9 Applying the Skills to Hostile Sources

I don’t ask him for anything. I ask him, “Is there anything I can do for you?”¹

—Eric Maddox,
the Army interrogator who located Saddam Hussein
on his approach to launching an interrogation

IMDB.com’s one-line synopsis of The Silence of the Lambs, the 1992 winner of the Best Picture Oscar, is: “A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims.” In this case, therefore, it is the hostile source—Hannibal Lecter—who lures the interrogator into a quid pro quo exchange that provides her with the truth she needs to catch a killer. Lecter won’t simply answer Agent Clarice Starling’s questions; he is an intelligent and inventive psychopath who wants to see her stripped down emotionally before he tells her what she needs to know.

Hopefully, you won’t have to try to extract the truth from a deranged cannibal, but you will very likely have exchanges with uncooperative sources who want to make you uncomfortable before they give you any information. An all-too-common example is the cheating spouse who wants the wife to feel badly about what she did to hurt the marriage before he comes clean on his infidelity (or vice versa).

In cases like this, you may get the truth, but you aren’t the one in control of the conversation. In this chapter, experts tell you how to establish, retain, and regain control so that you secure the information you need. It’s all part of the process they describe by which you bring a hostile source over to your side, cut through lies, and extract the truth.

6 Steps to Finding a Dictator

Eric Maddox developed a system for converting hostile sources into cooperative ones that helped him locate Saddam Hussein. Although Maddox went through the the U.S. Army’s interrogation training program at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, he thought the Army method of interrogation was flawed. He incorporated what he determined were effective techniques that he learned at Huachuca into his own interrogation scheme. The process he developed will likely resonate far more with non-military people who face a hostile source because it does not integrate any elements of fear or threat. It relies on:

1. Understanding your source’s situation.

2. Identifying his needs.

3. Cultivating trust.

4. Mentally re-orienting the source.

5. Putting the stakes into context.

6. Questioning well.

Understanding Your Source’s Situation

Maddox begins by looking at his prisoner’s situation; he thinks through the experiences that he had before being led into a room for interrogation. This is analogous to a CEO coming into a meeting with senior executive suspected of financial transgressions and making space in her thinking for the man’s circumstances: He ran an operation in a foreign country, surrounded by people of a different culture, and when I summoned him here for this meeting, he flew 11 hours, put on a suit, and then walked through my door. He is tired and frightened, and probably sees me as calculating and vengeful right now.

In the venue of the battlefield, Maddox would consider factors such as these: This prisoner was captured in the middle of the night at his house. When our soldiers went into his home, they didn’t know who he was initially. They stayed at his house for about 45 minutes. They eventually put him up against a wall and put a flashlight to his face to suggest that they had an informant with them to help identify him. When they put the flashlight to his face, members of the team kept muttering, “Yes, yes! That’s him!” Then they whisked him away to a helicopter. He knows no other prisoners were put into the helicopter. Someone put a hood over his head and he was flown two-and-a-half hours to a location where he’s been in isolation ever since.

In either the circumstance of the prisoner of war or that of the senior executive, the person who wants information from the source has to consider: What was the person thinking? Among other things, he is wondering who gave him up, or how he was found out. In all likelihood, he’s also making an assumption that if he is going to be interrogated, under zero circumstances will the person asking the questions help him out. As Maddox says:

It would be ridiculous to think that after you’ve blown down someone’s door in the middle of a war zone, grabbed him by the collar, put a hood over his head, flew him to a prison, and thrown him in isolation for a few hours that he would believe me when I lift up the hood and say, “I’m here to help.”

So the first question has to be, “What’s going on in the mind of this prisoner?” What does he think he’s going to see when I lift that hood? What does he think I’m going to ask him? What direction does he think I’m going to go in?

I want to figure out every possible question and concern in the mind of the prisoner.

