8 Applying the Skills to People
Who Hope to Hide Something

People who think everything is relative when it comes to truth are doing a great deal of harm to society. If there’s no truth, you can set your own rules. Truth is the way things are. It is what is real, not what you want to be real. You’ve lost theologically, you’ve lost morally, you’ve lost in every single way if you don’t think there is absolute truth.¹

—David Major,
Retired Senior FBI
Supervisory Special Agent; first director of
Counterintelligence, Intelligence and Security
Programs at the National Security Council at the
White House

Aclandestine officer goes through the process of identifying, vetting, and cultivating sources to do everything possible to secure a loyal supplier of information. Even so, there may be lingering questions about the degree of loyalty, whether or not the source is telling everything he knows, or whether he might be tampering with information. In the context of covert operations, these sources who volunteer or who are recruited by a case officer to provide information or other services secretly to the CIA are called agents or assets.

Early in his career in the field, Peter Earnest discovered that a valuable agent with whom he’d maintained a good relationship showed signs of playing fast and loose with his information. What Earnest did is not something you should try at home, but it does demonstrate one way to get the truth without actually asking for it.

The asset was known for producing lengthy, detailed reports. In the course of reviewing his reports, Earnest noticed similarities between the material the asset reported and what the station was getting from the intelligence services of certain other countries. The similarity put Earnest on alert and triggered the question: Is he talking to them as well as us?

He decided to leverage his good rapport with the asset to determine to what extent he and his information could be trusted. For years, the asset had invited Earnest and his wife to dinner. Not wanting to mix business and pleasure, he had always declined. During a routine discussion with the asset after suspicions had surfaced at the station about his reporting, Earnest moved the conversation to friendly territory; that prompted the asset to issue another invitation to dinner. Earnest accepted.

The asset and his wife lived in a kind of townhouse. Although the exterior was drab, the residence itself was well-appointed. He escorted his guests to the living/dining area upstairs. Earnest’s aim was to get to the office downstairs, where they occasionally had meetings. At another meeting just before this dinner party, Earnest had had a chance to examine the desk and determine that there was space between where the drawer of his desk closed and the end of the desk. When the asset had left the room briefly, Earnest was able to figure out that the space would be a good spot to plant a microphone.

Unfortunately, this was not a pin-sized bit of 21st-century recording technology. The 20th-century mic that Earnest brought with him to dinner that night was embedded in a foot-long wood block with batteries and a transmitter wired into strapped to his leg.

Fortunately, the asset and his wife had invited another couple so there were introductions and polite get-to-know-you conversation that extended the early part of the evening. Earnest had told his wife that when he excused himself from the party to go to the bathroom, she had to keep the conversation lively and distract the asset.

He knew there was a bathroom downstairs, so that’s where he headed. After sneaking into the office, he got under the desk, lay on his back, aimed the silent drill he’d hidden in his suit, drilled holes near the back of the drawer, and installed the bug. He scooped up the sawdust that had sprinkled down on his chest, put it in his pocket and rejoined the party.

For weeks after that, Earnest and his colleagues at the station monitored the asset’s conversations. Evidence was conclusive that the asset had been collaborating with multiple other intelligence services.

Without telling the asset why, Earnest ended the relationship with him. But it wasn’t just a matter of the man’s integrity; it was a matter of whether or not the CIA was not only getting the truth, but was the only intelligence service getting the truth—part of the criteria for cooperation with the asset. Earnest explains:

The business of intelligence is to get information that meets certain requirements and if it means dealing with the devil to get it, well, so be it. If the agent had been giving us critical information, we might not have dropped him, regardless of his triple dipping. It wasn’t and whatever value it did have was diminished by the fact that multiple competing organizations had it, too.

There are circumstances that might even drive us to say, “We know what you’re doing and we will pay you more to drop your other customers.” We wouldn’t tell him how we knew; we’d fabricate a story that wouldn’t suggest that we had mistrusted him. With a move like that, you might be buying time, you might be buying loyalty, or you might be buying trouble. In the spy business, as well as whatever you do, you have to consider all the options, but in the course of that, make an exhaustive list of the repercussions of choosing each option.²

Before looking at the non-spycraft ways—no hidden mic, no disguises—to get a source that is hiding something to deliver the truth, consider how Peter Earnest’s experience ties directly to a common business scenario. Let’s say you are one of two copying/printing businesses in a small community. A vendor has been supplying you exclusively with inexpensive ink cartridges and she gives you a deep discount on photo-quality paper. You find out through your sources in town that the vendor has decided to give your sole competitor in the community the same incentives to do business with her. You’re upset, because the products you’d gotten from your supplier had given you a competitive advantage. Your options are to continue with the supplier and look for a competitive advantage in another area of your business, try to find a new vendor, or confront the vendor and give her an incentive to stick with your previous exclusive arrangement. Your decision depends on the value of what you’re getting from the supplier.

