Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

The study of hostile interrogation methods has been an essential undertaking
in the noble effort to better prepare U.S. personnel to endure and withstand the
challenges they might face if taken prisoner. However, no similar effort has ever
been undertaken to better prepare U.S. intelligence personnel for their important
role in gleaning critical intelligence data from enemy prisoners and detainees.
The reasons for this omission remain unknown.
Operating with a dearth of research in support of offensive interrogation
methodology, the writers of the KUBARK manual appear to have found
themselves in a situation not unlike that experienced by interrogation personnel
today. In essence, KUBARK’s coercive methods reflected concepts derived from
research into hostile methods — government research carried out specifically
to help identify effective countermeasures — and then “reverse engineered”
selected principles to meet operational requirements. It is interesting to note that
the KUBARK manual (and the methods it proposes) was substantially informed
by studies conducted by Albert Biderman, a sociologist and principal investigator
for an Air Force Office of Scientific Research contract to review literature on the
stresses associated with captivity. 27
In large measure, the abuses — alleged or actual — perpetrated by U.S.
interrogation personnel since the advent of the war on terror can be explained
(albeit not defended) by the very same dynamic. With interrogation doctrine
reflecting little change from the 1960s and producing few substantial successes
in the current battlespace, commanders, operators, and intelligence officers have
sought an alternative. In considering options, it became readily apparent that the
experts in Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) were the “only other
game in town.”
While offensive and defensive interrogation operations have much in common,
there are intractable differences. Defensive interrogation training is designed to
help U.S. personnel withstand the unique stresses of all manner of exploitation
— including the employment of coercive methods — to protect information and
avoid becoming pawns in an adversary’s attempt to generate useful propaganda.
To prepare personnel for this substantial challenge, resistance training seeks
to create a systematic threat environment to achieve “stress inoculation.” This
includes exposing trainees to intensive role-played interrogation scenarios. In
the course of many years of experience in such practical exercises, many of the
resistance instructors have become accomplished role-play interrogators.
However, there are three fundamental reasons why experience as a resistance
instructor does not necessarily prepare someone for service as an intelligence
interrogator. First, resistance instructors — portraying interrogators from potential
adversarial nations that have shown disregard for international convention on the
treatment of prisoners — routinely employ a wide range of coercive methods
that often fall well outside Geneva Convention guidelines. Second, although
questioning is an important element of the role-play exercise, this activity does
27
KUBARK, 110–111.
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