Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode contains explicit language. Revision's History listeners Malcolm
Speaker 1: glad we'll hear. I've written a new book called Talking
Speaker 1: to Strangers, and it's about the mistakes we make in
Speaker 1: our interactions with people we don't know. Talking to Strangers
Speaker 1: features con artists and sociopaths and spies. It talks about
Speaker 1: how drinking affects the way we make sense of others.
Speaker 1: I spend time with the psychologist who ran the CIA's
Speaker 1: interrogation program and the man who spotted Bernie Madoff before
Speaker 1: anyone else, and I try to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of a heartbreaking encounter between a police officer and a
Speaker 1: civilian which resulted in the death of a young woman
Speaker 1: named Sandra Bland in Texas. I think it's a book
Speaker 1: that will prompt a lot of conversations and arguments, which,
Speaker 1: as you know from Rege History, is what I like
Speaker 1: to do. I'm very proud of it. And there's something
Speaker 1: else I'm proud of with Talking to Strangers. After making
Speaker 1: four seasons of Revisionist History, I've fallen in love with
Speaker 1: a kind of storytelling that can be done through a podcast,
Speaker 1: and I decided that I wanted to bring that same
Speaker 1: approach to the audiobook of Talking to Strangers. Normally, an
Speaker 1: audiobook is just the author or someone the author hires,
Speaker 1: reading into a microphone. I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make this audiobook of Talking to Strangers
Speaker 1: as compelling as an episode of revisionist history. So if
Speaker 1: you listen to the audiobook, you'll hear the voices of
Speaker 1: the people I interview, and if I'm describing some historical event,
Speaker 1: you'll hear archival tape for courtroom scenes. We have actors
Speaker 1: reimagining what happened. There's music, an extraordinary song by Jenelle
Speaker 1: money Scoring. We even have excerpts from other audiobooks and
Speaker 1: podcasts like The Fantastic Believed from NPR and Michigan Radio.
Speaker 1: I think the result is a completely different kind of
Speaker 1: audiobook experience, much more powerful, moving, engrossing. Anyway, rather than
Speaker 1: describe it, I thought I would give you a special preview.
Speaker 1: So here it is Chapter three of Talking to Strangers
Speaker 1: done the New way. Let's take a look at another
Speaker 1: Cuban spy story. In the early nineteen nineties, thousands of
Speaker 1: Cubans began to flee the regime of Fidel Castro. They
Speaker 1: cobbled together crewde boats made of inner tubes and metal
Speaker 1: drums and wooden doors, and any number of other stray parts.
Speaker 1: They set out on a desperate voyage across the ninety
Speaker 1: miles of the Florida Straits to the United States. By
Speaker 1: one estimate, as many as twenty four thousand people died
Speaker 1: attempting the journey. It was a human rights disaster. In response,
Speaker 1: a group of Cuban Emigreys in Miami founded Ermanos el
Speaker 1: Riscat Brothers to the Rescue. They put together a makeshift
Speaker 1: air force of single engine Cessna Skymasters and took to
Speaker 1: the skies over the Florida Straits, searching for refugees from
Speaker 1: the air and radioating their coordinates to the Coastguard. Ermanos
Speaker 1: el Riscate saved thousands of lives. They became heroes. As
Speaker 1: time passed, the Emigreys grew more ambitious. They began flying
Speaker 1: into Cuban airspace, dropping leaflets on Havana, urging the Cuban
Speaker 1: people to rise up against Castro's regime. The Cuban government,
Speaker 1: already embarrassed by the flight of refugees, was outraged. Tensions rose,
Speaker 1: coming to a head on February twenty fourth, nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, three Armanos al riscate planes took off for
Speaker 1: the Florida Straits. As they neared the Cuban coastline, two
Speaker 1: Cuban Air Force meg Fighter jets shot down two of
Speaker 1: the planes out of the sky, killing all four people aboard.
Speaker 1: The response to the attack was immediate. The United States
Speaker 1: Security Council passed a resolution denouncing the Cuban government a grave.
Speaker 1: President Clinton held a press conference.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been briefed by the
Speaker 2: National Security Advisor on the shooting down today in broad
Speaker 2: daylight two American civilian airplanes by a Cuban military aircraft.
Speaker 1: The Cuban emigrat population in Miami was furious. The two
Speaker 1: planes had been shot down in international airspace, making the
Speaker 1: incident tantamount to an act of war. The radio chatter
Speaker 1: among the Cuban pilots was released to the press. We
Speaker 1: hit him, Cohonis, we hit him. We retired them, Cohonis,
Speaker 1: we hit them fuckers. Mark the place where we retired them.
Speaker 1: This one won't fuck with us anymore. And then after
Speaker 1: one of the MiGs zeroed in on the second Cessna
Speaker 1: Homeland or Deathew Bastards, But in the midst of the controversy,
Speaker 1: the story suddenly shifted. A retired US rear admiral named
Speaker 1: Eugene Carroll gave an interview to CNN. Carol was an
Speaker 1: influential figure inside Washington. He had formerly served as director
Speaker 1: of all US Armed Forces in Europe, with seven thousand
Speaker 1: weapons at his disposal. Just before the Armanos El Roscotte shootdown,
Speaker 1: Carol said he and a small group of military analysts
Speaker 1: had met with top Cuban officials. CNN's Katherine Callaway interviewed
Speaker 1: Carrol to try and make sense of it all. Admiral,
Speaker 1: can you tell me what happened on your trip to Cuba,
Speaker 1: who you spoke with, and what you were told? Then,
Speaker 1: Carol says, we were hosted by the Ministry Defense General
Speaker 1: Rossalis del Toro. We traveled around, inspected Cuban bases, Cuban schools,
Speaker 1: their partially completed nuclear power plant, and so on. In
Speaker 1: long discussions with General Rosales del Toro and his staff,
Speaker 1: the question came up about these overflights from US aircraft,
Speaker 1: not government aircraft, but private airplanes operating out of Miami.
Speaker 1: They asked US what would happen if we shot one
Speaker 1: of those down? We can you know? Carol says he
Speaker 1: interpreted that question from his Cuban hosts as a thinly
Speaker 1: veiled warning. Then Callaway asks, so, when you returned, who
Speaker 1: did you relay this information to? Carol replies, as soon
Speaker 1: as we could make appointments, we discussed the situation with
Speaker 1: members of the State Department and members of the Defense
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency. The Defense Intelligence Agency THEA is the third
Speaker 1: arm of the foreign intelligence triumvirate in the US government,
Speaker 1: along with the CIA and the National Security Agency. If
Speaker 1: Carol had met with the State Department and the DIA,
Speaker 1: he had delivered the Cuban warning about as high up
Speaker 1: in the American government as you could go. And did
Speaker 1: the State Department and the DiiA take those warnings to heart?
Speaker 1: Did they step in and stop Armanos el Rascote from
Speaker 1: continuing their reckless forays into Cuban airspace? Obviously not, Carrol's
Speaker 1: comments ricochet around Washington d C. Policy circles. This was
Speaker 1: an embarrassing revelation. The Cuban shootdown happened on February twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: Carol's warnings to the State Department and DIA were delivered
Speaker 1: on February twenty third. A prominent Washington insider met with
Speaker 1: the US officials the day before the crisis explicitly warned
Speaker 1: them that the Cubans had lost patients with Armanos el Riscote,
Speaker 1: and his warning was ignored. What began as a Cuban
Speaker 1: atrocity was now transformed into a story about American diplomatic incompetence.
