S3E4 The Body Language of Lying

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 04

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• 1:08Speaker 03

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• 1:35Speaker 03

  This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.

• 1:38John Kiriakou?

  When you get into CIA operational training, one of the many things that they do is they give you specialized training on how to read somebody's body language. And one of the videos that they show you as part of that training is a video of a former Massachusetts State Senator by the name of Billy Bulger. Billy Bulger happened to be the brother of notorious gangster Whitey Bulger. Whitey Bulger had been missing for years, and the FBI long believed that Billy knew where he was. Well, Billy was the president of the Massachusetts State Senate. He went on to become the president of the University of

• 2:19John Kiriakou?

  Massachusetts. This was a very highly respected guy. They even had a younger brother, John, known as Jackie Bulger, who was a judge in Massachusetts. Well, the video that they showed us at the CIA was of Senator Billy Bulger, having been called before a congressional committee to testify on whether or not he had contact with his brother Whitey, who of course had absconded. Billy was adamant that he had no contact at all with Whitey. But his body language betrayed him. He did everything that the CIA told us to look out

• 2:58John Kiriakou?

  for in a liar. In the end, Whitey was captured in Santa Monica, California. Billy had to retire in disgrace, and the truth finally came out. Of course Billy Bulger had contact with his brother. Of course Billy Bulger knew that Whitey was hiding in California. He just couldn't bring himself to rat his brother out.

• 3:25John Kiriakou?

  I'm John Kurayaki. Welcome to Dead Drop, what makes a spy tick. For those keeping score, this is part two of our Spy Academy series. Class will be in session momentarily. But before I ring the school bell, I want to thank you for listening and for doing all those things that help others find their way here. Liking, rating, reviewing, and commenting on the podcast wherever you happen to be listening to it. You doing all those things really, truly does help more people find their way to the podcast, and I'm very grateful.

• 3:58John Kiriakou?

  Well, you know what that means. Class has started. In the last episode, we talked about who lies and why they lie. Now that we've ID'd the liars, we need to watch them lie in real time and then catch them at it. In this episode, we're going to talk about the myriad ways that liars give themselves away unintentionally, just by being who they are. Even exceptional liars have their tells. You just need to know what body parts to look at and then wait for them to put on a show. It might not be that much of a production, the show that is, but there will be a show. Each and every one of us speaks body language. That's as both speakers and as listeners. We see and sense lots of what others are

• 4:42John Kiriakou?

  thinking without them having to say so much as a single word. And when they do speak, we derive plenty of unspoken information from their vocal tone and pitch. Do they sound natural? Do they sound strained in any way? Volume speaks, well, not volumes, but loud enough. We even take note of performance. Why do they keep twitching like that, for example? Even two people staring at each other silently are actually screaming at each other at the top of their body language lungs. An arm wave or a fist banging on the table can be part of the communication. Adolf Hitler remains among history's best-known

• 5:23John Kiriakou?

  and respected fist bangers, academically, anyway. Scholars in rhetoric, history, linguistics, and communication have studied Hitler's speaking style for decades. For starters, Hitler walked in the door with charisma. You can't learn that. You can't necessarily harness it, but if you have it, you can at least get people to listen to you. People who witnessed Hitler's speak in real time noted his flaws. His voice was harsh. It had an edge to it that either set you aflame or put your teeth on edge. His speeches weren't just long. They were often repetitive and vaguely worded, confusing even. In Hitler's case, content wasn't king.

• 6:07John Kiriakou?

  Performance was king. That's why Hitler literally worked on his performance and performance style.

• 6:17John Kiriakou?

  His personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, wrote in 1955 in his memoir called Hitler Was My Friend, that in the mid-1920s, shortly after his release from Landsberg Prison, Hitler used Hoffman's camera to record himself speaking. He'd hold private sessions where he'd study his facial expressions, his hand gestures, his posture, and his poses. He would listen to playbacks of recorded speeches during practice sessions in order to study and then improve his performance. Add a meaningful pause here. Hit that word a little harder over there. He understood the effect that he had on crowds. He understood how to use that effect. His words worked the crowd on one level, while his physical presence conveyed

• 7:02John Kiriakou?

  a similar, but even more far-reaching message that worked everyone there in a whole other way that they didn't even realize. The words were the excuse for his voice to be in their ears. The real message, the one he needed everyone there to feel with every fiber of their being, was conveyed almost entirely by his voice.

