Lies, the liars who tell them, and how to spot both

Former FBI agent who helped catch Oklahoma City bomber promoting new book

Mark Bouton

It was a small detail.

The motel clerk remembered that the man with the Ryder truck went to check on it in the parking lot one evening. When the man saw that the back door wasn’t completely latched, he looked over his shoulder to see if anybody was watching.

He saw the motel clerk. So instead of simply raising the overhead door and slamming it down to latch it, he struggled to push the door down without raising it so much as an inch.

It was 1995, and Mark Bouton’s bosses with the Federal Bureau of Investigation had sent him to the not-so-luxurious Dreamland Motel in Junction City to ask a few questions as part of an investigation that was consuming a country.

“The clerk thought his actions were odd, and so did I,” Bouton recalled.

But Bouton didn’t necessarily think he was on the verge of uncovering the biggest lie of his career.

He asked for the name of the fellow who had rented the room with the Ryder truck. The clerk gave it to him, and it didn’t mean a thing.

Some guy by the name of Tim McVeigh.

• • •

Bouton retired from the FBI in 1997, but he’s hasn’t stopped watching liars. He said to just read and watch the news these days — everybody from Wall Street bankers to election season spin-masters — and it’s hard to miss the stench of dishonesty.

That’s when it struck Bouton that maybe he ought to write a book about the subject.

“I realized that I knew a lot about dealing with liars,” said Bouton, who lives north of St. Marys and who also has written several mystery novels. “Most of the people I interviewed during my career I had to account for that, and I interviewed a lot of people over a 30-year career.”

Bouton went on to write the book, “How to Spot Lies Like the FBI,” and will discuss the book at 7 p.m. Monday at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt.

Omri Gillath, an assistant professor of social psychology at Kansas University and a researcher on the subject of lying, said the book may be well-timed.

Lying obviously isn’t new — some may argue it is the oldest human art form — but Gillath said these are red-flag days for the subject of lying.

“Insecurity is probably the biggest factor that causes people to lie more often,” said Gillath, who is studying the mechanisms of the brain in an effort to detect lies. “I think the economic stresses of the day may have created more of an inclination, shall we say, to massage the truth.”

Bouton, perhaps a bit cynical from dealing with the clientele an FBI agent often deals with, certainly is of the opinion that lying is widespread. In his book, he cites a study in which 91 percent of people admitted to lying daily.

“And you have to wonder about the other 9 percent,” Bouton said.

• • •

Bouton was not looking for the name Tim McVeigh. He was looking for Robert Kling. Virtually every lawman in the country was. The federal building in Oklahoma City had been bombed the day before. Investigators at the scene had discovered the vehicle identification number from the Ryder truck that carried the bomb. The number was traced back to a Junction City truck rental business, and Bouton was canvassing Junction City hotels in hopes of finding someone who had seen Kling.

Instead, he was presented with this McVeigh name. Bouton asked to see the motel’s signature card, and he immediately recognized that the handwriting was slanted to the left, just like the signature of Robert Kling. He used his FBI ways to see if this McVeigh fellow had made any telephone calls from his hotel room. He had. He had ordered Chinese food — and he had done so under the name Robert Kling.

Bouton called his bosses. He told them he was on to something.

• • •

You don’t have to be a detective to detect lies, but a central theme of Bouton’s book is that it is important to pay attention to details.

During the course of his career, Bouton said he picked up on many “tells” that point to a lie. Some you’ve heard before; some you likely haven’t.

There’s the licking of lips. The mouths of most people actually do get dry when they lie, so they often lick their lips several times in a row. For some, there’s a noticeable swallow, for the same dry-mouth reasons.

The nose — just like Pinocchio says — is a tell. Bouton said some studies have shown that lying does cause a chemical to be released that causes the nose to swell slightly. You won’t notice that, but it does cause many people to scratch or touch their nose when lying.

Some have such a guilty mind about lying that they subconsciously bring their hand to their mouth after telling a lie, perhaps as a way to symbolically push back the untrue words. And, of course, the book has a whole chapter about the eyes. Many psychologists believe that a person rotating his eyes one direction means one thing, while rotating them another means something else.

But Bouton also cautions that detecting lies won’t ever be easy. He said some studies have shown law enforcement officers, who are expecting to be lied to, successfully detect lies about 50 percent of the time.

Gillath, the KU professor, said ordinary folks have an even tougher challenge.

“It is very tough in relationships because you have a reason to believe that the person is not lying to you,” Gillath said. “That’s why they say the husband is always the last to know.”

• • •

With the name Tim McVeigh now in their hands, FBI officials began searching their national database. What they found was surprising. Tim McVeigh was already in jail. He had been picked up by an Oklahoma state trooper shortly after the bombing for a traffic violation and was found to have had a gun in the vehicle. That bought McVeigh a trip to a local jail. The next day, McVeigh was scheduled to have a court hearing where Bouton and others familiar with the process assumed he was going to be released on bond.

You know how the story ends. McVeigh was convicted two years later and was eventually executed for the crime.

But for Bouton, there was still a question hanging out there. Why had McVeigh used his real name — and a real address for co-conspirator Terry Nichols’ brother — on the motel registration form?

He asked the motel clerk if she had any idea. She did. She said, believe it or not, the Dreamland Motel had some customers who would skip a bill or tear up a room. A fake name given at registration made it difficult for the motel to track them down.

So the clerk had learned that if she talked to the motel’s guests when they were filling out the registration card that it was less likely they would give a fake name. Her theory was that it was more difficult for people to think of a lie while carrying on a conversation.

Whether that is a true theory or not will have to be proved by a scientist some day. But not up for debate is this: Detecting a lie is good. Preventing one is even better.