KUBARK

KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation

KUBARK is a codename adopted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for itself. The document entitled KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, drafted in July 1963, serves as a comprehensive guide for training interrogators in the acquisition of intelligence from uncooperative individuals, often termed "resistant sources".

This manual, classified as Secret, is based largely upon the published results of extensive research, including scientific inquiries conducted by specialists in closely related subjects.

The purpose of the document is to provide guidelines for KUBARK interrogation, particularly counterintelligence interrogation. The techniques discussed are presented in an order of increasing intensity, corresponding to the rising sharpness of the source's resistance.

Counterintelligence interrogation is designed, almost invariably, to yield information about foreign intelligence and Communist security organisations, and focuses on clandestine activities directed against security. Such interrogations are not intended to cause the subject to incriminate himself for the purpose of bringing him to trial; rather, admissions of complicity are merely a preliminary step to acquiring more information. The interrogator's fundamental objective is the acquisition of all needed information by authorised means, not a personal triumph.

KUBARK is stipulated to lack law enforcement or police powers by the legislation under which it was founded. The manual also notes the significance of KUBARK's lack of executive powers, stating that it is difficult to succeed in the interrogation of a resistant source unless the service can control the subject and his environment for as long as necessary.

Interrogation Planning and Setting

The success of good interrogators depends significantly on their conscious or unconscious use of basic principles, processes, and techniques of interrogation.

Planning for interrogation is considered more important than the specifics of the plan. Before questioning commences, the interrogator must clearly understand the information desired, its importance, and how it may best be obtained. Confusion regarding the purpose will almost certainly lead to aimlessness and failure.

The environment of the interrogation is subject to manipulation and control. The interrogation room should be free of distractions, lacking startling objects, and pictures should be missing or dull. It must be constructed in a safehouse studied carefully to ensure the total environment can be manipulated as desired. For instance, the electric current must be known in advance so that transformers and other modifying devices are available if needed.

If the subject is under detention, the interrogator possesses the power to manipulate his environment. This control includes cutting off all human contacts, monopolising the social environment, and determining when the subject is fed, sent to bed, and whether he is rewarded for good or punished for bad behaviour.

Coercive Techniques

Part IX of the manual outlines the coercive counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources, presenting basic information about available techniques. The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression entails a loss of autonomy and a reversion to an earlier behavioural level.

The principal coercive techniques discussed are:

1. Arrest and Detention:

The timing of arrest should be planned for the early hours of the morning when the subject's mental and physical resistance is at its lowest. Detention circumstances are arranged to cut the subject off from the known and the reassuring, plunging him into the strange. Detained prisoners leading monotonously unvaried lives become dulled, apathetic, and depressed, which is an effective defence against interrogation. Disrupting patterns of time, space, and sensory perception causes disorientation, fear, and helplessness, diminishing resistance.

2. Deprivation of Sensory Stimuli:

The chief effect of deprivation is to deny the subject of most sensory inputs to which he is accustomed. Complete isolation in a lightless, sound-proofed cell is effective, with an even more controlled environment such as a water-tank or iron lung being increasingly effective. Isolation acts as a powerful stressor, often leading to superstition, intense love of living things, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions.

3. Threats and Fear:

The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. Threats are most effective when delivered coldly and joined with a suggested rationalisation for compliance; the subject must also discern an acceptable escape route. The threat of death induces sheer hopelessness and is regarded as having the highest position in law as a defence, yet may be highly ineffective when used against hard-headed types.

4. Debility:

Debility, or physical weakness induced by methods like prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, or deprivation of food or sleep, is assumed to lower the source’s psychological capacity to resist. Disrupting patterns of response, such as meals and sleep granted irregularly, further disorients the interrogatee.

5. Pain:

Resistance is considered likelier to be sapped by pain the subject appears to inflict upon himself rather than by direct torture. Forcing the detainee to maintain rigid positions, such as standing at attention for prolonged periods, causes an internal struggle where the source attributes the ability to inflict something worse to the interrogator.

6. Heightened Suggestibility and Hypnosis:

Hypnosis is described as heightened suggestibility and is a way to overcome resistance by inducing regression. It offers the advantage of post-hypnotic suggestion. The hypnotic situation may be used to relieve the individual of responsibility for his actions, allowing him to reveal information. The manual notes that operational personnel, including interrogators, should not use hypnotic techniques themselves due to the risk of producing irreversible psychological damage or leading to embarrassing publicity.

7. Narcosis (Drugs):

There is no drug capable of forcing every subject to divulge information. Drugs are considered no better than the use of hypnosis or the polygraph. However, administering a placebo (a harmless sugar pill) and claiming it is a truth serum may induce regression and convince the subject to talk. Persons burdened by shame or guilt are likely to unburden themselves when drugged, with the placebo providing a rationalisation for capitulation.

Non-Coercive Techniques

Non-coercive methods are employed to generate maximum pressure and induce compliance psychologically until the subject’s resistance is depleted and the urge to yield is fortified. The effectiveness of these techniques often relies upon their unsettling effect, disrupting the subject's familiar emotional and psychological associations.

Key non-coercive techniques include:

• Alice in Wonderland Technique:

Also known as the confusion technique, attributed to L Ron Hubbard, its aim is to confound the expectations and conditioned reactions of the interrogatee. It is performed by having one interrogator ask straightforward questions while another interrupts with nonsensical, unrelated, and quasi-illogical queries. This strange atmosphere causes the subject to doubt the normal pattern of speech and thought and reinforces his clinging to a world of continuity and logic. This technique is particularly effective against the orderly-obstinate character type.

• The All-Seeing Eye:

This technique involves giving the subject the false conviction that the interrogator already knows everything. The interrogator presents data based on known information and, if the subject lies, he is informed firmly and dispassionately that he has lied.

• Nobody Loves You:

This technique attempts to persuade the subject who is withholding information of grave consequence that everything concerning his case has been learned from others, making him believe his denouncers may be biased or malicious. The interrogatee is subtly convinced that his own defence must be based on hearing both sides of the story.

• The Witness Technique:

This method involves confronting the recalcitrant subject with an accuser, usually a friendly source who is believed to know what the interrogatee is concealing. The witness's identity and veracity may be corroborated by showing the interrogatee a damaging document (a letter or affidavit) where the witness takes an opposite position on the case and then reading the witness's letter to him. The correct method is to lead the witness into repeating the contradictory statements, then reading the letter to the subject without allowing him to explain, which accelerates the acquisition of information.

Historical Application and Controversy

The KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual and its core methods served as foundational material for the subsequent Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983. This 1983 manual used sections of KUBARK and military intelligence manuals from the mid 1960s developed by Project X.

Both KUBARK and the later manuals detailed coercive techniques, including the use of threats, fear, debility, pain, and sensory deprivation, techniques similar to those employed in the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

Between 1983 AD and 1987, the 1983 manual was used in multiple Latin American countries by CIA and Green Beret trainers. Similar material was later incorporated into seven Spanish-language training guides distributed to Latin American military officers between 1987 AD and 1991.

In 1992 AD, a secret investigative report was sent to then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, noting that five of the seven manuals derived from this work contained "offensive and objectionable material" that violated legal prohibitions and undermined U.S. credibility. Cheney concurred with the recommendations for corrective action and the destruction of the manuals. The manuals had originated in the Army's Project X program and had been forwarded to Defence Department headquarters for clearance in 1982, returning approved but UNCHANGED.

The CIA later released a less censored version of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation document in February 2014, subsequent to an initial declassification in January 1997.