or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such
purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information
or a confession, punishing him for an act he or
a third person has committed, or is suspected of having committed,
(17:52):
or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or
for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when
such pain or suff is inflicted by, or at the
instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, a
public official, for other person acting in an official capacity.
It does not include pain or suffering arising only from
(18:13):
inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Tut Tut, tut.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Can you unpack that for a s ben. I read it,
but I don't think I took it in.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, one of the big things there is that right
at the end, putting in lawful sanctions. So if it's
if it's part of the law in the country where
this is occurring. As this is the type of punishment,
it feels like there's a lot of wiggle room there.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, we can see the problems with this. So three
of the big things that happened, Noel, you point. You
made the excellent point about a third person that shows up,
because there are people who will gladly die for a cause,
but they don't want their children or their spouse to.
And then the second huge about this is the involvement
(19:02):
of a public official or someone acting in an official capacity.
So this is banning state sponsored acts of this sort
of violence. This is not banning, Uh, this is not
specifically meant to target you know, the day Matt snaps
and abducts someone, Okay, getting the getting the crazy eyes,
(19:24):
Sorry Matt. Moving on, What would it take?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
What would it take for a Matt snap, a Matte snap? Yeah, hmm,
you don't know, Maybe that's it you did, you don't know?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, probably someone harming my family. Yeah, but I don't
I don't know that I would abduct anybody.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I I feel like you, I feel like you know
exactly what the line on Matt step is. And God
hope we never cross it. We wouldn't be absolutely clear,
of course, Noel, I think you can agree with me
here that of the three of us, Matt is probably
the nicest legitimately and not not prone to abducting people.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Well, of course he's not prone, But when the snap happens, man, stand.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Back, I guess you never know when when a snap occurs.
That's the nature of it.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's very much the nature of it. But it could
happen any of us, and we all have our limits.
And that's why I think it's interesting you brought up
the third party situation, because that is a it's it's
dirty pool, my man. You know, taking someone's loved ones
and you know, using them as a as a tool
(20:33):
to extract information out of someone. That is just like
the most horrific thing that you could possibly do, I think,
you know.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Or even just like a co pilot or a partner
or someone who's in the same squad as you were, you.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Know, because now you're responsible for the life of another.
So ethically, it puts someone in the position where they
have to ask, am I committing.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Murder by in action?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But the third the third point, so the first point
is the thing about a third party. The second point
is the state action. And to follow up, the third
point here, and one of the most dangerous ones, is
the idea of lawful sanctions. What they're saying then is
that if there is a sanctioned action, anything from depriving
(21:20):
the civilians of a country of food due to an
economic sanction or a military incursion that results in the
death or mutilation of civilians, that does not count as torture.
And this debate continues in the international sphere today. Regrettably,
(21:42):
we can probably already get a good spider sense of
which countries have what positions, you know, well.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Especially if we go back to the top with that
example of the Navy airman, who is you know, telling
people that he's been tortured and this is part of
the Vietnam call. And then you imagine historically what we
know the US military was doing to civilians in places
all over North Vietnam. Sure, and you know, since it's
(22:12):
state sanctioned, you know, we're talking about the sixties and
seventies then during the Vietnam conflict. But so it's well
before a decade before the UN says this is what
torture is. But at the same time, both sides are
doing one form of torture or another.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
That's a great point, and we should also note that
in many cases it's not as if the president or
the ruling party or the monarch of a country said you, soldiers,
go out torture people. Often this fog of war mission
creep would set in, and there would be factions of
(22:53):
people or officials acting relatively of their own accord, thinking
that the ends justify the means. And so we can
already see the problems with this definition, as lengthy as
it is and as specific as it attempts to be.
But regardless of the imperfections, the concept itself seems noble, right,
(23:14):
stop torturing people, especially when there's not a lot of
evidence that it works as intended. So case closed, Right,
not so much, and we'll get into why after a
quick sponsor break. Here's where it gets crazy. The idea
(23:38):
that everybody can agree to stop torturing people is the
idea that this worked is wrong. Unfortunately, it is so
so so cartoonishly incorrect. According to the scholar Irvand Abramayan,
although there were several decades of prohibition against torture, generally
agreed that spread from Europe to most parts of the
(24:00):
world by the nineteen eighties that that ban was functionally off.
The taboo against torture had been broken.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, he argued that torture quote returned with a vengeance,
and a lot of this had to do with the
advent of television or the way television was kind of changing,
and it presented an opportunity to break political prisoners and
then broadcast the results the public recantations kind of like
we're mentioning at the top of the show. They wanted
(24:31):
that airmen to say, I don't believe in the ideologies
of the United States government. They are wrong. That's what
they want to be able to broadcast to everyone. And
the idea is that if you torture someone enough, you
can change, you know, you can make them say what
you want for your ideological means and just recanting yeah,
(24:53):
political beliefs. Using this ideological warfare and political mobilization and
the need to win the hearts and minds of people
who exist in a country where war is being waged.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Very it's Orwellian when you think about it, you know,
and if anything, then, according to this expert, in the
wake of the world wars, torture as a widespread practice
momentarily maybe sort of kind of a little bit paused
for a second. But now if we fast forward a
(25:27):
little closer to the modern age, we find that that
is not the case. According to Human Rights Watch, between
two thousand and four and two thousand and five, over
sixteen countries were documented using torture, state sponsored torture.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, and then you go to the war on terror,
the global war on terror, right, where we know black sites.
We've covered this before on an episode. Black sites have
been used where torture occurs. And it's not just the
United States.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Right, it is not just This is not just an
episode picking on the United States. And often these things
are occurring through a second or third hand thing. There's
a proxy. So despite being banned, torture continues in countries
around the globe. And this ancient practice shows no signs
of abating. In fact, our species has effectively leveraged technology
(26:16):
to arrive at new forms of physical and psychological abuse.
One thing we learned about in the course of our research,
which initially didn't sound that bad, was the so called
cold cell treatment. And this this is an Uncle Sam.
Original prisoners are placed in front of a large air
conditioner unit running on full blast. That doesn't sound bad
(26:40):
right at first.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Probably it's kind of nice, depending on where you are.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean for the first day, or for maybe even
for the first week.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But what about a month, what.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
About a year? That is the so called cold cell treatment,
And we should make we should make a point that
it's allegedly happened for years, but we're required technically to
say allegedly.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, I wonder what that does to the human body.
And we don't have a lot of information about exactly
how cold the air conditioner unit gets too, but we're
I'm assuming if it's an air conditioner rather than some
kind of like refrigeration device, it's probably in the lower
to mid sixties.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So it's probably it's not fatal. It's probably more psychological.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So what else have we found? What other technology have
we turned to? Torturous ends?
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Electricity? That's one of the major things that's been used
in modern times, everything from cattle prods to stun guns
to lasers being used by mostly mostly security forces like
police forces and militaries. And it's strange to imagine, especially
(27:59):
in the United States, the modern stun gun did not
originate as a less than lethal weapon for police officers
the way we you know, nowadays see it a lot
of the times a taser, you know, it was it
was a cattle prod and then it became a way
to control prisoners specifically, and then it kind of evolved. Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And then also this would be good going to the
earlier point you made know all about torture and fiction.
This would be where a car battery is hooked up
to something and then they shock the person.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
With the car battery, which is a very real thing.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh absolutely, here's a weird one, the so called white torture.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
What is this? I don't know this.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
This sounds this is psychological, but it sounds very strange.
A prisoner is in solitary confinement and everything in their world,
everything they encounter, including the food they eat and the
plate seat from white blank white.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Dude, you know that's in Jlo's rider that like everything
in her dressing room has to be white.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you what do you think she originated?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Maybe I should call it the j Lo torture.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
This is real. That's that's real. That's a thing. That's
not some interior designer being like playful. No, I can
imagine that being another psychological torture device that just I
don't know somehow, Yeah, especially like can you imagine combining
the cold cell the white cold cell is what they
(29:38):
would call.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
It, ugh with lights on all the time, also no
human contact.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Playing the same song over and over.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And you know that's that might sound like that's a
lot for us to put on Jennifer Lopez, but it
is in her rider that everything has to be.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
White, and she has been responsible for some atrocities though
that's true. Have you seen Gilie Uh?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
I have not.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
I haven't either heard it was really bad atrocity. Maybe
that's a little over overstated in the case, I did
like to sell though.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I did like the cell as well. I enjoyed it.
I felt from from the perspective cinematography, it was just stunning.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
The guy that directed that, Tarsim Singh, did those early
RAM videos, very nineties kind of tableaus with like the
rotating the platform and he's on with the anyway, that
guy basically invented the look of like the Pearl Jam
video from the nineties.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
And anyway, he's got some amazing other movies, huh.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
With a fall. The Fall is a good one.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Oh, and speaking of music, this brings us to another
form of technologically advanced torture that longtime listeners are familiar with.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, it's just music torture, right like, and I think
a part of it doesn't necessarily have to be incredibly loud.
