Read Eric Nalder's tips for interviewing tough subjects here.

In 2004, investigative journalist Eric Nalder interviewed a whistleblower from ConocoPhillips, the nation's third-largest oil company. Nalder's investigation revealed that oil industry safety nets were being undermined. EXPOSÉ episode, "A Sea of Trouble," featured Nalder's investigation into the enforcement of safety regulations on oil tankers which uncovered serious safety lapses and cover-ups.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Eric Nalder is known for his ability to get people to open up and tell all they know, on the record. His book, Tankers Full of Trouble, won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book award in 1994. Here, Nalder goes on the record with EXPOSÉ to describe how he puts this program into practice, his technique for interviewing whistleblowers, and mistakes he's made along the way.

EXPOSÉ: When did you develop your "Loosening Lips" manifesto? Why is it important to share these techniques? And what interviewing mistakes have you made along the way?

Nalder: It all started with a story I worked on with co-author Timothy Egan at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1981. My interview with a lawyer named Gary Culver inspired me to learn more about the art because he divulged so much that day. I wondered why. I wanted to bottle my techniques and use them again. (The story inspired a change in state law and Culver went to prison). Ever since then, I have asked police officers, FBI agents, lawyers, fellow journalists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, private investigators and others who do interviewing for a living to share their techniques with me. Two decades of collecting techniques has resulted in "Loosening Lips."

For nearly two decades I have been teaching my interview classes (and my other accompanying investigative reporting classes) to journalists from all over the world, as well as to private investigators and lawyers. I share these techniques because it is terribly important that we as reporters tell people the truth about the hidden important stuff. How will we tell them if we don't know how to ask?

The mistake I made most often was getting angry. A good interviewer never gets angry, not truly angry. A staged peeve might be okay, but when you get angry with someone, you give a piece of yourself to that person, a piece the person can collect on later. (By the way, when people get angry with me, I receive their anger with open ears and eyes, listening to and understanding their complaint. I bend with their anger, like a reed in the wind. Then I collect on their anger later).

As we see in EXPOSÉ, whistleblowers are essential, though reluctant sources for major investigations. In your experience, what turns an employee into a whistleblower? And does a journalist have a responsibility to protect them from retaliation?

Whistleblowers are usually smart people who have seen something bad happen over and over again. They want it stopped, permanently, and they want any wrongdoers to face consequences. They have usually tried to correct problems by contacting someone within their own organization. They have either been rebuked or ignored. They care.

I deal with roughly two types -- scared whistleblowers who contact me and scared whistleblowers I hunt down. A third of my hour-long "Loosening Lips" workshop is dedicated to methods for getting reluctant people to divulge everything they know and talk on the record. Simply put, it is important that I have deeply researched the situation before we talk extensively; that I have properly prepared my own psyche by meditating and envisioning success; that I have organized my paperwork and noted my questions; that I then organize the whistleblower's brain using questioning techniques like the chronology and the path of a-b-c-d logic; that I penetrate the privacy layers in the subject's brain by using hypnotic questioning techniques; that I re-interview the person repeatedly for thoroughness and accuracy and that I conduct an interview that feels at once like a good conversation but is also a relentless journey towards the truth.

Journalists have a responsibility to find and tell the truth. Part of the truth might be that the whistleblower has experienced retaliation and, if so, we have a responsibility to report on that relentlessly. We have an absolute responsibility to protect the identity of anyone who has requested and been granted anonymity. We also have a responsibility to convince that person, where possible, to talk on the record.

Your "Loosening Lips" program highlights honesty and trust as key elements to getting a person to open up. Yet, you also discuss the subtle behaviors and body language that helps you establish control over an interviewee. How do you strike the balance between empathy and authority?

Deeply understanding any interview subject, as deeply as possible, is part of my preparation. Quieting my own ego is another part of that preparation (the ego is a paranoid and ignorant device installed in our brains in primitive times to warn us to run when we encountered tigers).

Having accomplished both preparations, I am ready to open my ears. Then, with well-trained questioning, I can organize, penetrate and extract accurate information from the brain of the person I am interviewing.

When I approach people, it is with a demeanor (a look on the face, a tone in the voice, and even a movement of limbs) that says: "You are very lucky I am here today, because it could have been someone else. I am here to understand you. I am here to help you discover what you know, and to help you fully divulge it. You will lose your fear of talking to me, and you will see this as an opportunity. We are halfway there already, and we've barely begun to speak."