Now think of the scenario in terms of information in your workplace. Is a prickly relationship that yields good insights and gossip worth tossing out because you aren’t the only one hearing them? Or, do you want to manage the relationship to get whatever you can from this source that often has something to hide?

Assessing the Partially Cooperative Source

You can set your source up with verbal and non-verbal tests and watch for the cues of deception to determine if your source is hiding something or twisting the truth. Chapter 2 covered the topic of verbal and non-verbal red flags; the insights in this chapter are complementary but focus more on the “what else”—that is, what else you look for once you have a suspicion that you are being deceived through omission or distortion of facts.

Verbal Tests and Cues

You can quickly get signals of deception from avoidance of a yes-or-no question, as well as gaps or substitutions in storytelling.

Avoidance of yes-or-no questions

The questioning techniques that Jim Pyle and I covered in Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime centered on structuring questions that require a narrative response. This is an essential skill in baselining your source, rapport-building, and extracting facts. In probing for the truth, however, it’s sometimes useful to ask a yes-or-no question. Lena Sisco relies on a “rule of three”: In general, if you ask a particular yes-or-no question three times and don’t get a yes or a no, then the person is hiding something. It might just be that the question arouses so much sensitivity in the person that she can’t bring herself to say simply yes or no.

Here is a re-creation of an exchange between a 62-year-old, attractive single woman who prides herself on being an old-fashioned Southern belle and a journalist. (By “Southern belle,” I mean a woman from the southern United States who is generally associated with economic privilege and refined manners.) The question the journalist wanted her to answer was a straightforward one about dating. Keep in mind that a 62-year-old woman in the year 2014 (when I am writing this book) would have been in her prime dating years during the 1970s and 1980s, when women tended to put a focus on their sexual freedom, financial independence, and the fact that they could open doors themselves. The exchange went something like this:

Journalist:	I’m doing research for an article and was wondering—have you ever taken a date out for dinner?
Belle:	You know I’ve had very limited means in recent years, so that would be out of the question. [A response like this is an attempt to sidestep the question. The writer asked a question about whether or not the woman had ever paid for dinner on a date, but the woman gave a partial response which focused on only recent behavior.]
Journalist:	Of course, I understand. But I mean 30 or 40 years ago, when you had no financial constraints to speak of. Have you ever taken a date out to dinner?
Belle:	Have I ever taken a date out to dinner? [The woman cocked her head as she repeated the question. Repeating the question is another type of evasive maneuver. It buys time. A person who repeats the question is likely hoping that the questioner will get exasperated and move on to another topic.]
Journalist:	Yes. I was just wondering: Have you?
Belle:	Men offered to pay. Why would I insult them by insisting on paying? [The woman’s downward look indicated there might be some negative emotions associated with the question. She’s now had three chances to answer the question, so by Lena Sisco’s rule of three, the Southern belle struck out. But in a final attempt to get an answer, the writer approached the question from a theoretical standpoint to confirm or counter her suspicion that the woman’s aversion to paying on a date was cultural.]
Journalist:	If you had tremendous means, is taking a date out to dinner something you would do?
Belle:	Well, the way I was raised, I would never consider that appropriate.

Words like “never” are not a substitute for “no.” Phrases like “I can’t” are not a substitute for “no.” Answering a question with a question is pure avoidance. Repeating the question verbatim is a delaying tactic.

Many interviewers, some of them in high-profile jobs such as White House correspondent, end up accepting answers like these to yes-or-no questions. The answers that are given are meant to distance you from both facts and truth.

Here is another example, with a slightly different approach, to illustrate the use of yes-or-no-questions and application of the rule of three in a professional situation. This is an excerpt from Deposition Checklists and Strategies, a text for attorneys that provides pattern questions applicable to virtually anyone who might be testifying in a trial. The author, T. Evan Schaeffer, offers advice that is consistent with Sisco’s:

Sometimes it is hard getting an answer out of a witness. You home in on a particular issue, start to dig a little deeper, and suddenly the witness is fidgeting and pausing and hedging. All of a sudden, he is not even trying to answer the questions are you asking.

