A CIA Self-Help Book: How to Make Friends and Interrogate People

An “elicitation”, they call it. The word “interrogation” has such nasty connotations, doesn’t it? Especially when used in conjunction with the letters C, I and A.

So three alumni of the US intelligence agency aim to rebrand the inquisitorial process with a new book called Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All.

Philip Houston, Michael Floyd and Susan Carnicero believe the methods that have helped them to winkle out traitors in various unspecified sandy locations could help all of us in our business and general lives. And, perhaps, as parents.

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How to Tell If Someone Is Lying

By Stuart Wolpert / Source: UCLA Newsroom

When someone is acting suspiciously at an airport, subway station or other public space, how can law enforcement officers determine whether he's up to no good?
 
The ability to effectively detect deception is crucial to public safety, particularly in the wake of renewed threats against the U.S. following the killing of Osama bin Laden.
 


UCLA professor of psychology R. Edward Geiselman has been studying these questions for years and has taught investigative interviewing techniques to detectives and intelligence officers from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Marines, the Los Angeles police and sheriff's departments, and numerous international agencies.
 


He and three former UCLA undergraduates - Sandra Elmgren, Chris Green and Ida Rystad - analyzed some 60 studies on detecting deception and have conducted original research on the subject. They present their findings and their guidance for how to conduct effective training programs for detecting deception in the current issue of the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, which is published this week.

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Can Plants Read Your Mind?

By James F. Coyle, Author of
Beyond Belief: The Ultimate Mindpower Instructional Manual

In 1966 a very strange event occurred. Cleve Backster, America's top polygraph (lie detector) expert was working late in his New York office. His secretary had installed a Dragon pot plant to brighten the office.

Backster noticed that the plant needed water, and on impulse attached the leads of a lie detector to one of the leaves. The lie detector measures skin resistance and Backster knew that it would indicate when water reached the actual leaf. He poured water over the root system and waited to see how long before this moisture reached the leaves.

Nothing happened. In fact after a while the instrument appeared to indicate less moisture in the leaf. The pen-tracing equipment attached to the lie detector was trending downwards with a fair amount of "saw tooth" motion.

 Backster was puzzled as this was exactly the same response expected from a human being experiencing an emotional stimulus of short duration. He wondered if the plant could be displaying emotion.

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