Montes’s nickname was the “Queen of Cuba”; DIA found codes in her purse and radio in her closet; and postmortem quote “Her handlers…work for Havana” are all from Jim Popkin, “‘Queen of Cuba’ Ana Montes did much harm as a spy. Chances are you haven’t heard of her,” Washington Post, April 8, 2013.
For a complete list of Tim Levine’s deception experiments, see “Deception and Deception Detection,” https://timothy-levine.squarespace.com/deception, accessed March 7, 2019.
For video of “Philip” and other interview subjects, see T. R. Levine, NSF funded cheating tape interviews (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University, 2007–2011).
Levine had people watch twenty-two liars and twenty-two truth-tellers. The viewers correctly identified the liars 56 percent of the time. See Experiment 27 in Chapter 13 of Timothy R. Levine, Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2019). The average for similar versions of the same experiment by other psychologists is 54 percent. C. F. Bond, Jr. and B. M. DePaulo, “Accuracy of deception judgments,” Review of Personality and Social Psychology 10 (2006): 214–34.
Tim Levine’s answer is called the “Truth-Default Theory”: Timothy Levine, “Truth-Default Theory (TDT): A Theory of Human Deception and Deception Detection,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 33, no. 4 (2014): 378–92.
Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment: Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 64, no. 4 (1963): 371–78.
The account of the second lesson from Milgram’s experiment was largely drawn from Gina Perry’s definitive Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments (New York: The New Press, 2013); “mild and submissive,” pp. 55–56; “…I might have killed that man in the chair,” p. 80; “‘Maybe it really was true,’” pp. 127–29.
the full statistics from the Milgram experiment: Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), p. 172.
Chapter Four: The Holy Fool
The source of the following quotes is U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Investigations, “Investigation of Failure of the SEC to Uncover Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme—Public Version,” August 31, 2009, www.sec.gov/news/studies/2009/oig-509.pdf: “told us in confidence” and “Throw in that his brother-in-law,” p. 146; “None of it seems to add up,” p. 149; “I came to the conclusion…any evidence we could find,” p. 153; “I never…truly fraudulent,” p. 158; “Sollazzo did not find…‘ridiculous,’” p. 211; “It would have been so easy…that was the case,” p. 427; “This is not rocket science…$10 billion of options,” p. 155.
“I gift-wrapped…their priorities”: “Opening Statement of Harry Markopolos,” Public Resource Org, YouTube, video provided courtesy of C-SPAN, February 4, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF-gzN3ppbE&feature=youtu.be, accessed March 8, 2019.
Markopolos biographical info: Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), p. 11; account of trying to approach Spitzer with brown envelope, pp. 109–111.
“a great deal for us…doing business” and “Being deceived…a trade-off” are both from Chapter 11 of Timothy R. Levine, Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception (University of Alabama Press, 2019).
“‘Most of the officers…qualified staff’” and “‘The division…shrank dramatically’”: The account and quotes in the footnote about Angleton’s search for a mole in the CIA are from Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton—The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 263–264.
Chapter Five: Case Study: The Boy in the Shower
The source of the following material is Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Graham Basil Spanier vol. 1 (March 21, 2017): McQueary transcript through “P: Stomach to back? McQueary: Yes,” pp. 105–8; McQueary’s father’s testimony, pp. 141–42; McQueary transcript through “just kind of went sad,” pp. 115–16; prosecution’s closing statement, pp. 86–87; Dranov questioning by defense counsel, pp. 155, 163–65; Wendell Courtney testimony, pp. 174–75, 189; Tim Curley and John Raykovitz quotes (in footnote), pp. 381, 203; Gary Schultz testimony, p. 442.
Sandusky interview with Costas: “Sandusky addresses sex abuse allegations in 2011 interview,” NBC News, June 21, 2012, https://www.nbcnews.com/video/sandusky-addresses-sex-abuse-allegations-in-2011-interview-44570179907, accessed March 12, 2019.
“Dad would get every single kid…could not keep track of them all”: Malcolm Gladwell, “In Plain View,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/24/in-plain-view.
