One stop interrogation & interviewing resource

[davidbfpo]

Dritalin,

From my UK armchair and being a moderator your two questions sail very close to sensitive matters, even OPSEC. I would encourage others to answer with caution.

PM sent to Dritalin.

davidbfpo

[Jedburgh]

Use the forum search feature and the keyword interrogation. Although the discussions are more general than specific, due to reasons that David mentioned, there is commentary and links that are useful.

I will say that your second-hand comment:

....stress positions and sensory deprivation were the only way to get actionable intelligence from bad guys.

...is completely untrue, and whoever stated such nonsense is an amateur treading along the path to criminal action.

Second, as a cherry 35M, you need to seek out experienced NCOs and Warrants for advice and mentoring. They won't come to you - it needs to be the other way 'round.

I also recommend that you get on BCKS MI Space, specifically the HUMINT & CI area, and look through the material and post any RFIs you may have. (Access requires AKO log-in) Discussion can be a bit more open in that forum, but although it is relatively secure compared to an open board it is still an unclass forum with limits to how far you can go on that subject.

[120mm]

dritalin:

The US Army has doctrine on how to interrogate. This doctrine is fairly open and should be easy to find with a simple internet search. Nowhere within that doctrine is there the type of "interrogation" you have read about. I would suggest that a liar has talked to a naive journalist who didn't do due diligence before running a quote that supported his/her preconceived stereotype about interrogation.

The saddest thing is that this is now "ground truth" for an entire generation of idiots... Regardless of what really happens in interrogation.

[Jedburgh]

....I would suggest that a liar has talked to a naive journalist who didn't do due diligence before running a quote that supported his/her preconceived stereotype about interrogation....

Unfortunately, I know of times/places in both OEF/OIF where such a statement from a military interrogator would be truth, as perceived from a narrow range of experience.

Interrogators with no experience outside of Huachuca, placed across from difficult sources for which the rote interrogation training they've had did not effectively prepare them, will sometimes resort to questionable methods out of frustration. This is due to failures in leadership and training; the two are inextricably linked.

Even supposedly experienced interrogators will sometimes tread down the same mistaken path - it all depends on the nature of that experience and the character of the interrogator. A difficult interrogation is an intense experience for both the source and the interrogator - and as with other high-pressure situations, it can either bring out the best or the worst in a person. When leadership and oversight is lacking, it often tends to be the latter.

You can find some of that sort of thing in The Interrogators. The book fails to provide any substantive lessons with regard to interrogation, but it does illustrate the failure to prepare (failures in leadership and training) that particular group of interrogators for the nature of the mission at hand.

....The saddest thing is that this is now "ground truth" for an entire generation of idiots...

Even sadder is that some of those for whom this is "ground truth" are currently serving.

[Ken White]

but I shrugged it off. Your latest post caused me to recall the earlier comment:

...you need to seek out experienced NCOs and Warrants for advice and mentoring. They won't come to you - it needs to be the other way 'round.

the thing that bothered me was that it seemed to me that was the opposite of the way things worked in the dark ages when us Dinosaurs walked the earth. Good NCOs and Warrants worked at recognizing and encouraging talent and came in early or stayed late to mentor the good kids. I know things change and my experience is more than dated (over 25 years ago) but the fact that kids have to ask for help sort of jangled me. However, I just pegged it and moved on.

Then this:

This is due to failures in leadership and training; the two are inextricably linked.

caused me to recall the earlier comment -- and see some linkage. Or think there might be some.

Am I missing something?

[Jedburgh]

....Your latest post caused me to recall the earlier comment:the thing that bothered me was that it seemed to me that was the opposite of the way things worked in the dark ages when us Dinosaurs walked the earth. Good NCOs and Warrants worked at recognizing and encouraging talent and came in early or stayed late to mentor the good kids. I know things change and my experience is more than dated (over 25 years ago) but the fact that kids have to ask for help sort of jangled me. However, I just pegged it and moved on.

Then this:caused me to recall the earlier comment -- and see some linkage. Or think there might be some.

Am I missing something?

Ken, I don't think your observation is really just applicable to the the dark ages, when I was a young'un, I was lucky enough to be able to benefit from the mentoring environment that you describe. In many fields and units, that positive situation still exists.

