Chapter 8 Chapter 5 Behavioral Science or Bullshit?

I hadn't been back to Quantico since I finished my new agent training about five years ago.A lot has changed in this place.By the spring of 1975, for example, the FBI Academy was a fully furnished, fully functioning site built on a large plot from a US Marine Corps base, set amidst rolling hills and landscaped grounds. Nestled in the beautiful Virginia woodlands, about an hour south of Washington. In some respects, however, nothing has changed.The tactical group still had a combination of fame and status, and the light weapons group was even more popular.The leader of the team was George Chase. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, he was ordered to go to the UK to escort James Earl Ray back to China to face the American legal trial.Chase has a strong back and a strong waist, and breaking the handcuffs with his bare hands is a trivial feat for him.One time, some guy at the range got a pair of handcuffs, welded the chains on beforehand, and gave it to Chase to show off.Chase twisted so hard that he dislocated his wrist and had to wear a cast for weeks.

Hostage negotiation is taught by the Behavioral Science Division, which consists of a team of seven to nine Secret Service instructors.Psychology and the "soft sciences" were never highly regarded by Hoover and his assistants, so until his death, psychological research had the nature of a kind of "back room" research. In fact, most of the bureau at the time, and the law enforcement community in general, dismissed psychology and behavioral science as applied to the study of criminology as nonsense.Although it is obvious that I never felt that way, I have to admit that much of what was learned and taught in the field at the time had little real relevance to understanding and apprehending criminals, a situation that would change over the next few years. Change through us.After I took over the operation of the Behavioral Science Section, I changed the name of the Section to the Investigation Support Section.Whenever people ask me why I'm changing my name, I tell them fairly candidly that I just want to draw a line between "bullshit" and the work we do.

When I was training in hostage negotiation, the Behavioral Science Section was headed by Jack Puff and controlled and influenced by two very personal and insightful characters, Howard Turton and Patrick Mara Ni.Turton was about 6-foot-4, with piercing eyes behind wire-frame spectacles.Despite his former service in the Marine Corps, he was the deliberate type: always commanding, the quintessentially learned professor.He worked with the San Leandro Police Department in California, near San Francisco, before joining the FBI in 1962. In 1969 he began teaching a landmark course, first titled "Applied Criminology" and eventually (after Hoover's death, I assume) "Applied Criminal Psychology."In 1972, Turton traveled to New York to consult Dr. James Brussels, a psychiatrist who had solved the crazy bombing case, and agreed to teach Turton his profiling skills himself.

After enriching the knowledge in this area, Turton's handling of cases has undergone a major breakthrough.This approach emphasizes that by focusing on the analysis of relevant evidence at the crime scene, more can be learned about the criminal's actions and motives.In some respects, everything we've done in the behavioral sciences and in the analysis of criminal investigations since then has been based on it. Pat Malany always reminded me of leprechauns from Irish folklore.He was 5-foot-10, stocky, quick-witted and energetic.He transferred to Quantico from the New York field station in 1972 and holds a degree in psychology.By the time Quantico's tenure expired, he had successfully resolved the following hostage crises: in Washington, D.C., where the Hanafi Muslim sect took over Bnai Brith headquarters; in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, where a black Vietnam Veteran Moore breaks into the police station and holds a sheriff and his secretary hostage.Turton and Malani together form the first echelon of modern behavioral science, and this duo is outstanding and unforgettable.

Other instructors in the behavioral science department also taught the hostage negotiation course, including Dick Alter and Robert Reilles, who hadn't been at Quantico long.If Turton and Malani formed the first echelon, then Oort and Reilles formed the second echelon. They expanded the discipline forward and made it an important tool for police departments across the United States and around the world. Really valuable knowledge.Reilers and I were just teachers and students, and we would soon be collaborating on a series of crime studies that culminated in the work we are doing now. The hostage negotiation training course has about 50 students.In some ways, the course was more fun than it taught.However, it was also pleasant to have a two-week suspension of field work.In class, we dissect three basic types of hostage-takers: career criminals, psychopaths, and fanatics.We study some of the important phenomena that arise in hostage situations, such as Stockholm Syndrome.Two years earlier, in 1973, a botched bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, had turned into a harrowing hostage situation for customers and bank employees.In the end, the hostages sided with their captors, effectively helping them fight the police.

