Bureau of Sabotage
How Do Spies Keep Their Double Lives Secret?
Not everyone can handle this sort of secrecy as well as Laux did. In fact, the stress of constantly lying can lead some law-enforcement agents to emerge from undercover assignments with deep psychological scars. 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. 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. “Many undercover officers find this dual betrayal a difficult road to walk, adding to the stressors already inherent in undercover work.”
Still, more general research on lying can shed some light on how some people effectively pull off fictional identities for so long. In 2014, a team of Dutch researchers compiled a list of 18 traits that make someone an effective liar. Some are fairly straightforward, like confidence, preparedness, and quick thinking. 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. Another was “eloquence,” or the ability to give answers so long and so winding that the questioner becomes confused.