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Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception Paperback – July 16, 2013
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Three former CIA officers--among the world's foremost authorities on recognizing deceptive behavior--share their proven techniques for uncovering a lie
Imagine how different your life would be if you could tell whether someone was lying or telling you the truth. Be it hiring a new employee, investing in a financial interest, speaking with your child about drugs, confronting your significant other about suspected infidelity, or even dating someone new, having the ability to unmask a lie can have far-reaching and even life-altering consequences.
As former CIA officers, Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, and Susan Carnicero are among the world's best at recognizing deceptive behavior. Spy the Lie chronicles the captivating story of how they used a methodology Houston developed to detect deception in the counterterrorism and criminal investigation realms, and shows how these techniques can be applied in our daily lives.
Through fascinating anecdotes from their intelligence careers, the authors teach readers how to recognize deceptive behaviors, both verbal and nonverbal, that we all tend to display when we respond to questions untruthfully. For the first time, they share with the general public their methodology and their secrets to the art of asking questions that elicit the truth.
Spy the Lie is a game-changer. You may never read another book that has a more dramatic impact on your career, your relationships, or your future.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJuly 16, 2013
- Dimensions5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-101250029627
- ISBN-13978-1250029621
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Wouldn't it be great if we could bottle the collective wisdom of CIA officers who have interrogated hundreds of people, and apply all that experience to situations where we need to know if someone is telling the truth? In Spy the Lie, three CIA veterans have done just that. If you read this book, which is packed with great anecdotes, you will feel closer to being able to flesh out a lie.” ―Forbes
“Lie detection isn't ingrained; it's learned… By following their advice, which is based off years of interrogating terrorists and double agents, anyone can improve their odds at getting to the truth.” ―New York Post
“Michael Floyd and two fellow former ex-agents, with more than 75 years of interrogation experience between them, honed their methods on terrorist and criminals. But their advice work equally well on cheating spouses, lollygagging employees, or schoolkids feigning illness.” ―StarTribune
“This book is both entertaining and highly informative―and it’s the real deal. It gives readers genuine practical tools and tactics to use in all walks of life. I highly recommend it.” ―David J. Lieberman, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of Never Be Lied to Again
“For many years, Phil and his team have employed their skills to vet terrorist sources, catch spies, and protect the nation's secrets. With this book, they have done something perhaps even more remarkable: Equip anyone to reliably detect deception. Consciously or not, we all judge others' sincerity and truthfulness to protect ourselves. Most of us do it badly. This book will teach you to do it well.” ―Robert Grenier, chairman of ERG Partners, former director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center
“In this entertaining, instructive, and fascinating book, Phil, Michael, and Susan lay out an easy-to-follow process for detecting deception, with real-life stories that are the stuff of spy novels. I have used their model for years with phenomenal results.” ―Marisa R. Randazzo, Ph.D., managing partner at SIGMA Threat Management Associates, former chief research psychologist, U.S. Secret Service
“A terrific resource for anyone who would love to be able to tell when someone is lying. Having undergone their training, I've applied their methodology in some critical situations, and I've been blown away by its effectiveness. Spy the Lie is a captivating read with practical takeaway you'll use every day.” ―John Miller, senior correspondent at CBS News, former associate deputy director of National Intelligence, and former assistant director for public affairs at the FBI
“When my detectives on the LAPD's Counterterrorism Bureau and Robbery-Homicide Division took the course, we had veteran investigators tell us, ‘No one should ever be promoted to the rank of detective without taking this course,' and ‘I now want to go back and re-interview every suspect I ever questioned.' What this team has developed is truly unique, and anyone can learn to use it.” ―Bill Bratton, chairman of Kroll Associates, former LAPD chief, former NYPD and Boston Police Department police commissioner
About the Author
Michael Floyd began his career as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Military Police, then served as a Special Agent with the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. He now provides training and consulting services for Forbes Top 10 families and large corporations throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is widely recognized as a leading authority on interviewing, detection of deception and elicitation in cases involving criminal activity, personnel screening and national security issues.
A former security specialist with the Central Intelligence Agency, Susan Carnicero has 20 years of experience in interviewing, interrogation and polygraph examination, focused primarily on national security, employment and criminal issues. Susan is the developer of a behavioral screening program currently used within the federal government and in a variety of private industries. She is widely considered a leading authority on interviewing, detection of deception, and elicitation.
