We discussed how to fool a "narcoquiz" and lie to a telepath here so we should also mention two other ways to extract information. First, torture - dreadful but standard in the Bond books. Secondly, in Poul Anderson's "The Big Rain," Simon Hollister's wife has been hypnotically conditioned to ask him leading questions so that she can be debriefed later. She does not know that she is spying on the man that she does not know is a spy: ultimate manipulation. Because Hollister, an Un-man, has advanced psychotechnic training, he is able to see through the deception and to counteract it. By hypnotherapy, he removes her conditioning so that she remembers her conversation with the secret policeman.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
This is interesting, CAN someone be hypnotically conditioned to ask questions and later be debriefed, probably without him knowing it?
This is a surprisingly subtle and sophisticated means of doing Intelligence work in so early a story by Anderson.
Sean
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