Secret Service Agent: How to Get Anyone to Tell You the Truth | Brad Beeler

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Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. It's not about asking the right questions. It's creating the environment where the truth doesn't hurt, where they can feel comfortable making that disclosure. That's a quote from our guest today, Brad Beeler. And if you've ever struggled to get someone to actually open up with you, whether it be your kid, your partner, someone on your team, And you keep wondering why they shut down or why they hold back, then this episode is going to change how you see every conversation you have in your life moving forward. Maybe you've been taught that the way to get the truth out of someone is to push harder, ask smarter questions, catch people in something. This former Secret Service agent proves the opposite, that people tell you the truth when they feel safe, not when they feel cornered. And that applies just as much to your marriage and your kids, your coworkers and your peers, as it does in a federal interrogation room. In this episode, you're going to learn how to read body language like a trained investigator, why a single facial expression can shut someone down instantly, how to build instant trust and rapport with anyone you meet, and why chasing being interesting will always lose to being genuinely interested. Brad Beeler spent 25 years as a U.S. Secret Service agent protecting presidents, interviewing thousands of people, and becoming one of the agency's top polygraph examiners and behavioral experts. My name is Lewis Howes. Welcome to the School of Greatness, and let's go ahead and dive in.

You've been around some of the most powerful and influential people in the world. And some of the most, you know, I guess disgusting people in the world are people who have done disgusting acts, right? How many people have you interviewed over your years?

Probably a couple thousand.

A couple thousand?

Yeah.

And these are people who have done crimes or potentially done crimes, right?

Not all of them. Alleged to have committed crimes. Right. A lot of the people I did talk to, we cleared. They didn't commit those acts. Really?

Man, that's tough.

Yes.

It's got to be tough when you have to clear them. We're like, okay, they didn't commit it too, right?

Sometimes that's the greatest day you have is that You know, you come into a situation, I remember one, an individual was accused of domestic terrorism and he was actually convicted of material support of domestic terrorism post-9/11. And post-9/11, we had a fervor in the United States about certain activities. And this individual was accused of that, was convicted of that. Some information came up that that maybe wasn't the case.

We—

this individual was offered a kind of global plea agreement by the Department of Justice where if he passed this polygraph, he would be given this amount of years versus if he didn't, He'd be given this amount of years. And so this was an individual I shared nothing in common with. This individual did not like America, but yet he, it turned out, did not do the thing that he was accused of.

Really?

And honestly, it was probably the most proud interview that I ever did because I was able to try to hold back my personal views of him personally and focus on the job at hand and get him in the right headspace to prove that he was innocent.

Wow.

So he didn't like America, he— but he didn't commit the crime that he was accused of?

Correct.

So did he still go to prison?

He went to prison for some financial crimes stuff that he did.

Other stuff.

Yeah, that we were investigating. But he didn't do the major deed that he was accused of.

Interesting. So how do you remove your personal feelings of like, this guy's still a bad guy, right? He did something wrong over here. Let's get him for this other thing too. How do you remove that personal feeling And really try to just get the right information to serve him, even though, you know, he's supposed to go to jail anyways.

Man, that's tough. That's tough, right?

You're a scumbag here, but you weren't a scumbag here.

Yeah, it's not something that they taught. I think it was just over a period of time I would learn that if I had certain facial expressions— I almost view it like red light, yellow light, green light. If I have a red light expression or the way that I speak to somebody, it shuts them down. So they see that Maybe there's some ulterior motives here, and that's in business, parenting, whatever the case may be. So I learned one time I was talking to an individual that I believe was a serial offender against children, and he provided a disclosure, and I just gave that little, you know, just that little downward eyebrow flash, and it was contempt, and he immediately shut down after that admission because he felt you weren't—

you didn't like what he shared.

Correct. Like he's not in a safe place, right? These waters are not conducive, right?

So any little bit of facial expression that you give someone when you 100%. It's going to shut people down from telling you more about what they did.

Absolutely. Because we always want to get the why, and then I want to get the what else. And there's so many times where, hey, what else? And it's almost said assumptively if it's what else. Like, imagine, you know, Lewis, and I don't know your faith, but imagine if you were a Catholic and you were going into confessional and you walked in and there were cameras like these beautiful cameras you had here, and there wasn't that little shroud, right? And you knew who the other person was, and they— the priest knew who you were. And you said something, you'd made a disclosure, and that priest said, really? Or that priest said, why did you do that? Almost like what we do sometimes as parents. We punish the disclosure. And that's what I learned is in my spoken word and how I look. And you are amazing at this, you know, in the community, in the podcast, in the public specter, because you were so good with your active listening skills and your affect. You always kind of truly put off. And if I think it's genuine, it is, or else you were the greatest actor ever.

I'm not that good of an actor.

But you do such a good job of, of inviting disclosure is that, uh, you're never showing that furrowed brow. And I almost have people either do a lot of Botox or have imaginary, uh, like duct tape on your forehead, because I've had applicants admit to shooting, robbing. These are applicants for our organization.

Um, people coming into Secret Service?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Not bad guys that you caught?

No, these are just applicants.

People to come in to work at the Secret Service?

Yeah. And it's not It's not just our organization. Right, right, right. Every organization. Yeah. And that's why, you know, I always am careful about talking about polygraph because there's so much hatred about it and pseudoscience in this. It is the— it is a tool that needs to be used in the right place at the right time with guardrails and quality control. And when done in that environment, the things that are disclosed are amazing. And if we wouldn't have it, the amount of people that we get on this job that shouldn't have that job would be very, very problematic. I mean, you've had applicants admit to bestiality, all kinds of craziness that The first time you hear it, you can't just sit there and be shocked. Yeah, you just gotta be like, oh, okay. Uh, you know, how old were you? What else? Hey, what else? Or it was a female cat, right? Okay, good. All right, how old was the cat? Okay, 3. Okay, so it wasn't a kitten. Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that. No way. And you have to do that. No way.

You have to do that because— so they give you more.

Yeah, you don't want to punish the disclosure.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

So, so when you hear someone who's applying for, I guess, Secret Service or military or some role for the government, I guess, right? And they say they did something. How do you respond? And is that an automatic, okay, they can't be hired, or is there some gray area somewhere?

Some of it's going to depend on age and intent. And did they do it or were they part of a group that did it? So we're going to go into investigative mode. Wow. At that point, try to understand what, what really happened here. But yeah, sometimes we've had to make those disclosures to law enforcement to— came in looking for a job and it didn't necessarily work out. That's why we have it, is because think of it this way. When you see about a serial killer, they always go interview the neighbors. What do the neighbors say about that serial killer? Oh, John was just such a quiet kid. Nobody ever says, yeah, I knew that John was going to be a serial killer, right? Is that background checks are great, but what do they really pick up? Because everybody's so afraid of making that disclosure because they're going to get in trouble, they're going to get litigation put against them. So they're always very nice about what they say.

Interesting.

So in, in that, that's why we use it, and that's why it's very effective. So Once again, I'm not a polygraph acolyte. I did it for 17 years. I know its limitations, but I also know its strengths.

So when you hear someone disclose something that you, in your gut and your soul, are like, this is bad, this is wrong, this is horrible, maybe whatever, it's disgusting.

Yeah.

How do you respond right when you hear it to ensure that they continue to reveal all the information you want to know?

Yeah. So no instant changes in body language. My facial affect doesn't be neutral. I want it to be positive. So, neutral codes negative, both with first impressions and also existing impressions.

Neutral.

Neutral codes negative. And, this goes back to caveman days.

Okay.

If we're going and we come across another tribe, instantaneously, I'm going to look on your face and your hands and determine, are you going to hurt me? Are you going to be somebody that's going to potentially come into my tribe that I might reproduce with? I mean, very primal level. If I have a neutral affect, Our primitive self would code that as, this is not good, right? This is not good for me. I'm going to err on the side of caution. I'm going to put horns on you and run away, fight, whatever I need to do. So that's a— when you say first impression, like when I'm talking about within milliseconds of seeing you, is Lewis going to hurt me? I would see your affect right now and I'd say, no, his hands aren't balled up. He's not bladed his body. He's ventrally fronted, showing me his—

He doesn't have his Pen in his hand. You know, it's like any little thing that's— isn't it interesting, we look at hands first a lot, don't we, when we're meeting someone new?

Yeah.

And I, I heard that, I think, years ago, because you'd think that you'd look originally at their eyes or something, but it's like maybe it's an eye and then the hand. And subconsciously, I realized, like, yeah, when I'm meeting especially men, yeah, I'm trying to see, like, are they in a relaxed hand position, or are they clenched, or is there something— are their hands in their pocket? What do they have in their pocket? What's in there? It's like you're on guard then, right?

Yeah. So bodies being bladed is another thing that we look at. If you look at any knockout video, what happens right before the people look away, they ball up their fist, they blade their body to their dominant side. If they're right-handed, they drop their right leg. The next thing you know, they try to spin your chin and make you go to sleep. Is that from an officer safety standpoint, we'll look at those things, but those are primal and they— you may not pick up on it. You may not have got that training, but subconsciously it's still there. It's still in that source code. Where you're picking that up subconsciously is that I don't feel good here. So when I meet people, first off, handshakes, a warm, dry handshake. I put clinical-grade antiperspirant on my hands when I'm going to shake people's hands. Why? Because it's always going to be dry. When you've shaken people's hands, whether it be in competition or elsewhere, and they're wet—

It's the worst.

