Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All

Written by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd and Susan Carnicero

Narrated by Jeff Gurner

Getting someone to tell the truth is an essential skill that very few people possess. In the boardroom, classroom, or our own homes, every day we interact with others and try to get the truth from them.

People are often untruthful out of fear of negative consequences associated with divulging information. But if a person is made to forget the long-term outcomes, he or she can be influenced to disclose sensitive information that's being withheld. The aim is to encourage the person to remain in short-term thinking mode, shifting focus away from the long-term ramifications of telling the truth.

As former CIA agents and bestselling authors of Spy the Lie, Philip Houston, Mike Floyd, and Susan Carnicero are among the world's best at recognizing deceptive behavior and eliciting the truth from even the most accomplished liars. Get the Truth is a step-by-step guide that empowers readers to elicit the truth from others. It also chronicles the fascinating story of how the authors used a methodology Houston developed to elicit the truth in the counterterrorism and criminal investigation realms, and how these techniques can be applied to our daily lives. Using thrilling anecdotes from their careers in counterintelligence, and with easy-to-follow instructions, the authors provide a foolproof means of getting absolutely anybody to give an honest answer.

Get the Truth is the easy and effective way to learn how to get the truth every time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Mar 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781427243805

Philip Houston

Philip Houston is a nationally recognized authority on deception detection, critical interviewing and elicitation. His 25-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency included thousands of interviews and interrogations for the CIA and other federal agencies, both as an investigator and as a polygraph examiner. He is credited with developing a detection of deception methodology currently employed throughout the U.S. intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Phil introduced the detection of deception methodology to the corporate world with the co-founding of Business Intelligence Advisors, where he works with the company's largest clients in the U.S. and abroad. Houston is also the author of Spy the Lie.

Reviews for Get the Truth

[AJ024611 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book gives good insight into the world of interrogation.

[eowyna_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a fast, fascinating read. The authors are CIA agents who do polygraph tests for the peiodic re-checks for security clearances. It is presented as a series of true-life stories, with names anonymized, detailing how particular interviews, expected to be routine, turned into interrogrations eliciting much more information than the subject intended to provide. Forget the "enhanced interrogation" tactics you hear about on the news. These have nothing to do with torture, and everything with how to talk with someone, one-on-one, to pull the truth from them via empathy and building rapport. This book also analyzes how to structure the interview / interrogation, what kinds of questions to ask, how to ask them, and how to keep your subject in a state of mind conducive to answering them. The book is fascinating from a real-world security standpoint, but also shows how to prepare for negotiations and getting favorable terms in things like divorce settlements. In some ways, it is a focused version of winning friends and influencing people. I'm now going to look for their first book, Spy the Lie, since these are clearly the two sides of the coin.