Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All (18 page)

[Simpson is showing very little emotion, but his head and shoulders are now slumped. He recognizes that it’s over.]

Michael:
O.J., when you drove over to see Nicole last night, did you intend to kill her, or were you just there to protect your kids?

Simpson:
[Unresponsive]

Michael:
O.J., the nightmare is over. It’s time to wake up. Were you there to protect your kids?

Simpson:
Yeah. Yeah, I was. Oh, God. My life is over. My life is over. Nobody will forgive me. My life is over.

Michael:
I knew you were raised to acknowledge your mistakes, and to do something about them. I’m glad you had the guts to tell me the truth, O.J. Guts are something you’ve been blessed with, or you never would have achieved what you have in life. Of course, I wish this had never happened, but as a public figure I think how you handle yourself from this point on could have a very positive impact on people who are looking for someone with strength. We live in a very forgiving society. If I understand, and I do, other people will understand. You’ve already got a leg up because of the goodwill you’ve earned over the years.

Simpson:
What now?

Michael:
I’d like to hear how this thing went south so fast at Nicole’s last night, O.J. Let’s start with what you did with the knife.

[For the next two hours, Michael questions Simpson about every detail regarding the murders, until he’s satisfied that he has covered every element of the crime, and that he has obtained all of the truthful information that Simpson is willing to divulge.]

* * *

Is that really the way it would have panned out? Clearly, we have no way of knowing. What we do know is that the outcome of the questioning that day set in motion a sequence of events that prolonged the unspeakable anguish endured by the Brown and Goldman families. And O. J. Simpson, the man later found by a civil court to be culpable for the horrific deaths of the families’ loved ones, walked free. He was soon back on the golf course, enjoying life.

There’s an interesting footnote to all of this. It so happened that Michael met Detective Lange after Simpson was acquitted, and was able to ask him why he and Detective Vannatter ended their interview after just thirty-two minutes. Lange’s response was that they were concerned Simpson would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, and he would clam up. It was a nonsensical response. In essence, by ending the interview, Lange and Vannatter invoked the Fifth for him. The situation called not for ending the interview, but for keeping Simpson in short-term thinking mode, so that he wouldn’t focus on the consequences of his actions, and thus feel compelled to invoke the Fifth to protect himself from them. As it was, Simpson sank a PR hole-in-one by facing his accusers without even having his attorney present. He learned more from the LAPD that day than the LAPD learned from him.

• Understand that exhaustive preparation is absolutely essential. Know your case facts inside and out, identify the most important issues to cover, and formulate the key questions to ask. Take note of gaps in information, inconsistencies, and things that don’t fit or add up. Prioritize your issues and questions. Cover your most important issues sooner rather than later. That allows you to manage time constraints, and to take advantage of the suspect’s anxiety, which will generally be at its peak at the beginning of the session—the subject will be more likely to exhibit deceptive behaviors that you can analyze. You probably will only have one bite at the apple.

• Have a concrete plan and a well-considered strategy. Identify what it is you want to accomplish. Short of a confession, you must establish specific timelines for the subject’s activities, and details regarding his alibi, injuries, and any other key issues. In other words, lock him in tight to a story. The rule of thumb is to be excruciatingly methodical. This sends the message that you will leave no stone unturned.

• When using more than one questioner, ensure that you identify roles beforehand. One questioner takes the lead, while the other observes, takes notes, and considers follow-up questions—all without interrupting. When the first questioner is finished, he turns to the second questioner and “passes the baton” by saying, “That’s all I have. Do you have anything?” At this point, the roles reverse. The baton passing continues until both questioners are satisfied that the subject has revealed all of the truthful information he intends to disclose. There are advantages to having only one questioner in the room—remember the maxim “People don’t confess to crowds.” The baton passing helps create the sense of a one-on-one, rather than a two-on-one, encounter.

• Briefly apprise the subject of exactly what the issue is, and why you’re talking to him. Cryptic introductions or “hiding the ball” only work in the movies.

• Collect information in chronological order. Otherwise, you’ll risk missing key events or confusing the suspect.

• Don’t accept information at face value. Continually test information with follow-up questions: “How do you know that to be so?” “Why do you say that?” “On what do you base that information?”

• Never be afraid to say, “I don’t understand.” Be absolutely sure to clarify anything that doesn’t make sense to you.

• Ask open-ended questions to solicit a narrative response as a means of establishing the basis for the discussion, or of probing an issue. When asking open-ended questions, allow the subject to answer without interruption—the more information he provides, the greater the likelihood that he’ll make an inconsistent statement or reveal meaningful information. You want to keep the information faucet flowing. Always test the narrative with follow-up questions.

• Ask close-ended questions to gather specific points of data. Example: “What time did you arrive?”

• Use presumptive questions, sparingly, to convey a presumption about something related to the matter under investigation. Use of this type of question helps to encourage disclosure, because it implies that the interviewer has more information than the subject expected.

• Use bait questions, sparingly, to establish a hypothetical situation that can trigger a mind virus in a deceptive person. Bait questions typically begin with the phrase, “Is there any reason that…?” For example, “Is there any reason that we would find your fingerprints on the doorknob?”

• Ask simple, unambiguous, and straightforward questions. Always avoid asking compound questions, leading questions, negative questions, or questions that are confusing or overly broad.

• Always be alert for follow-up opportunities. Remember to ask, “What else?”

• Avoid falling into the trap of a checklist mentality. Effective interviewing is a very dynamic process, and is much more complex than simply asking a prepared list of questions.

• Keep note taking to a minimum during the interview—you’ll be less likely to miss important information conveyed by the subject, and any deceptive behaviors he may exhibit. During an interrogation, don’t take any notes at all—if the subject is reminded that you’re recording everything he says, he’ll be less likely to remain in short-term thinking mode.

