January 11, 2014
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“I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the
people on my team,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said during his
press conference on Jan. 9 regarding the George Washington Bridge
scandal.
“I am who I am, but I am not a bully.” While he worked hard in
the nearly two-hour press conference to dispel any rumors of his
involvement, many have already noted that Christie’s speech was more
remarkable for the questions it didn’t answer than for the ones it did.
Left
looming is: How could a man like Christie not know that his deputy
chief of staff ordered lane closures on the George Washington Bridge?
And how does a former U.S. Attorney, with his eye on a 2016 presidential
campaign, not ask follow-up questions when told the closures were a
result of a traffic test?
How indeed?
Most people feel it’s
relatively easy to spot a liar, and judging by the media coverage on
this scandal, many people feel that Christie is lying, but without a
smoking gun, i.e. damning emails or personal testimony from his staff or
the Port Authority, it’s hard to prove.
But his press conference itself may offer some insights. In
“Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception,” author
Pamela Meyer asserts that only when we step back from someone’s words
to view the whole picture can we begin to see the combination of
indicators that will help us successfully identify a liar. She writes:
After
listening closely to the details of someone’s speech, take a mental
step back to consider what the combination of his facial expressions,
body language, and verbal clues says about his attitude toward being
questioned. Attitude is a crucial indicator.
Is the subject
interested in helping you solve a problem or answer a question? Is he
forthright or evasive? How confidently does he speak? A deceptive person
might be guarded and hesitant to firmly acknowledge or deny anything
you suggest about his actions or behavior. A truthful person will
cooperate from the start and will signal that he is on your side.
But
what if that person is an expert at identifying liars? And what if that
person knows how to look like he’s telling the truth? As a former
lawyer, Christie would be a master at it. In his speech he went out of
his way to make the listener feel he was just as surprised as anyone and
that he was going to do everything in his power to get to the bottom of
the lane closures. But closer examination of what he said and what he
didn’t say offers a very different picture.
While liespotting
isn’t an exact science, and there are always exceptions, knowing how to
identify certain telltale behaviors can provide some very interesting
clues. Below, five mistakes Christie made in his press conference that
may be signs of less-than-truthful behavior.
1. Too much detail regarding unimportant issues. According
to Meyer, a subject will often offer specific details that have nothing
to do with the question of his guilt as a way of validating his claim
of innocence. It’s as if the specificity will add credibility to what
he’s about to tell you. However, when you listen closely, you’ll observe
that the abundance of details does not lead to relevant information.
When
explaining how he learned of the breach in his office regarding the
bridge lane closures, Christie said that he finished his workout at 8:50
and received a call from his director of communication at 8:55. Then he
said, “I found this out at 8:50 yesterday morning. By 9:00 this
morning, Bridget Kelly was fired. By 7:00 yesterday evening, Bill
Stepien was asked to leave my organization.”
This may sound
credible, but it begs the follow-up question, where’s the inquiry? Why
fire your deputy chief of staff without talking to her further to find
out who else might have been involved and what her motive might have
been. As a former attorney, Christie knows that establishing motive is
critical to securing a conviction of guilt, and if she’s the linchpin,
why isn’t he speaking to her to find the others involved? Instead, when
asked why Kelly lied to him, he said, “I have not had any conversation
with Bridget Kelly since the email came out. And so she was not given
the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious
that she had. And I’m, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation
at the moment.”
Notably, Christie indicated nine separate times
throughout the conference that he was interviewing his staff and would
continue to interview them. He details conversations with people he said
are not involved. But why spend so much time talking to innocent
people? If you want to find the guilty, talk to those you know are
guilty. At one point, he said,
And so now, having been
proven wrong, of course we’ll work cooperatively with the
investigations. And you know, I’m going through an examination, as I
mentioned to you, right now. That’s what I’m doing. I’m going through an
examination and talking to the individual people who work for me, not
only to discover if there’s any other information we need find, but also
to ask them: How did this happen? How did, you know, how did this, you
know, occur to us?
Here again, he’s giving the
appearance of being cooperative by offering details, but those details
lead to no real information except to tell us how serious he is about
interviewing. In fact, though the conference lasted almost two hours,
Christie said very little.
