Malcolm Nance [founding director of the International Anti-terrorism Center for Excellence]: "On Friday the Department of Defense released news of a revision to the 2005 DoD directive regarding the interrogation of prisoners by a wide range of non-DoD agencies and persons.

This recent change, promulgated by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England on October 9, represents what appears to be a sudden outbreak of common sense in the American captive management and prisoner exploitation program. The latest revision states that trained interrogators from military intelligence will provide mandatory oversight on all interrogations or detentions performed by non-DoD entities – including all US agencies, foreign governments and civilian contractors during military operations. This is a dramatic change.

Accountability for interrogations was not always so clear. During the period between September 12, 2001 and October 9, 2008, the military, with explicit authorization from the executive branch, unwisely directed that techniques used at the five Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape schools (SERE) be transformed into a template for creating intelligence mills at Guantanamo, Bagram, Camp Bucca, Abu Ghraib and black sites throughout the world. These techniques, called "enhanced interrogation techniques" amounted to torture and were used to quickly "break" resistant captives in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Constitution.

Congressional and news media investigations slowly revealed that the White House and DoD sent specific instructions condoning, encouraging and then ignoring abuses conducted by both DoD, non-DoD and foreign governments in the name of the United States. The thinly veiled language of past directives allowed minimal cover for abusers of US military captives and created an environment where interrogations using brutal techniques designed by communist, fascist and totalitarian regimes going back a century were the norm for several years.

It should be noted that the information that led to the development of SERE techniques came directly from the blood of American service members held captive by abusive captors since the French and Indian War. Indeed, SERE is a repository of the torture methods of our worst historical enemies. Knowing this, the very same lessons, learned at the hands of the Gestapo, Khmer Rouge, NKVD and North Vietnamese (to name a few) were wholeheartedly embraced for the war on terror. SERE program managers also knew these techniques were actually used by communist and fascist regimes to break the spirit of captives in order to quickly gain false written or oral confessions. False confessions taken under extreme duress were a necessary legal façade that would allow a kangaroo court and swift execution of a self-confessed "war criminal."

All the while the White House disregarded the fact that SERE had long ago determined that our enemies never truly gained any intelligence of value no matter how long the captivity or how deep the abuse.

Finally, the directive provides another stunning example of what should have been the order of the day in the armed forces and the intelligence community for all operations both before and after the September 11 attacks. The fact that it took seven years to re-embrace the military's sense of honor on this matter, to doctrinalize integrity in intelligence, and to train and hold other personnel and agencies accountable for murder or abuse is stunning. Secretary England's directive issues a direct order to all hands, that SERE techniques are removed from the American military mainstream.

In the crucial information battle space of the emerging world where al-Qaeda support is greatest, the last eight years of unnecessary and unwarranted abuses have been a horrible failure for the United States military and intelligence. Thanks to our own misguided efforts, al-Qaeda – the mass murderers who systematically vaporized and beheaded Moslems by the thousands, found their bloody outrages eclipsed in world opinion by America's own moral failing.

Secretary England's clarifying directive is a step forward that may yet again give America the right to claim moral outrage should our people be captured and abused by a future enemy."