But today, because of the rapid growth in HUMINT over the past few years, there are issues with mentoring as we knew it. Its a bit of a unique animal in that regard. Because of the rapid growth, the proportion of experienced (and there are a LOT of caveats that go with that word in this field) NCOs and Warrants that can do this effectively is much smaller than in many other fields. Add to this the fact that the poster of the original RFI is National Guard, and that further narrows the available options. That is why I say seek out, because it is likely that effective mentors are outside of his immediate range of view.

To kind'a clarify part of the comment above, because of its rapid expansion, HUMINT has struggled to fill out its NCO ranks from outside the MOS (there were always reclasses, but the proportions have been much higher recently) even at the SFC level. Add to this the fact that the Warrant field has changed from being technical experts, most of whom were prior SFCs in the MOS (the greatest and most valued mentors when I was new to the field), to being careerists. Adding to impact of both of the above is the lack of an effective selection process; there never was one, and today's heavy demand from the operational theaters for HUMINT pressures the schoolhouse for quantity over quality, resulting in individuals passing through that never would have in the period of a lesser op-tempo.

To expand on warrants, they are now mostly taken from junior SGTs, so that they have the opportunity to advance through all the warrant grades before retirement - in my personal opinion, this was one of the most damaging things that was done to the field. Exacerbating this issue, the expansion of the field created a large number of empty warrant slots, which DA responded to by accepting personnel from other MI disciplines (i.e. SIGINT) as well as MPs as HUMINT warrant officers. Although they may have been solid NCOs in their previous field, they possess no more knowledge of HUMINT than any junior enlisted graduate of Huachuca - thus completely eliminating the value of the warrant officer as a technical expert.

Pile all of the above together and you'll understand why there have been units where not a single individual - junior enlisted, NCO or Warrant - have any real experience in their MOS.

The dangerous part of that is there are situations where we have the HUMINT team in a given unit learning all the wrong lessons, because of lack of experience at all ranks, lack of non-HUMINT leadership oversight and direction, etc. etc. Of course, that's an illustration of a worst-case scenario - the reality has run the entire spectrum, from the massive potential for failure just described to tight groups of smart HUMINT soldiers doing outstanding things.

To sum up my rambling comments, mentoring in Army HUMINT suffered a substantive negative impact because of a combination of the rapid expansion of the field and the institutional evisceration of the warrant officer as a technical expert.

Luckily, technology allows cherry HUMINT'ers to reach out for advice and assistance to the broader field. However, there are more appropriate channels - both officially sanctioned and informal to do this than on a public discussion forum. And even those channels are best simply to network and find the best resources; discussions of value tend to take place off-line.

[Ken White]

Shame it is that. Scary, too..

Many thanks for a succinct and informative explanation. I wondered if there was a branch peculiar problem and see that there is. Given all that, the advice for him to seek out senior folks was well advised. The which I never doubted...

[120mm]

Unfortunately, I know of times/places in both OEF/OIF where such a statement from a military interrogator would be truth, as perceived from a narrow range of experience.

Interrogators with no experience outside of Huachuca, placed across from difficult sources for which the rote interrogation training they've had did not effectively prepare them, will sometimes resort to questionable methods out of frustration. This is due to failures in leadership and training; the two are inextricably linked.

Even supposedly experienced interrogators will sometimes tread down the same mistaken path - it all depends on the nature of that experience and the character of the interrogator. A difficult interrogation is an intense experience for both the source and the interrogator - and as with other high-pressure situations, it can either bring out the best or the worst in a person. When leadership and oversight is lacking, it often tends to be the latter.

You can find some of that sort of thing in The Interrogators. The book fails to provide any substantive lessons with regard to interrogation, but it does illustrate the failure to prepare (failures in leadership and training) that particular group of interrogators for the nature of the mission at hand.

Even sadder is that some of those for whom this is "ground truth" are currently serving.

That really hurts. No doubt that the TV audience for "24" and "Numbers" are buying the b.s. and then growing up to be interrogators. But the amount of liars out there who tell interrogation stories are manifold, too.

[John T. Fishel]

(but confirming some of the negatives as well) is a recent book by former SSG Eric Maddox, the interrogator who unearthed Saddam Hussein, entitled, MISSION BLACKLIST #1. Eric is now a DoD civilian interrogator who follows in a line that flows from COL Stuart Herrington.

Cheers

JohnT