FORMER FBI AGENT(JOE NAVARRO) BREAKS DOWN INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES

FORMER FBI AGENT(JOE NAVARRO) BREAKS DOWN INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES

 

So as an FBI agent, one of the things that I would do to make people comfortable was I always made sure that they would sit next to the door. On television you always see the suspect sitting in the corner of the room. That is third grade interviewing. Graduate level interviewing is you sit them near the door. Why? There's greater psychological comfort there. My name's Joe Navarro. And for 25 years I was a spy catcher with the FBI. And I am a nonverbal communications expert. So here's the truth about detecting deception or detecting if somebody's lying. There is no Pinocchio effect. It is sheer nonsense to assume that if somebody touches their nose, clears their throat, or touches their ear, that they're being deceptive. And I think this is the first time I'm revealing this on video. What we look for are indicators of discomfort and distress. We're not looking for deception because there is no single behavior indicative of deception. One of my favorite stories that's in my book, "What Every Body is Saying", is of a woman that was invited to the FBI office because she was part of an investigation. And during the first 20 minutes or so that we in the FBI use to calm the person down this individual, instead of calming down, became even more stressed. And we hadn't even talked about the case. She was biting her lip, she was touching her suprasternal notch, she was clutching at her neck jewelry. A couple of times there she was wringing her hands. And finally I said to her, madam, you look like you need to get something off your chest. And she said, thank you, Mr. Navarro. Because when I parked downstairs I only had two tokens for the meter and the meter's about to run out. So here were all these behaviors that maybe 30 years ago people would of looked at and said, oh, this is indicative of deception. I mean, she's touched her nose, she's bit her lip. No, she was worried about getting a ticket because she didn't have enough coins when she parked downstairs. And as it turns out somebody had stolen her ID, she had nothing to do with a crime. Whether we're dealing with the honest or the dishonest we may see behaviors that are indicative of psychological discomfort. The only thing that we can do is try to determine why we are seeing those behaviors, but not assume that they're indicative of deception, because the science just is not there. One of the things that I would do to make people comfortable was to say, look, I'm an FBI agent. We're conducting an investigation. And obviously you're here for a reason. My tone was always to go lower and slower to make sure that at a subconscious level they began to relax. What we want is someone who is calmer so that we have better recall. Remember, when we create stress we're affecting their memory. And this is why when we have stress we can't remember where the keys are? So we want the person to calm down. So we put them near the door, and we don't sit too close to them, because when we violate space it makes people nervous. So we back away from them, probably somewhere between four and five feet away, which is really unusual because on television we're used to seeing people very up close. And then rather than make a lot of eye contact, which is very intimidating, what I would do is make less eye contact so that they would begin to relax. And then I would do cathartic exhales. So I would look at my notes and do something like this. At a subconscious level the person listening to me will actually mirror that because humans gravitate towards homeostasis. Then I'd begin with very simple things. I would say, tell me about your name. It gives them an opportunity to say, well, my father, his grandmother was named this way. And now the person is relating subconsciously to these positive things that occurred in their life. And they're bringing it forward, which also contributes to psychological comfort. So are there times when we need to create psychological pressure? That is a profound question. I don't recommend it. Because once you create psychological pressure, we know that it takes anywhere from a half hour to an hour to return that person back to normal or homeostasis. After doing 13,000 interviews I can tell you, I have never seen where escalating a situation has benefited anyone. What it has done is it has derailed me as an interviewer to the point where, I remember there was an espionage interview I was doing on someone that was accused of espionage, and it was a bizarre interview. It was done standing up over three and a half hours on the loading dock of a lumber yard in Georgia. And myself and the suspect were going back and forth. And I was just getting more and more frustrated. And the man was sticking to the same story. And I was beginning to lose my patience. I had to end the interview because at that point I wasn't thinking clearly. And as it turns out, this individual did not commit espionage. His repetition of the same story was consistent with what really happened. He didn't do it. And so this was one of those mid-career type situations where it validated that thinking once again, that raising your voice, creating stress is not beneficial at all. - What do you know about those stolen jewels? - Jewels? - When I came into law enforcement in 1975 I was going through the Utah Police Academy. And they were teaching back then that if somebody touched their nose, touched their mouth, or coughed, they were lying. This is sheer and absolute nonsense. And they were teaching this for decades. And even when I entered the FBI in 1979 there were still misconceptions about, well if somebody asks for a drink of water, or if they look up and to the left and then they look to the right, that they're creating or inventing an answer and so forth. And the fact of the matter is that is all garbage. There were any number of things that we were falsely told that were indicative of deception. From facial touching, to sniffing, rubbing the insides of our mouths with our tongue and so forth. Here's the downside to all of this. I looked at the 261 DNA exonerations that took place over the last few decades. And this was the initial review of these individuals who had been convicted and were sentenced to be executed. And DNA later proved that they had nothing to do with the crime. And here's what's sad. In every single case, not one, not one police officer, not one prosecutor could detect the truth. But they all claimed to be able to detect deception. The other thing we found that was interesting from those 261 DNA exonerations, fully 25% was willing to admit to a crime just to stop the interview process. That means that those interviews, where there was a lot of psychological pressure applied, where it took place over hours and hours and hours, where there was a lot of threatening demeanor that eventually the people were willing to say, you know what? Just to, you know, I'm going to admit it, even though it's going to cost me my life.