They don't have confidence. What's wrong with this person?

Something seems off.

Something's off, right? Or if they come on and they give you that Queen of England, or if they come in and do the Trump You know, the power, the alpha.

Over the top.

So what I like to do is I like to show them my— the whites of my hands. And like you are right now, you're at about a 2 o'clock.

Yeah, yeah.

By doing that, since we always pronate, the other person, it's making it really easy for them to almost pancake. And we want to really connect right at the thumb so we don't hit the bones. And also we don't want to come in too shallow so it's like we're checking their pulse.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So we have that dry, that warm handshake, and it's not a shake, it's a hold. While we have eye contact.

So what's that look like?

Yeah, so it's this. Boom.

We hold it.

Yeah, we hold it.

Now, not too long.

I look down right before so that I don't miss the midair refuel, because how's that? That's the worst when we do this, right?

So you look down real quick and then you look back up.

And identify early. So let's go back 3 or 4 years ago with COVID We were doing this or we were doing this, right? So in some parts of the country, it's still a little bit— the vestiges are there. So what I'll come in is I'll show them the whites. Boom. Come in and I look down to see it, but then I come back up and it's just a hold and then I go back. And, I don't blade my body. I still ventrally front.

Interesting.

But then, when we move to a seated area, I like how you have this because this is almost like we're around a campfire. You got your little fire right there.

Fake, but it makes the meal feel more inviting.

Absolutely. Italian researchers learned that there's a right ear advantage. And, if I can speak into your right ear, you have about a 5% or 10% better to process sensitive information. So, if I'm in this setup, this is perfect for me.

My right ear.

Your right ear. Now, once again, 5% people are like this. We talked Nick Saban in the green room earlier. If Nick Saban had a 5% advantage in anything he did in Alabama, he'd take it.

Of course.

Right? So little things like that. I don't want to be directly across from you, and I don't want to have barriers, because if I have barriers, I can't see where your feet are.

Yeah.

The best body language is where your feet are, because it's the longest cabling from your brainstem.

Interesting.

So if I say something uncomfortable, you might turn away.

It's so interesting you say that, because I think about Experiential design as well. You know, we used to have a table, which I like the table because your hands are on top and you can kind of see the hands better, I feel like. And, or if it goes underneath, then you're like, okay, what's happening under there? So I like having it up there. And it also makes you feel less vulnerable if you're face onto each other and we're like both straight on. Then I used to have straight on, but I was like, uh, women, that probably doesn't feel comfortable. So it's just, they'll have it a little bit off-centered.

Centered.

Then we had this in the middle, but it's like, uh, your feet, you know. And so let's move it where it's not blocking, but it's still like here for the cup. So what would you change?

Anything?

I wouldn't change anything. And I, I would say you were very good at being observant. Watch where people's feet are. Watch where their orientation is. If you bring up a subject that maybe they don't really feel comfortable about, or let's say we get 90 minutes in and people are like, ah, it's about time, I've kind of talked about what I'm going to talk about, is, is I want to be able to see that. When we're across from a table, I can't see that. Plus A table is going to create an artificial anchor point that they can put their arms on. I don't want to see that because anchor points for me are some of the best ways to determine comfort, discomfort. Body language is terrible for detection of deception, but it's great for reception of message. So if I'm saying something and all of a sudden you cross your arms, it could be cold. It is cold in here. But if you didn't do that for the first 45 minutes and it just happened now, you notice it. It's a check engine light.

Interesting.

The same thing as that. I see that and then I see you do it with your legs. Okay, how can I unwind that? Maybe I go to a lower anchor point at my ankles and 2 minutes later, then I unwind it. Monkey see, monkey do. You'd be surprised at how many times people will unwind that. This is a confession posture, Lewis, right here. Think about this, right?

When you're leaning forward.

Just like this. If I— if I can't tell you how many— I mean, in school they say like this. Yeah, this, this just like this. People, this— they look down at the ground. So if I'm talking to you And I've got great rapport, I've got great respect, but I'm seated like this. You may mirror me, but you're mirroring a position that's the furthest thing away from a disclosure. So the way I always teach people is I'm like, just when you're talking to people, talk to them like this, because this to this is very close. So if you mirror me, I'm mirroring that in my benefit.

So when you're interviewing someone and trying to get information out of them, you're in the confessional posture most of the time?

I've got my anchors right here.

The whole time, essentially?

Pretty much. I may be back just a little bit further, but let's say right there where you're— if you're— that's perfect. Really? Just like this.

Wow.

The whole time. Because you want them to finally come up there and just be like— and go into a shame mode.

And it's literally—

Yeah. And it's shame, right? Because—

Sometimes.

Yeah.

Not always. Really? Right. Sometimes it may be you just— you got me.

You got me. You caught me. You got too much evidence on me.

So it's not about asking the right questions. It's creating the environment where The truth doesn't hurt, and they can feel comfortable making that disclosure. I create the right environment. And that's from— think of it this way: great communication is a great podcast. Think about your great episodes over the years. If you prepped and you read the book, or you read— saw some of their other podcasts, you made an amazing first impression in your green room, so you brought down their cortisol because they were stressed to be here, because this is a beautiful building. You got to know them a little bit. You got some talking points. Okay, what could I bring up? What would be some things we shouldn't talk about? You come on screen and you advocate for them. You let them talk 80% of the time. The most soothing voice on the planet is a person's own.

Yeah, yeah.

You let that speak that.

Yeah, yeah.

And you advocate for me. And once again, now that oxytocin, that dopamine, that serotonin is flowing in, those neurochemicals are— I'm bathing in it and I'm associating that with you. Okay? I'm putting a halo on you right now because you're letting me talk. And if I go down a, rabbit hole that's not of interest to your listeners, you kind of bring me back. If I go down one that you think is interesting, you kind of tease it out, and then you have a great podcast. Where I think podcasts are problematic is when it's 50/50, because you got somebody here that's stressed out. When they're talking, they're actually more comfortable.

Interesting.

Really?

Yeah.

Huh.

It lets them get their sea legs underneath them.

So, you know, 25 years Secret Service. Getting people to admit the worst things they've ever done, what would you say is the number one secret or communication tip to getting the truth out of anyone?

If you just said one trait, I would say be interested more than trying to be interesting. Dale Carnegie, like I said, is that when you, especially in leisure activities, let's kind of tease this out a little bit. So, if we're talking and you know you're coming in here and you're accused of something, what's your heart rate, do you think?

You're tired.

Yeah, you're— whether it be a job interview, whether it be talking to your parents about did you wreck the car last night or get a ticket, or law enforcement, your heart rate's probably 120, 130. Once your heart rate gets to a certain point, everything starts to turn into fight or flight. You get that tunnel vision, and that's not good. So I want to, one, make a great introduction. I want you to feel like you're in a good space. Maslow's hierarchy of needs— I want to work on that base. I'm never going to be your friend in a Single interaction. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure you're physiologically and psychologically safe.

So give me an example. You're back in Secret Service and you're, you know, you've got someone that did something really bad.

Yeah.

And you're about to prep to—

Oh, hell yeah.

Do an interview with them, right? What does the prep look like? And then what is the first 5 to 10 minutes to really warm them up and feel emotionally safe enough, even though they know that they did something wrong and you know they did something wrong?

Yeah. So let's say we worked a lot of cases in the Secret Service. A lot of people don't know. Is that we work a lot of cases for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So a lot of child exploitation cases. People think Secret Service protection. We started in 1865 doing investigations. So for me, I was an investigations person. That's what I really enjoyed doing outside the protection. So that's how we got involved in doing this outside work. So the case— I'll give you a for instance. An individual is accused of doing some bad— I'm just going to leave it as just some bad things to some kids, him and his girlfriend.

Mm-hmm.

And sexually bad. Yes, sexually taking pictures, doing inappropriate things. Okay. And it's one of these things where I'm trying to get a sight picture of what makes this person tick. Pain points, organic things that I might be able to bring up. So we, we don't put information in our diary anymore and put it under our bed. Where do we put it? Put it online. You know, I mean, if I'm trying to find out about Lewis, I go on your—

Every one of my posts.

Every—

yeah, I go on, you know, Caroline You know, doing a great job distilling your, uh, your Instagram.

Yeah.

Is that, uh, I go on there and I can find out—

What makes him tick.

Yeah.

What's his age experience. I could get some of those quotes, whatever. And in this sense, that's what I did, is that this person had a huge Facebook presence. And so I could go find out what makes him tick. And there were about 15 different things that I garnered. But one thing in particular was the fact that he loved his pit bull and he kept having pictures of this pit bull. I didn't know how I was going to bring this up.

But you have that in your mind at some point.

So that's just operating in the background, right? So I always like to meet basic necessities— bathroom, food. I knew he liked Wendy's, so guess what we're eating? Hey, man, I'm starving. I was going to get some Wendy's. Oh, man, I'd love a Frosty. And that's great. I take $20 out of my pocket, give it to the detective. What does that show? I'm taking care. And once again, I don't know if he did this thing, but it looks like I'm playing fair.

All right.

So we break bread, and break food is reciprocity.

