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

=== 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