Al-Qaeda training manual interrogation-resistance tactics
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The al-Qaeda training manual captured by U.S. forces includes a section on resisting interrogation. John Kiriakou says its first listed technique is to feign severe stomach pain and fall off the chair, a tactic he recognized in real time because he had read the manual himself.

The capture

Kiriakou recounts personally capturing a mid-to-high-level al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan after the man bought a one-way plane ticket to Pakistan using his own credit card and his own true name, an operational-security lapse that let six officers wait for him at the airport.

The interrogation

Handcuffed to an eye bolt screwed into the interrogation table, the detainee doubled over and feigned severe stomach pain, the manual's technique number one. Kiriakou, having read the same manual, told him to get back in the chair; the man tried several more resistance tactics, including pretending to faint and pretending he was about to vomit. Asked his name, the detainee gave two false names before Kiriakou warned him that a third lie would anger him; he then gave his real name.

'I read the training manual'

Retelling the episode in May 2026, Kiriakou supplied the exchange itself. He asked the man's name; the man doubled over in what he presented as agony and went off the chair, "he fell off the chair with his hand still chained to the table." Kiriakou stayed in his own seat and waited. "He opens one eye and looks up to me. And I said, 'I read the training manual. Get back in the chair.'"

The name sequence followed. "He's like, 'Mohammed Abdallah.' I said, 'Eh, try again. What's your name?'" A second false name produced a warning, "you're going to really piss me off if you give me a third fake name", and then the real one.

The remaining repertoire was exhausted in front of him. "He pretended to faint. He did the whole stomach thing. He pretended that he was going to throw up. And I just kind of sat there looking at him like, 'Are you done? I read the training manual.'"

'I'm going to send you to Jerusalem'

What broke the detainee, on Kiriakou's account, was not a threat he made but a threat the man made for him. Kiriakou offered the choice plainly, "I'm the good cop in this. We can either have a conversation like two grown men, or we're going to send you someplace that you're not going to like."

The detainee named the place himself: "I'm not afraid of Guantanamo." Kiriakou's reply took the opening. "Guantanamo? I never said I was going to send you to Guantanamo. I'm going to send you to Jerusalem."

He is explicit that the destination was never real, and equally explicit about what the real ones were: "of course, I would never send him to Jerusalem. We don't do that. We send them to way worse places than Jerusalem." The man then "just started talking. And he gave us everything." He went to Guantánamo afterwards; Kiriakou does not know what became of him. "He's probably still there."

Knowing the answers first

Kiriakou frames the whole episode as an illustration of the rule he was trained on rather than of any talent for reading people. Body-language tells matter, looking down or up before answering, fidgeting, crossed arms as a sign of nervousness and defensiveness, though he notes he crosses his own arms "cuz I just like the way it feels", but they are the obvious part.

The way past them is preparation: "what we were trained to do was to go into these interviews already knowing the answers to all of our questions", a basic police-detective tactic. In this case he knew who the man was, whom he had been meeting in the country he had come from, and that he was mid-to-high-level al-Qaeda with "literally, American blood on his hands." His summary: "body language is a big deal, but you've got to know the answers to your questions before you even go into the meeting."

He adds a note on vocabulary. "Interrogation is the word that the FBI uses. The CIA doesn't interrogate, it interviews or debriefs." His own view of the distinction: "don't pay any attention to that. That's just CIA silliness."

See also

- Jordanian al-Qaeda detainee
- John Kiriakou