Speaker 1: By February twenty fifth, when Carol spoke with CNN, it's
Speaker 1: clear that this perception had already sunk in. Fidel Castro
Speaker 1: wasn't being invited onto CNN to defend himself, but he
Speaker 1: didn't need to be. He had a rear admiral making
Speaker 1: his case. Does anything about Admiral Carroll and the Cuban
Speaker 1: shootdowns strike you as odd? There are an awful lot
Speaker 1: of coincidences here. First, the Cubans plan a deliberate, murderous
Speaker 1: attack on US citizens flying in international airspace. Second, it
Speaker 1: just so happens that the day before the attack, a
Speaker 1: prominent military insider delivers a stern warning to US officials
Speaker 1: about the possibility of exacs that action. And third, that
Speaker 1: warning frituitously puts that same official the day after the attack,
Speaker 1: in a position to make the Cuban case on one
Speaker 1: of the world's most respected news networks. The timing of
Speaker 1: those three events is a little too perfect, isn't it.
Speaker 1: If you were a public relations firm trying to mute
Speaker 1: the fallout from a very controversial action, that's exactly how
Speaker 1: you'd script it. Have a seemingly neutral expert available right
Speaker 1: away to say I warned them. This is what a
Speaker 1: military counterintelligence analyst named Reg Brown thought in the days
Speaker 1: after the incident. Brown worked on the Latin American desk
Speaker 1: of the Defense Intelligence Agency. His job was to understand
Speaker 1: the ways in which the Cuban intelligence services were trying
Speaker 1: to influence American military operations. His business, in other words,
Speaker 1: was to be alert to the kinds of nuances, subtleties,
Speaker 1: and unexplained co incidences that the rest of US ignore.
Speaker 1: And Brown couldn't shake the feeling that somehow the Cubans
Speaker 1: had orchestrated the whole crisis. It turned out, for example,
Speaker 1: that the Cubans had a source inside Armanos el Roscote,
Speaker 1: a pilot named Juan Pablo RoCE. On the day before
Speaker 1: the attack, Roque had disappeared and resurfaced at Castro's side
Speaker 1: in Havana. Clearly, Roque told his bosses back home that
Speaker 1: Armanos al Riscote had something planned for the twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: That made it very difficult for Brown to imagine that
Speaker 1: the date of the Carol briefing had been chosen by
Speaker 1: chance for maximum public relations impact. The Cubans would want
Speaker 1: their warning delivered the day before, wouldn't they That way,
Speaker 1: the State Department and the DIA couldn't wiggle out of
Speaker 1: the problem by saying that the warning was vague or
Speaker 1: long ago. Carol's words were right in front of them
Speaker 1: on the day the pilots took off from Miami. So
Speaker 1: who ragned that meeting? Brown wondered who picked February twenty third.
Speaker 1: He did some digging, and the name he came up
Speaker 1: with startled him. It was a colleague of his DIA,
Speaker 1: a Cuba expert named Anna Balen Montes. Anna Montes was
Speaker 1: a star. She had been selected repeatedly for promotions and
Speaker 1: special career opportunities, showered with accolades and bonuses. Her reviews
Speaker 1: were glowing. She had come to the DIA from the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, and in his recommendation One of her
Speaker 1: former supervisors described her as the best employee he had
Speaker 1: ever had. She once got a medal from George Tennant,
Speaker 1: the director of the CIA. Her nickname inside the intelligence
Speaker 1: community was the Queen of Cuba. Weeks past, Brown agonized
Speaker 1: to accuse a colleague of treachery on the basis of
Speaker 1: such semi paranoid speculation. Was an awfully big step, especially
Speaker 1: when the colleague was someone of Monte's stature. Finally, Brown
Speaker 1: made up his mind, taking his suspicions to a DIA
Speaker 1: counterintelligence officer named Scott Carmichael.
Speaker 3: He came over and we walked in the neighborhoods around
Speaker 3: there for a while during lunch hour.
Speaker 1: This is Carmichael talking about his first meeting with Reg Brown.
Speaker 3: And I think it was during that lunch hour. He
Speaker 3: hardly even got to tamatas. I mean, most of it
Speaker 3: was listening to him saying, oh God, he's bringing his hands,
Speaker 3: saying I don't want to do the wrong thing. Yea, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Slowly Carmichael drew him out. Brown had more evidence. He
Speaker 1: had written a report in the late nineteen eighties detailing
Speaker 1: the involvement of senior Cuban officials and international drug smuggling.
Speaker 3: He identified specific Cuban senior Cuban officers, including I think
Speaker 3: a general office and some lesser officers who were dirking involved,
Speaker 3: and then provided the specifics I mean whites, the dates,
Speaker 3: the time, to places who did walked home a whole enchilada.
Speaker 1: In a few days before Brown's report was released, the
Speaker 1: Cubans rounded up everyone had mentioned in his investigation, executed
Speaker 1: a number of them, and issued a public denial.
Speaker 3: I wrote one for the fuck there was a league.
Speaker 1: It made REDG. Brown paranoid. In nineteen ninety four, two
Speaker 1: Cuban intelligence officers had defected and told a similar story.
Speaker 1: The Cubans had someone high inside American intelligence. So what
Speaker 1: was he to think? Brown said to Carmichael, didn't he
Speaker 1: have reason to be suspicious? Then he told Carmichael the
Speaker 1: other thing that had happened During the Ermanos al Riscote crisis.
Speaker 1: Montees worked at the DIA's office on Bowling Air Force
Speaker 1: Base in the Anacostia section of Washington, d C. When
Speaker 1: the planes were shot down, she was called into the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: If you were one of the government's leading Cuba experts,
Speaker 1: you were needed at the scene. The shootdown happened on
Speaker 1: a Saturday. The following evening, Brown happened to telephone asking
Speaker 1: for Montes. He sent some woman answered the phone and
Speaker 1: told him that Anna had left. Carmichael says, earlier in
Speaker 1: the day, Montes had gotten a phone call and afterwards
Speaker 1: she'd been agitated. Then she told everyone in the situation
Speaker 1: room that she was tired, that there was nothing going on,
Speaker 1: that she was going home, and Reg.
Speaker 3: Was just absolutely incredulous. This is just so counter to
Speaker 3: our culture that he couldn't even leave it. Everybody understands
Speaker 3: that when a crisis occurs, you're called in because you
Speaker 3: have some expertise you can add add to the decision
Speaker 3: making processes.
Speaker 1: Here, Scott Carmichael starts thumping to make his point, Pentagon, you.
Speaker 3: Were available until you were dismissed. That's it's just understood.
Speaker 3: You know, at somebody at that level calls you in
Speaker 3: because all of a sudden, with North Koreans and launce
Speaker 3: A Michelan San Francisco, you don't just decide to leave
Speaker 3: when you get tired and armored. Everybody understands, and yet
Speaker 3: she did that and was just.
