Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All (14 page)

Michael was stunned. He had Tommy squarely in short-term thinking mode, and sensed he was on the verge of a confession. He knew that once Tommy left to do all of that pondering, the short-term thinking would collapse, and the chance of getting the truth would likely be lost forever. The detective handed Tommy his business card, and asked him to call him on Monday after he had thought it over. Tommy got up from his chair, and as he approached the door to leave, Michael knew he had to do something, and quickly. That baby girl needed justice, and he wasn’t about to let his best chance of accomplishing that slip through his fingers.

“Tommy, why can’t you tell us now?” Michael asked, managing to maintain his calm bearing.

“Because I’m scared, Michael,” Tommy replied. “I’m scared.”

In the world of interrogation that was tantamount to a confession, and it was all Michael needed to hear.

“I understand that, Tommy,” Michael said. “But you sincerely need to rethink this. If you leave now, it will be out of my hands for good. I’m here to work with you, and you need to clear it up. You need to clear it up today. You need to clear it up now. You owe it to yourself, and most importantly, you owe it to little Belinda.”

Tommy sat back down. After several more minutes of talking with Michael and the detective, Tommy was in tears. He turned to Michael.

“You’re pretty smart,” Tommy said. “What would you do?”

Michael looked at Tommy the way a father would look at a son who had come to him for advice. “I would tell the truth,” he replied gently. “That’s what I would do.”

Tommy looked down, and slowly nodded. He proceeded to give a full confession.

Tommy saw Michael as an ally, someone who wanted to help him deal with this nightmare he was living. That persuaded Tommy to share the truth: On the third day of a methamphetamine binge, he inflicted the injuries on the baby girl because her crying was keeping him awake.

Over the course of a long career, Michael had encountered the worst of the worst—murderers, rapists, child abusers—so he had been there plenty of times with people like Tommy. But what shouldn’t be lost in all of this is that Michael genuinely cared about Tommy. In fact, everything he told Tommy was from the heart—he understood what Tommy was feeling. Tommy knew that, and he ultimately turned to Michael for advice in making what would be one of the most important decisions of his life.

As Tommy was being handcuffed and escorted from the interrogation room, he turned to Michael.

“I bet you hate me, don’t you,” he said, the pain of the thought evident in his voice.

“Tommy, I hate what you did,” Michael replied, with no need to fake the compassion that Tommy could clearly see. “But I don’t hate you.”

11.

AN ELICITATION CASE STUDY

A sixteen-year-old girl we’ll call “Judy” let something slip in a casual conversation with the female dispatcher at a local police department. Judy, who worked at the station as a member of the Police Explorers, an auxiliary police program for young people, mentioned to the dispatcher that she had engaged in a sex act with an officer on the force. What Judy didn’t realize at the time was that the police officer, whom we’ll call “Ralph,” was dating the dispatcher.

The dispatcher, as you might imagine, was furious, and she reported the incident to the police chief. Ralph, a handsome twenty-four-year-old who was well liked by everyone in the department, vehemently denied the accusation, which had to do with an incident of mutual masturbation in Ralph’s truck. Following an internal investigation, everyone involved—the police chief, lieutenants, sergeants, the investigator from the district attorney’s office—believed that Ralph was telling the truth, and that Judy had fabricated the entire story. Even Judy’s father was overheard screaming at her, “I want you to stop fucking lying to these men, and tell them the truth!”

Judy’s physical description of Ralph’s genitals was inaccurate (we’ll spare you the details), and there were apparent inconsistencies in her story as to where the act took place. But what really convinced the investigators that she was lying was her “lack of emotion” in recounting the details of the incident. They were certain that a sixteen-year-old girl’s behavior would be akin to that of a traumatized rape victim if she had been telling the truth, so her composure in recounting the incident was seen as a conspicuous red flag. But Judy stuck unwaveringly to her story.

That’s when Michael entered the scene. He was called in to interview Judy, and to confirm that she was lying.