• 7:27John Kiriakou?

  We see and interpret each other's body language on what I call an animal level, subliminal, below the threshold of conscious awareness, entirely nonverbal, but still pretty damn clear. Hitler was hardly the first person to realize body language could speak subliminally and to great effect. In ancient Greece and in ancient Rome, philosophers and orators incorporated a range of gestures and postures into their speaking styles. These touches wouldn't necessarily win an argument, but they were part of a larger impression one was trying to make. After that, the study of body language had to wait a while to advance.

• 8:08John Kiriakou?

  Wait a while, that is, until 1644, when English Dr. John Bulwer published something called "Kurologia," or "The Natural Language of the Hand," one of the first attempts to catalog what hand gestures meant. Since then, of course, we've all come to appreciate quite explicitly what certain hand gestures mean, especially the explicit ones. In 1872, Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, usually treated as the starting point of modern research. In it, Darwin correctly identified that basic emotional

• 8:49John Kiriakou?

  expressions are innate, universal, and shared across human cultures and animal species.

• 8:57John Kiriakou?

  In the 1940s and 1950s, teams of CIA-based Sovietologists, analysts who looked at the Soviet Union in great detail, spent countless hours examining video and still photographs of other Soviet officials in close proximity to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. They were hoping to parse intelligence insights based solely on body language. Did this general show deference to that general? Who was Stalin laughing with? Who was he laughing at? Was there anyone getting a death stare? This was real analysis. Also in the 1950s, anthropologist Ray Birdwhistle started the systematic scientific study of nonverbal communication through

• 9:41John Kiriakou?

  body movements, gestures, facial expressions, and posture. He coined the term kinesics to describe it. And finally, in 1970, author Julius Fast wrote a bestseller called Body Language, sold 3 million copies, and made the phrase a part of everyday speech.

• 10:01John Kiriakou?

  Now, what we're looking for, and we'll come back to this because it's important, isn't the lie itself, although the lie will always be important. What we're looking for is behavioral, evidence of deception that tells us explicitly that our subject is in a lying state of mind. Before we can start, however, we need to get a fix on the body language universe. What constitutes normal or baseline behavior for both the individual and the group? By establishing a normal, anomalies become more visible, easier to spot. If the subject normally, let's say, rolls their eyes at everything they hear, which one of my attorneys used to do, it would drive me crazy, then the subject rolling their eyes isn't proof of anything.

• 10:46John Kiriakou?

  It's just a weird habit that they have. In this case, if the subject stops rolling their eyes at an interviewer's question, let's say, that would tell us something. That subject's unrolled eyes marks a deviation from baseline norms. Ignore them at your peril. There are technological innovations like polygraph exams, lie detector tests, that can measure this deviation. Really, the best example is the polygraph. It measures bodily reactions, but it doesn't always reveal what those reactions mean. As we're talking about the study of body language as an interrogation technique, we also need to touch on what's called the Reed technique.

• 11:28John Kiriakou?

  The Reed technique is a structured interview and interrogation method created in the 1950s by a guy named John Reed. Reed was a polygraph expert and a former Chicago police officer. His technique created a high-pressure environment for the interviewee with emotional swings from the accusatory to the empathetic. Since it's spread in the 1970s, the Reed technique has been widely used by police departments across the United States, and it works something like this. Let's say, police officer Pat believes the subject he's interviewing is lying to him. Without missing a beat, Officer Pat is supposed to initiate a nine-step process that, if it works, will break down the subject's defenses.

• 12:13John Kiriakou?

  So, the nine steps go like this. One, positive confrontation. And frankly, you can see this in YouTube videos 24 hours a day. Tell the subject that they've been caught and that there's a growing mountain of evidence stacking against them. It doesn't matter if the evidence is true or false or doesn't exist at all. Two, theme development. Offer the suspect a face-saving or sympathetic excuse for why they did what they did. Three, handling denials. Simply cut off the suspect whenever they try to say that they're innocent. The sooner they get that, defending themselves will be useless and unproductive, the better.

• 12:54John Kiriakou?

  The point of the exercise is a confession, not excuses. Four, overcoming objections. As the suspect begins to break down, bore in on their lingering resistance to confession by undermining the logic of their resistance. After a while, their own resistance will stop making any sense, even to them. Five, retaining attention. Having worn down the suspect, worn down their energy and their resistance, their minds will begin to wander. Keep the suspect focused on you because you are their salvation. Six, handling mood. Show sympathy when the suspect gets emotional.

