Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

8. How would the revelation of this form of interrogation be received by
various audiences, domestic and foreign
9. Would the use of coercive methods — real or alleged — have an impact
on the treatment of U.S. personnel held captive in adversarial hands
10. Would the use of forced regression as a sanctioned method of
exploitation be viewed as being consistent with long-standing U.S.
values and military traditions
11. The above considerations notwithstanding, does the use of regression
consistently produce reliable, actionable intelligence information
In The Manipulation of Human Behavior, Biderman decried the fact that, in
1961, the “dearth of sober information on interrogation has had the unfortunate
consequence of facilitating the exploitation of United States prisoners of war by
Communist captors.” 94 While he was specifically addressing a research shortfall
that undermined training in the resistance to interrogation for U.S. military
personnel, the same observation remains essentially true over 40 years later with
regard to the paucity of relevant information on effective tactics, techniques, and
procedures for the interrogation of adversarial detainees under U.S. control.
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.
132