Over a year ago the Air Force created the new 1N7X1 – Human Intelligence AFSC, which was formerly a special duty assignment with the AFSC of 8D000.
I had the privileged of interviewing an Air Force member who was a part of the 8D0 career field about what exactly Human Intelligence was and what life and training looked like for Air Force members.
This was originally going to be an episode on the Forever Wingman Podcast, but we mutually agreed due to Operational Security (OPSEC) that we shouldn’t use their name or their voice. I’m sure you’d agree why.
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I take OPSEC very seriously relating to Forever Wingman content. There is a fine balance between empowering you through information and protecting those who are in the field conducting operations. I ask you to do the same thin if posting in the comments.
Below is the modified transcription of our interview.
Be sure to check out the 1N7X1 – Human Intelligence AFSC page for more information.
A special thanks goes out to the Air Force member that took time out of their busy schedule to bring us some great insight on this new AFSC!
1N7X1/8D000 - Human Intelligence AFSC Interview
FW: The human intelligence career field, which is the 8D0X1, is a special duty linguistic briefer or an interrogator?
Debriefer – yes. That’s what the Air Force gave us as AFSCs before they had the 1N7X1.
FW: Got it. So when you were actually in the career field, you went through the 8D0 training and everything. Right?
Well actually, no. The Air Force at the time didn’t have any training; we went through the Army’s 97E which has since changed.
FW: Do you know what changed it?
No, I can’t remember the exact MOS for it but they combined intelligence and human collector into one MOS.
FW Note: The Army's 97E MOS has change to the 35M - Human Intelligence Collector MOS.
FW: So, how big was the career field when you went through?
From the Air Force side of the house they trained about roughly 60. We were the second group that went through that training.
FW: Sixty at a time?
We started with about 59 (I think 2 of them didn’t want to do it and got sent back home), so we had about 57 or so Air Force from various career fields.
FW: In your own words, what exactly is the human intelligence career field?
Its two parts: the main part is human intelligence collecting – interrogating; the second part is source operations which boils down to running sources. Have you ever seen that movie Spy Games, where you get somebody to spy for you?
FW: Yes.
As far as the training we received it was really cut and dry. They knew we weren’t going to be doing any source operations. The actual training only consisted of about a month out of the whole block of about 10 courses.
FW: Whenever it comes to the interrogation, are you actually debriefing people coming out of missions, or whatever you can comment on and whatever you are comfortable commenting on – what exactly is that?
We essentially interrogated insurgents or whatever you want to call them. Since we didn’t have any language skills we used interpreters. A lot of them were civilian DoD interpreters. That’s basically how we conducted our interrogations.
FW: You’re probably deployed majority of the time, right?
When we got tagged we were already scheduled to deploy for a year. We went through about 6 months of training which consisted of two parts. There was the initial, what we would call tech school (the Army’s basic interrogation school) and that lasted about 6 months; and then we went back for an additional month and a half of advanced training prior to deployment.
FW: That’s a lot of training.
The thing with the initial school is that in the Army you are a soldier first, so on top of the school work we also did the ruck marches, the field training and all the Army stuff that you probably normally wouldn’t do in an Air Force environment. I don’t think the Air Force has a tech school at the moment, I think they are either sending persons to the Navy school, which is the same one that the Marines go to.
FW: You are only in it for a year so?
Correct. At the time it was considered a TDY from my unit but I was gone for a year and a half. It was one of those Joint Expeditionary Taskings (JET taskings).
FW: Probably an Army tasking?
Yes. I don’t know how they are actually doing the assignments now, but more likely than not, you would probably be attached to an Army unit.
FW: That probably makes a lot of sense too. What did the actual day to day look like from the time that your alarm went off to the time that you went into work...what was your schedule like?
Being in a deployed environment you are on 12-hour shifts...6 on - one off which was not very often. We didn’t have a day off for the first month and a half or so. You would come in and do your prep work; the way it normally flowed is that if you were on night shift, day shift would have to pick up the cases (so to speak). The cases were ranked in a certain order according to how co-operative the individual was and how much intel-value he had. We would get the cases and those cases were further split up by sectors.
At the western sector we had everything from Western Iraq; there were guys who were individually assigned to certain cells or groups. We had one of the busiest sectors because it involved all of Ramadie and that sort of area. You would come in, review your cases, sit down with your analyst and you worked together as far as determining that after the case is reviewed what intelligence value ‘can we get from this guy’. You would match up his capture. Let’s say for example, the guy was caught trying to place an IED, you would want to ask him stuff related to bomb making and so forth; so we would pull up requirements that are related to that effect - you can pull up requirements for just about anything really.
FW: What are requirements?
Intelligence requirements - these are basically requirements that were numbered (4-digit numbers)...something that was thought of in some think tank or some higher agency. If you can answer at least one question for that requirement, then you would use that. They already had questions loaded in there (like what they wanted to know). The bottom line was trying to get that person to answer those questions.