Q: You were present at the meeting on August 14, 2005, weren’t you?

A: I was traveling a whole lot that month.

It’s an answer to a question that wasn’t asked. So you start again.

Q: Let me try again. Were you present at the meeting at August 14, 2005?

A: You know, I don’t remember what I did that day.

Do you give up the point? Of course not. You say, “Thanks for that, but you’re still not answering my question. I’m going to ask again…”

And so on. Does this sort of hedging by a witness ever work? Every once in awhile, it probably does. You have to keep asking the question you want answered until the witness answers it. Ask again and again. Usually by the fifth or sixth time, the witness will start getting the idea there’s nowhere to hide.³

Another way to back off from a yes-or-no question is to use a dissembling phrase. This is phrase designed to conceal the truth, such as Bill Clinton’s infamous denial of his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” If the activities he engaged in with her did not, in his mind, constitute sexual relations, then this represented a true statement from his perspective. The problem for former President Clinton is that he was surrounded by people who saw those activities as “sexual relations”; hence, he was ultimately deemed a liar in this instance.

Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s testimony to the grand jury about the accusation that he sold ambassadorships is riddled with dissembling phrases. This testimony, which he gave on June 23–24, 1975, remained sealed for 36 years—until November 10, 2011. The grand jury document lists as one of five areas of inquiry: “Any relationship between campaign contributions and the consideration of ambassadorships for five persons”⁴ and then names those individuals.

During the Q&A, one of the questioners, Associate Special Prosecutor Thomas J. McBride, asks this somewhat ill-constructed, yes-or-no question: “Do you recall Mr. deRoulet’s appointment in 1969, his nomination and confirmation as ambassador to Jamaica?” The exchange then illustrates how Nixon took the grand jury on mental walk through his garden of dissembling phrases and sentences:

Nixon:	Well, I think it would be helpful, Mr. McBride, if I were to tell you how I handle ambassadors and how such a document [the exhibit indicating the offer to deRoulet and his acceptance] would come to me so that you can be absolutely certain as to what I do recall and what I don’t and why I do not recall.
McBride:	Very well.
Nixon:	First, noting this date, it was a rather busy time. That was the time we were in the midst of the, one of the great Tet offensives, as you recall. There had been one in ’68 and then despite our peace overtures in early ’69—there was one that was just coming to conclusion then and Dr. Kissinger and I were developing strategy for his secret meetings which began in August.5

Nixon then goes on for pages about how ambassadors are selected and how he was so busy with really important matters that “I must indicate that I paid so—I must say, and I think properly so—so little attention to minor countries that my recollection with regard to who recommended them, et cetera, is quite vague.”⁶

The dodging and weaving continues for many more pages until Nixon says in response to the question on the sale of ambassadorships:

I respond to that question by saying that I have no recollection of ever authorizing the selling of ambassadorships, the making of an absolute commitment for ambassadorships. As I have indicated earlier, my recollection of the entire ambassadorial decision process, which is already in the record, is that those who made contributions would receive consideration, but as far as the specific commitment, et cetera—quote—end quote—is concerned, or the sale of ambassadorships, I have no recollection of using that term or intending that term.⁷

Unfortunately, many politicians have helped numb people to the reality that this kind of answer is worse than a non-answer: It’s deception cloaked in language that sounds believable—unless you have skills of truth and of lie detection.

Exercise: Using a Yes-or-No Question

Ask a yes-or-no question of someone you know that is likely to make your source just a little uncomfortable. For example, you work with someone who is bright, sophisticated, and well-read. You might ask her, “Do you ever watch reality TV?” If you get a response like, “Oh, please! Those shows are so stupid,” then you know you are on the way with Sisco’s rule of three.

You can also try the exercise in conjunction with a conversation motivator to see how often you can break through the impasse created by the yes-or-no question. In the reality TV scenario, you could offer a quid pro quo (one type of incentive motivator). You could say, “I know! Most of them really are stupid, but sometimes as I’m flipping through channels, some reality show catches my attention and I stick with it a few minutes.” Or, you could try an ego-boosting motivator: “Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t think for a minute that you would be devoted to any of those shows, but I was curious if you’ve ever seen one.”

Gaps and mismatches

Ground your evaluation of what you have, and what you might be missing, in the types of information that you can collect: people, places, things, and events. When you hear or read a story, ask yourself if all of those elements seem to make sense individually and together. Questions to ask yourself include:

Is the number of people in the story consistent from beginning to end?

Are the genders consistent?

Are the relationships between characters clear?

Does the location where the person says he was make sense?

Is the description of the place consistent with what I know about it?

How likely is it that the people in the story would actually do what the person says they did?

Does the description of the item in the story sound believable?

Could the events as described fit into the time frame?

Does the flow of the story make sense?

Considering questions like this when you hear or read a story is not a natural impulse if you’re in the presence of a good storyteller. In the theater, the phenomenon of buying into a story is called the willing suspension of disbelief. The trick to evoking it in real life is having enough of a story seem logical and believable to avert questions like the above from popping into the listener’s or reader’s head.

Another factor comes into play that can affect the believability of a story: appearance. A number of years ago a friend of mine met a handsome man at a sales conference. He was one of the presenters at the conference and looked the part of a senior executive who had every aspect of his life under control. She was very attracted him. After his presentation, she approached him, thinking that complimenting him on his speech would be a legitimate way to meet him. They ended up having cocktails that evening with a couple of business associates of hers. The man told fascinating stories about college, military service, and how he founded his company. My friend was infatuated—so infatuated that she missed an incongruity in his story. One of her business associates caught it, though, and mentioned it to my friend later. She immediately realized that her attraction to the man had greatly inflated her ability to willingly suspend disbelief.

This is one of the natural human traits that Ted Bundy exploited in the women he murdered. Attractive and intelligent, Bundy had been shy in his youth, but he developed a capacity for inventing tales that helped him evolve into a charming man. On occasion, he added helplessness to his charm by pretending to have a broken arm. His appearance did not arouse skepticism, because many of us have been enculturated to think of evil as ugly.

Exercise: Applying Critical Thinking to Storytelling

Watch a scripted television show or movie (that is, not a reality TV show) with the specific purpose of finding something wrong with it. You’re looking for plot holes, character inconsistencies, dialogue that contradicts something previously shown or discussed, and so on. Think in terms of people, places, things, and events to organize your critical thinking.

If you’re watching a science fiction movie or a Bond film, don’t include technological incongruities such as cars that fly and handheld devices that cure brain tumors. Stick to the story and how it’s presented. For example, you may see two people get into an elevator talking about a topic of great concern. Cut to commercial. When the story resumes, the two people are getting out of the elevator and their sentences pick up exactly where they left off before the commercial. Did their mouths freeze in the elevator?

The exercise is good training in not allowing the willing suspension of disbelief to overtake you—but you need to be able to switch gears and immerse yourself in a story when you want to. Otherwise, you’ll probably never enjoy any form of theater again as long as you live.

Non-Verbal Tests and Cues

Three different areas of study in the field of non-verbal human behavior offer insights to help you confirm or deny your suspicions about whether or not your source is telling the truth: vocalics, kinesics, and proxemics.

Vocalics

Listening and watching for changes in vocal expression is one way of determining that the fabric of truth has some holes in it. Vocalics is an area of non-verbal communication studies because it’s about how something is said rather than what is being said. I’ll focus on three facets of vocalics that often indicate emotion and always tell you something about how to interpret what’s being said to you: vocal qualities, emphasis, and use of fillers.

Vocal Qualities

Pitch, tone, pace, volume, hoarseness, stridency, and nasality are among the characteristics of a voice. In some cases, they can change from moment to moment, reflecting a deviation from the speaker’s baseline.

» Pitch helps convey the intensity of the communication, express a question, or convey uncertainty or even deception. A woman’s who’s just been crowned Miss Universe will likely say, “Thank you! Thank you!” in a high-pitched voice. And typically, a person’s voice will rise at the end of a question (although there are cultures where the opposite is true), so “How long does it take to get from here to Paris?” would have the pitch rise on the word “Paris.”

Regarding the expression of uncertainty or untruth, there is often a rise in pitch suggesting that the next thing you should do is agree with him. For example, at the end of a sales presentation, the sales rep might say, “The product is much more reliable than any others” with the pitch rising on the word “others.” If this is accompanied by what Gregory Hartley, my co-author on How to Spot a Liar, calls a “request for approval” facial expression, then the change in pitch is an important nonverbal signal. It’s working in tandem with a facial movement that involves slightly raised eyebrows to suggest, “You believe me, don’t you?”

This combination of shift in pitch and a very revealing facial expression is one example of how different types of non-verbal signals often work together to confirm your suspicions about a person.

