Your One-Stop Shop for Non-Torturous Interrogations

Want to learn how Jack Bauer ought to get terrorists to divulge information against their interests? Check out Interrogations Central, a website launched last week by “Matthew Alexander,” a pseudonymous interrogator whose non-torturous interrogations contributed to the successful hunting and killing of the Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006.

Alexander pulls together an extensive library of resources on best practices in interrogations that effectively refute the dubious claim that interrogations have to be brutal to be effective. One of his featured documents is “Educing Information,” a multi-volume behavioral-science research study of legal interrogation methods from 2006 that in 2009 led the Obama administration to establish its High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, a group of the government’s best interrogators operating in accordance with the best-practices outlined in the study. (On a personal note, it was also the subject of my first-ever Washington Independent piece, way back in January 2008.)

Probably still best not to try any of this stuff at home.