Law Technology

Why Listen to Me about Interrogation?

I've stayed out of the fray on this for as long as possible, but with the release of the memos from the Office of Legal Counsel, I juat have to include my opinion.

As my readers know, I'm a plaintiff's attorney and the tagline of this blog is ‘Using Technology to Be a Better Trial Lawyer'. My focus is being a better trial lawyer, whether it's through regular trial classes, using technology or even running a better office. That splits the readership because it's a somewhat scattershot topic area, but that's what interests me. I think it also interests plaintiff's attorneys with their own practice.

So I have held myself back from talking about interrogation and torture so as to not further spray the field, but it's time to offer my opinion on this.

But why should you listen to me?

I was an interrogator in the United States Army from 1982–1989, just short seven years. I signed up for 3 years the first tour and 4 years the second tour. The Army taught me Arabic on the first tour and Hungarian on the second tour.

I taught interrogation at Fort Huachuca, Arizona from 1986–1989. While at the interrogation school, I taught basic tactical interrogation for the United States Army. There were also ocassional classes for the Officer's Basic Intelligence Course and the Foreign Allied Officer's Course, where we taught officers from other countries.

In addition to those classes, I was on the team that did course development for the USMC reserve interrogation course and also was on a review board for the interrogation MOS (job specialty) training.

So that's why you should put some stock in my opinions. I went to law school in 1989 and am now a lawyer. Having the interrogation and a legal background is a good reason to listen to me. 

Here are the reasons to take my opinion with a grain of salt:  

I got asthma rather severely and received a medical retirement a year or so before Desert Storm in 1989, so while I taught interrogation for 3 years, I did not do any live interrogations.

All of my experience was with tactical interrogations and not strategic debriefing of high level detainees.

I worked on a tactical level. While I did teach interrogation for three years and know the doctrine cold, it was on a tactical level. I did not set policy at the national level in D.C.

Full post as published by South Carolina Trial Law Blog on May 03, 2009 (boomark / email).