2. Evading questions. During
the question-and-answer period Christie stuck to his talking points:
Apologize. Appear cooperative. Promise to do better next time. He also
avoided answering this question from a reporter: “So, I’m just asking,
what do you ask yourself about — they either thought this is what the
boss wanted, or they, as a group, they were willing to go rogue and do
this and then try to cover it up.” Christie’s response:
And
what does it make me ask about me? It makes me ask about me what did I
do wrong to have these folks think it was OK to lie to me? And there’s a
lot of soul-searching that goes around with this. You know, when you’re
a leader of an organization — and I’ve had this happen to me before,
where I’ve had folks not tell me the truth about something, not since
I’ve been governor but in previous leadership positions — you always
wonder about what you could do differently. And believe me, John, I
haven’t had a lot of sleep the last two nights, and I’ve been doing a
lot of soul-searching. I’m sick over this. I’ve worked for the last 12
years in public life developing a reputation for honesty and directness
and blunt talk, one that I think is well-deserved. But, you know, when
something like this happens, it’s appropriate for you to question
yourself, and certainly I am. And I am soul-searching on this… And so I
don’t want to overreact to that in that way either, John. But if you’re
asking me over the last 48 hours or last 36 hours I’ve done some
soul-searching, you bet I have.
He used a lot of
words to say little beyond, “I’m sorry.” It’s not an answer, it’s an
accusation. He’s saying, “I’m contrite. Isn’t it enough? Can’t you see
I’m really hurting?” We’re to feel sorry for him and even guilty for
suspecting him.
It’s also important to note that he repeats the
question in full twice — once as if to clarify and again as part of his
answer. Meyer warns that that kind of repetition indicates someone is
about to lie. It’s natural to repeat a question in part, to make sure
you hear it, but beware when someone repeats your question in full as
part of their answer. This could be a subject’s way of buying time while
he considers what he’s going to say next.
3. Lack of genuine emotion. Christie
is a force of nature. He is breathtakingly self-confident and
passionate about what he believes in. He’s expressive with his hands,
his face and his body. A Google image search reveals Christie using his
hands in almost every speech, hugging people and laughing heartily.
Christie is not a stuffed shirt. His baseline behavior is that of a
warm, sincere, powerful leader, quick to anger, but also quick to love.
But
in Thursday’s speech, Christie kept his arms on the podium, his face
expressionless and his words measured, despite the fact that he kept
repeating how heartbroken he was. “I don’t think I’ve gotten to the
angry stage yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there,” he said, as if he knew it
was strange not to appear angry.
The fact that this behavior is
so out of character for him is significant. In “Liespotting,” Meyer
advises, “…you’ll want to take into account the subject’s baseline
speaking habits before rushing to assume he’s fabricating a lie.” In
Thursday’s speech Christie’s body was frozen, his movements robotic, and
he lacked all of his customary warmth and charm. While this is not a
guarantee of guilt, in the context of the inherent problems with his
defense, it’s disquieting.
4. Leaks. These can be
the most damning of all. A leak is a facial expression or physical
gesture that sneaks out without the liar’s knowledge. These telltale
signs can be facial expressions or physical gestures that are out of
sync. For example, a subject angry at an accusation slams his fist on
the table, but his face betrays the slightest smile for just an instant.
A leak could also be an errant phrase tacked on to the end of a
statement that then changes its entire meaning. “I don’t
micromanage first,” Christie said at the end of an explanation regarding
his management style:
I am — there’s this — there’s
this, you know, kind of reputation out there of me being a micromanager.
I’m not. I mean, I think if you talk to my staff, what they would tell
you is that I delegate enormous authority to my staff and enormous
authority to my Cabinet. And I tell them, come to me with the policy
decisions that need to be made, with some high-level personnel decisions
that need to be made. But I do not manage in that kind of micro way,
first.
Later he assures the press corps that he will
always tell them the truth, as he sees it. It’s the “as I see it,” that
weakens the phrase. But the fact that he feels the need to say it at
all is somewhat suspect. According to Meyer, if anyone is telling you
they are telling you the truth, that person probably is not.
5. Contradictions. Twice
during the press conference Christie changed his story. At the start of
his speech he clearly explained that four weeks ago he took his staff
into his office and told them that if they had anything to do with the
bridge lane closures they had one hour to tell either chief of staff
Kevin O’Dowd or chief counsel Charlie McKenna. Later in the conference,
aggressively leaning over the podium, Christie said that four weeks ago
he took his staff into his office and told them that they should tell
him, Mr. O’Dowd and Mr. McKenna right then and there if they were
involved with the bridge debacle.
Then, when asked how he might
respond to a subpoena, Christie quickly dismissed the question by
saying, “I’m not going to speculate on that at this time.” A strange way
to answer given how many times he previously claimed he would do
everything to cooperate.
Once again, none of this proves Christie
is lying. But if Meyer’s book is any guide, it’s at least time to ask
him some more questions.
Amy Punt is a Los Angeles based writer of fiction and screenplays, and a graduate-level screenwriting instructor.