• 13:38John Kiriakou?

  What you want is better for both of you. Hell, it'll be better for everyone involved. They just need to confess. Seven, presenting the alternative question. There will likely be one last defensive stand before the game is over. Offer the suspect two choices, but both options mean the suspect is guilty. This is also known as the two-choice trap. Eight, oral confession. Have the suspect explain the details out loud. They did the crime, and now they're ready to do the time. And nine, the written statement. Turn the spoken confession into a signed, written document. File the paperwork, and then call it another good day at the office.

• 14:22John Kiriakou?

  And this is exactly why I always say that my advice is to repeat as a mantra, "I want to talk to my attorney, and I don't talk to cops." Still in use across America, the Reed technique has its supporters and its foes. Its foes include The Cornell Law Review, which earlier this year published law professor Maria J. Group's paper, "A Call to Eradicate the Reed Technique: An Alternative to Deceptive Interrogations." There are studies demonstrating that the intense psychological pressure can cause innocent people, young people, or vulnerable individuals to confess to crimes that they did not commit.

• 15:07John Kiriakou?

  And believe me, the history books are full of examples. The police officers using the technique are trained, as part of the technique, to lie about evidence, to lie about eyewitnesses, frankly, to lie about pretty much everything. Keep in mind, the thing that likely triggered a police officer switching the Reed technique on inside their own head is an observation of body language that, to them, indicated lying. But another valid criticism of the technique is how it ignores cultural factors that drive specific body language. Different cultures, for example, have different body languages. This flaw, and the others in the technique, have produced countless confessions from

• 15:50John Kiriakou?

  innocent people. Interrogations are innately confrontational, with one side of the table having all of the power. When confronted by especially damning information during interrogation, a suspect's face may turn red. But is that guilt? Embarrassment? Shock? Is it something the person asking the question hasn't even considered? The internal knowledge of guilt will produce one set of physical reactions and manifestations when triggered. The manifestations of embarrassment can look similar, but they're coming from a different place. Different cultures handle embarrassment differently, and they find embarrassment in different things.

• 16:35John Kiriakou?

  What embarrasses an American might have no impact on a German or a Pakistani, let's say. Having some grasp of the culture of the person being interrogated will help understand their self-conscious reactions along with the rest of their body language. Body language itself is affected by a variety of factors, including cultural traits. Even something as basic as eye contact carries different implications and has strict rules that those inside the culture feel compelled to follow. Americans want to look you right in the eye, or be looked in the eye, by whomever they're doing business with. Someone looking you in the eye is someone you can trust, and they know they can trust

• 17:16John Kiriakou?

  you because you are meeting their look 100%. But in Eastern cultures, that same eye contact can play very differently. Direct eye contact is seen as aggressive, confrontational. In many Asian cultures, looking away is the sign of respect or deference to someone superior. In Western culture, you nod if you agree. In Central Asia, you nod if you disagree.

• 17:46Alan Katz?

  It's Alan, Dead Drop's producer, and it's time for our October meeting of the Quince Fan Club. John, is there a piece or a couple of items in your closet or chest of drawers that your hand always finds first?

• 17:59John Kiriakou?

  Actually, Alan, there are a couple of Quince pieces in my growing collection. There is a sweater that I absolutely adore. It's actually the first Quince piece that I bought. It's cashmere, and it is the softest, yet lightest, cashmere sweater I've ever owned. And I just bought a pair of linen trousers. I'll tell you, when I go to the doctor, I always wear jeans, and then I get on the scale, and the doctor's like, "Oh, you should lose three pounds." Well, my jeans are three pounds. And so, I bought these linen trousers, I wore them to the doctor, and he says, "Hey, buddy, you lost a pound or two." The truth is, these linen trousers are light, they're beautiful, they're comfortable, and

• 18:43John Kiriakou?

  now they are my go-to pants.

• 18:45Alan Katz?

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• 19:03John Kiriakou?

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• 19:15Alan Katz?

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• 19:27John Kiriakou?

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• 19:39Alan Katz?

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• 19:51John Kiriakou?

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• 20:01Alan Katz?

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• 20:12John Kiriakou?

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• 20:41Speaker 00

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• 21:20John Kiriakou?

