Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

are quite resistant to “knowing better”; they often prevail even when experts are
fully aware of them and explicitly endeavor to mitigate their effect. 694
These findings have a clear implication for the assessment of eduction
practices: it is imprudent to base assessment only on the subjective feedback
of interrogators. Interrogators are professionals, and are certainly committed
to providing the most honest evaluations they can. However, unless they differ
greatly from other experts, their judgments and memories will be biased in favor
of the effectiveness of the practices they employ. Information gleaned from field
experience constitutes a critical source of knowledge, and without question many
of the lessons learned from such experiences are valid. But, equally without
question, many are invalid. Which is which Only objective, scientific research
can help to distinguish between them.
Feasibility of Scientific Investigation of Eduction
Practices
Researchers have substantial opportunity to investigate eduction practices
scientifically in ways that pose no ethical or political problems. The paragraphs
below outline some alternative study designs for these scientific investigations.
Venue 1: Objective Analysis of Contemporary Interrogations
As noted above, considerable evidence indicates that experts overrate the
effectiveness of their own practices. This occurs particularly when experts do not
receive frequent, objective feedback on the results of their practices — precisely
the circumstance in which interrogators usually find themselves. Although they
know whether or not a subject “talked,” they do not receive substantial feedback
on the accuracy or usefulness of the information educed. This can cause problems,
because a subject who has decided to feign cooperation would probably choose
to “reveal” two types of information: information that is accurate but useless and
information that appears useful, but is inaccurate.
Solving this problem requires independent, objective assessment of the
information educed. Fortunately, straightforward approaches exist for acquiring
such assessments. In essence, analysts should rate the usefulness, accuracy,
and timeliness of the information distributed from interrogations. To ensure
objectivity, the analysts performing these ratings should not know the source
of the information. Furthermore, these ratings should be delayed until after any
actions taken to follow up on the educed information are complete, because the
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For a concrete example to which the reader can relate, have you ever seen a professional
basketball player on a “hot streak,” “in the zone,” etc. In fact, you haven’t. A detailed analysis of
shooting behavior in almost every venue imaginable has yet to find a single professional player who
exhibits streaks beyond chance. The chance of making the next shot is simply independent of the
results of recent previous shots. In fact, shooting behavior is maximally inconsistent with the “hot
streak” hypothesis. Nevertheless, anyone who watches a game, including those of us who understand
statistics, “sees” streaks. The hot streaks are completely obvious and completely illusory.
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