Torture and interrogation -- from the disciplined subject, and the interrogators who did and didn't.
CIA is getting better and better at making content from its inhouse journal, Studies in Intelligence, available. This is an insightful report, for several reasons. It identifies that torture was a response of frustration by the South Vietnamese, and yes, it did get a specific fact -- and then shut down the individual completely. The more interactive US interrogations, but under difficult conditions, got more information.
I can't give you the exact date of this article, but from references in it, it's obviously recent. I'll give some background references for it, although they are books.
The document is a quarterly, with classified and unclassified versions, and there is a good deal of declassification of the classified. I'm exchanging some email with their library to try to understand how to match volume number with year; it's not obvious.
I was surprised to read it; I had read Snepp's account and others, and I indeed thought that Nguyen Tai had been killed by the South Vietnamese. This is an insightful report, for several reasons. It identifies that torture was a response of frustration by the South Vietnamese, and yes, it did get a specific fact -- and then shut down the individual completely.
US interrogators, even with the context of the "white room", which I think was a SVN interview, got more information from a conversational dialogue. It's also worth noting that US capabilities were limited by the lack of trustworthy linguists -- I'm working on some human intelligence material for Wikipedia, and will be writing on the challenges to using non-US linguists. A teenage friend has just decided on her tentative college major, which will be languages, with Arabic at the core. I'm not particularly talented in languages, but I see the impact of being able to say even a few phrases in Arabic, or exchange courtesies and maybe order dinner in Japaese.
There's a lot of food for thought here. The article is best read if you've also read Frank Snepp's In Search of Enemies and Sedgwick Tourison's Conversations with Victor Charlie. I hope to have my extracts from some current interrogation and linguist relations guides done in the next few days.
A New Yorker story, "The Agent", details not only "wall" issues but interrogation technique. The abstract linked here emphasizes the compartmentalizaion, but the story spends a fair amount of space on FBI agent Ali Soufan's approach of gaining confidence and respect from his subjects. (He was investigating the Cole bombing, but switched include to 9/11 after it happened.)
Often pointed out is that forced testimony tends to be what the interrogator wants to hear; the converse is that only the subject can tell you that his testimony is true. How does the interrogator know anything spoken has any value? If connecting with other data, a certain tidbit might link up in a convincing way, true. That is a very rare situation, I'm sure.
The kind of interrogation Soufan was employing was searching for information, our more typical need. In this case, one has to have confidence in the information offered by the subject, and only a fully trusting relationship in both directions offers this certainty.
November 7, 2007 8:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
In psychotherapy, the less of an agenda I have, the more I'm quiet, attentive, and calm... the more someone else opens up.
So it sounds like interrogators who turn to torture are in a rush. They want control. They want to squeeze information, as if the person were like a tube of toothpaste. They allow themselves to get irritated and then eventually they want to prove to the person that they are in control and can do anything they want.
Seems to me a good interrogator would be zen-like. Have enormous patience. And self-control. Be willing to wait. To be calm and quiet. To let things develop. To allow a relationship to develop. And within that setting, because the person has no other social outlet, eventually much will emerge.
Torture is bullying. It fits with those who abuse family members - people who want control and get mad unless they can dominate. Some abusers literally get a kick out of seeing someone harmed. Those are the worst sort, but I can imagine they could gravitate to torture.
Thanks, Howard, for this blog.
November 7, 2007 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm working on a Wikipedia article in which I'm merging concepts from a number of sources about interrogation. This is something of a challenge, since I don't have my full library here--luckily, I can remember specific books, but that doesn't extend to documents. There are other things I know from speaking to experts, but it's nothing for which I can cite a reference.
There is an immense similarity between psychotherapy and good interrogation. Thanks for pointing this out, as I can use it in the article. Any kind of interrogation beyond a brief interview involves forming a relationship between the interrogator and subject, or, as Jung would put it, a dyad. In anything that works, is going to involve some of the same dynamics, such as transference and countertransference. Both sides will begin to recognize, if not accept, one anothers' archetypes.
I remember an article by a very successful police detective, who described himself as a salesman. What he sold was the idea that prison was a more desirable state, for the subject, than the situation in the interrogation room. That didn't mean physical hardship, but, assuming the subject was guilty, the detective suggested that he created situations where even a sociopath would feel a need to tell the truth.