  In America, it used to be a lot more commonplace for people to hitch rides by extending their thumb. If I went to Saudi Arabia and did that, the people passing in their cars wouldn't dream of stopping for me because my extended thumb, in their culture, is flat-out offensive. It's like the middle finger. Even a simple "smile" can mean different things depending on the circumstances that caused the smile. An honest or sincere smile crinkles the eyes and causes the lips to turn up at the corners. That's the thing about real smiles. You can see a real smile reflected in the smiler's eyes.

• 21:59John Kiriakou?

  We all know the look of a dead-eyed smile. That's because we read smiles internally, looking for signs of their sincerity. An interviewer who provokes a smile from their suspect needs to be clear on whether that smile is sincere or not. Was it a smile? Or was it more of a smirk?

• 22:21John Kiriakou?

  Welcome to micro-expressions. Those fleeting flashes of emotion that come and are gone almost before they've been registered. Those micro-expressions can be better than a confession booth. Studies often undermine traditional popular conceptions about body language. Many people believe that rapid eye blinking indicates deception. But while rapid eye blinking is associated with stress, it isn't necessarily indicative of deception. More likely, it means that the subject is worried about something, is uncomfortable, or is worried because being interviewed in this way is just naturally stressful. None of that constitutes proof of deception.

• 23:04John Kiriakou?

  Our lips also can tell unintentional stories about us, too. Slightly parted lips indicate that a person is relaxed or comfortable. Firmly set lips indicate fear or resolve. Dishonesty isn't necessarily the only meaning. Interrogations can get very emotional, but different cultures handle emotions differently. Culture affects how people react to discomfort, pain, suffering, including severe physical pain. People from the Southern Mediterranean and the Middle East are expected to express pain and suffering. The emotional displays during funerals in those places are an expression of that tendency.

• 23:45John Kiriakou?

  By contrast, there's that famous English stiff upper lip that stands firmly in the face of all adversity. An uncomfortable example of that steely resolve: In 1808, the English author Fanny Burney offered to hold her cancerous breast while doctors removed it, and removed it without any sort of anesthesia whatsoever.

• 24:09John Kiriakou?

  Burney's reaction was shaped by an English culture that expected people to be nothing but brave in the face of severe agony. In the absence of anesthesia, what else have you got?

• 24:22John Kiriakou?

  Along the same lines, Confucian culture required people to keep their pain to themselves and to never share it with others. In the Soviet Union, when people went to the dentist, they knew that there would be no anesthesia, so they would anesthetize themselves with huge quantities of vodka beforehand while accepting it as a given, that there would be significant boul afterwards.

• 24:48John Kiriakou?

  Social boundaries are another crucial factor we need to recognize while assessing someone's truthfulness. Each culture has its own social boundaries, and these will be reflected in our suspect's body language. If you work with someone from Turkey, for instance, you'll quickly learn that their idea of social distance is measured in inches, not in feet. If someone Turkish wants to have a meaningful conversation with you, they will feel comfortable getting so face-to-face with you that you'll know precisely what your Turkish friend had for dinner. And maybe lunch and breakfast, too. The question will be, are you that culturally comfortable? If you're American or a Brit, you're more used to someone standing that close because

• 25:31John Kiriakou?

  they needed to whisper into your ear, not have an extended intimate "tet-a-tet." These cultural differences make all the difference. Body language can also be impacted by certain mental conditions. Now, the arena we're playing in is our interviewee's state of mind. That will be impacted by a lot of different things all at once. State of mind might be the most complicated part of the whole picture we're trying to create in our minds. Because we can't literally climb into this other person's head, we need to use their unintentional indicators, their body language, to speak for them, for our benefit. So the last thing we want to do is misinterpret what we're seeing.

• 26:14John Kiriakou?

  Someone walking in the door depressed will present differently than someone walking in the door happy. The two even stand differently. Of course, the question is, why are they depressed, or why are they happy? Someone suffering from social anxiety will seem inordinately worried, nervous, unstable, or guilty of something that they didn't actually do. "seem" is the key word here. Feeling that way organically will likely make a person reluctant to have any physical contact with you or with others. They'll balk even at shaking your hand. So how will you interpret that? Will you interpret it correctly? Listen, it's a rabbit hole in the making.

• 26:58John Kiriakou?

  As you observe them, a person suffering social anxiety will seem nervous, worried, or utterly incapable of dealing with ordinary affairs. Severe anxiety will make the sufferer appear utterly incapable of functioning and make whatever they say seem unreliable or untrue. But someone suffering from this condition didn't just wake up to this today, the day that you're meeting them. They've probably lived with it for years, a decade or more, never seeking treatment. They're used to it. It's just who they are. To them, being this way is perfectly normal. To you, however, it's them lying. If you don't appreciate who walked in the door.

