18 Dec 2016

Letter to the Editor WSJ under the heading “Waterboarding, Results and National Morals”

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Published in The Wall Street Journal (print edition), December 18, 2016, under the heading “Waterboarding, Results and National Morals” – Letters to the Editor (WSJ http://www.wsj.com/articles/waterboarding-results-and-national-morals-1482088037).

As a Marine Corps infantry officer in Vietnam, and while in Sarajevo as a NATO officer seconded to the U.N. Protection Force, I witnessed the before and after of what was euphemistically labeled “enhanced interrogation.” Some techniques were more enhanced than waterboarding. There is always the chance that a well-trained and indoctrinated subject ends up sitting in your lap whispering sweet nothings in your ear. It doesn’t work.

In 1983 I interrogated a hardened, committed and dedicated foreign communist operative in El Salvador during the communist-inspired civil war. The operative had undergone “enhanced” interrogation by the now defunct, notorious Policia de Hacienda (PH). The six-plus months of PH-enhanced interrogation included breaking all fingers, shattering of knee caps, etc., and, yes, waterboarding, not unusually done with human bodily fluids. In a period of three-months effort employing what Gen. James Mattis correctly advocates, I was able to extract intelligence of value.”

Col. John C. McKay, USMC (Ret.)

If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can read the original article on the WSJ website: http://www.wsj.com/articles/waterboarding-results-and-national-morals-1482088037