Speaker 1: In Reg Brown's thinking, if Montez really worked for the Cubans,
Speaker 1: they would have been desperate to hear from her. They
Speaker 1: would want to know what was happening in the situation room.
Speaker 1: Did she have a meeting that night with her handler.
Speaker 1: It was all a bit far fetched, which is why
Speaker 1: Brown was so conflicted. But there were Cuban spies. He
Speaker 1: knew that. And here was this woman taking a personal
Speaker 1: phone call and heading out the door in the middle
Speaker 1: of what was, for a Cuba specialist, just about the
Speaker 1: biggest crisis in a generation. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: she's the one who wo had arrange the awfully convenient
Speaker 1: Admiral Carrol briefing. Brown told Carmichael that the Cubans had
Speaker 1: wanted to shoot down one of the Harmanos el Riscotte
Speaker 1: planes for years, but they hadn't because they knew what
Speaker 1: a provocation that would be. It might serve as the excuse,
Speaker 1: you know, States needed to depose Fidel Castro or launch
Speaker 1: an invasion. To the Cubans, it wasn't worth it unless,
Speaker 1: that is, they could figure out some way to turn
Speaker 1: public opinion in their favor.
Speaker 3: And so he looked at that one. Holy shit, I'm
Speaker 3: looking at a kitting color and Dollan's influence operation to
Speaker 3: spin a story, and I asked the one who led
Speaker 3: the effort to me with the adil, Carol, what the
Speaker 3: hell is that all about?
Speaker 1: Months past? Brown persisted. Finally, Scott Carmichael pulled Montez file.
Speaker 1: She had passed her most recent polograph with flying colors.
Speaker 1: She didn't have a secret drinking problem or unexplained sums
Speaker 1: in her bank account. She had no red flags.
Speaker 3: After I had reviewed the security file of a personnel
Speaker 3: file on her, I thought, reg Way off here, this
Speaker 3: woman is like, she's going to be the next director
Speaker 3: of Intelligence from DN. He's just fabulous.
Speaker 1: He knew that in order to justify an investigation on
Speaker 1: the basis of speculation, he had to be meticulous. Reg Brown,
Speaker 1: he said, was coming apart. He had to satisfy Brown's
Speaker 1: suspicions one way or another, as he put it, to
Speaker 1: document the living shit out of everything. Because if word
Speaker 1: got out that Montes was under suspicion, I knew I
Speaker 1: was going to be facing a shit storm. Carmichael called
Speaker 1: monta is in. They met in a conference room at
Speaker 1: Bowling Air Force Base. She was attractive, intelligent, slender, with
Speaker 1: short hair and sharp, almost severe features. Carmichael thought to himself,
Speaker 1: this woman is impressive.
Speaker 3: She sat down. She was sitting like almost texting to
Speaker 3: me about that for away.
Speaker 1: Here Carmichael holds his hands three feet apart.
Speaker 3: Same side of the table, kind of thing, and she
Speaker 3: crossed her legs. I don't think that she did it
Speaker 3: on purpose. I don't think she didn't think she was
Speaker 3: just getting comfortable. Happen to be lame man. She couldn't
Speaker 3: know that. I mean, I like it. I know that
Speaker 3: I glanced down.
Speaker 1: He asked her about the Admiral Carroll meeting. She had
Speaker 1: an answer. It wasn't her idea at all. The son
Speaker 1: of someone she knew at DIA had accompanied Carol to Cuba,
Speaker 1: and she'd gotten a call afterward.
Speaker 3: I know his dad. His dad called me and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, if you want the latest scoop on, you
Speaker 3: should go see the Admiral Carroll. And so I just
Speaker 3: called up Admiral Carroll and we looked at our schedules
Speaker 3: and decided twenty third of February. It was the most
Speaker 3: convenient date that works for both of us, and that
Speaker 3: was it.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, Carmichael knew the DIA employee she
Speaker 1: was talking about He told her that he was going
Speaker 1: to call him up and corroborate her story, and she said,
Speaker 1: please do So what happened with the phone call in
Speaker 1: the situation room, he asked her. She said she didn't
Speaker 1: remember getting a phone call, and to Carmichael, it seemed
Speaker 1: as though she was being honest. It had been a crazy,
Speaker 1: hectic day nine months before. What about leaving early?
Speaker 3: She said, well, yeah, I did leave. Okay, So right
Speaker 3: away she's admitting to that, and she's not denying stuff
Speaker 3: which might be a little suspicious. She said, yeah, I
Speaker 3: did leave early today that day, and she says, you know,
Speaker 3: it was on a Sunday. The cafeterias were closed. I'm
Speaker 3: a very picky eater. I have analogies, so I don't
Speaker 3: eat stuff out of any machines. I got there around
Speaker 3: six o'clock in the morning, about again, case black at night,
Speaker 3: I'm starving to death. Nothing was going on. They didn't
Speaker 3: really need me, so I just decaided I was just
Speaker 3: gonna get out of there, go home and eat something.
Speaker 3: And that rang true to me. I did.
Speaker 1: After the interview, Carmichael set out to double check her answers.
Speaker 1: The date of the briefing really did seem like a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Her friend's son had gone to Cuba with Carol.
Speaker 3: And I learned that, Yeah, she does a aalogy. She's
Speaker 3: very particular about what she eats. I thought, she's there
Speaker 3: in the Pentagon on Sunday. I've been there. The cafterias
Speaker 3: aren't open. She went all day long without eating. She
Speaker 3: went home. I said, well, it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: So Carmichael went back to reg Brown and told him
Speaker 1: not to worry. He turned his attention to other matters.
Speaker 1: Anna Montes went back to her office. All was forgotten
Speaker 1: and forgiven until one day in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: five years later, when it was discovered that every night
Speaker 1: Montes had gone home typed up from memory all of
Speaker 1: the facts and insights she had learned that day at
Speaker 1: work and sent it to her handlers in Havana. From
Speaker 1: the day she joined the Dia, Montes had been a
Speaker 1: Cuban spy. In the classic spy novel The Secret Agent
Speaker 1: is Slippery and Devious were hoodwinked by the brilliance of
Speaker 1: the enemy. That was the way many Cia insiders explained
Speaker 1: the way Florentino as Piaga's revelations. Castro is a genius.
Speaker 1: The agents were brilliant actors in truth, however, the most
Speaker 1: dangerous spies are rarely diabolical. Aldrich Ames, maybe the most
Speaker 1: damaging trader in American history, had mediocre performance reviews, a
Speaker 1: drinking problem, and didn't even try to hide all the
Speaker 1: money he was getting from the Soviet Union for his spying.
Speaker 1: Anna Montes was scarcely any better. Right before she was arrested,
Speaker 1: the DIA found the codes she used to send her
Speaker 1: dispatches to Havana. Where did they find those codes? In
Speaker 1: her purse and in her apartment? She had a short
Speaker 1: wave radio in a shoe box in her closet. Brian Mattel,
Speaker 1: the CIA Cuba specialist who witnessed the Espiaga disaster, knew
Speaker 1: mont as well. He used to work as something called
Speaker 1: a National Intelligence Officer NIO.