FW: So, you would have these people and just ask them questions trying to gain intelligence and you would best be doing that for 12 hours at a time?
No. The interrogations were slotted. We were only allowed because of the limited number of interpreters we had; we were only allowed to do two interrogations per night which were scheduled in two-hour blocks. You can exceed those – so, if you went in there and the guy wasn’t talking you could [end it] but you had to do at least two. Some people did more depending on how many case lists they could get or the availability of the interpreters but for the most part it was limited to two interrogations per night. Really, that’s all you really had time for when you factor in the prep work and the intelligence report writing. That was one of the most time-consuming parts.
FW: I can imagine that...and probably the more monotonous.
You take your notes and discuss them with the analyst back and forth, jot down the data and get the interpreter to clarify what might have been said. On a typical day the time went by pretty fast and you had the occasional riot. We worked in a detention centre so these guys were not just sitting there behaving (so to speak), there were times when we had to pull patrol if there was a prison riot or some type of altercation or something like that we had to make sure that the cops had back-up because there was not enough to contain them all anyway.
FW: That seems very intense.
It is...and luckily I was one of the few who were embedded with an Army Guard unit, we also had interrogators but we were considered to be at the strategic level. They have three different levels of interrogators (there were scenarios when you went to interrogate somebody you know). When you go down to the unit level (so to speak) the interrogator goes out with the guys who are actually on the ground...
FW: So you had the opportunity to go to battalion level?
Yes. There, we had a lot of cases: you’re doing interrogations for roughly about 10 hours out of every day and there was no day-off. We were there for about 30 days (my analyst and I), we were supplementing the Marines and they didn’t want us to go because they only had two military interrogators and two civilians. They had enough interpreters but didn’t have enough interrogators to actually go in there and clear these guys out. We were averaging about 30 – 40 interrogations per day and on top of that we were writing intelligence reports, say, about one-third of those. That was a little tougher, and we were (kind of) isolated...we were by ourselves, along with the MPs that were guarding the detainees. We had a 1LT Marine; he was right out of the training (I guess). The Gunnery Sergeant was the one that ran the shop, so...
FW: Wow! This is a permanent career field now; I’m sure there is going to be a laundry list but what would you say some of the pros are and what are some of the cons?
Some of the pros would be the level of training they are going to embed in these guys now...If you were to equate it to coming straight out of tech school and being deployed down range to do your job, that’s exactly what we were asked to do. There was a lot of inexperience, a lot of people not knowing what to expect, so I think now that they actually have a dedicated career field these guys can get the actual upgraded training that you really need to do that job.
Gathering intelligence is a lot different from interrogating somebody to assess guilt. It’s one thing to stare a murder in the face knowing he did it, but it’s another thing to ask him why he did it or who else was involved; that might help you to stop the next murder (so to speak). We weren’t concerned with guilt, we knew these guys were guilty for the most part; it was just trying to get them to tell us what they knew.
I think one of the most difficult parts of the job... (you know the phrase that they say you catch more bees with honey than vinegar? And it’s true)...was that you basically had to look these guys in the eye, know what they did and then befriend them. A lot of the individuals wanted to go in there with the tough approach wanting to scream at them and intimidate them and that does not work when you are gathering intel. It takes a real mature and reserved person to do that job, not necessarily age wise but in character, you have to be really poised when you’re doing that job. It took me a good part of about three months to realize that like `hey, you would have better luck getting intel if you would just change your demeanour.’ I think that comes with time and experience, and that’s one of the things, we didn’t get a chance to hone those skills.
FW: What was the con?
I think the con was the difficulty of the job. As I said we were the first guys who were trained to interrogate non-conventional forces, so a part of the training was geared towards interrogating somebody from a different foreign Army.
One of the benefits is that it’s something new, you don’t normally think Air Force so embedded in something so (I want to say) “operational”.
FW: You’re absolutely right because you figure 80% to 90% of the jobs in the Air Force are support-oriented.
Yes, you can’t get any closer unless you are with the units themselves. They picked a handful of us (about 8 of us) who were attached to the actual units. It’s a good experience as much as what you take out of it compared to your everyday normal job. I can imagine you would probably do a lot more hands-on training now, a lot of deployment, many different classes to prepare people for what they are going to do because there is never a shortage of people to interrogate. They wouldn’t have initiated the 1N7 AFSC if we didn’t have a need for it. The way things are going we are probably going to need a whole lot more nowadays.
FW: Yes, and 6 months’ worth of training plus a month for advanced training – that’s a lot of training to just turn around for a year and then send them back out to the normal Air Force. That‘s a lot of wasted training.
