Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

claimed that a piece of land in the Amazonian basin was legitimately theirs and
theirs alone.
The Harvard Negotiation Project worked closely with President Jamil
Mahuad as he negotiated a resolution to the dispute (see Fisher and Shapiro, 2005).
A joint working group consisting of officials from both governments generated
an option that adequately addressed each side’s primary interests. The contested
land would become an international park under the ownership of Ecuador and
the sovereignty of Peru. No economic, political, or military activity could be
conducted on the land without the agreement of both governments. This option
allowed each party to reach a satisfactory resolution without giving in.
Identify Trade-offs
In a negotiation, differences are not always bad. Parties can look for different
valuation of issues and trade accordingly. In its simplest form, if one person likes
oranges more than apples, and the other likes apples more than oranges, a simple
transfer of goods can maximize joint gains.
Parties can create contingency agreements to capitalize on differences in
risk, expectations, and the like. (“If A happens, Party Y will do B and Party Z
will do C.”) Differences in the forecast of future events, for example, need not
become stumbling blocks for agreement. Rather than fight over whose forecast is
correct, parties can incorporate contingencies for each possible outcome into the
agreement. Contingency agreements also can be effective if parties have different
time preference or attitudes toward risk.
Unbundle One Issue into Many
If parties focus on a single issue, the negotiation risks becoming a distributional
contest. Negotiation research suggests that one way to avoid a distributional contest
is to “unbundle issues,” transforming a single-issue, fixed-pie negotiation into a
multi-issue negotiation where mutual gains can be reached (Lax and Sebenius,
1986; Thompson, 2005). For the educer, the question boils down to: How might
the educer add new issues, unbundle issues, or otherwise expand the number of
issues under discussion What else does the source care about How might those
matters be incorporated into the current discussion Putting more issues that the
source cares about on the table may give the source more incentive to cooperate.
Similarly, multiple simultaneous offers can serve to break a deadlock
(Bazerman and Neale, 1992; Kelley and Schenitzki, 1972). The offers should all
be of equal value to the offering party to improve the likelihood of meeting one’s
own objectives without making concessions. Each offer should cover multiple
issues to avoid the problem of sequential, tit-for-tat, haggling. All offers should
be made at the same time, which allows the offering party to observe the other
party’s reaction, learn more about the other’s interests, and, if an offer is accepted,
reach a Pareto-optimal outcome.
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