We also saw Sidney Lumitt's new film, Dog Days Afternoon, in which Al Pacino plays a bank robber who robs his gay lover of money for sex reassignment surgery.The film is based on a real hostage incident in New York City.It was this case and the lengthy negotiations it sparked that prompted the FBI to invite Sheriff Frank Boltz and Detective Harvey Schlossberg of the New York City Police Department to lecture at the FBI Academy to improve hostage negotiations s level.The NYPD is recognized as a national leader in this field. We studied the various principles of negotiation.Some guiding principles are obvious, such as keeping the death toll as low as possible.We do benefit from listening to tapes of actual hostage situations, but it won't be until years later, when a new generation of instructors arrive, that the students engage in role-playing exercises, the most you can get from classroom instruction. An exercise close to actual negotiation.At the same time, the training was a bit haphazard, because a lot of material was copied from criminal psychology courses, which was not very applicable.For example, they would send us photos and dossiers documenting child molesters or rapists, and then ask us to discuss how someone with that personality would react in a hostage situation.In addition, there is more weapon training, which is still the focus of Quantico's training.

Much of the hostage negotiation course we later taught was learned not from other agents in the classroom, but from the rigors of field work.As I mentioned, it was the case of Corey Moore, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, that brought Pat Malany to fame.After taking hostage the sheriff of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and his secretary, he publicly made several demands, one of which was that all white people must immediately leave the earth. Well, as far as negotiating tactics go, you don't give in to their demands if you have other options.And there are some requirements that cannot be fulfilled under any circumstances, and the above-mentioned requirements can undoubtedly be classified in this category.The case aroused widespread attention across the country, so much so that even the President of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, offered to talk to Moore to help resolve the hostage crisis.On Mr. Carter's part, this was done with good intentions and the sincerity with which he later sought to resolve what appeared to be intractable global conflicts, but it was not the best policy for negotiating. I was dealing with That's not what you want in a hostage crisis.Neither does Pat Malany.The problem with bringing in a big shot to mediate is that, in addition to causing other outlaws to do the same, it leaves you with no room to maneuver.You've been trying to mediate through a middleman so you can buy time and avoid making promises you don't want to keep.And when you put the hostage-taker in direct contact with someone he believes is the decision maker, there's nothing anyone can do.If you disagree with his request, you risk screwing things up in the blink of an eye.The longer you can delay talking to them, the better.

When I transferred to Quantico in the early 1980s to teach hostage negotiation tactics, we used a haunting videotape that was filmed in St. Louis a few years earlier.Eventually we stopped playing the tape because the St. Louis Police Department wasn't happy about it.In this video, a young black man robs a bar at gunpoint.The robbery was unsuccessful, he was trapped in the house, the police surrounded the place, and he took a group of people as hostages. The police dispatched a negotiating team of black and white officers to negotiate with him.However, as shown in the video tape, instead of treating him objectively, this group of policemen tried to solve the problem from his point of view with flattering words.They chattered and interrupted him constantly, not listening to what he was saying, and not trying to understand what he was trying to do in the hostage situation.

As the Chief of Police arrived on the scene - and again, I will never allow this to happen - the cameras panned.As soon as the chief arrived, he "officially" ignored his request, and then, as you can see, the guy pulled the trigger on his own head, and his brains spilled out. Contrast this case with Pat Malany's Cory Moore case.It was clear that Moore had misbehaved, and it was clear that all white people were not going to leave this planet.But by listening to the demands of the hostage-takers, Malani was able to discern what Moore really wanted and what would satisfy him.Malani offered to hold a press conference for Moore to make his case, and Moore released the hostages without bloodshed.

During my training at Quantico, I had become well-known in the behavioral science department, so Pat Malany, Dick Alter, and Bob Ressler recommended me to Jack Puff.Before I left for my post, the section chief called me into his basement office for an interview.Puff is a lovely, nice and friendly guy.He was dark, smoked, and looked like Victor Mathur.He told me that the instructors were very impressed with me and hoped that I would consider returning to Quantico as an instructor for the FBI National Academy training program.I am flattered by the offer, which I gladly accept. Back in Milwaukee, I was still on the Criminal Response Team and the Special Weapons Strike Team, but spent a lot of time traveling across the state, training business executives on how to deal with kidnapping and extortion, and training bank officials on how to deal with individuals and gangs Armed robbery, which is particularly rampant in rural banks.

