Spy the Lie E-Book

Mike Floyd

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 290

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

'The authors … are generous with their tips for a successful interrogation' The Sunday Times Identify the signs Ask the right questions Get to the truth Spy the Lie is a fascinating study of deception and a comprehensive lesson in how to identify and combat it. Featuring case studies based on the authors' real-life experiences in the field – involving 'turned' assets, KGB moles and criminal government officials – it reveals the methodology developed and used by the CIA to detect deception in the realms of counterterrorism and criminal investigation, and shows you how you can apply these techniques in your daily life. Whether hiring a new employee, investing money, knowing whether your boss is being straight with you, or finding out what your kids have been up to, this ingenious book will enable you to identify deceptive behavior in all its forms, and show you the techniques that will help you reach the truth.

Leseprobe

For those who have sacrificed in service to a noble cause

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

First published in the United States of America in 2012 by

St Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10010

Printed edition first published in the UK in 2012 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.co.uk

This electronic edition published in the UK in 2012 by Icon Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-84831-426-9 (ePub format)

ISBN: 978-1-84831-500-6 (Adobe ebook format)

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Published in Australia in 2012

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SPY THE LIE Copyright © 2012 by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, Susan Carnicero, and Don Tennant. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Design by Steven Seighman

CONTENTS

Title page

Dedication

Copyright information

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to Our World

1.The Difficulty We Have in Calling Someone a Liar

2.Navigating the Deception-Detection Obstacle Course

3.The Methodology: It All Comes Down to This

4.The Deception Paradox: Ignoring the Truth in ­Order to Find the Truth

5.What Deception Sounds Like

6.The Most Powerful Lies

7.The Wrath of the Liar

8.What Deception Looks Like

9.Truth in the Lie: Spying Unintended Messages

10.You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get

11.Managing Deception to Gain the Advantage

12.Let’s Be Careful Out There

13.A Textbook Case of Deception

14.Okay, So Now What?

APPENDIX I:Suggested Question Lists

APPENDIX II:A Sample Narrative Analysis Based on the Model

GLOSSARY

ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND WRITER

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is in large part the culmination of a body of work performed by a lot of people whose names aren’t on the cover, made possible in even larger part by the loving support of our families. The encouragement and advice of the people in our lives who are closest to us, along with their unflinching willingness to share the burdens that necessarily accompany any meaningful endeavor, lie at the heart of everything that went in to an effort that has spanned several years.

Throughout this pro­cess we have been surrounded by individuals who have demonstrated not only a gracious generosity with their time and expertise, but a genuine desire to help make this book a worthy voice of subject matter that can truly change people’s lives for the better. We are especially grateful for the able guidance of Peter Romary, an internationally recognized legal expert and a valued friend and colleague who serves as a partner in QVerity, the company we founded to advance and share the concepts ­we’ve presented in this book. Special thanks go out also to our other friends and colleagues at QVerity, including founding partner Bill Stanton, training specialist Jack Bowden, and marketing guru Bryan Stevenson.

Among the others who have touched this book with their extraordinary skills are those who read and re-­read various iterations of the manuscript, including Debi Houston, Jim and Frances Winstead, Alex and Terri Reeves, Mike and Penny Houston, Casey and Debbie Houston, Philip and Rebecca Houston, Chris Houston, Beth Houston, Nick Dawson, Ardith Tennant, and Marcy Romary. Our agent, Paul Fedorko of N. S. Bienstock in New York, had the vision to see that everyone should have access to what he had experienced in one of our training sessions, and the acumen to guide us through the transformation of that experience into the framework for this book. The crew at St. Martin’s Press could not have been more professional or easier to work with, and we are indebted to their talented copyeditors and designers. Our editor, Marc Resnick, is the best in the business—­his flexibility and good nature ­were matched only by the brilliance of his editorial craftsmanship. The trust he readily placed in us is deeply appreciated­.

