Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

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Negotiation Theory and Practice:
Exploring Ideas to Aid Information Eduction
Daniel L. Shapiro, Ph.D. 685
Harvard University
February 2006
Abstract
Information eduction can be viewed as a complex set of negotiations.
Government officials have information needs, and sources have information
they can disclose. The challenge is to determine how the government
can negotiate most effectively for that information. This report describes
negotiation concepts that might assist the information educer.
The Field of Negotiation
Brief Background
The negotiation field offers little in the way of direct research into the
challenge of educing information (EI) in an interrogation context. However, it is
worth noting that the current field of negotiation theory, like that of EI, arose from
necessity and has largely been tested in the trenches of practice. Game-theoretical
analyses of negotiation, such as Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy
of Confl ict, sought to curb escalating tensions in the Cold War. Interest-based
negotiation, typified by the Harvard Negotiation Project’s 1981 Getting to Yes,
was developed in the context of the project’s negotiations in the Iranian Hostage
conflict, with guerrilla forces in Central and South America, and in the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict. Walton and McKersie’s seminal negotiation research (1965)
was developed to reduce contentious labor negotiations. The negotiation work
of Mary Parker Follett evolved from dissatisfaction with the way organizations
dealt with difference (Follett, 1942). Scientific research in negotiation has been
a more recent development, but tends to confirm earlier, practice-based theory
(Thompson and Leonardelli, 2004).
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Dr. Shapiro is Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project and on the faculty at
Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School. The author wishes to thank Robert Fein, Mary
Rowe, Elizabeth Tippet, Roger Fisher, and the blind reviewers who offered feedback on previous
drafts of this report.
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