Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

• Perhaps the most important single trait of individuals who have
demonstrated long-term success in HUMINT operations is an exceptional
aptitude for dealing with ambiguity. Whether this characteristic can be
reliably measured remains to be seen.
The “Magic” of Rapport: 35 The Emotional Component
of Interrogation
One general observation is introduced now, however, because it
is considered basic to the establishment of rapport, upon which
the success of non-coercive interrogation depends…The skilled
interrogator can save a great deal of time by understanding the
emotional needs of the interrogatee. Most people confronted by
an official — and dimly powerful — representative of a foreign
power will get down to cases much faster if made to feel, from
the start, that they are being treated as individuals. 36
Despite the impressive success achieved by interrogators who have mastered
the skill of effectively establishing rapport with a source — the celebrated
Luftwaffe interrogator Hanns Scharff 37 providing but one well-known example
— methods for rapport-building continue to receive relatively little attention in
current interrogation training programs. There seems to be an unfounded yet
widespread presumption that all persons inherently possess the skills necessary
for building rapport and therefore do not require any supplemental training to
hone this ability. While the KUBARK manual has gained a degree of infamy
through its association with coercive means, it also, in an interesting stroke of
irony, consistently emphasizes the value of rapport-building as an essential tool
for the interrogator.
The devaluation of rapport — that is, building an operational accord with
a source — as an effective means of gaining compliance from a resistant source
is in large measure the product of the misguided public debate over the role of
interrogation in the Global War on Terror, one that seems invariably to focus
on the “ticking bomb” scenario. The point can be safely made that for every
instance where a source might have information about an imminent, catastrophic
terrorist event, there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of interrogations where
the information requirements are far less urgent and the opportunity exists for a
35
Rapport is one of the interrogator’s most powerful tools in gaining a source’s cooperation. It
must be made clear that, in the context of an interrogation, the term “rapport” is not limited to the idea
of friendship that builds between two individuals (although this may actually occur over the course
of an extended interrogation). For the purposes of this paper, the term will be used to imply a state
in which a degree of accord, conformity, and or/affinity is present within a relationship. Source: Jerry
Richardson, The Magic of Rapport (Capitola, CA: Meta Publications, 1987), 13.
36
KUBARK, 11.
37
Raymond F. Toliver, The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns Joachim Scharff, Master Interrogator
of the Luftwaffe (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1997).
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