chap21

LIST 21

25 Tips for Interrogating a Prisoner, From the CIA

In January 1997, the public finally got to see “KUBARK COUNTERINTELLIGENCE INTERROGATION,” the CIA's 1963 manual for getting information out of unwilling prisoners, typically enemy agents. The 128-page instruction book opens with the lines: “This manual cannot teach anyone how to be, or become, a good interrogator. At best it can help readers avoid the characteristic mistakes of a bad interrogator.” All quotes—including the names of techniques that are in quotes—are taken directly from the declassified document.

Décor

“The room in which the interrogation is to be conducted should be free of distractions. The colors of the walls, ceiling, rugs, and furniture should not be startling. Pictures should be missing or dull.” A plain table is a good idea, unless a fancy desk would send the message that the interrogator is a powerful authority figure.

The chair

“An overstuffed chair for the use of the interrogatee is sometime preferable to a straight-backed, wooden chair because if he is made to stand for a lengthy period or is otherwise deprived of physical comfort, the contrast is intensified and increased disorientation results.”

The “do not disturb” sign

“The effect of someone wandering in because he forgot his pen or wants to invite the interrogator to lunch can be devastating.”

Listening in on the interrogation

“If possible, audio equipment should also be used to transmit the proceedings to another room, used as a listening post. The main advantage of transmission is that it enables the person in charge of the interrogation to note crucial points and map further strategy, replacing one interrogator with another, timing a dramatic interruption correctly, etc.”

Sincerity

“The interrogator who merely pretends, in his surface performance, to feel a given emotion or to hold a given attitude toward the source is likely to be unconvincing; the source quickly senses the deception. Even children are very quick to feel this kind of pretense. To be persuasive, the sympathy or anger must be genuine; but to be useful, it must not interfere with the deeper level of precise, unaffected observation.”

Unpredictable schedule

“Interrogation sessions with a resistant source who is under detention should not be held on an unvarying schedule. The capacity for resistance is diminished by disorientation. The subject may be left alone for days; and he may be returned to his cell, allowed to sleep for five minutes, and brought back to an interrogation which is conducted as though eight hours had intervened. The principle is that sessions should be so planned as to disrupt the source's sense of chronological order.”

Also, it's suggested that you make everything in the subject's life, such as his sleeping and eating schedules, random and unpredictable.

The “Nobody Loves You” technique

“An interrogatee who is withholding items of no grave consequence to himself may sometimes be persuaded to talk by the simple tactic of pointing out that to date all of the information about his case has come from persons other than himself. The interrogator wants to be fair. He recognizes that some of the denouncers may have been biased or malicious. In any case, there is bound to be some slanting of the facts unless the interrogatee redresses the balance. The source owes it to himself to be sure that the interrogator hears both sides of the story.”

The “All-Seeing Eye (or Confession is Good for the Soul)” technique

“The interrogator who already knows part of the story explains to the source that the purpose of the questioning is not to gain information; the interrogator knows everything already. His real purpose is to test the sincerity (reliability, honor, etc.) of the source. The interrogator then asks a few questions to which he knows the answers. If the subject lies, he is informed firmly and dispassionately that he has lied. By skilled manipulation of the known, the questioner can convince a naive subject that all his secrets are out and that further resistance would be not only pointless but dangerous.”

The double-informant technique

The manual notes that planting a snitch in the subject's cell is a ruse so obvious as to be useless. “Less well known is the trick of planting two informants in the cell. One of them, A, tries now and then to pry a little information from the source; B remains quiet. At the proper time, and during A's absence, B warns the source not to tell A anything because B suspects him of being an informant planted by the authorities. Suspicion against a single cellmate may sometimes be broken down if he shows the source a hidden microphone that he has ‘found’ and suggests that they talk only in whispers at the other end of the room.”

The “News from Home” technique

Letting the subject get some letters from the outside is a good way to gain trust and increase his longing to cooperate and, thus, get released. Conversely, letting him write letters can be profitable, since they can be read for useful information.

Playing two subjects against each other

If you have two suspects who are suspected of operating together, pretend that one is squealing on the other. Creatively edit audiotape of your interrogations of the first one. Doctor up a phony “signed” confession.

The “Ivan Is a Dope” technique

“It may be useful to point out to a hostile agent that the cover story was ill-contrived, that the other [intelligence] service botched the job, that it is typical of the other service to ignore the welfare of its agents. The interrogator may personalize this pitch by explaining that he has been impressed by the agent's courage and intelligence. He sells the agent the idea that the interrogator, not his old service, represents a true friend, who understands him and will look after his welfare.”

The good-cop/bad-cop routine

In this age-old technique, one interrogator pretends to be an angry SOB who is restraining himself from getting medieval on the subject. The other interrogator pretends to be nice and reasonable, establishing false trust. The manual notes: “This routine works best with women, teenagers, and timid men.”

Language games

“If the recalcitrant subject speaks more than one language, it is better to question him in the tongue with which he is least familiar as long as the purpose of interrogation is to obtain a confession. After the interrogatee admits hostile intent or activity, a switch to the better-known language will facilitate follow-up. An abrupt switch of languages may trick a resistant source. If an interrogatee has withstood a barrage of questions in German or Korean, for example, a sudden shift to ‘Who is your case officer?’ in Russian may trigger the answer before the source can stop himself.”