Speaker 4: She used to sit across the table from me at
Speaker 4: meetings that I convened when I was INIO. You know,
Speaker 4: I would try to engage her and she would always
Speaker 4: give me these strange reactions when I would try to
Speaker 4: pin her down at some of these meetings that I convened,
Speaker 4: try to pen her down on you know, what do
Speaker 4: you think is infidel what do you think Fidell's motives
Speaker 4: are about this? You know she would fumble, you know,
Speaker 4: she in a retrospect and retrospect, you know, the deer
Speaker 4: with the headlights in his eyes, she she blocked. You know,
Speaker 4: she would even you know, even physically, she would show
Speaker 4: some you know, some kind of reactions that that caused
Speaker 4: me to think, Oh, she is nervous because she's just
Speaker 4: such a terrible analyst. She doesn't know what to say.
Speaker 1: One year later, Lttel says, Montez was accepted into the
Speaker 1: CIA's Distinguished Analyst Program, a research sabbatical available to intelligence
Speaker 1: officers from across the government. Where'd she ask to go? Cuba?
Speaker 4: Of course she went to Cuba funded by this program.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine.
Speaker 1: If you were a Cuban spy trying to conceal your intentions,
Speaker 1: would you request a paid sabbatical in Havana. ATel was
Speaker 1: speaking almost twenty years after it happened, but the brazenness
Speaker 1: of her behavior still astounded him.
Speaker 4: She went to Cuba as a CIA distinguished intelligence and analysts.
Speaker 4: Of course, they were delighted to have her, especially on
Speaker 4: our nickel, and I'm sure that they gave her all
Speaker 4: kinds of clandestine tradecraft.
Speaker 3: Training while she was there.
Speaker 4: I suspect camp rude, but I'm pretty sure she met
Speaker 4: with Fidel. Fidell loved to meet with his principal agents.
Speaker 4: He loved to meet with them, to encourage them, to
Speaker 4: congratulate them, to revel in the success that they were
Speaker 4: having together against against the CIA.
Speaker 1: When Montes came back to the Pentagon, she wrote a
Speaker 1: paper in which she didn't even bother to hide her biases.
Speaker 4: There should have been all kinds of red flags raised
Speaker 4: and gongs that went off when her paper was read
Speaker 4: by her supervisors, because she said things about the Cuban
Speaker 4: military that make absolutely no sense except from their point
Speaker 4: of view.
Speaker 1: But did anyone raise those red flags? Hotel says he
Speaker 1: never once suspected she was a spy.
Speaker 4: On the contrary, there were CIA officers of my rank
Speaker 4: or close to my rank who thought she was the
Speaker 4: best Cuban analyst there was. I never trusted her, but
Speaker 4: for the wrong reasons, and that's one of my great regrets.
Speaker 4: I'm always believed I was convinced that she was a
Speaker 4: terrible analyst on Cuba. Well she was, wasn't she objectively?
Speaker 4: Because she wasn't working for us she was working for.
Speaker 4: But I never connected the dots.
Speaker 1: Nor did anyone else. Anna Montez had a younger brother
Speaker 1: named Tito, who was an FBI agent. He had no idea.
Speaker 1: Montez's sister was also an FBI agent, who in fact,
Speaker 1: played a key role in exposing a ring of Cuban
Speaker 1: spies in Miami. She had no idea. Montes's boyfriend worked
Speaker 1: for the Pentagon as well. His specialty, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: was Latin American intelligence. His job was to go up
Speaker 1: against spies like his girlfriend. He had no idea. When
Speaker 1: Mantes was finally arrested, the chief of her section called
Speaker 1: her coworkers together and told them the news. People started
Speaker 1: crying in disbelief. The DIA had psychologists lined up to
Speaker 1: provide on site counseling services. Her supervisor was devastated. None
Speaker 1: of them had any idea. In her cubicle, she had
Speaker 1: a quotation from Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth taped to her
Speaker 1: wall at eye level for all the world to see.
Speaker 1: The king hath note of all that they intend by
Speaker 1: interception which they dream not of. Or, to put it
Speaker 1: a bit more plainly, the Queen of Cuba takes note
Speaker 1: of all that the US intends by means that all
Speaker 1: around her do not dream of The issue with spies
Speaker 1: is not that there is something brilliant about them. It
Speaker 1: is that there is something wrong with us us. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after this. We're back with more from this
Speaker 1: excerpt of my new book, Talking to Strangers. Over the
Speaker 1: course of his career, the psychologist Tim Levine has conducted
Speaker 1: hundreds of versions of the same simple experiment. He invites
Speaker 1: students to his laboratory and gives them a trivia test.
Speaker 1: What's the highest mountain in Asia? That kind of thing.
Speaker 1: If they answer the questions correctly, they win a cash prize.
Speaker 1: To help them out. They're given a partner, someone they've
Speaker 1: never met before, who is unknown to them, working for Levine.
Speaker 1: There's also an instructor in the room named Rachel. Midway
Speaker 1: through the test, Rachel suddenly gets called away. She leaves
Speaker 1: and goes upstairs. Then the carefully scripted performance begins. The
Speaker 1: partner says, I don't know about you, but I could
Speaker 1: use the money. I think the answers were left right there.
Speaker 1: He points to an envelope lying in plain sight on
Speaker 1: the desk, so it talk.
Speaker 5: To them whether they cheat or not, and then later
Speaker 5: we interview them, asking Digiti.
Speaker 1: This is Tim Levine. He says, in about thirty percent
Speaker 1: of cases, the research subjects do cheat. Levine's theories are
Speaker 1: laid out in his book duped Truth, Default Theory and
Speaker 1: the Social Science of Lying in Deception. If you want
Speaker 1: to understand how deception works, there is no better place
Speaker 1: to start. The number of scholars around the world who
Speaker 1: study human deception is vast. There are more theories about
Speaker 1: why we lie and how to detect those lies than
Speaker 1: there are about the Kennedy assassination. In that crowded field,
Speaker 1: Levine stands out. He has carefully constructed a unified theory
Speaker 1: about deception, and at the core of that theory are
Speaker 1: the insights he gained from that first trivia quiz study.
Speaker 1: I watched videotape of a dozen or so post experiment
Speaker 1: interviews with Levine in his office the University of Alabama
Speaker 1: in Birmingham. Because of privacy regulations, we can't play them
Speaker 1: for you here, but we're going to re enact them.
Speaker 1: Here's the first. The interviewer and the subject, a slightly
Speaker 1: spaced out young man. Let's call him Philip.
Speaker 6: All right, So have you played trivial pursuit games before,
Speaker 6: not very much, but I think I have. Okay, So
Speaker 6: in the current game, did you find the questions difficult?
Speaker 3: Yes? Some were?
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, some were.
Speaker 3: I was like, whoa, what is that?
Speaker 6: If you would scale them on one to ten? If
Speaker 6: one was easy and ten was difficult, where do you
Speaker 6: think you would put them?
Speaker 4: I would put them an eight and an eight.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're pretty tricky.
Speaker 1: Philip is then told that he and his partner did
Speaker 1: very well in the test. The interviewer asked him why.