One of the initial techniques a military interrogator might use with a prisoner is part of the so-called incentive approach. It might include giving him some creature comforts as a way of getting him to feel more favorable about his circumstances and about the interrogator. Maddox is very skeptical about the value of this—he prefers a strategy that arouses curiosity—because it does not address the core issues related to how the prisoner feels:

Do you think someone who has just gone through what the prisoner went through is going to care about hot chai and bagels? That guy is trying to determine if he should plead complete innocence and try to get the Americans to believe they accidentally captured the wrong person. He’s wondering, “Should I marginalize my nefarious activities, by trying to convince him he perceives my activities to be worse than they were? Should I try to negotiate my way out through cooperation? Or maybe I should just sit here and look confused.”

Compare Maddox’s description of his prisoner’s thoughts to how we might describe what’s going on in the head of the senior executive under scrutiny. Would a cappuccino and a scone do anything to alleviate his anxiety? Certainly, the circumstances are different in the sense that the executive is not facing an outcome that may be literally life or death, but for someone like him, the possibility of prison time might seem like death.

The key thing to keep in mind that is that beginning of interaction determines, to a great extent, whether or not you will get the desired outcome. Maddox compares it to flying an airplane: if you don’t know how to take off, you’re just going to crash immediately. “A lot of people do interrogations thinking they are flying the plane and the plane crashed a long time ago.” Whether it’s an interview, a negotiation, or an investigation like the one with the CEO and her senior executive, the model is the same. You have to begin well, keenly assessing the conditions at hand. After that, you put the necessary speed and direction into the effort so the plane flies.

Identifying Needs

A standard military interrogation begins with an assessment of intelligence gaps and a set of intelligence goals. The interrogator wants to know what information the prisoner can deliver that will help find a valued target, assess military strength, determine battle plans, and so on. So the starting point for the interrogator tends to be what he can get out of the source. That means he is the one going in with needs. That gives the control in the conversation or negotiation to the source, who has the ability to fulfill or not fulfill the interrogator’s needs. Maddox takes an inverted approach:

I turn that around, so that it appears I need nothing from him, but he needs something from me. I usually do it in a friendly manner.

I try to seem approachable. I say something like, “Well, there’s the guy. Okay, how are you?” He’s just come off the battlefield or some other traumatic circumstances. He might shake his head, so I say, “Not good, huh? Are these guys not treating you well? Are you getting everything you need?”

I don’t ask him for anything. I ask him, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

He might just offhandedly say that he doesn’t belong there. That he’s innocent. I might joke, “I know buddy. Everybody’s innocent here.”

He knows I’m not the one who yanked him out of his house in the middle of the night, so he might think maybe I haven’t made a decision about him yet. I’m like clay. I haven’t hardened up yet. I’m still shapeable.

The exchange to plant the seed that you don’t need anything from the source, but that source needs so much from you, is the basis for going forward. You are laying the foundation for the person to have a reason to speak with you. You ostensibly want nothing, but at the same time can give a lot.

Part of Maddox’s strategy in ascertaining needs is that he doesn’t have unlimited time. He is in this room and in this meeting to make sure that the source’s needs are understood and, to whatever extent possible, met. But he has to leave because of other pressing responsibilities. In the scenario of the CEO and the senior executive who has allegedly done something heinous in a corporate context, the CEO would say that she had to excuse herself due to prior obligations.

The pressure is on. The source must state his needs now or forego the opportunity. And as the desperate intent to forge a connection takes shape, the source then gives verbal and non-verbal cues: I need your help.

When people need your help, if you are too strong, you are intimidating and therefore hard to connect with. But if you come across as genuinely curious and serious about trying to understand them and their dilemma, then you are inviting them to connect with you. The ultimate challenge going forward is to ascertain what your source wants. Once that’s accomplished, then you have a strong chance of getting the truth from him.

Cultivating Trust

If you’re dealing with a hostile source, then chances are good that there is the issue of guilt or innocence at play. As part of his strategy to secure trust, Maddox next goes through a process of convincing the source that he hasn’t made any judgment about guilt or innocence. The clear message is that he is malleable and that the information he seeks would be one thing that would help him make some important choices.