I give you something, you got to give me something.

100%, right? Is that— but also, it's a, it's a, it's a barometer, meaning when you're nervous, you don't tend to eat. So he's scarfing this stuff down. So I feel like his heart rate's in a good place where he can tell me the truth, whether he did the thing or he didn't do the thing.

Interesting.

So family, education, employment, leisure— FEEL is what we call it.

But just because Just because you're nervous doesn't mean that you did the thing. They did the thing.

Absolutely.

But, they're just like, oh, there's an agent investigating me. It's a nerve-wracking moment.

A lot of people over the years, nervousness has been looked at as, oh, that's deception. Amanda Knox, people thought she's nervous, she's acting strange. And then, the Italian police get that confirmation bias. So, yes, you want to be real careful about that. So, one of the ways we like to do it is I want to find out what makes you tick. So, family, education, employment, leisure. And, where I find this really works very well is in leisure activities.

Really?

So, in this case, what I did is, hey, what do you like to— let's just call him Bob. Hey, Bob, what do you like to do in your free time? Oh, I like to play this. I like to video game. What kind of video games? I like to do this, this. What else do you like to do? I like to walk my dog. Oh, tell me about your dog. Oh, he's a Staffordshire Terrier. Some people call it a pit bull. You know, I said, man, they get bad reputations, right? He said, yeah, but it's all nature versus nurture if you take care of it. You know, so he goes off in about 10 minutes. He's talking about this. He's beaming.

About his dog?

About his dog. And so, his stress level's coming down. His heart rate's coming down. Now, the backstory here is about 10 minutes later, he makes a disclosure that something bad happened to him as a kid, about the same ages in which these kids that we were investigating had happened to them. So you're basically providing him a built-in off-ramp by asking the question. And I can say, hey, John, look, remember we talked about your pimple, how when it's treated well, it's amazing. But if you, if you put OC spray on it, you know, pepper spray on it, and if you You know, put a shock collar on it and you only feed it when it fights, it creates a monster, right? That trajectory of that animal's changed. I said, let's go back to your past. Your trajectory was changed by something that somebody that you love did to you. And it maybe changed that asteroid's trajectory and it caused the crater that we're seeing here today.

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So by looking at that background, I'm able to give him an off-ramp to the bad thing he did. I'm not excusing it, right? He got 47 years in prison.

Really?

So, you know, he still had to pay amends, but in his mind, that was his personal justification for that bad thing. So I'm always really, really big on asking, And let's just run it out here real quick. What do you like to do in your free time, Lewis?

Well, I like spending time with my kids right now because they're 10 months old, like playing pickleball. Yeah.

Okay, so let's say we were on an airplane and I didn't know who you were, right? And I'm just sitting next to you and, and we're talking and there's too many MeToo people out there. You've probably seen them. Okay. Is that let people share their experience. Ask informed questions and it will circle back to you. How many times has somebody said, what do you like doing in your free time? I like to run. Me too. What marathons you do? This. And now you're just in this measuring contest of who's more important. So avoid the me too.

Yeah, I think the most interesting person in every room is always the most interested person.

Yeah.

You know, that's how I kind of got started in my career because I was in my young 20s. I didn't understand business. I was like just trying to figure out the business world. And some mentors were like, why don't you go to some conferences and start meeting people? But I was like, I don't have anything to offer. I don't have any skills. I don't have any experience, no success in the business world. I just got done playing football. And so all I did was ask questions. And I was like too nervous to talk about myself because I didn't have anything to offer. And everyone at the end of the night were like, you're such an interesting guy. And I never said anything. I was just asking questions and showed curiosity. 100%.

I was like, you're amazing what you did, how you overcame that.

Wow, that's incredible. And people are like, hey, how can I help you?

Yeah.

At the end of the night, they're like, what can I do for you? I didn't even hear your story. You know, it's so, so fascinating how connected we can get to others when we show curiosity.

Yeah, you're right. 100%.

But how did—

this is the thing. This is something I've struggled with. There are people in my past who I've— who have done wrong to me, or in my interpretation, they've done wrong to me. I felt betrayed. I felt abandoned or whatever, abused, taken advantage of, whatever. Right? Or if like they did something wrong, and for whatever reason, when I confront them, I don't have the ability to show compassion or positive affect.

Yeah, the emotion is clouding the logic.

It is.

And anytime your emotion gets involved into the situation, what's their automatic defense mechanism?

Defense.

Yeah. So I think if you change it to, help me understand, almost like dot, dot, dot after that, help me understand why. You know, is it— you're almost putting it out there as you're doing me a favor by explaining this to me versus why.

Right, right.

Why is very problematic. It's putting them on the defensive. And too many times, especially if that's associated with lying, you're trying to bring their identity into play. And when someone's identity is affected—

Gosh, I just like calling people out on their identity. I'm like, you're just a liar, you're a cheater, you know?

It feels good.

But here's the thing, most of my childhood I had like little white lies constantly to try to protect myself. So it's also the part of the younger version of me that I don't like. So maybe it's part of me reflecting to myself of like, God, I was a jerk too back in my day, and I've done things that I'm not proud of, and I lied and I cheated. I did all these things.

I stole.

I did these things. But it's almost like now I know how bad that was.

Yeah.

How would you confront another person personally rather than for the job who did you wrong or your family wrong.

I always like to prime it on the front end as much as possible. I know you talked about how sometimes your dad would be, you know, he'd come at you with the, the red light, not the green light.

Yeah.

Why did you do this? Don't lie to me. And that creates just walls. Yes. Right. We need to go around the walls. No frontal attack when it comes to that. So priming as much as we can to make them feel comfortable that we're not going to judge them.

So we may do something like But if it's against you personally or your kid, like, yeah, it's— how do you—

I want to— I want you to step outside yourself.

How do you do that?

I want you to think as like those video games where you're the top level. View yourself as a character and view yourself as like, uh, you got the Xbox controller and you're controlling yourself. You're connected, tethered to yourself, but you're not yourself. And I want you to be their buddy.

But how do you do it if they really hit that button in your heart, your soul? Like, how do you like, okay, My heart rate's got to lower. Like, how do you personally do that?

What's, what's your goal? Yeah, I know. But no, let's, let's say it.

The goal is to get the information.

The goal is to get the information. And if I told you, here's the best way to do it, you'd do that, right?

Yes.

So it's the same way. Here's your goal. What's the best way to do it?

But how do you get the emotions out of it?

It's tough.

How have you— like, what's the strategy?

Okay, screwing up so many times, uh, I let my ego many times affect the results.

Really?

You know, we had a situation, uh, I did a lot of work in Chicago, my partner Brian and I, and we had a case in which we thought we were 10-foot tall and bulletproof. And it was unfortunately the death of a baby. And we had a mother-father situation and we thought case facts looked like the guy did it. You know, confirmation bias is the worst thing that can, can come in, right?

Because you're assuming, you think it is, you see there might be some evidence.

Yeah. And that's what horns and halos are, right? You see a negative trait or you get negative information. and you see everything through that prism. So instead of talking to the mom and getting some background, maybe ruling her out as a suspect, we said, ah, we're just gonna go talk to dad. We're gonna get this.

Really?

Dad was so close. He was showing really close signs of emotion, but we didn't have that one little bit of information that could push it. And we didn't get it. He lawyered up. We go talk to mom. She's too emotional to really talk to, but she gives us a couple words. She says the guy's name, she says the baby, and she says bat. And it was a situation where There was a little souvenir baseball bat found and it had been disinfected, it looked like. If we'd have had that information from her, if we wouldn't let our egos come involved, we'd have done that interview first. That would have been probably the straw that broke the camel's back to be able to elicit that last bit of information.

From the guy.

From the guy. And we did bad by that child. We didn't get justice for that child because of our egos and because of Or maybe emotions. And this comes full circle where literally a few days after, we're given the same set of scenarios on a double homicide. And time is of the essence, but we can either talk to the 18-year-old kid who's never been arrested, or we can talk to the 25-year-old person that doesn't like law enforcement, but that's been arrested a lot. And we kind of tried to learn from those mistakes and said, we're going to talk to the 18-year-old this time. And we did. And thankfully, because we were able to get the background information. This 25-year-old that was accused, he was minding his own business. So we get some context. He was on the South Side of Chicago, and some Latin Kings rolled up to him. They didn't know that he was a Gold Glove boxer, and he knocked all 3 of them out.

Wow.

And then he urinated on them. The problem with that is, is if you're a Gangster Disciple and you urinate on 3 Latin Kings, they're probably gonna come for retribution.

Oh, yeah.

And so he catches through the grapevine that they're coming for him. They're gonna roll, you know, 3 or 4 deep is what I heard. what they called it, over to his house and kill his, uh, his family members and him. So understanding the backstory now is so important, right? Because now we got the why to his what, potentially. And my partner Brian did such an amazing job because after we got that information, he talks about where they cut the gun up, how they tried to cut the gun up, how they threw it in the canal, where— so we were able to send the dive team out. But we still got to go talk to the other potential subject. So we go in there and he is scre— every bad thing you could say to another human being, he says to us. And—

Why?

