One Little Slip, a whistle blowers story

Lying as a Tool — and Lying for Personal Gai

One of the things I’ve always valued about sharing experiences is my ability to speak in a way people understand. I don’t mean adopting accents or mannerisms the way politicians do when they land in a new town. I mean listening—reading the room, recognizing what matters to the person in front of me, and meeting them where they are. That skill isn’t rare, but it does require attention and honesty. And honesty, I learned early, is not the same thing as naivete.

Here’s a simple thought experiment. Imagine a child—call him Johnny—who is known as a liar by third grade. It doesn’t matter what the lies are about; what matters is that they work often enough to reinforce the behavior. Each year Johnny gets better. He learns which lies succeed, which fail, and how to adjust. If Johnny is smart, he refines the practice. By the time he graduates, lying isn’t something he does—it’s something he uses.

Now ask yourself: what happens when Johnny enters adult life? Can he work in his community? Can he be trusted with authority? The problem isn’t that he lies once or twice. The problem is that dishonesty becomes his operating system.

For someone who has lived a life like mine, lying does not come easily. In fact, it often works against you. I know I would never make a good salesman. I’ve watched people talk effortlessly, slipping falsehoods into conversation without hesitation, and I’ve been caught off guard by it. One of the most masterful conversationalists I ever knew was Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro. Whether you were already mid-conversation or he pulled you aside like he needed something, he could throw linguistic knuckleballs all day long. I miss those encounters.

Some people lie the way others breathe. And in a world where it’s become impolite—or even offensive—to distrust people for obvious reasons, that matters. It’s why I trust almost no one outside my closest inner circle. Most people eventually learn these lessons the slow way. Fortunately, very little of it affects my daily life anymore.

Sitting in public and reading faces is just an extension of what I did for decades. It becomes second nature. Most people give themselves away if you’re paying attention. I won’t dive into psychology here, but I learned very young that lying almost always made things worse. Even when I “got away with it,” there was a cost—usually guilt, sometimes consequences delayed just long enough to hurt more.

Because of that, I developed a simple rule with superiors: if I’m speaking, it’s the truth. I would speak my mind, and I would own it. I never advanced by favors, cronyism, or back-channel deals. References are one thing; indebting yourself to others is another. I’ve lived a life of hyper-independence, and in that world, reputation is currency. Once you spend it dishonestly, it’s gone.

That said, there is a critical distinction most people fail to understand: lying as a tool in controlled, ethical contexts versus lying for personal gain or concealment.

In the mid 1990’s, I became one of the first hostage negotiators in my department. Our training came from the FBI. Whatever my later opinions about that institution, the training itself was invaluable. One lesson in particular stayed with me for the rest of my career: in crisis negotiation, you may have to lie—and you must do it well.

In a hostage or barricade situation, deception can preserve life. But it cannot be casual. It cannot be sloppy. And it cannot rely on memory. We were taught to build what was called a “lie chart.” Literally: butcher paper on the wall, mapping each falsehood, how it connected to the next, and what could never change. It looked like cave drawings, but it worked. Because once a lie is told in a life-or-death situation, it must remain internally consistent forever.

Compare that to poker. If I bluff and forget what I said, I lose chips. In a crisis, people lose lives.

That is the difference.

What troubled me throughout my career was how quickly some people adopted lying to the public as a default behavior. Early on, I saw it clearly. A deputy riding with me one night called out a radar speed that simply wasn’t accurate. The difference was only a few miles per hour, but the point wasn’t the number—it was the choice. If you start your career forcing facts to fit your narrative, you will eventually force much worse.

From that moment on, I questioned everything that came across that deputy’s signature. Once you know someone is willing to lie when it doesn’t matter, you can never trust them when it does.

And this brings me to records.

There are three things that do not change:

1. History, whether you like it or not.
   
2. Personnel files, when they exist.
   
3. Lies committed to paper and signed, which become false statements or perjury.
   

Verbal lies can fade. Written lies do not.

When someone gives two sworn statements about the same incident that directly contradict each other, the issue isn’t which one is true. The issue is that one of them is a lie. In my career, that alone would have ended someone’s job. When it doesn’t, you are no longer dealing with error—you are dealing with tolerance for misconduct.

As it applies to my later interactions with the Chief of Police, there are facts that will never change. I documented my history. I ensured conversations of consequence were preserved. I understood exactly what was at stake when power shifted. And I knew that once allegations were put on paper, the record—not rhetoric—would decide the outcome.

What ultimately made me a threat was not hostility, ambition, or politics. It was that I represented something immovable: a long record of service, institutional memory, and a reputation built over decades. Reputation can’t be manufactured. It can’t be bought. And it can’t be erased by accusation alone.

Ironically, the very conduct I was accused of mirrors the complaints repeatedly made by those who sought to discredit me. The record speaks for itself. Mine is sparse. Others’ are not.

This chapter is not about name-calling or personal animus. It’s about patterns. About how dishonesty, once normalized, escalates. And about how the difference between lying as a controlled, ethical tactic and lying for personal gain is the difference between protecting life and destroying trust.

The rest of this book exists because that line was crossed, starting with my right to Freedom of Speech, a First Amendment protected right for those retaliated against.

And once crossed, it cannot be uncrossed.

Rope was given out freely, the reactions were as I calculated, and I’ve patiently waited .