The exchange might go like this:

Maddox:	I’m really busy. I know they’re trying to get you to Guantánamo Bay as soon as possible. I just need to get some paperwork done and make sure I have your name correct.
Prisoner:	No, I really need your help.
Maddox:	What’s the problem? I don’t have all day, but I’ll do what I can to help you.
Prisoner:	I’m innocent.
Maddox:	That’s not what the commander says. Those guys who grabbed you are convinced you’re guilty. They are happy to have you here.
Prisoner:	They’re liars. I didn’t do anything wrong.
Maddox:	I don’t know anything about this. You’re going to have to explain what’s going on.

The CEO’s exchange with her senior executive suspected of wrongdoing could easily parallel the above:

CEO:	I have to prepare for the board meeting tomorrow so you’ll have to excuse me. Our legal team is going to spend time with you next and see how this needs to get sorted out. I just wanted to spend a few minutes with you to let you know that things will move forward rather quickly from this point on.
Exec Suspect:	Just a few more minutes, please. I need your help.
CEO:	What do you think I can do for you?
Exec Suspect:	I didn’t do anything wrong.
CEO:	That’s not what the auditors think and it’s not what I’ve been told.
Exec Suspect:	They made a mistake. I don’t know who told you what, but they aren’t giving you the whole picture.
CEO:	You’re going to have to explain what’s going on.

With an exchange like this, the relationship takes a critical turn. In the context of an interrogation, when Maddox lifts the hood, the prisoner’s main thought is, Don’t talk to this guy. That conviction has now shifted. He perceives that Maddox is not only in a position to help him, but also that the interrogator hasn’t made up his mind about his guilt or innocence: “You have to convince the person you are shapeable. The source has to feel you don’t want anything from him and that he can make an impression on you. When he believes that, he thinks, Wait a second. I want to talk to this guy. It may not do any good, but it’s the only shot I have at changing my circumstances.”

The breakthrough in cultivating trust—that is, establishing rapport—occurs when the hostile source wants to talk to you. He feels the need for conversation as the only way to convince you to help him. Integral to having the trust take hold is to get the source to believe that you have the will and ability to follow through on doing some tough maneuvering to be helpful.

Having accomplished that, figuratively speaking, you try to get him to walk toward you—to want to be closer to you. In a situation where there is an enemy, you want him to come over to your side. Maddox often saw this happen with prisoners who saw that the American team was efficient and showed strength and precision in operations. They compared that to their own teams and decided they would be smart to switch allegiance to the United States.

In other situations with a hostile source, the shift might involve turning a state’s witness or offering to gather information secretly that would be helpful to you. In the example of the senior executive, he might offer to cooperate so that others involved in the scheme would get caught.

It’s reasonable to wonder if someone who decides to switch loyalties can be counted on to remain loyal and prove himself trustworthy. Maddox’s anecdotal evidence is compelling. He’s done more than 2,700 interrogations, but had only three prisoners dupe him after he’d determined they were being cooperative. He notes that, of course there were hundreds he did not get the cooperation of, but among those he felt he’d won over, almost all of them remained cooperative. It’s an impressive conversion rate similar to that of Hans Scharff, who supposedly obtained salient information from 90 percent of the prisoners he interrogated.

Mentally Re-Orienting the Source

If you have ever gone to summer camp, boot camp, college, or any other immersive experience that lasted an extended period of time, then you can immediately grasp what happens in the next phase of the process. After your source cooperates, you try to get him into a completely different world. In a summer camp experience, the person leaves home and goes to a new environment; soon, he adapts to it and starts to feel comfortable in it. As long you can keep the person in the new environment, he will likely stay in it. In the business example, the CEO could move the senior executive to headquarters where he would have periodic access to her. A clandestine service officer would place his defector into a safe house where they could meet often and converse freely.

