Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

Ketcham, 1994; Roediger and McDermott 1995). One proposed cause of these
errors is difficulty in distinguishing the “source” of a given unit of information;
an inconsistent distinction separates information acquired internally (in one’s
head) from externally (actual experience). Moreover, stress, even at moderate
levels, has been found to impair memory recall (de Quervain et al., 2000; Henson,
Shallice, and Dolan, 1999; Lupien et al., 1998; Nadel and Jacobs, 1998; Payne,
Nadel, Allen, Thomas, and Jacobs, 2002).
Accuracy of Educed Information
A variety of factors such as stress, fatigue, distraction, and intoxication
can impair the capacity to retrieve and perceive memories accurately. At the
extreme, for example, there is a significant social science literature addressing
the apparently rare, but disturbing, issue of people confessing to crimes they did
not commit. The most critical implications for intelligence are that interrogation
tactics can lead the source to provide information that is inaccurate (intentionally
or unintentionally) even though the information may seem to conform to the
interrogator’s expectations, and also that the process of interrogation itself can
affect a source’s ability to recall known information accurately.
One distinction between interrogations conducted in LE and intelligence
contexts is that the primary objective in most U.S. law enforcement interrogations
is to obtain a confession rather than to educe information. The presumption or
expectation of guilt at the outset of an interrogation has been shown to influence
interrogators’ questioning strategy and cause them to exert more pressure to
confess. It also affects the interrogator’s inferences and judgments about the
suspect’s guilt.
This body of research underscores the importance of obtaining not merely
information through education, but specifically accurate and useful information.
It also provides a sobering reminder that some eduction methods — such as
inducing stress, fatigue, distraction, and intoxication — have the potential to
affect not only a source’s motivation to provide accurate, useful information, but
also his capacity to do so.
“Stress and Duress”
Determining what constitutes a “stress and duress” technique is a matter of
some debate. Social science research, however, has studied the effects of certain
techniques that have been used in the past (some quite widely), particularly
those commonly alleged by various groups to produce undue stress and duress
in detainees. True interrogative confession has been modeled as “a complicated
and demanding decision-making process” (Gudjonsson, 1992, 64). Of particular
interest, then, is how those effects might alter an uncooperative individual’s
motivation or capacity to provide accurate, useful information.
Research describes the psychological and emotional effects of strategies
sometimes used to diminish resistance, specifically physical discomfort, sleep
deprivation, and sensory deprivation. None of the studies, however, addresses
definitively whether these tactics indeed diminish resistance to persuasion and
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