Yael Tzur/Israel Sun
Michael Koubi, a former
interrogator for Israel's security
service, revealed his technique.
Posted on 12/12/2004 4:29:20 AM PST by Pharmboy
Yael Tzur/Israel Sun
Michael Koubi, a former
interrogator for Israel's security
service, revealed his technique.
HOW does a government gain information from a terrorist? The question is of more than academic interest to the United States- which, in places like Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, and the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba, has been trying to ferret out the secrets of suspected terrorists.
Those who do the interrogating rarely speak about their trade, which has often been shadowed by accusations, and sometimes revelations, of human rights violations. But the New Scientist, a British weekly, recently published an interview with Michael Koubi, who was the chief interrogator for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, from 1987 to 1993. The interview was part of special study by the magazine into the psychological methods interrogators use to extract information and the traumatic effects they can have on their subjects.
Mr. Koubi interrogated hundreds of Palestinian militants, according to Michael Bond, the New Scientist editor who conducted the interview, among them Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the former leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, who was killed in an Israeli attack this year.
Excerpts from Mr. Koubi's responses follow:
When asked what made him a good interrogator, Mr. Koubi said he was a natural, in part because of his mastery of Arabic, but also because of the kind of person he is.
Being an interrogator is 70 percent character, 30 percent learned. You have to know how to use intonation when you speak to a prisoner. You have to let him feel you are the boss, always. Not many interrogators can do that, because they don't have the self-assurance. I was born with that. You have to know instinctively the exact time when to shout, when to speak loudly, when to speak quietly, or when not to speak at all and just sit and look at him - for hours if necessary. These things are instinctive.
One reason the best interrogators are born, not made, Mr. Koubi said, is that no two people react in precisely the same way to the ordeal of imprisonment and questioning.
Every detainee behaves differently. It depends whether he's from the city or the village, or a Bedouin from the desert. It depends whether he's educated or not. Prison is unimaginably different to normal life. People behave in unexpected ways. People who talk tough in public often submit in interrogation.
I once interrogated a Bedouin who said nothing at all for a few days. He was a very tough man. During one session I was playing with a stick, and this idea came to me: I said to him, do you realize there's a snake hidden in the stick? And suddenly he became very afraid. He said he'd tell me anything. This man was used to dealing with snakes in the open, but in a cell it was a different matter.
I have a thousand different systems for a thousand detainees. I always have to start alone in the room with him. Sometimes, to make a show, I get other, cooperative detainees to shout outside the door, and when he hears them yelling he gets fearful. Many detainees are young, between 18 and 24. It's their first time in jail and being interrogated, and most of them are likely to do what I tell them.
Of course they won't talk about everything at the beginning. Sometimes I'll come in and give him a slap - but only with permission from higher authority.
•
Despite Palestinian accusations to the contrary, Mr. Koubi said Israeli interrogators use only "very low levels" of physical coercion - "two slaps in one interrogation, or to shake him, but not very strongly, or to put a cover on his head to scare him."
The excesses uncovered at Abu Ghraib prison most likely occurred, he added, because the conditions for effective interrogation had not been established.
I don't want to judge the Americans. In Gaza we have one security person for every 1,000 people. In Iraq they have one for every 100,000. They have no information or intelligence on their detainees.
Information is the beginning of interrogation, and if there is none, if there is no language between you and the detainee, sometimes you will use more power. That I presume is what happened in Abu Ghraib.
If Israelis committed similar violations in their long struggle with the Palestinians, Mr. Koubi said, it was an unacceptable aberration.
Sometimes it has happened, but very seldom, and in these cases the interrogators were thrown out of the organization. I have no need for those methods. I use only psychology, head to head.
•
Preparations for individual interrogations could be extensive, as they were when Mr. Koubi questioned Sheikh Yassin, which he did in 1984 and 1989.
At the beginning he was totally silent. He didn't answer any questions. Then I said to him, I know you are a religious man, let's speak about religious knowledge. Now, to prepare for this interrogation I had learned the Koran almost by heart. I said to him, let's have a competition. I'll ask you a question about the Koran, and if I win I can ask you another about any subject and you have to answer. He was sure he would know it better than me. But I started asking complicated questions, and he didn't know the answers.
When you are in prison, you forget things. For example, I asked him to tell me the name of the only sura out of the 114 in the Koran that did not contain the letter mim. He didn't know. I asked him how many verses there were in the Baqarah sura, the longest in the Koran. He had forgotten. So I won, and I sat with him for hundreds of hours while he talked about the ideology of Hamas. He even told other detainees to cooperate with me, because he respected me. If he could he would have killed me, but he respected me.
The knowledge that the person under questioning might willingly kill the interrogator, were their circumstances reversed, helps restrain any inclination toward sympathy with the prisoner.
Sometimes you can be sitting before someone who is 24 years old and he looks like a nice man. Then he admits to you what he's done and you can change 180 degrees in what you feel about him.
The point is we are acting against terrorists. If I thought someone was innocent or knew nothing I would release them immediately.
A good interrogator, Mr. Koubi said, always has the advantage in an interrogation, even if he were the prisoner.
I would use the same methods I use when interrogating someone, only the opposite. I would give nothing away. Nothing.
When asked if he had any weaknesses Mr. Koubi responded:
None. None in interrogation.
It's pretty much common knowledge that effective interrogation has basically nothing to do with physical torture.
You must habg out with a unique bunch of people.
I make an attempt to actually know what I'm talking about rather than buying into mythology.
Of course there are lots of countries that do a lot of physical torture in "Interrogations."
They don't do it to get information, they do it for intimidation and fear purposes.
Thanks for sharing. I feel privileged to having been replied to by someone as well informed as you.
I’ve heard that. You’ve probably heard that everyone has a breaking point. Both can’t be true in all circumstances.
I suspect that torture works almost every time it’s tried, but free societies won’t allow much of it. And a little torture isn’t effective.
I assume this guy wouldn't go bragging about his failures...
Rule one. Win the war and your not a war criminal.
Rule two. Terrorist aren't protected by any law.
Rule three. To be protected you must be wearing a clearly identifiable uniform or clearly a civilian.
Rule four. Muslims are exempt from any protection until they can exhibit traditional values of human beings.
Pain will induce terrorist to talk. In fact enough will make them beg to be killed, of course this is just hearsay.
But as Strategerist mentions, torture is usally used for other reasons that simply to gain information.
How long do we have to use kid gloves when we play with these scum?
It's not due to any excess of delicacy that we refrain from most obvious torture. But information extracted under torture is often inaccurate. When people are in pain, a substantial proportion of them will make false confessions or will manufacture information just to get the torture to stop. Other techniques can be more effective.
The reality is that US soldiers aren't going to be allowed to use these techniques so they have to turn prisoners over to other Moslems and you can't be sure the info you get is good.
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