PHIL HOUSTON’S PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If the greatest deception in life is to believe that any significant accomplishment is solely one’s own, then perhaps the greatest trea­sures in life are the people around us without whom any goal is only a dream. Coauthoring this book would not have been possible without the unwavering support of my wonderful and amazing family, which includes my wife, Debi; my sons, Phil Jr. and Chris; and my daughter, Beth. Without their love, support and understanding, I never would have been able to pursue the kind of career that enabled me to travel the world, and in turn to develop the techniques that we have captured in this book. Also, special thanks to my kids for allowing me to share their personal stories and vignettes to illustrate some of our techniques in the book.

While there are many people whose friendship and support I will always cherish, there are four former Agency colleagues worthy of special mention. These four colleagues and I formed our first commercial venture to provide training in the detection of deception. Without the hard work, entrepreneurial spirit and dedication of Bill Fairweather, Jack Bowden, Gary Baron, and a fourth colleague, who for the time being must go unnamed, this book might never have been written. I will be forever indebted to them. Their careers in the ser­vice of the United States are worthy of books unto themselves.

The Central Intelligence Agency is, of course, the backdrop for all we have written, and I would be remiss if I did not say a few words about this remarkable or­ga­ni­za­tion. Having worked there for almost twenty-­five years, I cannot imagine spending a career anywhere ­else. While it is essential that most of the Agency’s work be conducted in secrecy, it is also somewhat disappointing that everyone in the country cannot witness firsthand the incredible accomplishments that are achieved every day by Agency employees around the world. There is simply no finer or more dedicated group of people in the world, who work not for recognition, but only for freedom.

MICHAEL FLOYD’S PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am blessed to have been raised by a village. That village is Columbus, Nebraska, a small farming community in our nation’s heartland, filled with stout-­hearted people who live by example and not by words. No one ever accomplishes anything in life without the help of others. Sadly, space does not allow me to honor the countless people who have profoundly touched my life along the way.

I wish to give special thanks to my teachers, coaches, friends, and neighbors. To my life-long friend and partner in shenanigans, Steve Anderson—thank you for always having my back. To my high school track and football coach, Ron Callan—thank you for your inspiration and example. To my swashbuckling and entrepreneurial army buddy, Frank ­Argenbright—thank you for encouraging me to pursue the deception-detection profession all those years ago. To my mentor, the late John E. Reid, who referred to me as the “bald-faced lad from Nebraska”—I hope our book makes you proud. To my law school professors, Paula Lustbader and David Boerner—thank you for giving me one of life’s most important gifts: confidence in myself. To my beautiful sisters, Julie and Stephanie—thank you for your guidance, generosity, and humor. In memory of my parents, Bill and Wilma Floyd—I want to express my deepest thanks for their influence and unconditional love. Most importantly, thank you to my wife, Estelita—child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist extraordinaire—for your encouragement, support, wisdom, spirituality, and love. You are my rock.

SUSAN CARNICERO’S PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like my coauthors, I am fortunate to have spent my life surrounded by wonderful friends and family who have provided great direction and support over the years. Heartfelt appreciation goes to my parents, Anna Marie and Jack Brenton and Cliff Muncy, who I’m sure at times questioned some of my decisions, but nonetheless offered unwavering support. I’m very grateful to my marvelous friends and mentors, Sheila Derryberry and Warren Hammer, who expected only the best from me, both personally and professionally, and in the pro­cess led me to believe in myself. Without them, my participation in the book project would not have been possible. Though there is no room to thank them all, there are many more friends who have been instrumental in my coauthorship of this book, whether it was through providing me with story fodder or simply supporting the idea, and to them I am grateful. A special thanks to Cindy and Steve Gensurowsky, with whom I have shared countless hours sitting on the deck, sharing stories similar to those in the book, and dissecting life in general. You have been my lifeline for so many years, and your friendship is the gift of a lifetime.

