Naming Names Under Waterboarding

Assume for a moment (and to be honest, with our history since the 1900's, it is not that impossible of an assumption,) that you suspected within the next few days you would be siezed by agents of the government and whisked away never to see the light of day until some long distant future. You know you are going to be severly interrogated.  There is one person you respect very much, but suspect as being in league with the opposition to our current government.  You want to protect that person, but know to survive you will have to give up a name, or several names.  Who would you choose to sacrifice? Think about who you would select?

Don't climb on a high horse and say "I will go to my death before I betray anyone." The House Un-American Activities Committee proved in the 1930's that it doesn't take torture to get people to name names; just the threat of imprisonment and loss of a job can turn a person desparate to keep their family economically and politically safe. And so, names were named. Sometimes just someone who showed up for free drinks at a party.  Sometimes people who had supposedly wronged the interviewee in some small way.  Sometimes a creditor to the interviewee; a diabolical payback with interest in a way!  And sometimes it was  powerful people the interviewee just wanted to have a taste of what their goverment was doing. (This last tactic worked well for the Iranian students who rallied against the Shah.)

So, I've given you quite a few possible targets. Have you selected who you will give up?

For me, it would be a sales rep for our company.  All I know is that somehow he used to  get information to a mole within the Bush administration.  He passed along the info to one of his customers that manufactures agricultural equipment.  That person in turn got the info to the mole.

I would hold out, of course until I could take no more, then I'd give up our sales rep.  Our poor salesman, knowing nothing, would probably hold out very convincingly. But eventually he would give up the seven customers he has who manufacture ag equipment.

Those seven would in turn be worked over until one gives up the only contact they can think of in Washington D.C.  A person who used to be their attorney, until that person went off to a cabinet level position with the current administration. 

Alarm bells.

That person is too impossible to believe as being the mole, so back come the Black Tee Shirts to visit me in my hell hole.  Here's where it gets delicious.  I finally confess that I know the info gets to the mole because I communicate with an editor in the Midwest who is our mutual contact for verifying a successful pass through of info.  That editor has also  interviewed the mole, and that interview can be found.

Unfortunately that editor has since been deported back to their home country in a sweep by immigration.  That should raise some eyebrows.  The final link that I could then establish is  that the mole graduated from high school with me.

In the meantime I have done far more damage to the system than they have done to me. There is a sales rep who will never trust his government again, and there are seven agri-businessmen who are aghast at what they were threatened with by their government.  The Ambassador to the country of deportation for the editor, who will questioned as to that person's political activities at home, and last but not least the shadow of doubt now cast upon a person who has the President's ear.

Waterboarding doesn't work IMHO on someone who expects it will come to them.

The Iranian revoluntionaries proved that as one by one they began to topple the Shah's inner circle.

Well, perhaps our Black Tee Shirts use it more effectively, after all they have saved us from a "sorry that's a classified number" of attacks, right?