I think it's what he's always done to get his way. And I think he was trying to get a reaction. You know that visceral reaction you talked about when somebody does something wrong? I think he does that to push people's buttons. And you know what? Hey, I was trying to cooperate, but this guy was— and my partner just saw it as performative. He saw that the, the They weren't balled up. He saw it was fake emotion, and he let, he let it just play out. He let it habituate. And then he was his buddy. What he did with me by that is you blame outside factors, you understand without agreement, you diminish impact, not culpability, you demonstrate tactical empathy, and you focus on the why. He was his buddy. He said, John, look, here's the deal. I know you didn't wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning with ill will in your heart.

Mm.

Here's what I know happened. You were minding your own business. They stepped up to you. And you protected yourself.

Yeah.

You might have taken it a little bit too far.

Yeah, yeah.

But then you catch wind they're going to come kill your family members that aren't in the gang. And you know what? You can't call the police, or you didn't feel like you could call the police, so you stepped up and you did something that you shouldn't have done. Okay, but there were 5 people in that car. You didn't kill all 5. You know, it's diminishing impact. And as we're talking, you just see him go from violent to down. And he finally came in on it because Brian did such a good job being his buddy. And I'm not saying the stakes of your— some of your interactions maybe are the same, but it's what's the off-ramp we can give that other person?

Wow.

So they can save face, whether it be in a negotiation, whether it be in a criminal interrogation, or whether it be that parent that did say that bad thing to your son, by primarily saying, hey, John, look, I've dealt with you a lot in the past. I know you're a stand-up guy. Sometimes we get emotional. Sometimes we say things that, you know, we don't mean. And those things, you know, and This all kind of makes me think about one of the first cases I ever had in the Secret Service. We get a call that comes into the Republican headquarters in a small town in Illinois, and I'm literally 24, 25 years old, brand new, wet behind the ears.

Yeah.

And this was a great gig because normally nothing happens when you're doing protective intelligence. Murphy's Law, you know, is that literally the night before the visit, it was a W visit. So Bush 43. Um, it's in 2000, the whole hanging chad election. And 9 o'clock at night, a phone call comes into the headquarters saying, hey, if, if he comes here, I'm a sniper, I'm gonna shoot him, so on and so forth. Well, we find out, oh no, what am I gonna do? Luckily, I had this guy named Bill. And Bill was like, if you imagine Columbo as a Secret Service agent, that was him.

Hmm.

He was like, I don't know how old the dude was, how he was still— wasn't retired, but he Was just so humble. And he said, man, let me show you the way. We go out to where the— it was an old payphone. So one of the old phones with that you actually had to put coins in. And there were no, obviously, flock cameras then. There was no Ring cameras. But he takes the phone, cuts it off, puts it in a Ziploc bag, kicks over the trash can, which I thought was, wow, going through dirty diapers. And one of the last things he goes through is a little Styrofoam cup that has a yellow piece of paper that has the Republican headquarters phone number on it. Bag that up, because this is pre-DNA, early stages of DNA, but now we got potential handwriting and fingerprints. So we're canvassing the area looking for where could this cup and, and page have come from. The only thing we see is a little supermarket about a block away. So we walk over there and he's interviewing the manager and we're looking around and he sees the little yellow piece of paper next to the phone that was ripped off that was the same exact— it was one of these scenarios you see in training, you're like, that didn't happen.

No, but it did. It all happened perfectly. Like Perfectly.

And we asked the manager, hey, guy sounded between 50 and 70. Who was working in that? 3 people. We pull the employment apps, which are handwritten. He had a layover on his 2s and a strike during his 7s. Once again, you couldn't come up with a scenario at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center that was more unrealistic. But now we know the guy, and now it's about 11 o'clock. We go to the person's house, knock on the door, and it was surreal to see Bill just When I talk about priming a situation and creating the environment for the truth, could he have— let's— we're going to do a search warrant, we're going to do this. Absolutely. But he knocks on the door. We have a couple local law enforcement with us. Uh, the guy's wife comes to the door and very Midwestern. Hey, what can I do for you?

You want some cookies?

Come on in. Yeah, he's like, hey, you could get us a cup of coffee. So very— we walk in, we make a right, and I remember the hallway distinctly because the guy's almost at the kitchen table, like doing something very Rockwellian of like doing fishing flies, like tying fishing flies at the kitchen table. And as we're walking, Bill sees a picture of his wedding from probably the 1960s, same woman. So he's been married for about 50 years and he sees his Vietnam Marine photo.

Intel.

Observant intel. He's— I don't know how he's going to use this, but he walks up to the guy and he goes, hey, John. Hey, this is Brad. I'm Bill. He's like, we're with the Secret Service. Secret Service does 2 things. We stop people from counterfeiting money and stop people from hurting our protectees. He goes, have you been printing any counterfeit any recently? And he goes, no. He goes, well, now you know why we're here.

Oh, man.

I mean, so like he hits him with that, but then he smooths it and says, look, here's the deal. The reason I'm handling it like this is because I just walked by your wonderful wife. I see you guys have been married for a long time. It says a lot about you. I see that you serve this country. That says a lot about you. And I know the political times that we're in and they're very charged. What I'd like to hope is that you got in a heated political discussion You took it a step too far and you did something that you're normally going to do, but you weren't going to take that next step. Is that what we're talking about? And the guy came completely in on it.

He opened up to it right away.

Right there. And it was just mind-blowing to see a professional—

Wow.

Take all that in, prime it. And sometimes if you don't prime it on the front end— and I, I don't want the lie to happen, Lewis. It's harder to deal with. 54% of people, when we've done the biggest study on lie detection, Is that if I watch 2 videos of you, there's a 54% chance I get it right on which one was telling the truth and which was lying. We suck at this.

That's not that good.

It's not that good.

It's a coin flip.

So if I don't have to deal with the lie, even better. Right.

Wow.

So did he go to jail? Or because he didn't act, nothing happened?

So he got a delayed sentence, probation. I think they took into his age. He had some health issues.

Yeah, yeah.

But—

Normally, if someone does that, they're going—

You're getting arrested.

Wow. Even if you don't act?

100%.

But if you make that threat, if you make that—

wow.

Yeah. And it's obviously the times we're in because we're—

Of course.

The echo chambers and how charged we are. There's less friction.

Yeah.

When we dealt with threats 20 years ago, if you said something stupid at a bar, somebody'd say, hey, Lewis, that's stupid. Nowadays, the bars are virtual. And people can just go to whatever bar they want. And you've seen with a lot of the political violence, it's easier for people to find like-minded people. Wow.

Okay. You mentioned this thing, halo and horns. Can you share what that is?

Yeah. So I meet you and you have a positive attribute. I give you an affinity bias, meaning I put a halo on you. meet you and you're having a bad day, you give me a bad look, whatever. I hear you talking poorly to your staff. I associate that as a negative act. So I'm going to see everything through those prisms. And that can be very problematic, is that— I remember a case not too long ago, about 4 years ago, when I was still with the Secret Service, where my partner and I were doing a search warrant on a child predator. And we come into the kitchen and there's a Chihuahua and there's a pit bull. Now there's a lot of stereotypes about those two animals, right? And I don't want to have to ever be in a situation where I have to shoot a dog. And thankfully it didn't come to that. But pit bulls can hurt you, right? So what's my focus? My focus is on the pit bull. I had put horns on the pit bull, a halo on the chihuahua.

Chihuahuas will bite you though.

Well, as I found out, Lewis, you try to pet it. So as I was focused, he came around behind me, jumped up and grabbed me by the testicles.

The chihuahua? Chihuahua. No way. It came up and jumped and bit you?

Didn't just bite, but then latched on and treated it like a Nerf ball.

Oh my God.

So I have to holster up. My partner Ryan is laughing, uh, the bad guy in the kitchen's laughing. I think the pit bull's probably laughing that his little toadie's taking care of business. And thankfully, the, the Duluth Trading Company, their fire hose pants kept me talking at the octave that I'm talking at right now. So horns and halos can be very, very difficult, and Not too long before that, I had fallen victim to it in a criminal case where there's a missing female and she is dating 2 bike members of a motorcycle outlaw gang. One member's a one-percenter from the standpoint of, uh, he's 6'4, he's 250, numerous felonies. The ATF had thought he had, had done other nefarious things in his past. If you were spinning back up Sons of Anarchy and you needed a villain, No, he'd be the guy. Yeah, the other guy was a hangaround, didn't even have a bike. 5'6, 130 pounds, dripping wet, looked like an accountant. So they're both best friends, they're dating the same female, she's disappeared.

They don't know they're dating?

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, it's a long story.

Okay, gotcha. All right.

Yeah, so very Jerry Springer-ish. Okay, no offense to Jerry Springer, but, uh, yeah, there was a lot going on there. But what's our assumption when I talk to the to the detectives. I'm like, I made the mistake of saying, what do you think? Ah, we don't think this guy's capable of hurting a fly. And if you looked at him, you didn't think that either. And this guy, he's a bad dude, chances are. And when you hear that, horns and halos get assigned. So I do a polygraph on the little 5'6 guy first, and I ask him about his participation in her disappearance. He fails. What's my assumption? My assumption is maybe he saw it after the fact. He has knowledge. So for 3 or 4 hours, I'm talking to him. Let me help you. You're probably afraid of him. I'm Secret Service. Let me help you. And he keeps saying, that's not it. That's not it. And the detective outside the room, she finally comes in, knocks on the door. She goes, hey, you mind if I say something? Because she had picked it up. She didn't have the confirmation bias. She goes, you keep saying that's not it. What is it? And he goes, I killed her, cut her up in 6 pieces, and threw her in the river.