The mall-seasoned business people are astonishingly ignorant of how to keep themselves safe, allowing their schedules and even vacation plans to be featured in local newspapers and company newsletters.This makes them a likely target for kidnappers and fraudsters.I taught them and their secretaries and subordinates how to evaluate incoming calls and requests for disclosure, and how to determine whether an incoming fraudulent call was genuine or false.For example, every now and then a company manager gets a call saying his wife or child has been kidnapped and he has to put a certain amount of ransom in a certain location.In fact, his wife or children are perfectly safe and there is no danger at all during the whole process.But the gangster who wanted to make ill-gotten gains knew in advance that no matter what the reason was, he would not be able to find his family in a short time, so if the gangster could tell one or two facts that seemed to be tenable, he could Make the terrified manager obediently accept his request. Likewise, by urging bank officials to establish certain simple procedures, we can make bank robberies less likely to succeed.One of the usual tricks of robbers is to wait outside the bank early in the morning, waiting for the branch manager to open the door for work.The gangsters would hold the manager hostage, and when other unsuspecting employees came to work, they would be detained one by one.Later, you learned that the branch office was full of hostages, and you took over a big mess. I've had some banks set up a basic code system.When the first person comes to work in the morning and finds that everything is ok, he or she does one thing—adjust the curtains, move the potted plant, turn on a certain light, whatever—as a signal to others Indicates that the condition is normal.If the second person comes to work without seeing the signal, he or she should not walk in, but call the police immediately. Likewise, we train tellers—because they are the key to the safety of their banks—how to play by ear rather than die in a dire situation.We explained how to carefully handle the explosive money bags that were widely used at the time.Based on the results of my interviews with some successful bank robbers, I instructed tellers to deliberately "look nervously" when a note expressing their intent to rob was handed to them by letting the note land on their side of the cashier's room at the grille instead of giving it back to the robbers, thus preserving a valuable piece of incriminating evidence. I know from interviews that robbers don't like to attack banks, so if you can record strangers who enter the bank, especially those who make simple or routine requests (such as asking for notes to be exchanged for coins) , may be very helpful in solving the case.Had the teller been able to scribble the person's license plate number or note down any form of identification, the ensuing robbery would often have been solved. I started poking around with the homicide detectives, and I also visited the medical examiner's office.Any forensic pathologist, like most good detectives, will tell you that the most important piece of evidence in any murder investigation is the victim's body, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about that.I believe my fascination with this can partly be traced back to my youthful aspirations to become a veterinarian and to understand how body structure and function relate to life.But as much as I enjoyed working with homicide squads and forensics labs, what really interested me was the psychology of the criminal: what drives a murderer to commit a crime?What factors led him to commit the murder under the circumstances? During the weeks I trained at Quantico, I was exposed to several of the more bizarre murders, the most bizarre of which occurred almost in my backyard, which was actually about 140 miles away.But that's close enough. In the 1950s, Edward Gein lived in seclusion in rural Plainfield, Wisconsin, with a population of only 642.He quietly began his criminal career, initially as a grave robber.He was particularly interested in the skin of corpses, which he cut off, tanned, and draped over himself, in addition to adorning a tailor's mannequin and various furnishings.For a while, he wanted to have sex-reassignment surgery, a bold and innovative move in the American Midwest in the 1950s.When surgery failed, he decided to make the next best thing, which was to make himself a women's dress out of real women's skin.Some speculated he was trying to be like his dead domineering mother.If this case sounds familiar at first, it's because parts of it have been woven into Robert Bloch's novel Psycho (which has been made into a Hitchcock classic), and also narrated by Thomas Harris implanted his video.Harris heard the story while auditing a class at Quantico. If Gein's delusional needs hadn't expanded to "create" more corpses to use, he might have continued to live in the shadowy world of the ghouls.When we started our work on serial killers, this "escalation behavior" was a phenomenon we recognized in almost all cases.Gein was accused of murdering two middle-aged women, although the number of victims may have been greater. In January 1958, he was diagnosed with insanity and was sent to Central State Hospital and Mendota Psychiatric Sanatorium in Waupun, where he remained for the rest of his life.He was a model prisoner all his life. In 1984, at the age of 77, Gein died peacefully in the geriatric ward of the Mendota Nursing Home. Needless to say, as a local police detective or field agent, you don't come into contact with such things very often.When I returned to Milwaukee, I wanted to learn as much about the case as possible.But when I checked with the state attorney general's office, I found that the records of the case had been sealed and banned because the crime was too crazy. When