WASHINGTON, 1 June 2007 — It is an eerie coincidence: The day another Saudi detainee died after apparently committing suicide at the US military’s controversial Guantanamo Bay prison camp, it was announced — just as the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations — that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are “outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.” A group of experts, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, released a 325-page report Wednesday critical of the techniques used by interrogators since the United States was attacked by terrorists nearly six years ago, and finds there may be no value to coercive techniques.

They argue that US interrogation techniques are a hodgepodge from the 1950s or based on old Soviet techniques, and insist that harsh techniques do not produce the best results and that the rules should be restructured to reflect lessons learned from many fields, including marketing and tricks of homicide detectives.

The report explores scientific knowledge on interrogation in the wake of reported abuse around the globe. The study, sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity, was posted yesterday on the Federation of American Scientists’ website, at http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf.

In it, experts find that popular culture and ad hoc experimentation have fueled the use of aggressive and sometimes physical interrogation techniques to get those captured on the battlefields to talk, even if there is no evidence to support the tactics’ effectiveness. The board, which advises the director of national intelligence, recommends studying the matter.

The Bush administration has long advocated the ability to use aggressive interrogation tactics on terrorism suspects. But after abuse came to light at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and the Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Congress forced the government to limit its approaches to long-standing military doctrine but allowed a loophole that lets the CIA continue such techniques.

The Army’s new field manual on intelligence, approved in September, specifically bans some of the most aggressive techniques — such as “waterboarding,” beatings, sensory deprivation and depriving a detainee of food — and draws clear boundaries for all military personnel who participate in interrogations. Army officials abandoned more coercive techniques because of the abuse scandals and evidence that Army and contract interrogators had developed approaches in the field based on vague guidance.

The ISB panel says interrogation should be restructured using “tricks of veteran homicide detectives, the persuasive techniques of sophisticated marketing and models from American history.” They say there is little evidence harsh methods get the best results. Despite this, Vice President Dick Cheney criticized applying the Geneva Conventions to those captured in the war on terror during a Saturday commencement address at the United States Military Academy. West Point instructors have recently complained about the difficulty of persuading Army cadets to adhere to the principles of the Geneva Conventions.

“There’s an assumption that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply,” study-group member Randy Borum told reporters this week.

Borum — a psychologist who advises the Defense Department and teaches at the University of South Florida — has stated that the limited evidence collected indicates that torture is ineffective.

All along, some people in the military and inside the CIA and Justice have raised the same points contained in the new report. But those voices and opinions were dismissed or ignored.