Interviewing is a rich and important source
of information, tremendously underutilized by the
Left.* Businessmen, government officials and
functionaries of non-profit organizations have
access to large quantities of previously untapped
material. There are several types of information
which they are willing to share with a credible
interviewer. These include: the most up-to-date
material available, answers to specific questions,
clarification of apparent inconsistencies in your
analysis, information about the decision making
process and human interest material. The sug-
gestions which follow are presented to help you
learn how to get that information.
Interviewing can be fun. It is like playing
a giant chess game where your opponent has most
of the good pieces, but he doesn’t know that you
are playing and that you want to win. But inter-
viewing may also be alienating. At times you are
forced to make insipid conversation, to play de-
grading games and to smile when what you hear is
filling you with rage. To remain effective, the
interviewer must be part of a larger movement,
preferably an organization, where the work has a
political purpose. Otherwise, because of the
alienation, you may be sucked into the hierarchy
you are examining and into the value system you
are pretending to have.
Too often we mystify the people and insti-
tutions we are trying to study. As a result, we
become reluctant to contact an individual or we
become nervous before an interview. But the men
and women you will interview are all too human.
Underneath their plastic facade are lonely people
who often drink more than they should, whose chil-
dren do not respect them and who want to be flat-
tered and appreciated. Most people like to talk
about themselves and their work, especially to
people who are interesting, but don’t usually
get the chance.
There are four main areas to consider in
conducting an interview: (I) choosing a strategy,
(II) setting up the interview, (III) conducting
the interview and (IV recording and using the
data.
*For additional information, see NACLA, ed. ‘Ten
Theses on Power Structure Research” in NACLA Re-
search Methodology Guide. pp. 3-4.
I. CHOOSING A STRATEGY
The purpose of an interview is to gather
information, not to politicize people. Therefore
the strategy you should use to conduct the inter-
view has little direct connection with your poli-
tical orientation. The strategy depends on the
purpose of the interview (i.e. the type of mate-
rial you want to gather), how much you know about
the subject you are studying, and how good an
actor you are. If you are not a good actor, do
not pretend too much. Most important, choose a
strategy which allows you to feel comfortable
and relaxed.
There are four specific strategies which
have been most useful. It is assumed that for
the first three of these strategies the person
being interviewed does not know your real poli-
tical orientation or why you want the information.
How to introduce yourself to the person being
interviewed so that your political orientation
remains confidential will be discussed below.
These strategies are separate and distinct.
If you are doing a series of interviews with
people in the same institution or in organizations
which communicate with each other, be very care-
ful to use the same strategy throughout. Infor-
mation about your interviews will travel and you
will be caught if you are inconsistent.
A. Dialectic.
In talking with a person in an establishment
hierarchy, take a position slightly more conser-
vative than his or hers. This approach will force
the person to carry his argument to its logical
conclusion or extreme in his own terms. If you
take a position which is slightly more liberal
than his, the person tends to become defensive,
run into logical deadends, get angry and stop
talking. The importance of this approach is not
only in the specific questions you ask but in
your ability to establish yourself in a general
position relative to the person being interviewed.
This will enable you to ask questions which are
otherwise off limits.
For example, in talking with USAID officials,
do not ask: “Why are you spending money to train
police to kill guerrillas when so many people are
illiterate and the money could be used for
schools?” Instead ask: “Why isn’t more money
spent to train police or for military civic action
to pacify areas so that people will be able to go45
to school?” After this type of question you are
in a good position to ask: “How much is spent to
train police?” and get a straight answer. If you
are too conservative the subject will dismiss you
as not being part of the “establishment” and
merely answer: “Pacification is not enough and
schools must be built.” Thus you have to feel
out the person you are talking with to determine
his or her point of view.
Most people you will talk to do not have a
clearly developed, consistent ideological frame-
work. Your position and political orientation
may have to change slightly as you get to know
their positions better in order to maintain a
dialogue. There can be some variance from ques-
tion to question in the difference between your
position and the position of the person you talk
to, but the variation should be within a rather
narrow limit. This approach requires a fairly
good understanding of the topic under investiga-
tion.
B. Naive.
Be open, trusting and astonished. Begin by
asking general questions in the area you want to
know about. Try to direct the conversation, pri-
marily using only the information you have been
given during the interview to focus in on a topic
The subject provides the information, you pro-
vide the logic. The logic you use should be a
vehicle to extend his thinking in his terms and
to get more of the information which makes up
his theoretical framework: The logic you use
should not be a presentation of your own frame-
work. For example, if the person you are inter-
viewing says, “We have military civic action to
help develop the countryside,” you should then
naively ask, “Wouldn’t these programs be most
useful in areas where there is guerrilla acti-
vity?” and then hope that he will go on to show
how civic action is tied in with military paci-
fication. This style of questioning will make
explicit his implicit assumptions. You can ques-
tion what a person says if you think he is lying
or the information is incorrect, but never do it
in a way that shows that you know he is wrong.
This approach is useful in two cases: 1)
When you are genuinely unfamiliar with a topic
or situation and want to find out as much as
possible in a short time. (Generally though, it
is better to have done background work on a topic
before you conduct an interview.) 2) When you
know a lot about a topic, have very specific
questions and can manipulate the conversation to
get answers without the person knowing that you
had those questions in mind before the interview.
Unless you are very skillful, the questions you
ask can draw a very clear map of what you are
really interested in and indicate how much you
actually know. The person may then realize that
you are not as naive as you pretend to be and
stop talking.
C. Aggressive.
This strategy requires a tremendous amount
of general understanding of a subject and access
to specific new information. Essentially you tell
the person, in a gentle way, how much you know
about them and ask them to fill in the missing
pieces. They may do so for two reasons: 1) you
have information in which they are interested,
either about a competitor who you have already
interviewed or about their area in general, or,
2) they feel you will be able to fill in the
missing pieces without your help and would like
it put in their own words, rather than yours.
Forbes magazine (January 15, 1971) reports a des-
cription of this strategy.
Now, the analyst will call on the corpora-
tion’s executives. He won’t ask general
questions like ‘What is your market share?’
… He’ll say, ‘Your market share is such-
and-such.’ At first, they may say, ‘You’re
speaking nonsense.’ He’ll persist, and
they’ll begin to realize he does know a
great deal about them. They don’t want to
look like fools or liars. After maybe half
an hour they’ll say, ‘Well, if you know that
that much…’ Then they’ll start talking.
It probably will be a two-way conversation.
They’ll ask him questions too.
A variation of this strategy is useful when
talking with government officials who do not
really believe the positions they are forced to
take. You can push them against the wall until
they admit that they disagree with a certain
policy. They may then explain why they think
the decision was made to adopt that policy, who
argued for it and why they think it is the wrong
policy. This strategy is useful if you want to
study the decision-making process and internal
organizational conflicts. This strategy can
successfully be used with government officials
because of the ambivalence this group tends to
feel about its work. Corporation officials are
more assimilated into their organization and
therefore have, or are willing to admit, much
less disagreement with stated policies.
D. Guarded Honesty.
This is the most risky of the four strate-
gies. The person you are interviewing knows your
political orientation and is interested in what
specific information you have and the limits of
your knowledge. He is interested in your analy-
sis of the situation to gain a different theo-
retical perspective. Never underestimate their
interest in our analysis! lie will be willing to
tell you a few things which you could not find
in any other way, but in exchange he wants to
know what you think. One technique used by in-
telligence agents of the ruling class is to vol-
untarily give you a piece of important classified
information to gain your confidence. The agent
then sits back and watches where your questions
go to see what you are interested in and what
you already know.
Never think that because you have found out
good information using this strategy that you are
pulling the wool over their eyes. They are doing
exactly what you are doing only they have been
playing this game much longer.46
II. SETTING UP THE INTERVIEW
To get the most out of an interview, hun-
dreds of hours of background research are re-
quired. That work will help you decide who to
talk to in any given institution and what infor-
mation is not available elsewhere. Whenever pos-
sible, develop a biographical profile of the per-
son before you conduct the interview.
A. Whom to interview.
The best people to interview are.librarians, secretaries, authors of newspaper articles, pub-
lic relations men (who are hired specifically to
answer your questions), and of course, the func-
tionaries in the hierarchy.
A very important consideration is how high
up in the hierarchy you want to go for informa-
tion. Generally, the lower the official, the
better the information you will get. A lower
official is not tied into the system as firmly
as is an older, more important official. Talk-
ing with a high level official (directors and
officers) is useful 1) to answer a specific
question which a lower official may not know
or may not be at liberty to answer, and 2) to
see how he responds to questions, i.e. to see
what is their most sophisticated, stated stra-
tegy. Analysing material gathered from high
level officials involves interpreting their
carefully chosen words, where things may mean
far more than they superficially seem to.
Organizational charts and reference books
exist for major institutions (e.g. U.S. Govern-
ment Organizational Manual, available through
the Government Printing Office). You are more
likely to get an interview if you contact a spe-
cific person by name with a request to talk to
him about a specific, limited topic. At least
try to know which division or branch of the
hierarchy you want to talk with.
If you have been to college, go through
your current Alumni Directory. Alumni are usu-
ally listed by business address. Find someone
in the particular institution you are interested
in studying. Write to him and say that you are
a fellow alumnus and would like to talk with him
or someone in his office about your project. For
some strange cultist reason, fellow alumni tend
to help each other.