I identified myself as an FBI agent and was interested in the case from a teaching standpoint, the office opened the file for me.I followed the office staff into the archives room, took out several boxes of files from the long shelf, and had to remove the sealing wax to open them. I will never forget this scene.One of the photos inside is unforgettable: the naked, headless female corpse is hung upside down by ropes and pulleys, cut open from the breastbone to the genitals, and the reproductive organs are all cut off.Other photos show severed heads on a table with their eyes open and staring blankly.These pictures are so shocking, so incredible.I began to speculate about who the real culprit was and how this knowledge might help in finding him.In a real sense, the matter has been on my mind ever since. At the end of September 1976, I left Milwaukee for a temporary assignment at Quantico, where I had been selected to be number one.Counselor for seven training courses.Pam had to stay alone in Milwaukee, running the house and raising Erica, who was only one year old, while teaching.This is the first time I have traveled away from home many times over the years.I don't think most people in the bureau, in the military and in the diplomatic world, understand the burden that spouses in the rear carry. The Bureau of Investigation National Academy's rigorous 11-week training program recruits accomplished and senior law enforcement officials from around the country and around the world.Academy cadets usually train alongside Bureau agents.The way to distinguish the two types of trainees is by the color of their shirts.Bureau agents wear blue shirts, Academy cadets wear red shirts.Another difference: Academy students tend to be older and more experienced.In order to be eligible for admission, you must be recommended by your local superintendent and approved by your Quantico instructor.The National Academy not only provides professional training in the latest law enforcement knowledge and techniques, but also provides an informal venue for the Bureau to develop personal relationships with officers everywhere, a relationship that has proven to be an invaluable resource time and again.The director of the National Academy training program is Jim Cotter, a real law enforcement officer beloved by the police. As a counselor, I am in charge of a class of 50 students.Despite the policy of then-director Patrick Gray and his successor, Clarence Kelly, to open up the bureau to the narrow confines of the Hoover era, the National Academy had yet to enroll any women.In addition to the American students, I also had students from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Egypt in my class.You live in a dormitory with them, and they expect everything from you. You have to be an instructor, a social teacher, a medical staff, something like the female guide in the Boy Scout squad.Behavioral Sciences staff can use this to observe how you deal with the police, how you adjust to the Quantico environment, and how you cope with stress. There is a lot of pressure to say the least.The training the trainees receive is top-notch, but it comes at a cost: away from their families, living in a dormitory for the first time in their adulthood, not drinking alcohol in the dormitory, sharing bathrooms with people they don't know, and being forced to undergo intense physical exertion training that most people haven't had since the end of special agent training.By the sixth week or so, many of the cops were going crazy, crashing into the white cinderblock walls at every turn. Of course, counselors are also very difficult to be.The way each facilitator performs assigned tasks is different.As in any other situation in life, I decided that I'd better have a sense of humor if my class was going to make it through the training program intact.Some counselors take a different approach.One of them was so strict that he even severely reprimanded the students during the intramural sports competition.By the third week, the class he was in charge of was so annoyed that the students gave him a set of suitcases, which meant "get out of here". Another counselor was a former secret agent, let me call him Fred.He had never had a drinking problem before he came to Quantico, but he did pick up a lot since he came here. The facilitator should observe the participants for signs of depression.In fact, Fred liked to shut himself in his room, smoking or drinking until his mind went blank.Only the fittest will survive when you're up against the tried and tested cops of the streets.The slightest weakness is exposed, and you're screwed.Fred was such a nice guy, very sensitive and understanding, trusting, so he couldn't get the cops down. There was a rule in perpetual effect at that time: women were not allowed to stay overnight.Fred was approached one night by a policeman complaining that he "couldn't take it any longer."As a counselor, you don't want to hear about this kind of thing.His roommate kept sleeping with a different woman every night, which kept him awake.So Fred and that guy came to that dormitory together, only to find five or six people waiting at the door, holding money in their sweaty hands, waiting for their turn to go to battle.Furious, Fred burst into the room and grabbed the guy who was on top of the blonde and lifted him off, only to discover that the "woman" was a blow-up doll. A week later, a policeman came to Fred's room in the middle of the night, saying that his roommate, Harry, was depressed and had just opened the window and jumped out.First of all, the windows of the dormitories are not allowed to be opened.Fred hurried across the corridor, rushed into the room, and looked out the open window to see Harry lying bloodied on the grass.Fred ran down the stairs quickly and rushed to the suicide scene, but Harry jumped up and frightened Fred out of his