Transcription
Former CIA operative and author of TAN's directive, Wayne Simmons. Wayne, nice to see you this morning. Welcome to Fox and Friends.
First of all, I I don't believe that uh enhanced interrogation, as you know, I think both of you know my position on that enhanced interrogation that we use is not torture. Waterboarding is not torture. It's simply a technique used to u to gained valuable information.
This guy was on Fox News seen around the world for 13 years and he was touted as Fox News's CIA counterterrorism Islamic extremism expert. 13 years CIA people saw him all over the world. Not a peep. Nobody ever said a word. After he's arrested, many CIA people came to me and said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. I I had questions about him from the beginning." Bottom line is nobody said anything. Nobody did anything except me.
That was ex CIA officer Kent Kisby talking about a popular Fox News contributor, Wayne Simmons. who claimed to be a former CIA operative, but who Kent helped expose as a serial liar and fraud. A 2016 New York Times article covered how Wayne Simmons was exposed. On Kent's site, he references that article writing the shocking story of how Kent uncovered and brought down an in-your-face fraudster on a par with Bernie Maidolf. For 13 years, Fox News, the political military establishment, and millions of Fox News viewers were scammed. Kent Klby, applying his proprietary holistic contextual credibility assessment technique, revealed the fraud in minutes. How could millions of Fox viewers, including legions of former, retired, and current CIA officers, be unaware the network's leading CIA counterterrorism expert, was a fraud? Isn't the CIA's job to vet people to be sure they are who they say they are? The answers will shock you. One man grasped the truth and he pursued it to its conclusion.
Okay, that was from Kent's website. Kent recently reached out to me regarding the con artist Chase Hughes, whose many lies and unethical behaviors I exposed in 2024 on my podcast. Kent had been interested in outing Chase as a fraud and then saw that I'd already done a lot of that work. So, in this episode, we'll talk about Kent's work in outing Wayne Simmons, how Kent was introduced to Wayne, what it was that quickly tipped Kent off, that Wayne was a fake, and how Kent's immediate sense of fakery relates to his own credibility assessment method, which Kent has written a book about. We'll talk about the push back Kent got from powerful people in the government who knew and supported Wayne Simmons and how his efforts to expose Wayne affected Kent's life. And we'll talk a bit about Chase Hughes, how Chase Hugh's claims of expertise in military and intel and SCOPS areas map over to Wayne Simmons lies. Although, if you really want to know about that, I recommend reading the expose on my site, behavior-podcast.com. Go to my site and search for Chase Hughes, and look for the piece titled The Many Lies of Chase Hughes.
Kent is also a harsh critic of self-proclaimed behavior experts in general. He argues that systems for assigning meaning to non-verbal behavior, specific body and face movements is worse than useless in law enforcement or espionage related work or other highstakes real world environments. In Kent's book, Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment: A Reality-based Alternative to Deception Detection, he lays out an overview of the work of the well-known behavior researcher Paul Ecman and makes the case that Ecman is an irresponsible liar and con artist. I have to say that I personally largely agree with Kent. Kent is of course not the first person to call Paul Ecman out for bad science and bad ideas. There are many fellow researchers who have harshly criticized his work. On this podcast, for example, I've talked to respected deception detection researcher Tim Levine about the weakness of Ecman's work. Kent's view of Ecman is just a lot more pessimistic than most. But I think he makes a great argument for why we should see Ecman as an extremely untrustworthy person, someone who, the record shows, is not really interested in the truth and much more interested in promoting himself as a genius.
This episode will be only the first part of Kenya's talk. This talk will focus on the frauds Wayne Simmons and Chase Hughes. The second episode that I'll air in a couple weeks or so will focus on non-verbal behavior and its role or its non-roll in law enforcement and credibility assessment scenarios.
Here's a little bit more about Kent's career from his website kentcl.com. Kent served as a staff CIA case officer in the 1990s and as a contractor after 911. He has worked in various capacities in intelligence positions in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. His specialty is counterterrorism and Islamic extremism. Ken has also worked counter intelligence, counterp proliferation, counter narcotics, and other targets. In addition to extensive liaison work with foreign intel services, he has worked in the US intel community and inter agency intergovernmental intelligence operations since 9/11. He was awarded the intelligence community seal medallion, the highest civilian intelligence agency decoration for contractors for his counterterrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. His work in the Philippines was described in an article by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic Monthly in March 2007. The article being titled Jihadists in Paradise.
