New Form Of Educing Information
To answer a few questions:
1. The actual ASI for Strategic Debriefing did not come into the Army system
until the course was developed out of major input from JROC-B. There was defintely no ASI in the 70s until the course was developed.
2. In 1973 through 1983, the 66 MI Group would often came to JROC-B in order to understand what we were doing as our job description and functions in fact became the basic functions of the new Strategic Debriefing Course. This was due to the fact that we would handle on occassions 3-4 thousand refugees per month at the height of say the Polish distrubances. We handled also on occassions handled 4-5k per month with five screeners and 9 debriefers. And this did not include the constant stream of airliner hijackings coming into Berlin. They the 66MI Group had their own debriefing system in the main West German refugee center, but were not handling the sheer volume we were seeing nor were they having the successes we were having on the Collection side.
3. There were a few Army interrogators assigned to the JROC-B in 1973 and into the 80s, but due to their lack of fluency in their language skill sets even coming straight out of DLI they never performed Strategic Debriefing and were put into the Collection Management side of the house.
3. The goal of both is again I underline it -to gain the rapport of the individual thus the ability to gain information-regardless of whether he is a Ansar al Sunnah member or he is a Czech nuclear engineer or a Russian SAM weapons officer. The second goal was/is to detect deception and the last goal was to "see" the cover stories often used by Iraqi's to explain their arrests.
4. Yes I did create the concept in JROC-B and a number of 66 MI Group Interrogation CWOs who came into Berlin during the period 1973 until 1986 to watch our work initially commented "I cannot keep up with your circling as it appears to go nowhere"---once they watched a number of debriefings they fully understood the technique. So I am not so sure that the concept has been around as long as the commenters are alluding to unless someone can show me where in the 66 MI Group something similar was ongoing.
5. If the system is so old and has been around for a long time or is not revoluntionary then why did DOD send in May 2005 a Ph.D with long ties to the HUMINT side to Abu Ghraib to plead with Army interrogators to get onboard with rapport/cultural use in their interrogations. The use of culture has been the core center of Strategic Debriefing for literally years. While the class was mandatory it defintely was not brought into by the Strat Debriefing Bn assigned to Abu Ghraib. The Ph.D was the main investigator who identifed the key failures in Abu Ghraib and his coming back was part of the DOD retraining program for Abu Ghraib.
6. At the NTC a SIGINT MAJ felt that the technique was to difficult for novice interrogators to understand or incorporate during FSO. He then complained to Ft. H where several GS 14/15s felt that there was a violation of the new FM. When it was pointed out that it has been and was still being taught at Ft. H and when the unclass training slides were submitted for review---after over ten calls to them and over ten emails requesting their input to show due cause---absolutely no response ever came back. Feedback from all classes and from the key core group BCT Company Commanders was at a surprsingly high level--often citing ---"why weren't we taught this before our first, second, or third deployments.
It should be pointed out that from late 2006 until now the NTC never really pushed interrogation or MSO from the role playing perspective and the roles were only maybe one page long so while the BCt exercised the S2 side nothing on thre HUMINT really ever got tested and pushed.
7. The reason that Strategic Debriefers often fail on the crossover is that they were never taught the approaches-and vice versa Interrogators in the basic TRADOC course are never taught spiral questioning. It should be noted that a majority of information gained in Iraq came via the Direct questioning approach that TRADOC did not want taught to new interrogators--and direct questioning rolls naturally out of spiral questioning.
8. It should be noted that the DOD mandatory briefing for interrogators in Abu Ghraib listed a long number of characteristics that an interrogator needed in order to be a great interrogator---by the way nothing on the list reflected actually being trained in interrogation.
9. As an example---during my second rotation into Abu Ghraib a number of AF interrogators right out of Ft. H had been there for about three months. I stepped in on the night shift and after several interrogations had over 15 reports in backlog-the average number of reports in backlog by the AF types 0-2 and that after three months. I was often asked why it was easy for me and they were struggling. They were taught the spiral but really did not understood it nor did they tie it to culture. Again a failure on the Ft. H side---it was presented to them in an 8 hour block of instruction but they never really got a true chance to practice as the instructors had to check the blocks and move them on.
I am attempting to show a methodology that both works, addresses the concerns voiced by the Intelligence Board's paper on educing infomation and definitely side steps the need for enhanced techniques.
So people can accept it or reject it, but it has worked well for me in over 6000 debriefings, interrogations, and screenings. I have seen way to many HUMINT failures from too many poorly trained interrogators.
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Originally Posted by Outlaw7
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