My interview techniques -- then applied -- feel casual, but are in fact a scientific unraveling of the information contained in brain cells.

Yes I have failed from time to time, but even the best-trained public figures have relaxed and talked openly when these techniques are honestly and effectively applied.

Notice I said honestly. You can't simultaneously lie with your face and your voice. Arrive with an honest purpose, even if your purpose is to get the truth out of a liar.

In your 35 years as a reporter, who was your toughest interview? And why?

Three examples, if you will indulge me.

Example One: Long ago, we interviewed a guy who had been stealing from a government home-repair program. He told us he was holding a gun, and it was believable. Oddly, as I recall, it helped that I faced him and slowly moved towards him as I talked to him (not from a safety standpoint, but with the purpose of getting him to say something).

Example two: In 1992, we were investigating U.S. Sen. Brock Adams on allegations of molestation and rape (my fellow journalists were Susan Gilmore, Eric Pryne, and David Boardman). This interview occurred on the Friday before the Sunday when we were going to publish our investigative story (following a 3 1/2 year on-again, off-again investigation). Adams had adamantly refused to talk with us. That Friday night, he was appearing at a fund raising reception in Seattle with then-majority leader Sen. George Mitchell. Before we arrived, unannounced, we crafted and memorized a single question that covered everything in our investigation. I entered the fund raising event first, and Pryne waited outside, ready to come in if I was unceremoniously tossed out. Boardman, the editor, came along to watch.

When I entered the hall, Adams' public relations person spotted me and ran over to tell me: "Eric, he's not going to talk to you."

Having prepared myself emotionally, I spoke with her with an honest and hypnotic demeanor that essentially said: "You are lucky I am here and there are certain things you must do."

"That's fine," I actually said. "But the way it always works, the Senator must tell me that himself."

She agreed, and walked across the floor to fetch him. I remember well how he walked across the floor with his wife at his side, a pale nervous face, sweaty, a man facing his fate. We greeted each other, politely, and after the small talk seemed to be failing, I fired off the memorized question. The senator's wife lit into me, accusing me of all sorts of things. Instead of arguing back, I interviewed her anger. She started to respond more substantively. The senator said a couple of things, too. The interview was happening. Then one of the senator's handlers, standing nearby, saw what was happening. He pushed his body between us and physically moved me away. That's all we would get. Adams -- then one of the most powerful men in the Senate -- would leave politics forever on Monday. He is now dead.

Example three: When I was working on my book, Tankers Full of Trouble, I was sailing on the good ship Arco Anchorage, 900-feet long, fully loaded with 39 million gallons of Alaskan crude oil, sailing south in a mountainous storm through the ugliest winter in a decade in the Gulf of Alaska. I wanted to talk with the chief engineer, but he hated outsiders and just about everyone else. I visited him in his office one night and he venomously told me that I was an ignorant fellow who was unworthy of an interview. He tossed me a book, the foot-thick manual for the steam engine, and told me he wouldn't answer a single question until I had read it. I went to my quarters and memorized it. Not only did the chief engineer then talk (boring me, some), but by reading the manual I was ready to unravel the steamy works of this marvelous seven-story power plant. Never try to make poetry out of a machine until you have read the manual.

For you, what is the greatest challenge in investigative reporting?

Understanding, truly and accurately understanding, the thing that I am looking at -- and finding the story. What a task. There are nights that stretch into early mornings when I find myself entering data into an Excel spreadsheet with the hopeful purpose of unlocking the gates to understanding. There are conversations where a bureaucrat is spread eagle against those same gates, keeping me out, claiming exemptions to this or that law, or using other maddening excuses. There are interviews that go unexpectedly in another direction, like a windstorm, a wind that leads to an entirely different -- and hopefully better -- story. There are deadlines that approach like a freight train in the night, while I am stuck in a tunnel without all the information. There are wild tipsters who call me in the middle of an important train of thought, demanding an hour of me, stretching their point without getting to it, while my deadline ticks. But you must listen to them, because they might have a better story. There are documents so thick you could press a sunflower flat, and have an awful hard time finding the seeds. Searching for seeds, down on my knees, eyes reddened, back sore, is the life of an investigative reporter. Mothers don't let your children grow up to be...