In some ways, this is like the military approach called “change of scene” that was described in Chapter 4. The big difference is that the approach is temporary; it’s a matter of walking the source to the coffee machine instead of staying in the interrogation room the whole time. There is no sense of immersion, and though it might engender more open conversation, it wouldn’t contribute to the kind of bonding that’s the goal in this process.

In a war zone, an environment where the prisoner is removed from fighting and no longer has a constant concern about where to hide represents a completely different world. It doesn’t have the elements of struggle that kept him on edge all the time. Maddox says, “It’s like drug rehab for some people. You get them there and they are good with it. As long as they don’t have to go back into society, they’re fine.”

Putting the Stakes Into Context

In television crime dramas, the detective commonly sits across a table from the accused murder and warns, “If eyewitnesses to the crime tell me you did it, you’ll be on death row within three months.” The CEO’s version of this caution would be, “If our auditors prove you altered the books, you will pay a fine that’s more than you could ever earn in a lifetime.” In both cases, the success they had previously in drawing in their hostile source will evaporate.

What they’ve done is put the center of the discussion “out there” where the wrongdoing occurred. What they need to do is keep the focus “in here.”

You aren’t in a war zone. Even if you were, there are distinct advantages to keeping the discussion and the stakes of a transgression within the environment where the one-on-one interaction is occurring. You have a hostile source in front of you, who now has come to trust you on some level, so keep the conversation focused on what occurs in this context. Maddox provides a scenario that spotlights how this works:

Define the stakes in terms of what can happen inside the interrogation room, and shut out what others have said and threatened.

The prisoner probably says, “I’m innocent. I haven’t done anything.” But the set-up has to be that he feels it’s beneficial to talk to me, even though he’s been told that my team said he blew up Americans.

“No, no; ask me anything,” he says. “I’ll prove it to you that I’m innocent.”

One approach that the training at Ft. Huachuca teaches would then have me say something like, “Okay, but if you killed people and I can prove it, then you go to prison for the rest of your life.”

But I want to keep the focus on “in here” and not what he did “out there,” so that’s not what I would do. I’d say, “Listen, if I’m going to spend this time helping you, you cannot tell me a single lie.”

The typical response is, “Mister, if I tell you a single lie, then you can kill me.” This is a statement that he’d punctuate by running his finger across his neck like a knife slicing it.

I make it clear that I can’t and wouldn’t kill him, but if he told me a single lie, he would stay in this prison for the rest of his life. Then I juice it up; I give him good news: “But if you don’t tell me a single lie, then I’ll let you walk right out that door.”

What just happened? I’m not having to prove what that guy did out there; I’m just having to catch him in a lie in here.

Put the stakes inside the interrogation booth. You can’t prove what they did out there, but can catch them in a lie in the booth.

Questioning Well

Maddox cites questioning techniques as the single most valuable aspect of his interrogation training at Ft. Huachuca. It was what my coauthor Jim Pyle taught at the interrogation school and what we focused on in Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime. Specifically, Maddox sees value in differentiating between one type of question and another and in knowing how to use the different types in logical combination with each other to obtain the information being sought.

Even so, he puts his own spin on the execution. First, I’ll clarify the types of questions (a more complete discussion is in Chapter 5) by citing examples related to prisoner interrogation and the CEO–senior executive scenario. After that, I’ll cover Maddox’s unique way of questioning and handling source leads.

Good questions

1. Direct: A straightforward question that opens with a basic interrogative word or phrase. The CEO asks the senior executive, “Did you alter the financial records?”

2. Control: A question for which you already have the answer. The CEO asks the executive, “How many direct reports do you have at that location?” even though he already knows that information.

3. Repeat: Two or more different questions that are after the same information. The CEO asks the executive, “When was the last time you accessed the financial records?” The executive responds, “March 30, at the end of the quarter.” Toward the end of the conversation, which is taking place on May 15, she asks as she’s going out the door, “By the way, I’m meeting with the board tomorrow and I need to tell them how many weeks it’s been since you’ve accessed the financial records. What do I tell them?” Without thinking, the executive blurts out, “About two weeks.”