Speaker 6: Teamwork, teamwork? Yeah, okay, all right, So now I called
Speaker 6: Rachel out of the room briefly. When she was gone,
Speaker 6: did you cheat?
Speaker 4: I guess no.
Speaker 1: Philip looks away.
Speaker 6: Are you telling the truth?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 6: Okay. So when I interview your partner and I ask Kurt,
Speaker 6: what is she going to say?
Speaker 1: At this point, there's an uncomfortable silence, as if the
Speaker 1: student is trying to get his story straight, He's obviously
Speaker 1: thinking very hard. Levine said no.
Speaker 6: No, yeah, okay, all right, Well that's all I need
Speaker 6: from you.
Speaker 1: Is Philip telling the truth. Levine has shown the Philip
Speaker 1: videotape to hundreds of people, and nearly every viewer correctly
Speaker 1: pegs Philip as a cheater. As the partner confirmed to Levine,
Speaker 1: Philip looked inside the answer filled envelope the minute Rachel
Speaker 1: left the room. In his exit interview, he lied. And
Speaker 1: it's obvious.
Speaker 3: That's so like.
Speaker 7: Everybody gets a sky right, Yeah, a cheater. He is
Speaker 7: no conviction, right. She can't even keep a straight face, right.
Speaker 1: Philip was easy, But the more tapes we looked at,
Speaker 1: the harder it got. Here's the second case. Let's call
Speaker 1: him Lucas. He was handsome, articulate, confident. Here he is
Speaker 1: talking to the interviewer.
Speaker 6: So I have to ask, when Rachel left the room,
Speaker 6: did I he cheating a card?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: Are you telling me the truth?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 6: When I interview your partner and I ask her the
Speaker 6: same question, what do you think she's gonna say?
Speaker 3: Same thing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is good. It's everybody believes him, Levine said.
Speaker 1: I believed him. Lucas was lying. Levine and I spent
Speaker 1: the better part of the morning watching his trivia quiz videotapes.
Speaker 1: By the end, I was ready to throw up my hands.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what to make of anyone. The
Speaker 1: point of Levine's research was to try and answer one
Speaker 1: of the biggest puzzles in human psychology, Why are we
Speaker 1: so bad at detecting lies? You'd think would be good
Speaker 1: at it. Logic says, it would be very useful for
Speaker 1: human beings to know when they're being deceived. Evolution over
Speaker 1: many millions of years should have favored people with the
Speaker 1: ability to pick up on the subtle signs of deception,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't. In one iteration of his experiment, Levine
Speaker 1: divided his tapes in half, twenty two liars and twenty
Speaker 1: two truth tellers. On average, the people watching the videos
Speaker 1: correctly identified the liars fifty six percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Other psychologists have tried similar versions of the same experiment,
Speaker 1: The average for all of them fifty four percent. Just
Speaker 1: About everyone is terrible, police officers, judges, therapists, even CIA
Speaker 1: officers running big spy networks. Every one why Tim Levine's
Speaker 1: answer is called truth default theory.
Speaker 3: Or t d T.
Speaker 1: Levine's theory started with an insight that came from one
Speaker 1: of his graduate students. He's soon park. It was right
Speaker 1: at the beginning of Levine's research, when he was as
Speaker 1: baffled as the rest of his profession about why we
Speaker 1: are all so bad at something that, by rights, we
Speaker 1: should be good at.
Speaker 5: Her big insight, Well, first one was in the fifty
Speaker 5: four percent deception accuracy thing that's averaging across trust and lies,
Speaker 5: and you come to a very different understanding if you
Speaker 5: break out truth how much people are right on truth
Speaker 5: and how much people are right on lies.
Speaker 1: What he means is this, If I tell you that
Speaker 1: your accuracy rate on Levine's videos is right around fifty percent,
Speaker 1: the natural assumption is to think that you are just
Speaker 1: randomly guessing, that you have no idea what you're doing.
Speaker 1: But Park's observation was that's not true. We're much better
Speaker 1: than chance at correctly identifying the student who are telling
Speaker 1: the truth, but we're much worse than chance at correctly
Speaker 1: identifying the students who are lying. We go through all
Speaker 1: those videos and we guess true true, true, which means
Speaker 1: we get most of the truthful interviews right and most
Speaker 1: of the liars wrong. We have a default to truth.
Speaker 1: Our operating assumption is that the people that we're dealing
Speaker 1: with are honest. Levine says his own experiment is an
Speaker 1: almost perfect illustration of this phenomenon. He invites people to
Speaker 1: play a trivia game for money. Suddenly the instructor is
Speaker 1: called out of the room and she just happens to
Speaker 1: leave the answers to the test in plain view on
Speaker 1: her desk. Levine says that logically the subject should roll
Speaker 1: their eyes at this point. They're college students, they're not stupid.
Speaker 1: They've signed up for a psychological experiment. They're given a
Speaker 1: partner whom they've never met, who is egging them on
Speaker 1: to cheat. You would think that they might be even
Speaker 1: a little suspicious that things are not as they seem.
Speaker 5: But no, so they catch that they leaving the room
Speaker 5: might be a set up. I think they almost never
Speaker 5: catch as that their partners.
Speaker 7: A suite I see, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's weird. It's interesting what they suspect. So they
Speaker 3: think that there might be hidden gaps.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, they think it might be a set up,
Speaker 5: because insurements are set.
Speaker 1: Ups, right, But this nice person they're talking and chatting to,
Speaker 1: they never question it. To snap out of truth default
Speaker 1: mode requires what Levine calls a trigger. A trigger is
Speaker 1: not the same as a suspicion or the first sliver
Speaker 1: of doubt. We fall out of truth default mode only
Speaker 1: when the case against our initial assumption becomes definitive. We
Speaker 1: do not behave. In other words, like sober minded scientists
Speaker 1: slowly gathering evidence of the truth or falsity of something
Speaker 1: before reaching a conclusion, we do the opposite. We start
Speaker 1: by believing, and we stop believing only when our doubts
Speaker 1: and misgivings rise to the point where we could no
Speaker 1: longer explain them away. This proposition sounds at first that
Speaker 1: the kind of hair splitting that social scientists loved to
Speaker 1: engage in. It is not. It is a profound point
Speaker 1: that explains a lot of otherwise puzzling behavior. Consider, for example,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous findings in all of psychology,
Speaker 1: Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment. In nineteen sixty one, Milgram recruited
Speaker 1: volunteers from New Haven to take part in what he
Speaker 1: said was a memory experiment. Each volunteer was met by
Speaker 1: a somber, imposing young man named John Williams, who explained
Speaker 1: that they were going to play the role of teacher
Speaker 1: in the experiment. Williams introduced them to another volunteer, a pleasant,
Speaker 1: middle aged man named mister Wallace. Mister Wallace, they were told,
Speaker 1: was to be the learner. He was in an adjoining
Speaker 1: room wired to a complicated apparatus capable of delivering electrical
Speaker 1: shocks up to four hundred and fifty volts. If you're
Speaker 1: curious about what four hundred and fifty volts feels like,
Speaker 1: it's just shy of the amount of electrical shock that
Speaker 1: leaves tissue damage. The teacher volunteer was instructed to give
Speaker 1: the learner a series of memory tasks, and each time
Speaker 1: the learner failed, the volunteer was to punish him with
Speaker 1: an ever greater electrical shock in order to see whether
Speaker 1: the threat of punishment affected someone's ability to perform memory tasks.
