Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

• Initiative: Initiative – seeking out and taking control of one’s own
destiny — is necessary to achieve mastery of the environment
and interactions with adversaries and to avoid being mastered
by them.
Although Boyd’s strategy began to take shape with his experiences in aerial
combat during the Korean War, its application nonetheless remains unbounded by
time or technology. It incorporates principles espoused by the strategist Sun Tzu
over 2,500 years ago as well as those set forth by the laws of thermodynamics.
Variations on this strategic theme have demonstrated their efficacy on the
battlefields of World War II and in the lethality of the renowned 17 th -century
Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. In the following passage, Musashi,
author of the classic treatise on strategy, The Book of Five Rings, succinctly sets
forth much of what every interrogator needs to successfully educe information
from resistant sources:
[Y]ou determine [the] opponent’s traditions, observe [their]
character, find out [their] strengths and weaknesses, maneuver
in ways contrary to the opponent’s expectations, determine the
opponent’s highs and lows, ascertain rhythms in between, and
make the first move; this is essential. 681
Concluding Observations
[I]t is a paradox of the twenty-fi rst century that, in
this age of technological wonders, the threats to our lives,
wealth, and order are fundamentally, crudely human. We may
diagram bunkers, bombs, and entire armies, but we falter at
understanding the human soul. Nor will the human heart fi t into
our templates. Love, fear, hatred, not machines, are the stuff
of which wars are made, whether we speak of terrorist jihads,
campaigns of ethnic cleansing, or conventional offensives (and
do not underestimate the deadly power of love, whether felt
toward a god, a people, a clan, fl ag, or an individual.) 682
Educing Information in the Last (or Current) War
With much of the nation’s military, intelligence, and internal security resources
currently focused on the Global War on Terror and the insurgency in Iraq, any
effort to reexamine doctrine and methods for educing information can be too
easily — and mistakenly — narrowed to applications within these two contexts.
Although those who use terrorist and insurgent tactics have demonstrated an
unprecedented mastery of leading-edge technologies, the scope and complexity of
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Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, translated by Thomas Cleary (London: Shambhala
Publications, Inc., 2003), 56.
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Ralph Peters, Beyond Terror (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), 195.
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