Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All (11 page)

In the end, Norman obtained his security clearance. That meant far more to Phil than winning the round did.

8.

GOING FOR THE GOLD: COLLECTING NUGGETS OF INFORMATION

As you proceed with your monologue in your interrogation of Jan, at some point it’ll be time to check your progress—you’ll need to evaluate where you stand in your quest to persuade Jan to admit that she stole the missing oxycodone. The best time to do that is when you see some sign of buy-in, some indication of agreement with what you’ve been conveying to her in your monologue. This sign may come in the form of a nonverbal indicator—she might nod her head in agreement when you tell her that the only way to resolve the matter is to get all the facts onto the table. Or it might come verbally—she may agree with a rationalization or minimization statement with an acknowledgment like, “Yeah, things have been tough lately,” or “You’re right, I’m not a bad person.”

Now, how should you phrase your progress check? Suppose you were to simply put it this way:

“Okay, Jan, tell me: Did you take the oxycodone?”

There’s a problem with that, and it’s a critical one. The message you just sent her is that you still don’t know whether she took it or not, and that she still has a chance to convince you that she didn’t take it. What she hears is that she can still fight, and she can still win.

Instead of hitting her with the “did you do it” question then, you want to convey it in the form of a
presumptive
question. A presumptive question is exactly what it sounds like—it presumes something related to the matter under discussion or investigation. In this case, your presumptive question might be, “Jan, where is the oxycodone now?” or “Jan, how much of the oxycodone do you still have?”

When she hears that, there are two paths Jan can take. One path is to immediately respond with resistance, in which case you’ll need to go right back into your monologue. The other path takes you to your desired destination: the truth. In that case, you go straight into the information collection phase of your interrogation.

The first thing to keep in mind is that it’s essential to refrain from any inclination to chastise or penalize Jan. If she says something like, “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have done it,” you’ll need to combat any urge to dump on her with a retort like, “Jan, I knew you did it,” or “Jan, why didn’t you save us both a lot of time and tell me that before?” As you begin your information collection, it’s vitally important for Jan to feel good about the path she’s chosen, so that she’ll be inclined to continue to share truthful information with you.

Your focus, then, needs to be on rewarding Jan for her decision, and we’ve found that a simple thank-you is a very powerful reward: “Jan, thank you for that. That took a lot of courage.” You’ll also need to squash any urge to bask in your victory—far from haughty, your tone should be sympathetic: “I know that was very difficult, but you did the right thing.” A defense lawyer might claim otherwise, but it’s very difficult to argue that telling the truth isn’t the right thing to do. In any case, you don’t want her head to go there. You want to keep her in short-term thinking mode, and minimization is a useful tool here: “It’s not the end of the world, Jan. The sun will come up tomorrow, just as it always has.”

* * *

The concept of reward in an elicitation situation warrants further elaboration, simply because its expression is so essential in fostering the person’s willingness to continue to share truthful information with you. Sometimes the extent of the information that people share when they feel they’re being rewarded for it surprises even us.

Not long ago, Susan was called in to conduct a screening interview of a job candidate we’ll call “Harriet.” As a self-employed contractor, Harriet had moved between employers fairly frequently, so she had undergone employment interviews with HR personnel on a regular basis over the years. Harriet had always made it through those interviews with no problem, so Susan expected the interview with her to go fairly smoothly. It didn’t. Susan learned that Harriet had been fired from a couple of jobs because she had trouble getting up in the morning. Harriet initially claimed it was because she liked to watch TV late into the night, but later admitted it was related to her abuse of alcohol and drugs. She went on to admit that several years earlier, she had become so addicted to crack cocaine, her aunt reported her to social services for neglecting her children. Harriet further acknowledged that she still used marijuana and cocaine when she got frustrated. When Susan asked her where she got her cocaine, she responded that she could go to any city in the country and identify a dealer on the street. She added that about a year earlier, she had been shot at by a rival dealer in the middle of a drug buy. She unloaded all of that in an interview that lasted less than an hour.

