Stuart A. Herrington
Stuart A. Herrington, Col, U.S. Army (Ret.) is an author and retired counterintelligence interrogator.[1] Herrington's 2003 audit of conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison prompted scrutiny of U.S. interrogation efforts in the Global War on Terror.[2]
Military and Intelligence Assignments
Vietnam
Herrington joined military intelligence in 1967 and served in Berlin before deploying to Vietnam in 1971. In Vietnam, Herrington later wrote, he saw the waterboarding of a 19-year-old girl, and was shocked into a permanent aversion to torture as an interrogation technique.[3] Herrington then served at the Defense Attache Organization in Saigon and was the last Americans to helicopter off its roof when the city fell to the North Vietnamese Army in 1975.[4]
German and post Cold-War operations
Herrington spent most of the next decade with Army counterintelligence in Berlin. He played a role in the arrest of more than a dozen spies in the Clyde Lee Conrad Ring, an army cell that had been selling NATO war plans to the Russians.[5] After Operation Just Cause (1989) and Operation Desert Storm (1991), Herrington led the interrogations of high-value detainees and wrote the after-action military espionage (HUMINT) reports.[6] From 1992 to 1998, Herrington worked as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Asia/Pacific Division; commanded the U.S Army Foreign Counterintelligence Activity; and supported the U.S. Task Force Russia probe into the fates of Cold War POW/MIA.[7]
Public opposition to torture
Herrington retired from the military in 1998 to work for Calloway Golf. In 2003, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Army in its review of detainee operations.[8] In 2006, Herrington mentored a class of interrogators at Fort Bliss, Texas, on the use of non-abusive interrogation techniques. In 2008, Herrington and other retired military intelligence officers called for a ban on waterboarding.[9] Herrington discussed his philosophy of interrogation -- elicitation through empathy -- in several public talks.[10]
References
- ^ Tom Ricks's Inbox, The Washington Post, November 11, 2007
- ^ Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall, Task Force 6-26: In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse," The New York Times, March 19, 2006
- ^ Herrington, Silence was a Weapon, Presidio Press, 1982)
- ^ Herrington, Peace with Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam 1973-1975, Presidio Press, 1982.
- ^ Herrington, Traitors Among US: Inside the Spy Catcher's World, Harcourt, 1999.
- ^ Herrington, “The Interrogation Perfect Storm," Remarks, Fort Leavenworth Ethics Symposium, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 16-18 Nov. 16-18, 2009
- ^ “Report of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs,” April 2001
- ^ Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Intervention in Iraq (Penguin, 2006).
- ^ "Top Interrogators Declare Torture Ineffective in Intelligence Gathering," Human Rights First, press release, June 24, 2008
- ^ Herrington, “Effectively Interrogating Terrorism Suspects: Lessons from the Field,” Panel discussion, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 18 June 2008.