» Tone is a characteristic of voice that goes a long way toward conveying meaning. Most of what I learned about tone, I learned from my mother before the first grade. She would ask me to do something I had no interest in doing and I would say, “Yes, Mommy” in a way that provoked: “Don’t you use that tone of voice with me, young lady!”

Tone and pitch work in tandem to convey sarcasm, to clue you in that someone is telling a joke, to leak repressed anger, and much more. They lend nuance to speech to help clarify both the message and the intent of the message. It is their critical role in making sure that a message is understood properly that makes e-mail a dangerous mechanism for trying to be funny or sarcastic. Emoticons can help, but they don’t necessarily eliminate confusion.

» Pace is the speaking rate someone has adopted in a particular conversation. A sudden change is a deviation from baseline in the context of that conversation and it indicates stress. On a business call earlier this year, I detected that the person I was speaking with had quickened the pace of his speech. I looked at the time and realized that it was about three minutes before 11 o’clock. Even though we had not established an end time for the call and still had a lot of ground to cover in the discussion, I asked, “Do you have another appointment at 11?” He told me did and expressed surprise at the question.

A source who is not being completely honest might either speed up or slow down. Speeding up is one way someone who is trying to deceive you can prevent you from interrupting him with a question or challenge. And if your source suddenly changes the pace by enunciating every word, in contrast to fluid speech that preceded the shift—“I…did…not…have…sexual…relations…with that woman”—you have reason to question the veracity of the statement. Here’s another occasion when you are likely to see one non-verbal paired with another as part of the deviation. In the instance of Bill Clinton’s denial, he punctuated it by moving his forearm up and down three times in a hammering gesture. This kind of aggressive move was not characteristic of Clinton’s normal style of gesturing.

» Volume is another vocal quality that conveys intensity. An ardent denial of an accusation would probably be said more loudly than other parts of the conversation. Of course, some people might drop to a whisper in expressing a denial. Neither change would automatically suggest that the person is being deceitful, however. The following discussion below on kinesics gives clues on what kinds of gestures and facial expressions done in conjunction with such a deviation in vocal quality would reinforce a suspicion of deception.

» Qualities such as hoarseness, stridency, or nasality suggest stress only when they aren’t normal for the person. When the vocal chords tighten up and/or the throat becomes dry, the voice takes on a different sound. It can get very raspy, the way comedian Joan Rivers sounded all the time; that was part of her baseline. Look for other signs of stress, such as blinking. If the throat is drying out due to a mild fight-or-flight response, then the eyes are drying out, too. You might also see the person’s body get more rigid if the vocal chords are tightening. I used to see this combination of tight body/tight voice when I auditioned for musicals in college. If you’re really nervous about the audition, you may not hit the high notes (and your dancing won’t be that marvelous, either)!

Exercise: Testing Rapport and
Emotional Attachment to the Subject

Now that you know some of the vocalic cues of stress, deliberately try to evoke these deviations from baseline. The results might give you a stronger sense of rapport and insight into the source’s emotional attachment to the subject:

» During a conversation, make your pitch a little higher and talk a little faster to correspond with your level of animation. Notice whether or not the other person responds in kind. When people feel they have rapport with someone, they have a natural tendency to mirror the other person. If your source mirrors you in pitch and rate of speech, then you probably have a good connection, or at least are on the way to developing one. In contrast, if you sense disinterest or discomfort, that could be an indication that the two of you are not in tune with each other.

» Bring up a topic that involves emotion—positive or negative. If your source is someone at work, then the easiest way to provoke an emotional response and find out how it affects vocal quality might be to bring up a common enemy. That could be a person, an office policy, or a meeting that neither one of you wants to attend. If it’s a really strong negative for the person, you should hear significant changes in her voice.

» Pay attention to emphasis. Three different messages are being transmitted in the following sentence depending on where the person places emphasis:

“I did not do that.” The speaker is suggesting that she, as opposed to someone else, didn’t do the act in question.

“I did NOT do that.” The speaker wants to make it clear that she denies doing the act in question.

“I did not do THAT.” The speaker denies doing the act in question, but she may have done something else a lot like it.

In the course of a conversation with your source, notice which words are emphasized, but also listen for a lack of emphasis if you suspect deception. In May, 2010, after former Tour de France winner Floyd Landis admitted he used performance enhancing drugs and pointed an accusing finger at Lance Armstrong for doing the same, Armstrong held an impromptu press conference during a bike race in California. He said to reporters, “We have nothing to hide. We have nothing to run from.”⁸

Oddly missing from his denial was emphasis on keywords. Also, his delivery was nearly flat.

» Listen for fillers. Typical fillers in English are “um,” “uh,” “well,” “like,” and “you know,” although fillers are not a distinctly English phenomenon. You will find them creeping into conversation in many languages; American Sign Language contains a gesture for “um,” so fillers are not even solely associated with spoken language. In general, such syllables or words fill the gap as you think about what to say next. If you’ve asked a source a question and get an “um” in response, or if the sentence is peppered with fillers, it could be a sign that person either doesn’t want to answer the question or hasn’t figured out how to answer it. Watch for movement cues to give you an indication of whether or not stress is present to give you a hint about possible attempt at deception.

Ellen Horne is the Executive Producer of WNYC’s Peabody Award–winning show Radiolab. On an episode titled “Deception,” she contributed the story of a career con artist named Hope, whom Horne termed “very charming.” During Hope’s trial for fraud, Horne even found herself “rooting for her.”

Hope agreed to let Ellen interview her two days before she was to begin her two-year prison sentence, but she rescheduled, rescheduled again, and ultimately cancelled. In one call to reschedule, this is what she said: “Hey, Ellen, it’s Hope. It’s about um almost 3 o’clock and I actually um have to change our 5 o’clock meeting. I have to do something with my daughter um and I’m not going to have time um to make it there by five.”⁹ I’ve italicized the fillers and words that suggest that Hope had not yet thought through her lie.

Kinesics

Most people would think of this as body language, but because I think of all non-verbal communication as body language, I want to differentiate between the study of movement—kinesics—and other non-verbals.

Eye Contact

Chapter 2 contained a detailed description of ways to evaluate eye movements, which is using eye contact to determine whether a person is engaged, emotional, deep in thought, or conjuring up an idea. In this section, the focus is on using eye contact in other practical ways with your source.

Making eye contact with a person can provoke a response. In a meeting, if you wanted to find out what a specific colleague thought about a idea you proposed, you could present the idea, ask “What do you think?” and then look straight at the person you want to answer the question. This is a common teacher trick: Without actually calling on a person to answer a question, the act of making eye contact indicates without a doubt that you want an answer from that individual. This is a tactic that works very well with silence as a conversation motivator. Make eye contact, pose the question, and wait for a response.

You can send information through eye contact or by refraining from eye contact. After your source provides an answer, for example, your eyes can convey “I’m thinking about that.” Combined with silence, or an inert response such as “hmmm,” your eye contact may be enough to elicit more information from the person. As a corollary, your lack of eye of contact may convey the same thing since it’s common for people to look away—eyes up and off to the side—when they are processing what’s been said.

One key piece of information you can send with your eyes is a sense of interest and connection. It’s acknowledgment of rapport or the intent to establish rapport. Sustained eye contact while a person is speaking, in conjunction with movements such as nodding the head and slightly leaning forward, are all part of the skill of active listening.

Eye contact has a powerful ability to intimidate, and sometimes that’s what you intend. In the Chapter 4 discussion on the use of silence as a conversation motivator, I referred to the one- or two-second differences that different cultures have in terms of how long it takes for them to get uncomfortable with silence in a conversation. These cultural differences exist with eye contact, as well. Whereas people in the United States and Western Europe tend to be very similar, sustained eye contact—and gender is significant here—can be considered inappropriate or even threatening in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Know what the cultural norms are for your source before trying to use eye contact as a part of your scheme for extracting the truth.

Facial Expressions

“Facial expressions are dynamic signals that transmit information over time,”¹⁰ according to Rachael E. Jack, the lead researcher of a study published in 2014 by a team from the University of Glasgow Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology. They provide a sophisticated signaling system, with Jack’s research providing valuable, fresh insights into understanding how facial expression might help us spot stress and other emotional responses in a source.