Finally, the greatest thanks must go to my children, Lauren and Nick, for allowing me to use stories about you, both in our training and in the book. Our frenetic lives are not always easy, but your love and support, as well as your senses of humor, make each day worth greeting. I am so proud of both of you, and I look forward to continuing the journey towards adulthood with you both. Now, go do your homework! Love you guys.

DON TENNANT’S PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have the im­mense good fortune of living on the grounds of Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine, where values like truthfulness form the foundation of the school’s very existence. My wife, Ardith, is on the staff ­here, so I’m able to live and work in an environment that fosters a deep appreciation for the inherent nobility of mankind. It was a gift to be able to help write this book in a setting where our flaws as human beings are recognized as hurdles that face us all. So it’s a good place to be if you find yourself writing about situations in which people are tested with the choice to be truthful or untruthful. There is no inclination to judge or to cast any stones, because there are routine reminders that ­we’re all in this thing together, and that we all have work to do to get to where we need to be. I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of our friends ­here at Green Acre, and in the greater Eliot community, for that cherished gift, and for their encouragement and support along the way.

When I consider everything that has happened in my life, and everyone who played a role in making my involvement with this book possible, my thoughts keep going back to my family. My kids—­Ardith (named after her grandma, making her the third in a row), Don (yes, our first two kids had our names—­just let it go), Dan, and Shelly—­have given me more than I could ever give them in ten lifetimes of being their Daddy. They each have qualities that I hope I have when I grow up. Finally, and most precious of all, my beloved wife taught me what it means to truly love someone, and to truly be loved by someone. She is, and will always be, my angel.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Our World

Imagine that it’s the late afternoon of September 11, 2001. Rescue crews are dealing with the unthinkable amid the massive heap of acrid rubble at Ground Zero in New York, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood that morning. The wreckage of United Airlines Flight 93 has turned a peaceful field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, into a horrifying disaster site. The charred gash in the northwest face of the Pentagon, just minutes up the George Washington Parkway from where you and your colleagues are still coming to grips with what has happened, is smoldering. The United States of America is under attack.

You’re not unlike the hundreds of millions of your fellow citizens of America and the world who are trying to come to grips with the same thing. Just about all the emotions are the same. The difference is that you’re an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, and you have unique skills that will be tapped to help determine the source of the attack, the nature of the immediate threat to the nation, and our country’s best chances for preventing a recurrence. Welcome to our world.

The three of us came into this world from entirely different directions, and from vastly different backgrounds. The common denominator was the combination of a fascination with human nature, and a conviction that untruthfulness lies at the heart of all too many of the problems we face as individuals, as a nation, and as a global community.

Phil Houston was a career CIA officer, whose years of experience as an Agency polygraph examiner positioned him not only for senior-­level assignments overseeing internal investigations and the security of CIA personnel and facilities, but for the creation of that unique skill set, born of hundreds of interviews and noncoercive interrogations, that the country would be tapping at one of the most dire hours in its history. Michael Floyd’s CIA ser­vice was preceded by a separate career as a private-­sector polygraph expert. He provided training for polygraph examiners in the CIA and throughout the public and private sectors, and conducted polygraph examinations in hundreds of criminal investigations, many of them high-­profile cases. Susan Carnicero, an expert in criminal psychology, was a CIA operative under deep cover before coming in from the cold and serving as a polygraph examiner and personnel screening specialist. Eventually, we shared an overarching, driving passion: to be able to know whether or not a person is telling the truth.

The deception-­detection methodology we will share with you in this book has its roots in the polygraph-­examination experience—­an experience that can ascertain a person’s truthfulness quite effectively when administered by a skilled examiner. Our methodology can be employed with a degree of effectiveness that equates to or even surpasses what is achieved by means of a polygraph.

