Interrogation: A victim of collateral damage

Interrogation practices have undergone an onslaught of negative media comments and images as the result of President Bush’s global war on terror. Unfortunately, the actions of the U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency have greatly damaged the importance and value of truly professional interrogation.

As a result, interrogation has become a victim of collateral damage.

This is a shame because professional interrogation techniques are the bread and butter of U.S. law enforcement agencies and corporate security officers handling murder, illegal drugs, fraud and assorted other crimes.

Interrogation, and its close cousins interviewing and cross-examination, are used frequently to gather valuable information and/or intelligence.

Cross-examination is the questioning of opposing witnesses in a civil or criminal trial. Its main purpose is to discredit the opposing witness. In the real world, seldom, if ever does the opposing witness confess to murder on the witness stand ala Law and Order-style TV shows.

Cross-examination is reserved for trial attorneys and many times involves aggressive questioning but never violence.

Interviewing is defined as a dialogue or discussion by some dictionaries. It’s described as a “conversation with a purpose” in interrogation literature.

Interviewing as used by interrogation professionals is designed to learn not only the facts and circumstances of a crime but also insight into the suspect’s background, personality, strengths and weaknesses. Interviews are non-accusatory and almost always precede interrogations. The investigator conducting the interview remains neutral and concentrates on fact-finding and assessing the suspect as a person.

On the other hand, professional interrogations are accusatory and typically dominated by the interrogator accusing the suspect of a specific crime or incident. An interrogation is not a give-and-take with the suspect.

In the hope of gaining a confession, the interrogator must convince the suspect that evidence exists to convict him of the crime. In effect, the interrogator makes a “sales pitch” to the suspect, appealing to his emotions.

One of the best confessions I achieved as an FBI agent came from a 13-year veteran Baltimore City police detective who was arrested for bank robbery. I tried to convince the officer that he had a compulsive gambling problem, but he wouldn’t buy that. The detective’s ability to rationalize his compulsive behavior negated the logic of my approach.

So I tried another tactic. Reminding the detective that he had used his mother’s car as the get-away vehicle, I asked him if he was going to make prosecutors subpoena his 76-year-old mother to testify against him.

That did it. The tough cop couldn’t face the emotional strain of mom testifying against him, so he confessed. It didn’t take violence, threats, shouting or waterboarding—just a little psychology.

Psychology is the key to an interrogation. The goal is to provide an emotional release for the suspect. My weeks of interrogation training at the FBI and John E. Reid & Associates (a private polygraph and law enforcement training company) always stressed professional conduct in dealing with suspects—not violence or humiliation.

I learned not to argue with the suspects. You don’t accomplish anything by winning the argument and losing the confession.

Genuine cooperation in the form of a confession can be relied on. Forced confessions are inherently unreliable and can mislead an investigation.

Short-term benefits can sometimes be achieved using forced confessions, which explains why torture has been with us throughout history. But short-term benefits aside, unprofessional conduct in today’s world results in negative media attention that creates huge creditability problems with friend and foe.

As an example, we have seen images of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and allegations of torture and humiliation of terrorism suspects. The pictures of near-naked Iraqi prisoners with hoods on their heads are demoralizing and troubling to this day.

These images, combined with reports of the CIA destroying videotapes of “rough interrogations” of terrorism suspects, compound the problem. These unprofessional and illegal interrogation techniques have made our enemies more determined and undermined our country’s ability to exercise leadership in the world.

I can’t measure the cost-benefit ratio of using these extreme and illegal interrogation techniques. I hope that valuable information was obtained that prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives.

But I also ask myself how many terrorists our actions motivated or created. I suspect the collateral damage we did to professional interrogation techniques and our terrorism efforts are much higher than any benefit gained. More important, we lost the moral high ground that will take years of effort to regain in Iraq and throughout the world.

Dan Dreibelbis is an adjunct instructor for Villa Julie College’s Forensic Law Program. He retired from the FBI after serving 25 years as a special agent in the Baltimore field office. Dan can be contacted at dan.dreibelbis[at 

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