The “Spinoza and Mor timer Snerd” technique

First you ask the subject questions about the high-level operations of his agency, questions that he is truly unable to answer. “His complaints that he knows nothing of such matters are met by flat insistence that he does know, he would have to know, that even the most stupid men in his position know.” Suddenly, the interrogator switches to questions about low-level information, which the subject does know and may reveal. An American POW who was the victim of this tactic later said: “I know it seems strange now, but I was positively grateful to them when they switched to a topic I knew something about.”

The “Wolf in Sheep's Clothing” technique

In this risky maneuver, a CIA decoy pretends to be a representative of an enemy agency, the same agency that employs the sap being interrogated. Thinking he's being debriefed by his side, he spills his guts.?

The “Alice in Wonderland” technique

Simply put: Mess with the subject's head. You attempt “not only to obliterate the familiar but to replace it with the weird. Although this method can be employed by a single interrogator, it is better adapted to use by two or three. When the subject enters the room, the first interrogator asks a doubletalk question—one which seems straightforward but is essentially nonsensical. Whether the interrogatee tries to answer or not, the second interrogator follows up (interrupting any attempted response) with a wholly unrelated and equally illogical query. Sometimes two or more questions are asked simultaneously. Pitch, tone, and volume of the interrogators' voices are unrelated to the import of the questions. No pattern of questions and answers is permitted to develop, nor do the questions themselves relate logically to each other. In this strange atmosphere the subject finds that the pattern of speech and thought which he has learned to consider normal have been replaced by an eerie meaninglessness. The interrogatee may start laughing or refuse to take the situation seriously. But as the process continues, day after day if necessary, the subject begins to try to make sense of the situation, which becomes mentally intolerable. Now he is likely to make significant admissions, or even to pour out his story, just to stop the flow of babble which assails him.”

The “Placebo” technique

Make the subject take a sugar pill, then tell him it was a truth serum. If he's consciously or subconsciously looking for an excuse to cooperate, he'll tell all.

Take away his clothes

Clothes provide a sense of identity, so get him into unfamiliar garb as soon as possible “If the interrogatee is especially proud or neat, it may be useful to give him an outfit that is one or two sizes too large and to fail to provide a belt, so that he must hold his pants up.”

Sensory deprivation

“The more completely the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more rapidly and deeply will the interrogatee be affected. Results produced only after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc. An environment still more subject to control, such as [a] water-tank or iron lung, is even more effective.”

“Threats and Fear”

“The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain, for example, can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain. The same principle holds for other fears: sustained long enough, a strong fear of anything vague or unknown induces regression, whereas the materialization of the fear, the infliction of some form of punishment, is likely to come as a relief. The subject finds that he can hold out, and his resistances are strengthened….

“Threats delivered coldly are more effective than those shouted in rage.”

However, the interrogator should never threaten death:

The threat of death has often been found to be worse than useless. It “has the highest position in law as a defense, but in many interrogation situations it is a highly ineffective threat. Many prisoners, in fact, have refused to yield in the face of such threats who have subsequently been ‘broken’ by other procedures” [A Study for Development of Improved Interrogation Techniques, Albert D. Biderman]. The principal reason is that the ultimate threat is likely to induce sheer hopelessness if the interrogatee does not believe that it is a trick; he feels that he is as likely to be condemned after compliance as before. The threat of death is also ineffective when used against hard-headed types who realize that silencing them forever would defeat the interrogator's purpose. If the threat is recognized as a bluff, it will not only fail but also pave the way to failure for later coercive ruses used by the interrogator.

Inducing debility

The CIA mentions ancient techniques of physically weakening people: “prolonged constraint; prolonged exertion; extremes of heat, cold, or moisture; and deprivation or drastic reduction of food or sleep.” It doesn't, however, recommend these approaches, since “experience” shows that they're pretty ineffective. In fact, the Agency says that you'll probably have better luck with threatening to do these things, rather than actually doing them.

Pain

The manual's section on pain (i.e., physical torture) argues against it on many grounds:

Interrogatees who are withholding but who feel qualms of guilt and a secret desire to yield are likely to become intractable if made to endure pain. The reason is that they can then interpret the pain as punishment and hence as expiation. There are also persons who enjoy pain and its anticipation and who will keep back information that they might otherwise divulge if they are given reason to expect that withholding will result in the punishment that they want. Persons of considerable moral or intellectual stature often find in pain inflicted by others a confirmation of the belief that they are in the hands of inferiors, and their resolve not to submit is strengthened.

Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress.

Hypnosis

The CIA heavily qualifies its recommendation of hypnosis, but at the right time and in the hands of a pro, it can be employed. “For example, a KUBARK [CIA] interrogator could tell a suspect double agent in trance that the KGB is conducting the questioning, and thus invert the whole frame of reference…. The value of hypnotic trance is not that it permits the interrogator to impose his will but rather that it can be used to convince the interrogatee that there is no valid reason not to be forthcoming.”

Drugs

“The effect of most drugs depends more upon the personality of the subject than upon the physical characteristics of the drugs themselves. If the approval of Headquarters has been obtained and if a doctor is at hand for administration, one of the most important of the interrogator's functions is providing the doctor with a full and accurate description of the psychological make-up of the interrogatee, to facilitate the best possible choice of a drug.”

“This discussion does not include a list of drugs that have been employed for interrogation purposes or a discussion of their properties because these are medical considerations within the province of a doctor rather than an interogator [sic].” images