4. Persistent (or Follow-Up): The same question, either reshaped a little or simply repeated to explore different angles of the desired information. A version of it is “What else?” So, an interrogator questioning a prisoner might ask him what he was doing just prior to capture. The prisoner replies, “Eating lunch.” The interrogator suspects that’s not all he was doing, because the prisoner had a fresh cut on his leg, so he asks, “What else?”

5. Summary: An aid to revisiting an answer. The CEO says to the executive, “Do I understand you correctly that there were four people who had access to those records?” Just be careful and don’t turn this into a compound question by trying to consolidate information. An example of this mistake is: “Do I understand you correctly that there were four people who had access to the information and that one of them was on maternity leave when the problems arose?”

6. Non-Pertinent: A question that ostensibly does not relate to the information you’re seeking. In the discussion that follows, you will see how Maddox masterfully uses non-pertinent questions to arrive at pertinent information. A classic use of non-pertinent questions with a hostile source is to find out how he responds in a conversation that’s relatively non-stressful because the topic has nothing to do with guilt or innocence.

Bad questions

1. Leading: The question supplies an answer. The CEO says to the executive prior to any guilt having been established, “How badly do you feel about manipulating the financial records?” The question should be a direct one at that stage: “Did you manipulate the records?”

2. Negative: Use of negative words such as “never” and “not” that confuse the point of the question. The interrogator says to the prisoner, “Are you not listening to me?”

3. Vague: A question lacking clarity, so the source may not be sure what information is being requested. The CEO asks the executive, “When you found out the auditors had entered the building and then they walked into your office unannounced with your assistant running behind them, what were you thinking?” The executive can pick and choose with this one, perhaps responding with, “I worried that someone had done something terrible to my assistant. She looked absolutely terrified.” When you ask a vague question, if the source intends to hide the facts from you, this sets him up to hide them without even lying to you.

4. Compound: Posing two or more questions at one time. The interrogator asks the prisoner, “How did you get the bomb into the basement of that building and where did you get the materials to build it?”

Armed with his arsenal of different types of questions, Maddox proceeds with an interrogation that more closely resembles the kind of conversation you would have with someone you’ve just met on a long train ride. His combination of all the good questions—direct, control, repeat, persistent, summary, and non-pertinent—gives him a spectrum of information. He’s particularly adept at showing how and why non-pertinent questions can be a vital part of the exchange:

If the prisoner is part of the insurgency, about 95 percent of his life is normal. He has a job and kids and a house to take care of. It’s the other five percent of his time that’s devoted to making bombs and planting IEDs. He will want to hide that five percent, but he will feel open about talking to me about that other 95 percent of his existence. He’ll open up in the hope that I conclude that he’s pretty clean. I ask about friends, family, job, relationship, travel, property, income and everything else. And somehow, I build a blueprint in my brain and from it, I can identify the hidden five percent.

Then I reveal that to the prisoner. You can see the look on his face; he knows he’s been caught.

Maddox’s summary of his questioning style doesn’t capture the complexity of the process, which, to a great extent, depends on the way he follows source leads. If you were to go “by the book” (in the this case, that means following the Army Field Manual), then you would pick up a single source lead and follow it through. So, for example, if your source makes a reference to a friend he saw every day during the period of time when he was allegedly engaged in illegal activities, then you would go down a questioning path that focuses on the friend. In contrast, in the following example and explanation, Maddox illuminates how his process is different:

Let’s say I’m talking to an Iraqi from Tikrit and our conversation is three or four hours. We start with questions about friends and family. While telling me about his family, he says he has three brothers—two older and one younger. He also has a couple of sisters. He has a farm. He likes to travel. He does a lot of things with his family.

I notice that when he’s going to a wedding or other family gathering and he rides in a car, whenever he’s with one or more of his brothers, his older brother drives. I’ll ask, “Who did you ride with?”

“My oldest brother came up and picked us up.”