But whenever you see it done and you dramatized in film,
it's usually some absurd stack of you know, bass in
the trunk kind of car stereo speakers. They're just blasting
the stuff at really high decibel levels. We're talking about,
(31:10):
you know, the idea I think is repetition, right, so
it would be the same song over and over and
over and over again, whether it's Metallica or Britney Spears
or even a very popular one Ben I think you
mentioned before on another episode is the Barney song. Yep?
Did you know that guy's a tantric sex guru? Now,
the guy that played Barney.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Does he still wear the costume?
Speaker 3 (31:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I think, Oh, I need to get that out of
my head.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And already he mainly just wears scented oils and lotions
and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
A fine musk. The other practice that we found was
force feeding, including using some medical advances to feed people rectally,
similar to real life version of that South Park trope.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, and a lot of this you'll see in the news.
And it's not necessarily used as a torture, but as
a way to keep people who are prisoners alive if
they're having some kind of protest where they're doing self
starvation in protest of their captivity. And so again, it's
crazy to think that the method to preserve someone's life
(32:27):
can also be used to torture them.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yes, yeah, and that goes into an ethical question as well.
You know, this is something that we didn't discuss off air,
but it just occurred to me. Now, if somebody wants
to die, right, if they want to commit medically assisted
suicide their own accord, and they are legally required to
(32:52):
stay alive, is that this in a state of pain,
perhaps from a chronic condition. Is that the state eighty
Indian torture? Or is you know what's the line there?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
That's a tough ethical question we should.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Is there an ethicist in the house, Paul or you
an ethicist?
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Okay, but you know that's in that's something we I
wonder if the UN has pondered that. I haven't seen
anything anything recently at least.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Well, and let's just I don't know, I'm gonna talk
about the elephant in the room, or at least my elephant.
You know, the UN kind of gets a lot of
flak as being a somewhat toothless organization, like you can
make these resolutions, but at the end of the day,
it's just kind of, you know, words on paper, and
there's very little enforcement ability that the u N has.
(33:45):
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
You are correct. The the primary power structure of the
United Nations is the u N Security Council, and they
can each member of the UN Security Council can veto
an entire concept. So it has to things have to
pass unanimously. So it is very very, very very difficult.
(34:09):
It's not as bad and ineffectual as the predecessor, the
League of Nations. But yeah, you're you're spot on. When
do words on paper translate to substantive change?
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah, no, that that that kind of is the question,
And that's sort of you know, when we're talking about
the shift of consciousness as a country, when we decide
as a people that torture is not okay. But yet
if it still is thought by some as being an
effective tool, whether or not there are resolutions on the
books or not. At the end of the day, if
(34:42):
you think it's going to get the job done, you're
probably going to figure out a way to get around
it and do it, you know, especially when we have
things like black sites and you know, stuff where there's
very little oversights and you have heads of these divisions
that essentially act as gods of their little fiefdoms, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
So it's tough, like secret Police, for instance, throughout a
lot of throughout a lot of recent history. And that's
the point that is the stuff they don't want you
to know here in this episode. It's the fact that
there are numerous active conspiracies as we speak. We're not
(35:22):
talking about nineteen ninety three. We're not talking about nineteen
seventy four, we're not talking about two thousand and seven.
We're talking about twenty eighteen. As we are recording this,
there are numerous active cover ups and conspiracies allowing various
governments around the world, including the United States, but not
limited to Uncle Sam, to commit torture, either through proxies
(35:45):
or euphemisms like enhanced interrogation or good old fashioned secret police.
As you guys pointed out black sites off the line
item budgets written out of your history books, and we
might never know what happens with it. And this forces
us to ask about the future of torture.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
And we'll get into that right after a quick word
from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
So we're back, and Noel, you brought up this excellent point,
Especially in the case of US intelligence services, military arms.
The primary argument for these techniques is that is something
along the lines of, well, they might be deplorable, but
they do result invaluable or what they would call actionable
(36:34):
intelligence that can ultimately save lives. And the scenario you'll
often hear described by people supporting these programs is the following.
It's something called the ticking time bomb scenario.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, imagine that you're an authority figure, right, whether this
is law enforcement, military, maybe an intelligence officer working for
the CIA, whatever it is. You have absolute certainty that
there will be some form of a a terrorist attack,
probably and it's going to happen in the near to
immediate future, but you don't know exactly where, you don't
(37:08):
know exactly when. How do you find out this is
the big quandary. How do you gain that information without
you know, stumbling upon a piece of paper that has
it written out.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
So let's take it a step further and say that
maybe maybe we are those investigators, and we have one
or more suspects and custody, and with the same amount
of certitude, we know that they know where the attack
will be. Maybe we have it narrowed down to three cities,
but they know which city and which.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Day, and we know that, you know, torture is banned,
it may still be one of the only ways to
extract information, this kind of information before one hundreds and
thousands of innocent people die, or at least that's the justification, right.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
M Yeah, And this this is often depicted the ultimate dilemma,
at least for modern times regarding torture, and experts continue
to debate it today whether or not it's a good
idea to save all of these lives by torturing this person.
Can you even get information that would be reliable enough
to save people if you did indeed torture one of
(38:19):
these suspects. There's a lot to unpact there, right, Like,
do you.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Or do we in this scenario want to be responsible
for thousands of venison people dying because we refuse to
bend or break the law.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, and international law that's set forth by you know,
the United Nations. And look, it's just one of those things,
like it's a big moral quandary that seems to have
probably the most weight behind it in our modern times.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
So now our question becomes if we want to be
a Machavelli and if we want to cast morals aside.
Now our question shifts a little, and it's the ultimate
question here. Does it work? As we alluded to earlier
in the show, does physically or psychologically torturing someone compel
them to provide truthful, useful information. The answer is no.
(39:16):
Torture does not work, at least in the way that
the tormentors might publicly intend. Again, that's publicly. So there's
an article from Scientific American by a guy named Michael Schrmer,
and it's called We've known for four hundred years that
torture doesn't work. In this article, there is a fascinating
(39:42):
anecdote about the Duke of Brunswick in Germany during the
time of the Inquisition. He goes to visit the inquisitors
and he wants to oversee their use of torture to
extract information from people accused of witchcraft, right the majority
of whom we're women. The Jesuits told the Duke that
the inquisitors are doing their duty. They're only arresting people
(40:04):
who have been implicated in the confessions of other witches.
When they were put to the question which was the
term for torture? And so the Duke's so a little
bit skeptical, and he thinks, well, maybe people just say
anything to get this to stop. So he invited the
Jesuits to come visit him and go with him to
a dungeon to witness a woman being stretched on the
(40:27):
rack second degree of torture, like we have mentioned earlier.
And the Duke said to this lady, while she's mid torture,
by the way, he says, now, women, you are a
confessed witch. I suspect these two men of being warlocks.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
What do you say?
Speaker 1 (40:44):
And he looks at the executioners and he says another
turn of the rack executioners, And the woman immediately said, no, no, no,
you are quite right. I have often seen them at
the sabbot. They can turn themselves into goats, wolves and
other animals. Several witches have had children and buy them
One woman even had eight children whom these men fathered.
The children had heads like toads and legs like spiders.
(41:06):
And the Duke turned to the Jesuits and said, should
I torture you until you confess?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Geez? You get real creative when you put to the question.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
And that's how we know. Like, the problem with torture
is if the primary goal is to receive truthful information again,
morals aside, then we have to think of the primary
goal of the victim, which is just to stop this immense,
unending pain.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Well, and also mentioned in that article is something that
has really shaped the way I viewed torture over the years.
Christopher Hitchens, a writer that I very much admired to
a certain extent. Several years ago, while he was still living,
he was working, he was writing for Vanity Fair still
and he went and he was himself waterboarded. And you know,
(41:57):
he was famously hawkish about war, believing that there were
good reasons to go to war and to eliminate terrorism.
And you know, you can look at his views, but
he didn't believe that waterboarding was that big of a deal.
But he went. It occurred to him, and his quote
(42:18):
from the article was if waterboarding does not constitute torture,
then there is no such thing as torture, because he
had a terrible experience. He almost immediately after being subjected
to the water pouring on his head, he said, no,
that felt like I was drowning. That is the worst
thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
And I'm sure most listeners know what waterboarding is, but
i mean, just to set the scene, it's like you've
got a rag over your face. There isn't you know,
a torrent of water being poured over your mouth and
nose to the point where it's constant enough that you
just can't catch your breath. And I'm imagining that the
rag is creating almost a suction against your face where
(42:58):
you just like are totally incapable of drawing breath. And
so I would argue that this is not only a
physical torture, because we know it's very unpleasant physically when
you can't breathe, it's also a psychological torture because it's
the sensation that it's creating of not being able to
catch your breath and of dying, of drowning, which sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Well, yeah, and the whole point of this whole thing, though,
is that Christopher Hitchins was alluding to the fact that
he would have said anything to make that stop, and
he can't imagine He couldn't imagine experiencing that as someone
like being told, you know where X is, you know
what time it's going to happen, Tell me where it is,
(43:38):
and then proceed with the torture over and over and over.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
It just seems so counterintuitive to me that people would
think that this is a smart way to get people
to tell them the truth. It just seems to me
that it's obvious that it would be the opposite.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, it's a smart way to get people to tell
you whatever you want them to say, right, But whether
or not it's true is very, very different. And this
ticking time bomb thought experiment, let's be honest, it's way
too cut and dry in reality. If there's someone in captivity,
they may or may not be responsible for this thing, right,
(44:14):
They may or may not have accurate information. Even if
they are responsible, maybe they're not on the inner circle
for some specific operation, then they might not know anything useful.
They might just make stuff up out of whole.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Cloth, like the toadheads. So as I'm saying, like, that's
like creative writing type stuff, like you know, you are
going to dig deep into your imagination for you know,
to make that rack tightening cease.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Absolutely, and despite the continued practices of what we could
call gray area interrogation and or torture, the US government
itself publicly agrees that torture is not really effective. There
was a twenty fourteen report by the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence. They analyzed millions of internal CIA documents related
(45:03):
to the torture of people's suspected of terrorism, and the
Senate concluded the CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques
was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining
cooperation from detainees. It also adds that multiple CIA detainees
fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence, and that leads us
(45:25):
to ask, if torture doesn't work, what does Is there
something better than torture?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Well, yeah, pretty much the opposite of torture. There are
multiple studies that show that this might be the thing,
the way to get information from people building rapport. It works, wonders,
and it has a significantly higher chance of creating a
successful relationship between interrogator and interrogate by actually being like
(45:55):
showing empathy and I understand your situation. I mean, there's
a whole host of lines you can go down, for sure.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I guess the problem there is, though, if you have
people that are trained, they are hardened to the point
where they they're just not They're not gonna play nice
with you at all, you know. I Mean. It's one
thing if you're like a scared kid, or like someone
who's been accused of a crime and you're just all,
you know, you don't know which way is up. You
could probably coerce someone into telling you some stuff and
(46:24):
getting them to cry and talk about their mommy or
something like. I'm being a jerk, but you know what
I'm saying. But if someone is like a trained a
terrorist or an operative of some kind, I don't I
don't think that's gonna work.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
I don't know. You might find that there's really I'm
just saying there. You might find that there is a
vulnerable human inside each and every one of us.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
It also depends on the X axis of time.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
So if someone is detained for life with no human contact.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Isn't that torture? Except for you.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
It is.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
It is, but it's it's a chess level torture. Yeah,
And the thing is that it appears to it appears
to work. There are different studies that confirm. There's one
called the Who, What and Why Human Intelligence Gathering from
this journal Apply Cognitive Psychology. They surveyed one hundred and
(47:17):
fifty two interrogators and they found that rapport and relationship
building techniques were employed most often and perceived to be
the most effective, regardless of context and intended outcome. Particularly
they found in comparison to confrontational techniques. And that's from
the interrogators themselves.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Yeah. There's another study called Interviewing High Value Detainees. It
sampled sixty four practitioners and detainees and it found that quote,
detainees were more likely to disclose meaningful information and earlier
in the interview when rapport building techniques were used.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
So those are two examples of studies that find this
approach superior to confrontational or abusive behavior. Although I do
appreciate the point of rapport building and solitary confinement being
just another form of torture, art arguably, with these stories
(48:12):
we hear from various global conflicts in the study of torture,
they indicate the same conclusions, not just from academics and historians,
but from the first hand accounts of other interrogators. And
so we have to ask ourselves. If torture does not
work at least in terms of providing truthful information or
eliciting it, if it only blinds someone to the point
(48:36):
that they will say anything to prevent further abuse, then
why do we as a species persist. There's several reasons,
and absolutely none of them are appealing. First, in some
belief systems, certain methods of punishment may be prescribed for
certain types of transgressions. This is where you hear about
traditional methods of punishment, right or execution for the violation
(48:59):
of socio spiritual moras. That's just that's a word I
made up. I'm gonna stick with mores word socio spiritual.
And then there's the other one. Second, torture is also
used successfully to some degree to send a message.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
And this goes to.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
An anecdote. Now, I know there's a touchy geopolitical situation
with Russia right now, but there's a short there's a
short story or an account of what happened in the
Soviet Union at the time had four Soviet diplomats kidnapped
in nineteen eighty five. Did you'll hear about this?
Speaker 2 (49:38):
I have no.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
So in nineteen eighty five, these four Soviet diplomats were
kidnapped by a fundamentalist group called the Islamic Liberation Organization.
They dispatched Russia dispatched something called it's Alpha Group. They
were tasked with counter terrorism hostage rescue situations. They learned
(50:01):
that one of the hostages had been killed, a guy
named Arkadi Katkov. And so what they did is they
tracked down and located one of the leaders of the kidnappers,
are possibly a relative, and they wanted to send a
message to the terrorist. They tortured this person that they
(50:26):
captured with absolutely no intention of gaining information, absolutely no
intention of letting them survive. Alpha Group castrated the hostage,
cut him into pieces, and sent pieces of him to
the hostage takers. And they also said, we know who
your other relatives are, and we know where they live,
and we know their routines. The three hostages were released
(50:49):
and dropped off near the Soviet embassy, and there were
no other There haven't been Russian officials taken captive since then,
and then people argue back and forth this scary story.
But what it shows is that their goal in torture
then was not to learn anything new. Their goal was
(51:11):
to send a signal, just like in the early days
of civilization, where someone said, let us make an example, disgusting,
repugnant example.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, rather than flaming some prisoners and putting them on
spikes throughout your whole kingdom, you'd just cut one person
up to take this one group out.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
And you could argue again, morals aside that that was
a short term solution, that the signaling did result in
the release of those other hostages. But over the long
term is that a solution, I don't know. But for now,
the practice of torture continues. We had talked before about
(51:54):
several like we've mentioned several forms of torture that seem
our cane but are still around. Right, Like nol you
mentioned when we're talking about foot whipping. You had told
me before that that's not an ancient practice, right right.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Well, I mean maybe the origins of it are, but
I know there was an incident with I believe it
was kuse Hussein who participated in whipping the feet of
I believe it was an Iraqi soccer team. You know
about this, the whole team? I think so. Yeah, apparently
Ude Hussein was a pretty sore loser when the group
(52:33):
of Iraqi soccer stars did not win the Asian Cup
and he had them tortured by having the soles of
their feet whipped after losing the World Cup qualifying match.
So yeah, it's definitely something that's still around.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
And that's technically that's going to be state sponsored then
because he was a Hussain.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Wow, well, boys, I feel awful.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Well there's a silver lining, right what? I don't know
when we're just talking off air about you know, the
future of torture. Maybe there's a kind of torture that
doesn't really hurt you physically.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Oh okay, some sort of virtual torture.
Speaker 3 (53:17):
Yeah. Yeah, you guys see an Altered Carbon the Netflix show. Yeah,
I think it's a lot of fun. It's got problems,
But there's a particular scenario where there's this like shop
or it looks like a medical facility where a somebody
who wants to extract information can pay these texts to
put somebody under you kind of have to abduct them first,
(53:40):
So if that shoot them up in the neck with
some kind of you know, sleepy meds, and then you
put them on this table and put all these electrodes
attached to their brain, and they end up in a
virtual room where somebody can go in there and reak
all kinds of virtual havoc on them, and apparently, you know,
there's like a readout of the way their body's reacting.
(54:00):
And while it's all psychological, they apparently feel it in
the virtual world.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Right. Yeah, it's a terrifying extrapolation of both virtual reality
and torture, certainly. And I can imagine a world, this
world where there is some type of interface that makes
it it blurs the line between real and virtual, like
(54:26):
the ar stuff that we are seeing right now, augmented
reality and virtual reality. I can totally imagine that occurring.
I wonder how effective it would be or could be
the same thing.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
Man, do you not still think the ethical quandaries still
apply and also the efficacy?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, absolutely, it would still apply, at least in the
psychological sense, because unless the person's mind was also erased,
they were their experience was also erased. They would still
remember this and bear the psychological burden of what occurred.
It sort of like you can wake up from a nightmare,
(55:05):
but you still remember it and you're still going to
affect your behavior. Sure, so perhaps it's still better than
the alternative of shredding people's tongues or flaming them, But
it's a difference of degree on.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
I m'd say, Man, I watched the video on the
Brazen Bull to get ready for this, and I almost
didn't even want to bring it up.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
But the thing where they put them inside of a thing, it's.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
A statue made out of bronze, or at least theoretically
there is. There has not one been found, Like they've
never actually seen a full brazen.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Bull, which just read accounts of it.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, but it was a statue of a bowl that
was large enough for a human to fit inside, and
they would put a fire on the bottom of it,
and the entire thing would heat up because of the
substance it's made of, all of the metal, it quickly
heats up to the same temperature the person inside is
pretty much cooked. And it was Oh, there was also
this whole thing where their stories or at least accounts
(56:08):
of the bull makes an actual bull sound when the
person is being cooked, and it's based on the idea
of the single air hole that goes into the bowl
is actually from the mouth of this brazen bull statue,
and the only way to get oxygen as smoke is
filling up the bull, and you're in there being cooked
(56:30):
and dying is to breathe through that hole, and it
makes like a cow sound when you're breathing through it.
