View all newsletters
Sign up to our newsletters

Support 110 years of independent journalism.

16 December 2014updated 02 Mar 2015 1:17pm

The US Senate report on the CIA’s torture programme should have surprised nobody

Torture is about power, not truth.

By Gavin Rees

The revelations in the US Senate report on the CIA’s torture programme should have surprised nobody. They were foretold more than 50 years ago in a number of sites in Algeria: for instance, a former casino, the Villa Sésini, and improvised locations in kitchens and farmyards. These were places where French interrogators tortured Algerians in the mistaken belief that they were defending state security. Every act of self-deception and evasion that the Bush administration carried out after the 9/11 attacks has parallels somewhere in the mess that France left in Algeria.

In January 1957, the French authorities in Algiers turned policing over to the military after a string of café bombings. Suspects in the independence movement were rounded up and systematically tortured until the intricate cell structure of the National Liberation Army (ALN) unravelled.

Prefiguring the way in which the CIA would later seek to soften public opinion, military men told journalists that there was little else they could do when they knew that bombs were being set to explode. They avoided the word“torture” in favour of an emphasis on new, scientific interrogation techniques. In reality, French paratroopers were waterboarding Algerian suspects – something they wanted to hide from civilians at home, given that less than two decades earlier the Gestapo had perfected the technique on the French resistance in Paris.

The historical consensus has been that the French broke the ALN thanks to information extracted under torture but lost the long war because their brutal policies alienated the Algerian people. That view is enshrined in a 1966 film that was screened in the Pentagon in 2003 and has since become required viewing for counter-insurgents: Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers. The film opens with the aftermath of a torture session: a semi-naked man, sitting on a chair, struggles for air after naming his co-conspirators. Now the unpleasantness is over, the paratroopers can be human once more. They talk to him kindly and offer him coffee. The implication is clear: the soldiers did what they had to do and did so with restraint. It’s great cinema but this is not what actually happened.

Rather than watching the film, counterterrorism forces at the Pentagon would have been better off reading the French historian Raphaëlle Branche’s 2001 book La Torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954-1962 (“Torture and the Army During the Algerian War”). By examining state records and oral testimony, she shows that far from being surgical and restrained, “modern” torture programmes are hard to contain. The head of the local police in Algeria, Paul Teitgen, estimated that in a ten-month period he had signed arrest warrants for 24,000 people, of whom 3,024 never returned. The French did locate ALN operatives through their work but they processed far more suspects than the CIA has.

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

Justifying his actions later, the general in charge, Jacques Massu, claimed that the paratroopers’ techniques did not “degrade the individual”. However, given the blank canvas of a helpless human body, the soldiers did not restrict themselves to approved techniques. Torturers find what they need to find. The soldiers had quotas to meet and did so by extracting false confessions. The innocent implicated their innocent neighbours, creating an inexhaustible supply of suspects. Torturers often deploy a twisted logic: only criminals torture the innocent, so the suspect before me must be guilty.

The French experience in Algeria should have put an end to the preposterous suggestion that torture is about extracting the truth. It is often about invention and it is always about humiliation and fantasies of power. 

Content from our partners
The promise of prevention
How Labour hopes to make the UK a leader in green energy
Is now the time to rethink health and care for older people? With Age UK

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU