reduced and recycled

It’s been a while since I’ve been tasked with catching someone in a lie. I’m not very good at this, since it involves reading a person’s body language and such. The alternative to going with your gut, of course, is getting all your facts right. Once you’ve got your facts established, you listen to one version of the story and then you compare them to the facts.

Sometimes you reveal those facts, if there’s any utility in revealing potentially ‘dangerous’ facts, and sometimes you don’t. From what I understand, a bit of experience is required to know which facts to reveal, and which to conceal. Facts, or information, are used for baiting, and they make juicy baits.

Facts, when well-placed, forces an otherwise confident respondent to hesitate. If the person’s a good liar, you’ll have to try hard at watching for signs that they’re fibbing. If the person’s not a good liar, you first indication of a breakdown are either nerves, or anger. Nerves, because the person lying to you had probably been debating with themselves over whether they should lie or not. They are writhing in their guilt, so a hint of they’re being found out makes them break out in sweat.

The indignant ones? The indignant ones are a mixture of people who are either offended because you’ve contradicted them, or indignant that you’ve found them out. In most cases, it devolves into a one-side shouting match. I tend to listen, because it’s always safest not to provoke these fellas further. Listening also means you get to mentally prepare a carefully worded reply.

And all of the above requires planning, something which I am, at this stage, still poor at.

The last group, now the last group of liars are the most dangerous. They are the habitual liars, or the ones most accustomed to lying. See, most liars are of this sort: they passively accept your bits of information and then react - but go no further. The good ones, the ones that are wholly dangerous, they are the ones who go on the offensive immediately upon facing a snag in their plans.

By offensive, I mean several things, of course: the threat of force; the threat of litigation; or the threat of reporting you to higher authorities. The better liars don’t react like cornered wolves; they don’t hit out randomly. They plan. They make provisions for possible revelations. They blind-side you with straw-men - and these straw-men, quite unrelated to your investigation, can potentially do alot of harm.

And the very best of liars? The very best of liars use your words against you. This normally involves either a premeditated misconstrual of what you say, or indulging in pure fabrication.

That being said, I’ll be spending tomorrow gathering facts. Then, later in the evening, I will meet the big snake himself. If I don’t have my facts, I’m dead in the water.

Or I’m dead in the water already. Tomorrow is an opportunity for the snake to spin pure fabrications. Perhaps a recording device for tomorrow evening is called for.