Okay, here's the talk with Kent Closby. Hey Kent, thanks for joining me. Sorry, I said that right as to be with you today, Zack.
>> Sorry, I said that right as you were drinking coffee.
>> Sorry.
>> Uh, good. Off to a good start, but we'll keep going. That's kind of funny. Uh, okay. So, yeah, maybe we could start out with uh what what made you uh what got you reaching out to me, if you'd care to share that uh story.
>> So, I've been following Chase Hughes for several years. Uh I was introduced to him probably four or five years ago uh by some former associates of his. So, I they they had given me a background on Chase Hughes and I I had never heard of him. So, I had started following him and did a little bit of due diligence and saw that he was uh he was not what he claimed and that whatever it was he was selling was snake oil. Um I'm sort of one of my uh one of my uh interests, professional interests is exposing people like that. So, I had been developing a dossier on him. it had fallen to the back of my uh of my things to do. I have other things going on. And I hadn't heard of him or seen anything from him in quite a while until late 2025, probably in the fall, early winter sometime. Uh I saw an interview of him uh that he did on some national podcast. It was either Joe Rogan. Was it Was he on Joe Rogan? Yeah, but late uh yeah, he was on Joe Rogan. He was also on some other big ones like Diary of a CEO, which is pretty popular. Some
>> actually I don't see any of those, but I saw a clip of of a big one, and I'm pretty sure it was Joe Rogan, but that's when it suddenly hit me. What in the hell? I thought this dude was gone. Yeah. I thought I thought he faded away. And here he is showing up on this very high-profile u uh uh media. So, I went back and started, you know, re re-energized my Chase Hughes uh project. And in the course of that, I did a couple searches. Is anybody else looking at Chase Hughes? And boom. Uh you showed up. Uh Zachary Elwood, uh Pokerell guy, uh has a a
>> I got my own dossier.
>> Yeah. had had a fantastic article on your Substack or your your uh your website. And as I read that article, I was like, man, this guy has done way more than I have. You your dossier, your your background, your your analysis of Chase Hughes was extensive. And that's when I reached out to you uh to said just just to offer my uh let you know there's a kindred soul out here who's who's also offended by the Chase Hughes scam and uh
>> wanted to see if we could somehow collaborate. Yeah, there's and as I told you and other people, it's like we need more people talking about it because he's he's continuing to peak in the uh popularity, which is kind of amazing u amazing what he's been able to do in that regard. But yeah, another funny thing too when you know you you reached out to me via LinkedIn last like a month ago and I had missed your message and then I randomly unrelated stumbled across your work because I was doing some research on micro expressions and you know Paul Ecman's work the other day and saw your critiques of him. So it was kind of funny that we ended up connecting because we I was I was reaching out to you and you were reaching out to me which is you know
>> totally independent of each other coincidentally reaching out to each other at the same time. Yeah. That's there's there's some kind of karma or something there. It was meant to be.
>> Yeah. And maybe we could uh I mean we could talk about Chase for a long time, but we'll leave that aside for now. But I I wanted to ask you about your work outing Wayne Simmons. That that was a that is just a very interesting case and I and I had not somehow I had not heard about that at all when you looked into what you had done. I think there's a is was it a New York Times or some article about you exposing him or helping expose him?
>> Yeah. Yeah. There was a a front page on the New York Times Sunday magazine
>> uh story extensive went into great depth of
>> That's great.
>> I didn't like the headline. uh something like uh the operation to out a Fox News.
>> Yeah, I didn't like that headline either. I was like what that is not at all like it made it sound like there was something uh you know underhanded going on. It's like that I didn't like the headline either. Yeah. So I I I I worked really closely with the guy that wrote the article and the guy that wrote the article totally understood and if you read the article uh it's not an operation to out a a a Fox News commentator. It was a
>> exposure of a fraud.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> And so so it turns out that the guys that write the headline are totally separate from the guys that write the article. But anyway,
>> yeah, I've had that experience, too. U Yeah. Yeah, I was wondering. Yeah, maybe we could uh I mean there's so much to say about just about the Wayne Simmons thing, too. We could spend a long time with that, but I I am wondering I mean people should definitely read that article and and look into that. It's a very interesting story, but I wanted to ask you about that. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you fairly quickly what what instincts you had about how uh he was likely a fraud and how quickly you knew that and what those circumstances were.