It was the most horrifying thing. I mean, there are gross,
terrible things of cutting up and all this, but the
concept of being locked into an oven in that way
while you can hear whoever is in charge like laughing.
(56:54):
Because it's supposedly done as like a form of entertainment,
not only punishment, but attainment.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
Well, that goes into when we're talking about some of
these older civilizations where the torture was kind of entertainment.
Like even you know, being a gladiator for example, that
was a punishment that was a form of torture. I mean,
you had a fighting chance, I guess, but it was
also done for you know, the amusement of the government
(57:21):
and then they keep the people happy with the bread
and circuses and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
And religion was also functioning as government too for much
of the time. So if it was a religious practice,
if we must, you know, rip the hearts out of
the living so that the sun continues to rise or
that the eclipse ends, then it's still still a state
sponsored action. And this brings us to questions for you, folks.
(57:49):
Do you believe that torture does produce results?
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Do you believe that the.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Ends justify the macabre means? And if so or if not,
why we would like to hear from you. We also,
this is the part of the show where Matt, Noel
and I let you know that we are on the internet.
That's all true. We are on Instagram, We're on Facebook.
(58:22):
Join our discussion page here's where it gets crazy, where
you can find us interacting from time to time. You
can also find us on Twitter. But we're not just
on the internet anymore, folks. The rumors are true. We've
branched out to another platform, the good old telephone.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Yes, we now have a toll free number that you
can call and leave us a voice message and spoiler alert,
we might make a couple episodes where we feature you
on the show. Okay, it's gonna happen, but we just
need you to leave the messages. So here it is,
write this down, put it in your phone, do what
(58:59):
you gotta do. Eight three three st d w y
t K. Let's do that again with numbers eight three
three seven, eight three nine nine eight five. If you
call that number right now, you will hear Ben's voice
and then leave a message. That's all. It's super simple.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Hey.
Speaker 3 (59:18):
And if you, you know, have some sort of phone aversion,
you know, like touching plastic buttons, I guess I could
apply to a keyboard, dude. It doesn't matter if it's
a specific phone a version. You can reach us on
the internet. Like Ben said, we are there at a
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram and just conspiracy stuff on
Twitter and Facebook. And if you don't want to do
(59:41):
any of that stuff phone Internet facts. Yeah, we don't
have facts, but we should. We should. That should be
our next antiquated communication means that we come up with.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
That would actually be amazing. We had a fax machine
that just sat next.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, it makes a cool sound, that's for.
Speaker 2 (59:57):
Sure, all right, And that's the end of the this
classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about
this episode, you can get into contact with us in
a number of different ways. One of the best is
to give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three STDWYTK. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You see it all the time in film and fiction.
There is a ticking clock and a hard nosed law
enforcement investigator has to bend the rules, break the lines,
perhaps engage in torture for the greater good. That's what
Tonight's classic episode is about.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
That's what the series twenty four is all about.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It really is, Matt, It really is. The question though,
is in real life does torture actually work? Do all
these arguments we hear or heard about places like Guantanamo
Bay do they bear results?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
But hey, listen to the episode. Isn't torture at all.
It's quite pleasant. So let's jump right in.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
H Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel the Iron
Maiden Brown.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
They called me Ben. We are joined with our returning
super producer Paul Decant and most importantly, you are here.
You are you that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. By the self described moniker, one of
our co hosts just added you you may sense a
(01:35):
bit of foreshadowing in today's episode. Today's episode is a
little dark, but let's get into it with an anecdote.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I in the time, I get adequate fool and adequate
clothing and medical care when I require.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Voice you just heard was Admiral Jeremiah Denton of the
United States Navy. On July eighteenth, nineteen sixty five, his
US Navy jet was shot down while leading an air
attack over North Vietnam. He was captured, and he remained
in the country as a prisoner of war until nineteen
seventy three. It's quite a long time now after Like
(02:21):
during that first full year that he was a prisoner
of war, he was interviewed for this propaganda piece essentially
from the North viet Vietnamese He was filmed being interviewed
by a member of the Japanese press, and during this
interview he states several things that you heard. He's getting
adequate food and clothing and medical care, and also that
(02:44):
he supports the United States government and all of its actions.
And that's probably not something that his captors wanted him
to say, if it truly was a propaganda piece, which
it appears to be. But here's the thing. What you
can't see because you're not watching the film, is that
he is blinking all the while that he's talking, and
(03:05):
what he is spelling out is actually Morse code, and
he's spelling out the word torture. And we actually have
a quick clip here of what that would sound like.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
And this stuck out to the analyst on Uncle Sam's
side because they knew that Denton did not have some
sort of medical condition that would cause him to blink radically.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Absolutely, And when the US Naval Intelligence got ahold of this,
this was the first time they had had any kind
of communication from one of these prison camps that was
existing in North Vietnam that actually stated in any way
that they were being tortured, that the American POWs were
being tortured.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
And he's doing this repeatedly in different interviews or is
this all in one sit down?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
This is one sit down, but he is just continually
spelling the word torture.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
And these propaganda videos were relativetively common in this age
from different governments, where you would have someone say, yes,
we are being treated well, we are being taken care of,
when multiple outside sources suspected that this was not the case.
Today's episode is diving into dark and grisly territory, and
(04:20):
we would like all of you friends, neighbors, conspiracy realists,
and skeptics alike to know upfront that this show is
going to contain graphic descriptions of horrific physical and mental
abuse you see. Today we are exploring the past, the present,
and the future of torture, given the ubiquitous nature of
(04:41):
torture throughout human history, even before recorded human history, because
we were as a species torturing each other before we
were writing things down. We won't be delving into too
many specific cases, but we will inevitably run into several
strange examples of this practice. So here are the facts.
(05:04):
First things first, what's the operative definition of torture?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yeah, torture is the deliberate infliction of physical and or
I mean, I guess it could be one of the
other psychological pain with the purpose of obtaining information or
extorting a confession from the victim and thus enabling a conviction.
It can also be the penalty itself, and I get that.
That's like a good, cut and dry definition of it.
(05:31):
Don't Some people torture just for the sheer thrill of
doing it, with no end game in mind.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, a lot of this comes from the un outlining
exactly what torture is in nineteen eighty four, I believe.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Right right, the acronym uncat, which might be the only
funny thing about this episode which we will dive into.
And that's a great point because this sounds on the
surface like a pretty solid definition, but of course not
everyone agrees with it, because there is torture simply for
sadistic purposes, typically not from a state level actor. It
(06:10):
would be someone who wants to torture someone, and maybe
they're doing it while employed by the state, but they're
getting their own dark giggles in the process.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And then what about the difference between state sponsored torture
and enhanced interrogation? Right right?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Is this a brand name difference is there? Is it
a matter of degree, or are they fundamentally different things.
Experts like gr Scott, who in the late nineteenth century
wrote a book about torture, says that it's devilishly easy
to make a definition of torture that's either too narrow
only a specific kind of thing can be considered torture,
(06:48):
or it's too wide in scope, you know, like I
was tortured because I had to listen to someone tell
me yet again the plot of Looper, that's not quite torture.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I mean, maybe it is.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
If they just do it forever for a year. But
for today's purposes, we're going to go with the definition
that Nol just mentioned earlier. The systematic use of torture
in criminal procedures or criminal proceedings dates back to some
of our earliest civilizations. And it's creepy when you think
about it. Scenes depicting torture can be found on different monuments, right.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Oh yeah, in everywhere, in these ancient areas from Mesopotamia, Egypt,
all over.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And the first records of a legal application of torture
to prove something, to prove guilt or innocence, we're found
in the Sumerian Code of ur Nimu. It's around the
twenty first century BCE, and then the Babylonian Code of
Hamarabi in the eighteenth century BCE again, and the procedure
(07:59):
describe the divine judgment of the water ordeal, which is
what it's torture. As this practice became increasingly codified because
it was already common, right, and different raiding parties from
tribes and so on. As it became part of the
(08:19):
rule of law. The administration of torture took different directions
depending on the civilization. So ancient Greeks and Romans used
it for interrogation. And this is really interesting because this
is something that haunts us. I would argue in the
current age. Until the second century AD, torture was only
(08:40):
supposed to be used on slaves, with some notable exceptions.
In fact, a slave's testimony in any sort of legal
proceeding was only admissible if they had been tortured first.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, that's the assumption, is that you couldn't trust slaves
to reveal the truth of their own accord.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
That has messed up up on so many levels.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It is because can you imagine being a slave and saying, yes,
I know, I saw you, know, Sabat or whatever take
the water jug And I'm like, look, we believe you,
but I unfortunately, I am going to have to break
like one of your hands.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, and then are you sure you saw him take it?
