It ’s been a dream of scientist , interrogator and law enforcement professionals for old age : trounce a terrorist suspect to a couplet of electrode , set out asking him interrogation , and determine his brainwaves rat him out .
In a late paper , a Northwestern University prof use some of his recent fieldwork to advocate the intelligence agency community to give the scientific discipline another shot . Just one problem : His ego - delineate “ Oddball Approach ” to exposing terrorist probably wo n’t bring in the real human beings .
Psychologist J. Peter Rosenfeld write in the journal Psychophysiology that he can call and preclude terrorist attacks , all after running a clinical trial in which his student had to plan a mock assault . The estimation was to make a test that would allow interrogators a foolproof agency of extracting information about planned onslaught from resistant suspect using just two wire connected to the forehead . “ They could either commit him to Egypt for the waterboard , ” Rosenfeld tells Danger Room , “ or give him a scientifically base test . ”
Rosenfeld ’s students receive a briefing on a serial of options that they could engage : four potential locating in Houston , four types of bombs , and four date in July . Individually , they wrote letter to their “ superiors ” in their imaginary terror cells sketch their intended acts .
get in the probe . psychologist established decades ago that hoi polloi will involuntarily activate a sure brainstorm when they encounter a conversant input , known as a P300 . In theory , it ’s better than a Trygve Lie detector : you do n’t have to interest about the brain let out a P300 out of jitteriness , the direction a panic heart can create off-key positive degree for polygraph . As Wired.comreported shortly after the September 11 attacks , that ’s why every couple of long time someone proposes using electroencephalography – EEG , to you and me – asa reliable ( and , potentially , legally admissible ) alternative to the erstwhile lie demodulator .
During a 25 - minute of arc test , Rosenfeld ’s students were shown a screen that flash hundreds of names of random cities , appointment and bomb methods . Sure enough , the students ’ P300s told Rosenfeld when and where the hypothetical blast would take place . Even if someone tries heavily not to remember his specify terrorist bit , “ we still catch them eight out of nine or 10 times , ” Rosenfeld says . “ It ’s pretty all-fired good . ”
Now to convert someone in the news residential district . And that may be more difficult than the well-thought-of psychologist figures . Anyone familiar with interrogations of existent - life terrorist suspects will like a shot spot a problem with Rosenfeld ’s test : it presumes right smart too much noesis on the part of both the inquisitor and the interrogated .
The distinctive terrorist who regain himself in front of FBI or CIA agent wo n’t necessarily be intimate everything about a peculiar patch . The 9/11 hijackers , for example , were kept deliberately in the dark about everything besides their specific piece of the operation . And that ’s on the off chance that someone that stag or gigabyte - men round up have even made it into the participating stagecoach of panic - plotting , a pretty elect radical .
Alternatively , someone who find himself in an interrogation chairman might have been catch red - handed – believe underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – rendering Rosenfeld ’s trial moot . It then falls to interrogators to figure out a defendant ’s place in the cabal , something that ’s a lot harder to determine than with a simple synaptic sacking . Anyone might recognize Osama bin Laden and permit out some P300s , but that does n’t intend that he ’s collaborate with him .
Most often , inquisitor do n’t have any mind whether the hombre in the chair opposite them is a chip player or a terror master . That ’s why genuine - lifespan interrogator tools for unravel terror webs are far more simplistic , for draw out blanket information and then pare it down .
Ali Soufan , for case , a retired FBI counterterrorist , got the first - ever al - Qaeda substantiation of the terrorist group ’s blameworthiness for 9/11 . His orphic weapon?Sugarless cookies , fed to a thirsty al - Qaeda affiliate named Abu Jandal .
Rosenfeld profess that his test depends on both terrorist and interrogator having a great bargain of knowledge about a given plot . ( Self - deprecatingly , he refers to his P300 test as his “ Oddball Approach . ” )
He say he ’s had just one interaction with an American spook since his newspaper publisher come out earlier this summertime , a Defense Intelligence Agency official name Donald Krapohl , who was skeptical that the P300 psychometric test would be useful to interrogator for on the dot that reason . ( In an electronic mail , Krapohl confirmed corresponding with Rosenfeld , but did not receive license from his bosses to speak with me for this story . )
Aside from a guy who works with the Transportation Security Administration at Midway Airport in Chicago , Rosenfeld says , “ We have n’t had any [ other ] bites in the counterterrorism community . ”
That points to a central clinical disconnect . Rosenfeld require to help U.S. counterterrorists . But he does n’t know any . So it ’s hard for him to project a test that ’s relevant to actual inquisitor .
“ It ’s like I tell everybody , ” he say . “ We ’ve done a lot of body of work in the science laboratory now for a tenacious time , and we ’d really care to see it out in the real world . ” Anyone from Langley wants to give Rosenfeld a shout , he ’s quick to put some electrode together in the hope that he can help hold on the next flak .
Photo : Brown University
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