>> Yeah. So I I think really the most important takeaway from that the the the operation that I ran, if you want to call it that, to expose Simmons as a fraud, was the fact that this guy was on Fox News seen around the world for 13 years and he was touted as a C Fox News's CIA counterterrorism Islamic extremism expert. CIA offices at that time during the global war on terror all had big screen TVs that were on all the time and many times kind of depending on the politics of the uh of the management but uh at that time Fox News was probably predominantly the choice for running 247 on these TVs and in headquarters. head CIA headquarters. There's Fox News is on everywhere. C the counterterrorism center everywhere. It's on 13 years. This guy was blatantly in your face. It's not like he's hiding, you know, sneaking around in the backyards whispering in people's ears, "Hey, I'm a CIA guy. Let me give you a secret." He was in your face. Fox News. Day after day after day, 13 years, CIA people saw him all over the world. Not a peep. Nobody ever said a word. After he's arrested, many CIA people came to me and said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. I I had questions about him from the beginning." Bottom line is nobody said anything. Nobody did anything except me. The as soon as I I I met him, a mutual friend introduced us. I I didn't have cable, didn't watch Fox News, don't watch Fox News, so I never heard of him, never seen him. Our mutual friend said, "Hey, you guys are just alike. Counterterrorism operators, you guys. Oh, I you got to meet him. He is plugged in. He is a cool dude."
>> Sure. Let's have lunch.
>> Quick quick question. Sat down. Quick question. Okay. Did you Did you have suspicions about him based on, you know, your read of the situation before you met him or did your suspicions Okay. Yeah. Go ahead.
>> I I did I did no due diligence before meeting him. I uh I just took the word of uh this mutual friend who now it's clear uh had no idea what he was talking about and he was misrepresenting himself as well. I knew I knew the mutual friend through at the time I was uh uh teaching, instructing, facilitating, instructional designing in uh intelligence training for both civilian and military human intelligence. Uh I I knew him through a professional um um organization, intelligence educators, something international association for intelligence education. I knew him through that. Had never met him, but assumed his there was there's no no reason that I needed to do due diligence on this guy, but I assumed his competence. Turned out he's he's totally incompetent and he was a borderline fraud himself. He was a Turns out he was a a an Air Force cop who was uh spinning him trying to create a new uh a new career spinning himself as an intel guy. But anyway, so he introduced me. I at the time I took his word for it. Yeah, my colleague mutual friend says I should meet you. I didn't do due diligence on Wayne. All I knew was the sort of headline. Wayne Simmons, uh, CIA counterterrorism expert. Uh, he's on been on Fox News for the last 13 years. So, that that was that was the setup when I sat down to have lunch with him.
>> So, when you met him, you fairly quickly had a sense that the things were off based on what he talked about, the way he talked.
>> Yeah. As soon as we started talking, um, he he there there's I I I call it it's like when dogs sniff each other's butt. That's it's butt sniffing. when you're when you're a CIA officer and you meet some another CIA officer, there's sort of it's not standard, but you know, you you ask about assignments, you ask about training, when did you go through training, uh where were you stationed, did you know somebody that you know Joe who was stationed there, the year before, right? Um
>> yeah, the language they use to describe the positions, that kind of stuff. Yeah.
>> Yeah. It's the context. It's it's what what I ended up at the time I had I I had in my head my system of credibility assessment but I had never it was all um implicit. I never explicitly
>> extracted it from my head and said okay here's how I do credibility assessment. I did extract it and make it uh explicit later and now I can use that that language is I had a gut feeling and what a gut your gut is based on contextual it it's it's the uh sum of your experiences in context. Mhm.
>> So your gut, my gut is totally useless in brain surgery. If I sat down with a brain surgeon or somebody pretending to be a brain surgeon and he starts babbling about, well, you know, I was cutting into the hypothalamus the other day and the vagus nerve was blah blah blah. I'm like, yeah, okay, sounds good to me. Because I have no contextual expertise. Mhm.
>> My contextual expertise uh is was totally wrapped around Wayne Simmons scam.