Are you sure? And continue breaking until the person says no.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Well, and I'm sure we're gonna get into this later.
But it's like now, we know that torture typically renders
accounts unreliable, right because you're going to say whatever it
takes to make them stop.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Oh, we're going to get into that on exactly how
reliable or not torture techniques are.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean this idea, though, this fundamental assumption
about the efficacy of torture is like a concept that
haunts humanity like a ghost, and the consequences of this
philosophy remain with us day and have been here for millennia.
(10:02):
In some areas of the world, acts of torture were
grouped into different categories. You would have something like first, second,
or third degree, and they were they were rated in
terms of pain, and unlike the modern way that degrees
are interpreted in the legal system of the US today,
like first degree murder is worse than second degree murder. Yeah,
(10:25):
just flip that, Just flip it, flip it. So first
degree torture in this kind of system would be something
that causes pain but does not permanently mutilate the body,
such as whipping or the many variations thereof, or just
you know, beating the ever loving snot out of someone.
One variation of whipping would be something called bastinado or
(10:47):
phallic of foot whipping. So it sounds silly at first
when when you're thinking and you're just slapping someone's feet. No,
if you were rip to shreds and they needed these
to walk. So that's the first degree.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And the second degree ups the ante quite a bit,
I would say, And this is where you'll find things
like vices or racks, things that either crush or you know,
like stretch to the point of not killing but pretty
much mutilating someone. These are like screw presses, yeah, where
(11:23):
where your thumbs would be crushed, or toes or really
any knees, feet, teeth, any kind of way. Basically, that's
where you get to second degree, where you're not going
to look and function the same after you've been tortured.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And you may well die, but they're not purposely they're not.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
And that's like when where they would put you on
the rack and like stretch you to the point where
your bones would break, and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right as a second or what yeah, or what would
be called maybe a restraint position like the so called
Palestinian hanging there. But these both well horrific pale in
comparison to the third degree.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, the third degree is where it really starts to
make your skin crawl. This is the kind of torture
that was the most insidious and dangerous of all, utterly
nightmare fuel, the kind of stuff that you hear in
fiction that you're you would almost question who would come
up with this idea. It's all very creative stuff too,
So we're talking spikes and blades and boiling oil and
(12:33):
fire and things with names of that alone will just
send shivers up your spine, like the serrated iron tongue.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Shredder not an ironic name.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Oh, the hot copper basin for abascination.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
That's the word of the day, destroying someone's eyesight, that's right.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And oh and the stocks that forcably held the victim's
feet over red hot coals and then yeah, until the
skin and the foot muscles were burnt black and the
bones completely turned to powder.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Wow, the feet were the skin of the few were
also coated and lard beforehand, which is an extra gruesome detail.
And what we just described on that third degree, it's
very clear that, especially before the advent of modern medicine,
someone's chances of surviving any of those was remarkably slim,
(13:31):
just the infection. Can you imagine the infection, the bleeding
out from these various wounds.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
And it's one of those things too, where unless they
needed to keep you alive because they really wanted to
continue to extract information from you, it's not like they
were going to give you any kind of medical attention
right away unless it was, you know, worth their while
to do so.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Right they might have someone pray for you, but that
person might be praying while they're doing that thing.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
The worst thing is that it's not for me. The
worst thing is that it's not just for interrogation purposes.
Sometimes the whole reason that a human being would have
to go through this is so that whatever group is
doing the torturing can set an example for what happens
if you either defy the group in power, or even
(14:22):
just some kind of dissenter from the group in power,
that bothers me to no end.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
The people are starving and there's a widespread theft of grain,
and someone says, well, we need the bulk of these
serfs or peasants or whatever to survive and to farm land,
so let's just publicly eviscerate one of.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Them, just so they know literally not just give them
a good talking to, vesceerate their.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Flesh, leave the head somewhere visible, a pike perhaps, And.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
You know, you can get into arguments about controlling a
population through fear or through you know, the various ways
that you can do that from a high level, but man,
it just seems too brutal to make much sense.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And the type of abuse administered here would typically depend
on the setting, the transgression, the social status of the victim. So,
for example, in Europe, Elizabeth Bathory or is Bet Bathory,
because of her high station, was not murdered or burned
(15:28):
at a stake or impaled. She was walled into a
room where she didn't start to death, she was fed
until she died. She was put on, not to be
too glib about it, permanent time out or solitary confinement.
And people would argue that that sort of injustice or
inequality of consequence occurs today. I think that the four
(15:53):
of us would largely agree that is the case, at
least here in the States, and for centuries and entries
various civilizations across the globe, we all just sort of
took it for granted that horrific physical degradations mutilations and
abuses were par for the course when it came to
dissent a crime or even rubbing the wrong important person
(16:17):
the wrong way. And if we fast forward to the
modern day, humanity started to realize this is a problem.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah. Where did he get clicked for humanity, Ben in
the World Wars?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, yeah, in the World Wars. That's I believe when
the public around the world said, what Charnel houses? What
avatoirs are we building? You know, and that was a
primary impetus for the United Nations to codify protections against torture.
And as you had said, Matt, this didn't happen, actually
(16:53):
happen or get adopted into law until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Okay, So it took a long time for it to
click for humanity.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Right, Well, it took a long time for them to
make it official.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
There.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
You know, there are things before. There are rules of
Engagement for war treatment a POW's But the Convention against
Torture another cruel in human or degrading treatment or punishment,
commonly known as UNCAT or the United Nations Convention against
Torture wasn't adopted until nineteen eighty four. It was ratified
in nineteen eighty seven, and so they used a definition
(17:27):
that's a little bit different from the one we used
at the top.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, this comes from Article one of the Convention. Quote
for the purpose of this Convention, the term torture means
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical
or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such
purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information
or a confession, punishing him for an act he or
a third person has committed, or is suspected of having committed,
(17:52):
or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or
for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when
such pain or suff is inflicted by, or at the
instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, a
public official, for other person acting in an official capacity.
It does not include pain or suffering arising only from
(18:13):
inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Tut Tut, tut.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Can you unpack that for a s ben. I read it,
but I don't think I took it in.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, one of the big things there is that right
at the end, putting in lawful sanctions. So if it's
if it's part of the law in the country where
this is occurring. As this is the type of punishment,
it feels like there's a lot of wiggle room there.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, we can see the problems with this. So three
of the big things that happened, Noel, you point. You
made the excellent point about a third person that shows up,
because there are people who will gladly die for a cause,
but they don't want their children or their spouse to.
And then the second huge about this is the involvement
(19:02):
of a public official or someone acting in an official capacity.
So this is banning state sponsored acts of this sort
of violence. This is not banning, Uh, this is not
specifically meant to target you know, the day Matt snaps
and abducts someone, Okay, getting the getting the crazy eyes,
(19:24):
Sorry Matt. Moving on, What would it take?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
What would it take for a Matt snap, a Matte snap? Yeah, hmm,
you don't know, Maybe that's it you did, you don't know?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, probably someone harming my family. Yeah, but I don't
I don't know that I would abduct anybody.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I I feel like you, I feel like you know
exactly what the line on Matt step is. And God
hope we never cross it. We wouldn't be absolutely clear,
of course, Noel, I think you can agree with me
here that of the three of us, Matt is probably
the nicest legitimately and not not prone to abducting people.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Well, of course he's not prone, But when the snap happens, man, stand.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Back, I guess you never know when when a snap occurs.
That's the nature of it.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's very much the nature of it. But it could
happen any of us, and we all have our limits.
And that's why I think it's interesting you brought up
the third party situation, because that is a it's it's
dirty pool, my man. You know, taking someone's loved ones
and you know, using them as a as a tool
(20:33):
to extract information out of someone. That is just like
the most horrific thing that you could possibly do, I think,
you know.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Or even just like a co pilot or a partner
or someone who's in the same squad as you were, you.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Know, because now you're responsible for the life of another.
So ethically, it puts someone in the position where they
have to ask, am I committing.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Murder by in action?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But the third the third point, so the first point
is the thing about a third party. The second point
is the state action. And to follow up, the third
point here, and one of the most dangerous ones, is
the idea of lawful sanctions. What they're saying then is
that if there is a sanctioned action, anything from depriving
(21:20):
the civilians of a country of food due to an
economic sanction or a military incursion that results in the
death or mutilation of civilians, that does not count as torture.
