Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

well, or whether, these aims would translate into a preventive investigation. For
example, in comparison to a law enforcement officer, an interrogator working on
a preventive investigation would most likely have less information against which
to evaluate a given lie, or even to judge whether a suspect is lying at all during the
interrogation. Consequently, this potential difference in goals must underlie any
assessment of the value of law enforcement interrogation practices in preventing
terrorism. Similarly, all current law enforcement techniques operate under the
assumption that confessions obtained must meet certain legal and evidentiary
requirements. Some adjustment might be needed in purely preventive situations
or when legal requirements are inapplicable.
It is difficult to arrive at any fixed conclusions about the applicability of law
enforcement interrogation techniques to the terrorism context because we do
not know whether they in fact are effective. As mentioned in Section 13, much
research is needed into the actual effectiveness of law enforcement interrogation
techniques, since individual agencies keep no statistics on confessions or any
data on other measures of interrogation success. Even if the techniques prove
effective, we would still have to evaluate whether they would be equally effective
in the terrorism context in particular. Although law enforcement agents with
experience in both regular law enforcement and terrorism investigations have
noted that current techniques work well in both contexts, they also recognize
that their effectiveness largely depends on having vast amounts of time to
devote to the investigation and interrogation. Thus, current law enforcement
interrogation techniques have little applicability to a ticking-bomb, or otherwise
time-constrained, investigation scenario. Additionally, other aspects endemic
to the terrorism phenomenon must be taken into account when evaluating the
relevance of law enforcement interrogation techniques to that arena. For example,
current interrogation techniques and training programs make no mention of,
or consider adjustments for, the possibility that suspects have been trained in
counter-interrogation techniques. Such training is common practice for terrorist
organizations and must be taken into account when fashioning interrogation
techniques to be used with terrorism suspects.
Another feature that might make both the literature and law enforcement
techniques difficult to adopt in the terrorism prevention context is the conspicuous
omission of any cultural adaptation. All psychological literature and interrogation
techniques seem either to ignore the potential impact of culture on the outcome of
an interrogation or to assume that it does not matter. Because the current terrorist
threat is so intricately tied to culture and religion, failing to study the impact
of those factors on the efficacy of interrogation techniques seems like a glaring
oversight. Additionally, cultural awareness and adaptation would appear to be
central elements of the rapport-building upon which the current techniques rely so
heavily. Though by no means an exhaustive list, areas for possible study include
whether culture in fact is a statistically significant predictor of the outcome of
interrogations, and, if so, whether shame-based approaches to interrogation work
better among certain cultures than fear- or guilt-based approaches. To this end,
it may be worth bringing together interrogation experts from around the world
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