wits.Coincidentally, someone took away a bottle of ketchup from the restaurant that night!By graduation, Fred's hair was thinning, he was slovenly, his legs were often numb, and he walked with a limp.A neurologist performed a clinical examination of him and found nothing wrong.A year later, he had returned to the field station, having been relieved of duty on grounds of disability.I feel sorry for him, but cops and cops are very similar in at least one respect: you have to prove to everyone how tough you are. Although I adopted an easy-going and humorous approach, I was not immune to similar encounters. Fortunately, most of the tricks I received were common pranks on campus.Once, the students in my class removed all the furniture from my bedroom; another time, they cut my sheets short; and several times, they glued cellophane to my toilet seat.You have to find ways to relieve stress. There was a time when they drove me so mad that I decided to hide for a while.This group of people is worthy of being an excellent policeman, and they can accurately sense the arrival of that moment.They padded my green MGA with hollow cinder blocks just enough to leave the wheels free so the wheels would just spin when they started.I got in the car, started the engine, slammed on the clutch, and put it in gear, but the car just wouldn't accelerate, and I couldn't figure out why the car wouldn't go away.I got out, cursing a British car with such a crappy engine.I popped the hood, kicked the tires, and bent over to check the car.In an instant, the lights of the entire parking lot were on.They were all sitting in their cars with their headlights on and the light was shining on me.They kept saying that they liked me very much, and after they had had enough trouble, they put the car back on the ground for me. Foreign students cannot avoid being teased.Many foreign students bring empty suitcases when they come, so they often go to military service agencies to make big purchases.I was particularly impressed by an Egyptian colonel.He once asked a police officer from Detroit what the word "fuck" meant. (Big mistake.) The officer told him (and his interpretation was somewhat accurate): It was a generic word with many different meanings depending on the context, but most of the time it was almost applicable.One of the layers means "beautiful" or "advanced". So this guy goes to the military service agency, walks up to the camera counter, points his finger and says, "I want to buy that fucking camera." The young female shop assistant who changed her face when she heard this asked him: "What do you want?" "I want to buy that fucking camera." Several other practitioners who were present quickly walked up to him and explained to him that although this word is indeed used a lot, it is not allowed to say it in front of women and children. There is also a Japanese police officer, out of etiquette considerations, asked an American police officer how to show due etiquette when meeting an instructor whom he respects very much.So whenever I passed him in the hallway, he always greeted me with a smile and a respectful bow: "Fuck you, Mr. Douglas." Instead of complicating things, I bowed back and said with a smile, "Fuck you too." Generally speaking, when the Japanese send personnel to the National Academy for training, they will insist on sending two students at a time.It didn't take us long to learn that one of them was the magistrate, the other a subordinate, and was responsible for shining his shoes, making his bed, cleaning his house, and generally serving as his servant.Once, several trainees went to Jim Cotter and complained that the Japanese commander had to practice karate and martial arts regularly and beat his followers to death.Cotter called the officer over, explained to him that everyone in the academy was equal, and told him in no uncertain terms that his behavior was unacceptable.This incident confirms that cultural barriers must be overcome. I sat in on classes at the National Academy and got a feel for how they teach.When the training ended in December, both the Behavioral Sciences Unit and the teaching team offered me a job.The head of the teaching group also offered to pay for my further graduate studies, but I felt more interested in behavioral science. I returned to Milwaukee a week before Christmas, so confident of my new position at Quantico that Pam and I also purchased a five-acre piece of land not far south of the Bureau of Investigation National Academy in Quantico. In January 1977, the Bureau announced that it would conduct a human resources study, during which all personnel transfers would be temporarily frozen.My new position was in vain.I got hooked on the Virginia estate and had to borrow money from my father and pay the installments, but I still had no idea what I was doing with the bureau. A few weeks later, while I was out on a case with an agent named Henry McCaslin, I received a call from headquarters announcing my transfer to Quantico in June to a position in the Behavioral Science Division. At 32, I am replacing Pat Malany, who will be moving to the Oversight Division at headquarters.This position is no small feat and I am up for the challenge.The only thing I'm really worried about is the students I'm going to be teaching.I know how they mess with counselors, even ones they like.I can imagine how ruthless they would be to the instructors who were savage in class.The dance I'm going to do is pretty good, but I'm not sure I've got the tunes by heart.If I'm going to teach them behavioral science, I'd better figure out how to cut out as much bullshit as possible.In order to impart valuable knowledge to a sheriff 15 to 20 years my senior, I knew it had to be something real and something to say. It was with these concerns that I entered the next stage of my life journey.

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