• 27:42John Kiriakou?

  The National Institute for Mental Health estimates that between 42.5 million to more than 50 million American adults, roughly 19% to more than 20% of the entire US adult population, suffer from anxiety disorders or significant anxiety symptoms in any given year. Social anxiety sufferers exhibit consistent observable symptoms. Panic attacks can suddenly overwhelm someone and turn their normal, thoughtful composure into chaotic overreaction, including rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking, or the total inability to speak. A person experiencing social anxiety will appear to be under great stress, even in

• 28:25John Kiriakou?

  what would seem to be unstressful times. Pushed, the subject with obsessive-compulsive tendencies will engage in repetitive behaviors or embrace certain personal rituals whenever they leave home, like checking and rechecking that the lights are off and the doors are closed and locked. Not that they'll ever feel secure that the doors are closed and locked. That's why they'll go back two, three, four times to double, triple, quadruple check. Are they acting guilty? Or do they have obsessive-compulsive disorder?

• 29:00John Kiriakou?

  All the people I just mentioned, each with their various issues before they sit in a room with you, is going to bring that mental baggage into an interrogation, which will likely trigger all their symptoms anew.

• 29:14Speaker 00

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• 29:51Speaker 03

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• 30:17John Kiriakou?

  So, as you stare across the space between you and the object of your investigation, needing to establish communication with this person, just so you can do your damn job and establish in your own mind whether or not they're being honest, it is vital to take into account the full monty of both verbal and non-verbal communication, both intentional and unintentional. Now that we've walked into the room where our interview subject awaits, we need to look not just at them, but at them from inside their own head if we can. If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the Costard

• 31:01John Kiriakou?

  and Touchstone family. Just the Photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this, Just the Photographer will put you right there, on the ground, right next to David, inside his head in fact. It's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costardandtouchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes.

• 31:45John Kiriakou?

  In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone, like The Donor, A DNA Horror Story, The Hall Closet, Sage Wellness Within, and the How Not to Make a Movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now, back to Dead Drop. Popular TV shows often blend forensic and criminal psychology into dramatic crime-solving stories, though they frequently blur the line between real psychological science and bullshit. For a little while, every network seemed to have a show about a profiler of one kind or another. Criminal Minds, Mindhunter, Lie to Me, and Hannibal all came at the subject from slightly

• 32:29John Kiriakou?

  different angles, giving the impression that criminal profiling was a common career path. It wasn't, and it isn't. People with degrees in forensic psychology are much more likely to spend their careers working as correctional counselors, probation officers, victim advocates, or mental health counselors. Profilers, not so much. I've actually never met a profiler. Still, in those various jobs, these good people, as they interact with their clients, charges, duties, and responsibilities, will be examining body language. I want to put another word on the table, too: candor. What a trained professional in this field is looking for isn't so much lying as candor.

• 33:13John Kiriakou?

  Is the person I'm questioning being candid with me? A lie can be the product of a moment's bad decision-making. "Did you steal the cookie, Johnny?" "No," says Johnny, the cookie clearly visible in his hand. Lack of candor, on the other hand, is a cautious indicator to the investigator that the subject is being dishonest. "So, did you steal the cookie, Johnny?" "No," says Johnny, slowly putting his hand, the one with the cookie in it, behind his back. Johnny isn't just lying there, he's exhibiting full-on liar behavior. With candor in mind, let's put this on the table: catching someone in a lie is good. Catching them in a web of lies, that's better.

• 33:54John Kiriakou?

  A former security specialist with the Central Intelligence Agency, Susan Carnesaro, has decades of experience in interviewing, interrogation, and polygraph examination focused primarily on national security, employment, and criminal issues. She is a founding partner of Qverity, an information collection company for government agencies, law enforcement, and private corporations, and she's the co-author of the book Spy the Lie. A terrific book wherein Susan and her co-writers lay out a system for asking questions and watching responses in an interrogation. Spy the Lie advocates strongly that the interrogator avoid casual speculation based on surface assumptions.

• 34:39John Kiriakou?