B. How to set up the interview.
Telephone calls are the best way, People are more likely to bury letters. If you have a
few specific questions, sometimes the entire
interview can be conducted by telephone. Speak
with assurance and authority, indicating that
you know what you want to find out. Do not feel
that you are imposing on the person whom you are
interviewing. Most often the person will be glad
that you have made your inquiries since most in-
stitutions like publicity and want to present
themselves in the best light possible.
Go to the places which are open to you,
where the people you want to interview meet for
business and social reasons: the Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of Manufac-
turers, business association meetings, conferen-
ces and conventions. Whenever possible, a contact
— even a friend of a friend– will help insure
that you are given an interview. If you are de-
nied an interview, PUSH. Don’t give up easily
and don’t take it personally. Call again, write
a letter, send some information to show the indi-
vidual you are serious and interesting. As Lenin
said, “There is no problem a Bolshevik cannot
solve.”
C. How to present yourself.
It is best to present yourself as someone
who, with a little stretch of the imagination,
you might be. This way you will feel most com-
fortable and be most believable. A college stu-
dent who is writing a paper or doing research
for a professor, a graduate student who is work-
ing on a thesis or trying to find a topic, a rep-
resentative of a concerned citizens group, a free-
lance reporter who might be commissioned to write
a specific article if enough material exists, a
reporter from a college paper, or someone who is
applying for a job are all possibilities.
Credentials help but are not necessary. A
press card, even from a local or college newspa-
per, is helpful and relatively easy to get, A
letter from a friendly college professor saying you
are doing research in a course for him or her is
useful. If the person to be interviewed asks,
one sheet of stationery is usually sufficient
proof that you are who you say you are. But
they usually don’t ask.
If the interview is limited to a phone con-
versation, there is a whole host of other ways
of presenting yourself: an employer checking on
a specific individual, a private detective, a
researcher for a corporation, or for a stock-
broker who is developing a profile of a company
to advise clients on whether to invest in that
firm. The disadvantage with these ways of pre-
senting yourself is that it is very easy for
a person to check on your credentials. As a re-
sult you may only get one chance to speak to the
person you are interviewing.
In deciding on a way to present yourself,
keep in mind how the person and institution being
interviewed will respond to publicity. The pri-
mary way for you to know whether the company or
institution wants or is willing to have publicity
is by going through the New York Times Index, the
Wall Street Journal Index and the Business Perio-
dicals Index. Two types of articles are written
about a company or institution: press releases
and feature articles based on interviews. Read-
ing other people’s interviews for content will
help you know the extent of publicity the com-
pany will allow. Reading the interviews for style
— what questions did the person ask to get the
information presented– will help you to formu-47
late your own questions.
If a company does not want publicity, it is
best to present yourself as a graduate student
who is writing a confidential thesis which no
one but your advisor will see. It is generally
better to present yourself as a graduate student since the person you want to talk to may feel that talking to an undergraduate is unimportant and will not benefit him or his firm.
III. CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW
Interviews can be conducted anywhere: at a party, sitting next to someone on a plane, at
a sports event or in an office. At informal
gatherings it is better if the person does not
think that you are interviewing him or her but
thinks that you are having a conversation. The
information which follows is primarily for office
interviews.
A. Appearance.
You will want to be attractive in both appea-
rance and manner to the person you are interview-
ing. Short or moderately long hair and a jacket
and tie for men; a skirt or fashionable pants
outfit for women. The clothes you wear must be
consistent with the strategy and the situation
you choose. You should not, for example, wear
a chic outfit and use the naive approach.
B. Waiting in the outer office.
The outer office is filled with information
and with leads for beginning the conversation
with the person you are interviewing. Look at
the magazines they have, watch how people relate
to each other, try to get a rough idea of the
number of people doing which jobs, see how the
office is decorated, talk to the secretary or
receptionist and indirectly ask non-controversial
questions about the office, the company and her
boss.
C. The interview.
In the beginning of the interview, chat in
order to get to know each other and so that you
both can relax. Once he feels relaxed and you
have started asking questions, ask if you can
take notes. Most likely he will be flattered.
If he is reluctant, tell him immediately that
the notes are not important. This will demon-
strate your good faith. Remember, if you take
notes it is easier for him to know what infor-
mation you consider important. If you think
there is some information which he might not
want publicized, ask if it is okay to write it
down. If he refuses, you might have found out
some interesting material (which of course you
will remember since you have focused in on it).
Regardless of whether he says it is okay or not
to write down the material, you have shown your
concern for his interests. (Taping is only use-
ful for special interviews. People are much
more cautious about what they say if every word
is recorded.)
