Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

Making Sense of Chaos and Ambiguity
History is replete with examples of apparently sound and carefully reasoned
plans gone horribly awry as they moved from the chalkboard (or PowerPoint
presentation) into the real world, where they invariably encountered a ubiquitous
and implacable foe: chaos. This chaos — also known by the Clausewitzian terms
“fog of war” and “friction” — is unavoidable and, in many cases, unpredictable.
Incisive strategy, however, can ameliorate and even overcome fog and friction.
Chaos and ambiguity are the handmaidens of conflict. These two forces appear
to remain omnipresent across the entire spectrum of conflict, from maneuver
warfare on the battlefield to negotiations between multinational corporations.
Rather than wish them away — or, worse yet, pretend to ignore their existence
— the prudent strategist anticipates and, where possible, seeks to employ them
as an advantage over a less agile adversary. Such an approach is as valid in the
interrogation room as it is in other fields of battle.
The interpersonal/intrapersonal barrier to success introduces unique forms of
chaos and ambiguity that an interrogator who wants to educe information from a
reluctant source must recognize, understand, and address. The following are but a
few examples of the intractable factors that can generate chaos and ambiguity in
the course of an extended interrogation process: 673
• The inherent complexity of personalities
• The role of changing, incompatible expectations
• The influence of life experience
• Tactics and strategies of formal resistance training
• Rapidly changing operating environment
• Rapidly changing intelligence requirements
• Introducing new and/or additional sources into the process
• Removing sources from the process.
A judicious assumption in this context is that the individual (interrogator or
source) who demonstrates greater skill and adaptability in consistently responding
to chaos and ambiguity, in an environment often characterized by a smog of data, 674
will ultimately prevail. If this is true, an overarching strategy for successfully
navigating the conflict is essential. Fortunately, such a strategy exists…and can
easily be tailored for application to the context of interrogation.
673
Given the nature of chaos and ambiguity it would be practically impossible to establish a
truly comprehensive list of such factors. Also, the examples above were limited to those relevant to
the Interpersonal/Intrapersonal Barrier to Success. The Linguistic/Cultural and Scientific/Technical
Barriers to Success generate a host of additional factors that can similarly create chaos and ambiguity.
674
Similar to Clausewitz’s fog of war, the smog of data represents the friction and sensory overload
encountered by decisionmakers at all levels as they encounter the unprecedented volume of intelligence
information generated by the modern U.S. Intelligence Community.
256