Don Tennant is a former National Security Agency analyst and business/technology journalist. As editor in chief of Computerworld, he won a variety of national journalism awards, including the Timothy White Award for Editorial Integrity and the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award from American Business Media.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Spy the Lie
Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect DeceptionBy Philip HoustonSt. Martin's Griffin
Copyright © 2013 Philip HoustonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9781250029621
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 numerable 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, Langley, 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.
Copyright © 2012 by Phil Houston, Mark Floyd, Susan Carnicero, and Don Tennant
Continues...
Excerpted from Spy the Lie by Philip Houston Copyright © 2013 by Philip Houston. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (July 16, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250029627
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250029621
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Michael Floyd, Founding Partner
QVerity
Michael Floyd is a founding partner in QVerity and a NY Times Best Selling co-author of Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception and Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All, to be released by St. Martins Press on March 24, 2015. He is recognized as a leading authority on information collection.
Michael Floyd provides training and consulting services for local, state and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies; high net-worth families; and large corporations and firms throughout the North America, Europe, and Asia. He is widely recognized as a leading authority on interviewing, detection of deception and elicitation in cases involving criminal activity, personnel screening and national security issues.
Michael is the founder of Advanced Polygraph Services, where he spent 10 years conducting high-profile interviews and interrogations for law enforcement agencies, law firms, and private industry. He has most recently been involved in providing training and consulting services in the areas of detection of deception and information collection to firms in the financial services and audit communities.
Michael began his career as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Military Police, serving in the U.S. and Asia. After spending 6 years on the staff of John E. Reid & Assoc. as a polygraph examiner and instructor on detection of deception, interviewing and interrogation, he subsequently served as an Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Throughout a career that has spanned more than 40 years, he has conducted over 8,000 interviews and interrogations worldwide.
A graduate of the University of South Dakota with a B.S. in Education, Michael also holds an M.S. Degree in Detection of Deception from Reid College and a JD Degree from Seattle University School of Law.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Don Tennant is a former National Security Agency analyst and business/technology journalist. As editor in chief of Computerworld, he won a variety of national journalism awards, including the Timothy White Award for Editorial Integrity and the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award from American Business Media.
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Detecting deception isn't magic and it isn't infallible. But it is possible to become better at it than most of us are now. The book identifies several barriers to accurately detecting deception. We expect most people to tell the truth, we ask the wrong questions, and we look for the wrong "tells" in other people's behavior. And we try to watch everything they do instead of focusing on a small number of reliable indicators.
Such reliable indicators of deception include certain kinds of verbal hesitations and evasions as well as specific body movements of which a deceiver is largely unaware. Readers learn to ask questions that require different mental processing from guilty versus innocent suspects. One technique is to ask questions a good guy will answer with an immediate--and perhaps angry--"No!" while the bad guy will need to give a longer, more carefully worded response. We watch for deception indicators that begin in the first five seconds after a question. And we look for clusters of indicators rather than for single actions. There is more to it, of course, but this is the core methodology the book presents. It's good stuff. And it's learnable.
I attended a training session conducted by the authors' company (QVerity, in partnership with hemsleyfraser) this week. I had listened to roughly three-quarters of the audiobook during a long car ride the day before. Based on what I learned from the book I was able to do well in the video pre-test, successfully distinguishing a lying suspect from the four who told the truth. Almost everyone was also able to do this after two hours of training. So it seems to me that the book is nearly as valuable as being taught these skills by the authors themselves. It is a well-written, fascinating book on a very useful topic. I highly recommend it.
A final comment. The book closes with a warning to use these skills only for good. And to not practice them on our significant others. Apparently catching your spouse in all of those little white lies can put unnecessary stress on the relationship. I may have made a variation of this error by giving my wife a copy of the book and inviting her along to the training. Not sure that was such a good idea. We'll see.