“They took in so many…part of his persona”: Joe Posnanski, Paterno (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 251.
“Wherever I went…part of me”: Jerry Sandusky, Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story (Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing Inc., 2000), pp. 33, 210.
“If Sandusky…canonize him”: Jack McCallum, “Last Call: Jerry Sandusky, the Dean of Linebacker U, is leaving Penn State after 32 years to devote himself to a different kind of coaching,” Sports Illustrated, December 20, 1999, https://www.si.com/vault/1999/12/20/271564/last-call-jerry-sandusky-the-dean-of-linebacker-u-is-leaving-penn-state-after-32-years-to-devote-himself-to-a-different-kind-of-coaching.
“In more than one motel hallway…done without public notice”: Bill Lyon, “Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is the Pied Piper of his time,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 27, 1999.
This was not unusual for Sandusky (in footnote): Commonwealth v. Gerald A. Sandusky, June 11, 2012, p. 53; Brett Swisher Houtz testimony, June 11, 2012, p. 70; Dorothy Sandusky testimony, June 19, 2012, p. 257.
The mother told her son’s psychologist…“luckiest boy in the world”: According to one of the numerous postmortems on the case, “The boy said that he did not want to get Sandusky in ‘trouble’ and that Sandusky must not have meant anything by his actions. The boy did not want anyone to talk to Sandusky because he might not invite him to any more games.” Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP, Report of the Special Investigative Counsel Regarding the Actions of the Pennsylvania State University Related to the Child Sexual Abuse Committed by Gerald A. Sandusky, July 12, 2012, https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/396512/report-final-071212.pdf, p. 42; “wasn’t anything sexual about it” and “Honest to God, nothing happened,” pp. 43–46.
Aaron Fisher biographical info and felt uneasy about some of Sandusky’s behavior: Aaron Fisher, Michael Gillum, and Dawn Daniels, Silent No More: Victim 1’s Fight for Justice Against Jerry Sandusky (New York: Ballantine Books, 2012).
Fisher met with his therapist repeatedly: Mark Pendergrast, The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment (Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Sunbury Press, 2017), pp. 90, 52, 55; Fisher changes story, p. 59; “Myers said…get some money,” quoted from Pennsylvania State Police interview with Allan Myers, September 2011, p. 147; footnote regarding the prosecution’s report on Allan Myers is from Anthony Sassano, Supplemental Report on Allan Myers, April 11, 2012, Penn State Police, quoted on p. 168 of Pendergrast’s book. The full passage in The Most Hated Man in America reads as follows:
“Corricelli indicated that Attorney Shubin advised him that Myers had related to him incidents of oral, anal, and digital penetration by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his report. “Shubin showed Corricelli a three page document purported to be Myers’s recollection of his sexual contact with Sandusky. Corricelli examined the document and indicated to me that he suspected the document was written by Anthony Shubin. I advised that I did not want a copy of a document that was suspected to be written by Attorney Shubin.” Sassano concluded: “At this time, I don't anticipate further investigation concerning Allan Myers.”
For more on the controversy over repressed traumatic memories (in footnote), see, for example, C. J. Brainerd and V. F.
Reyna, The Science of False Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); E. F. Loftus and K. Ketcham, The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994); R. J. McNally, Remembering Trauma (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); R. Ofshe and E. Watters, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Scribner, 1994); D. L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
“I am contacting you…Jerry Sandusky and a child”: Geoffrey Moulton, Jr., Report to the Attorney General of the Investigation of Gerald A. Sandusky, May 30, 2014, Appendix J, http://filesource.abacast.com/commonwealthofpa/mp4_podcast/2014_06_23_REPORT_to_AG_ON_THE_SANDUSKY_INVESTIGATION.pdf.
Let’s be clear. The Sandusky case is weird. Ever since Sandusky’s arrest and conviction, a small group of people have insisted that he is innocent. The most outspoken is the radio talk-show host John Ziegler, a conservative-leaning journalist. Ziegler is involved with three others in the website www.framingpaterno.com, which is devoted to poking holes in the prosecution’s case against Sandusky.