25%, that's frightening. So every time I hear somebody out there says, oh I can tell that they're lying from their body language, I just say that's absolute rubbish. There is no science to support it. - All right, Ralph. You want it the hard way I can fix that too. You've got 20 years staring you right in the face. - What do you want me to say, that I did it? - We're always dealing with the human brain, whether we're dating, whether we're dealing with family members, or even in a forensic interview. You know, I tell the story of this individual in Yuma, Arizona, who immediately came under suspicion. There was a body found and the person had been stabbed with an ice pick. Now the only person that knew this was myself and the suspect. We found out that the victim had been in an argument with this individual named Ricky. So, I go and meet with Ricky. And Ricky said, I had nothing to do with it. And I said, well, that's fine. I said, well, Ricky, you tell me you didn't kill this gentleman. But if you had, would you have used a machete? And he said, no. I said, okay, would you have used a gun? No. How about an ax? No. And I said, Ricky, would you have used an ice pick? And when I used the word ice pick, which obviously somebody with guilty knowledge would respond to, his eyelids came down and he tucked his chin in. Blocking behavior, protective behavior. So I just looked at him and I said, Ricky, come on. You were seen having an argument with him and now he's dead. And eventually he confessed. Keep in mind that nonverbal communications per se are not admissible in court. I mean, I could say that the person looked distraught. And defense counsel might ask, well how would you know that? How long have you known the person? What does distraught look like? And I could say, well, I, he closed his eyes and he lowered his chin. And they could come back and say, well, that's not indicative of anything. But this is how we use non-verbals, to let me know that that which only the suspect knew affected him. There's a certain amount of lying that we have to do to get along with each other. So we say that lying is a tool for social survival. And because of that, we're actually pretty good at lying. Most of us lie, the research says, anywhere from three to five times an hour. I hardly talk to anyone in an hour. So I don't think I find myself lying so much. But I know that if I'm having a bad day and somebody says, hey, how are you? I'll probably say, yeah, I'm okay, when I'm not. I think the most effective liars are the people who habitually lie. One of the best liars I ever ran into was a woman who was a spy. She could tell stories like no one I've ever known, they were so  convincing. You would ask her a question and she would just be so fluid in her answers. And of course she's describing something that was taking place in Germany. So it's not something that we could go and check on the next day. And she led us on for about a year. The only thing that we can do to protect ourselves from deception is what is being said, and what is the proof. You begin to make an inquiry, the story begins to fall apart, or it causes a cognitive load. Oh, so you went to Mexico, which airport did you land at? Um, I, you know. And then they struggle to come out with an answer. Simple questions should evoke simple answers. And when they create a cognitive load then it's not indicative of deception, but it should certainly make you wonder, is there something wrong here? One of the things about this woman spy, who was in fact convicted to 25 years. As soon as we were in Germany and allowed to conduct the  investigation we could immediately see that the story was falling apart. You can either accept a story as it's being told, or you can make an effort to question it to see if you can you verify it. There's a lot of myths about body language. But this one area, this area of deception, we've got to get away from this because this is no joke. You can be sued for saying to somebody, I think you're lying, when it's based on non-verbals. And you can certainly ruin somebody's life. In fact, I would say anybody that says I can help you to detect deception is actually deceiving you because there just simply is no science to support it. All we can say is we're seeing behaviors

indicative of psychological discomfort. And that is as far as you can go with that.