Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

Background
Our adversaries are often more sophisticated now than in the past and the U.S.
advantage in high-tech surveillance capabilities has diminished over the years.
Both practical and political considerations account for past trends away from
development and use of human sources for intelligence collection and toward
substantial reliance upon imagery and communications interception technology.
First and foremost, this approach worked; in fact, for many years, it worked
extremely well. It leveraged the huge technological and financial advantages of
the United States over most of the rest of the world, providing data collection
capabilities that allowed the Intelligence Community access almost anywhere it
cared to look. Unfortunately (in this context), the technological disparity between
countries has grown narrower. As a result, our competitors and adversaries better
understand our capabilities, which allows them to develop countermeasures that
have diminished the return on our technology-based collection methods.
Our adversaries are different than in the past. While it still remains almost
impossible for another nation to move an armored division without being
seen, high-tech surveillance systems offer relatively little capacity to track the
movements of individuals belonging to a terrorist organization.
Given the dispersed nature and small size of terrorist organizations, direct
interaction with people is required to develop the kinds of information needed
to inform and direct intelligence operations. The challenge is to identify when
information and sources developed through human contact are valid.
Determining Veracity
Methods of detecting when an individual is attempting to deceive a listener
constitute a primary basis for assessing the potential utility and validity of
information obtained from human sources. A significant amount of scientific
study has focused on this topic. Overall, data to this point suggest that for all
groups, novice to professional, accuracy in determining when someone is being
deceptive is only marginally better than chance. 1-22
The two primary approaches to detecting deception rely on psychophysiological
and behavioral indicators. Psychophysiological methods involve monitoring and
assessing physiological reactions to events; for instance, through use of heart rate
and function monitors 23-26 , skin conductance sensors, 27,28 thermal photography,
voice frequency analysis 29 , and brain activation patterns measured via electronic
wave patterns 30-33 or via magnetic resonance imaging, etc. Detailed examinations
of these and other methods appear elsewhere in the literature 16,34,35 or within papers
sponsored through the current study on educing information, such as the study by
Heckman and Happel in this document.
The present review covers scientific findings regarding our current capacity
to detect deception by using behavioral indicators: all actions, statements, or
responses that another person can reasonably monitor through observation. It
focuses only on those methods that can be used in person-to-person communication,
without the aid of extensive technological support. While technologically based
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