  As I just pointed out, even obvious-seeming body language must be contextualized first. We assume that someone sitting across from us with their arms folded is closed off, and therefore dishonest. But as Susan and her co-authors point out, how one sits is often a matter of personal comfort. The subject may even be cold, and so they fold their arms across their chest. In that context, folded arms are self-soothing and nothing more. But it's also true that folded arms can reflect confidence. The person about to be questioned might not be closed off at all. They might be on the offensive. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used to give entire speeches with his arms folded.

• 35:22John Kiriakou?

  Still, how an interviewee handles their arms and hands speaks to their underlying psychology. A person holding an object against their chest, or placing an arm in a resting position on the table in front of them, or using one arm to hold the other arm behind their back, these are all specific gestures that reveal that the person being questioned feels uncomfortable. Now, what they're uncomfortable about is a whole other question, so it's a good thing we're about to interrogate them. Spy the Lie's system replicates a polygraph's functionality. The process focuses on a question and the physical response to the question. Now, certain types of questions are more effective than others. In a very real sense, an interrogation is an endurance test.

• 36:06John Kiriakou?

  Who can outlast whom? Another way to think of it is as a marathon versus a sprint. In a marathon, you want to pace yourself. You want to conserve your energy until you really need it, which you will. Vaguely worded, overly complicated questions expend more energy than they're worth, and on top of that, they distract your focus away from the interviewee's response and onto the rambling question that you asked. Also, long questions give the interviewee time to think while you're flailing around. That allows them to more easily create false details to fit their existing narrative. So don't enable their bullshit. You need to find your inner Hemingway here: short, sweet, and to the point.

• 36:50John Kiriakou?

  That kind of rhythm with those kinds of questions will make the subject expend more mental energy. As they dance harder and harder, it will get more challenging for them to keep their story or stories straight, making it harder for them to create false details or figure out ways to evade answering you. Another way to think of it: don't shotgun your questions. Sniper them, aiming at specific information. You're not there to fish, you're there to catch. By keeping the questions short, simple, and direct, you invite the interviewee to slip up or start bumping into inconsistencies in their story that might indicate a lie.

• 37:31John Kiriakou?

  Finally, the questions must be loaded, but not leading. Leading questions imply one possible simple answer, usually yes or no. You've made it easy on the subject. Loaded questions, by contrast, imply that you know something, and because you know it, you know what their response should be. Now you've got them thinking, "Do you know? And what do you know?" Now they have to answer in a way that won't conflict with you, but won't do any more harm than has already been done. You've got them thinking way more during that interrogation than is good for them. I'm going to put yet another word on the table: clusters. It's that first five seconds where all is revealed.

• 38:16John Kiriakou?

  The truth will play simply. Deception, on the other hand, will manifest in a cluster of two or more signs, inappropriate responses, failure or reluctance to answer, qualifier-heavy answers, and generally suspicious responses. Clusters of deceptive behavior. It goes back to candor. Is the subject being candid? When they're not, their deceptive behaviors begin to cluster. If a subject asks, "What evidence do you have against me?", that's a tell. Put yourself in their shoes. If you know there's no such evidence, you wouldn't frame the question from the evidence's perspective, as if it did or could exist.

• 38:57John Kiriakou?

  At the very least, the subject should say, “There’s no evidence against me.” That’s because, in fact, there isn’t. In this first five seconds, it’s possible that you’ll see a nonverbal response even before your question is completed. That’s because, while we normally speak from 120 to 150 words a minute, we think way more words. Research suggests that our thoughts move at least 10 times faster than our mouths could possibly work. Thought is faster because it isn’t expressed as words, but as concepts. That’s why subjects can experience two or more nonverbal reactions, a cluster, almost immediately.

• 39:40John Kiriakou?

  It’s important to recognize that your suspect will also exhibit some truthful behavior, too. Very few people lie about everything. If you ask a deceptive person a question that they’re comfortable answering, you’ll get a truthful response from them. It’s the uncomfortable questions that tell the story that you’re looking for. Imagine we’re talking about a business deal instead of a criminal matter. We’re buying a large ticket item from a private seller. You ask the potential seller if the price on the table is as low as he’s willing to go. Maybe he lops off a few dollars. That number, he insists, is his bottom line. It’s a good price. It’s a fair price. At this point in the interview, the seller wants to show you that he’s a reasonable,

• 40:23John Kiriakou?

  honest person whom you can trust, so please just close the deal. It’s a manipulation, of course. He has a clear motive. He wants what he wants and needs to happen. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t like the deal, you can always just walk away, but let’s bring it back to a criminal investigation. The subject we’re sitting with wants us to see them as an honest person, even though they aren’t. We ask them about their work. “What did you do in the organization?” A straightforward, honest answer would be, “I’m an accountant,” or “I’m an engineer,” simple and direct. But let’s say we ask the question, and the answer begins with, “I’m an accountant,” but then the accountant goes on to elaborate on all the other things they do for the company. Hmm, so why are they doing that?

