Repudiate force.

Editor,

Hayden and the people he worked for as C.I.A. director are so blinded by their authoritarian urges that force and coercion are the only terms in which they are capable of understanding interrogation.

President Obama should announce to every adversary, every would-be terrorist, that American interrogation practices include only building rapport based on mutual respect. We will not beat, humiliate, coerce, torture or assault the human dignity of anyone we interrogate in any way.

Force does not "work". Coercion is not an effective "tool". Any successful professional interrogator will tell you that building rapport based on mutual respect is the only "technique" that "works."

Cowards like George Bush and his inner circle naturally turned to illegal and ineffective "methods" because they are so socially maladjusted that this is all they were capable of. They were and are criminals, in other words, and their crimes long outwore the necessity for debate. Now it is time to prosecute and to repudiate "force" once and for all in any and all interrogation rooms operated by the United States.

re: "Former C.I.A. Director Defends Interrogation" (4/20/2009)