Speaker 1: As the shocks escalated, Wallace would cry out in pain,
Speaker 1: and ultimately he started hammering on the walls. But if
Speaker 1: the teacher waivered, the imposing instructor would urge them on,
Speaker 1: please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is
Speaker 1: absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice.
Speaker 1: It must go on. The reason the Milgrim experiment is
Speaker 1: so famous is that virtually all of the volunteers complied.
Speaker 1: Sixty five percent ended up administering the maximum dose to
Speaker 1: the hapless learner. In the wake of the Second World
Speaker 1: War and the revelations about what German guards had been
Speaker 1: ordered to do in the Nazi concentration camps. Milgram's findings
Speaker 1: caused a sensation, But to Levine, there's a second lesson
Speaker 1: to the experiment. The volunteer shows up and meets the
Speaker 1: imposing young John Williams. He was actually a local high
Speaker 1: school biology teacher, chosen, in Milgram's words, because he was technical,
Speaker 1: looking and dry, the type you would later see on
Speaker 1: television in connection with the Space Program. Everything william said
Speaker 1: during the experiment had been memorized from a script written
Speaker 1: by Milgram himself. Mister Wallace was in fact a man
Speaker 1: named Jim McDonough. He worked for the railroad. Molgram liked
Speaker 1: him for the part of victim because he was mild
Speaker 1: and submissive. His cries of agony were taped and played
Speaker 1: over a loudspeaker. The experiment was a little amateur theatrical production,
Speaker 1: and the word amateur here is crucial. The Milgrim experiment
Speaker 1: was not produced for a Broadway stage. Mister Wallace, by
Speaker 1: Mogram's own description, was a terrible actor, and everything about
Speaker 1: the experiment was, to put it mildly, more than a
Speaker 1: little far fetched. The electric shock machine didn't actually give shocks.
Speaker 1: More than one participant saw the loud speaker in the
Speaker 1: corner and wondered why Wallace's cries were coming from there,
Speaker 1: not from behind the door to the room where Wallace
Speaker 1: was strapped in, and if the purpose of the experiment
Speaker 1: was to measure learning wyner, did William spend the entire
Speaker 1: time with the teacher and not behind the door with
Speaker 1: the learner. Didn't that make it obvious that what he
Speaker 1: really wanted to do was observe the pre inflicting the pain,
Speaker 1: not the person receiving the pain. As hoaxes go, the
Speaker 1: Milgram experiment was pretty transparent, and just as with Levine's
Speaker 1: trivia test, people fell for it. They defaulted to truth.
Speaker 1: As one subject wrote to Mogram in a follow up questionnaire,
Speaker 1: I actually checked the death notices in the New Haven
Speaker 1: Register for at least two weeks after the experiment to
Speaker 1: see if I had been involved and a contributing factor
Speaker 1: in the death of the so called learner. I was
Speaker 1: very relieved that his name did not appear another road.
Speaker 1: Believe me, when no response came from mister Wallace with
Speaker 1: the stronger voltage, I really believe the man was probably dead.
Speaker 1: These are adults who were apparently convinced that a prestigious
Speaker 1: institution of higher learning could run a possibly lethal torture
Speaker 1: experiment in one of its basements. The experiment left such
Speaker 1: an effect on me. Another wrote that I spent the
Speaker 1: night in a cold sweat and nightmares because of the
Speaker 1: fear that I might have killed that man in the chair.
Speaker 1: But here's the crucial detail. Milgram's subjects weren't hopelessly gullible.
Speaker 1: They had doubts, lots of doubts. In her fascinating history
Speaker 1: of Milgram's obedience experiments, Behind the Shock Machine, Geina Perry
Speaker 1: interviews a retired too maker named Joe Demo, who was
Speaker 1: one of Milgram's original subjects. I thought this is bizarre,
Speaker 1: Demo told Perry. Demo became convinced that Wallace was faking it.
Speaker 1: But then mister Wallace came out of the locked room
Speaker 1: at the end of the experiment and put on a
Speaker 1: little act. He looked, Demo remembers, haggard and emotional. He
Speaker 1: came in with a handkerchief in his hand, wiping his face.
Speaker 1: He came up to me and he offered his hand
Speaker 1: to shake hands with me, and he said I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for stopping it. When he came in,
Speaker 1: I thought, Wow, maybe it really was true. Demo was
Speaker 1: pretty sure that he was being lied to. But all
Speaker 1: it took was for one of the liars to extend
Speaker 1: the pretense a little longer, look a little upset, and
Speaker 1: mop his brow with a handkerchief, and Demo folded his cards.
Speaker 1: Here are the full statistics from the Milgrim experiment. Fifty
Speaker 1: six point one percent I fully believed the learner was
Speaker 1: getting painful shocks. Twenty four percent, although I had some doubts,
Speaker 1: I believe the learner was probably getting the shocks six
Speaker 1: point one percent. I just wasn't sure whether the learner
Speaker 1: was getting the shocks or not. Eleven point four percent.
Speaker 1: Although I had some doubts, I thought the learner was
Speaker 1: probably not getting the shocks. Two point four percent. I
Speaker 1: was certain the learner was not getting the shocks. Over
Speaker 1: forty percent of the volunteers picked up on something odd,
Speaker 1: something that suggested the experiment was not what it seemed,
Speaker 1: But those doubts just weren't enough to trigger them out
Speaker 1: of truth. Default. That's Levine's point. You believe someone not
Speaker 1: because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not
Speaker 1: the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don't
Speaker 1: have enough doubts about them. Just think about how many
Speaker 1: times you have criticized someone else in hindsight for their
Speaker 1: failure to spot a liar. You should have known there
Speaker 1: were all kinds of red flags you had doubts. Levine
Speaker 1: would say, that's the wrong way to think about what happened.
Speaker 1: The right question is were there enough red flags to
Speaker 1: push you over the threshold of belief. If there weren't,
Speaker 1: then by defaulting to truth, you were only being human
Speaker 1: more After this, we're back with chapter three of Talking
Speaker 1: to Strangers. Anna Berlin Montes grew up in the affluent
Speaker 1: suburbs of Baltimore. Her father was a psychiatrist. She attended
Speaker 1: the University of Virginia, then received a master's degree in
Speaker 1: foreign affairs from Johns Hopkins University. She was a passionate
Speaker 1: supporter of the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which the
Speaker 1: US government was then working to overthrow, and her activism
Speaker 1: attracted the attention of a recruiter for Cuban intelligence. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, she made a secret visit to Havana.
Speaker 1: Her new compatriots encouraged her to apply for work in
Speaker 1: the US intelligence community. That same year, she joined the DIA,
Speaker 1: and from there her assent was swift. Montes arrived at
Speaker 1: her office first thing in the morning, ate lunch at
Speaker 1: her desk, and kept to herself. She lived alone in
Speaker 1: a two bedroom condo in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington.