When it was all over, Susan asked Harriet why she felt comfortable sharing that information with her, when none of it ever came out in any of her previous HR interviews. Harriet explained that every other HR department she’d ever gone through would ask her if she had a problem with alcohol or drugs, she’d say “no,” and it was left at that. Harriet told Susan that when she pursued the matter beyond the initial denial, she did it in a way that made her feel better about herself as she gave her progressively more information. And she said it really meant a lot to her that Susan went so far as to thank her for her honesty. It seems the pleasure of hearing a simple thank-you can be kind of addictive in its own right.

At the same time, we’ve found that a thank-you isn’t the only powerful means of rewarding cooperative behavior. Sometimes a little creativity in playing to your audience can go a long way.

Susan once conducted a screening interview with a former special operations officer we’ll call “Kevin,” who had held a high-level security clearance for a number of years. In the course of the interview, it became clear to Susan that Kevin enjoyed his alcohol quite a bit. It also became clear that he was having some difficulty with the standard questions regarding sexual deviancy. Kevin had displayed a cluster of deceptive behaviors in response to those questions, so Susan had to transition to interrogation mode to get to the bottom of the sexual deviancy issue. Kevin eventually admitted to having engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior on a number of occasions when he had been drinking, and Susan rewarded those admissions by playing to Kevin’s machismo.

Susan’s brilliance as an interviewer and interrogator is matched only by her brilliance as an actress. It was time to play a role—one that needed to be pulled off with impeccable timing and absolute believability.

“What sorts of things have you done?” Susan asked. “I mean, what would your wife say is the worst thing you’ve ever done when you were drinking?”

Kevin paused. “Well … I’m not comfortable sharing that with you right now,” he said. “I’m really not comfortable talking about it.”

“Oh, come on, Kevin,” Susan said encouragingly. “You can’t tell me anything I haven’t heard before.”

Kevin relented. Susan was wrong. She genuinely thought she’d heard it all. It turned out she hadn’t.

“Well,” Kevin fumbled, “actually, my wife doesn’t know about this. If she did, she’d kill me. There’s this bar I go to. Sometimes when I’m there, I get up on the bar, drop my pants, and make funny shadow shapes with my penis.”

Unfortunately, in this job there’s no such thing as “too much information.” But Susan didn’t flinch. Her nonchalance made it appear that she was thinking,
If one more guy tells me today that he drops his trousers at a bar and makes funny shadow shapes with his penis, I’m going to start to wonder.
The interview concluded shortly after that, with the nonadversarial nature of the encounter undamaged.

“Okay, so what’s the next step?” Kevin asked, as Susan gathered her things to leave.

“You should be hearing from us within a week to ten days,” Susan said. She had gotten the information she needed to determine Kevin’s suitability to hold a sensitive position. And Kevin left with his dignity intact.

* * *

Now that Jan has chosen the confession path, your next task is to conduct a debriefing. Your first inclination might well be to drill down on her theft of the oxycodone. Resist that inclination—you can get to that later. She’s in short-term thinking mode, so you need to capitalize on that by taking a lateral approach to determine whether you’re looking at a problem that’s bigger than the theft of the missing oxycodone:

“Jan, I appreciate this. I know it was difficult. But trust me, it’s not the end of the world. Let me ask you, Jan, what other times has something like this happened?”

Let’s say that in response to your question, Jan, visibly upset that she’s in this predicament, summons the courage to admit that she once slipped a few Vicodin tablets into her pocket. What that tells you is that Jan had additional information that she didn’t want to share with you, so it follows that she may well have more information that she wants to withhold. To deal with that, think of the Vicodin admission as what we call a “cliff moment.” What Jan may have been thinking was, “Okay, I can tell her about the oxycodone and the Vicodin, but I can’t tell her about this and this and this, because if I told her all of that, there’s no way I’d be able to keep my job.” It’s like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff, and if she takes one more step, she’s gone.

