Editing KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Review: Observations of an Interrogator (section)

== The Strategy of Non-Coercive Interrogation ==
If source resistance is encountered during screening or during the opening or reconnaissance phases of the interrogation, non- coercive methods of sapping opposition and strengthening the tendency to yield and to cooperate may be applied. Although these methods appear here in an approximate order of increasing pressure, it should not be inferred that each is to be tried until the key fits the lock. On the contrary, a large part of the skill and the success of the experienced interrogator lies in his ability to match method to source. The use of unsuccessful techniques will of itself increase the interrogatee’s will and ability to resist.76

The effectiveness of most of the non-coercive techniques depends upon their unsettling effect. The interrogation situation is in itself disturbing to most people encountering it for the first time. The aim is to enhance this effect, to disrupt radically the familiar emotional and psychological associations of the subject. When this aim is achieved, resistance is seriously impaired.77
The [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] offers a broad array of useful insights into the interrogation process — insights gleaned from extensive real-world experience. While the coercive approaches are rightfully rejected, it is clear the intelligence officers and behavioral scientists who contributed to this manual spent considerable time studying and reflecting upon their craft. It is up to the current generation of practitioners to sort through this treatise to uncover the invaluable take-aways.

76 KUBARK, 65.
77 KUBARK, 65-66.

123

One of those can be found in the above passage. Interrogators must consistently guard against taking actions that will prove counterproductive as the process unfolds. Rather, interrogation must be approached in a systematic fashion, thinking, as a chess master must, several steps ahead of the interrogatee. This is where the aforementioned Law of Requisite Variety comes into play, as the interrogator always maintains at least one more method of obtaining compliance
— be it a new line of questioning, an alternative approach, or a well-crafted ruse (see below) — than the source has means of resisting. But, as the manual states, employing those options in a confused, ill-conceived manner will only “increase the interrogatee’s will and ability to resist.”

The [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] offers specific techniques (i.e., approaches) for use in a non-coercive interrogation setting. Several of these have potential for application in current intelligence collection operations.

=== Going Next Door ===
Occasionally the information needed from a recalcitrant interrogatee is obtainable from a willing source...[t]he labor of extracting the truth from an unwilling interrogatee should be undertaken only if the same information is not more easily obtainable elsewhere....78

One of the fallacies of interrogation — and one that continues to be a significant factor in driving the use of coercive techniques — is the concept that every detainee is a unique, invaluable, and irreplaceable source of intelligence information and therefore must be leveraged into compliance. As with the “ticking nuclear bomb” scenario so often cited in the debate over just how far U.S. interrogators should go to force a source to cooperate, such instances are extremely rare. Nonetheless, there is almost a default pattern wherein the path of greatest resistance is taken with a recalcitrant source rather than taking the more strategic route of seeking the same information from a more accessible and compliant source.

This common miscue is based on two fundamental errors in judgment. The first is an ego-based error. While persistence is a critical characteristic of many successful interrogators, the most accomplished among them focus their finite resources (e.g., time and energy) on the challenges that present the most attractive risk/gain ratio. After spending sufficient time to establish that the source’s resistance posture will be a significant hurdle, the wise interrogator quickly asks himself/herself, in keeping with the [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] guidance quoted above, “Where else can I obtain the information I need?” Such prudent interrogators are not driven by the need to demonstrate their skill in overcoming a particular source’s line of resistance; rather, they are driven by the intractable need to obtain the desired information from whatever source is liable to offer it up.

78 KUBARK, 66.

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Second, there is the tactical error of assuming that a source’s level of resistance is directly correlated with his level of knowledgeability. While common sense might suggest a logic inherent in this assumption, reality will quickly correct it. Resistance is the direct product of several key factors: training, life experience, personality, commitment to a cause, deep-seated feelings about the interrogator and/or his country of origin, and even anger at the manner in which the source has been treated since capture. Any one of these can lead the truck driver to protect the already compromised route he was to drive during an operation more fiercely than a less-motivated nuclear engineer will protect the key to disabling a radioactive dispersal device.79

=== Nobody Loves You ===
An interrogatee who is withholding items of no grave consequence to himself may sometimes be persuaded to talk by the simple tactic of pointing out that to date all of the information about his case has come from persons other than himself. The interrogator wants to be fair. He recognizes that some of the denouncers may have been biased or malicious...the source owes it to himself to be sure that the interrogator hears both sides of the story.80
(See observations under next heading.)

