Seems like we may be confusing CT, COIN and FID. Foreign internal defense (FID) is the participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization, to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, terrorism, and other threats to their security. The focus of US FID efforts is to support the host nation’s (HN’s) internal defense and development (IDAD), which can be described as the full range of measures taken by a nation to promote its growth and protect itself from the security threats described above.

I agree that the French and Brits both influenced our COIN doctrine in the 70s and 80s, even if they didn't get credit for the influence. And yes, rougher methods were generally more accepted during the Cold War as the cost of doing business. Perhaps not a stated policy, but in practice we did follow the he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard rule. Our objective was to contain communism, and the ends were generally more important than the means. However, as Dayuhan pointed out no one needed to teach these guys how to torture or abuse anyone, they were abusing their people and prisoners long before they met any American advisors.

Did the U.S. teach these methods? I can only speak from my experience in the 80s (we cleaned up our act in the 90s). The short answer is no, but I accept there "may" have even some U.S. persons involved who promoted these methods based on their personal views, but I'm not aware of doctrine that promoted these abuses. I'm referring to the military only, the three letter agency folks can speak for themselves. I recall seeing a few abuses over the years in more than one developing nation, and during that time frame we had no mandate to intervene like we do now. None the less, I did intervene in two separate incidents in two separate countries to stop (at least for the moment) foreign troops from abusing their own people (such as beating up a local civilian to get information, when he wasn't even a suspect, it was just normal practice). We would attempt to mentor them later on why that behavior was counterproductive, but we had no mandate to stop it or disengage with them if they did, like we do now. My general impression was no one in the USG was supportive of this, and worked patiently to change this behavior. What the CIA may have done the 70s in Latin America is another story, but like most of us on SWJ, we only know what we read, and suspect a great deal of that is inaccurate.

The bottom line is these were cultural norms, and since in FID we were advising and assisting we didn't make the rules, but mentored and in some cases instructed. We were teaching the importance of a proper relationship with the populace long before population centric COIN became vogue in 2006 or so. The focus wasn't the population, but defeating the insurgency, but realizing you couldn't do that effectively if you alienated the population.

All that said I'm not opposed to a tough interrogation run by a true professional. Intelligence is critical, and the best intelligence for these types of conflicts is human intelligence, especially in those days. A tough interrogation conducted by a professional is not torture.

Finally, the brutal tactics employed by the French worked, so it would be naive to dismiss them as ineffective, but that isn't point, it simply isn't the way we fight based on our national morals, which are for the most part codified into law.