No way.

Holy cow.

Confirmation bias can cloud everything. Oh my gosh. So use horns and halos for— I'm walking down the street late at night. Law enforcement, use it when you're walking up to a patrol car and you get that gut instinct. Trust it then unequivocally. When it comes to when you've got time to digest and you don't need to make a quick decision, try to get a couple more interactions before you throw those horns and halos on somebody, because Ted Bundy did a great job with first impressions. Wow.

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So do you not put horns or halos on anyone then, or do you try to put halos on a bad person so that they will give you more information, or how does that—

Not really with them. I never want them to think that I look at them poorly, right? So I treat kind of horns and halos, or a first impression, as a hypothesis, not a conclusion. And I want more information to get the conclusion behind it.

But when you're internally thinking about them or speaking to them and you're with a bad guy, are you putting a halo on them so that you are warm and kind to them?

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

So that they will reveal more?

Yeah. So let me give you a for instance. So what do you think should happen to these 2 people? I'm gonna give you a short guy and I'll give you a tall guy. All right. And I think this will kind of explain it to your listeners. So the short guy, He was a veteran of World War I for his country. He served his country by all accounts valiantly. He was decorated for his activities in World War I. Very introverted guy. He didn't really find his voice till the 1930s. He was very introverted, but he became a much better political speaker in the 1930s. He was the leader of his military juggernaut, and his actions— once again, very short guy— his actions led to the burning deaths, if we just want to focus on burning deaths, of a million people. So that's a short guy. Then we got a tall guy, very tall guy. And this, you know, coming up on 9/11. So a very, very tall guy, very religious guy, very, very rich guy, fought off 2 empires. Both empires that he fought off, he fought them off on the behalf of the other empire. Okay. He fought what some people would say are by using terroristic type means because he was fighting an enemy that had much more resources. And he caused the death of 24,000 people, but exponential amounts of, of gold and treasure, so to speak. So we have short guy and we have tall guy, and you can make one of them disappear from the annals of history. What would Lewis do?

I mean, just from that information, the person who kills a million, you would think you'd want to remove them versus 25,000 from that.

Okay.

But I don't know, is there more context?

Well, you just killed Harry S. Truman.

Okay.

Instead of George Washington. So when we talk horns and halos, right, and it's not a gotcha question, nobody's ever gotten that right when I say it to my students. But it just shows when you're given facts and you're not given any more context, right? Yeah, we put the horns and the halos and it changes our assumptions. So if you look at it from this standpoint, Harry Truman, okay, uh, with Curtis LeMay and his firebombing campaign in Japan, basically dropping bombs, napalm on civilian centers, and then the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, If you look at those actions, and I try to be his buddy afterwards, so you mentioned how would I kind of use this? Here's what I would do. I'd say, Harry, so let's say I'm interrogating Harry. We're at the Nuremberg Trials. Harry, um, who would I blame? I blame the Empire of Japan. Say, Harry, look, December 6th, we're isolationists. We're staying out of the war. That's the sentiment of this country. But the Empire of Japan killed 3,000 of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen on one day.

Mm-hmm.

Then I would understand, but not agree. And I say, I get it. It's tough because you're writing letters home to soldiers, sailors, and airmen talking about how they gave their lives. And I diminish impact by saying, Harry, let's be honest, a million people died over the course of that 3, 4 months. Millions more would've died if we would've had to land in mainland Japan.

Mm-hmm.

Then I demonstrate empathy with stories and analogies and say, Harry, it's kind of like an ER doc, and she's there at 2:30 in the morning, and a horrific car accident comes in with a little 5-year-old kid that just looks like your kid. And he's got a baseball uniform on and mangled leg. You got to make a decision. Am I going to take the leg or not? If you take the leg, he's never going to play baseball again. If you don't take the leg, he may die.

Yeah.

You took the leg, and that's what you did here, and the buck stops here. And then I summarized.

Wow.

We're talking about you didn't start it, but you ended it. So, Harry, boom. And that's how you'd interrogate Harry Truman. If you're going to interrogate Osama bin Laden, you have to talk to him like he's George Washington, because in his mind, He is. Everyone's the hero of their own adventure.

Yeah, man. So is that what you call the buddy framework then?

Yeah.

Okay.

The off-ramp. Yeah.

Can you walk me through the criminal equation that you use to understand when someone commits a crime? And does it also apply to everyday bad decisions too?

100%.

It does.

Yeah. So if you think about all crime, most crime can be kind of boiled down to an equation. You have need plus ability plus opportunity, their own internal justifications. And all of that is almost squared by stress, meaning stress is like the gasoline on that numerator. And then you got a denominator, which is social bonds and chances and consequences of getting caught. So that's what keeps you from doing those bad things.

Yeah.

So if you want to think of— have you seen Breaking Bad?

Couple episodes, not the whole thing, but I know—

So Walter White, you understand the gist of it, right? We got a chemistry teacher. Gets in the meth game. All right. So if you look at his need, his need was he needed money because he'd just been diagnosed with cancer. What was his ability? He was a—

he could make meth.

He could make meth. What was his opportunity? He knew Jesse that had the distribution networks. What was his own justification? Hey, people are going to do it anyway. Why don't I provide them a better, better service product, better product, better service?

Yeah.

And what were his stressors? Well, just season 1 through 5, the stressors are all over.

Yeah.

His social bonds are a mess. And his chances of getting caught, he's got a brother-in-law that's a DEA agent.

Crazy. Yeah.

So literally, you can almost take any kind of crime, or it could be embezzlement from work, it could be whatever, and you can almost plug that in and then reverse engineer it to see what caused them to wake up that day to do that bad thing, and then try to be their buddy in that regard.

Wow.

Without calling them a liar or a bad person.

Gosh, that's so hard to do for me.

Yes.

It's so hard to do for me. Has there been an instance in your life personally where you've failed your own strategies because of emotion?

Oh yeah, I think it's really hard with your kids.

Oh, tell me more.

Well, so I, I can just think without— I don't want to put the, uh, the offending party on, on notice, but, uh, somebody, you know, my son was an athlete and you get a coach that is doing something that's obviously wrong. Yeah. And inappropriate. Would I like to go be his buddy?

Sure.

Do I teach that? I did not practice what we preach in that situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is tough when it's your own.

You take it personally then.

Yeah.

This is not— I mean, obviously you have, you know, a sex offender to children coming in. It's, it's not your kid, but you could take it very personally about how horrible that is and still get angry. But when it's your child, I bet it's like, how do you really regulate your emotions is another level.

Yeah. I mean, interrogating the equation at work, my kid's not an equation.

No.

And so, yeah, it is tough. And I don't know the way around that.

How did you handle that situation?

Did you just— I think initially poorly.

Yeah, yeah.

And then as I finally realized that my blood was boiling and realized logic comes after emotion and I'm putting up this coach's guard, that I finally regulated myself a little bit.

And then you were able to— Yeah.

Then it was all good.

Resolve it. Yeah. In your mind, what are the most applicable tactics to everyday life that you've learned through interrogations then?

Oh, man. Perception versus perspective.

What does that mean?

So we— I learned this many, many years ago from the standpoint of, look, we all have a perspective of things, but we got to be careful about our perception. I mean, I've got a perspective on my own personal life. Those are my shoes that I'm in. is that I've got to be able to get in their shoes. And people say, oh, empathy, this. No, I have to understand the other person's perspective. I have a perception about them, and I have to be very, very careful about that, is because I don't know why they did that thing. And I've been very surprised about why people—

Really?

Did certain things. And that if I would've gone upon an assumption of my perception, I would've been 100% wrong. So That's one of the things that universally that's kind of taught me is, is to try to understand things from, from their, their point of view. And even if it's not right, um, how they got there could be problematic, but to get the mission done and to find out the truth, I have to look at it from their perspective. It is— it's easier for me when we worked homicides to understand a homicide most of the time. Because it was gang-related, it was drug-related, it was disrespect, whatever. When we would deal with somebody that would hurt an infant, it's like, why? Yeah, that's— and that's the hard part, is to try to put that on. That always caused some, some scars, okay? It's something that I had to deal with, is that I was blessed. I kind of had 3 different stints in our polygraph program— Chicago, St. Louis, and then The greatest thing for me was going to teach and taking a step back from being in the trenches, because when you are being people's buddy that don't deserve a buddy—

Oh.

I thought I was having a heart attack. I thought I was having panic attacks. And it was cognitive dissonance. Oh, if I was getting on a plane and we travel armed, so I don't want to have to be in a situation where, oh my gosh, I'm having a panic attack. I don't want to lose my gun. I didn't want to— you know, in law enforcement, we always view as, and we don't want to go talk to the therapist. That shows you're weak. That's the old, the old me, you know. I didn't realize it's not the, the, you know, the old saying about it's not the water outside the hull that sinks you, it's the water that gets inside the hull. And in talking to these people, I thought I was fine, but I wasn't self— taking care of myself.

You weren't releasing that energy too.

I was just, hey, we got another case, we got another case. And it's always another molester and, oh my God, I got to do this because if I don't do this, you get almost like a, a God complex. So if I don't do this, this—

More kids are gonna suffer or die.

