{"id":45589,"date":"2016-08-09T18:07:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T22:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=45589"},"modified":"2016-08-09T18:07:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T22:07:58","slug":"fmr-cia-agent-obama-displayed-high-level-of-deception-on-400-million-iranian-payment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=45589","title":{"rendered":"Fmr. CIA Agent: Obama Displayed \u2018High Level\u2019 of Deception On $400 Million Iranian Payment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more-->by Phil Houston and Don Tennant<br \/>\nLAW NEWZ<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-22697 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/static03.mediaite.com\/ln\/up\/2016\/07\/Obama725-e1469477061448.jpg\" alt=\"Image of President Barack Obama via Evan El-Amin\/Shutterstock\" width=\"320\" height=\"213\" \/><i>Phil Houston is CEO of\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.qverity.com\/\"><i>QVerity<\/i><\/a><i>, a training and consulting company specializing in detecting deception by employing a model he developed while at the Central Intelligence Agency.\u00a0He has conducted thousands of interviews and interrogations for the CIA and other federal agencies.\u00a0<\/i><i>His colleague Don Tennant contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<p>As the debate rages over whether the payment of $400 million to Iran was a ransom to secure the release of four Americans being held prisoner by Iranian authorities, our analysis of the behavior exhibited by President <strong>Barack Obama<\/strong> in explaining the payment suggests that it was almost certainly a precondition for the prisoners\u2019 release.<\/p>\n<p>In an Aug. 4 press conference held at the Pentagon, President Obama made a concerted effort to disassociate the payment from the release of the prisoners. He argued that the payment, which had been announced in January, constituted an agreement to release Iranian assets that had been frozen by the U.S., following a legal review that concluded that not returning the assets could cost the U.S. billions of dollars in litigation fees. The timing of the payment, President Obama insisted, was simply a consequence of having diplomatic negotiations with Iran for the first time in several decades. \u201cSo the issue is not so much that it was a coincidence, as it is that we were able to have a direct discussion,\u201d the President said. \u201cJohn Kerry could meet with the Foreign Minister, which meant that our ability to clear accounts on a number of different issues at the same time, converged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"qualified qualified-1\">What was never directly addressed was the key question as to whether the $400 million payment was a <i>precondition<\/i> for the release of the Americans. The high level of deceptive behaviors exhibited by President Obama during the press conference has left little doubt in our minds that it was.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xE6JHF_DoP8\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>First and foremost was the evasion behavior exhibited by the President, in the form of denial problems associated with the ransom question. We never heard the President explicitly state, \u201cWe did not pay ransom to secure the release of these four Americans.\u201d Instead, the President relied on the <i>non-specific<\/i> denial, \u201cWe do not pay ransom for hostages.\u201d At one point the President did say, \u201cWe do not pay ransom, <i>we didn\u2019t here<\/i>, and we don\u2019t, we won\u2019t in the future.\u201d But the denial issue here is its <i>isolated delivery<\/i>, buried in the long narrative of his argument. These denial problems are classic deceptive indicators.<\/p>\n<p>Also of particular concern was the President\u2019s aggression behavior, which took the form of an attack on the press and others who raised the ransom question.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been interesting to watch this story surface,\u201d the president said with a noticeable smile. \u201cSome of you may recall, we announced these payments in January\u2014many months ago. There wasn\u2019t a secret\u2014we announced them to all of you. Josh did a briefing on them,\u201d he said. Then, breaking into a chuckle, he said, \u201cThis wasn\u2019t some nefarious deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"qualified qualified-2\">The attack statements were amplified by the smiling and chuckling, another form of aggression behavior we often see when people are being deceptive in a matter that\u2019s extremely serious. The enormity of the ransom-for-hostages issue cannot be overstated, so when we see this inappropriate smiling or laughing, we attribute it to aggression in the form of dismissing an opposing position, and those who voice it, out of hand.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama persisted in this aggression behavior when he chided those who jumped on the payment-to-Iran story while ignoring what he claimed was the successful outcome of the deal with Iran.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I\u2019m interested in is, if there\u2019s some news to be made, why not have some of these folks who were predicting disaster say, \u2018You know what? This thing actually worked!\u2019 Now, that would be a shock,\u201d he said. Breaking into a chuckle again, the President continued. \u201cThat would be impressive, if some of these folks who said the sky is falling suddenly said, \u2018You know what? We were wrong, and we are glad that Iran no longer has the capacity to break out in the short term and develop a nuclear weapon.\u2019 But of course, that wasn\u2019t going to happen.\u201d Chuckling once again, he added, \u201cInstead, what we have is the manufacturing of outrage in a story that we disclosed in January.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At this point, the dismissiveness was approaching derision\u2014an attack seemingly aimed at silencing anyone who questioned the nature and timing of the payment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"qualified qualified-3\">And then there\u2019s the intense persuasion behavior in the form of convincing statements aimed at influencing our perception. Such statements, which were woven in throughout President Obama\u2019s remarks, are often relied upon by a person when the facts are not his ally. For example, the President invoked the \u201cheartbreaking\u201d presidential task of meeting with the families of other hostages.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got a number of Americans being held all around the world, and I meet with their families, and it is heartbreaking,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we have stood up an entire section of interagency experts who devote all their time to working with these families to get these Americans out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A few minutes later, in addressing the question of why the payment was made in cash, President Obama sought to turn our attention to what he argued has been the successful outcome of the deal with Iran.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason cash was exchanged is because we don\u2019t have a banking relationship with Iran, which is precisely part of the pressure that we are able to apply to them so that they would ship a whole bunch of nuclear material out, and close down a bunch of facilities that, as I remember, two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, was people\u2019s top fear and priority\u2014that we make sure Iran doesn\u2019t have break-out nuclear capacity,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t. This worked.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite his best efforts to manage everyone\u2019s perception, the President appears to be relying on a technicality to disguise the payment as something other than a precondition of release of the four Americans, or what most of us would call a ransom.<\/p>\n<p>All of this deceptive behavior notwithstanding, we remain incredibly thankful that four of our citizens are now home with their families. At the same time, while it can certainly be argued that using this longstanding arrangement as leverage to secure the release of these Americans was an ingenious move on the part of the Obama Administration, there was always a danger inherent in this ingenuity.<\/p>\n<p>We are convinced that the President\u2019s deceptive behavior is not indicative of any sort of change in the Administration\u2019s policy against paying ransom for hostages. Hopefully, no enemy of the U.S. will be foolhardy enough to believe that it does. But the fact remains that the Administration should certainly have understood that regardless of whether or not it was ransom, Iran was bound to exploit it as such. Presenting the Iranians with a golden opportunity to do so, and to thereby encourage other terrorist regimes and interests to step up their hostage-taking activities, could well have the exact same result as paying the ransom outright. It\u2019s a lesson that the next Administration would be very well-advised to consider.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lawnewz.com\/columnists\/fmr-cia-agent-obama-displayed-high-level-of-deception-when-questioned-on-400-million-iranian-payment\/\">http:\/\/lawnewz.com\/columnists\/fmr-cia-agent-obama-displayed-high-level-of-deception-when-questioned-on-400-million-iranian-payment\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}