The CIA Document of Human Manipulation: Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual

by Central Intelligence Agency, The Basic Skills Agency

Released by the Freedom of Information Act. This document is a thorough description of how the CIA recommends interrogating a subject. To get the information that is needed there is nothing withheld short of torture. For example in "Threats and Fears," the CIA authors note that "the threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain, for example, can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." Under the subheading "Pain," the guidelines discuss the theories behind various thresholds of pain, and recommend that a subject's "resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself" such rather than by direct torture. The report suggests forcing the detainee to stand at attention for long periods of time. A section on sensory deprivations suggests imprisoning detainees in rooms without sensory stimuli of any kind, "in a cell which has no light," for example.

Genres: Psychology, Espionage, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the U.S. Government, tasked with gathering, processing and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT). As one of the principal members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and his Cabinet.

Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a domestic security service, CIA has no law enforcement function and is mainly focused on overseas intelligence gathering, with only limited domestic collection. Though it is not the only U.S. government agency specializing in HUMINT, CIA serves as the national manager for coordination and deconfliction of HUMINT activities across the entire intelligence community. Moreover, CIA is the only agency authorized by law to carry out and oversee covert action on behalf of the President, unless the President determines that another agency is better suited for carrying out such action. It can, for example, exert foreign political influence through its tactical divisions, such as the Special Activities Division.

Before the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, CIA Director concurrently served as the head of the Intelligence Community; today these functions and authorities reside with the Director of National Intelligence. Despite transferring some of its powers to the DNI, the CIA has grown in size as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in fiscal year 2010, the CIA had the largest budget of all IC agencies, exceeding previous estimates.

The CIA has increasingly expanded its roles, including covert paramilitary operations. One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Center (IOC), has shifted focus from counter-terrorism to offensive cyber-operations. While the CIA has had some recent accomplishments, such as locating Osama bin Laden and taking part in the successful Operation Neptune Spear, it has also been involved in controversial programs such as extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques.

Reviews

[Madhab Dwibedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

forming n forging a prisoner

[Jean Buehler]

🤨

[John Gratton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found out about this after reading The Shock Doctrine. Horrifying.

[T]

lmao why would the cia publish this!??? uhh btw im only adding these sort of books in my reading list because im very curious. plz dont put me on a list lol. although i wouldnt be surpised if these sort of reports were put online for download as a honeypot strategy to bait potential bad actors with sussy intentions. it would be very smart tbh.

me personally i just find it super interesting and entertaining to have a peek behind the scenes of the mechanics of mysterious governmental agencies, it has always been way more fun and intriguing than any spy novel or military thrillers.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuinely an interesting read. I am not sure how truthful the information presented in the book is, however, I did find it to be a thought-provoking take on common trends regarding human psychology. I wouldn’t recommend this book due to its extreme specificity on CIA interrogation methods, although it is interesting to see how movies portray interrogations compared to the official documents.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent example of mid-century horror writing, with sterile burecratic prose dancing across the pages a bright contrast to the utterly practical descriptions of normalized torture. All romantic idealism of the taxpayers who sponsored the work left behind, in it's place a haunting beautiful testament to humanity's pragmatism and cruelty.

[Simon Cortez-Žagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think this is a very good document/guide. Detailed and factual information and techniques. Old but still relevant

[Cristian · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all let me say that you can get this document for free by googling it in pdf format. Having said that:

The book has some interesting information, specially on the latter part (it started kinda slow and boring for me).It's a shame several parts are missing, either due to editings done by the CIA themselves, deletion, or having not finished it before releasing it.However, the reason I'm giving it such a low rating is the sum of several "issues" with the edition.

First of all, I don't see why the need to rename it "The CIA Document of Human Manipulation". It was released under the name "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual" and I believe it should stay that way. Second, there are many "code" names used in the book (which is to be expected in a document of this kind), and nowhere in the edition is there a footnote or list mentioning what they mean. If I hadn't found a wikipedia article listing them, I would have never understood several things mentioned in it.
Apart from this, I thought very unprofessional to have every single page mentioning the website of the publisher, and there is some minor mistyping of words here and there that aren't present in the original documents.

All in all, it's an interesting historical document (even with the missing information), and I'd advice just printing it from the original .pdf released instead of buying this edition.

[Rhiannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

this was so hard to read i absolutely hated it but it was somewhat interesting

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find this particularly informative or interesting. Sure there are a couple sections where it's describing personality types in the context of interrogation. Which, while interesting, aren't particular useful or applicable to anything else.

If you're interested in reading (and downloading) a copy, I found a three part copy here:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/...
It's a little bit down on that page, and don't be surprised that every footer and header has secret crossed out, and that page to page has words, paragraphs or entire sections that are still redacted.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you have to do evil to do more good...Right?

I won't go into detail of my personal opinions here, but suffice it to mention that as a participant in a US SERE program, the threshold between torture and interrogation blurs across several of the specific techniques articulated in this document. Sleep deprivation should never be underestimated.

[Switch Waking · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written during the cold war this book details the types of people the CIA or Kubark, as they call themselves, would interrogate and the methods they used to interrogate them.
In the book they specifically state that any use of torture is forbidden which makes me wonder when they decided to change their stance on that.

[Stephen Brewster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this because it was referenced a few times in The Sympathizer. This is a manual on interrogation and counter-interrogation techniques. Full stop. It's pretty cool if you are into the history of US intelligence but maybe not something the public needs access to if I'm honest. Knowing that the document exists was probably enough to get the bad stuff under control.

[Eli Dakin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the content inside this book and found it very Interesting. I cannot ignore though what the content represents and how it was used. Due to this I have only rated it Ok. I would still recommend this book.