Being the lazy
sort, I started by finding a few YouTube videos and popular articles on the
subject. My big hope was that I would learn enough from that and wouldn't need
to dig any deeper.
I felt I learned
a lot from what I read and saw, but when it came time to write it up for my
blog, I found myself overwhelmed by the material.
I'll need to analyze what I read a lot more before I can give a write up the justice it deserves.
Instead, today I will list a few lessons I did learn.
- People who practice this technique prefer to call it an interview. They try to create a casual friendly atmosphere. They will hold it in a hotel room with comfortable chairs rather than the stereotypical bare interrogation room.
- The two aspects of the technique are developing rapport and detecting deception.
- Developing rapport is a matter of building trust and respect for each other. This leads to empathy and openness in communication.
- A good interviewer will act nice toward the subject of the interrogation. Interviewers cannot fake this. It must be genuine. A friendly smile can go a long way toward building trust and respect.
- Giving the subject a hot drink can put them at ease.
- Interviews start by looking for common ground. This does not need to relate to the issue of the interview. It could music they like, family relationships, food and so on.
- The interviewer must make it clear that the subject of the interview is free to choose if they want to talk or not. People will talk more readily if they feel it is their choice than if you try to force them.
- One technique is that the interviewer will tell the subject something personal about themselves. This encourages the subject to share something personal about them selves. When I read this, I thought of the scenes between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs". In the next paragraph of the article, the referenced those scenes explicitly.
- The interviewer must remember that goal is to learn, not to punish. They must control their own emotional response.
- "Everyone has a story they want to tell. The goal for the interviewer is t0 create an atmosphere where they are willing to tell it." - Major Sherwood Moran
- A terrorist will want to tell you why they did it.
- There are several techniques for detecting deception, which I need to investigate further. However, once the interviewer has gained rapport with the subject, it is much easier for them to challenge deception.
Rapport
interviewing is very much a skill and it takes time and effort to become good
at it. In my life I came to realize that knowledge is not skill. People can
know what to do from reading or watching someone else do something. A person
can only develop a skill if they do it themselves.
There is still
quite a lot I need to absorb about interrogation, but I already see opportunities
to improve my story. In particular, the title “The Interrogation” is
wrong.
In the meantime, I found some more articles
that I think I should read as well. I should also re-watch “The Silence of
the Lambs”, or at least the scenes between Hannibal and Clarice. I will
need to process what I've learned before I can embark on my next step of
writing.
Some of my
sources:
My Secret to
Breaking Terrorists: Detecting Deception & Rapport | Lena Sisco |
TEDxWilmington https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9j8iJHSCbY
The scientists
persuading terrorists to spill their secrets https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/13/the-scientists-persuading-terrorists-to-spill-their-secrets
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
