DR:  Torture is when state agents use physical methods on detained and helpless individuals to attain certain information for the state. It excludes circumstances [in which] private individuals torture others. That is part of the history of cruelty. Punishment is a legal term and not all punishment involves physical pain, as it can take the form of fines and exile. Not all torture is punishment, because it can be used for investigative purposes. The difference is not in the words used to define [punishment and torture], it's in the practice of what actually happens.

DR:  There are two types of monitoring: internal and external. Internal monitoring by the state can stop nearly all organized torture when there is strong leadership, regular medical and judicial inspections, and protection for whistleblowers. But we need more political torture literacy and ways to recognize that it has taken place. We have wars, and the soldiers come home and get jobs as police and security guards. Waterboarding appeared in police precincts in the American South between 1910 and 1930 after soldiers returned from the Philippines; electro-torture that happened in Vietnam appeared in Chicago's South Side prisons from 1972 to 1992. There is a 20-year shadow every time soldiers use torture in a war. The techniques of [the Iraq war] will probably appear in the next 20 years somewhere.

However, there's good news. You might be skeptical about whether human-rights groups work, but torturers are not. They kill human-rights lawyers and hunt down doctors. This tells me external monitoring groups do make a difference. Clean torture develops when you have external monitoring and states that are recalcitrant and don't want to change. What causes "clean torture" is the unwillingness of states to not torture, but even they worry about human-rights monitors.

DR:  Clean torture techniques are [created] not just to escape monitors, but also to isolate the victim from his community. A victim who has a scar leaves no doubt about whether he was tortured or not; without a mark, there is doubt. A victim without a scar can't win sympathy. Clean methods interrupt the connections between the victims and the political communities they live in. There is an erosion of human trust; the less we can acknowledge each others' pain, the more dangerous the world becomes.

DR:  Torture is an institutional process that is deeply corrosive. Organizations become less responsive to central authority; bureaucratic evolution is a problem and torture spreads — especially in the context of a counter-insurgency war. It spreads for several reasons: you have more victims because you don't know who the opponents are — it's a witch hunt; the methods expand because you have less time to learn information and you are dealing with things to come, not inquisitional torture; there is peer pressure among torturers to be the best; and, in a counter-insurgency effort, you don't have direct control of the troops by a central authority. So this current crisis was entirely predictable back in 2002.

DR:  It makes it easier for human-rights groups to produce large amounts of information, distribute it, and generate outrage. It also puts more incentive on torturers to be cleaner with the prevalence of cell phones, movies, and alternative television networks.

DR:  At Abu Ghraib, we had a mixed-gender unit, which is very rare historically. We don't really know yet if mixed-gender units change the structure of torture or not. But sexual humiliation was part of Abu Ghraib and this had never happened before. I had to ask why. In mixed-race units in Vietnam, rape was a bonding vehicle that [brought] men [together] across lines. So perhaps sexual humiliation binds men and women together in these units, especially since penetrating rape can't. By participating together in sexual humiliation, and taking photographs of each other, they bound together in a code of silence.

DR:  Much of the history of torture is linked to the history of animals. The most important development that occurred in the 20th century that reduced torture was the car. Once we gave up horses and carriages, people stopped carrying whips. Now the whip started sticking out when people carried one and human conditions improved.

DR:  That electro-shock therapy is useless for torture. Its voltage is far lower than anything a torturer would use and it produces retrograde amnesia, which makes it useless for interrogation. You start to realize that the stories people tell can't possibly be true.

-This interview was conducted by Catherine New.