It made for a long day. It was a four-hour drive to the town where the police department was located, and Michael was scheduled for an early morning interview with Judy. As the interview got under way, Michael soon recognized that there was a very reasonable explanation for why she had been so composed in recounting the story: She was an enthusiastic participant, and actually had hoped for such an encounter with Ralph. She was anything but traumatized.

Throughout the interview, Michael closely observed the verbal and nonverbal behaviors Judy exhibited in response to his questions, and he came to his conclusion with a high degree of certainty: Judy was telling the truth. That meant Michael needed to have a chat with Ralph.

At the conclusion of the interview with Judy, Michael met with the police chief in his office, along with several of the investigating officers. They were stunned when Michael told them that in his professional opinion Judy was telling the truth. But the police chief didn’t hesitate. Ralph was at home, having been placed on administrative leave with pay to wait out the investigation. The police chief called him and ordered him to report immediately to the station for an interview with Michael.

As we pointed out in Chapter 6, it’s essential for an interviewer to be as informed as possible about the interviewee’s background, so that this information can be incorporated into the monologue, should the interview transition to an interrogation. Michael knew that Ralph had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps, and that he was divorced, with a reputation as a ladies’ man in the community.

We’ve found that the more we know about the person’s less fortunate life circumstances, the better equipped we will be to develop an effective interrogation strategy. These circumstances might include financial difficulties, alcohol or drug dependency, relationship problems, being raised in a one-parent household or on the wrong side of the tracks, physical abuse, racism, sexism, employment issues, or simple bad luck. All of these circumstances are fertile ground for exploitation as we build rationalization into the monologue.

During the nonaccusatory investigative interview, the interviewer should take advantage of any opportunities that present themselves to begin planting seeds in the event of a subsequent interrogation. In Michael’s interview with Ralph, such an opportunity arose when he learned that Ralph’s alleged misconduct had been characterized by the investigators in extremely harsh language. This is how it played out:

Michael:
How did you learn of the allegations against you?

Ralph:
I was getting ready for work, and they told me to come meet the chief. I was thinking, there are only two reasons for meeting the chief—when you’re doing good, or you’re doing bad. So I just came in, and they sat me down and the chief told me what the allegations are—that I molested Judy. I didn’t know what to think. That’s how I heard of it.

Michael:
That’s what he called it—“molesting”? That’s the word he used?

Ralph:
Yeah.

Michael:
Okay. That’s kind of a strong word.

Ralph:
Yeah.

Michael:
How did you feel when he said that?

Ralph:
Like my life had stopped. Those are serious allegations. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to say.

[Michael was thinking,
Hey, Ralph, how about saying, I DIDN’T DO IT!]

Michael:
What did you say?

Ralph:
I didn’t say anything. They just walked me out and I sat down and spoke with the Department of Justice investigator.

From that brief exchange, Michael knew that a major psychological hurdle he would need to overcome during the interrogation would require him to reframe the allegation so that it wasn’t presented in terms of Judy having been “molested.” He needed to use a softer, more psychologically acceptable term, like “inappropriate touching.”

Another means of gaining insight into potential psychological hurdles that will need to be overcome during an interrogation is to simply ask. A hypothetical question can be particularly effective, as Michael demonstrated in this case:

Michael:
If someone did what Judy said happened here, what do you think the person would be afraid of? What would be the person’s biggest reason not to want to tell the truth about that? What would be their greatest fear?

Ralph:
Like if I did it?

Michael:
You or anybody who had done something like what Judy said happened.

Ralph:
I guess if they’re an adult and she’s a minor, I guess worried about going to jail or something.

Bingo! That new information would be solid gold in an interrogation. Now Michael knew the biggest psychological hurdle he’d need to overcome in order to turn Ralph’s “no” into “yes” was his fear of going to the Big House should he confess.