For decades, the biggest name in research in this field has been Paul Ekman, a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. Ekman’s groundbreaking work in the universality of human expression identified six expressions of emotion that virtually all people have in common: disgust, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and happiness. Gregory Hartley, former Army interrogation instructor and author of multiple books on body language and human behavior, identified an additional four: contempt, pride, uncertainty, and embarrassment. On March 31, 2012, Ohio State University announced that a team led by Aleix Martinez, a cognitive scientist and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, had developed a computational model to identify 21 distinctly different facial expressions that people share: angry, awed, surprised, disgusted, fearful, fearfully angry, disgustedly surprised, fearfully disgusted, fearfully surprised, happily disgusted, angrily surprised, sadly surprised, sadly angry, sadly fearful, sadly disgusted, sad, happy, hateful, happily surprised, angrily disgusted, and appalled.¹¹

In contrast, Jack’s research reduced the basic number to four. Using Ekman’s six as the starting point, her team had study participants categorize random expressions they viewed on a screen as happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, or sadness. Agreement among the participants indicated the expression signaled emotional information. The next step was to establish which muscle movements were associated with which emotions; when those movements occurred figured into the analysis. Happiness and sadness were readily identified. But it wasn’t that clear with the other four, which took time to be distinguished, according to the researchers. Ultimately, they paired fear with surprise and disgust with anger: “Early facial expression signaling supports the discrimination of four categories, namely happy, sad, fear/surprise (i.e., fast-approaching danger) and disgust/anger (i.e., stationary danger), which are only later more finely discriminated as six emotion categories.”¹²

The value of Jack’s categories to you in your efforts to evaluate the truthfulness of your source is that the breakdown can be restated as happy, sad, approach, and avoidance:

If your source is happy, she’s either very cooperative or totally convinced she has fooled you.

Sadness would indicate heavy emotional involvement in the topic. You’ve struck a nerve with your question.

If your question to a source results in the raised eyebrows, open eyes, and slightly open mouth associated with both fear and surprise—even for a flash—you know your approach has pushed her off balance.

If your question to a source results in a lowered brow and a look that says, “Get away from me!” then you know your question has aroused either disgust or anger. She will stand her ground and will likely come across as antagonistic in her response.

Regarding this last point, Ekman has an additional insight on what might be termed “hot anger.” His extensive work, also covered briefly in Chapter 2, supports the assertion that there is an anger-reliable muscle at the margin of the mouth that most people cannot control. When it’s engaged, the face would conveys genuine anger very distinctly.

Postures and Gestures

In Chapter 2, the four basic types of movements receive attention: illustrators, regulators, barriers, and adaptors. Deviations from what is normal for a person in any of those constitute an indication that stress is present—and stress can be good or bad. An example of good stress is the strong desire to please; an example of bad stress is the presence of fear. As a complement to that discussion, this section focuses on angles and curves.

When I was in British Columbia receiving wilderness training before a 10-day adventure race, I watched a film on what to do if you come face to face with certain kinds of bears. The advice was “Get big!” You square off, put your arms out, and generally try to look as large and angular as possible. The opposite would be rounding your back, shoulders, and arms, and looking as small and helpless as possible. In other words, this is the difference between the posture of a predator and the posture of prey.

If your source adopts a posture of angles—regardless of whether he’s standing, sitting, squatting, or lying down—you can consider that assertive. A typical example of an angled posture in a standing position is hands on hips. In a seated position, legs crossed in a figure-four is an angular posture. This is one of the two main postures that Edward Snowden adopted in his May 2014 interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. If you already suspect your source is not coming clean, and he adopts postures and gestures characterized by angles, then you have another reason to wonder. You may not have the good rapport that you thought you had with the individual; his body is pushing you away.

In contrast, if your source hunches over, draws her arms closer to her body as though she’s hugging herself, or otherwise adopts postures and movements characterized by curves rather than angles, then you have “prey,” not “predator.” Depending on whether or not you’re getting satisfactory answers, you may want to try using an ego-boosting conversation motivator.

Proxemics

This non-verbal is all about how close to or far away from you are to someone and how that influences communication. In general, public space, the kind you probably try to maintain on your walk through a city park, is at least 12 feet. Social space, the kind you establish during a business meeting, is at least 4 feet. Personal space is maybe a foot or so from the body and extends to the social zone beginning at 4 feet. Breaches of personal space, especially sudden ones, can trigger extremely negative responses.

If you’ve built strong rapport with your source, then that 4-foot mark should be no problem. But what if you lean forward 2 feet and ask a question? Your move can be perceived as an invasive action. Does your source’s facial expression convey approach (fear/surprise) or avoidance (disgust/anger)? Does your source suddenly use either a body part—folding arms or turning away slightly—or an object—reaching for his cell phone as a barrier?

The concept of territoriality is also included in this field of study. So even though you may be across the room from your source, when you sit in his favorite chair, you may get the same kind of response as if you had leaned forward and invaded his personal space.