>> I I have a gut for that context.
>> I when um I can smell a rat because of my gut, because of my contextual competence.
>> You know the domain. It's like domain specific knowledge.
>> Domain specific. Exactly. that I call that context. It's it's cultural,
>> language, profession.
>> Uh so this guy had no clue. He was I I was at the time uh formulating the explicit uh form of my credibility assessment
>> uh approach.
>> And his case was was just this. It was like a god-given case study of here you go man apply your expertise here.
>> So here that that's a long long description of why I knew he was a fraud within five minutes.
>> Mhm.
>> He was he had been turns out who he fooled and who he scammed were military guys. He had a very uh highlevel network in the military. His his sister was an under secretary of defense. She was like Rumsfeld's admin guru evidently. She went everywhere Rumsfeld went. She went. She was assistant secretary of defense for admin or something like that. Simmons was a lifelong screwup. He'd been kicked out of the Navy in uh in in basic training. He had been arrested multiple times for DUIs. He had been uh he had some kind of record with uh dealing drugs. It appears to me, looking back at it now, his sister wanted to help him and he may have spun a story to her that he was CIA and she went to Rumsfeld and said, "Hey, my little brother Wayne, you know, uh, he's he he's fallen on hard times, but you know, he was a 30-year CIA guy and he really could use some help." And that then comes the global war on terror and uh Rumsfeld is his is his angel is his top cover and Rumsfeld was tied in with Fox News and that just he he had he had Rumsfeld's Rumsfeld was vouching for him
>> and everybody in the DoD in in the military was terrified of Rumsfeld. If Rumsfeld said it, it's it's from from God's mouth to Rumsfeld's ear.
>> It's it's may as well be the word of God.
>> So the the military was terrified
>> of of Rumsfeld. And if he if he vouched for Simmons, then Simmons was what he said he was,
>> right?
>> That that's that's what I discovered as as this went on.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> So he was used to So the reason I give you that background is he was used to conning military guys and military guys have this um h have a misconception or a stereotype or a idea. They think they know what the CIA is and what CIA officers do, but they don't. they they may as well their their concept comes from watching movies generally speaking.
>> So Simmons was able to use his top cover from Rumsfeld with the military's misunderstanding of civilian intelligence and scam his way right right through anything that the military touched. He was able to be the CIA guy in there. So, I'm not I I've been in the military. I I'm I'm also I also have military uh expertise. I have the contextual competence. So, you can't scam me of military stuff either. But
>> he was trying to scam me at just like he scammed the military guys. And uh it it was alarm bells go off within five minutes before they even brought my water in in the restaurant. I knew this this [ __ ] is is trying to play me for a fool.
>> Yeah.
>> And and the only thing I I I don't I don't have a temper, but the only thing that pisses me off is somebody trying to play me for a fool. He did, and that pissed me off. He didn't know it.
>> He played a lot of millions of people for a fool. Yeah. Uh I want to I want to know I want to tie some of the things you said into the Chase Hughes stuff because there's a lot of overlap here. Uh so for example, I've had a couple people uh who who were were actually did work in military and intel kind of things reach out to me and say they either they or people they knew had encountered Chase Hughes at events and tried to talk about like this the alleged experience, you know, military government experience that Chase Hughes claims to have had and you know intel or interrogations or SCOPS or whatever the various things that he claims to have had. And uh it was very clear like they were they their [ __ ] meters immediately went off too where they're like this guy didn't talk about it in any sort of way that made made sense. You know, their [ __ ] meters went off. Uh then you also have the aspect of Chase, you know, claiming that he has these some some of these books and and things on his site and things he talks about where he's like these are top secret military secrets that I'm sharing. You know, this kind of Jason Bourne kind of stuff. And it's like sort of like you said with uh Wayne Simmons, it's like if these were uh you know really uh top secret things that required a lot of clearance to have like would he can just hand these out on his site or give you know give them to people and there's no problem. That alone is sign that something's off because like the military is not just going to let somebody like share all these alleged top secret uh things which kind of corresponds to what you were saying about Wayne Simmons over 15 years claiming to be this like you know into all this espionage espionage stuff but like nobody talks about him or you know nobody and he's talking about these things openly. Um, so just to say there going to be these various clues and then you also have
>> I think there's also the fact that
>> this kind of you know the espionage uh CIA type of things kind of lend themselves to bullshitters because it's kind of a perfect cover where people can say like oh of course you can't find any evidence of me doing that. I was so you know it's undercover stuff. It's plausible deniability stuff.
