Another was “eloquence,” or the ability to give answers so long and so winding that the questioner becomes confused.Īnd Laux, who lived a lie for the better part of a decade, had something else working in his favor. Others are slightly less intuitive - one item on the list, for example, was “unverifiable responding,” or knowing when to say “I don’t know” to a question versus making up an answer that could later be debunked. Some are fairly straightforward, like confidence, preparedness, and quick thinking. In 2014, a team of Dutch researchers compiled a list of 18 traits that make someone an effective liar. Still, more general research on lying can shed some light on how some people effectively pull off fictional identities for so long. And then there’s the problem of sample size: There just aren’t many current or former spies out there who can be corralled into submitting themselves for study. A 2014 paper in the Intelligencer, the journal of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, pointed out that plenty of information about spies is classified by intelligence agencies that want to protect their methods. That’s partly because it’s such a hard thing to study. “Many undercover officers find this dual betrayal a difficult road to walk, adding to the stressors already inherent in undercover work.” Related StoriesĪ Curious Disorder Convinced This Guy His Cat Was a Spyīut beyond this paper, researchers’ knowledge of spy psychology - both what makes someone suited to the job in the first place and what the long-term effects of being a spy are - is fairly limited. Officers “knowingly and purposefully develop relationships that they will eventually betray” with both the people they’re targeting and the people they meet in the context of their assumed identities. A 2006 paper in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, for example, explained the mental toll that a double life can take: “Psychologically, the essence of all undercover operations is the same,” it reads. In fact, the stress of constantly lying can lead some law-enforcement agents to emerge from undercover assignments with deep psychological scars. Not everyone can handle this sort of secrecy as well as Laux did. Consider, every new person I met was one more person I had to keep my secret from and weave another lie with.” Ultimately, Laux was able to compartmentalize - “I do not regret that my life was a fabricated lie,” he said, “because it was only my job that I was hiding from everyone.” “My social life was robust,” he explained in another answer, “but do understand that came with a lot of stress that I brought upon myself. I talk about in my book how my girlfriend once found my Agency badge in my sock drawer (cool secret hiding spot huh?) and how I had to talk my way out of that disaster. Which they would constantly point out but I just had to suck it up and deal with it. They always thought I was cheating on them or in the mafia or selling drugs or something illicit. And those closest to me were always my girlfriends. And that wasn’t the only snag he hit while trying to guard his secret: Those closest to me always were suspicious. When he learned he was headed to Afghanistan, he told his parents he was moving to Hawaii - a place so far away from their Midwestern home, he assumed, that they’d never try to come visit him.
Reveal their true identities to their daughter – but he still made The current season deals with the fallout after the married spies decide to
The Americans (a show produced by another former CIA officer) – much of Jennings, the KGB agents living as a suburban Virginia family in Keeping his cover wasn’t quite as drama-filled as it was for the
Laux, who recently published a memoir titled Left of Boom, told his family and everyone else that he was a low-level salesman (“and since that’s pretty boring, there truthfully weren’t a lot of other follow-up questions”). Last week, Douglas Laux, a former CIA agent who spent eight years undercover - including a stint in Afghanistan - hosted a Reddit AMA in which he fielded questions about his time as a spy, his life since leaving the agency (“Now I’m just a cat owner with a PlayStation who likes to drink Capri Sun”), and how he managed to keep such a big secret for as long as he did.
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