Speaker 1: She never married. In the course of his investigation, Scott Carmichael,
Speaker 1: the DIA counterintelligence officer, collected every adjective used by Montes's
Speaker 1: co workers to describe her. It is an impressive list, shy, quiet,
Speaker 1: aloof cool, independent, self reliant, standoffish, intelligent, serious, dedicated, focused,
Speaker 1: hard working, sharp, quick, manipulative, venomous, unsociable, ambitious, charming, confident, businesslike,
Speaker 1: no nonsense, assertive, deliberate, calm, mature, unflappable, capable, and competent.
Speaker 1: Anna Montes assumed that the reason for her meeting with
Speaker 1: Carmichael was that he was performing a routine security check.
Speaker 1: All intelligence officers are periodically vetted so that they can
Speaker 1: continue to hold a security clearance. She was presque because.
Speaker 3: When she first came in, she started blowing off, you know,
Speaker 3: by telling me and it was true. She had just
Speaker 3: been named as an acting division chief. She had a
Speaker 3: ton of responsibilities and meetings and things to do, and
Speaker 3: she just didn't have a lot of time.
Speaker 1: Carmichael is a disarmingly boyish man with fair hair and
Speaker 1: a substantial stomach. He looks, by his own estimation, like
Speaker 1: the late comedian and actor Chris Farley. She must have
Speaker 1: thought she could bully him.
Speaker 3: And so I just dealt with the way you normally do.
Speaker 3: The first time, you just kind of ignore it, just
Speaker 3: acknowledge it. I mean, the first thing you use, you acknowledge, say,
Speaker 3: oh I understand, yeah, I heard that. That congratulation's great,
Speaker 3: I understand. You got a living in amount of time.
Speaker 3: And then you just kind of ignore it, because if
Speaker 3: it takes you twelve days, it takes twelve days. You
Speaker 3: don't let him go. But then she hit me with
Speaker 3: it again, and she really me appointed it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I hadn't settled in yet, and she said, oh, but seriously,
Speaker 3: I got to leap by two or something like that
Speaker 3: because I got all these things to do, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck? You know? I asked what I'm thinking?
Speaker 3: And so when she did that, I lost I lose
Speaker 3: my temper, but I lost my patience. That's why I
Speaker 3: hit her. Be twenty eyes look on, I have reasons
Speaker 3: to suspect that you might be involved in the car
Speaker 3: and velo and simple as operational. We need to sit
Speaker 3: down and talk about this.
Speaker 1: Montes had been by that point a Cuban spy for
Speaker 1: nearly her entire government career. She had met with her
Speaker 1: handlers at least three hundred times, handing over so many
Speaker 1: secrets that she ranks as one of the most damaging
Speaker 1: spies in US history. She had secretly visited Cuba on
Speaker 1: several occasions. After her arrest, it was discovered that Fidel
Speaker 1: Castro had personally given her a medal. Through all of that,
Speaker 1: there hadn't been even a whiff of suspicion. And suddenly,
Speaker 1: at the start of what she thought was a routine
Speaker 1: background check, a funny looking Chris Farley character was pointing
Speaker 1: the finger at her. She sat there in shock.
Speaker 3: She would just looking at me like I'm sure, looking
Speaker 3: at the headlines, waiting for say, another word, just waiting.
Speaker 1: When Carmichael looked back on that meeting years later, he
Speaker 1: realized that was the first clue he had missed her
Speaker 1: reaction made no sense.
Speaker 3: I just didn't pick up on She never said, what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? Nothing like that. She didn't see
Speaker 3: a freaking word. She just sat down and listening. And
Speaker 3: you know, if i'd been a stute, I picked up
Speaker 3: on that. No denial, no confusion, no anger. Anybody who's
Speaker 3: told the suspective of murder or something the completely and
Speaker 3: it's like, wait a minute, you just accused me of
Speaker 3: so I don't want to know what the fuck this
Speaker 3: is all about. And eventually they'll get in your face,
Speaker 3: you know, they'll really get in your face. I didn't
Speaker 3: do a freaking thing and stept sit there.
Speaker 1: Like Carmichael had doubts right from the beginning, But doubts
Speaker 1: triggered disbelief only when you can't explain them away, and
Speaker 1: he could easily explain them away. She was the Queen
Speaker 1: of Cuba, for goodness sake. How could the Queen of
Speaker 1: Cuba be a spy? Sure, Carmichael told her, I have
Speaker 1: reason to suspect that you might be involved in a
Speaker 1: counterintelligence influence operation, but he later admitted he said that
Speaker 1: only because he wanted her to take the meeting seriously.
Speaker 3: I was anxious to get into it and get to
Speaker 3: the next step. And like I said, I just panted
Speaker 3: myself in the back and I worked. I'd shut her up,
Speaker 3: not to hear anymore of that crap anymore. Now, let's
Speaker 3: get do this, get this done. That's why I missed.
Speaker 1: They talked about the Admiral Carroll briefing. She had a
Speaker 1: good answer. They talked about why she abruptly left the
Speaker 1: Pentagon that day. She had an answer. She was being flirty,
Speaker 1: a little playful. He began to relax. He looked down
Speaker 1: at her legs again, and.
Speaker 3: She's bouncing her toe like that. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was conscious, but what I do know is that
Speaker 3: catches your eye. And we got more comfortable with one another,
Speaker 3: and she became just a little bit more flirty.
Speaker 1: They talked about the phone call the day the plane
Speaker 1: was shot down. She said she never got a phone call,
Speaker 1: or at least she didn't remember getting one. It should
Speaker 1: have been another red flag. The people who were with
Speaker 1: her that day in the situation room distinctly remembered her
Speaker 1: getting a phone call. But then again, it had been
Speaker 1: a long and stressful day. They'd all been in the
Speaker 1: middle of an international crisis. Maybe they just confused her
Speaker 1: with someone else. There was one other thing, another moment
Speaker 1: when Carmichael saw something in her reaction that made him wonder.
Speaker 1: Near the end of the interview, he asked Montez a
Speaker 1: series of questions about what happened after she left the
Speaker 1: Pentagon that day. It was a standard investigative procedure. He
Speaker 1: just wanted as complete a picture as possible of her
Speaker 1: movements that evening. He asked her what she did after work.
Speaker 1: She said she drove home. He asked her where she parked.
Speaker 1: She said, in the lot across the street. He asked
Speaker 1: her if she saw anyone else as she was parking.
Speaker 1: Did she say hello to anyone? She said no.
Speaker 3: I said, okay, well, so what'd you do? You can
Speaker 3: park the car and you walked across the street while
Speaker 3: I'm doing this is when changed the demeanor keeven in mine.
Speaker 3: I'd been talking to her for almost two hours, and
Speaker 3: by that time, Anna and I were almost like buddies. Okay,
Speaker 3: not that close, but where we have a great rapport going.
Speaker 3: She's actually joking about stuff or making funny remarks every
Speaker 3: once in a while about stuff. It's that casual, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden it's huge. Change came over
Speaker 3: and you could see it, and one minute she's just
Speaker 3: almost flirting stuff. We were having a good time at that. Oh,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it's like at was handing the
Speaker 3: cookie jar and his back and monsters you have. She
Speaker 3: was looking at me like and denying, but looking at
Speaker 3: me with that looked like, what do you know?
