Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Educate You How you can Detect Deception

“Don’t Practice on Your Significant Other”
This book’s authors have many years of experience interviewing CIA assets, CIA employees, and a variety of ordinary people in non-CIA settings. Their specialty is in determining when someone is lying. And they are good at it. This skill in detecting deception has done a lot of good, helping their clients make better decisions about hiring the right new employee, trusting the right baby sitter, and prosecuting the person who really “did it.” Sometimes the skills bring pain, making clear that the waiting doctor’s politeness covers bad news or that a spouse isn’t really joking about “her boyfriend.” Still, it’s better to know, isn’t it?Detecting deception isn’t magic and it isn’t infallible. But it is possible to become better at it than most of us are now. The book identifies several barriers to accurately detecting deception. We expect most people to tell the truth, we ask the wrong questions, and we look for the wrong “tells” in other people’s behavior. And we try to watch everything they do instead of focusing on a small number of reliable indicators.Such reliable indicators of deception include certain kinds of verbal hesitations and evasions as well as specific body movements of which a deceiver is largely unaware. Readers learn to ask questions that require different mental processing from guilty versus innocent suspects. One technique is to ask questions a good guy will answer with an immediate–and perhaps angry–“No!” while the bad guy will need to give a longer, more carefully worded response. We watch for deception indicators that begin in the first five seconds after a question. And we look for clusters of indicators rather than for single actions. There is more to it, of course, but this is the core methodology the book presents. It’s good stuff. And it’s learnable.I attended a training session conducted by the authors’ company (QVerity, in partnership with hemsleyfraser) this week. I had listened to roughly three-quarters of the audiobook during a long car ride the day before. Based on what I learned from the book I was able to do well in the video pre-test, successfully distinguishing a lying suspect from the four who told the truth. Almost everyone was also able to do this after two hours of training. So it seems to me that the book is nearly as valuable as being taught these skills by the authors themselves. It is a well-written, fascinating book on a very useful topic. I highly recommend it.A final comment. The book closes with a warning to use these skills only for good. And to not practice them on our significant others. Apparently catching your spouse in all of those little white lies can put unnecessary stress on the relationship. I may have made a variation of this error by giving my wife a copy of the book and inviting her along to the training. Not sure that was such a good idea. We’ll see.

Very informative and eye opening
“There is no such thing as a human lie detector” (p. 14).Three ex-CIA agents, the authors!, who are now working privately spill the beans on the system they apply to detect lies. This method, L-Square Mode System, focus on observing what ‘the suspect’ says, does and reacts, and by learning to make the right kind of questions to spot deceiving behaviour. It all comes down to body language, congruency in speech and behaviour within the subject’s own idiosyncrasy. It also come down to being aware of our self-defeating beliefs and limitations to spot a lie: the belief that people will not lie to us, the reliance on behavioural myths, the complexity of communication, our own biases, the ‘global’ influence, and how smart we think we are.The system relies on getting clusters of deceiving information, not just individual clues. However, one of the most surprising statements is that if we can identify the first deceiving behaviour (verbal or non-verbal) in the first 5 seconds (seconds!) we can reasonable conclude that that behaviour is directly linked with the stimulus. (p. 31). Of course, the higher the number of deceiving behaviours exhibited by a person, the most likelihood of deception.One of the most important things to keep in mind when applying the L-square System is that its virtue relies on its simplicity, that deceiving clues do not always equal deceit or a lie, that the system is not infallible, that the more we practise it the better we get at it, and part of the success depends on obtaining information in a non-confrontational non-judgemental way. The authors have successfully applied this system for years, and once we go through the book and see some of their examples (especially the long transcript and examination in appendix 2), you will notice that you can, too, start spotting deceiving behaviour.The book has a glossary with a short explanations of all the specialised terms the authors use throughout this work. I always appreciate the effort when electronic books have the index properly hyperlinked, which is the case here.The main downside of the book is that is not particularly didactic if you want a step by step sort of book. Some of the things that prevent the book from being more user- friendly are:> Some of the summaries, oddly enough, are placed in the middle of a page, interrupting the narration and some of them not directly related. Why not placing them at the end of the chapter they relate to?> The amount of information and types of questions they offer can be complicated because their names and because involve different and dynamic approaches that vary depending on how the subject of interest reacts. However, there is not a cheat-sheet scheme or figure to help readers navigate the system easily.> There is no section with exercises for us to practise, with hidden solutions at the end of the book. That would have been so handy especially because the book is about spotting lies.> Some of the statements about body language are familiar to me, but it would have been really useful having some figures or photos with some of those mentioned in the book shown, but there is none.Overall this a fascinating book that it is usable for daily queries about your family, friends and co-workers, not just to learn how intelligence and law enforcement institutions operate. However, not as practical as I was hopping for.

This book is a must read, especially if you have kids lol. It is illuminating and enlightening.

After completing this book, I realized that I could have saved tens of thousands of dollars, had I read this material just one year ago. The authors explain how Time and Cluster are key components to catching a lie. They explain why and how the first five seconds (Time) following a question are crucial and how verbal and non-verbal behavior (Cluster) are important. Hence, the L-squared model: always listen and watch. If, like me, you were used to trusting too much and believing easily, this book is for you. If you want to know when someone is being deceptive or want to spare yourself some lasting regret because of your naivety, then study this book. I am a fast reader but it took me a week to finish this book as I wanted to grasp every detail and technique in it. I will read it again. We live in a beautiful world but from time to time you will bump ito deceptive people and it is your full responsibiity to protect yoursel from being taken advantage if you want to be successful. No one will proctect your interest expect yourself. So, buy and study this book.

If wanna spy some lies, this is the book for you.I am outta control spying.I spot lies on the train.I spot lies on a plane.I spy lies in the eyes, sighs and thighs.Now I just need an awesome badge, some credentials and a microphone in my lapel. Old school.