Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

In general, direct physical brutality creates only resentment,
hostility, and further defiance. 98
As these passages from the 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 manual offers unique and exceptional insights into the
complex challenges of educing information from a resistant source through noncoercive
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 manual does not portray coercive
methods as a necessary — or even viable — means of effectively educing
information.
Shock of Capture: A Strategic Inflection Point in an Interrogation
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
98
KUBARK, 90–91.
99
Mark Moyer, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 90.
100
KUBARK, 85.
133