Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

The U.S. interrogation effort must similarly learn and adapt to the emerging
challenges it faces in gathering information from detainees. This checklist can
serve as a useful template for building a contemporary version tailored to meet
the unique requirements of educing information in response to current and future
challenges to the national security interests of the United States.
Bibliographic Reference
The KUBARK manual includes an extensive bibliography, including a
number of references produced by the notable researchers Biderman and Hinkle.
Also included are several military documents pertaining to interrogation developed
at Fort Holabird, the former center for military HUMINT operational training. For
security reasons, a number of references have been excised completely (evidenced
only by the remaining entry number in the bibliography).
Findings
A careful examination of the KUBARK manual yields a wealth of
potentially valuable concepts that either have the potential for immediate
application in the development of a next generation of tactics, techniques, and
procedures for educing information or that warrant further study by relevant
professionals. While most of these have been identified previously, a few
additional observations — some of which cross over two or more of the topics
addressed earlier — merit specific comment.
• A theme that recurs in the KUBARK manual is that interrogation is
defined both by its intensely interpersonal nature and intractably shaped
by the unique personalities of both the interrogator and the source. This
observation suggests both an important avenue of research as well as a
notable caution. In describing interrogation as an “interpersonal” event,
it offers social scientists an important sense of how to approach — at
least initially — this complex activity. At the same time, it seems to offer
a reminder that, in many important ways, each interrogation is unique
and therefore one must be cautious in trying to apply a strategic template
that would prove effective in each case.
• Because interrogation is a complex process, practitioners of the art of
interrogation require extensive training and progressive, supervised
experience to meet current and emerging operational requirements. From
the moment of capture, the value of a given source’s knowledgeability
begins to degrade as the gap in direct access to the information of
intelligence interest widens and memory for detail diminishes. The
windows of opportunity to gather information in response to priority
intelligence requirements are finite, especially those involving high-value
targets. In the course of an interrogation, errors in strategy, approach
planning, and actions are in many instances irreversible.
• In seeking to identify an effective protocol for selecting and training a
cadre of interrogators who would ultimately be able to perform at this level,
the Intelligence Community might derive value from reviewing selection
139