Or he might say, “I drove over to my younger brother’s house and picked him up.”

So I get a picture of a certain dynamic. Whoever the older brother is in the scene, he’s the one who drives. At some point, he tells me a story of going to a sister’s wedding three years ago. He says his older brothers went in a different car and he was in the car with his younger brother. I ask, “Where were you sitting?”

He says, “In the back seat.”

Suddenly, I’m missing an older sibling. I’ll have to circle around in different ways to confirm that, but what I’ve done is build a picture in my head based upon data. But what I don’t do is fill in any of the peripheral paint. Everything ties to data input.

Most people have a tendency to fill in the gaps through assumptions and perhaps through connecting dots that aren’t there. I am not saying that I don’t assume they were driving on a road, but it’s not in my picture if the prisoner hasn’t described it. I’m not going to ask a leading question like, “What happened when you drove down the road toward your mother’s house?” That’s filling in the paint in the picture. Don’t plug in data you did not receive. But do use the data that you have.

I’m not labeling any of the information relevant or irrelevant. At the point when I get it, I just don’t know. You must use what you have. Use all of what you have.

I’m not intuitive about this. I’m just a pragmatic person who collects data and sees how it fits and where the gaps are.

To explain more about Maddox’s process, if he is trying to confirm that there’s a missing sibling in a story, he has a suspicion that the prisoner is trying to hide something. It could be another family relationship, like a cousin. Or the source may talk freely about everyone in his family, but seems less inclined to be that open about his wife’s younger brother. Or there might be a detail such as the prisoner saying he has one farm, but descriptions of terrain and buildings suggest that there are two. Or he said he went to Syria twice, but his narrative suggests he actually went three times.

Maddox doesn’t ignore body language or tools like NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) as indicators of deception; however, he doesn’t consider them primary. One physical cue that does stand out for him is a deviation in pace. If he’s having a fluid conversation with the prisoner about his younger brother for three minutes and then his older brother for three minutes, and then there’s halting conversation about the oldest brother, he will suspect that the source is trying to hide something. “But knowing that doesn’t do much good,” he says. “It’s finding out what he’s hiding that gets me where I need to go.” He also needs to know why the source is hiding the information. Would he tell everyone this lie or just the American interrogator? You don’t get that from reading body language, which merely indicates that stress is present and there’s a likelihood that someone told a lie.

Maddox then works all of those pieces that seem to contain lies of omission into his questioning strategy. He says, “Those holes are part of the five percent of the prisoner’s life that relates to his activities in the insurgency.” Every question he then asks can build a confirmation of one or more of the missing pieces in the picture.

So the way he handles it is different from the standard map of following a source lead. There isn’t just a missing brother. There’s also a missing farm, a missing trip, and a missing brother-in-law, and he’s working the leads simultaneously. The questions do “lean on” each other to gather more data for the picture, but it doesn’t proceed in the straight path a student interrogator would see in the Army Field Manual.

The question for anyone without the natural mental agility of Eric Maddox is: How do you execute a strategy like this and follow multiple sources leads concurrently? It’s so fundamental to his success that Maddox says unequivocally, “That’s how I try to find the truth.”

Maddox’s technique sounds like a miracle of memory, but you may already be doing this to some extent without realizing it. His method is reminiscent of an approach that some respected journalists have used through the years. In the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, William Henry Hills and Robert Luce, a journalist who later became a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, produced a series of volumes titled The Writer. In Volume 15, they advised:

It is often a good rule for a reporter to get his whole story without taking a single note, and then go over it again with the person he is questioning, this time jotting down brief notes of names and important facts. Having “surrounded” the matter, so to speak, he knows what information he needs in the way of detail, and he can get it in proper order and to the best advantage.²

The man they cited as the original source of the advice was a renowned journalist name Charles Hemstreet, who first offered it in an 1866 book titled The Reporter at Work. Hemstreet’s logic as expressed in that book tracks with how Maddox operates. Some people like Maddox—and I can personally relate to this—find note-taking distracting. We are better off listening to every word that someone says and then taking some time to process what we heard before asking follow-up questions and following source leads.