Phil was the principal architect of the methodology, which was developed within the CIA for applications that ­were Agency-­specific, and that cannot be shared ­here due to the need to protect CIA sources and methods. But its effectiveness became so quickly and widely recognized that the broader intelligence community and federal law enforcement agencies sought and received training in the methodology. The three of us have since worked together to further its development and to fine-­tune it for a wider range of applications.

The event that cleared the way for us to share the methodology with you took place in 1996, when Phil and several of his colleagues in the CIA’s Office of Security received the Agency’s permission to provide the training to the private sector. While much of its application within the intelligence community was clearly classified, the methodology itself was determined to be unclassified, so there was no reason the training ­couldn’t be made available to outside interests. Susan, who would become the lead instructor in the methodology within the Agency, joined the outside effort a short time later. Since then, the three of us have provided the training to hundreds of organizations, from Wall Street clients, corporate enterprises, and law firms, to nonprofits, academic institutions, and local law-­enforcement agencies.

Still, we recognized that the applicability of the model is so universal that there remained a massive audience that we could never hope to reach through our training programs. So we decided that the next logical step was to introduce the model to people everywhere who could use it in everyday life—­at work, at home, and at school. That’s where you come in.

You, like everyone ­else, routinely have questions, the answers to which have a meaningful impact on your life. Is your boss being completely up front about those projections for the next two quarters and why it behooves everybody to stick around rather than bolt to a competitor? Is your significant other being straight with you about having done nothing more last night than hook up with a couple of friends for a drink? Is your child being honest when he assures you that he has never experimented with drugs? Other questions may be less personally consequential, but you still want the answers: Does that quarterback mean it this time when he says he’s not coming back next season? Is that politician being truthful when she says she’s not going to run for president?

Imagine that you ­were able to identify deception in response­ to these and the countless other questions like them that arise all around you every day—­that you ­were successful in developing skills that take you to what we call the “spy-­the-­lie moment.” Welcome to your new world.

1.

The Difficulty We Have in Calling Someone a Liar

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.

—Malcolm Muggeridge

It appeared that Phil had drawn the long straw that day. The foreign asset he was scheduled to meet at a downtown hotel in a country that ­can’t be identified due to the sensitive nature of the CIA’s work there had served the Agency well for twenty years, and his loyalty was thought to have been proven. The asset, whom we’ll call “Omar,” had been questioned by CIA personnel on numerous occasions over the years in debriefings and routine security interviews, and his credibility was reinforced with every encounter. Omar had earned his stripes as a trusted partner who was prepared to carry out the mission whenever he was called upon.

Phil and an Office of Security colleague had been dispatched from their home base at Langley a couple of weeks earlier to conduct routine interviews with key assets in several countries in the region. Just like the CIA employees themselves, these assets had to be regularly interviewed to ensure that they continued to meet the Agency’s stringent security requirements. The work was interesting—­it was always a welcome change to get out into the field—­but grueling. These interviews could be extraordinarily intense and could go on for hours if an asset showed any sign of deception under questioning­.

A stickler for doing his homework, Phil reviewed Omar’s file like he was preparing to coach his beloved East Carolina University Pirates in a game against Virginia Tech. He studied accounts of Omar’s past activities as if he ­were watching game film, trying to pick up any obscure detail or nuance that would help ensure a win. When he finally closed the file, he basked in his good fortune. This one was going to be easy. Omar was obviously squeaky clean.

Phil’s colleague caught him at the door as he was leaving their secured location to conduct the interview with Omar.

“Hey, I guess you’re not gonna be around to get some dinner­ later, huh?”

“Oh yeah, I will—­this one’s a piece of cake,” Phil assured him. “I’ll be there in two hours.”

His colleague was clearly skeptical. “No way,” he said.

“Look, I finally got lucky,” Phil insisted. “I know I’ve had a ton of tough ones lately, but this one’s different. This guy’s been looked at by so many of our guys that there really just isn’t anything to worry about. Two hours.”