And this debate continues in the international sphere today. Regrettably,
(21:42):
we can probably already get a good spider sense of
which countries have what positions, you know, well.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Especially if we go back to the top with that
example of the Navy airman, who is you know, telling
people that he's been tortured and this is part of
the Vietnam call. And then you imagine historically what we
know the US military was doing to civilians in places
all over North Vietnam. Sure, and you know, since it's
(22:12):
state sanctioned, you know, we're talking about the sixties and
seventies then during the Vietnam conflict. But so it's well
before a decade before the UN says this is what
torture is. But at the same time, both sides are
doing one form of torture or another.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
That's a great point, and we should also note that
in many cases it's not as if the president or
the ruling party or the monarch of a country said you, soldiers,
go out torture people. Often this fog of war mission
creep would set in, and there would be factions of
(22:53):
people or officials acting relatively of their own accord, thinking
that the ends justify the means. And so we can
already see the problems with this definition, as lengthy as
it is and as specific as it attempts to be.
But regardless of the imperfections, the concept itself seems noble, right,
(23:14):
stop torturing people, especially when there's not a lot of
evidence that it works as intended. So case closed, Right,
not so much, and we'll get into why after a
quick sponsor break. Here's where it gets crazy. The idea
(23:38):
that everybody can agree to stop torturing people is the
idea that this worked is wrong. Unfortunately, it is so
so so cartoonishly incorrect. According to the scholar Irvand Abramayan,
although there were several decades of prohibition against torture, generally
agreed that spread from Europe to most parts of the
(24:00):
world by the nineteen eighties that that ban was functionally off.
The taboo against torture had been broken.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, he argued that torture quote returned with a vengeance,
and a lot of this had to do with the
advent of television or the way television was kind of changing,
and it presented an opportunity to break political prisoners and
then broadcast the results the public recantations kind of like
we're mentioning at the top of the show. They wanted
(24:31):
that airmen to say, I don't believe in the ideologies
of the United States government. They are wrong. That's what
they want to be able to broadcast to everyone. And
the idea is that if you torture someone enough, you
can change, you know, you can make them say what
you want for your ideological means and just recanting yeah,
(24:53):
political beliefs. Using this ideological warfare and political mobilization and
the need to win the hearts and minds of people
who exist in a country where war is being waged.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Very it's Orwellian when you think about it, you know,
and if anything, then, according to this expert, in the
wake of the world wars, torture as a widespread practice
momentarily maybe sort of kind of a little bit paused
for a second. But now if we fast forward a
(25:27):
little closer to the modern age, we find that that
is not the case. According to Human Rights Watch, between
two thousand and four and two thousand and five, over
sixteen countries were documented using torture, state sponsored torture.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, and then you go to the war on terror,
the global war on terror, right, where we know black sites.
We've covered this before on an episode. Black sites have
been used where torture occurs. And it's not just the
United States.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Right, it is not just This is not just an
episode picking on the United States. And often these things
are occurring through a second or third hand thing. There's
a proxy. So despite being banned, torture continues in countries
around the globe. And this ancient practice shows no signs
of abating. In fact, our species has effectively leveraged technology
(26:16):
to arrive at new forms of physical and psychological abuse.
One thing we learned about in the course of our research,
which initially didn't sound that bad, was the so called
cold cell treatment. And this this is an Uncle Sam.
Original prisoners are placed in front of a large air
conditioner unit running on full blast. That doesn't sound bad
(26:40):
right at first.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Probably it's kind of nice, depending on where you are.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean for the first day, or for maybe even
for the first week.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But what about a month, what.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
About a year? That is the so called cold cell treatment,
And we should make we should make a point that
it's allegedly happened for years, but we're required technically to
say allegedly.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, I wonder what that does to the human body.
And we don't have a lot of information about exactly
how cold the air conditioner unit gets too, but we're
I'm assuming if it's an air conditioner rather than some
kind of like refrigeration device, it's probably in the lower
to mid sixties.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So it's probably it's not fatal. It's probably more psychological.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So what else have we found? What other technology have
we turned to? Torturous ends?
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Electricity? That's one of the major things that's been used
in modern times, everything from cattle prods to stun guns
to lasers being used by mostly mostly security forces like
police forces and militaries. And it's strange to imagine, especially
(27:59):
in the United States, the modern stun gun did not
originate as a less than lethal weapon for police officers
the way we you know, nowadays see it a lot
of the times a taser, you know, it was it
was a cattle prod and then it became a way
to control prisoners specifically, and then it kind of evolved. Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And then also this would be good going to the
earlier point you made know all about torture and fiction.
This would be where a car battery is hooked up
to something and then they shock the person.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
With the car battery, which is a very real thing.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh absolutely, here's a weird one, the so called white torture.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
What is this? I don't know this.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
This sounds this is psychological, but it sounds very strange.
A prisoner is in solitary confinement and everything in their world,
everything they encounter, including the food they eat and the
plate seat from white blank white.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Dude, you know that's in Jlo's rider that like everything
in her dressing room has to be white.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you what do you think she originated?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Maybe I should call it the j Lo torture.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
This is real. That's that's real. That's a thing. That's
not some interior designer being like playful. No, I can
imagine that being another psychological torture device that just I
don't know somehow, Yeah, especially like can you imagine combining
the cold cell the white cold cell is what they
(29:38):
would call.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
It, ugh with lights on all the time, also no
human contact.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Playing the same song over and over.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And you know that's that might sound like that's a
lot for us to put on Jennifer Lopez, but it
is in her rider that everything has to be.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
White, and she has been responsible for some atrocities though
that's true. Have you seen Gilie Uh?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
I have not.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
I haven't either heard it was really bad atrocity. Maybe
that's a little over overstated in the case, I did
like to sell though.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I did like the cell as well. I enjoyed it.
I felt from from the perspective cinematography, it was just stunning.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
The guy that directed that, Tarsim Singh, did those early
RAM videos, very nineties kind of tableaus with like the
rotating the platform and he's on with the anyway, that
guy basically invented the look of like the Pearl Jam
video from the nineties.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
And anyway, he's got some amazing other movies, huh.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
With a fall. The Fall is a good one.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Oh, and speaking of music, this brings us to another
form of technologically advanced torture that longtime listeners are familiar with.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, it's just music torture, right like, and I think
a part of it doesn't necessarily have to be incredibly loud.
But whenever you see it done and you dramatized in film,
it's usually some absurd stack of you know, bass in
the trunk kind of car stereo speakers. They're just blasting
the stuff at really high decibel levels. We're talking about,
(31:10):
you know, the idea I think is repetition, right, so
it would be the same song over and over and
over and over again, whether it's Metallica or Britney Spears
or even a very popular one Ben I think you
mentioned before on another episode is the Barney song. Yep?
Did you know that guy's a tantric sex guru? Now,
the guy that played Barney.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Does he still wear the costume?
Speaker 3 (31:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I think, Oh, I need to get that out of
my head.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And already he mainly just wears scented oils and lotions
and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
A fine musk. The other practice that we found was
force feeding, including using some medical advances to feed people rectally,
similar to real life version of that South Park trope.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, and a lot of this you'll see in the news.
And it's not necessarily used as a torture, but as
a way to keep people who are prisoners alive if
they're having some kind of protest where they're doing self
starvation in protest of their captivity. And so again, it's
crazy to think that the method to preserve someone's life
(32:27):
can also be used to torture them.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yes, yeah, and that goes into an ethical question as well.
You know, this is something that we didn't discuss off air,
but it just occurred to me. Now, if somebody wants
to die, right, if they want to commit medically assisted
suicide their own accord, and they are legally required to
(32:52):
stay alive, is that this in a state of pain,
perhaps from a chronic condition. Is that the state eighty
Indian torture? Or is you know what's the line there?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
That's a tough ethical question we should.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Is there an ethicist in the house, Paul or you
an ethicist?
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Okay, but you know that's in that's something we I
wonder if the UN has pondered that. I haven't seen
anything anything recently at least.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Well, and let's just I don't know, I'm gonna talk
about the elephant in the room, or at least my elephant.
You know, the UN kind of gets a lot of
flak as being a somewhat toothless organization, like you can
make these resolutions, but at the end of the day,
it's just kind of, you know, words on paper, and
there's very little enforcement ability that the u N has.
(33:45):
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
You are correct. The the primary power structure of the
United Nations is the u N Security Council, and they
can each member of the UN Security Council can veto
an entire concept. So it has to things have to
pass unanimously. So it is very very, very very difficult.
(34:09):
It's not as bad and ineffectual as the predecessor, the
League of Nations. But yeah, you're you're spot on. When
do words on paper translate to substantive change?
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah, no, that that that kind of is the question,
And that's sort of you know, when we're talking about
the shift of consciousness as a country, when we decide
as a people that torture is not okay. But yet
if it still is thought by some as being an
effective tool, whether or not there are resolutions on the
books or not. At the end of the day, if
(34:42):
you think it's going to get the job done, you're
probably going to figure out a way to get around
it and do it, you know, especially when we have
things like black sites and you know, stuff where there's
very little oversights and you have heads of these divisions
that essentially act as gods of their little fiefdoms, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
So it's tough, like secret Police, for instance, throughout a
lot of throughout a lot of recent history. And that's
the point that is the stuff they don't want you
to know here in this episode. It's the fact that
there are numerous active conspiracies as we speak. We're not
(35:22):
talking about nineteen ninety three. We're not talking about nineteen
seventy four, we're not talking about two thousand and seven.