>> Uh which is what you know Wayne Simmons did. It's also uh what I think what Chase used. I haven't heard him do it recently, but it's also what I see a lot of his fans say. They'll be like, "Oh, he was just so deep undercover. Nobody knows about the stuff he's done." I'm like, "Okay." Uh, yeah. Right. It's
>> Yeah, that is that is exactly Simmons approach as well. And yeah,
>> even when he got arrested and such. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Say again. Even when he got arrested and afterwards he was trying to say like, "Oh, I you know, he he never went back from his story because he was like, "No, I was just doing such top secret stuff and nobody knew what I was doing, you know, nobody can talk about it." Blah, blah, blah. You know,
>> except Yeah, absolutely. He he uh till today I I haven't seen anything from him in a while, but even while he was in prison and when he got out of prison, same thing is I'm I'm on a quest to uh to to exonerate myself. I am who I said I was. That's that's the last I heard from him.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh except uh I ran an operation with with my my buddy. He was an old boss of mine in the CIA. Uh he was retired at the time. He's passed away since. Um but uh he he was he was a real 30-year veteran. Had done everything in the in the agency, been everywhere. manager level, highest highest kind of manager level. And I I convinced him uh that Simmons was fake. He was a Fox News watcher and he had he as a veteran CIA uh officer accepted Simmons because there are many compartmented operations that not everybody knows about. And that's that's what my friend Jim assumed is, yeah, you know, it doesn't sound right, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Uh, Fox News has to be vetting their people. This is his thinking, right?
>> Fox News has to be vetting their people. They wouldn't let a fake on. And I Yeah, I knew pretty much everything, but not everything. And maybe he was in one of those compartmented operations. So, when I first started uh doing my vetting of Simmons and reaching out to my network of of former CIA officers, I talked to him and it took a little convincing. I had to present it. I I He wouldn't just say, "Oh, yeah, your gut told you he was fake." I had to I had already built a dossier that that showed uh convincingly that that Simmons was a fake. So I I got him onto my side and I was in touch with Simmons on Facebook and Simmons would uh chat every now and then. you know, he didn't know I was gathering details and and I I uh suggested that he meet a fellow CIA officer, my friend Jim. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Uhhuh. He you know, he's Simmons is happy to to network. So, I put those two together and then Jim and I came up with a uh an approach. In effect, it was an operation. It was an operational approach. I I did I did the turnover and then I sat back and let it was kind of like good cop bad cop. Uh Jim established a relationship with him, started talking and then he started asking very uh specific vetting questions. The the best one is um every CIA officer has an employee identification number. If you are an employee, you have an EIN. It doesn't matter what your status is, what your cover is. Doesn't matter if you're deep, dark, undercover, triple secret, or you're a knock, you're uh overt, you're covert. You have an EIN. That is your agency identifier, and everybody knows it off the top of their head. So Jim started asking him things like that. What's Okay, Wayne, what's your EIN? Who who was your you were a knock? Who was your knock? There there's a trade craft of running knocks. Uh every knock will have an inside officer handler who takes care of his admin stuff, meets him occasionally. They swap receipts or uh or or advances or whatever. What's your EIN? Who was who were your handling officers through your 30-year career? you know, you're handling officers. They are uh your lifeline to the bureaucracy, to your career, you know, everything there. There's all the admin issues. Um your pay, your advances, your expenses, your retirement funding, all of those things come up all the time and you're dealing with them as a knock through your handling officer. Jim starts asking him these questions and very quickly it got um it got uh aggressive and finally uh Simmons you know became very defensive and this is all on Facebook chat so we had the transcript Simmons gets defensive and says oh you you know you don't trust me I am who I said I am blah blah blah they come back the next time and maybe a day or two later, Simmons had time to sleep on it and Jim tells him, "Hey, Wayne, you know, you're you never you're not CIA and you never were. It's very obvious." And he and Wayne in chat says, "All right. Yeah, I I admit it. I I will never again um present myself as a CIA officer." You were right. and um and and Jim said, "Okay, well, you need to make a public announcement or something like that." And at the time, I was writing a um an article to go out to expose him. And that was the final piece that I needed. I his I have a transcript of his admission. I put that in there.
