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Authors: Anonymous Spy
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unlike law enforcement, the CIA does not have to be much concerned about a foreign agent’s or suspect’s legal rights.
Interrogations might have different objectives. Some interrogations have the objective to resolve unresolved issues. An agent suspected of fabricating information may, for example, be directly or surreptitiously interrogated to resolve details of his fabrication. Other interrogations are used to obtain actionable operational intelligence. Captured terrorists, for example, may be interrogated to obtain information upon which countermeasures may be developed. Also, terrorists may be interrogated to obtain operational details of their terrorist cell and its interconnections with other terrorist cells.
Developing Your Skills
During your training at the Farm, you will receive only cursory training in the communication tools of elicitation, debriefing, and interrogation that are so valuable to your CIA career. Once in the field, you will be expected to develop these skills through trial and error. Elicitation is the first skill you should take pains to develop. As an OC case officer, you will be given many opportunities to develop these skills at official receptions and functions where Foreign Service officers from other countries congregate. As a NOC officer, you will have to improvise by joining fraternal and social clubs or work-related professional organizations to develop these skills.
As you develop your pool of recruited agents, you will naturally and gradually develop your debriefing skills. It is pretty much a trial and error process, but your training at the Farm will fortunately concentrate more on debriefing than on elicitation or interrogation. The collection requirements provided by CIA headquarters will provide basis guidance for the debriefing process and greatly enhance the ability of the case officer to rapidly develop debriefing skills.
Elicitation, debriefing, and interrogation all have some commonalities. Perhaps the most important from the point of view of an intelligence professional is rapport. Put simply, rapport is a basis of a relationship between the participants. While it is best that this relationship be one of trust, respect, admiration, and sympathy, it may be tempered by less positive attributes such as fear and anxiety. But the relationship, whatever the foundation, provides a channel to foster communications through which the case officer will be able to obtain information of intelligence or operational use.
Elicitation, debriefing, and interrogation also have a psychological function. The experienced case officer may use these tools to plant seeds for the future. Some psychological seeds may provide inducements for an elicitation target to become an agent for the CIA through manipulation of the target’s motivations and vulnerabilities. For a recruited agent, seeds planted during debriefings may enhance control or influence over the asset by tweaking aspects of the agent’s motivations or vulnerabilities. In the interrogation mode, psychological pressure may be applied to the subject through a host of methods to enhance cooperation—to break the subject, so to speak.
Despite press reports to the contrary, however, the CIA does not condone the use of torture in the interrogation of suspected double agents, agents suspected of lying or fabricating information. More flexibility in the use of physical inducement has been used in the case of terrorist interrogations. Water boarding, as far as I am concerned, is not torture. In fact, the CIA has established guidelines on the degree of physical inducements that may be used during interrogation. Historically, foreign security liaison services that cooperate with the CIA to interrogate prisoners of war or terrorists have been known to use physical torture. Such has never been condoned by the CIA though CIA personnel at the scene have been known to turn the other way when they suspect torture may be
Interrogations might have different objectives. Some interrogations have the objective to resolve unresolved issues. An agent suspected of fabricating information may, for example, be directly or surreptitiously interrogated to resolve details of his fabrication. Other interrogations are used to obtain actionable operational intelligence. Captured terrorists, for example, may be interrogated to obtain information upon which countermeasures may be developed. Also, terrorists may be interrogated to obtain operational details of their terrorist cell and its interconnections with other terrorist cells.
Developing Your Skills
During your training at the Farm, you will receive only cursory training in the communication tools of elicitation, debriefing, and interrogation that are so valuable to your CIA career. Once in the field, you will be expected to develop these skills through trial and error. Elicitation is the first skill you should take pains to develop. As an OC case officer, you will be given many opportunities to develop these skills at official receptions and functions where Foreign Service officers from other countries congregate. As a NOC officer, you will have to improvise by joining fraternal and social clubs or work-related professional organizations to develop these skills.
As you develop your pool of recruited agents, you will naturally and gradually develop your debriefing skills. It is pretty much a trial and error process, but your training at the Farm will fortunately concentrate more on debriefing than on elicitation or interrogation. The collection requirements provided by CIA headquarters will provide basis guidance for the debriefing process and greatly enhance the ability of the case officer to rapidly develop debriefing skills.
Elicitation, debriefing, and interrogation all have some commonalities. Perhaps the most important from the point of view of an intelligence professional is rapport. Put simply, rapport is a basis of a relationship between the participants. While it is best that this relationship be one of trust, respect, admiration, and sympathy, it may be tempered by less positive attributes such as fear and anxiety. But the relationship, whatever the foundation, provides a channel to foster communications through which the case officer will be able to obtain information of intelligence or operational use.
Elicitation, debriefing, and interrogation also have a psychological function. The experienced case officer may use these tools to plant seeds for the future. Some psychological seeds may provide inducements for an elicitation target to become an agent for the CIA through manipulation of the target’s motivations and vulnerabilities. For a recruited agent, seeds planted during debriefings may enhance control or influence over the asset by tweaking aspects of the agent’s motivations or vulnerabilities. In the interrogation mode, psychological pressure may be applied to the subject through a host of methods to enhance cooperation—to break the subject, so to speak.
Despite press reports to the contrary, however, the CIA does not condone the use of torture in the interrogation of suspected double agents, agents suspected of lying or fabricating information. More flexibility in the use of physical inducement has been used in the case of terrorist interrogations. Water boarding, as far as I am concerned, is not torture. In fact, the CIA has established guidelines on the degree of physical inducements that may be used during interrogation. Historically, foreign security liaison services that cooperate with the CIA to interrogate prisoners of war or terrorists have been known to use physical torture. Such has never been condoned by the CIA though CIA personnel at the scene have been known to turn the other way when they suspect torture may be
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