Phil headed for the prearranged site of the meeting, a guest room in a high-­rise hotel in the middle of town. Just getting Omar to the hotel was a clandestine operation in itself, a carefully choreographed plan that had been carried out with exacting precision to protect Omar from discovery by hostile intelligence ser­vices. When Phil and Omar ­were securely settled in the designated room—­a suite with a comfortable sitting area on one of the higher floors—­the two engaged in cordial conversation, and then Phil got down to business.

Phil sat on the sofa, and invited Omar to have a seat in the adjacent easy chair. With hundreds of similar interviews under his belt, Phil had the drill thoroughly rehearsed. He was relaxed, but businesslike, as he began to go through the prepared list of standard questions. Not surprisingly, Omar responded to them directly and comfortably—­Phil could see that after twenty years Omar, too, knew the drill.

“You’ve worked for us for years,” Phil acknowledged. “Have you ever worked for anybody ­else?”

It was an easygoing way of confronting this longtime, trusted asset with the question that had to be asked: Had he ever worked for the bad guys? What happened next stunned Phil.

Omar shifted in his seat, paused, and with visible discomfort responded with a question: “Can I pray?”

Phil felt like a quarterback who’d gotten creamed from behind as he scrambled out of the pocket. Whoa. Where did THAT come from? He had absolutely no expectation of seeing that behavior from Omar. And yet there it was.

“Sure, no problem,” Phil said, still recovering from the wallop. He expected Omar to bow his head for a few moments, and then proceed with his response. So what came next was even more puzzling.

Omar got up from the chair and went into the bathroom, and returned with a towel. What­ever this guy was doing, Phil was thinking, it ­wasn’t good. And it simply didn’t make any sense. Omar’s unblemished record and Phil’s certainty that he hadn’t been lying in the interview to that point meant there had to be a reasonable explanation for Omar’s actions.

Omar approached the window as Phil scrambled to make sense of what was happening. What is this guy doing? Is he going to try to signal somebody with the towel? How bad is this going to get? And then it dawned on him. Omar is Muslim. He was at the window to get his bearings so he could pray in the direction of Mecca. Muslims pray at set times throughout the day, and maybe this was one of those times.

Sure enough, Omar carefully spread the towel on the floor to use it as a prayer rug, and prostrated himself on it. As Omar prayed, Phil’s mind was whirling, and he began to second-­guess himself. Had he said anything to offend Omar? Had he been disrespectful of Omar’s faith? He ­couldn’t help but hope that it was his handling of the interview, not Omar’s actions, that ­were problematic. After all, Omar was a key asset of the local CIA operation. If Phil ­were to go back with the claim that a source who had been trusted for so many years and cleared by so many previous interviewers was bad, the head of the local operation was likely to want Phil’s scalp, not Omar’s. Beyond all that, Phil was getting hungry, and the dinner appointment he promised he would keep was approaching. No one wanted to believe that Omar was clean more than Phil did.

After praying for about ten minutes, Omar arose, folded the towel, and returned to his seat. As Phil gathered his thoughts to resume the interview, he recognized that he was being swayed by his own bias in wanting to believe Omar, rather than sticking to an objective assessment of Omar’s behavior. There was only one thing to do: hit him with the question again.

The response was hardly what Phil was hoping for. Omar paused and shifted his feet uneasily. “Why are you asking me this?” he protested. “Is there a concern?”

If there ­wasn’t before, there was now. Omar’s verbal and nonverbal behavior in response to the question told Phil it was time to shift into elicitation mode. Calling upon his well-­honed skills in nonconfrontational interrogation, Phil became something of a human GPS, navigating to a predetermined destination: a confession.

Phil reached his destination sooner than even he expected. In less than an hour, Omar admitted that he had been working for an enemy intelligence ser­vice for the full twenty years that he had served as a CIA asset.

