Former CIA officer Michele Rigby Assad on spotting deception

Assad joined the CIA shortly after 9/11 and later specialized in counterterrorism. She said evaluating sources meant confronting information that was fabricated or embellished, and that no single gesture reliably identifies a lie. Instead, she looked for clusters of behavioral changes.

In one case, she was asked to assess an Arab intelligence officer for possible counterintelligence concerns. After reviewing his file, she suspected he might be secretly working for another country’s intelligence service while also supplying information to the CIA. She interviewed him for hours, first observing his usual body language. When she began naming countries, she said, he grabbed a couch pillow and hugged it after she mentioned one in particular. He relaxed when she changed the subject, then grabbed the pillow again when she returned to it. Years later, Assad said, she learned her assessment was correct.

She recalled other unusual reactions: one source built a barrier of Coke cans between them while answering difficult questions; another jumped up and ran to the bathroom after she asked about his wife. Such actions do not prove someone is lying, Assad said. Their significance lies in the change from a person’s baseline and the stress a sensitive topic may trigger.

Assad also learned to listen for what a source leaves out. In an eight-hour interview with someone suspected of being a double agent, she initially thought she had uncovered nothing. Reviewing her notes nearly two weeks later, she noticed that he had never criticized the government he claimed to oppose, though he was secretly working for it, she said. Assad spent another 14 years as a corporate and security advisor to companies operating in the Near East.