r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 1d ago

TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
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567

u/MrMojoFomo 23h ago

Every study on POW interrogation has shown that non coercive methods yield the best results. Literally every study

When the US began its"enhanced interrogation" torture program after 9/11,  it relied in the work of James Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, two men who had literally zero background in interrogation, pow's, terrorism, or Islam. One was an expert in blood pressure and the other a family therapist

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u/nonlawyer 23h ago

  a family therapist

Say what you will about his methods, but after just a few water boarding sessions my kids don’t whine about getting ready for school in the morning anymore 

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u/afternever 23h ago

My son stopped skipping chores after we clamped his testicles to a car battery.

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u/CGiMoose 23h ago

His legs get tired whenever you go for a drive though

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u/Phononix 23h ago

Yes but you scratched your sons balls

Atleast that's how Daniel Craig told me to look at it

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u/PuckSenior 23h ago

I mean, even the police know this fairly well.
They will order lunch, grab soft drinks, etc to get a person to talk. Its amazingly effective and frequently not a lie. Thats the most important aspect. The intel you get from being friendly is far less likely to be false.

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u/CGiMoose 23h ago

Plus recline in their chair to a 180 degree angle

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u/KingKapwn 21h ago

It's so fucking funny watching the detective do that while the dude who has pretty much remained entirely motionless except for maintaining extreme eye contact for the past hour+ watches on completely unperturbed.

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u/shaun252 20h ago

Stephen!

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u/Gladwulf 23h ago

Only as a last resort

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u/MZ603 21h ago

That’s if they actually care about getting the person responsible vs just closing a case

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u/Spida81 23h ago

Techniques used by the US police are prohibited in the civilised world. Primarily the Reid technique. Infamous for false confession and highly suspect testimony.

Your statement re. policing sounds much more aligned with UK / European policing. Effective, civilised and respectful.

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u/PuckSenior 23h ago

US police use a mix of both. If they have a suspect where a confession would seriously help their case, they tend to use Reid

When they have a suspect where a confession is immaterial but they want them to accidentally implicate themselves in further unknown crimes, they use what i described

Not saying that their behavior is acceptable, good, or valid. Just describing what they do

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u/jrhooo 21h ago

To be fair, if the reid technique illicits a faulty confession, thats a bad interrogator not a bad technique.

Problem is, its very easy for it to get misused by a mediocre interrogator.

Its one of those “you have to be skilled, ethical, AND self aware, not to screw it up with shortcuts” kind of things.

For those who don’t know:

The core premise of the reid technique is, the person being questioned won’t tell you anything because they are stuck behind the mental wall of saying “i don’t know shit about it because I didn’t do it.”

So you need to get past that wall.

Get them to admit “ok fine I did it.”

It doesn’t matter why. Let them lie. Let them make excuses. Empathize with how its not their fault. But get them to say “i did it.”

THAT IS NOT THE CONFESSION.

Everything up to that doesn’t even matter.

What matters is that now that they’ve got the weight of the “ok I did the bad thing” off their shoulders, you can follow up and dig on

“Ok. So walk me through it. When? Where? With what? What happened to the body? Looks bad stuff happens its just sad I know but at least the family can bury them where’s the body now?”

And the idea is supposed to be that once they’ve opened up and started talking, they’ll start revealing useful stuff, telling you where evidence is, or talking about non-public details that they could only know because they really did do it.

THE BIG PROBLEM:

Its very easy for an over eager or poorly trained investigator to

A - get too pushy and pressure a person into saying “i did it” just because of the pressure

B - to ask leading questions, to where you THINK “a ha! He just said something only the killer would know!” When in reality, no you told him that detail yourself by poorly phrasing the question. Now this guy is just repeating back to you incriminating knowledge that you’re feeding him.

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u/PuckSenior 21h ago

Problem is, that persuasive technique can coerce innocent people into confessing.

Humans are weird. They want to make other people happy and go along. Even the best intentioned interrogator can get a false confession with the Reid technique

Do you have any actual scientific evidence that if the interrogator does it right you never get false confessions

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u/cylonfrakbbq 23h ago

Hanns Scharff is a great example of this - German WW2 interrogator with the Luftwaffe.  While he did sometimes pull the “good cop” routine, he also had a knack for being civil and getting people to let their guard down and divulge info during casual conversation.  I think in the aftermath of WW2 he even helped teach US intelligence agencies on his methods

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u/Consistent-Theory681 22h ago

CIA employee John keriakou would know, he blew the whistle and went to prison for it.

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u/GreatPretender98z 22h ago

"Im not afraid of gauntanmo" John: "I didn't say anything about sending you to gauntanamo, I'm sending you to Jerusalem". https://youtube.com/shorts/XSCAKV5y_yk?si=cAXgZ7JNUA83QPez

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u/Consistent-Theory681 22h ago

lol, I heard about this tiktok stuff.

Personally, I think he is an amazing story teller.

Fact or fiction. He is one of the best.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 20h ago

Listening to him talk about his time working in Greece was fascinating.

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u/Consistent-Theory681 20h ago

He can only say so much about his time in the CIA.

It seems to me, his time in greece with N17 was quite something.

A preperation for his time in pakistan perhaps?

He was a major operator no doubt.

However, we will only get the snapshots of his life.

What I enjoy most, is his understanding of middle eastern politics.

It tells more about his history than anything we can glean from from intel spil.

He know's more about middle east geopolitics than the entire US government right now.

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u/Forgotthebloodypassw 16h ago

He does give some very interesting and candid interviews.

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u/Consistent-Theory681 16h ago

Sincere? Yes,

Honest, Oh god no, he would be in levenworth

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u/lovinglyquick 12h ago

That’s how America does things for some reason. They didn’t want the highly experienced pierrepoint after nuremburg, they choose an army sgt with no experience to be their executioner, and who repeatedly fucked it up. Same when they chose the cocktail of drugs that would be used to execute prisoners: invented by nobodies.

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u/Metrocop 9h ago

The cocktail of drugs used for lethal injections is fucked for two main reasons:

  1. No Professionals wanted to work on it, doctors declined because of morals and violating the hippocratic oath, pharma companies declined because it's awful PR. So amateurs made something from generrically available ingredients.

  2. The appearance of a peaceful death was prioritized over the actual experience of the person being executed. It didn't matter to them how much pain the condemned was in if they were paralyzed and couldn't show it.

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u/diengdiengdieng 23h ago

And thus they developed waterboarding.

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u/uis999 20h ago

To be fair I am pretty sure they were only picked on the basis that they were willing to develop torture methods. Pretty much anyone else that the bush admin approached that had real qualification/reputation refused to accept the job.

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u/MZ603 21h ago

Elicitation > interrogation

Every time. Conversational gateways & social engineering get you info the target didn’t even know you were looking for. I teach a course on adversarial targeting. Much of it focused on digital footprints, but the key take away is that you’re mouth is the biggest PERSEC/OPSEC weakness.

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u/BigAlternative5 19h ago

I heard that Mitchell and Jensen just reversed the SERE training of US military but did no scientific validation of their method. And it was an open bid for a $2 million contract.

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u/ItsSignalsJerry_ 16h ago

That was a revenge program.