As I mention in my discussion of the Sandusky case, Ziegler is the one who persuasively argues that there was at least a five-week lag between McQueary’s spotting Sandusky in the shower and his telling anyone in the Penn State leadership about it. See John Ziegler, “New Proof that December 29, 2000, Not February 9, 2001, was the Real Date of the McQueary Episode,” The Framing of Joe Paterno (blog), February 9, 2018, http://www.framingpaterno.com/new-proof-december-29-2000-not-february-9th-2001-was-real-date-mcqueary-episode. Ziegler thinks this is evidence that McQueary didn’t see what he thought he saw. I think it suggests—in the context of default to truth—that McQueary had doubts about what he saw. Needless to say, there is a big difference between those two interpretations.
Ziegler has uncovered a number of other facts, which for reasons of space and focus I did not include in the chapter. (The Sandusky case is a very very deep and winding rabbit hole.) According to Ziegler’s reporting, at least some of Sandusky’s victims are not credible. They appear to have been attracted by the large cash settlements that Penn State was offering and the relatively lax criteria the university used for deciding who would get paid.
In the course of reporting this chapter, I corresponded on several occasions with Ziegler and chatted with him on the phone. He generously shared a number of documents with me—including the memo written by private investigator Curtis Everhart. I’m not convinced of Ziegler’s ultimate conclusion—that Sandusky is innocent. But I do agree with him that the case is much more ambiguous and unusual than the conventional press accounts suggest. If you would like to go down the Sandusky rabbit hole, you may want to start with Ziegler.
A second (and perhaps more mainstream) Sandusky skeptic is author Mark Pendergrast, who published The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment in 2017. Pendergrast argues that the Sandusky case was a classic example of a “moral panic” and the frailty of human memory. I drew heavily from Pendergrast’s book in my account of the Aaron Fisher and Allan Myers cases. One of the noteworthy things about Pendergrast’s book, I must say, is the back cover, which has blurbs from two of the most influential and respected experts on memory in the world: Richard Leo of the University of San Francisco, and Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California at Irvine.
Here is what Loftus had to say: “The Most Hated Man in America tells a truly remarkable story. In all the media coverage the Sandusky case has received, it’s amazing that no one else has noticed or written about so many of these things, including all the ‘memories’ that were retrieved through therapy and litigation. One would think that the sheer insanity of so much of this will have to eventually come out.”
What do I think? I have no idea. I will let others tackle the morass of conflicting evidence and speculation and ambiguity that is the Sandusky case. My interest is simply this: if the case is such a mess, how on earth can you put Spanier, Curley, and Schultz behind bars?
the “graduate assistant…reported what he had seen”: Sandusky Grand Jury Presentment, November 5, 2011, https://cbsboston.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sandusky-grand-jury-presentment.pdf, pp. 6–7.
McQueary’s email to Jonelle Eshbach was obtained by Ray Blehar, a blogger in the Penn State area. Ray Blehar, “Correcting the Record: Part 1: McQueary’s 2001 Eye-witness Report,” Second Mile – Sandusky Scandal (SMSS): Searching for the Truth through a Fog of Deception (Blog), October 9, 2017, https://notpsu.blogspot.com/2017/10/correcting-record-part-1-mcquearys-2001.html#more.
Rachael Denhollander’s statement: “Rachael Denhollander delivers powerful final victim speech to Larry Nassar,” YouTube, January 24, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CjVOLToRJk&t=616s.
“And unfortunately, I was right…deepest, darkest hole and hide”: “Survivor reported sexual assault in 1997, MSU did nothing,” YouTube, January 19, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYJIx_3hbRA.
“This just goes to show…patients lie to get doctors in trouble”: Melissa Korn, “Larry Nassar’s Boss at Michigan State Said in 2016 That He Didn’t Believe Sex Abuse Claims,” Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/deans-comments-shed-light-on-culture-at-michigan-state-during-nassars-tenure-1521453600.
Quotes from Believed podcast: Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith, “The Parents,” Believed, NPR/Michigan Radio, Podcast audio, November 26, 2018, https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=669669746.