• 41:07John Kiriakou?

  Why are they going to such lengths to convince us that they’re a good person? Guilty people may speak a lot of words while answering your question, but most of them are just a word salad. They’ll explain something off to the side, but never directly deny that they’ve committed a crime. Put yourself in an honest person’s shoes, trying to deny their guilt. They’re trying to articulate their lack of culpability. The dishonest person, fully able to articulate that but unwilling to, is concerned instead with finding an evasive pathway. The internal rationale is different. So is the internal workflow. Honest people tend much more toward yes and no. That’s where the truth sits. Aggression is another indicator of deception.

• 41:52John Kiriakou?

  If you ask a subject if they know anything about information that has gone missing, for instance, they may respond by attacking the question. “You people always think I did it!” is not a convincing answer to the wrong question. Another significant measure of deception: your suspect dismisses the question or tells you it’s stupid. “There you go again!” is code for “I’m being deceptive.” There are also nonverbal indicators that reflect aggression. Sometimes we’ll see a person who smiles at an inappropriate time during questioning. That’s another microindicator. They’re small, but significant, all the same. A suspect may talk a long time and insist that he loves his murdered wife, but through

• 42:37John Kiriakou?

  it all, he still doesn’t respond to the actual question, “Did you kill your wife?” The suspect may say that he would never hurt his wife, but that’s different from saying that he did not hurt his wife. Conditional tense is not the same as an explicit denial. He may talk around it in an effort to convince you that he’s a good, caring person, but it’s a good thing you know better. This is an example of perception manipulation. Another version of that: if a person cites their strong religious beliefs during the interview. This should be regarded as a perception qualifier. It’s their effort to dress up their lives. Subjects inclined to hide behind religiosity will use phrases like “to tell the truth,”

• 43:22John Kiriakou?

  or “truthfully what I think is.”

• 43:26John Kiriakou?

  They need you to look past them and their deceptions to the truth underscoring religious beliefs that they don’t honor. Another significant nonverbal tell: the behavioral pause. “Hey, what were you doing five years ago on this day?” If you pause to think before answering that, that’s absolutely normal. We would all do that. That’s why it’s a bad question to ask a subject. If you ask them, however, “Did you rob the bank five years ago?” then there’s no reason for a lot of thought while considering a response. Either they did it or they didn’t do it. If the suspect pauses to debate internally how to phrase their response, it’s because their response is a lie.

• 44:08John Kiriakou?

  Grooming gestures, fixing one’s hair, or altering some aspect of one’s clothing, those are also indications of deception. At the CIA, they taught us, when you ask someone a question and they begin picking lint off their sleeve or off their pant leg, they’re preparing to lie to you.

• 44:30John Kiriakou?

  Attack behavior points to deception. That doesn’t mean a subject gets violent. Rather, they threaten self-harm if the interrogation continues.

• 44:40John Kiriakou?

  In Spy the Lie, there’s an account of a woman who had to be polygraphed four times because her behavior was so peculiar. Eventually, she threatened to throw herself from the CIA’s seventh-floor balcony unless the polygraph examiner backed off. Can you imagine that? In the next episode, we’ll get into the nitty and the gritty of the interrogation process itself. That’s when the fun really begins. But before we can do that, we need to consider how exactly we formulate our questions and prepare for our subject’s possible responses. The question has arisen during questioning, “Is the suspect a pervert?” “No,” replies the suspect. “I’m not a pervert. Perverts are the lowest form of life.”

• 45:23John Kiriakou?

  Okay, what’s happened here is the subject has made what’s called a convincing statement that’s non-responsive, but makes an assertion meant to convince the questioner that the subject is still a good person. So here’s the key. Sure, he denied the accusation, but then added more to it, which then creates the jacuzzi moment. “I don’t believe you.” For the interrogator, the best follow-up questions fly below the radar. They might not even sound like questions. In the case of the suspect trying to convince us that he’s not a pervert, the interrogator should agree with the suspect. “You’re so right. Perverts are scum. No decent person would want to associate with perverts.”

