Friendly Interrogation More Effective
This morning on the Canada Broadcasting Corporation there was a segment of the show called The Current featuring an interrogator who claims that friendly techniques that work with the basic patterns of the person are much more effective than torture and other kinds of coercive techniques.
He goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander. His team was responsible for the information that led the US to finding Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He’s just come out with How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.
Time offers a very good synopsis of the book. There’s also a piece on Axcess News that includes comments from Alexander about the ineffectiveness of torture.
It’s uncanny how his description in the interview of his techniques accord with the overall approach of the Sun Tzu. Rather than trying to break the interviewee down (going against), he tries to discern the interviewee’s basic nature and let that take him where it will lead. Essentially, he works more with the shih than with the person. In particular, some lines from the Sun Tzu that come to mind in this regard:
Now the form of the military is like water.
Water in its movement avoids the high and hastens to the low.
The military in its victory avoids the solid and strikes the empty.
Thus water determines its movement in accordance with the earth.
The military determines victory in accordance with the enemy.
The military is without fixed shih and without lasting form.
To be able to transform with the enemy is what is meant by “spiritlike.”
From Chapter 6
To listen to the interview, go to The Current. At the bottom of the description of Part 2, there is an icon you can press to listen. The podcaset will probably be available soon.
Barry Boyce