Michael had gotten enough information to be convinced that Ralph was indeed lying, so it was time to switch to interrogation mode. His transition statement took the form of a DOG, and he began by explaining how he knew that Ralph wasn’t being truthful:

Michael:
Basically, what we are able to do now is just based upon the way a person looks, acts, and talks, we know whether he is telling the truth or not. Because people do certain things and they say things certain ways when they tell the truth, and they do certain things and say certain things when they don’t tell the truth. And, quite frankly here, Ralph, based on the verbal and nonverbal behaviors you have displayed during our interview, and based upon the investigation itself, there is no question that there was sexual activity between you and Judy.

Ralph:
[Silence]

It’s important to note here that throughout the interrogation, you need to remain firmly in what we call “L-squared mode.” That is, you need to simultaneously
look
and
listen
to track the subject’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Beyond the obvious advantage of determining truth and deception, this assessment model serves as a road map to track progress, or lack thereof, as the interrogation unfolds. In this case, Ralph’s failure to deny reinforced Michael’s initial assessment that Ralph was being deceptive, and that he was on the right course.

Michael threw Ralph a lifeline of hope, sliding into his monologue since Ralph had yet to offer any resistance.

Michael:
Now, the good news is the verbal and nonverbal behavior you’ve displayed has shown me that you are not what I would classify as a typical sex offender. You’re not even close to that. So, I’m going to be able to say conclusively that you’re not necessarily a threat to anybody.

I think when you get down to the brass tacks of this thing, my gut feeling is they are going to find out that this was probably all Judy’s idea, and that you absolutely didn’t do anything to encourage it, nor did you force anything, and that one thing led to another. We all make mistakes in judgment. But because you are in the law enforcement setting, nobody wants to spoil anything for you. I can tell just from talking to you that you are an outstanding police officer.

I don’t want to ruin anything for you. But what’s happened here, what I wanted to say, is they should have known better. Through no fault of yours, they have kind of unconsciously put the fear of God in you, and forced you into a position where it’s been really hard for you to tell the truth. Had they not labeled it “molestation,” I think you would have leveled with them. Had they handled you differently, I think you would have said, “Yeah, it was stupid and I shouldn’t have done it.” But then they started throwing out those buzzwords that would have scared
me
off. And, because you’re new in the profession and you’re green, you don’t know how these administrative things go. You’re fearful of how you may be looked upon. Everybody that I’ve talked to speaks very highly of you, and that’s not going to change based on a silly little thing like this.

Now, if you had forced Judy, if you had got her drunk or gave her drugs or taken advantage of her like that—see, that would have been a whole different thing. But none of that happened. If Judy was eight years old or nine years old, that would be a completely different thing. But she’s almost eighteen. She’s for all practical purposes an adult. And, twenty-four isn’t that old. You’re not that much beyond her age.

Ralph was nodding in agreement.

Michael:
Now, if I was with Judy—I’m fifty-one years old—then people might look at that and say that’s weird, that’s age inappropriate. I’m not real quick with math, but I know fifty-one minus sixteen—that’s a lot of years, and so that would be really embarrassing for me. Or if Chief here ended up with Judy, that would be really embarrassing.

I’m married. I don’t know if Chief is married. He probably is, but you’re not even married, see, so, these kinds of things happen in the workplace all the time. There’s always sexual tension in the workplace. And I’m not even implying that you had the hots for Judy, because I know you didn’t. I’m not implying that you singled her out or selected her and then seduced her, went after her. That’s not the case at all.

All that’s happened here is, my gut is, she came to you, saw you as someone she was attracted to and said, “Hey, Ralph, can you give me a ride home?” And you thought it was an innocent thing. And, you’re a nice guy, thinking nothing’s behind it. Why not give her a ride home? And then one thing led to another, and then this thing happened and you think it’s no big deal, just a quickie, a one-night-stand kind of thing, and not that much happened anyway. And for all you knew, it was over with, and no big deal. And then months later they come to you. You had probably completely forgotten about it, and then all of a sudden here it is, and it’s taken on a life of its own. And it’s silly. It’s unfortunate.