We're talking about twenty eighteen. As we are recording this,
there are numerous active cover ups and conspiracies allowing various
governments around the world, including the United States, but not
limited to Uncle Sam, to commit torture, either through proxies
(35:45):
or euphemisms like enhanced interrogation or good old fashioned secret police.
As you guys pointed out black sites off the line
item budgets written out of your history books, and we
might never know what happens with it. And this forces
us to ask about the future of torture.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
And we'll get into that right after a quick word
from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
So we're back, and Noel, you brought up this excellent point,
Especially in the case of US intelligence services, military arms.
The primary argument for these techniques is that is something
along the lines of, well, they might be deplorable, but
they do result invaluable or what they would call actionable
(36:34):
intelligence that can ultimately save lives. And the scenario you'll
often hear described by people supporting these programs is the following.
It's something called the ticking time bomb scenario.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, imagine that you're an authority figure, right, whether this
is law enforcement, military, maybe an intelligence officer working for
the CIA, whatever it is. You have absolute certainty that
there will be some form of a a terrorist attack,
probably and it's going to happen in the near to
immediate future, but you don't know exactly where, you don't
(37:08):
know exactly when. How do you find out this is
the big quandary. How do you gain that information without
you know, stumbling upon a piece of paper that has
it written out.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
So let's take it a step further and say that
maybe maybe we are those investigators, and we have one
or more suspects and custody, and with the same amount
of certitude, we know that they know where the attack
will be. Maybe we have it narrowed down to three cities,
but they know which city and which.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Day, and we know that, you know, torture is banned,
it may still be one of the only ways to
extract information, this kind of information before one hundreds and
thousands of innocent people die, or at least that's the justification, right.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
M Yeah, And this this is often depicted the ultimate dilemma,
at least for modern times regarding torture, and experts continue
to debate it today whether or not it's a good
idea to save all of these lives by torturing this person.
Can you even get information that would be reliable enough
to save people if you did indeed torture one of
(38:19):
these suspects. There's a lot to unpact there, right, Like,
do you.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Or do we in this scenario want to be responsible
for thousands of venison people dying because we refuse to
bend or break the law.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, and international law that's set forth by you know,
the United Nations. And look, it's just one of those things,
like it's a big moral quandary that seems to have
probably the most weight behind it in our modern times.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
So now our question becomes if we want to be
a Machavelli and if we want to cast morals aside.
Now our question shifts a little, and it's the ultimate
question here. Does it work? As we alluded to earlier
in the show, does physically or psychologically torturing someone compel
them to provide truthful, useful information. The answer is no.
(39:16):
Torture does not work, at least in the way that
the tormentors might publicly intend. Again, that's publicly. So there's
an article from Scientific American by a guy named Michael Schrmer,
and it's called We've known for four hundred years that
torture doesn't work. In this article, there is a fascinating
(39:42):
anecdote about the Duke of Brunswick in Germany during the
time of the Inquisition. He goes to visit the inquisitors
and he wants to oversee their use of torture to
extract information from people accused of witchcraft, right the majority
of whom we're women. The Jesuits told the Duke that
the inquisitors are doing their duty. They're only arresting people
(40:04):
who have been implicated in the confessions of other witches.
When they were put to the question which was the
term for torture? And so the Duke's so a little
bit skeptical, and he thinks, well, maybe people just say
anything to get this to stop. So he invited the
Jesuits to come visit him and go with him to
a dungeon to witness a woman being stretched on the
(40:27):
rack second degree of torture, like we have mentioned earlier.
And the Duke said to this lady, while she's mid torture,
by the way, he says, now, women, you are a
confessed witch. I suspect these two men of being warlocks.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
What do you say?
Speaker 1 (40:44):
And he looks at the executioners and he says another
turn of the rack executioners, And the woman immediately said, no, no, no,
you are quite right. I have often seen them at
the sabbot. They can turn themselves into goats, wolves and
other animals. Several witches have had children and buy them
One woman even had eight children whom these men fathered.
The children had heads like toads and legs like spiders.
(41:06):
And the Duke turned to the Jesuits and said, should
I torture you until you confess?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Geez? You get real creative when you put to the question.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
And that's how we know. Like, the problem with torture
is if the primary goal is to receive truthful information again,
morals aside, then we have to think of the primary
goal of the victim, which is just to stop this immense,
unending pain.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Well, and also mentioned in that article is something that
has really shaped the way I viewed torture over the years.
Christopher Hitchens, a writer that I very much admired to
a certain extent. Several years ago, while he was still living,
he was working, he was writing for Vanity Fair still
and he went and he was himself waterboarded. And you know,
(41:57):
he was famously hawkish about war, believing that there were
good reasons to go to war and to eliminate terrorism.
And you know, you can look at his views, but
he didn't believe that waterboarding was that big of a deal.
But he went. It occurred to him, and his quote
(42:18):
from the article was if waterboarding does not constitute torture,
then there is no such thing as torture, because he
had a terrible experience. He almost immediately after being subjected
to the water pouring on his head, he said, no,
that felt like I was drowning. That is the worst
thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
And I'm sure most listeners know what waterboarding is, but
i mean, just to set the scene, it's like you've
got a rag over your face. There isn't you know,
a torrent of water being poured over your mouth and
nose to the point where it's constant enough that you
just can't catch your breath. And I'm imagining that the
rag is creating almost a suction against your face where
(42:58):
you just like are totally incapable of drawing breath. And
so I would argue that this is not only a
physical torture, because we know it's very unpleasant physically when
you can't breathe, it's also a psychological torture because it's
the sensation that it's creating of not being able to
catch your breath and of dying, of drowning, which sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Well, yeah, and the whole point of this whole thing, though,
is that Christopher Hitchins was alluding to the fact that
he would have said anything to make that stop, and
he can't imagine He couldn't imagine experiencing that as someone
like being told, you know where X is, you know
what time it's going to happen, Tell me where it is,
(43:38):
and then proceed with the torture over and over and over.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
It just seems so counterintuitive to me that people would
think that this is a smart way to get people
to tell them the truth. It just seems to me
that it's obvious that it would be the opposite.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, it's a smart way to get people to tell
you whatever you want them to say, right, But whether
or not it's true is very, very different. And this
ticking time bomb thought experiment, let's be honest, it's way
too cut and dry in reality. If there's someone in captivity,
they may or may not be responsible for this thing, right,
(44:14):
They may or may not have accurate information. Even if
they are responsible, maybe they're not on the inner circle
for some specific operation, then they might not know anything useful.
They might just make stuff up out of whole.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Cloth, like the toadheads. So as I'm saying, like, that's
like creative writing type stuff, like you know, you are
going to dig deep into your imagination for you know,
to make that rack tightening cease.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Absolutely, and despite the continued practices of what we could
call gray area interrogation and or torture, the US government
itself publicly agrees that torture is not really effective. There
was a twenty fourteen report by the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence. They analyzed millions of internal CIA documents related
(45:03):
to the torture of people's suspected of terrorism, and the
Senate concluded the CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques
was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining
cooperation from detainees. It also adds that multiple CIA detainees
fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence, and that leads us
(45:25):
to ask, if torture doesn't work, what does Is there
something better than torture?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Well, yeah, pretty much the opposite of torture. There are
multiple studies that show that this might be the thing,
the way to get information from people building rapport. It works, wonders,
and it has a significantly higher chance of creating a
successful relationship between interrogator and interrogate by actually being like
(45:55):
showing empathy and I understand your situation. I mean, there's
a whole host of lines you can go down, for sure.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I guess the problem there is, though, if you have
people that are trained, they are hardened to the point
where they they're just not They're not gonna play nice
with you at all, you know. I Mean. It's one
thing if you're like a scared kid, or like someone
who's been accused of a crime and you're just all,
you know, you don't know which way is up. You
could probably coerce someone into telling you some stuff and
(46:24):
getting them to cry and talk about their mommy or
something like. I'm being a jerk, but you know what
I'm saying. But if someone is like a trained a
terrorist or an operative of some kind, I don't I
don't think that's gonna work.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
I don't know. You might find that there's really I'm
just saying there. You might find that there is a
vulnerable human inside each and every one of us.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
It also depends on the X axis of time.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
So if someone is detained for life with no human contact.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Isn't that torture? Except for you.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
It is.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
It is, but it's it's a chess level torture. Yeah,
And the thing is that it appears to it appears
to work. There are different studies that confirm. There's one
called the Who, What and Why Human Intelligence Gathering from
this journal Apply Cognitive Psychology. They surveyed one hundred and
(47:17):
fifty two interrogators and they found that rapport and relationship
building techniques were employed most often and perceived to be
the most effective, regardless of context and intended outcome. Particularly
they found in comparison to confrontational techniques. And that's from
the interrogators themselves.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Yeah. There's another study called Interviewing High Value Detainees. It
sampled sixty four practitioners and detainees and it found that quote,
detainees were more likely to disclose meaningful information and earlier
in the interview when rapport building techniques were used.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
So those are two examples of studies that find this
approach superior to confrontational or abusive behavior. Although I do
appreciate the point of rapport building and solitary confinement being
just another form of torture, art arguably, with these stories
(48:12):
we hear from various global conflicts in the study of torture,
they indicate the same conclusions, not just from academics and historians,
but from the first hand accounts of other interrogators. And
so we have to ask ourselves. If torture does not
work at least in terms of providing truthful information or
eliciting it, if it only blinds someone to the point
(48:36):
that they will say anything to prevent further abuse, then
why do we as a species persist. There's several reasons,
and absolutely none of them are appealing. First, in some
belief systems, certain methods of punishment may be prescribed for
certain types of transgressions. This is where you hear about
traditional methods of punishment, right or execution for the violation
(48:59):
of socio spiritual moras. That's just that's a word I
made up. I'm gonna stick with mores word socio spiritual.
