Archive for September, 2006

Interrogation

“For the Party’s sake you can and MUST at 24 hours’ notice change all your convictions and force yourself to believe that white is black.”

A Catholic cardinal was asked how he would reply if hte Poper told him to believe taht two plus two is five. The cardinal replied, “I would ask him, ‘Your Holiness, would you prefer that it be SIX?”

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had plenty of personal experience with KGB “interrogations.” They lasted for hours every day for days on end. Solzhenitsyn knew hundreds of others who had been through what the KGB called interrogations.

It takes a cold-blooded bastard like me to think of an obvious question:

Why did the KGB BOTHER with “interrogations?” Why didn’t it just make up whatever it wanted the person to have said and put it down in the records? The reason was that what the KGB was doing had nothing to do with interrogation. They were not seeking information.

KGB actuallly did these things precisely so that Solzhenitsyn and his fellow Gulag residents and all potential stoolies would hear about them…They would literally step on a man’s testicles and crush them.

John McCain openly admits he was a stoolie in the Vietnam “interrogations” he got a solver start for resisting.

But stoolies weren’t there to give real information. They were there to give out information that could be used against other prisoners in order to get what the “interrogation” WANTED to get.

In America, the police get rough only when they are no longer looking for information. In the real world, a copy does not get paid to find out the truth. In the real world, a cop gets paid for closing cases.

Over and over and over big-time lawyers shock law students by laughing and telling them that being a lawyer has absolutely nothing to do with justice. You win cases. Period.

Lawyers and cops get rough when they need their victim to say what they need said. These are NOT interrogations.

I have a major problem with the fact that the points I most desperately want you to absord sound like jokes. So let me tell you why there are so few interrogators like me. I will start by reminding you how to get into “intelligence” work. In order to get into intelligence work you needed an Ivy League degree. You also needed to get along iwth the other Ivy Leaguers.

These were people who saw no difference between Communism and the West except that the Communists were more idealistic.

So how did I get into any of this crap? Once again, the truth sounds like an old joke:

A con man taught his son all about how to lie, cheat and steal. One day the kid asked him, “Papa, is there ever a time when you just tellthe TRUTH?” HIs old man was shocked, but he gave it some thought. Finally he replied, “Well, son, in a real pinch ANY gimmick will do.”

So how did I get into ANY of this stuff? Very rarely and ONLY in a pinch. Not only did I not make it into the big time, my intelligence work COST me money.

When was Ic alled in as an interrogator? ONLY on the rare occasions when someone needed a real interrogation. Sometimes things get desperate and someone higher up is in a position where they cannot afford to turn things over to the intelligence bureaucracy.

There ARE cases when you need a real interrogation. At some point, admittedly in rare cases, you need to go beyond the general questioning and get deadly serious. You need INFORMATION, not confessions.

Let me give ONE quick example. When police are looking for a confession, they try to keep the suspects seprate so they cannot concoct a story to get around what

the police are looking for and what the suspects know the police are looking for. After all, this is a game. Remember, nobody is looking for INFORMATION. The so-called interrogation is to make suspects say what you need them to say to close the case.

If you are not looking to do anything to the people you are questioning, when you need INFORMATION, you normallly give them plenty of time togather. This is precisely because people are used to the idea that an interrogration is NOT an interrogration. So they wil discuss what it is that you are trying to get them to say, what it is they are “in” for, and it will never occur to them that you have no interest inthat whatsoever.

If you’re good at this, it is hilarious to listen to them try desperately to avoid certain subjects. You know EXACTLY what they have decided the whole thing is about. You watch them dodge subjects so obviously that it is funny while they try desperately to be Shrewd.

On Capitol Hil, I alwasy thanked God for the fact that everyone thought anybody witha Southern accent was a dolt. In a serious interrogation, where peoples’ lives depended on getting it RIGHT, I thanked God for the general impression of what an “interrogration” is. The person you are questioning is almost tearfully relieved when he gets to talk about something besides whatver he think he needs to be Shrewd about. You can play him like a violin: you make his trings taut by hovering around whatever it is he thinks he’s there about.

So when it seems like you are just talking about htings in general, he is so relieved he talks freely.

It never occurs to these people that you have not hte slightest interest in THEM at all. What you are looking for is those bursts of relieved frankness where he tells you everything he can think of. He is trying desperately to keep this terrible Interrogrator off of The Subject, which he assumes is him.

I have never bullied ANYBODY since before I reached age thirteen. I have never even froced someone to say what he does not want to say.

I am not Shrewd. The only way I can SOUND honest is by BEING honest. People can see through me when I make a pathetic attempt to be tricky, and I have known that since grade school. But I am AWFULLY good at LISTENING. The only way I know to find out the TRUTH is to listen carefully.

This is what real interrogration, the pursuit of genuine INFORMATION, is all about. Only in very rare cases is it necessary.

Maybe I am wrong to call myself a PROFESSIONAL interrogator. You can’t make a living off this alone. But you can make yourself irreplacable in several areas, and the living follows.

But when there is a desperate need for INFORMATION, someone like me is absolutely essential.

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“A Little Indian Blood”

Many times down here the conversation would get around to one’s ethnic background.

I would sigh and say, “You’re Scot-Irish with some Indian blood, right?”

The reply was almost always, “Yes! How did you know that?”

I would say, truthfully, “EVERYBODY says that.”

If you know any real history, you will know that white men would take Indian wives, but NEVER the other way around. And as soon as they got back to white territory they would drop that “marriage” and get themselves a white woman as fast as the average rich black does today. Dragging around a squaw did not look good.

In fact, blacks have almost ALL of the real Indian blood in this country today. REAL Indian blood PAYS MONEY from the government. I have seen gfatherings of whites who can actually PROVE they have Indian blood, and it looks like an Aryan festival.

