The Hidden Persuaders project has interviewed neuropsychologist Tim Shallice about his opposition to the British government’s use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ in the Northern Ireland conflict of the 1970s – a practice eventually abandoned as torture.
Shallice is little known to the wider public but is one of the most important and influential neuropsychologists of his generation, having pioneered the systematic study of neurological problems as a window on typical cognitive function.
One of his first papers was not on brain injury, however, it was an article titled ‘Ulster depth interrogation techniques and their relation to sensory deprivation research’ where he set out a cognitive basis for why the ‘five techniques’ – wall-standing, hooding, white noise, sleep deprivation, and deprivation of food and drink – amounted to torture.
Shallice traces a link between the use of these techniques and research on sensory deprivation – which was investigated both by regular scientists for reasons of scientific curiosity, and as we learned later, by intelligence services while trying to understand ‘brain washing’.
The use of these techniques in Northern Ireland was subject to an official investigation and Shallice and other researchers testified to the Parker Committee which led Prime Minister Edward Heath to ban the practice.
If those techniques sound eerily familiar, it is because they formed the basis of interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay and other notorious sites in the ‘war on terror’.
The Hidden Persuaders is a research project at Birkbeck, University of London, which is investigating the history of ‘brainwashing’. It traces the practice to its use by the British during the colonisation of Yemen, who seemed to have borrowed it off the KGB.
And if you want to read about the modern day effects of the abusive techniques, The New York Times has just published a disturbing feature article about the long-term consequences of being tortured in Guantanamo and other ‘black sites’ by following up many of the people subject to the brutal techniques.
Link to Hidden Persuaders interview with Tim Shallice.
Link to NYT on long-term legacy of war on terror torture.
Mind Hacks 