The Spanish Inquisition

The abstract is all I have access to:

Empirical evidence on contemporary torture is sparse. The archives of the Spanish Inquisition provide a detailed historical source of quantitative and qualitative information about interrogational torture. The inquisition tortured brutally and systematically, willing to torment all who it deemed as withholding evidence. This torture yielded information that was often reliable: witnesses in the torture chamber and witnesses that were not tortured provided corresponding information about collaborators, locations, events, and practices. Nonetheless, inquisitors treated the results of interrogations in the torture chamber with skepticism. This bureaucratized torture stands in stark contrast to the “ticking bomb” philosophy that has motivated US torture policy in the aftermath of 9/11. Evidence from the archives of the Spanish Inquisition suggests torture affords no middle ground: one cannot improvise quick, amateurish, and half-hearted torture sessions, motivated by anger and fear, and hope to extract reliable intelligence.

Ron E. Hassner – Security Studies, Volume 29, 2020 – Issue 3

Re-read that conclusion: “torture affords no middle ground: one cannot improvise quick, amateurish, and half-hearted torture sessions, motivated by anger and fear, and hope to extract reliable intelligence.”

I am not willing to pay for full access to the article, but does this mean that professional torture extracts reliable and actionable intelligence? Was the CIA training curriculum simply not sufficiently advanced?

The phrasing of Ron E. Hassner’s abstract invites the question: if Inquisition torture produced reliable information, does that imply that professionalized torture can yield actionable intelligence? The answer, drawn from Hassner’s data and wider research, is more nuanced.

Hassner’s quantitative review of over 1,000 Inquisition trials (1575–1610) shows that roughly 12 percent involved torture; confessions under torture occurred in about 29 percent of those cases, while non-tortured confessions reached 42 percent. The apparent reliability noted in the archives reflects correlation, not causation. Tortured and non-tortured witnesses sometimes corroborated each other, but inquisitors had already accumulated extensive independent evidence before resorting to coercion. Torture, in practice, confirmed what was already suspected; it seldom uncovered new leads. In other words, its epistemic value was supplementary, not revelatory.

This bureaucratized and highly regulated system differs radically from modern “ticking-bomb” fantasies. The Inquisition’s procedures were conducted by trained officials, under procedural guidelines refined over centuries, within a quasi-judicial framework. Even then, inquisitors treated the results with formal skepticism, cross-checking and often discounting testimony given under duress. Hassner’s conclusion “torture affords no middle ground” underscores that the only circumstances under which torture yielded even partial reliability required institutional control, documentation, and time-intensive verification. These are precisely the conditions absent from emergency intelligence operations.

Contemporary research amplifies the same conclusion. Neuroscientific studies (e.g., Shane O’Mara, Why Torture Doesn’t Work, 2015) demonstrate that acute stress impairs hippocampal memory consolidation, distorts temporal sequencing, and increases confabulation, the creation of false but sincerely believed memories. Psychological analyses of coercive interrogation likewise find that fear, pain, and exhaustion accelerate compliance but degrade accuracy. The 2014 U.S. Senate Select Committee report on CIA interrogations concluded that coercive methods produced little unique, verifiable intelligence and often delayed cooperation or encouraged deception.

Thus, if “professional torture” ever achieved partial reliability, it did so within a framework of obsessive bureaucracy, a system so slow, resource-intensive, and morally corrupting as to be incompatible with modern intelligence needs. The historical record and scientific consensus converge: torture can confirm but rarely discover truth. The epistemic cost is too high, and the moral corrosion total.

For further perspective, NPR’s Fresh Air (Terry Gross, 2012) interviewed former interrogators and psychologists, all emphasizing that rapport-based, evidence-driven methods consistently yield more reliable intelligence than coercion.