Jack Schafer - The Truth Detector: An Ex-FBI Agents Guide for Getting People to Reveal the Truth

ALSO BY JACK SCHAFER, Ph.D., with MARVIN KARLINS, Ph.D.

The Like Switch

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Copyright 2020 by John Schafer, Ph.D. and Marvin Karlins, Ph.D.

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First Atria Paperback edition October 2020

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

ISBN 978-1-9821-3907-0

ISBN 978-1-9821-3912-4 (ebook)

To my wife, Helen:

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,

to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

JACK SCHAFER

To all the men and women who risk their lives daily to keep America safe:

Your selfless acts of heroism are the gold standard of human greatness.

MARVIN KARLINS

What It Is, How It Works, Why It Works

Getting to the Truth Before the Lie

If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk a lot less.

EDWARD A. MURPHY, JR.

Imagine going up to a stranger in a shopping mall, initiating a conversation, and within five minutes getting them to reveal personal information, such as their Social Security number, computer password, date of birth, or mothers maiden name, without them knowing they provided sensitive personal information. This may seem like an impossible task, but its easier than you think. I remain astonished at how easy it is to get people to unwittingly provide sensitive information and reveal the truth.

There are dozens of books on detecting deception. This isnt one of them. What makes this book unique is the presentation of a technique you can use to extract honest information from friends, family members, coworkerseven total strangerswithout them realizing what you are doing. Using this technique, you can get people to tell you the truth about subjects they would normally keep secret or lie about. That is why the book is called The Truth Detector rather than The Lie Detector: because once you learn the methods in this book, you will be able to get people to reveal the truth before they ever get suspicious, raise their shields, and respond deceptively. You can then use that information in a way that will bring you the greatest possible benefit. Knowing what people really think can even help you distinguish a friend from a potential enemy who can do you harm. Because this approach was designed to elicit a truthful response from people, the technique is referred to as elicitation.

As an FBI special agent, my job was to obtain information from suspects, witnesses, and spies who, for various reasons, wanted to keep that information private. Elicitation is an essential, noninvasive tool that I helped develop over my career in the intelligence field to collect information. Because of my years of experience as a member of the FBIs National Security Division Behavioral Analysis Program, I was often called upon to teach young FBI trainees how to use the elicitation techniques to obtain maximum results. These intelligence officers, in the course of their work, are often required to obtain information that is not publicly available.

To demonstrate the power and effectiveness of the elicitation technique, I conducted a classroom demonstration. I confidently assured my students that, at the end of the eight-hour elicitation training course, they would be able to obtain dates of birth, PIN numbers, Social Security numbers, bank account information, and computer passwords from perfect strangers within a few minutes of meeting them.

Naturally, the students were very skeptical of my claim. They assured me that no one would give up sensitive, personal information to a stranger, much less not realize they were revealing that critical information. It was clear to me that they believed my claims were not only beyond absurd but tested the limits of human imagination. One defiant student vehemently proclaimed that he would never give personal information to a stranger under any circumstances.

In the first four hours of the training session, I taught the students basic elicitation techniques, the exact ones you will be learning about in this book. During this time, I kept in mind what the defiant student had insisted. My goal was to get this individual to reveal his Social Security number without him realizing he had done so.

I knew the topic of eliciting Social Security numbers would come up naturally during class discussions. When it did, I explained the components of a Social Security number. I began the discussion with the last four digits on the Social Security card. I told the students that these four digits alone were not very important, because more than one person can be assigned the same four digits. In fact, out of 10,000 people, at least two people will share the same last four digits of their Social Security numbers. I also reminded the students that those last four digits of their Social Security numbers were useless if the other five numbers were unknown.

At this point, I turned to the defiant student and said, Knowing this, you wouldnt object to revealing the last four numbers of your Social Security number, would you? The student shrugged his shoulders and recited the four digits.

Next, I casually mentioned that the middle two digits were group numbers and virtually meaningless because they simply reflected the order in which the total Social Security number was assigned to new applicants. I asked a student if she would object to revealing the middle two digits of her Social Security number. She blurted out two numbers. I pointed to another student and, without saying a word, he recited the two digits of his own Social Security number. In quick succession, I pointed to random students. They automatically recited the two middle digits of their Social Security numbers without hesitation. I then pointed to the defiant student; he blurted out his Social Security numbers two middle digits as well. To camouflage my elicitation objective, I pointed to several more students, who willingly gave their two digits.

I concluded this portion of my lecture by telling the students that the first three digits of a Social Security number corresponded to the location of the Social Security office that issued the number. During one of the morning class breaks, I nonchalantly asked the defiant student where he was from. He readily identified the city and state where he grew up. I surmised that his parents obtained a Social Security number for him in order to write him off as a dependent on their tax returns. I looked up the Social Security office closest to the city where the defiant student grew up and obtained the first three numbers of the students Social Security number.