• 46:08John Kiriakou?

  Now that you’ve taken the wind out of the convincing statement sails, you can both agree, “Perverts are terrible people.” So then, why is this guy such a pervert? There is one important qualifier to everything we’ve just talked about. If the suspect is a sociopath, the rules change, because sociopaths are, frankly, sociopaths. By dint of brain chemistry, sociopaths lack any moral dimension. Right or wrong, aren’t clearly marked out in their heads, like they are in everyone else’s. Think of Charles Manson. His broken psyche was driven by the need to dominate. No appeal to conscience would alter his internal responses.

• 46:50John Kiriakou?

  When dealing with sociopaths, and this applies to whether you’re interrogating one or simply unfortunate enough just to have one in your life, one effective approach is to convince them that you think they are completely unimportant. The subtleties of a conventional interrogation are wasted on sociopaths otherwise. Psychopaths also present challenges, but with them, the trick is to keep them talking. Holding a psychopath’s interest isn’t easy, because all they ever really want to talk about is themselves. That’s why it’s vital to keep the discussion with a psychopath focused on them. Whereas you want the sociopath to believe they’re unimportant to you, with the psychopath,

• 47:34John Kiriakou?

  you need to impress them that you’re impressed by them. Interrogating psychopaths demands that the interrogator do their homework. They’ve got to know the crime scene and the psychopath’s background so that the psychopath always sees themselves as the main topic of the interview. The psychopath also must grasp that you’ve done your homework. That’s one more thing that keeps it interesting for them. There’s a card game element to interviewing a psychopath. Think about Hannibal Lecter. The more his interrogators know and know about him, the better their chances of getting what they want from him. In order to keep the psychopath fully engaged, the interrogator must play the psychopath’s

• 48:17John Kiriakou?

  family history, arrest record, and mental health issues. Never use moral or ethical issues. Psychopaths, just like sociopaths, don’t give a shit about what is right or wrong. They feel zero responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Those are all our problems. But the more familiar the interviewer is with the crime, its details, and the crime scene, the more likely he is to spark the psychopath’s genuine interest in continuing the conversation. A clever interviewer might critique how the crime was conducted. If you tell a psychopath they made mistakes, they’re likely to defend themselves in great detail, focusing in on how precisely they conducted the crime. That’s a perfect setup.

• 49:03John Kiriakou?

  An incensed sociopath is a talkative sociopath, who, as they keep talking, will become increasingly likely to implicate themselves. A quick note about psychopaths: they tend to be very effective at using body language themselves. That’s why someone interviewing a psychopath needs to focus on the psychopath’s words. Another type of person immune to interrogation techniques is someone who’s been subjected to torture and survived it. Torture survivors have sometimes developed a form of self- Torture survivors have sometimes developed a form of self-hypnotism that prevents them from being broken.

• 49:43John Kiriakou?

  A non-life-threatening, sorry, a non-threatening form of interrogation based on the development of friendship might be the only workable way to approach this kind of subject. Finally, the same kind of challenges as dealing with a psychopath face the interrogator dealing with a professional intelligence officer. Having been trained to understand all of the interrogation tactics, a trained spy can be difficult to trick. A legal intelligence officer, that is, one who operates in the open, will have a well-developed story, a legend, we call it, that he has studied extensively. And if anyone's going to be self-aware, if not self-conscious, about their body language, it's someone trained to speak it.

• 50:28John Kiriakou?

  We'll get into the weeds on how to interrogate spies as we travel deeper into the Spy Academy syllabus. You know how they say that a picture's worth a thousand words? That applies to body language, too. As I hope you've begun to appreciate, body language can speak volumes even as we sit silently. An interrogator fluent in body language can save themselves a lot of wasted time, energy, and useless wheel spinning. So we've laid out a fair amount of the Matrix, all the stuff an interrogator needs to have in mind before they start interrogating anyone. In the next episode, we'll talk about how to interrogate unsavory, deplorable, and downright evil characters.

• 51:12John Kiriakou?

  After all, the world we'll be dealing with, well, it isn't exactly Disneyland. Before walking in the door with a monster, you need to prepare. And then I'll take you inside just such an interrogation. When we questioned fallen dictator Saddam Hussein, it was actually done by my good friend, John Nixon. You're not going to want to miss that. Until then, thanks for listening. I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costar and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast, and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.

• 52:05Alan Katz?

  This podcast, it's a Costar and Touchstone production.

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