===Joint Suspects===
If two or more interrogation sources are suspected of joint complicity in acts directed against U.S. security, they should be separated immediately. If time permits, it may be a good idea (depending upon the psychological assessment of both) to postpone interrogation for about a week. Any anxious inquiries from either can be met with a knowing grin and some such reply as, “We’ll get to you in due time. There’s no hurry now.”81

The primary difference between these two approaches is that in the first the source is presented with evidence — largely implicit — that other, unnamed, unknown (to the source), and as yet unseen detainees have provided information that reflects negatively upon him, while in the second scenario the interrogator refers directly to damaging information gathered from other detainees known to the source.

Leveraging one source against another is a common police tactic (the central idea of the classic “prisoner’s dilemma”) and is especially useful when dealing with sources who have limited or no training in resistance strategies. With sufficient validated intelligence supporting him, the interrogator can effectively present information to source A that was allegedly (and plausibly) provided by source B. The wedge thus placed, in conjunction with time and careful orchestration, can be effective in eliciting progressively more information independently from each source.

79 A radioactive dispersal device is often referred to in the media and in popular literature as a “dirty bomb.”
80 KUBARK, 67.
81 KUBARK, 70.

=== The All-Seeing Eye ===
The interrogator who already knows part of the story explains to the source that the purpose of the questioning is not to gain information; the interrogator knows everything already. His real purpose is to test the sincerity (reliability, honor, etc.) of the source. The interrogator then asks a few questions to which he knows the answers. If the subject lies, he is informed firmly and dispassionately that he has lied. By skilled manipulation of the known, the questioner can convince a naïve subject that all his secrets are out and that further resistance would be not only pointless but dangerous.82

Similar to the We Know All approach outlined in U.S. Army Field Manual 34-52, the All-Seeing Eye has proven consistently effective with a broad array of sources.83 While simple in concept, as with other effective approaches, the underlying dynamic can be far more complex. In this instance, two fundamental activities occur to render it effective in obtaining compliance from a resistant source.

First, Cialdini’s authority principle plays an important part in this approach. The source, convinced that the interrogator knows as much as (perhaps more than) he does, sees little to be gained from protecting information of such apparently little value, especially if he anticipates that the consequences of withholding such information are undesirable. Second, recalling the premise that two of the interrogator’s primary objectives are to increase the stress the source internalizes about the consequences of resistance while simultaneously reducing the internalized stress over the prospect of cooperating, this approach systematically targets the latter. By maintaining this approach over time, the interrogator is able to introduce a new and perhaps unexpected factor in the source’s resistance/ cooperation calculus.

=== Ivan Is a Dope ===
It may be useful to point out to a hostile [source] that the cover story was ill-contrived, that the other service botched the job, that it is typical of the other service to ignore the welfare of its agents. The interrogator may personalize this pitch by explaining that he has been impressed by the [source’s] courage and intelligence.84

This approach also leverages the psychological and emotional partition between aforementioned values outside the interrogation room and those inside the interrogation room. By using this approach effectively, the interrogator continues to separate the source from his or her external anchors. In this instance, that anchor is a belief in the parent service’s skill in managing cover to properly protect the source operationally. This has direct application to the interrogation of suspected terrorists, not only as it relates to cover support, but also to the threat briefings, operational planning, and equipment provided to the source by his or her sponsoring organization.

A key element of systematic interrogation is systematic innovation. Rather than assume that the approaches outlined in U.S. Army Field Manual 34-52 are the limit of their repertoire of tactics, interrogators should view those approaches as only the very beginning. The drafters of the [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] demonstrated the value to be found in the ability to adapt to new challenges, design innovative strategies, identify through practical experience what appears to consistently work well, and share these novel concepts with other interrogators. If a central clearinghouse for new interrogation tactics, techniques, and procedures existed
— a means of capturing and widely disseminating the experience and insights of operators in the field — it is quite probable that the art of interrogation would currently be taught and practiced in a significantly different and far more effective fashion.

82 KUBARK, 67.
83 The author refers to this approach as “The Exquisite Ruse,” and has used it with great effect in interrogation operations conducted during Operations JUST CAUSE, DESERT STORM, and IRAQI FREEDOM.

84 85

=== The Need to Communicate ===
...continued questioning about lofty topics that the source knows nothing about may pave the way for the extraction of information at lower levels...complaints that he knows nothing of such matters are met by flat insistence that he does know, he would have to know, that even the most stupid men in his position know...after the process has continued long enough, the source was asked a question to which he did know the answer. Numbers of [former] American [POWs] have mentioned “the tremendous feeling of relief you get when [the interrogator] finally asks you something you can answer...I know it seems strange now, but I was positively grateful to them when they switched to a topic I knew something about.”