Still, Phil’s job ­wasn’t over. Instead, it took an essential twist. Now he had to be assured that Omar was telling the truth when he claimed to have been working for the bad guys all those years. Remaining squarely in interrogation mode, Phil began asking questions to elicit information that would corroborate Omar’s confession. With the truth he managed to conceal for two de­cades finally exposed, Omar recounted how for years he had to pretend to be a novice when he underwent CIA training—­more often than not, he had already received the same training from the bad guys. He began to go into explicit detail about some of his successes against the Americans. One of his accomplishments was particularly chilling.

The individuals who hold the keys to the secrets of any CIA operation anywhere in the world are the communications officers. They are the ones who handle all the message traffic between their post, CIA HQ, and other CIA posts worldwide. They have access to the CIA’s ultrasensitive communications network and every classified document that’s transmitted to or from their post. If hostile intelligence ser­vices see the personnel at a CIA post as a potential gold mine of information, the comms officers are the mother lode.

Omar, it turned out, had gotten disturbingly close to the communications personnel at the nearby CIA post. The location had two comms officers who shared a ­house and employed a servant from the local population. Omar had scored a major win by gaining eyes and ears inside the comms officers’ residence: he recruited the servant.

That revelation came as another body blow to Phil, who was well aware of the damage that such a compromise could inflict. This time, the impact was swiftly moderated. Omar went on to confide in Phil that after only a couple of months, the servant abruptly and unexpectedly quit his job at the comms officers’ home. When Omar went to his handler to deliver­ the bad news, the handler, a former competitive weight lifter, was so incensed that he picked up a chair and broke it with his bare hands. Omar told Phil he had no idea of the value the bad guys placed on having an asset within the comms officers’ living quarters, and he began to fear for his own safety when the handler got in his face and began screaming uncontrollably at him.

Phil nodded attentively and compassionately as Omar unloaded it all. Inside, he was exhilarated. He had missed plenty of dinner appointments with far less consolation.

It was dawn when Phil wrapped up the interview. Omar went on his way, no doubt well aware that mea­sures ­were firmly in place to ensure that the necessary follow-­up on his case could proceed. Phil went back to the CIA facility and immediately cabled Langley. The revelation of Omar’s duplicity was received with near disbelief. How could this have happened? How was Omar able to keep the masquerade intact all those years?

Phil was beginning to grasp the answers. Deception, he well knew, could be unyieldingly difficult to detect. He knew he had come perilously close to blowing it himself in that ­hotel suite with Omar. He recognized how much he wanted to believe this guy—­he found himself looking for reasons to believe him, blaming himself for his insensitivity to Omar’s religious beliefs and practices. It was only when he disciplined himself to adhere to a systematic, objective approach to the interview that he prevailed.

That systematic approach was crystallizing in Phil’s mind. It was a work in progress, an amalgamation of the training he had received and the attention he gave to the behaviors he had observed in the course of conducting hundreds of interviews. He seemed to have a knack for assessing human behavior, and it was becoming more acute all the time. There was a gut feeling at work, yet it was more than that. There was a cognitive analysis going on, an almost imperceptible, subconscious cata­loging of verbal and nonverbal behaviors exhibited in response to the questions Phil would ask. And those behaviors ­were beginning to coalesce into an approach to detecting deception that was proving to be extraordinarily effective. Phil was transforming his knack into a quantifiable, replicable set of skills. He had no way of knowing at the time that that transformation would ultimately lead to a methodology for distinguishing truth from deception that officers throughout intelligence and law enforcement communities, and ultimately people from all walks of life in the private sector, would be trained to use.

2.

Navigating the Deception-Detection Obstacle Course

The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

—Daniel W. Davenport

There is no such thing as a human lie detector. Let us be clear that we certainly don’t think of ourselves that way. No individual on the planet can know beyond question whether what someone says is a lie, unless it’s contrary to what that individual already knows to be true. If someone tells you he was an assistant coach with the Washington Redskins under head coach Mike Shanahan in 2008 and 2009, and you happen to know that Shanahan ­wasn’t hired by the Redskins until 2010, you know that the person has told you a lie. If you don’t know Mike Shanahan from Mike Ditka, and you have no clue who coaches the Redskins, you have no way of knowing at that moment whether the person is lying. Nothing in this book, or any other book, will change that.