And then there's the other one. Second, torture is also
used successfully to some degree to send a message.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
And this goes to.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
An anecdote. Now, I know there's a touchy geopolitical situation
with Russia right now, but there's a short there's a
short story or an account of what happened in the
Soviet Union at the time had four Soviet diplomats kidnapped
in nineteen eighty five. Did you'll hear about this?
Speaker 2 (49:38):
I have no.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
So in nineteen eighty five, these four Soviet diplomats were
kidnapped by a fundamentalist group called the Islamic Liberation Organization.
They dispatched Russia dispatched something called it's Alpha Group. They
were tasked with counter terrorism hostage rescue situations. They learned
(50:01):
that one of the hostages had been killed, a guy
named Arkadi Katkov. And so what they did is they
tracked down and located one of the leaders of the kidnappers,
are possibly a relative, and they wanted to send a
message to the terrorist. They tortured this person that they
(50:26):
captured with absolutely no intention of gaining information, absolutely no
intention of letting them survive. Alpha Group castrated the hostage,
cut him into pieces, and sent pieces of him to
the hostage takers. And they also said, we know who
your other relatives are, and we know where they live,
and we know their routines. The three hostages were released
(50:49):
and dropped off near the Soviet embassy, and there were
no other There haven't been Russian officials taken captive since then,
and then people argue back and forth this scary story.
But what it shows is that their goal in torture
then was not to learn anything new. Their goal was
(51:11):
to send a signal, just like in the early days
of civilization, where someone said, let us make an example, disgusting,
repugnant example.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, rather than flaming some prisoners and putting them on
spikes throughout your whole kingdom, you'd just cut one person
up to take this one group out.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
And you could argue again, morals aside that that was
a short term solution, that the signaling did result in
the release of those other hostages. But over the long
term is that a solution, I don't know. But for now,
the practice of torture continues. We had talked before about
(51:54):
several like we've mentioned several forms of torture that seem
our cane but are still around. Right, Like nol you
mentioned when we're talking about foot whipping. You had told
me before that that's not an ancient practice, right right.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Well, I mean maybe the origins of it are, but
I know there was an incident with I believe it
was kuse Hussein who participated in whipping the feet of
I believe it was an Iraqi soccer team. You know
about this, the whole team? I think so. Yeah, apparently
Ude Hussein was a pretty sore loser when the group
(52:33):
of Iraqi soccer stars did not win the Asian Cup
and he had them tortured by having the soles of
their feet whipped after losing the World Cup qualifying match.
So yeah, it's definitely something that's still around.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
And that's technically that's going to be state sponsored then
because he was a Hussain.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Wow, well, boys, I feel awful.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Well there's a silver lining, right what? I don't know
when we're just talking off air about you know, the
future of torture. Maybe there's a kind of torture that
doesn't really hurt you physically.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Oh okay, some sort of virtual torture.
Speaker 3 (53:17):
Yeah. Yeah, you guys see an Altered Carbon the Netflix show. Yeah,
I think it's a lot of fun. It's got problems,
But there's a particular scenario where there's this like shop
or it looks like a medical facility where a somebody
who wants to extract information can pay these texts to
put somebody under you kind of have to abduct them first,
(53:40):
So if that shoot them up in the neck with
some kind of you know, sleepy meds, and then you
put them on this table and put all these electrodes
attached to their brain, and they end up in a
virtual room where somebody can go in there and reak
all kinds of virtual havoc on them, and apparently, you know,
there's like a readout of the way their body's reacting.
(54:00):
And while it's all psychological, they apparently feel it in
the virtual world.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Right. Yeah, it's a terrifying extrapolation of both virtual reality
and torture, certainly. And I can imagine a world, this
world where there is some type of interface that makes
it it blurs the line between real and virtual, like
(54:26):
the ar stuff that we are seeing right now, augmented
reality and virtual reality. I can totally imagine that occurring.
I wonder how effective it would be or could be
the same thing.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
Man, do you not still think the ethical quandaries still
apply and also the efficacy?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, absolutely, it would still apply, at least in the
psychological sense, because unless the person's mind was also erased,
they were their experience was also erased. They would still
remember this and bear the psychological burden of what occurred.
It sort of like you can wake up from a nightmare,
(55:05):
but you still remember it and you're still going to
affect your behavior. Sure, so perhaps it's still better than
the alternative of shredding people's tongues or flaming them, But
it's a difference of degree on.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
I m'd say, Man, I watched the video on the
Brazen Bull to get ready for this, and I almost
didn't even want to bring it up.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
But the thing where they put them inside of a thing, it's.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
A statue made out of bronze, or at least theoretically
there is. There has not one been found, Like they've
never actually seen a full brazen.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Bull, which just read accounts of it.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, but it was a statue of a bowl that
was large enough for a human to fit inside, and
they would put a fire on the bottom of it,
and the entire thing would heat up because of the
substance it's made of, all of the metal, it quickly
heats up to the same temperature the person inside is
pretty much cooked. And it was Oh, there was also
this whole thing where their stories or at least accounts
(56:08):
of the bull makes an actual bull sound when the
person is being cooked, and it's based on the idea
of the single air hole that goes into the bowl
is actually from the mouth of this brazen bull statue,
and the only way to get oxygen as smoke is
filling up the bull, and you're in there being cooked
(56:30):
and dying is to breathe through that hole, and it
makes like a cow sound when you're breathing through it.
It was the most horrifying thing. I mean, there are gross,
terrible things of cutting up and all this, but the
concept of being locked into an oven in that way
while you can hear whoever is in charge like laughing.
(56:54):
Because it's supposedly done as like a form of entertainment,
not only punishment, but attainment.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
Well, that goes into when we're talking about some of
these older civilizations where the torture was kind of entertainment.
Like even you know, being a gladiator for example, that
was a punishment that was a form of torture. I mean,
you had a fighting chance, I guess, but it was
also done for you know, the amusement of the government
(57:21):
and then they keep the people happy with the bread
and circuses and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
And religion was also functioning as government too for much
of the time. So if it was a religious practice,
if we must, you know, rip the hearts out of
the living so that the sun continues to rise or
that the eclipse ends, then it's still still a state
sponsored action. And this brings us to questions for you, folks.
(57:49):
Do you believe that torture does produce results?
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Do you believe that the.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Ends justify the macabre means? And if so or if not,
why we would like to hear from you. We also,
this is the part of the show where Matt, Noel
and I let you know that we are on the internet.
That's all true. We are on Instagram, We're on Facebook.
(58:22):
Join our discussion page here's where it gets crazy, where
you can find us interacting from time to time. You
can also find us on Twitter. But we're not just
on the internet anymore, folks. The rumors are true. We've
branched out to another platform, the good old telephone.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Yes, we now have a toll free number that you
can call and leave us a voice message and spoiler alert,
we might make a couple episodes where we feature you
on the show. Okay, it's gonna happen, but we just
need you to leave the messages. So here it is,
write this down, put it in your phone, do what
(58:59):
you gotta do. Eight three three st d w y
t K. Let's do that again with numbers eight three
three seven, eight three nine nine eight five. If you
call that number right now, you will hear Ben's voice
and then leave a message. That's all. It's super simple.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Hey.
Speaker 3 (59:18):
And if you, you know, have some sort of phone aversion,
you know, like touching plastic buttons, I guess I could
apply to a keyboard, dude. It doesn't matter if it's
a specific phone a version. You can reach us on
the internet. Like Ben said, we are there at a
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram and just conspiracy stuff on
Twitter and Facebook. And if you don't want to do
(59:41):
any of that stuff phone Internet facts. Yeah, we don't
have facts, but we should. We should. That should be
our next antiquated communication means that we come up with.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
That would actually be amazing. We had a fax machine
that just sat next.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, it makes a cool sound, that's for.
Speaker 2 (59:57):
Sure, all right, And that's the end of the this
classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about
this episode, you can get into contact with us in
a number of different ways. One of the best is
to give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three STDWYTK. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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