To summarize, if you want to test strength of your rapport, using your knowledge of proxemics is one way to do it. Evaluate whether your source’s response to closing the distance between you and/or occupying territory that is supposed to be under his control sends the signals you had expected.

To sum up the challenge related to non-verbals, Lena Sisco notes:

Your job is to pair up what the body is doing with what the mouth is saying. If there is a mismatch, then you have reason to conclude that the person is experiencing stress. Stress can be associated with lots of reasons, but stress can also indicate that a person isn’t being completely honest with you.

    Behavioral congruency—meaning that the mouth and body match up—suggests truthfulness. Seeing the opposite in response to a question suggests the person is ill at ease with the question and/or her response to it.¹³

Why the Lie?

We would be naïve to think that most people always tell the truth and nothing but the truth. The reality is that most of us are careful about hiding certain types of information and deliberately distorting others. So, though we may often deal with cooperative sources, and we may at some point have to extract information from hostile sources, the most common scenario will be that we want the truth from someone who has something he wants to hide or modify.

It isn’t just people who have something to hide who are omitting facts or spinning tales, though. We can understand the motivation to lie of someone who is guilty or embarrassed. But why do even highly accomplished people slip lies into their stories when the truth of their lives is interesting enough?

Dave Major answers the question, “Why do people lie to you when they don’t need to?” with a single word: power.¹⁴ There is tremendous power in telling a purposeless lie and getting someone to believe you. It is the kind of power that Ryan Holiday had when he got reports from major news outlets to believe that he was an expert in things he knew little or nothing about. (Holiday is the author of Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, who duped the New York Times, Reuters, ABC News, CBS, and MSNBC into reporting his “expertise” on subjects about which he knew virtually nothing.)

You are seeing all the signs of being lied to by someone who is not hostile to you and has no apparent reason to lie to you, you could be dealing with someone who simply wants to know he can get away with it.

People who do this habitually are made differently—literally. Yalin Yang, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, used fMRI with test subjects that included documented pathological liars and non-liars. The liars showed an astonishing increase in white matter—23 to 36 percent more white matter than the non-liars—in the part of the brain associated with personality, attunement to other people, planning complex cognitive behavior, and decision-making. It’s the part of your brain that supports your storytelling. And the more white matter you have, the better able you are to put bits of information together to fabricate a story. Yang hypothesized: “In the case of lying, it is conceivable that excessive lying repeatedly activates the prefrontal circuit underlying lying, resulting in permanent changes in brain morphology.”¹⁵ So all those kids out there who think lying is fun and keep trying to see what they can get away with might be engaged in brain-altering behavior. At least that’s one theory. The other is that they were born that way.

Obfuscation in Action

With the tips in mind about avoidance of yes-or-no questions, fillers, and other ways people who want to hide something will fend off direct questions, consider the following exchange from Season 1, Episode 5 of the TV show 24. It is early in the morning the day Senator David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) intends to announce his candidacy for president of the United States, and he decides to confront his son about his possible involvement in a murder:

David Palmer:	The night of your sister’s rape, did you have any contact with Floyd Richter?
Keith Palmer:	What?
David Palmer:	You heard me.
Keith Palmer:	I, I don’t believe this. I mean, what brought this up all of a sudden? I mean, let’s just leave it all in the past where it belongs.
David Palmer:	I’d like to. Believe me. But as it happens, I can’t. (pause) What did you do that night after you found out that Nicole had been attacked? The truth now. All of it.
Keith Palmer:	I don’t think you have a right to ask me that.
David Palmer:	You don’t think I have the right?
Keith Palmer:	No, I don’t. See, this thing happened. Somebody had to deal with it. But you were in Chicago giving a speech or New York receiving some big award.
David Palmer:	Let’s deal with my shortcomings as a father some other time. Right now, I want to know what you did after you found out that your sister had been raped.
Keith Palmer:	And I told you, I’m not going to answer.
David Palmer:	You will answer me!

The nature—not the substance—of this Q&A is something that many people deal with regularly with loved ones, people at work, customer service representatives, and others in our daily lives. And just as David Palmer got to the point of anger with his son because of his son’s hedging, so do the rest of us when we don’t get straight answers to straight questions.

The insights in the next chapter will help you confirm that you have an uncooperative source. After that, if you want to make progress, you need to adjust your conversation motivators, body language, and rapport-building techniques to accommodate the source and situation.