Yeah. And it's, it's not right, is that you have to take an inventory of where you're at. And, and finally, I was getting to the point where I had to go in and I, and I felt like I was having a heart attack. They did a catheter on me and they're like, really? Oh yeah. They're like, your heart's fine. And it was, I was rotten mentally from the standpoint of I started seeing neighbors as what's their ulterior motive? Supervise, you know, what's his problem? Like, when you deal with people that have horns all the time, you start to kind of—

Everyone's got something.

Everybody's got something.

Like, there's evil people out here, so how do I—

And when you're constant, when the operational tempo is such, you don't have a chance to kind of decompress. It'd be like this. When you think of your football career, like, every week, what's your preparation like?

A lot of training, a lot of hitting, a lot of training, a lot of practice.

Gaint tape.

Aggression, the other day, focus.

focus. But would you say it's 95% prep and then really only 5% perform? Oh, I don't know.

I mean, it's probably like 50/50. Maybe it's like you're prepping and then you're, you're practicing and then you play at the end of the week. Yeah.

But 60 minutes of game time.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So I guess 90% prep with training and then—

So within that game time versus practice, you got time to decompress, you got times to heal, rehabilitate. The problem in law enforcement is we're so—

Every day is game time.

Every day is game time.

8 hours a day.

You don't have time to train, so you don't have time to go out and do control tactics and range and this. You do the bare minimum and you learn on the job. You learn on the job. And that's the problem. And it's also you don't have time to heal.

Yeah.

Is that the average person in law enforcement, from 911 operators to EMTs to state troopers to federal agents, they may experience 200 or 300 traumatic events where a 911 operator's on the phone when somebody dies, a state trooper's pulling up to a horrific vehicle accident where 7 people died, a detective has to go give a death notification. We have to talk to these horrific people. Um, but yet you gotta go to work the next day.

Oh my God, there's no time off.

There's no time off. So for me, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I would wear the same shirt to work. I had a great therapist that she would say almost you treat it like a Almost like a medical examiner has a laboratory coat. You take it off. I'd leave it in my car. I'd play a game of chess real quick on my phone before I walked in the house.

Clear your mind, clear your energy.

Dissociate.

Man, but you might have just seen the most horrific thing and then 30 minutes later, like, have to be with your wife and kids.

Yeah. And especially when your kids are the ages of some of the victims.

Oh, gosh. It's like having to play that role to be the buddy and knowing But you're doing it to try to like get the bad guys, but it still affects you emotionally.

100%. And that's why I think we're finally trying to do a better job now of, especially the people that have to look at these images and these horrific images, to decompress, talk to people, and realize it's not, uh, it's not a weakness, it's a strength to actually realize you need to talk to somebody and you need help. So I'm glad to see that that seed change is kind of happening.

Is there a moment or a case that you still carry that changed how you see people permanently?

Wow. I would say in the many, many cases that I've worked, most of the people that I dealt with were not evil. Were not evil.

What were they?

They were people that situational factors created an outcome. There was something I see. I see chapter 30. They're 30 years old. If I went back in chapter 5, 10, 15, I would see all kinds of disruptions to to that asteroid that changed that trajectory.

That led them to that moment to take that action.

Not to make it right.

Yeah.

But most people I talked to, I could do that. However, there were a few people that weren't like that. We had— we would do a lot of cases in South Carolina. They were very proactive trying to catch predators. They're very great. And Kevin, one of the commanders down there, was great about doing these to catch predator operations where we kind of tried to— it's almost like a preemptive burn. and how, you know, out here with forest fires, you want to sometimes burn, you know, and catch the bad people that are out there so they don't maybe abduct a kid, things like that. So there'd be online detectives go out and perpetrate themselves as—

Messaging people, messaging kids and say, hey, let's hang out. Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, you've seen the Chris Hansen stuff. And, and that's what we were doing in this situation. Um, you know, there's a funny part of it and there's a not so funny part of it, is that one of these offenders had said Hey, I've been caught before. You say you live near a lake. I'm not buying it. I need proof of life. And this was just when AI was just starting. So without getting into sources and methods, Kevin, uh, had a profile photo that was actually him that they had doctored a little bit. I won't get into too many specifics, but he ran back to his house. He lived on the lake and he got on his dock and he put on his wife's bikini. And of course they had to get rid of all the hair and You know, the chest hair and get rid of that. But they recreated the 12-year-old version of the previous photo that the person thought he was chatting with.

Mm-hmm.

And that was the straw that broke his proverbial back. And he jumped in his car, came down, and they, they arrested him. And so, you know, you, you, you see those moments, you're like, oh, that's great. You know, wonderful. But then the next case is a guy that shows up and he is— this is where we gotta be careful about what we put online. This female who was a babysitter, she had a pretty good social media presence and she was in his orbit.

It's like a daycare or just a babysitter?

Kind of both. But the problem is it wasn't really a regulated daycare, so there weren't a lot of people around observing. Yeah. And he observed her as a mark, not because he liked her, but because she had access and he kind of scrubbed her social media. And scraped it. Because think about what you can find out from somebody's social media, likes, pain points, whatever the case may be. And he created a mythical Prince Charming of himself that she was like, this guy's amazing.

He was a Tinder Swindler.

100%.

Kind of that guy.

100%. With obviously different motives.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he— I always say, what else? And he admitted to one infant. What else? Another infant. 30 infants.

That he had sexually abused.

That he had sexually assaulted. Oh, and the way he described it was just— I won't even— yeah, I won't even get into it because it's triggering. It's just like, that for me was when I was like, you know what, clock's ticking, I'm eligible to retire. I love teaching this stuff. To me, teaching it was a great way to kind of, you know, give back. And but yeah, it was time to—

How do you get someone like that who's done, you know, horrible crime with kids to actually open up and reveal that they did this knowing that Don't they know they're going to go to jail by revealing this?

Some do. Some have been having that conversation in their head. They know what they did is wrong.

Really? So this person knew it was wrong?

They knew it was wrong.

Because a sociopath, would they know it's wrong?

Yeah, they still know it's wrong. They just might not have emotion for the person that they're doing it against. Oh, okay. They don't care. Yeah. It's like I always get that question on polygraph, like, would this person pass if they don't think it's wrong? They still know they pulled the trigger. They still know they choked this person.

They did the crime.

They did the crime. So yeah, they still know that they did it. But once again, it's creating that space where I'm not judging them and I'm just creating a forum where, just like on a podcast, we can just air it out. And, and that's what he did. And I, I didn't show that judgment.

Um, after the 5th kid that he reveals, you don't have— how do you internally not show disgust on your face externally?

Yeah, just keep my eyebrows up.

Just, no, tell me more.

Yeah, it's like when you first meet people, you do a quick eyebrow flash. It keeps you from coding neutral. But, uh, yeah, it's almost like I had it kept there, like, wow, this guy's crazy.

Wow.

Uh, but, oh man, but yeah, it's just, uh, when people are talking, a lot of times they don't realize what's leaking out. And so once again, by not judging— he had, he had never told anybody this before, so everybody wants to share. Cathartic, right?

That's so interesting, right?

Yeah.

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What has been your biggest personal challenge with all the information that you've learned in the Secret Service? Is there anything that holds you back with the information you know as a human being?

As a human being? Wow.

Like, do you—

I would say not letting your accomplishments or chasing accomplishments, right? Is it coming in young? I thought, man, I need to do this. I need these arrests. I need to get on this protected detail. I need to do X, Y, and Z because those were resume things, right? And this kind of all came full circle for me where I had access because of the polygraph program and where I was, the cities I were in. We had good relationships with the local police department, so I got to run a lot of polygraphs. And I was blessed to have that opportunity that in one year, 2015, my supervisors put in for me to win Agent of the Year. And, you know, when you win that from the Secret Service, you think, oh, I've arrived and I made it. I made it. Right. And then you go up there and it was wonderful. They flew my family up there and there I am, my son. He's got his suit on and my wife's up there and You know, you're feeling proud of yourself, and then you think, this was built upon talking about somebody doing their worst day. And yeah, this is a great honor, but just down the street from our headquarters is— it was raining. It was a terrible weather day. There were uniformed division officers, technicians, agents that were standing out in the rain. They were cold. They didn't have that opportunity. They were, you know, all they cared about is, is my push on time? Right?

And so, It—

I felt almost afterwards like, uh, Donnie Brasco when he gets the gold watch afterwards. Is because to get all that, I had had horrific mental— like, dealing with that stuff. I had been away from my family. You know, you get the, the hotel status, you're like, oh, I have lifetime titanium.

That's not good.

That means you spent 3 and a half, 4 years away from your family in this property.

Interesting.

So, uh, I think to me that's when it became less about doing the thing and can you be a force multiplier and, and be what my view of greatness is, which—

Impacting others to do.

Impacting others is that I can't tell you how great it is when somebody else calls you or emails you and says, hey man, and I don't— I mean, I remember them, but they said, you taught me this and this is what this did for me. It just, you can't.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

How good are you at detecting a lie without the polygraph test when you're in front of a person?

Probably not very good.

Really?

And when I say it's relative.

Yeah.