Speaker 1: After her arrest, investigators discovered what had really happened that night.
Speaker 1: The Cubans had an arrangement with her. If she ever
Speaker 1: spotted one of her old handlers on the street, it
Speaker 1: meant that her spymasters urgently needed to talk to her
Speaker 1: in person. She should keep walking and meet the following
Speaker 1: morning at a pre arranged site. That night, when she
Speaker 1: got home from the Pentagon, she saw one of her
Speaker 1: old handlers standing by her apartment building. So when Carmichael
Speaker 1: asked her pointedly, who did you see? Did you see
Speaker 1: anyone as you came home, she must have thought that
Speaker 1: he knew about the arrangement, that he was on to her.
Speaker 3: She's scared the fucking dam and she thought I knew
Speaker 3: it and I didn't. I mean, I had no idea,
Speaker 3: I didn't know what I had. I knew I had something.
Speaker 3: I knew there was something, And long after the interview,
Speaker 3: I looked back at that, and what did I do?
Speaker 3: I did the same thing every other human, I mean does,
Speaker 3: But I rationalized it away. I thought, well, maybe she
Speaker 3: was maybe she's been seeing a married guy and she
Speaker 3: hooked up with her merriat and she didn't want to
Speaker 3: tell me. Or maybe she's a lesbian or something and
Speaker 3: she was hooking up with a girlfriend she doesn't want
Speaker 3: us to know. She's worried about that. I started thinking
Speaker 3: about all these other possibilities, and I accepted just enough
Speaker 3: so that I wouldn't keep going crazy. Accepted it.
Speaker 1: Anna Montes wasn't a master spy. She didn't need to be.
Speaker 1: In a world where our lie detector is set to
Speaker 1: the off position, a spy is always going to have
Speaker 1: an easy time of it. And was Scott Carmichael somehow negligent?
Speaker 1: Not at all? He did what truth default theory would
Speaker 1: predict any of us would do. He operated from the
Speaker 1: assumption that Anna Montes was telling the truth, and, almost
Speaker 1: without realizing it, work to square everything she said with
Speaker 1: that assumption. We need a trigger to snap out of
Speaker 1: the default to truth. But the threshold for triggers is high.
Speaker 1: Carmichael was nowhere near that point. The simple truth, as
Speaker 1: Tim Levine argues, is that lie detection does not cannot
Speaker 1: work the way we expect it to work. In the movies,
Speaker 1: the brilliant detective confronts the subject and catches him right
Speaker 1: then and there in a lie. But in real life,
Speaker 1: accumulating the amount of evidence necessary to overwhelm our doubts
Speaker 1: takes time. You ask your husband if he is having
Speaker 1: an affair, and he says no, and you believe him.
Speaker 1: Your default is that he is telling the truth, and
Speaker 1: whatever little inconsistency as you spot in his story, you
Speaker 1: explained away. But three months later you happen to notice
Speaker 1: an unusual hotel charge on his credit card bill, and
Speaker 1: the combination of that and weeks of unexplained absences and
Speaker 1: mysterious phone calls pushes you over the top. That's how
Speaker 1: lies are detected. This is why the Cubans were able
Speaker 1: to pull the wool over the CIA's eyes for so long.
Speaker 1: That story is not an indictment of the agency's competence.
Speaker 1: It just reflects the fact that CIA officers are like
Speaker 1: the rest of us human equipped with the same set
Speaker 1: of biases to truth as everyone else. Carmichael went back
Speaker 1: to Reg Brown and tried to explain it.
Speaker 3: Just you know, I realized what it looks like to you.
Speaker 3: I understand your reasoning that you think that this is
Speaker 3: a deliberate influence operation. Look see what if it was.
Speaker 3: I can't a finger at on to say she was
Speaker 3: part of delivery efforts.
Speaker 1: In the end, he says he just had to close
Speaker 1: out the case. Four years after Scott Carmichael's interview with
Speaker 1: Anna Montes, one of his colleagues the DA met an
Speaker 1: analyst for the National Security Agency at an interagency meeting.
Speaker 1: The NSA is the third arm of the US intelligence network,
Speaker 1: along with the CIA and the DA. They are the codebreakers,
Speaker 1: and the analyst said that her agency had had some
Speaker 1: success with the codes that the Cubans were using to
Speaker 1: communicate with their agents. The codes were long rows of
Speaker 1: numbers broadcast at regular intervals over shortwave radio, and the
Speaker 1: NSA had managed to decode a few snippets. They had
Speaker 1: given the list of tidbits to the FBI two and
Speaker 1: a half years before, but had heard nothing back. Out
Speaker 1: of frustration, the NSA analysts to share a few details
Speaker 1: with her DIA counterpart, the Cubans had a highly placed
Speaker 1: spy in Washington whom they called Agent S. She said
Speaker 1: Agent S had an interest in something called a safe system,
Speaker 1: and Agent S had apparently visited the American base at
Speaker 1: Guantanamo Bay in the two week time frame from July
Speaker 1: fourth to July eighteenth, nineteen ninety six. The man from
Speaker 1: the DIA was alarmed. Safe was the name of the
Speaker 1: DIA's internal computer messaging archive that strongly suggested that Agent
Speaker 1: S was at the DIA, or at least closely affiliated
Speaker 1: with the DIA. He came back and told his supervisors.
Speaker 1: They told Carmichael. He was angry.
Speaker 3: He said, two and a half years, how many DIA
Speaker 3: employees have gone on there. You've never opened up. They've
Speaker 3: never told me they open a freaking case on DII
Speaker 3: in boy Old Mother Farmers.
Speaker 1: He was the DIA's counterintelligence investigator. He knew exactly what
Speaker 1: he had to do, a search of the DIA computer system.
Speaker 1: Any Department of Defense employee who travels to Guantanamo Bay
Speaker 1: needs to get approval. They need to send two messages
Speaker 1: through the Pentagon system, asking first for permission to travel
Speaker 1: and then for permission to talk to whomever they wished
Speaker 1: to interview at the base. Okay, so two messages. Carmichael said.
Speaker 1: He guessed that the earliest anyone traveling to Guantanamo Bay
Speaker 1: in July would apply for their clearances was April, so
Speaker 1: he had his search parameters travel authority and security clearance
Speaker 1: requests from DIA employees regarding Guantanamo Bay made between April
Speaker 1: first and July eighteenth, nineteen ninety six. He told his
Speaker 1: co worker Gator Johnson to run the same search simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Two heads will be better than one. They began searching
Speaker 1: to the safe system.
Speaker 3: I thought, I'm gonna go through this real quick and
Speaker 3: just see something jumps on it. And that's when I
Speaker 3: hit That's when I'm pretty sure it was the twenty
Speaker 3: four hit me and it was Hannabi Montes and the
Speaker 3: game was fucking over. And I mean it was over
Speaker 3: in a heart, and I was really stunned, speechless, stunned.
Speaker 3: I could have fallen out of my chair, and I
Speaker 3: literally backed up, you know, I was on wheels. I
Speaker 3: was literally distancing myself from this bad news.
Speaker 1: Carmichael said, Oh shit,