If this approach to questioning seems doable for you, then you will find yourself following multiple source leads at once. It will probably be useful to sort them mentally into people, places, things, and events so there is an underlying system of storing the leads—just as you would store them if you were taking physical notes.

Minimizing and Maximizing

Minimizing involves making your source feel less guilty or less wrong, and maximizing does the opposite. Used skillfully, both have value in extracting the truth from a hostile source, but these techniques aren’t as simple to use as observing nervous gestures or avoiding bad questions. It’s very easy to be clumsy with these techniques with the result being that your source knows you are manipulating what she perceives as the consequences of admitting to cheating, stealing, or any other transgression.

Minimizing

The following example illustrates a skillful use of minimizing because of where the interrogator places his emphasis.

As part of his work as a special agent in the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Michael Reilly had to interrogate a suspected child molester. He was actually beyond a suspect, as Reilly had ample evidence that the military officer seated before him had been having an incestuous relationship with his daughter. The last thing that Reilly—himself the father of young daughters—wanted to do was build rapport with a heinous predator. But he knew he had to do it in order to get a confession. Without a confession to avert a trial, the girl’s nightmares would be fueled by the drama in a courtroom where she would be asked to tell a room full of strangers what her father had done. So Reilly began building a bridge, father to father.

They talked about the challenges of being a father to a beautiful daughter. They would do anything for their daughters, they agreed, even though sometimes it was painful to them. Reilly wanted his suspect to feel as though he understood him; he wanted the man to get the sense that his actions regarding his daughter were acceptable, even normal. He steadily moved toward the conversational territory where he could bring up the subject of sexual relations, eventually suggesting that he understood how a father might want to teach his daughter about being with a man so her first experience would be with someone who loved her, someone who would have sex with her to protect her from harsh surprises later on.

As the man began to trust Reilly, he talked about how he had done just that. He stuck with the approach to minimizing that Reilly had established, saying things like “I was trying to teach my daughter the ways of the world. I didn’t want her to learn it from a stranger.”

Reilly’s emphasis was on assuming a friendly demeanor, expressing understanding and even sympathy, boosting the man’s ego by suggesting he did something wise, and ultimately touching his conscience. It’s what researchers in the field of interrogation strategies call a “no consequences” approach to minimizing.

In contrast, a “consequences” approach would specifically downplay the consequences of the transgression and stress the benefits, in terms of leniency, of cooperating with the interrogator. Studies have shown that the consequences style of minimizing has a greater chance of eliciting a false confession or other incorrect information than Reilly’s no-consequences use of the technique.³

Maximizing

In Chapter 4, I briefly referenced military-style conversation motivators, otherwise known to interrogators as “approaches.” Some of them are key elements in the maximizing technique, which is more confrontational in nature than minimizing. These elements might include the we-know-all and fear-up (mild) approaches. So, for example, you might confront your cheating spouse by saying that you’ve seen the text messages from his mistress—even though you haven’t, but you know he texts a lot—and that you intend to tell his mother, who would likely disinherit him for his adultery because of her religious beliefs.

The holes in adopting this technique are probably obvious. Anytime you assert absolutely certainty about someone’s guilt, if you don’t have hard evidence of that guilt, the ice underneath you is thin. And nearly anytime you integrate a third party into the scenario, you have introduced a significant variable.

A better way to maximize would be simply to assume an unfriendly demeanor and assert a firm belief in guilt.⁴ This is the no-consequences style of maximizing that is more likely to provoke truthfulness and less likely to aggravate the source to the point of outrage, anger, and denial.

The fundamental premise of any technique designed to lure a hostile source into telling the truth is this: You are dealing with a human being. Human beings, unless they are aberrant, want to feel connected to others. The techniques described throughout this book are interpersonal skills that allow you to connect with others effectively and exploit that connection through conversation.