>> Yeah.
>> Confession. Put it in the article. Sent it to and sent it to Simmons and said, "Simmons, I'm gonna gonna publish this as soon as possible. will give you a chance to respond. And he his response was, "This is [ __ ] I never said any such thing. If I did, I retract it. I was a 30-year knock. And you're going to pay for it, Clby." You know, a threat. And he followed through on that threat. He had he did have a very And he still has. He has a highlevel network of military. It's pretty much all military. one CIA officer who uh a woman who's been totally on his side just unbelievably. But the the rest are at retired admirals, retired generals, you know, four, five stars, uh you know, the the highest level uh military brass. Um and and he was connected throughout the media. So when he said, "I'm gonna you're gonna you're gonna you'll hear my response." So his buddy, the one that u that introduced us, the next day published an article in an online military special forces military softre. It was it was back then it was widely read. I don't know if it's still read, but um article denouncing the attacks on Wayne Simmons. Uh, and I don't think they he he mentioned me by name, but it it was clear exactly who he was talking about. And then when I tried to place that article exposing him, everybody, no one would accept it. None of the usual websites that I had published on would accept it. So, he did use his military contacts to to shut it all up,
>> right?
>> Uh, and he um, and and maybe you could talk briefly about I mean did he make your life harder? Did how hard was it for you? Did you suffer much or did you just kind of like were were you thinking like well eventually the truth's going to come out? Talk maybe you could talk a little bit about that process until he got in trouble eventually.
Well, well, after that, um that that I was pretty much black ballalled. uh I was not able to uh place any more articles uh until I I don't know if it was a year maybe maybe a year and a half before he that that before he uh um spread the word that I was you know harassing him or whatever or that there was an operation to to denigrate him and he was uh and his great reputation. Um, I I want to say it was a year maybe more before the FBI contacted me and I shared my dossier on Simmons with them and he was arrested probably within a several months after that. Uh, but in that time I was unable to uh place any articles anywhere. Um, I was I was the real deal. I was a real uh CIA counterterrorism expert. I've done the operations. I've been all around the world. Uh Islamic extremism, counterterrorism, uh counter intelligence and uh in in instead of and there's many other people like me as well who lost opportunities because of Simmons. Not that he was he was bad bad mouthing them specifically, but he was filling a slot that could have been filled by a real person,
>> right?
>> But yeah, he he uh blackalled me. Him and his military buddies black ballalled me and I was unable to publish anything and nobody wanted wanted anything to do with me until he was arrested. Uh, and that was sort of my vindication. Yeah.
>> And then when that New York Times article came out, you know, then it was everybody knows.
>> Did you start getting uh any any media invites when you got vindicated? Did you appear on any
>> uh got got contacts from people who from media who never would have been in touch with me before? uh the my my previous places that I had uh websites that I had wrote for none of them called up and said, "Oh, hey, sorry about that. Uh can you can you give us something new?" That didn't happen. Uh but but it did open up a whole new whole another channel of you know that the New York Times article ended up opening eyes of say uh um producers of like I I think that they they did a couple podcasts. Uh they they there may have been some kind of I don't know if if like Discovery Channel or somebody did something on it. I they they did do a a couple of shows on an operation I did in the Philippines. So I'm getting kind of confused. I confuse the two. I don't know I don't know what they but it did open up um a lot of publicity for my
>> my skills. Yeah, it seems like you could write a whole book just about the outing of uh that person and yeah, that I mean that whole story is is so interesting and just talking about Yeah, maybe you could work Chase Hughes in there too if you do. I mean, I still think you should I still I mean I still think you should do your own uh expose of Chase Hughes because because we just need more people talking about these people. I mean, the thing I've I've told you and other people is like a lot of people think like, "Oh, I did the work. You know, other people don't have to do it, but it's like I get people reaching out to me, Chase Hughes fans that are like, "You're just a bitter person lying about Chase Hughes. If it was if it was really a story, you'd have more like uh journalists and uh you know, people with experience covering it, talking about it." So, just to say, I think the more the marrier because I I think there's a lot of people that it's kind of like this assumption thing you were talking about with Wayne Simmons where it's like people will will say to me and publicly on these Reddit threads, they'll be like, "Well, if Chief Hughes was really such a fraud, you wouldn't have like Joe Rogan promoting him. You wouldn't have diary of a CEO guy. You wouldn't have Dr. Phil. You wouldn't have these guys who work on this behavior panel show. Wouldn't work with him." And I'm like, "Well, it's clearly wrong because he's clearly a fraud and a a serial liar. So you have to examine your assumptions about uh what's going on there because your assumptions are are leading you way astray. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean people don't want to admit that they've been that they have been played for fools that they have been scammed.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean there's so many case studies like this and Simmons is a great one because the exact same uh the exact same responses when when I expose Simmons is same thing. People don't want to believe it. They've bought into it. Bernie
>> maid off.