What we can do, however, is give you some tools that have proven in countless situations to be remarkably effective at detecting lies, and we can show you how to use them. Think of those tools as the means of applying the systematic approach that Phil was developing in the course of conducting those hundreds of interviews and interrogations for the CIA—­an approach that was ultimately molded into our deception­-detection methodology.

Before we get into the nitty-­gritty of the methodology, it’s important to understand that there are some formidable obstacles that get in the way of successfully detecting deception. ­Here are some that ­we’ve found to be especially challenging:

THE BELIEF THAT PEOPLE WILL NOT LIE TO YOU. This is the main obstacle that Phil had to deal with in his encounter with Omar, who had already been vetted and whose veracity and good standing ­were unquestioned when Phil interviewed him. In a more everyday setting, we think of this one as a social obstacle. In our society we operate with the belief that people are innocent until proven guilty, and with a mentality drilled into us since we ­were children that lying is one of the worst things you can do. Parents tell their kids that if they mess up, lying about it is ten times worse than what­ever it was they did that they shouldn’t have done in the first place. That’s a powerful influence that can cause real discomfort when ­we’re placed in a position of having to label someone as a liar, and we find ourselves wanting to believe people. The problem is that people do lie, and they lie a lot. Some behavioral research suggests that on average, we lie at least ten times in a twenty-­four-­hour period, including the so-­called “white lies” that we tell in order to avoid hurt or conflict. So the psychologists will tell you that anyone will lie to you if he believes it’s in his best interest to do so. What we would add is that he’s more likely to lie to you if he believes he can get away with it.

Another factor that causes us to want to believe people is that most of us feel uncomfortable sitting in judgment of anyone ­else, and rightly so. We don’t want to be casting any stones at anyone because we know that ­we’re not in any position to do so. What we need to remember, however, is that the pro­cess of ascertaining the truth is not in itself a judgmental endeavor. In fact, if we allow any sort of judgment to creep into the pro­cess, we handicap ourselves because it distracts us from the systematic approach we need to take in order to find the truth. The three of us have absolutely no inclination toward or interest in sitting in judgment of anyone whose truthfulness we assess. Our sole aim in detecting deception is to deliver factual data to inform the decision-­making pro­cess so that the best decision in any given situation can be made.

RELIANCE ON BEHAVIORAL MYTHS. There are a lot of behaviors that ­we’ve heard, that ­we’ve been told, and in some instances ­we’ve been taught, that are signs a person is or isn’t being truthful. We have found, however, that there simply isn’t a sufficient body of anecdotal or empirical evidence to support them, and that they’re not nearly as reliable as the behaviors we will share with you. We would recommend, therefore, that they not be employed in a deception-­detection scenario. We’ll talk about some of these behaviors in chapter 12.

THE COMPLEXITIES OF COMMUNICATION. Perhaps you’ve never thought about it this way, but when you’re trying to figure out whether a person is lying to you or telling you the truth, what you’re analyzing is communication. The problem is that communication can be a very iffy proposition, for a couple of reasons­.

First, due to the imprecision of language, we often hear a word and then put our own spin on it, and that interpretation is what guides our understanding of what’s conveyed to us and how we act in response. The second issue is that words aren’t all we have to deal with when we analyze communication—­in fact, they don’t even make up the lion’s share. Research tells us that if we divide communication into two broad buckets—­everything that’s a word, or the verbals; and everything that’s not a word, or the nonverbals—­the majority of communication is nonverbal.

So why is that important relative to detecting deception? If ­we’re trying to analyze what’s being communicated to us, and the majority of communication is nonverbal, how much nonverbal training have we had? Possibly not all that much. On the