It is. There was a time when there was talk of standing up a unit. They did and I think it was some sort of attachment. I remember because they picked one of our guys to be the deputy of that attachment but I don’t think they actually stood it up full blown, they just (kind of) picked from various sources. Our commander at the time was an OSI guy who was a Major. Now, I think they are doing it right, if only because you keep the experience. Every now and then a couple of jobs pop up for debriefers but in another language which most of us didn’t have. There was only one or two of us who had language skills that could have been useful.
I know the Army attempted to recruit us to turn Warrant Officers but after a year of that deployment people were just burnt out and they weren’t willing to do it. They were tired just getting out of the Air Force, going into the Army, going to Warrant Officer School, getting attached to a unit and committing to another year of deployment. You were basically going to school for a year and change on top of the DLAB [Defence Language Aptitude Battery test] because I think Warrant Officer School must have been 3 months or so and then depending on how you scored on the DLAB they would send you to Monterey, CA for language training and then you were deployed again. I think we had one individual who attempted and ended up getting hurt during the training, so they ended up just getting out.
FW: For someone who is thinking about going into this AFSC, what advice would you give based on your experience?
It’s difficult to say – I think you would have to come into it knowing that it is not an easy job; it’s not what you see on TV. Nothing really can prepare you to sit in front of one of these guys and talk to them until you actually do it. If you are not comfortable with deceit and deceiving people then this is probably not the job for you because I would say that 99% of what you are doing is lying. While you are doing it for a good cause (because you are saving lives as the intel you gather does make a difference), at the same time it does take a toll on you from just the reaction you can get from doing that. Even Army guys who went through training (we had a couple who went down range with us) since then they have got out, so the stress factor is really high for that job. Ultimately, I don’t regret doing it. If I could go back and keep doing it now I probably would, given the chance, but I would definitely keep an open mind. While you are in the training you don’t realize it, but it is definitely one of those jobs that I guess you would have to experience to put it into perspective.
FW: Do you know anyone who has gotten out to using the experience gained in the training, whether the Army or the Air Force?
Yes, I’ve got a couple of friends on the civilian side or different agencies and one of them is now back here in Arizona but he [is] going down range as a civilian and doing the same job. I’ve got another one, as of a year ago he was still working down south at DIA [Defence Intelligence Agency].
FW: It sounds as if there are opportunities for sure whenever you get out, to make a transition, whether it be through one of the agencies or as a contractor.
Yes, there are a lot of opportunities as contractors. There are a lot of opportunities for employment after the fact, even if it’s not necessarily just interrogating because there are a lot of stuff you pick up from the job and there are different aspects of the career field in general. One of those is a security clearance and the connections you make and the technology that you are exposed to as far as information technology (and that sort of stuff); it’s worth getting into if you can endure it.
FW: What about upgrade training? What do you think that would look like for the 1N7X1 AFSC, or do you think it would be mostly speculation on your part?
Probably at this point...I mean, considering the length of time of the initial school, assuming they changed the curriculum, I think the more field training you would probably get until they set up an actual school house you are going to be going on service training, conferences where they talk about different techniques and how to build on those. Ultimately, I don’t know how you transition from a 5 to a 7 level without actually going down range
I would venture to guess here that the trainees would do a lot of role playing from people with experience. That’s one of the good things because with all the individuals who have since been deployed and encountered situations like that, they can play the roles a lot better than when we went through and we were still in the early days of the war.
FW: What is it that I’m not asking? What comes to mind that you think is important that somebody would want to know or need to know about the human intelligence career field?
I think [physical fitness]...you do PT with the Army so you are doing field training, weapons training and close quarter combat training. Some of the stuff that they teach now depending on the location where you are going, for example, if you are going to Afghanistan to be an air advisor or something like that, you have to go through the CQC [Close Quarters Combat] training. There is also live fire training, convoy training and combat life saver training. A lot of training goes into it and this includes academic training where you study case files, law (the portion that keeps you out of trouble).
There is a very thin line between what you can and can’t do and you have to learn how to tether on that line. Even if you are backed by the JAG [Judge Advocate Group], because we had JAGs assigned and every time we did an interrogation they had to sign off on what we were doing, how we were going to do it, what approach we were going to use, what props we were going to use and that sort of stuff.
FW: Yes, so you already had a game plan even before you walked in the door.
Yes, but even with that coverage there is still stuff that is left up to interpretation by other people who might come across information and question it. You have to be really careful when you make certain analogies or distinctions or whatever the case may be, you have to be cognizant that the margin of error is real, especially after Abu Ghraib when everybody was (kind of) CYA so any little thing was viewed as a red flag. If you had one mistake you had the four-star calling down asking what the hell was happening down there. I don’t want to say that was one of the down sides but there had to be something had to be keeping it at the front of your mind...
I think that’s probably one of the benefits of the career field itself because you have so much of that longevity of it and exposure to the training that you’ve ran through these models in your mind and all these different scenarios and how you would react to them being thrown into it directly out of tech school.
Hope you enjoyed it. Remember to leave a comment below, but always remember OPSEC!