Law enforcement

FBI gets an unexpected lesson in interrogation from a former Nazi

Hanns Scharff was a master manipulator, but not in the stereotypical Gestapo-like ways that usually come to mind. His tools were kindness, respect, empathy and guile.

He told meandering stories, took detainees on long strolls in the countryside and left them alone in his office to read the U.S. military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. He provided hard-to-find cigarettes and even let one captured U.S. pilot take a short flight in a German fighter plane.

But all the while, without them even knowing, he was swiping their secrets.

In recent years, Scharff’s technique has become the intense focus of research funded by the U.S. government through the FBI-led High-Value Interrogation Group, a task force of agents, analysts and intelligence community officers who question suspected terrorists and other key detainees.