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You're Lying: Secrets From an Expert Military Interrogator to Spot the Lies and Get to the Truth
Lena wrote You’re Lying! because no matter what your profession or life circumstances, you need the skills to take control of a situation, detect deception, and reveal the truth. While you probably won’t ever have to interrogate a detainee who doesn’t want to tell you about an upcoming terrorist attack—as Lena has— You’re Lying! will help you deal with that salesperson trying to rip you off, the kid bullying your child who claims innocence, a cheating spouse, or dissembling boss. As the adage says, knowledge is power.
Lena interrogated numerous members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban while stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, then taught those skills to Defense Department personnel for years afterward. Her ability to build rapport, accurately read body language, and employ effective questioning techniques led to numerous successes that saved American lives.
You will also learn her easy-to-follow five-step program on how to accurately detect verbal (both spoken and written) and non-verbal deceptive tells, how to conduct an effective line of questioning, and what to do after you identify the lies we all face every day.
Take the knowledge in You’re Lying! and empower yourself.
Don’t get fooled again.
Lena interrogated numerous members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban while stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, then taught those skills to Defense Department personnel for years afterward. Her ability to build rapport, accurately read body language, and employ effective questioning techniques led to numerous successes that saved American lives.
You will also learn her easy-to-follow five-step program on how to accurately detect verbal (both spoken and written) and non-verbal deceptive tells, how to conduct an effective line of questioning, and what to do after you identify the lies we all face every day.
Take the knowledge in You’re Lying! and empower yourself.
Don’t get fooled again.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 20, 2015
12 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 4, 2015
Military interrogation has always been a fascinating subject for me. Not the brute force “Jack Baur” type of interrogation, but the subtle ways in which certain people can detect truth from lies. This is usually done by building rapport with a person rather than by using fear as a motivator (although fear is sometimes necessary and appropriate in some situations). That is why I was excited to receive this book and write a review.
Lena Sisco is the president and co-founder of The Congruency Group, LLC and a senior instructor at the Body Language Institute in Washington, D.C. During her career as a military intelligence officer and interrogator she interrogated members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay. Afterwards, she trained DOD personnel in interrogation. These skills uniquely qualify her to write a book on the art and science of detecting both visual and auditory cues that naturally occur in the human body when a person is under stress. When a person lies, their body undergoes a physiological change as it experiences the stress (even minor stress) of telling a lie and hoping to not get caught. There are also cues which naturally occur when a person feels elated when they believe they have successfully deceived someone.
I knew that there would be a danger in reading a book on lie detection skills. The danger is that the book could have been dreadfully technical and dry. That was not the case with You’re Lying! Sisco writes in a conversational manner and her illustrations show why she was a success in military interrogation and in teaching the skills to the DOD personnel. Her writing was very fluid and yet profoundly relevant. I was also excited to see a couple dozen photographs demonstrating the visual cues she revealed in the book.
One of the things which I found useful was her use of familiar scenarios in which people were caught in a lie. Throughout the book, Sisco referenced people such as Bill Clinton, Anthony Wiener, and Jodi Arias and the cues which they exhibited when questioned in court or by the press. In many places she gave a URL or mentioned how to find the footage on YouTube so that the reader is able to watch the video and observe the cues which she describes. I found this to be very relevant. The only thing that could have improved the experience is if she provided an image of a QR code for the reader to scan and be taken to the video footage. A small complaint given the usefulness of the book as a whole.
There is so much in this book that I want to share but am refraining from revealing because I really do believe that this book is one which you should purchase if you have an interest in this topic. The book has many practical applications even for normal people who don’t interrogate terrorists for a living. Parents, employers and everyday people buying a new car or listening to a sales pitch about a vacation package will benefit from Lena Sisco’s excellent book on spotting lies and getting to the truth.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Career Press in exchange for an online review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
Lena Sisco is the president and co-founder of The Congruency Group, LLC and a senior instructor at the Body Language Institute in Washington, D.C. During her career as a military intelligence officer and interrogator she interrogated members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay. Afterwards, she trained DOD personnel in interrogation. These skills uniquely qualify her to write a book on the art and science of detecting both visual and auditory cues that naturally occur in the human body when a person is under stress. When a person lies, their body undergoes a physiological change as it experiences the stress (even minor stress) of telling a lie and hoping to not get caught. There are also cues which naturally occur when a person feels elated when they believe they have successfully deceived someone.
I knew that there would be a danger in reading a book on lie detection skills. The danger is that the book could have been dreadfully technical and dry. That was not the case with You’re Lying! Sisco writes in a conversational manner and her illustrations show why she was a success in military interrogation and in teaching the skills to the DOD personnel. Her writing was very fluid and yet profoundly relevant. I was also excited to see a couple dozen photographs demonstrating the visual cues she revealed in the book.
One of the things which I found useful was her use of familiar scenarios in which people were caught in a lie. Throughout the book, Sisco referenced people such as Bill Clinton, Anthony Wiener, and Jodi Arias and the cues which they exhibited when questioned in court or by the press. In many places she gave a URL or mentioned how to find the footage on YouTube so that the reader is able to watch the video and observe the cues which she describes. I found this to be very relevant. The only thing that could have improved the experience is if she provided an image of a QR code for the reader to scan and be taken to the video footage. A small complaint given the usefulness of the book as a whole.
