“If I could get someone to accept any small gesture of kindness, like a glass of tea, a special food item, a book, writing materials, etc., then I had him!”
-Anonymous Counterintelligence Officer, 12/30/02.

Meet the face behind the operation in an engaging one-person show based on the real life character of a U.S counterintelligence officer. Colombian psychologist and actor Hector Aristizábal grapples with the persona of a U.S. counterintelligence officer. Aristizabal takes us on a journey through the mind of an interrogator who believes that his work is informed by cultural sensitivity and knowledge. In this theatrical encounter we get to sip tea with the interrogator and participate in the stories he tells. We become terrorists, and potential interrogators. This highly provocative play is inspired by real extensive correspondence between the interrogator himself and social scientist, Jean Maria Arrigo.

The officer this play is based on, was trained as both a social scientist and an explosives expert, and served as a liaison to counter terrorist police teams in the Middle East. The officer reflects on scenes of violent Middle Eastern interrogation of supposed terrorists and on his own experiences with less violent methods. He sizes up the terrorist threat, the prospects of detainees, the needs of his subordinates, the failings of his superiors, and the foibles of meddling human rights activists.

A survivor of state-sponsored torture himself (Colombia, 1982), Hector becomes his nemesis, the torturer, in frank investigation of Carl Jung’s dictum, “The healthy man does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”

The script was created by Hector Aristizabal, Vivien Sansour and Diane Lefer from Correspondence between a U.S. Counterintelligence Liaison Officer & Social Psychologist, Jean Maria Arrigo,2002-2006, Project on Ethics and Art in Testimony; additional copy archived in the Intelligence Ethics Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

The final product is under the direction of Brian Brophy.