Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits'
By Petula Dvorak - Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007; Page A01
For six decades, they held their silence.
The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.
Something worth thinking about ... here.
My comment: Rush Limbaugh would call them phony soldiers today. They weren't macho enough for the draft dodging chicken hawks! They were just effective ... more than we can honestly say about the techniques being used today that get what the interrogated imagines the interrogator wants to hear.
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