There is so much in this book that I want to share but am refraining from revealing because I really do believe that this book is one which you should purchase if you have an interest in this topic. The book has many practical applications even for normal people who don’t interrogate terrorists for a living. Parents, employers and everyday people buying a new car or listening to a sales pitch about a vacation package will benefit from Lena Sisco’s excellent book on spotting lies and getting to the truth.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Career Press in exchange for an online review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
September 25, 2017
Though there are some definitely interesting points in the book, overall it's not as academically rigorous as I was expecting it to be, e.g., no reference section of studies that might support the author's assertions. Many of the "pearls" are rather common sense and the casual style and content of the book will probably best appeal to lay people than those who have are in the business of detecting truth. And though the author acknowledges that NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is doubted by most experts and is not backed by valid science, she still supports using it, which takes away from her expertise in my opinion. She also references Myers-Briggs, another problematic test, that most experts know to be flawed.
December 20, 2020
It is an enjoyable read, and the concepts and technics are very well explained. It certainly gives you a better insight on understanding body expressions.
June 8, 2020
The author may have been good at her job, detecting liars and working as a liar herself, but she is a shitty writer.
I wanted to like this. I might have liked it had I been able to make it past the 10% mark. But, the writing was really horrible. It was almost as if no one had edited the book for content. Sisco has a tendency to go off on tangents or be repetivive. She has these long lists of people who might use lie detecting as a skill in their jobs: lawyers, doctors, parents, teachers, dog trainers, police, priest...look Sisco, we're already reading your damn book, no need to sell us on the fact that detecting lies might be useful to us. Get on with it already.
But she does not ever get on with it. She goes off on a tangent on why it is usually just better to tell the truth. This might sound relevent in a book about detecting liars, but she manages to make it moralistic, preachy and completely off topic.
The point at which I could not take any more of this book was this glaring flaw of juxtaposition that was so hilarious that I wondered if it was intentional. In one paragraph, she calmly explains to us that it was her job not just to detect lies from terrorist she was interrogating, but to also lie to them. She had to lie to them and tell them that they might be set free if they cooperated with her. In other words, she is a professional liar (her words). Then, in the next paragraph, she makes this bizarre statement about how she had no idea that people were being tortured at Gitmo. She avers that she never saw anything, and she implicitly questions the US Senate’s report on torture at Gitmo.
Is this a joke? In one paragraph, she asserts that she is a professional liar and then, the next paragraph turns wildly to say she swears, crossing her heart, that she never saw anyone do anything bad while she was working Gitmo. I am not making a comment on Gitmo or anything like that, but rather on shitty editing. Any editor worth their salt would have not allowed an author to go from “I lie for a living” to “But, honestly, trust me, I never saw anyone tortured in Gitmo.”
This author probably had something interesting to say, but, with her shitty writing, I was not willing to put up with the bad to get to the good. Of the 10% of the book that I read, I learned only one thing that I thought was worth remembering (there are two kinds of liars, those who feel uncomfortable lying (90%) , and those who feel comfortable (10%), the body releases cortisol in the former, endorphins in the latter). This ratio of time spent reading to interesting things learned was not high enough for me to bother finishing the book.
Read 10%.
I wanted to like this. I might have liked it had I been able to make it past the 10% mark. But, the writing was really horrible. It was almost as if no one had edited the book for content. Sisco has a tendency to go off on tangents or be repetivive. She has these long lists of people who might use lie detecting as a skill in their jobs: lawyers, doctors, parents, teachers, dog trainers, police, priest...look Sisco, we're already reading your damn book, no need to sell us on the fact that detecting lies might be useful to us. Get on with it already.
But she does not ever get on with it. She goes off on a tangent on why it is usually just better to tell the truth. This might sound relevent in a book about detecting liars, but she manages to make it moralistic, preachy and completely off topic.
The point at which I could not take any more of this book was this glaring flaw of juxtaposition that was so hilarious that I wondered if it was intentional. In one paragraph, she calmly explains to us that it was her job not just to detect lies from terrorist she was interrogating, but to also lie to them. She had to lie to them and tell them that they might be set free if they cooperated with her. In other words, she is a professional liar (her words). Then, in the next paragraph, she makes this bizarre statement about how she had no idea that people were being tortured at Gitmo. She avers that she never saw anything, and she implicitly questions the US Senate’s report on torture at Gitmo.
Is this a joke? In one paragraph, she asserts that she is a professional liar and then, the next paragraph turns wildly to say she swears, crossing her heart, that she never saw anyone do anything bad while she was working Gitmo. I am not making a comment on Gitmo or anything like that, but rather on shitty editing. Any editor worth their salt would have not allowed an author to go from “I lie for a living” to “But, honestly, trust me, I never saw anyone tortured in Gitmo.”
This author probably had something interesting to say, but, with her shitty writing, I was not willing to put up with the bad to get to the good. Of the 10% of the book that I read, I learned only one thing that I thought was worth remembering (there are two kinds of liars, those who feel uncomfortable lying (90%) , and those who feel comfortable (10%), the body releases cortisol in the former, endorphins in the latter). This ratio of time spent reading to interesting things learned was not high enough for me to bother finishing the book.
Read 10%.
March 26, 2020
Good content though a bit repetitive. The amount of basic grammatical and spelling mistakes in this book is unbelievable - a really shoddy editing job.
June 6, 2020
I listened to this book to prepare for an interview with Lena Sisco. I really enjoyed her actionable content and we were able to discuss it even more in the interview.
https://unstructuredpod.com/212
https://unstructuredpod.com/212
March 1, 2022
A really excellent mix of inside stories about interrogation techniques in the Guantanemo Bay terror detention center and self-help advice on how to tell his someone is lying to you. Totally recommend.
October 24, 2018
a lot of life experience of the author being discussed. Fun and appeal to general readers. A book which give you general understanding about body language.
December 27, 2018
Interesting. Takes awhile to read, process and learn. Engaging author.
June 20, 2024
Repetitive and takes a while to get to the point.
October 4, 2015
Really practical tips were given by the author. Time to try those out!
January 10, 2016
A bit repetitive until it launches into the ins and outs of her REBLE program. Great body language info.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews