Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

to be “heard,” or become lonely in detention, and tell more than they originally
intended. Some may be motivated by false information that can be refuted. Some
may be trained to resist certain sources of power that might be used in EI, but
understanding the training methods may indicate ways of sowing doubt in that
training.
Another reason to know the interests of a source is to understand what
negotiation theory refers to as a “resistance point”: a point at which the source
changes his mind in an important way about dealing with the educer. This could
be the point at which the source will stop dealing with his captors and seek other
alternatives, such as trying to injure himself seriously, persuade someone else to
injure him, or commit suicide. A source might have a resistance point of a different
kind; that is, a point at which the source will decide to share — or appear to share
— important information. The educer would obviously benefit from discovering
this latter resistance point in order to try to move it toward cooperation. (The
educer might endeavor to lower the resistance point by causing the source to
doubt his own assessments, either about the United States or about his interests.)
To identify something to trade the educer would need to know what the
source would value: for example, changing aspects of the EI sessions, conditions
of custody, contacts with family, or time of release. EI interactions might present
numerous opportunities to offer something of value — tangible or intangible —
that involves little or no cost to U.S. interests. And if the source accepts something
of value, this might also mean that he now might stand to lose something if he
were to stop being helpful.
Few sources would be unique: each belongs to a religious group, a political
group, and an ethnic culture. He may belong to an extended family. How one
interacts with an individual source may be, de facto, part of a much larger
“negotiation” with all the others in his immediate group, and potentially with
all the people around the world who identify with the source. Members of the
source’s ethnic or religious group may also be at the site of the negotiation, which
means the question of “negotiating with the constituency” is close at hand. The
willingness of a source to give information might depend in important ways on
the attitudes of a group of sources and might require that the source be separated
from other sources. Alternatively, a group of sources might include people from
different backgrounds whose interests at least initially differ. Such differences
among the sources might advance U.S. interests if the United States could develop
a coalition with one or another group.
The Need for Research about Negotiations and EI
The founders of modern-day negotiation theory, Walton and McKersie,
developed their theory by studying records of negotiations. 689 This type of study
could easily be extended to EI. Existing records of EI sessions, including debriefs
689
Richard Walton and Robert McKersie, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1965).
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