Have you ever read The Shoes of the Fisherman? There's a fascinating relationship between the Slavic pope (this was before John Paul II) and his former interrogator, who now ran the Soviet Union. With the most successful interrogators, there was a positive relationship; some German air force interrogators from WWII were sponsored for US citizenship by former prisoners.
An interrogation process that involves torture still is a relationship, but it's more like a violent domestic relationship. There is a point, however, where the torture becomes an end in itself -- this is more the province of death squads and the idea of breaking the opposition, much like Winston Smith was broken in Orwell's 1984. The breaking for its own sake often was a Latin American dictatorship style, but, similar in a different way, were Asian Communists. They were not after information, but a "confession" they could use as propaganda.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 7, 2007 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, a lot of similarity, I'm sure, between effective interrogation and therapy. And yes, in such a relationship, there is always the chance that each could influence the other. However, since the interrogator is not cut off from other relationships, that makes it far less likely they could be subverted. I'm sure there are safeguards to protect the interrogator from that, to help them process their side of the relationship.
As far as what you call a torturer/victim "relationship," well... I honestly think the torturer is losing his or her humanity, his or her ability to ever relate well to other humans. They are either sadistic to start with, in which case the torture is a "turn-on" or they have compartmentalized the torture in ways that destroy their own humanity. Also, the "violent domestic" analogy breaks down, because choice and dependency keep them together, where as torture is not voluntary. And there is not the "kiss and make-up" cycle when it comes to torture. Even "good-cop, bad-cop" is not the same. It's a break-down of humanity on both sides.
I'm not sure i've read the book you mentioned. But interesting and not surprising.
Here's an idea for you, Howard. Take a look at the new research on "mirror neurons." It's fascinating. I suspect that people who can torture are people whose mirror neurons are subpar. Mirror neurons allow us to put ourselves in the shoes of another person. Literally the same neurons fire if I watch you do something as if I am doing that same something. I think empathy has something to do with this. And sociopathy likely is the reverse of empathy, in terms of the functioning of mirror neurons. So, ultimately it makes me wonder if sociopathy - in its extreme form - and you'd have to include the sadists who torture among them - is in fact a brain disorder, due to poor mirror neuron functioning.
A good interrogator, then, to follow up on the mirror neuron idea, would be able to understand better the role of someone being interrogated - and that would likely facilitate the work. Under the best of circumstances, the two individuals become partners in a task - the task of trying to understand "something" together. And to the degree the interrogator can enlist the other person in that joint task, then I think they will be successful. An honest interrogator, someone empathic and respectful of the person is likely to get farther - unless the person being interrogated is a sociopath and doesn't care about relationships or people. Then you need to find out what does motivate them. And use a behavioral approach I suppose. I take that back. When imprisoned a sociopath breaks down and becomes depressed.
I can't believe I'm writing about this kind of thing! But yes, there's overlap!
November 7, 2007 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Certainly not in the context of terror, mirror imaging is a term of art in intelligence tradecraft. In the context of intelligence analysis, where I am commenting on Dick Heuer's extremely respected book on the psychology of intelligence analysis, mirror-imaging the intelligence analyst's context onto that which he is studying is considered one of the most common cognitive traps in understanding another culture or context. In counterespionage, however, mirror-imaging is seen as a useful tool. The mirror-imaging is to be done by the case officer understanding the hostile service's expectation of their own agent, so the double agent will seem normal to them and not draw suspicion.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 7, 2007 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not mirror-imaging. Mirror neurons. This is very, very recent research. And I doubt it's gotten into the intelligence field yet.
Look for "mirror neurons." You'll be glad you did! You may be ahead of the curve, as you'd be putting new research to a novel use!
I follow what you said about mirror imaging as a cognitive trap. This is different.
I am assuming the roles of interrogator and intelligence analyst are different. I'm sure they are.
November 7, 2007 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
The roles are different, although the same person can do both. Sedgwick Tourison Jr., who wrote Conversations with Victor Charlie: an Interrogator's Story, was brilliant at both. He'd deal courteously and conversationally with subjects, but listen (and have recorded) to fine details that might just drop in conversation, such as a reference, say, to "the cooking oil man". That might be a perfectly literal statement, or it might be that the cooking oil man is a guerilla leader using a traveling salesman role as a cover. By putting together references from interviews of multiple subjects, and then analyzing any relationship to known ambushes and the like, he might infer that a cooking oil sales visit will be followed, within 48 hours, by an ambush within 10 kilometers of the sales call.
