Spycatcher

At the height of the Cold War, the FBI and Army Intelligence learned of an espionage ring operating in Western Europe made up of American soldiers, including Clyde Lee Conrad (pictured above). To determine the size of the espionage operation and the extent of the damage caused by them, we had to conduct thousands of interviews. Those that were fruitful required further inquiries and more extensive interviews. One of the ways we found to conduct multiple interviews, and in one case more than 50 interviews before one individual was arrested, was accomplished by using nonverbal behaviors for establishing physical and psychological comfort.

For 25 years I worked in the FBI catching spies. If you were to ask me what that work consisted of, I would have to be honest and say mostly observation and the use of psychology. In essence, I was a paid observer of human behavior. My greatest tool was the knowledge that had been acquired in the last half century on how the brain works.