In yet another example of the many conundrums of the interrogation room, common sense would suggest that sources would find an advantage in being asked questions concerning topics about which they knew little or nothing. Such circumstances do not place them in a position where they felt pressure to deceive (“falsify”) or purposely withhold (“conceal”) information. As reported by U.S. POWs who were subjected to this manner of questioning during the Korean War, however, it often proved true that the inability to answer questions created tremendous pressure and, as the quotation above illustrates, the opportunity finally to address questions within the scope of their experience and knowledgeability proved a welcome relief. The need to communicate is surprisingly powerful, and more powerful still under traumatic circumstances.

Cialdini provides another perspective that may be a relevant factor at play in this approach. In his rejection-then-retreat scenario, when one asks for something difficult (a request that might often be denied) and then asks for something less demanding, the compliance rate for the lesser demand is higher when the demand is preceded by the more difficult demand than when the questions are asked in isolation.86 In the context of interrogation, a source may be reluctant to answer sweeping questions about organizational plans and intentions, but, in contrast, may be less guarded about lower-level details. Although declining to answer questions about strategic-level topics, the source may feel less pressure to keep from answering questions about tactical-level topics.

Taking into account Cialdini’s consistency principle (i.e., people tend to act in a manner consistent with formal, public statements made or positions taken previously),87 this strategy would probably work more effectively when the interrogator asks the strategic-level question, but, sensing hesitation on the part of the source, withdraws it before the source has the chance to resist. If allowed to formally assume a resistance posture, the pressure to remain consistent with that decision may have a greater influence than the relief gained from being able to respond to a question with which the source is more comfortable.
What internal dialogue takes place within a source in response to various approaches? Can Cialdini’s principles of persuasion explain, at least in part, why a given approach elicits compliance from a source? Do certain trends in behavior in the interrogation room prove valid in a sufficient number of cases that they can be routinely employed with a high degree of probability of ultimately proving effective? The review of available literature strongly suggests that these critical questions, and others, have not been satisfactorily addressed with regard to the traditional approaches and other tactics, techniques, and procedures still being employed. The move to the next generation of strategies for educing information depends on research that can uncover the answer to these questions. Once this has been accomplished, ineffective methods can be eliminated from the training curricula and replaced by innovative strategies complete with a valid description of the underlying factors that are essential to success.

85 KUBARK, 72. KUBARK, 75.

86 Cialdini, 36–51.
87 Cialdini, 57–113.

<div id="Alice in Wonderland"></div>

=== Alice in Wonderland: The Power of Applied Confusion === 
The aim of the Alice in Wonderland or confusion technique is to confound the expectations and conditioned reactions of the interrogatee. He is accustomed to a world that makes sense, at least to him: a world of continuity and logic, a predictable world. He clings to this world to reinforce his identity and powers of resistance. The confusion technique is designed not only to obliterate the familiar, but to replace it with the weird...as the process continues, day after day as necessary, the subject begins to try to make sense of the situation, which becomes mentally intolerable...he is likely to make significant admissions, or even to pour out his story.88

SERE psychologists have identified the inability to effectively forecast near-term events as a major stressor in the detention environment. Adults grow accustomed to having a reasonable degree of control over their lives, which enables them to make accurate predictions about basic events such as when they go to sleep, when they wake up, when they eat, and when they use the toilet. In addition, if they find themselves encountering unpleasant circumstances (e.g., an annoying neighbor, a time-wasting work associate, etc.), it is normally within their power to escape those stressful situations at will (or least minimize the time spent engaged with the unattractive individual). In detention, avoidance may not be an option.

The KUBARK principle described in the passage above suggests that an interrogator is able to generate a significant degree of pressure on a source through the purposeful creation of confusing circumstances that effectively remove the source’s ability to make predictions. In effect, the source struggles to find a familiar logic to the chain of events, the nature of the interactions, and purpose of the exchanges with the interrogator. As the struggle proves unsuccessful, the level of stress can dramatically rise to an exceptionally uncomfortable level. According to the [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]], sources may offer up information to the interrogator in an effort to overtly introduce “sense” to their chaotic circumstances. In discussing that information, the source has recaptured a degree of comforting predictability.

From the source’s perspective, the experience of being detained and interrogated would seem to have inherent elements of disorder and ambiguity. The effect this has on a given source (negative or positive) would appear, then, to be directly correlated with each source’s need for order and level of comfort/ discomfort with ambiguity. While the literature on Communist methods of interrogation frequently references the value of confusion in obtaining compliance, it is less clear as it applies to obtaining relevant, accurate information. Perhaps additional study is warranted on the effects of confusion as well as a means for rapidly assessing a source’s tolerance for disorder and ambiguity.

88 KUBARK, 76.