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

==Obstacles to Meaningful Intelligence: The Negative Effects of Coercion==
[T]he response to coercion typically contains “at least three important elements: debility, dependency, and dread.”95
“[A]mong the American POWs pressured by the Chinese Communists, the DDD syndrome in its full-blown form constituted a state of discomfort that was well-nigh intolerable.” If the debility-dependency-dread state is unduly prolonged, however, the [source] may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to arouse him.96

Psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist.97
...a strong fear of anything vague or unknown induces regression, whereas the materialization of the fear, the infliction of some form of punishment, is likely to come as a relief. The subject finds that he can hold out, and his resistances are strengthened.

94 Albert Biderman, “Introduction – Manipulations of Human Behavior,” in The Manipulation of Human Behavior, 4.
95 KUBARK, 83.
96 KUBARK, 84.
97 KUBARK, 84.

In general, direct physical brutality creates only resentment, hostility, and further defiance.98
As these passages from the [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] suggest, the very means by which coercive methods undermine the source’s resistance posture may also concomitantly degrade his ability to report the intelligence information they possess in a valid, comprehensive fashion. There would, then, appear to be a very fine line that the interrogator would need to walk deftly as he uses sufficient force to cause the source to yield to questioning, but not so much as to impede the source’s ability to answer those questions meaningfully.

In examining this complex issue, it is important to keep clearly in mind that interrogations take place in real-world settings, without the controls available in the safety of the institutional research environment. Managing levels of internalized pressure experienced by a source subjected to coercive means is most definitely neither a science nor a precise art. The pressure interrogators and overseers would seek to measure is an elusive entity, one that can only be gauged by highly subjective standards. Levels of pressure introduced by coercive methods, as with torture in general, are often in the eye of the beholder as illustrated in the following passage from Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, an account of Operation Phoenix, conducted during the Vietnam War:

Some people define torture as the infliction of severe physical pain on a defenseless person. I define torture as the infliction of any pain on a defenseless individual because deciding which activities inflict severe pain is an excessively complicated and imprecise business. (Original italics)99

The [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] offers unique and exceptional insights into the complex challenges of educing information from a resistant source through non- coercive means. While it addresses the use of coercive methods, it also describes how those methods may prove ultimately counterproductive. Although criticized for its discussion of coercion, the [[KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation|KUBARK manual]] does not portray coercive methods as a necessary — or even viable — means of effectively educing information.

98 99 100
The manner and timing of arrest can contribute substantially to the interrogator’s purposes. “What we aim to do is to ensure that the manner of arrest achieves, if possible, surprise, and the maximum amount of mental discomfort in order to catch the suspect off balance and to deprive him of the initiative.”

100 KUBARK, 90–91.
Mark Moyer, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 
90. KUBARK, 85.