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Conversation with a Master Interrogator

(New Scientist-UK) Michael Koubi worked for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, for 21 years and was its chief interrogator from 1987 to 1993. Q: There have been accusations of torture and abuse during interrogations. Koubi: I know. But these accusations come from detainees who heard screams and shouts coming from neighboring cells and believed it was really happening, when it was just theatre. The yelling was from other detainees who were cooperating with us. 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. You have to learn everything about the detainee and his background. You have to know about his family, his wife, his children, his friends, his neighborhood, his city. You have to be better than him, wiser than him. It's about making them think they cannot hide anything from you. I interrogated Sheikh Yassin in 1984 and 1989. To prepare for this interrogation I had learned the Koran almost by heart. I started asking complicated questions abut the Koran, and he didn't know the answers. 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.
2004-12-14 00:00:00
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