These few whites are descended from a long time ago, when America was solidly Aryan except for Indians. Their few drops of Indian blood came from mixed ancestors who did not look like they had a drop of Indian in them.

NOBOY in white society wanted to drag a squaw around iwth them, and a man who looked like an Indian who had a white wife would have been lynched or repeatedly insulted and killed in one of many fights over it.

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Elizabeth

NOT SPAM

I read a book about the Bible a couple of years ago in which the author, who does a pretty thorough job of analysis, states that the Old Testament is about two completely different
Gods and religions — and that the dividing point was the “Babylonian Captivity.” Before that,
it was about a cruel, demanding God who demanded human sacrifice, etc. (I’ll check the library here and see if they have it.)

I abhorred the Protestant practice of pulling verses out of the Bible to “prove” points. As
a Catholic, I have some theology I can call upon to support my abhorrence: besides, it’s easier
to appreciate the Bible if you look at complete units, such as chapters.

The only parts of the Old Testament I _like_ are the later parts, such as Proverbs and the Psalms as well as the DeuteroCanonical books, which are the ones Luther decided to hack out. (btw, several of the Psalms are very closely related to the Zoroastrian Gathas, if not direct translations.)

Be very careful with spellcheckers. Microsoft’s is occasionally wrong. Microsoft’s grammar checker is often _very_ wrong.

Comment by Elizabeth

ME:

This is a very interesting business about the two Jewish religions back when. The problem is that only you and I and precious few others can DISUSS it. This is hte same problem I introduced in “The First Church of Judaism.”

You see, people who COULD see the history you and I are talking about have a REASON they know all that. The Bible thumpers are desperate to believe that tehre is no political or tribal subext inthe Old Testament except that which their theology declares. The anti-semites are trying so desperately to tie all that to their General Theory of the Jewish Conspiracy Throughout Time that you can’t keep a talk going with them, either.

But, pace Joe, I am human too. What fascinates ME about ancient Israel is my own lifetime of experience in the Cold War. So when I read the Old Tesament., I never forget for a minute that it wa written in a Cold War atmpsphere. As I keep saying, I read the words of Jesus inthe New Testament entirely differently than theologians do, because I never forget for a minute that Jesus was speaking in a totalitarian theocratic society, something I am VERY familiar with.

Throughout Israel’s early history, it was on the front inthe constant Cold War between Egypt to the south and Mesopotamia to the north. The center of ancient Israel didn’t LOOK like Checkpoint Charlie, but there were plenty of resemblances.

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Joe and Rocky

Remember what I told you about Rocky Marciano, Bob. He was scared before every one of his fights. That’s what he said. And you know the Rock don’t lie. Just ‘cause you’re scared don’t mean you don’t tho a punch at somebody.

Part of Comment by Joe Rorke

ME:

I’m glad you know how to spell the word “tho.”

If I felt that the Rock DID lie, I would be able to prevent myself from telling him so. As you know, “Discretion is the better part of valor.”

I ain’t chicken.

But I’m LOADED with descretion.

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The First Church of Judaism

I hate sermons. In the little Methodist Church my mother made me attend every other Sunday, the clock faced the preacher so he would see when his half hour was used up. It didn’t help that back then a wool suit was the only formal attire, so I had to wear wool pants in the middle of the South Carolina summer.

As I had to explain at each conference I attended, I have spent fifty years writing speeches, giving speeches, listening to speeches, and I attend precious few and never for fun.

Within two miles of where I am sitting there are three synagogues, one of each major branch. If I wanted to hear about Jews all I would need to do is drive to one of them on Saturday. But I don’t.

When I talk to David Duke, he almost NEVER mentions Jews to me. That is because he knows that I am sick to death of the subject. But most specialists on Jews, and he certainly qualifies on that score, are neither that polite and none of the others I have met have David’s empathy.

I am an old interogator, so to me an anti-semitic lecture is much the same as a rabbinical sermon. There is something fundamentally unhealthy about a gentile building his world around Jews. But I am wrong to some extent. You see, an interrogator must not just go with his gut reaction. He has to take human motivations into account.

Being an interrogator is based on rule that are simple, but not EASY.

One of the most basic motivations of human beings, since our outstanding chraracteristic is a large frontal lobe, is that we become interested in what we know about. Overriding Joe’s loud objections in advance, I myself am, to a surprising degree, human. I can prove this surprising point with one example.

I was Special Assistant to the head of the Civil Service for both Staffing and Security checks. There is nothing quite as mind-numbing as regulations for civil service jobs. But I had to study them in depth.

I knew that my studies had gone too far when I was trying to explain to someone the radical implications of a particular decision recorded in the loose-leaf, ten thousand page Federal Personnel Manual (FPM). I finally noticed that the person I was filling in on the background of my Great Discovery had a look on his face that showed clearly that he would be rather doing something more pleasant, like being in the last stages of tuberculosis or having a spike driven into his ear.

Remember that I was a professional interrogator, and it took me that long to catch on!

It bothers me that, in church, there is always a reading from the Old Testament. The curse of being from the Bible Belt is that we are exposed to Jews, Jews, Jews all the time, even if we have never met one of the sect that calls itself Jews today.

I am fighting human nature here. Anybody who has studied Jews on and on and on, for any reason at all, is going to find Jews interesting.

Whether he is anti-semitic or pro-semitic (philo-semitic is pretentious nonsense) makes no difference at all. Whether he is a rabbi or a Bible Belter makes no difference at all. A person tends to take an interest in whatever he knows a lot about.

My problem is that I don’t HAVE to listen to the rabbis. But I have to show folks on my side polite attention, even when I would rather be sitting there having a spike slowly driven into my ear.

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