Belief is not about the absence of doubt but having few enough doubts to trust someone. Criticizing someone for failing to spot a liar overlooks the threshold of doubt required for belief. The key is whether there were enough red flags to push one into belief; defaulting to truth in the absence of enough doubt is a human trait.
On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two small planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an organization in Florida that tried to spot refugees fleeing Cuba in boats. A strange chain of events preceded the shoot-down, and people in the intelligence business turned to a rising star in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Montes. Montes was known around Washington as the “Queen of Cuba” for her insights into the Castro regime. But what Montes’ colleagues eventually found out about her shook their sense of trust to the core. (In this excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s forthcoming audiobook Talking to Strangers, we hear why spy mysteries do not unfold in real life like they do in the movies.)
To preorder a copy of Talking to Strangers and check out Malcolm Gladwell's book tour, visit www.gladwellbooks.com.
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