To answer the various questions raised concerning "spiral questioning". As a former Special Forces Vietnam veteran, and after a long career of strategic debriefing in Berlin, training interrogation reservists, being asked to interrogate in Iraq, having participated in role playing for new interrogator trainees/EAIT trainees, and having worked with S2s/HUMINT Teams on 34 BCT roatations at the NTC I have been in a great position to watch the interrogation field evolve since 1966.

One of the truly major problems that led to Abu Ghriab outside of "others" involvement was the simple fact that the Army has separated Strategic Debriefers from Interrogators---but in fact both functions share a common goal that both Ft. H and TRADOC are overlooking---the person being questioned during Stategic Debriefing based on law and Intelligence Oversight DOES not have to answer a single question whereas in Interrogation the interrogator is trying to get the detainee to answer questions and maybe from a person who simply does not want to talk to you.

I attended a DoD directed training course in early 2005 for all interrogators assigned to the JIDC at Abu Ghraib where the instructor mirrored alot of what I had over the years been using--rapport, rapport, rapport, and building that rapport via culture. All the Army interrogators at that briefing absolutely rejected that advice as it did not match their former Army training---and they were a Strategic Debriefing Bn from Korea.

When I became a "questioner" in 1973--in those days no one really had a name for what we were doing as I was the first US citizen hired to work with an entire questioning team that was basically German. I "became" an interrogator simply because I spoke fluent German-absolutely no training outside of intensive three weeks of mentoring by the other German interrogators.

I had a number of years later the opportunity to attend the German CI/MI School for interrogation at Bad Ems, Germany where I totally surprised senior (COL ranks) German military instructors with the technique and their feedback pushed me to continiously refine the method.

Spiral questioning evolved out of the need to get individuals to talk with you who leagally did not have to answer a single question---the core goal is to build rapport and build it fast and at the same time get a feel for information areas, and to check security issues constantly along the way. I also realized that the core concept of being able to "prove" that the person was lying became second in importance---the main goal in understanding the lying was why was the person lying and I then realized it had to do with protecting something.

BUT at Ft. H in 2006 and still today all you hear from young interrogators and EAIT personnel is "he is lying and I got him to break"---the concept of getting someone to "break" is riding a totally wrong horse.

A simple explanation of the method is as follows;
You set up a number of areas to be covered-pick a point to start and you ask a very simple question on that topic until you have worked your way through the topics--but the question has to be extremely straight forward and simple, then you sart a second round of questioning starting from a different point and you repeat the original question and add more depth to the first question---absolutely no follow up questions which is a urge hard to resist. Once that series is finished you start again at another point and expand on the first part of the questioning.

The questioning is constantly changing and the detainee never sees a pattern, and the questions are always getting deeper in depth and breadth--if there is a cover story in play the detainee quickly loses control over it.

Entire process usually takes about 1-2 hours to complete and once it is complete then you can move into the various approaches that had been identified as potentially working with the individual. And it is constantly tied to the culture of the individual involved.

AND it is tied to the concept of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one's behavior, and facts. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

I believe this is what the Intelligence Science Board is looking for in their article concerning educing information for the 21st century. AND you totally avoid the fight over enhanced methods that achieve nothing.

Example---I first unknowingly tried this on a captured high ranking NVA officer in 1969---I knew he had been living like a dog in tunnels and existing on limited amounts of food prior to capture. Threw him into a hot shower, gave him a clean set of clothes, and sat him down in front of a table full of food, and left him totally alone for a week. He was free to roam the CIDG camp but under guard-then sat him down and in a calm fashion started the questioning --three hours later we had the entire supply bunker locations for two full NVA regiments. I had my first taste of cognitive dissonance.

Hope this answers some of the questions that a number of members have posted-before I was stopped from further NTC training I had trained over seven hunderd personnel in this form of questioning--from Pvts to COLs to former LE personnel and believe me even non trained interrogators understand it and after some practice they tend to get the hang of it.