Counterespionage, also called "offensive counterintelligence", is yet another discipline, which goes beyond detecting spies and the like (defensive counterintelligence), and, not just neutralizing them with arrest, induces them, perhaps not being aware of the process, to send misleading information to their own side, and perhaps provide human intelligence to the side doing the counterespionage.
LOL...there is a phrase from TS Eliot, "A Wilderness of Mirrors", that was one of the favorites of James Jesus Angleton, the legendary long-time chief of CIA counterespionage. In counterintelligence, and especially counterespionage, the reality is rather like what you see when two mirrors face one another. A spy may turn on his own side and become a double agent. He may decide his real loyalty is to his original side, but stay in the relationship with the foreign service; this is popularly called "triple agent" but "redoubled" in CIA tradecraft terminology.
Obviously, the agent can turn again and again, such that a degree of paranoia in a counterintelligence specialist (who need not be an interrogator) is a bona fide occupational qualification. Of course, it can go too far.
In a different intelligence discipline, cryptanalysis, a very sharp sense of pattern recognition is necessary, but NSA considers it quite normal for cryptanalysts to go too far and need anything from rest to counseling to hospitalization, with a gradual return to their work, with no shame about the reaction. I'm told one of the ways they catch it early is to ask a cryptanalyst to look at the white pages of the phone book, and if they come back and find him in near hysteria, trying to find meaning in the numbers, he's due for rest and treatment.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 7, 2007 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, that business about going over the deep end, if too enmeshed in your job? It can happen to therapists. If you're working with a really crazy kind of person and you're trying hard to get into their mindset, you can find yourself literally pulled into the craziness. It's transitory. But it can happen. And my definition of crazy versus normal is that craziness can happen to anyone, but if you can bounce back from it - you're ok. If not... you need those meds!
November 7, 2007 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
What you've described is the primary business negotiation technique of the Chinese and Japanese.
American business people tend to be very impatient, especially in negotiations (gotta get the deal done!) and will more often than not tip their hand if they do not follow the same patient negotiating path as their Asian counterparts.
I've been to negotiations where nothing was said (after the introductions) for 20-30 minutes. At one meeting, the dialog consisted of the introductions, the passing of the proposals, silence for 20 minutes, then an agreement on when next to meet.
I've also been to negotiations where the American broke. I recall one incident, while negotiating payment terms, the team from Shenzhen just sat there, not saying anything. After about 10 minutes, an American sales manager just blurted out, "Ok, we'll give you an additional 1% discount, drop the schedule by 10 days, and give you first choice on preferred carriers. That's the best I can do."
I swear I could detect a small wisp of a smile from the lead Asian negotiator.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym
November 7, 2007 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Arab haggling is quite different than the oriental "wait and see" method. You drink tea and chat for hours.
I've often been intrigued by the differences between two types of sales people. One type is narcissistic - for them the sale is a proof of personal power. They would be the impatient, pressuring types you describe. Then there are the "helping" sales people. They truly care about people. They want you to be happy with the product or process and they'll work hard to understand you, to make sure you're getting what you need.
Amazing the way things overlap!
November 7, 2007 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's also a third way, which, in my opinion, many Asians (especially Chinese) hold. The business person whose main focus is on the welfare of the company. Japanese term this "sarariman" or the company man.
It can be seen as rude and egotistical when too much emphasis is placed on the self. In e-mail correspondence, in particular, there is heavy use in the term "we" instead of "I". For example, it would be highly improper for someone to say "I offer you this proposal." The individual does not matter, as opposed to Western sales with tracking and rewarding of the individual effort. What matters is securing the best business response for the business.
One glaring exception seems to be Taiwan. And this may be because of its strong Western influences, especially in the business realm.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym
November 7, 2007 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hai, domo. Asian business customs would be useful study for becoming a serious intelligence interrogator. Arab customs share some similarities, in that it is necessary to build a personal relationship before there will be serious business discussions.