Before you go into the interview, have a list of questions in mind. This list will help you direct the conversation and avoid uncomfor- table pauses while you think up new questions. Have a few filler questions you can ask, either
to intersperse between sensitive questions or
to give you a few minutes to think about your next probe while he rambles on.
Whenever possible do not ask important
questions directly if you think that will anta-
gonize the person. Approach the question indi-
rectly, try to figure out what other combina-
tion of questions will give you the same answer, or try to make the conversation lead “naturally”
to that question. For example, if you want to
know D, casually say “A?” knowing that his res-
ponse of course will be “B.” You can then natu-
rally say, “C?” and find out if the answer is D.
A concrete example will help. If you want to
know about sterilization programs you can ask,
“What is being done to decrease the rate of popu-
lation growth?” He of course will answer, “We
have birth control clinics.” And then you can
ask, “Why haven’t sterilization programs been
tried as they have been in India?”
If you think you will not want to talk again
to this person or to anyone he talks to, and
there is no other way to get the information, you
can ask one inflammable or controversial question.
This of course will be your last question. This
type of question is particularly useful if you
are interested in how the person responds. It
is better, however, not to antagonize the person
you have talked with. If possible try to leave
an opening for future contact: borrow something,
ask for an address, or ask if you could talk
again if you have more questions.
D. Other suggestions.
There are several other suggestions which
will help you learn how to conduct an interview.
1) See the movie The Sorrow and the Pity,
by Marcel Ophuls. An excellent documentary about
French collaboration with Nazi Germany during
World War II, the movie consists of four hours
of brilliant interviewing. While most of the
movie generally presents only the responses, you
get a clear idea of what questions were asked
and how. One interview with the relative of
Prime Minister Laval is particularly useful for
learning good techniques.
2) Watch the Dick Cavett show. He is an
example of what not to do. His staff does a lot
of background research on each of the people who
come on the show. Knowing the background of the
person as well as he does, Cavett asks questions
which are embarrasing to the subject but appear
to the audience to be harmless. The person is
made to feel defensive. This approach works for
the Cavett show but would destroy most interviews.
His technique for keeping a conversation going,
his “charm” and his discipline of doing back-
ground research are positive techniques to learn
from watching his show.48
3) Practice by conducting interviews where
you don’t really care about the results. Set
yourself goals of specific information you want
to find out, and try to see the best ways to get
it.
4) Role play with friends, learn from each
others’ mistakes and share ideas about which tech-
niques have worked and which have not. Most im-
portant, be flexible, try new things and have a
good time.
IV. RECORDING AND USING THE DATA
A. Recording the data.
Immediately after the interview, whether you
have taken notes or not, write down as much as
you can remember. If you do not have time, write
down major areas or ideas which will remind you
of what was discussed. As soon as you can, type
up everything you can remember, EVEN WHAT SEEMS
UNIMPORTANT. When you begin a research project,
you are in the process of formulating a theoreti-
cal framework within which to analyze the material
you are gathering. The framework you develop
comes from an examination of your political goals
and the audience you want to reach; from an exa-
mination of the data you are acquiring and an
understanding of Marxist theory; and from an in-
tegration of theory and practice. Data has no
meaning without a framework. As the framework
becomes more clearly developed, the same infor-
mation takes on new meaning and importance.
B. Using the data.
Research is a weapon. To use the information
you gather effectively, you must remember its so-
cial role and political purpose. If the material
sits in some dusty file cabinet or cloistered
away with an isolated researcher, it remains pow-
erless. If the information is not eventually
used to change the existing power relations in
capitalist society, it is wasted.
Frequently, individuals you interview will
indicate that they wish to have the material re-
main confidential. It is our feeling that friends
should be protected and their wishes respected. Few people among the ruling class and their
agents fall into that category. The primary consideration to weigh is the political impact of publication versus the extent to which chan- nels of communication will be cut off in the future.
A WORD OF CAUTION
There are three additional notes of caution:
1. People respond very differently depending on whether the interviewer is a man or a woman. These differences may create problems but they can be turned to your advantage.
2. Different people in any given institution
have different views about what is going on and what should go on. Sometimes they distort infor-
mation, exaggerate or lie. Always try to figure out why a person has told you the informatin he or she has. Just because you have one excellent interview in an institution, do not think that you have the inside story. As in the case of the blind men touching the elephant, there are
many inside stories.
3. Never admit what you do not want to. If, for example, you are accused of not really having the conservative political orientation you claim
to have, deny the accusation. Normally there is
not sufficient evidence to prove you wrong.
Remember, what you are doing is perfectly
legal. Sociologists have been doing it to Blacks and poor people for years. If research is gath-
ered effectively and used politically, the tables
will be turned and the rulers will be left with
only the pawns to play with.
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