A good example was when I was interviewing a woman whom I felt had amazing qualifications for my Front Desk Manager’s position. She had owned her own pet salon for over 17 years but sold it and went to work for Pet Smart. I thought that seemed a little strange so asked her why? She naturally had a response that she wanted to move to Texas, originally being from Wisconsin which was horribly cold and owning a business was just too stressful. I wanted to know more as this didn’t seem like the mentality of a successful business owner so I asked her what kind of paycheck she wrote herself each year. Her response was “my gross income last year was $80k, which I am so proud of.” 1) She did not answer the question. 2) “which I am proud of.” Is used to further convince me she was making good money.” Luckily as a business owner I know it probably takes at least $80.K just to run a business. But this was not enough for me to disqualify her and author Russell Targ says just 1 red flag is not enough, so after a few more positive type questions I asked another. ‘Tell me about a time you didn’t get along with a co-worker’. I’m paraphrasing because she gave an overly long explanation of events which in-and of itself is a red flag but within the overly verbose statement She stated “they get annoyed with me” but didn’t tell me what “they” get annoyed with. When I asked what ‘they get annoyed with’ she minimized a situation where she had the flu 4 days and the next day she went to an already committed dentist appointment to get her tooth pulled and was in too much pain so again had to call in sick. I was a bit suspicious at this point as to why her boss would be annoyed with this if she was such a great employee since both those explanations seemed reasonable. So I later in the interview snuck in an “assumptive question” about her being late to which she confessed several additional times having been late but of course had plausible excuses. I was even more suspicious at this point about her integrity as an employee so asked the question a different way, ‘tell me a time you had a challenging client’ to which she told me another very verbose story about “a client who brought in a badly matted dog and when after shaving it had lots of bruising etc. the lady gave a terrible rating.” I tried not to sound judgmental so I commiserated with her on that as a business owner how awful that must have felt. We exchanged some giggles and at this point I felt she really was ready to open up to me. I then asked her to ‘describe a bad day at work’ where she gave another story with many excuses why where she had ripped a dog’s ear by accident, the police and media was called accusing her of animal abuse, she was taken to court and her name was smeared in this small town which was hard to recover from.😳 Now I am a bit alarmed but the old me is wanting to believe her that it wasn’t her fault so Finally, I wrapped up after many other positive exchanges I asked ‘if I were to call her employer what derogatory things might they say about her’ to which she replied “they don’t like the way I do things which of course with further questioning her reply was to minimize all of their complaints.” Now, here is where I used to get tripped up. I usually have a phone interview that lasts about an hour or more before setting up face-to-face interview and that is how this one was. I as usual wanting to believe the best in everybody was mostly paying attention to the many positive and outstanding things she had to say and want to believe her excuses so immediately set up a face-to-face interview. But this time I did something differently after hanging up with her. I paid really close attention to the “cluster” of suspicious things she mentioned and by then it hit me like a ton of bricks. In every bad hire I have ever made they had answers like this woman where they minimized, evaded the questions, or had great excuses. Now while we all have great excuses from time to time the book says to pay attention to multiples. Needless to say I politely cancelled the interview. After reading this book the signs were as clear as day.
I am happy to say I am now able to cut my phone interviews down to just 20-30 minutes even shorter when I see these “cluster” as the hook puts it.
I decided to buy this title because of the intelligence agency background of the authors, and they described their method of detecting deception as a relatively simple and straightforward one. They weren't lying (see what I did there?).
The book provides clear, real-world examples of subjects who've been less than truthful when questioned about a variety of topics, and for me, those examples went a long way toward crystallizing the specific points being made about the methodology the authors have developed.
As the book points out, there's no such thing as a lie detector, and I doubt most who read this will ever become as adept at deception detecting as the authors are, but the book does provide interesting insights into human nature and how people can give themselves away when they aren't being truthful. I'd say the book is full of solid concepts to keep in mind as you go about your daily life interacting with other people in all kinds of different situations where truth is critical.
You won't become a human lie detector, and you won't be able to observe someone's body language and determine whether or not someone is being truthful (despite what some TV pundits claim they can do – they can't). Just keep the book's methodology in mind and be mindful when you see some of the behaviors discussed.
Top reviews from other countries
I am outta control spying.
I spot lies on the train.
I spot lies on a plane.
I spy lies in the eyes, sighs and thighs.
Now I just need an awesome badge, some credentials and a microphone in my lapel. Old school.