I've had some exposure to Japanese nonverbal communication, and reading some of the silence. It doesn't hurt that I understand a little more Japanese than I can speak, although I am by no way fluent, when the side discussions start.
Have you read any of Edward T. Hall's work? He's a social anthropologist and excellent writer, who has written such things as The Hidden Dimension. Hall coined the term "proxemics", originally for the physical interpersonal distance for various interactions in cultures. A German may want to speak from three feet away, where there is an Arab proverb that you cannot really talk with someone unless you feel their breath on you. Hall goes a good deal farter, and looks at the different concepts of time in different cultures, closely related to whether people in the culture may have multiple interactions going on simultaneously (monochronic vs. polychronic). In our culture, the executive on a precise time schedule shows status, where the high-status individual in parts of Latin America is rarely on time, and may even have several different people in his office at once, with several conversations.
With my Japanese business hosts, I found both shock and respect when they'd make a casual reference to something we might see on the street. I forget exactly where we saw it, but we passed a display of swords, and someone waved to them and said "Japanese swords". I thanked them, and then made some observations about Miyamoto Musashi, kenjutsu, and we gradually drifted into Musashi's concepts of strategy. After that, our business discussions were at a completely different level.
Business dinners were fun, as I was cursed with having a very xenophobic salesman as my partner. When we got in very late the first night, I wasn't trying to show off, but just get something to eat when I ordered, in the all-night sushi bar, in fractured but understandable restaurant Japanese. A little later, several of my hosts got me aside and said "do you like Japanese food"?
I told them I only had two restrictions: it had to be dead, and no fugu. They broke out laughing, but in a very warm way.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 7, 2007 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Xie xie. (one of these days, I'll learn more than just a hundred or so Mandarin phrases)
I think all cultures use some form of developing interpersonal relationships with business clients. Japanese use karaoke, Brazilians use weddings, and Americans use golf. I know, gross generalizations; I'm just making a point. :)
I'm familiar with proxemics, although I must admit that I have not read Hall's work that I'm aware of. Asians are very fond of close proximity, also, and can be unnerving to the Westerner who feels one's personal space is being violated.
Oh, how I am familiar with the concept (or lack thereof) of time with a Latin American business person! Couple that with the bureaucracy and it can feel like deals take forever. I find it interesting that this time management is factored into the dealings with Latin Americans, but not usually with Asians.
I've often wondered about business dinners, as well. For example, when Westerners visit Asia, it is often customary to go to a traditional restaurant and sample the local cuisine. The host will take control of the evening, with the full menu planned out, as well as late-night activities. Luckily I already had an appreciation for authentic Chinese cuisine. I can stomach only so many fish eyes, and thousand year old eggs. Although fish cheeks can be quite tasty if crispy and not greasy.
On the other hand, when an Asian counterpart visits America, it is customary to take them to an Asian restaurant. Maybe because we don't have really authentic American food? Maybe because we try to accommodate too much? I haven't figured that one out yet.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym
November 7, 2007 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, the worst of both worlds came when my hosts took me to a German restaurant in Tokyo. I swear it must have been the revenge of all the Axis power.
With foreign guests here, look for distinct regional American cuisines, of which there are many, and perhaps look for ones that have some similarity to theirs. Now, I happen to think Korean barbecue is wonderful, but we had a hit with some Korean scientists when we took them to a Memphis-style, then a Texan-style, and then a North Carolina place. The last was carry-out only so we made that lunch.
You also may be able to find an interesting fusion cooking, like Ken Lo's style of mixing US Southwest with (mostly) Western Chinese. On a couple of occasions, things worked out such that I found someone in the group liked to cook, as I do, so we did their regional cooking together.
Sometimes there are surprises. When in school, I had some Nigerians over for dinner, and I made some things in a mostly Szechuan-Hunan style. They said it was like their home cooking.
There are interesting variants. I can't remember the name of the place, but I went to a classical Mexican restaurant, not TexMex (which is a distinct cuisine, as is New Mexico). When I opened the menu, I lost it when I looked at the appetizer page: "Genuine American Nachos, adapted for the Mexican palate."
Perhaps the Golden Rule of international relations is "every culture has some form of dumpling. Peace comes when you share your dumplings."
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 7, 2007 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink