Interrogation Preparation
“If you didn’t break during POW training, you will here,” Spartek said, an anti-interrogation instructor for the DOD. These were the first words to my 10-member class at the start of training, teaching us how to respond if caught collecting intelligence on foreign nations. Spartek then leaned forward against the podium, his imposing stature and intimidating face emerging from the shadows, and stated in a thick Eastern European accent, “The good news is you will learn something about yourself that most people will never have the chance to.”
The training offered insight into yourself, helping you become aware of what might cause you to break so you can prepare for it. This mindfulness is vital in high-stress situations, which are often closer than we realize. The training environment also taps into our species’ psychosomatic unity to ensure survival—a typically unused resource activated during fight-or-flight responses. During these moments, this challenging training helped me remain committed to my mission over the next five years with an NSA deployment team.
Having just graduated from POW training—the most intense physical and psychological challenge I’d faced so far—I thought about how breaking would affect me, someone determined not to. Until now, I had succeeded in my career by refusing to break, and now I was facing a group of giants whose job was to crush that resolve, and of the accomplished aviators with me. Varying degrees of cockiness fueled us, bred from our past successful military campaigns.
Before this training, I worked as a jet engine inspector at the 33rd Fighter Wing. We activated during Desert Storm I and became the most decorated unit, shooting down 16 enemy aircraft with minimal risk to our pilots. Captain Robert “Cheese” Graeter, an F-15 pilot, said, after shooting down two aircraft and returning to Eglin AFB in Florida, “The radar and electronics locked onto the enemy from miles away when I released the missiles.” Experts believe such aerial combat is unlikely to happen again. This fact lessened the need for air-to-air fighters, which is why my unit converted to a training wing and why the USAF directed me to a new career.
I had finished my second degree in electronics when USAF officials told me to take aptitude tests and meet the requirements for a Top Secret clearance. They granted the clearance and issued orders to train for a classified assignment. After graduating with honors from the Electronic Signals Intelligence school in San Angelo, Texas, I was sent to Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, to undergo Combat Survival and Prisoner of War training. Upon completion, I immediately began Special Survival (anti-interrogation) training, gaining skills to “Survive with Honor” if captured while working for U.S. agencies that we would eventually serve. In military slang, this course is referred to as "Advanced Beatings."
The anti-interrogation training began with lectures about the psychological aspects of interrogation and preparing for your role as a political prisoner, just as the interrogators train for theirs. Many of these talks included stories of war heroes who endured as POWs during the Vietnam War. The bedside book of every interrogator is of an American POW—it was their Bible. Making us feel like we were in “Hanoi Hilton” was their religion.
The first day of interrogations, marked by intense psychological stress and physical torment aimed at extracting information, overwhelmed all the senses. The most difficult aspect was watching your comrades endure hits and bruises. It was a constant feeling that one of you was being abused; in 1991, bruises were authorized souvenirs, unlike today’s regulations that prohibit them. However, most trainees didn’t need physical pain to break.
I saw a trainee lose control inside a wooden crate next to mine as a vice slowly crushed us. Not used to being confined, his body spasmed violently, enough for his crate to bounce off the floor and bump into mine. An instructor shouted the “safe word," and through my box’s wooden slats, I watched the instructors pull the rattled aviator out and take him to the base’s psychologist.
Reflecting on this aviator and the three other times I heard the safe word, I remembered the hours of lectures that prepared me for interrogations in the days ahead. The training was abstract, unlike the specialized skills I learned in jet engine mechanic school, where every task had clear technical instructions. Now, the training taught us to look within ourselves for answers when responding to the interrogator in a way that doesn’t solicit cooperation or cause harm, like an unintelligible infant.
After the first day of interrogations, I stayed awake into the evening, overwhelmed by a paralyzing sense of doom and feeling mentally exhausted, just as I had felt physically fatigued during combat survival training. One night in the freezing rain, high in the Washington state mountains, I rolled out from under my poncho where I had been sleeping and woke up feeling like an icicle. Cold, wet, and shivering, I explained my situation to the instructor the next morning. He offered me lifesaving advice: don’t spend your spare time gathering food; focus on preparing your shelter first.
The human body can go weeks without food and days without water. Inadequate shelter can cause death from hypothermia overnight. Recognizing this fact was crucial for survival during the snowy days ahead. Each evening, instead of foraging for edible shrubbery or trapping minnows and small game, I would gather pine tree limbs, turning them into a bed as tall as I was. Sunk into an insulated bed of pine boughs, I found the rest necessary for physical survival. I now pondered the key to mental survival.
The training emphasized that we survived safely as infants without rational thought or conversation, and that we could do it again. Desperate for this personal solution, like a drowning person reaching for a life vest, I used the training to connect with a basic version of myself, before the fears and paranoia of life set in—things that become bridges to breakdowns. Miraculously, my psyche accepted my current reality from a past perspective of life, one incapable of coercion or fear. I was prepared to be interrogated.
SSgt Mike Neeley, who witnessed my interrogations, said, “Spartek was really having his way with you.” Earlier, I witnessed Spartek bouncing 1st Lt. Tim Gestring off the ceiling during POW training, and I thought it was impossible for anyone to handle another person in that manner. It was hard for me to see because of a light in my eyes and a shotgun to my head, as interrogators forced me to read propaganda on camera. At first glance, it seemed like Gestring was an adult-sized doll, lifted by his shirt cuffs and shaken violently. Then I noticed the whites of his eyes, as if he were crying out for help, like a gazelle caught in a crocodile’s jaws. Each thrust of Spartek caused his shirt-clenched fists to pound Gestring’s limp chest. Afterward, during the graduation party, we compared who had the most bruised ribs.
There’s nothing like partying with a group of friends who share a bond forged through hardship. Being in a state of constant vigilance, sometimes lasting up to 36 hours without sleep, cemented our bond. This extreme environment made it impossible to process events that were actually quite comedic. Once, we were naked, outside in the frigid snow with burlap sacks over our heads. We had one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us and the other hand holding our excreta bucket, marching to empty its contents. During this 'trail of dehumanization', just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I heard the clanking of buckets and a commotion, followed by an instructor screaming, “Well that’s just great number 22, you spilled the contents of your bucket all over number 21!” Removing identity was part of the course, and replacing names with numbers reflected that. I was number 24.
“Who is number 21?” I shouted during the party. A captain, an F-16 pilot, reluctantly raised his hand and lowered his eyes to the floor. The laughter echoed for miles from the crowded “Top Gun” like canteen bar, from airmen devoid of arrogance that the training had stripped away. Recounts of such events filled the evening, once appalling but now entertaining. The party served as a final reminder of the training we received—that surviving with honor is worth it.