But I get it wrong a lot. Like if we were doing 2 truths and a lie, that's not it. But people like to do that. It's not really a realistic scenario. But what I like to do is I like to give people an open-ended forum. It's a dog without a leash. They tell me a story and then you look for certain statements. So then next, after that transitional moment, A lot of times that's where people sandwich the lie or they sandwich the omission in. Omission is the most common way people lie. So within that, then let's go to that time period and let's now force a yes or no question. That's to me the closest thing I can get to a polygraph without a polygraph.

What does that look like? Omission is the closest thing to a lie. What does that mean?

So omission would be obviously you just don't tell me, right? You just— it's less cognitive load. You don't have to remember the lie. You just don't tell me the lie. It's not as much psychological stress. I know we were talking offline about how you have a hard time lying sometimes because you don't want to lie and you maybe feel like you're—

Yeah, yeah.

So a polygraph's going to measure blood volume, heart rate, breathing pattern and quality, and your galvanic skin response, basically your sweat activity. And it's going to do that for a certain period of time after I provide you stimulus in the form of a yes/no question and you provide me a response as a yes/no question. Without the polygraph, that's still happening. I'm just not seeing it on my monitor.

Yeah.

But it may manifest itself in your word choice, in your vocal inflection, in how you choose to answer it. So the best way I like to look at this, Lewis, is if I ask my daughter, did you clean your room? And she says, yes.

That means no.

There's 2 types of yes. There's yes and there's yes.

That means no.

So vocal inflection, it's not perfect. Once again, view these as check engine lights. But a high-pitched voice is kind of like, do you believe me? Right. Delay. So if I'm, if I'm baselining you and we're asking a bunch of questions and it's nope, nope, nope, and then nope.

Yeah.

Delay.

Delay. Yeah.

And you're, you're thinking about it. Uh, do I want to tell them yes or no? Yeah.

Yep. Exclusive qualifiers. Usually, typically, normally. So if I say I typically don't cheat, right? Let's say you ask me about cheating in school and I say, oh, typically I don't cheat. Why did you say typically? That's a truthful statement. People don't want to lie.

Yeah. Most of the time I don't do that.

Most time I don't do that. Normally, usually, verbal, nonverbal disconnect. So yes, or if I went like this, see, that's hard to do.

No.

Yes. So if I'm speaking something that my body language is contrary to.

So someone shakes their head no, but they say yes. What are they really saying?

That's one of the few times where I'm really going to look at the body language and be like, Ooh, I'm kind of erring on the body language like that. You were so worried about what you were going to verbally say to me and what leaked out. But once again, not 100%. It's that check engine light where I'm like, I'm going to follow that one up later.

There's also certain cultures where people kind of shake their head no and they say yes all the time, right?

It's not— 100%. And there's agreeable people. So once again, I'm taking these things all into context and I'm not immediately calling them out going, Lewis, you just did that.

You're just taking the information in.

Taking it in. What are some other things that we look at? Just not answering the— I want you to sit there and think, when you ask somebody a question, did they answer the question?

Yeah.

If they gave you delay, equivocation, if they confronted you for asking it—

Why are you asking me that?

Yes.

Then you're like, oh.

Yeah. Then it's once again, it's the check engine light. So it's almost easier to just view it as, did they answer my question? So if you go back to the Jerry Sandusky situation where Bob Costas talked to him on Real sports. Then he said, "Are you a pedophile?" And Jerry said, "No." It's a legalistic term. He didn't view himself as a pedophile. He answered so quickly. Then Costas did an amazing job and said, "Are you sexually attracted to young children?" And he goes, "Am I sexually attracted to young children? Sexually attracted to young children? I mean, I like spending time with them. I like hanging out with them, but no." Well, he gave a lot of truthful statements. He likes hanging out with them. He likes spending time with them. But he couldn't answer the actual question. So that's what I think the biggest, the easiest thing for your listeners to pick up on is when you ask a yes or no question, did you actually get an answer or was it obfuscation? Was it delay? Was it evasion?

Have you ever had to take a lie detector test?

Yeah.

Do you fail it? Do you pass it? Like, how does it—

Well, I must have passed. I got the job.

I guess. Have you taken one since then?

Oh, so we had to do one to get back into the polygraph program and I did okay on that one.

Really?

My understanding.

You did okay. You passed enough.

I passed, evidently.

If you were hypothetically trying to pass a test, a lie detector test, and there wasn't something you did wrong, but maybe it wasn't like 100% accurate, you're like, I just don't want them to know that.

Yeah.

But I'm not like lying about like some wrong crime.

Yeah.

Like, I just didn't want them to know this one thing because it makes me—

Looks bad.

Makes my character look a little off. Yeah. Is there a way you would get around that, or do you just say, you know what, just— you're just— you would just try to be as honest as you can to keep your heart rate down and just hope for the best?

So the advice I always give people is, look, think of this like a magnetometer.

Like a what?

Like a magnetometer. Like you're going through TSA. I can't tell if that's a paperclip, or I can't tell if that's a handgun. You may be making a mountain out of a molehill. So before we take this test, what do we need to talk about that you need to kind of undo your pockets? Because once again, I want to prime the situation so that they can be honest with me.

Yeah.

I don't want them to fail and then I have to understand why they failed. I want them to provide me the information and I will be just— to your listeners out there, anybody applying to federal law enforcement, they look at a whole person concept. A lot of these things that, that used to be, especially with drug use and stuff that used to be, you know, 10, 15 years ago, oh, don't even apply.

Yeah.

Now they look at the time, the place, the relevance. And if the, the best thing you can do is—

The distance away from it. If you're 10, 15, 20 years away from it or something, then—

Yeah. But even now, like with marijuana, because it's legal on the state side, the time delineation is like a year sometimes.

Interesting.

So as long as the person comes in and they're like, look, my application forms are correct, all those forms are pulled off or all the questions are pulled off the forms. So if when you mail that, email that, whatever, if in your heart of hearts you knew that that was truthful, You're going to pass. It's when somebody goes on Reddit or they do this and they do that and they're like, oh, here's what I have to do to pass a polygraph. I get this sometimes when I fly. I'll be flying and I'll check in with the pilot and they'll be like, where are you going? I'm going to Toledo. What are you doing? I'm gonna run some polygraphs. And they're like, polygraph? That doesn't work. And you're like, well, TSA is not 100%, but you're trusting that with 300 people on this plane, right?

Ooh, snap.

And I, and I don't mean it as a shot. I mean it as like, Why do you use it? Because it does work. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. It's the best mousetrap we've got.

Yeah.

And then they're like, well, can't you beat it? And I'm like, well— and, you know, it's a very civil conversation, but I'll say, how big is your book to fly the 737? Oh, man, it's 1,500 pages. I say, could I read that?

Yeah.

If I read it, could I fly your book? And they're like, no, you need flight time. And I go, what do you mean? Well, because you wouldn't know how much this would result in that. And I say it's the same thing with polygraph. You can read on Reddit or online, do this, do that to affect the outcome of the exam, but you don't see what I'm seeing. And if I see normal physiology every day and you don't know how much input creates this, now I know you're trying to do something untoward. And it would be like if WADA came in to test you.

Yeah.

And you gave them a watered-down sample. Yeah.

Well, what is this?

Why are you giving them watered-down urine sample? You must be up to something. So for honest people, Just be honest. Just be honest. So many people that think they're going to be a false positive take bad advice, and unfortunately it works against them.

And it just causes more stress afterwards.

Yeah, it causes stress, and that agency may just be like, look, we're not going to take a chance now.

Wow. Wow. Well, you got a great book out, Brad. It's called Tell Me Everything: A Secret Service Agent's Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing the Truth and communicating with anyone. And in a world where I feel like relationships matter the most, and sometimes revealing stuff about ourselves in relationships, specifically intimate relationships, can make or break the relationship. You know, even when, you know, my wife, when we first started dating, you know, in my mind, I said, I'm gonna tell her everything. She asked me anything, like, and I don't have the cleanest past of like, And again, nothing I've done horrible, but it's not like things that I'm proud of when I was like 12, right? It's like, okay, I used to steal, I used to whatever, like these things. And I was like, anything she asked me that I feel shame about, I'm gonna share it. And I go, she may not like it, it may not work out, but I don't want to hold on to hiding something about myself to someone I might be with for a long time, right? Or forever. And thankfully, I chose the right woman because When I revealed these things, she didn't give me contempt.

Right.

She didn't look at me like, you did that when you were 12? You did that when you were 8? You know, you do all these things, right? She didn't look at me like I was a bad person, which made me want to be like, let me share everything. You know, it's like, here's all my flaws. And, and I think that goes a long way in relationships when you're building trust and connection with someone. So maybe she read your book before I met her. But I think it goes a long way when you, when you can connect with someone and not show them disgust with something they've done in their past, whether you want to hang out with that person or not, but building rapport and connections. So I want people to get your book. You're also on bradleybieler.com. Is that your website, right?

Yeah.

And then you're on Instagram, LinkedIn.

Brad Bieler 1865.

Brad Bieler 1865.

Yeah.

But the book is Tell Me Everything. Who do you think would get the most out of this book?

