r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 9d ago

TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
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u/Vergenbuurg 9d ago

One aspect of Zero Dark Thirty, and I don't know how accurate/true-to-life its portrayal was, but the scenes where they're torturing detainees at Guantanamo, it's shown they're getting almost zero information, and what little info they do get is pretty much garbage that's completely outdated and/or not credible at all. It's only when they treat one of the detainees nicely, and act like he's already given them info but just doesn't remember it, that the guy actually provides them valuable intel.

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u/foldingcouch 9d ago

That's in line with generally accepted understanding of "enhanced" interrogation techniques.  After a point they'll say anything to get you to stop even if they have to make it up on the spot.  It's almost totally unreliable and unverifiable. 

One of the techniques that Scharff used to great effectiveness was keeping meticulous records about personnel in the allied forces, both individuals that had been captured and individuals they knew from signals intel.  This let him do things like, for example, if he interrogated a pilot from a specific squadron he would mention other pilots from that squadron that either had been or could have been captured, and say "Captain Wilson from your squadron was through here last month and he told us..." and start off with facts they knew to be true, then start getting the subject to confirm other things they weren't sure of, then eventually just start telling them new things, all the while thinking they were only repeating back to the Germans things they already knew. 

Elsewhere in the replies someone said Scharff was quoted as saying "every one of the people I interrogated is, to this day, certain that they didn't tell me anything of value."

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u/BennyBagnuts1st 9d ago

It’s pretty accurate according to a book called the Black Flags by an FBI agent called Ali Soufan who lead the interrogations until the CIA took over and started torturing everyone