Your job is to explore what’s in the ravine on the other side of the cliff. So when Jan tells you about the Vicodin, you acknowledge it, reward her, and keep right on going as if she never even said it. The two most important words in this information collection process are “what else.” Think of each subsequent admission as having come to another cliff, and keep exploring what’s on the other side. If she exhibits deceptive behavior, you go right back into the monologue. If she admits to something else, you reward. Then you keep going until she says there is nothing else, and she shows no signs of deceptive behavior. With each admission, remember to avoid a deep dive into any one issue. Your best bet is to aim for little nuggets of information, so it doesn’t appear that you’re asking for a big data dump and an emotionally draining confession. Then, when you have all those nuggets and it’s time for your deep dive, don’t go back to the beginning—start with the most recent admission first. That’s likely the most serious matter, because it’s the one she tried hardest to conceal.

Keep in mind as you’re collecting those nuggets how essential it is to remain engaged. As we pointed out in Chapter 6, engaging the person you’re interrogating is a vital element in coming across as sincere, which will in turn help you in your effort to persuade the person to share the information you’re seeking. But we should make it clear that it’s equally important to be engaged from the standpoint of ensuring that you don’t miss any of those nuggets that are coming at you.

Susan once did a screening interview with a job candidate we’ll call “Marvin,” who mentioned during the interview that he had graduated from high school six years earlier. That information typically wouldn’t be particularly consequential during an interview of this type, so if the interviewer isn’t acutely engaged, something like that can easily become buried under the mental pile of consequential information that’s collected over the course of the interview. In this case, when Susan raised the topic of drug use, Marvin admitted to using cocaine five years earlier. For the reasons we’ve explained, Susan didn’t drill down on that admission—it was like she had never even heard it. She proceeded with her line of questioning to determine what other drugs Marvin might have used, and what other times he used them. When she was satisfied that there were no other cliffs to approach, Susan went back to the cocaine admission to drill down on that. When she asked about the circumstances, Marvin said he and some buddies on his high school hockey team had used cocaine at a five-year class reunion. Oops. Marvin didn’t realize he had goofed up until Susan called him on it.

“OK, help me understand this, Marvin,” Susan said, with no hint of remonstration in her voice. “Earlier you said it was five years ago that you last used cocaine. You also said you graduated from high school six years ago. If you used the cocaine at a five-year class reunion, can you clarify the timeline for me?”

Marvin knew there was no way out. He apologized, and admitted that it wasn’t five years earlier, after all. It turned out he had actually last used cocaine about two months earlier. If Susan hadn’t been engaged enough to have caught the seemingly insignificant fact that Marvin had graduated from high school six years earlier, she would have been beaten on the drug question.

* * *

Speaking of cliff moments, if you happen to be a woman, and you’ve ever found yourself in the position of needing to purchase a new car, you probably know what it feels like to want to take a leap off the nearest cliff. It can be an outrageously frustrating experience when unscrupulous salesmen do their best to capitalize on a situation in which they perceive themselves as having the upper hand. The trick is to turn the tables, and to use those cliff moments to your advantage.

Not long ago, Susan was in the market for a new car. Her experience at the first dealership she went to gave her a sense of what she was up against. She had seen an ad for a special sale on a particular model at this dealership—every car on the lot that was this particular model was being sold at one very attractive, low price. When Susan arrived at the dealership, the salesman took her to a lot where all of the cars had been damaged by a recent hail storm—some worse than others. That was odd, Susan thought, because the ad didn’t say anything about hail damage. So she asked the salesman if those were the only cars that were included in the sale.

“Oh, no,” the salesman replied. “There are others. Did you want to see those?”

“Not anymore,” Susan said. And she left.

The next dealership Susan went to played the guilt card, which it apparently found to be especially effective with women. After a test drive, the salesman suggested to Susan that she take the car home and drive it for a couple of days. Susan resisted, but the salesman was adamant. “Take it,” he said. “Once you’ve really experienced it, you’re not going to want to bring it back.”