The Wrong Question About Torture: Lessons of Guantanamo Bay

What happens when fear becomes policy—and the people labeled “the worst of the worst” are no longer treated as people? In this episode of the Truth Be Told Podcast, host Dave Thompson, CFI explores the powerful story behind the documentary Leaving Hotel California and the complicated legacy of Guantanamo Bay, post-9/11 interrogations, enhanced interrogation techniques, torture, and the human consequences of abandoning evidence-based investigative practices. Dave is joined by filmmakers Chimène de Jonge and Aybüke Demirel, former NCIS Special Agent Mark Fallon, and former Guantanamo detainee and Guantánamo Diary author Mohamedou Ould Slahi for a conversation about investigative interviewing, coercion, false information, cognitive bias, morality, forgiveness, and what happens when fear begins influencing the investigative process. Inside Leaving Hotel California Support the Documentary Here. The documentary Leaving Hotel California examines Guantanamo Bay through the experiences of the people who lived this history from dramatically different perspectives. Chimène and Aybüke explain how a journalism project driven by their interest in human rights evolved into a documentary focused not simply on what happened at Guantanamo, but on the people behind the history. Their reporting led them to former government officials, investigators, intelligence professionals, attorneys, and detainees as they attempted to understand what actually happened—and why. Mark Fallon: Fighting Torture From Inside the System Mark Fallon offers a rare perspective from inside the U.S. government's response to September 11. As a senior NCIS investigator involved in terrorism investigations after 9/11, Fallon describes watching interrogation practices evolve from legitimate investigative efforts toward coercive techniques and prisoner abuse. He discusses his attempts to challenge those practices, document what was happening, and warn government leadership about how history would ultimately judge the decisions being made. The conversation also examines SERE — Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape — training and the controversial decision to adapt techniques designed to help U.S. personnel resist abusive treatment for use in interrogations. Fallon explains the fundamental contradiction: techniques associated with increasing resistance and producing unreliable or false information were being adapted as methods for obtaining intelligence. For investigators, law enforcement professionals, HR investigators, intelligence professionals, and anyone interested in science-based investigative interviewing, the lesson extends well beyond Guantanamo: Pressure can produce compliance. That doesn't mean it produces reliable information. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: The Human Being Behind the Label Mohamedou brings the conversation from interrogation theory to lived experience. He describes his detention, interrogation, sleep deprivation, abuse, and the psychological impact of being treated not as an individual, but as part of a category of people presumed to be dangerous. But Mohamedou also challenges one of the most common debates surrounding enhanced interrogation: Why is the question whether torture works? What if the more important question is whether torture is morally acceptable in the first place? That distinction creates one of the most powerful moments of the episode and forces a broader conversation about ethics, investigative integrity, human rights, and what limits should exist even when investigators believe the stakes could not be higher. Investigative Bias, False Information & the Danger of Certainty The episode also explores how the fear and uncertainty following September 11 created conditions where confirmation bias, categorization, assumptions, and investigative tunnel vision could influence decision-making. Fallon describes investigators being tasked not only with identifying people responsible for terrorism, but also with investigating evidence that could exonerate detainees who should not have been at Guantanamo in the first place. It's a lesson that remains relevant to investigators today. When investigators become committed to a conclusion before fully developing the information, the interview can shift from an effort to discover what happened into an effort to confirm what we already believe happened. An Unexpected Friendship