“He does that to me all the time!”: Kerry Howley, “Everyone Believed Larry Nassar,” New York Magazine/The Cut, November 19, 2018, https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/how-did-larry-nassar-deceive-so-many-for-so-long.html.
“I had to make an extremely hard choice…your dark, broken soul”: “Lifelong friend, longtime defender speaks against Larry Nassar,” YouTube, January 19, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Aa2MQORd4.
“I asked the specific question…as far away from him as possible”: Allan Myers interview with Curtis Everhart (Criminal Defense Investigator), November 9, 2011.
The only time Myers ever appeared…he didn’t recall thirty-four times: Commonwealth v. Gerald A. Sandusky (Appeal), November 4, 2016, p. 10.
“Are you sure…like that before” and “Every one of you…would back them up”: Jeffrey Toobin, “Former Penn State President Graham Spanier Speaks,” The New Yorker, August 21, 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/former-penn-state-president-graham-spanier-speaks.
Chapter Six: The Friends Fallacy
Dialogue is from Friends, “The One with the Girl Who Hits Joey” (episode 15, season 5), directed by Kevin Bright, NBC, 1998.
It was developed by legendary psychologist (in footnote): Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, Facial Action Coding System, parts 1 and 2 (San Francisco: Human Interaction Laboratory, Dept. of Psychiatry, University of California, 1978).
In my second book, Blink (Little, Brown and Company, 2005), I devoted a large chunk of Chapter Six, “Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind Reading,” to a discussion of the work of Paul Ekman, one of the most important psychologists of the last century. He is the coinventor of FACS, which I asked Jennifer Fugate to use to analyze that episode of Friends. FACS has become the gold standard for understanding and cataloging how human emotion is displayed on the face. Ekman’s principal scientific contribution was to demonstrate the idea of “leakage”—that the emotions we feel are often, involuntarily, displayed on our faces in some distinctive configuration of facial muscles. And if you are trained in the “language” of the face and have the opportunity to break down videotape of someone’s expressions millisecond by millisecond, you can identify those configurations.
Here is what I wrote on p. 210 of Blink: “Whenever we experience a basic emotion, that emotion is automatically expressed by the muscles of the face. That response may linger on the face for just a fraction of a second or be
detectable only if electrical sensors are attached to the face. But it’s always there.”
Ekman was making two bold claims. First, that emotion is necessarily expressed on the face—that if you feel it, you’ll show it. And second, that these kinds of emotional expressions are universal—that everyone, everywhere, uses their face to display their feelings in the same way.
These propositions had always left some psychologists uneasy. But since Blink was written, there has been growing reaction in the psychology community against Ekman’s position.
For example, why did Ekman believe that emotions were universal? In the 1960s, he and two colleagues traveled to Papua New Guinea, armed with a stack of thirty photographs. The pictures were headshots of Westerners making facial expressions corresponding to the basic emotions: anger, sadness, contempt, disgust, surprise, happiness, and fear.
The New Guinea tribe that Ekman’s group visited was called the Fore. As recently as a dozen years earlier, they had still been effectively living in the Stone Age, completely cut off from the rest of the world. Ekman’s idea was that if the Fore could identify anger or surprise in the photographed faces as readily as someone in New York City or London can, emotions must be universal. Sure enough, they could.
“Our findings support Darwin’s suggestion that facial expressions of emotion are similar among humans, regardless of culture, because of their evolutionary origin,” Ekman and his colleagues wrote in a paper published in Science, one of the most prestigious academic journals. (See P. Ekman et al., “Pan-Cultural Elements in Facial Display of Emotions,” Science 164 [1969]: 86–88.)
This idea—that there is a universal set of human emotional reactions—is the principle that lies behind an entire category of tools that we use to understand strangers. It’s why we have lie detectors. It’s why lovestruck couples stare deeply into each other’s eyes. It’s why Neville Chamberlain made his daring visit to see Hitler in Germany. And it’s why Solomon looked hard at the defendant in the child-abuse case.
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