1902: Future President Defends Waterboarding

Future president Theodore Roosevelt, writing about the use of waterboarding as an interrogation method during the Spanish-American War, defends the practice. “The enlisted men began to use the old Filipino method: the water cure” (see 1800 and After), he writes in a letter. “Nobody was seriously damaged.” During the war, a US soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended and fined by an Army court-martial for waterboarding a prisoner. The Army judge advocate wrote that the charges constituted a “resort to torture with a view to extort a confession.” He recommended disapproval because “the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture.” [National Public Radio, 11/3/2007]