Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

generated inside the interrogatee. His resistance sapped, his
urge to yield is fortified, until in the end he defeats himself. 65
The concept of “pressure” is an elusive one to capture in a manner that wins
universal acceptance. For this reason, the term itself has played a significant, if
misunderstood role with respect to allegations of prisoner mistreatment. This can
be illustrated in the following recurring scenario:
A senior commander, whose forces have engaged a challenging
insurgent adversary, rightfully seeks to gain every available
advantage, including that possible through timely and tailored
intelligence gathered from recently captured detainees.
Interrogators, diligently employing the U.S. Army tactical
interrogation model—one designed for a more conventional
military paradigm—encounter difficulties in obtaining the
desired intelligence information from suspected terrorists,
captured insurgents, and other high-value detainees. In this
highly charged environment, commanders direct interrogators
to “increase the pressure” on the prisoners without additional
guidance as to how that order might be acted upon. Operating
without advanced training in the needed interrogation
tradecraft and lacking guidance from doctrine tailored to the
circumstances, some interrogators (the majority of whom
are young and relatively inexperienced) interpret the order to
“increase the pressure” as meaning anything from extending the
length of interrogations to pushing (and at times exceeding) the
envelope of accepted methods. In a small number of cases, it is
interpreted as meaning increased physicality.
In the context of an interrogation, myriad environmental factors may generate
pressure (i.e., stress) within an individual. At the same time, it is important — and
the KUBARK manual suggests — not to overlook the influence of the source’s
self-induced pressures. For the purposes of this paper, self-induced pressures will
be defined as those resulting from an individual’s interpretation of, and chosen
response to, events, both real and imagined. Understanding this dynamic, the
challenge for the interrogator is to skillfully (and carefully) manage the level
of pressure in a manner that moves the interrogation toward its established
objectives.
Nonetheless, pressure is an exceedingly difficult quality to measure
accurately, especially on the exclusive basis of external observation. Additional
degrees of difficulty are introduced by the cultural and linguistic barriers that are
almost always present in an interrogation setting, individual responses to pressure,
current levels of physical and emotional health, and time held in detention. Given
this complex matrix, interrogators find themselves walking a very fine line,
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KUBARK, 52.
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