Appendix B - Note on interview techniques

Summary

A fascinating aspect of the research process was interviewing approximately 100 individuals who, as either current or past members of the US policymaking establishment, contributed to the framing of the various policies described in this volume. It is the remembrances of these individuals that provided a context and tone for the various periods examined which were simply impossible to obtain from written sources. Rather than provide a laundry list of interview techniques which have been examined exhaustively by other researchers in the field, I simply wish to note four issues of the interview process which were of particular relevance to this study.

The first issue revolved around whether to use a standardized set of questions or a more open-ended interview technique. Due to the historical nature of the project which focused on US foreign policies toward four African countries during a period spanning more than fifty years, interviews were used as an important means of filling in controversial gaps in the historical record. For example, as discussed in Chapter 4, interviews were crucial in determining the extremely controversial role of the CIA in successfully promoting certain Somali candidates in that country's 1967 parliamentary elections. As a result, each interview inevitably required the formulation of questions unique to that country or historical period.