This article promotes an interviewing technique that could be used when interviewing elite policy-making respondents who fear repercussions for divulging information and who, as a result, either become too emotionally unstable to allow for rapport or begin to resist disclosing information. Based on two independent research projects in Bulgaria and Cyprus, the article advocates the active use of a new type of research participant, the intermediary. This relatively new interview participant is used to introduce and vouch for the credibility of the researcher. The paper argues their inclusion in the interview decreases a respondent’s resistance by improving rapport and by preventing concealment of information. They achieve the former by: creating an aura of trust, by providing emotional support to the respondent and by converting the interview to a friendly conversation. They achieve the latter by intervening at the moments when they consider the respondent is deliberately or unintentionally withholding information.