• Don’t waste time on tangential issues. Ask yourself, “Is this really what we want to know?” “Are we asking high-priority questions here?”

• Don’t rush your pace between questions. After the subject responds to a question, take a momentary pause that’s just south of awkward before you ask your next question. The brief silence gives you time to digest the response, and to determine what your next question should be. In addition, a guilty person may blurt out a nugget of information that you wouldn’t have gotten if you had rushed into your next question.

• Maintain a noncoercive, nonadversarial demeanor throughout the process. Always treat the subject with dignity, respect, and compassion.

• Make the person feel good about disclosing information by rewarding him with statements like, “Thanks for sharing that,” or “That’s helpful, thank you.”

• Always incorporate catch-all questions to uncover lies of omission or information that was overlooked: “What else can we talk about that will help us understand your situation?” “What haven’t I asked you today that you think I should know about?”

13.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

In his 2011 book,
The Black Banners
, Ali H. Soufan, a former FBI interrogator, recounted in some detail his perspective on the circumstances surrounding the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee in the United States’ War on Terror, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002. Soufan argued that he and his FBI colleagues had been successful in obtaining actionable intelligence from Abu Zubaydah by means of noncoercive, rapport-building interrogation techniques. He maintained that a team from the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, or CTC, subsequently came in with the authority to use enhanced interrogation techniques, and that when those harsh methods were used against Abu Zubaydah, he ceased cooperating, and the intelligence dried up.

Soufan wrote that the CTC team included the Agency’s chief operational psychologist; an interrogator he called “Ed”; a polygraph examiner he called “Frank”; and a contractor hired by the CIA—a psychologist he called “Boris.” The team was later complemented, Soufan wrote, by a contingent of young CIA analysts.

According to Soufan, the CIA group was sharply divided on the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation techniques—a division he portrayed with Boris as the leader of the faction that advocated enhanced interrogation, and Frank as the voice for noncoercive techniques, consistent with those that Soufan and his FBI colleagues had been employing.

Not surprisingly, Soufan was sharply critical of Boris. He wrote that Boris readily acknowledged not only that he had never questioned an Islamic terrorist, but that he had never even conducted an interrogation. Soufan recounted how Boris responded to an argument that the enhanced techniques would be completely ineffective against someone who was committed to dying for his cause:

“This is science,” was Boris’s response. He seemed shocked to have someone challenging him. Former colleagues of his told me that he always viewed himself as the smartest person in any room and disliked anyone who questioned him.… “You’ll see,” said Boris. “It’s human nature to react to these things. You’ll soon see how quickly he folds. Human beings always want to make life better for themselves. You’ll see.” … He had a condescending look on his face, as if he couldn’t be bothered with speaking to such simpletons.

Soufan went on to write about what happened after Boris’s initial techniques failed to yield the results he had promised.

Other CTC officials and local CIA officers also began to develop doubts, and their original openness to trying Boris’s techniques was replaced by growing skepticism. They had limited or no interrogation experience and didn’t know anything about Abu Zubaydah, so at first didn’t know better. Boris had seemed to know what he was talking about.

But then they saw that Boris’s experiments were evolving into a risky situation with possible legal ramifications. They also began to realize that while Boris came across as being full of confidence, in reality he was just experimenting. His experience was limited to the classroom. He’d never been involved in an actual interrogation of a terrorist before.

Still, according to Soufan, the young CIA analysts who joined the team admired Boris, and were receptive to his arguments. He wrote that the rapport-building, noncoercive approach advocated by Frank, the CIA polygraph examiner, was seen by the young analysts as “boring.” Frank’s approach was to convince Abu Zubaydah that cooperating was not only in his best interest, but was the right thing to do at that moment in time.

Soufan wrote that Boris hated Frank, which he surmised was due to the fact that Frank was an actual interrogator who made it clear, from what he said and how he conducted his interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, that he disagreed with Boris’s approach. Soufan recounted what happened when Boris and the young CIA analysts watched the CCTV monitor when Frank was in with Abu Zubaydah:

Boris often made sarcastic remarks about Frank to the others in the room: “He’s boring the hell out of him,” he might say, or “You know what Abu Zubaydah is saying right now? He’s saying, ‘Just shoot me.’” Some of the young analysts would laugh at anything Boris said.

* * *

When we read Soufan’s account of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, we were struck by its clarity as a microcosm of the enhanced interrogation debate. As we noted in the opening pages of this book, we are disinclined to address the question of what interrogation techniques our country should be prepared to employ to protect our national security, or to judge anyone who advocates any particular technique. But what we are prepared to do is to offer our own perspective on what Soufan recounted in his book, with the understanding that we are not in a position to vouch for its accuracy.

To the extent that Soufan’s portrayal was at least close to being factual, what’s essential to understand is that Boris’s contention that it’s human nature to immediately provide truthful information as a reaction to physical and mental torment just isn’t true. Moreover, it’s entirely wrong to suggest that fear is the only driver of influence in an interrogation situation. The fear of being subjected to physical and mental torment is likely to elicit a reaction, but its reliability in eliciting truthful information is suspect, at best.

The efficacy of our approach to getting the truth simply goes far beyond the understanding of people like Boris. That lack of understanding is at least partially attributable to a convoluted notion of how short-term thinking works.

In fact, when the aim is to elicit the truth, short-term thinking isn’t about
instilling
fear—it’s about
minimizing
or
eliminating
it. In the case of Abu Zubaydah, if we have reason to believe that this man is withholding information about individuals involved in terrorist attacks, our best chance of influencing him to release that information is to get him to a place where he’s not thinking about any negative consequences of releasing it. The absence of fear, rather than its presence, is the driver. Boris appeared to be unable to grasp that concept.