Well, of course, I'm going to tell you everyone— parents, teachers, coaches, right? That's what the publishing company will tell you to say. I originally wrote it for law enforcement and thought, this is what I'm going to go with, right? I've made all these mistakes. And luckily, I had a great editor that's like, man, these are universal lessons about how to prepare for an interaction, how to make a great first impression, how to use all your senses in interaction. How to further your communication, how to detect deception. And then when somebody does you wrong, how do you not punch them in the face?

It's funny, when I had Evie Pomparasan on a few different times, I can't remember what the question was I asked her, but she started with something. I think I said, like, how do you know if someone is lying or something like this, right? Or someone's lying or telling the truth. And she goes, well, everyone lies.

Yeah.

Right? And she goes, everyone lies. And I was like, oh yeah, I guess everyone, you know, it was like I was playing into it, right? I guess we do. She goes, it just depends what type of lie you're telling, right? Is that what it is?

Yeah.

Everyone lies. It depends how you're telling the lie.

Why the lie?

Why the lie?

Yeah. I mean, like—

So you lie as well?

Everybody lies. I mean, you said it, right? Is that we are a tribal-based culture that if men would typically, and I'm not being sexist here, I'm just going evolution. We would lie about our exploits. I brought this home for us to eat. I killed this many buffalo, whatever.

It was this big.

It was this big.

Yeah.

And women a lot of times would lie to keep the cohesion of the group together. And obviously that's changed in a lot of different ways, but we all lie. And if we lived in a society where people didn't lie, that would be, I think, pretty damning.

Interesting.

I mean, it's weird to think that way, but there's been movies made about that where just everybody is completely honest. And that's an interesting world that you live in. I think lies, kind of like alcohol, are somewhat of a social lubricant.

Who lies more, men or women, in modern society?

Man, I'm going to get in trouble.

Based on your evidence of thousands of—

Children. Let me go with that. I'm not going to be— it's kids because there's less consequences for their actions. So I think juveniles tend to lie more. Yeah.

What is it that women who you're interviewing lie about more, or how do they lie that's different than how men lie or what they lie about?

I don't think there's much.

Really?

Yeah, I don't think that's gender-specific. I really don't. I haven't picked up any differences in how or what they lie about.

Who's harder at tricking you at lying?

Who's better at lying?

Yes, who's better at lying? Women.

Yeah, women are better at lying. Detecting lies and interrogating.

Yeah. If my wife's asked me something, like, I know not to lie. I'm like, I know there's sometimes I'm like, I don't want to say this, but I know if I don't say it, she's going to— she's going to understand something's off.

Women's intuition is a thing.

So I'm just like, I'd rather just not ask me certain things because I'm like, right, why are you going to make me feel bad about something? You know? But it's just so much easier to live your life being honest. Especially in intimate relationships. But is there ever a moment you should lie to your partner?

Oof, man. Yeah, I mean, there would be— I think there are times— my wife just beat cancer, and I think there were times that— and we've always had a pretty good prognosis, but I think there were times where maybe my enthusiasm on the prognosis could have bordered on, am I being deceptive? But what's my motivation, right? So yeah, there are times like that.

Right, right, right.

Wow.

So women are better at lying and they're better at detecting lies.

Oh yeah.

Why do you think that is? Is it, is it their emotional awareness? Is it spiritual? Is it they have something in their brain?

They're observant. We're men, we're very transactional in how we talk to people most of the time. A lot of times when we talk and we'll be looking away, I'll be thinking about, you know, the old Stephen Covey and don't listen to, you know, listening to respond versus, you know, listening to understand.

Mm-hmm.

Is that I think women are a lot better at that, as actually using eye contact, using body language. So when there's an incongruence between the lyrics, the soundtrack, and the music video, they're better at picking it up. 'Cause words are just words. How I say the words, the second line of communication. And then the third line of communication is my body language.

Yeah.

So like, for instance, my wife, if she texts me with no emoji that says I'm fine, I don't know what the frick that means. Is it, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine? If I can talk to her, at least I hear the voice. If I see her, I can put all that together. I think women are a lot better at being observant and being able to pick up on those things. What's normal, baselining you, those types of things.

What is the one question you wish more people would ask you that would help them improve their life?

I would tell my son, and, and, you know, focus on your lane. And try to keep all the noise that's in the outside world, the people who are trying to live rent-free in your head, try to keep that out. And that goes from Marcus Aurelius to Viktor Frankl to Usain Bolt. You know, he trained 4 years for 9.4 seconds, whatever it is, right?

Yeah.

Is that stay in your lane and, you know, focus on, you know, those outcomes and, and not the outcomes, but focus on the processes that lead to the outcomes. I know Nick Saban had a famous quote about that is that, Just be vigorous in your day-to-day, in your small victories so that you can achieve your— don't try to eat that elephant the entire way. Take those small little spoons.

That's beautiful. A couple of final questions, Brad. This is called the 3 Truths. So, imagine hypothetically you get to live as long as you want, but it's your last day on earth in the future and you get to create and accomplish everything you want from this moment until then. But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your work with you. So, this book, this conversation, any written material, videos that you have is gone hypothetically. But, on the last day of your life, you get to leave behind 3 lessons to the world, 3 truths. What would those 3 truths be for you?

So, Ted Lasso, I'm going to give you a quote, be curious, not judgmental. He said it was Mark Twain. It wasn't Mark Twain or Walt Whitman, I think he said it was, but be curious, not judgmental. If you are curious about other people and you use your mouth and ears in the proportion that the good Lord gave them to you, You'll learn a lot more. You will come across as genuine. From the time I was a little kid, I'm always asking why. Start asking why a little bit more. I would go with kind of what I said before is once again, stand in your lane as far as don't be worried about what other people are doing. Don't be worried so much about what other people are saying. I think in today's society, we're always worried about the way we look, the way we act, those types of things. I would say lastly, perception versus perspective. I know we talked about this before, but Too many times we look at things from our worldview, how we see things. The best thing about the Secret Service is I got to travel to 40 countries and I got to talk to— see politicians. I got to see pedophiles and everything in between. And you realize really quickly that people are people. I remember I was in Tokyo not too long ago before I left the Secret Service, and I was there on a protective visit. And it's not about— Being in the limo, being on Air Force One, that wasn't my protection story. My protection story was usually near a dumpster or in a stairwell. That wasn't in the recruiting brochure. 3 days in a stairwell with a Japanese Secret Service agent.

You were 3 days in a stairwell?

3 days in a stairwell.

Just guarding your spot?

Yeah, keeping them away from the protected area. And Google Translate and I are having an amazing conversation with this Japanese Secret Service agent. And perspective-wise, if you think about it, He was from Nagasaki. 70, 80, 90 years prior, what did we do?

Bombed.

Bombed him with an A-bomb. And here I am, she's— he's bringing in pastries. He— we're having this amazing conversation that we're similar. We're going through the same parental issues as together. And I give him a little $2 American flag pin, and he pops open his cufflinks and gives me his grandfather's cufflinks. Pearl cufflinks. So in a long way, I think that's positive to society, that in 1, 2 generations we can change from wanting to kill an entire— and vice versa— yeah, to we can break bread and get along. So, wow, trying to understand other people's perception and get away from propaganda.

That's cool. Um, I want to acknowledge you, Brad, for, you know, a lot of the work you did towards the end, which is around, you know, capturing pedophiles and really cleaning them, you know, off the streets and getting them into behind bars. Because I feel like that's probably one of the worst crimes. I mean, obviously murder is horrible, but I think sexually abusing a child has got to be one of the, the worst things that an adult can do. And so for you using your skills and your knowledge, your tools, to go do that, even though it's probably the thing that caused you to retire from doing it by seeing how disgusting that is, I want to acknowledge you for doing that work and saving a lot of kids' lives.

Thank you.

It means a lot. Yeah, thank you. It's really powerful. Um, my final question for you, Brad, is what is your definition of greatness?

So I guess probably 25 years ago, I would view greatness as, man, winning the Super Bowl, right? Being that person that does that one great thing. I think having gone through 25 years of seeing presidents, protectees, and all that, I think it's about more sustained doing things that have an impact upon society. And I go back to being a 17-year-old kid, Union, Missouri. I've got an English teacher named Miss Bertrand, and Miss Bertrand, she taught English, she taught speech, she taught drama, she was the drama coach, all this stuff. And she suffered from unbelievably debilitating rheumatoid arthritis to where she could barely walk. Had a hard time, you know, moving pens and writing on the blackboard. But every day she got up and she did what is the— I think one of the greatest things people can do is give you attention. Okay? Even back then before devices.

Yeah.

Giving someone your attention is priceless. And she would connect with thousands of students over 37 years and she would make them the best version of themselves. She wasn't getting raises, she wasn't winning awards, she wasn't winning Super Bowls. She was in Union, Missouri, making these small-town kids better at the lyrics, the soundtrack, and the dance, doing all part of it. And I know she— well, I was one of those kids that she affected and hopefully made me a much better communicator that hopefully locked up some bad guys and did some good things. So she passed on, and I know at her funeral, hundreds of her former students came there.

Wow.

From all over the country to pay their respects. And she had no idea the impact that she had on people. So, Doing ordinary things at an unbelievably high level when nobody's keeping score, nobody's giving you an award for it.

That's greatness.

That's greatness.

Thanks for being here, sir. I appreciate it.

Thanks, sir.

Amazing, my friend. I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week, and every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show. It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you, and I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I wanna remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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