Yes, and the famous Stanford experiments support this, too. But the caveat is that oversight and leadership can mitigate this effect. I think people have a strong tendency to follow the leader, and if the leader sets a good example, and there are consequences for not following the good example, then everyone can stay on the straight and narrow. Interestingly, according to the NYT, the CIA initially asked for prisons that could be run by the military or by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but they were rebuffed by Rumsfeld, who was apparently wary of having to report detention of prisoners to the ICRC, which is required under international law. Thus the saga of secrecy began: '“Rumsfeld took military bases off the table, so we started looking around at what became the black sites,” Mr. Rizzo recalled in an interview. “We brainstormed. Do we put them on ships? We considered a deserted island. It was born out of necessity. It wasn’t some diabolical plot.”'There is compelling evidence that any one of us would have done the very same thing.