>> That's billions of dollars. You know, the these
>> Chase Hughes is is is small fry. Simmons is small fry.
>> Yeah.
>> They Bernie Maid off is billions of dollars and people didn't want to hear it. It's Oh, yeah. He's got he he can beat the market consistently. No freaking way. Yeah. You know, anybody who has who's ever put their money in a bank account or who's ever bought a share of stock knows nobody can consistently create that kind of return. But people, especially those who were in on it, who had who were getting their paper profits, people who are somehow invested
>> Yeah.
>> they're invested financially or emotionally or something. It's like you believe
>> ethnically too the Ponzi schemes are are they started out at the Ponzi was an ethnic Italian and he prayed on the Italian immigrant community. Uh Maid Off was an ethnic Jew. He prayed on the Jewish community. He he was a huge uh donor to all kinds of Jewish causes.
>> It's like he's one of he's one of us. He won't you know he's he the It increases the loyalty aspect. I mean, we see this with the political polarization aspects where people are more likely to believe people who they see as like on their side on for any cause or or goal. Yeah. And once they're invested emotionally or financially, it's very very difficult to bring people around to the truth. So that's a long way of saying, you know, confirming what you're what you're saying is with with Hughes is that these people who are bought into the cult, whether financially or emotionally, don't want to be told don't want they they don't not just told they can't cannot process it intellectually or emotionally. I mean there's back in back in the I guess 70s and 80s there was a whole uh industry of uh decultifying or I can't I forget what they call it. They have they have a word
>> deprogramming. Yeah. Yeah. Deprogramming which is they you know they there's these uh different cults back then and there's cults now the same way but maybe they've made it illegal to kidnap your kid and programming, but I you don't hear about it anymore, but they used to be a big industry of kidnapping usually young adults who had been who had been recruited into cults and deprogramming them. And that deprogramming process was long and arduous and not always successful. In effect, you know, they they they put him in prison. they, you know, they put them in lock them up in a hotel closet or something and separate them from their cult experience. It's the same thing with Hughes or Simmons or Maidolf or Ecman acolytes. They are so invested emotionally, financially, intellectually they cannot see reality.
>> I give up. I I never even try to um deprogram someone. I just I see my role. I'm really good at vetting, uncovering the truth, and laying it out there for people to see. Um I cannot change someone's mind. Uh I don't think I if they if they see the truth and they decide to change their mind, fantastic.
>> Yeah.
>> But
>> it's hard.
>> I don't know. I I might be I might be up for uh starting a new deprogramming service.
>> Well, you know, uh I don't know if you know, but Chase Hughes claims to be an expert cult programmer, too. That's one of the many things he claims he's kidding me. No, that's one of the things. There's a Reddit there's a Reddit thread there's a Reddit thread about him being an expert cult. People are like, "Is he really?" And you know, it's just he's claimed to be an expert in literally everything psychology related. It's just it's so funny, you know. Um,
>> pitiful, pitiful.
>> That was a talk with exCIA officer Kent Kisby, author of Holistic Contextual Credibility Assessment, a reality based alternative to deception detection. I thought the book was good and includes a lot of interesting stories from Kent's career and from the spycraft trade in general. You can learn more about Kent at his website, kentclby.com. In a future episode, I'll share the second part of this talk where Kent and I discuss non-verbal behavior and its non-importance as Kent sees it in determining veracity and credibility. This has been the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. You can learn more about this podcast at behavior-podcast.com. Thanks for listening. Music by Small Skies.