Paul Bass Photo
Behind this anonymous door three floors above downtown New Haven, a Yale-affiliated shrink is paying local immigrants $150 to help the FBI sniff out liars when hunting terrorists.
At least that’s the officially stated purpose of the work quietly taking place at the “Center for Research and Development.”
The center is a for-profit contract-research shop that shares space with other psychiatrists in a small suite of offices with an unmarked entrance on the third floor of the Gold Building, the glass tower that reflects the sky and surrounding buildings next to the state courthouse at 234 Church St.
A psychiatrist affiliated with the Yale Medical School, Charles A. Morgan, has been paying local Colombians, among other immigrants, $150 apiece to give honest answers to a set of questions about their beliefs, then to lie.
The title of the study: “Efficacy of Interviewing to Detect Lies about Beliefs.” The study involves interviewing and video-recording 150 participants over two years.
Who’s paying the bill? The study’s sponsor, according to an “informed consent” sheet signed by study participants, is the “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
The local FBI office referred questions about the study to the national office, where Special Agent Ann Todd said she did not have any information immediately available about such a study.
The goal of the study, according to the informed consent sheet: “to test how well specific interviewing techniques can be used to tell when a person is lying or telling the truth about their beliefs. … to test whether these techniques are valid and whether they may be useful to law enforcement professionals tasked with protecting the public against terrorism threats … [and] whether the methods are valid cross culturally.”
All of which may have transpired unnoticed beyond the immigrant community in New Haven if not for a separate controversy that erupted last week over similar work conducted by Charles Morgan. That controversy involved another center he was allegedly setting up at Yale with a $1.8 million federal Department of Defense grant to corral local immigrants for research to benefit military “special ops” abroad. Yale quickly quashed that project after an outcry from New Haven’s immigrant community (reported here). Then it turned out that the mysterious Dr. Morgan may never have had that $1.8 million grant in the first place; first the DoD said he did, then it said he didn’t.
Be Believable, Get The $150
Diosa: “It was fun.”
Hernando Diosa (pictured), a Colombian-born reporter for the Spanish-language weekly La Voz Hispana, heard about Morgan’s private, putative FBI research project from fellow immigrants. The researchers “were trying to get Colombians — only Colombians — to do the study,” fellow Colombian immigrants told him.
Diosa stopped by the center’s office in the Gold building on Feb. 15. He spent an hour or so answering questions about how he feels about, say, whether foreign-born students should wear ponchos to an American school, he said. He was asked to give the honest answer, then to lie, he said.
Participants are asked to sign the five-page single-spaced “consent form” before beginning the study. The form lists phone numbers to call if participants have any concerns later on. And it spells out how the experiment unfolds, with some potentially hard-to-follow conditions governing whether participants might forfeit their money:
“• One meeting with the research team that will be approximately 1 hour in duration. During the first 1/2 hour of your time you will be given instructions about the study and participate in an English comprehension test. After this you will be given a questionnaire and have approximately 20 minutes of time to complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire will ask you about your personal beliefs on a series of topics that range from gun control, the military, abortion, the rights of women, reproductive rights, gay rights, political violence, etc. Once you have completed the questionnaire you will then be informed as to whether or not you will be asked to be truthful or deceptive in our study. If you are asked to be TRUTHFUL, this will mean that when you are interviewed about your beliefs you can be completely honest. If you are asked to be DECEPTIVE this will mean when you are interviewed and asked about your belief, you will need to lie and claim that you hold a view that is OPPOSITE to your true belief. …
“• After you learn whether you are to be truthful or deceptive, you will then participate in an interview with a research person.
“• During this interview you will be asked questions about your beliefs in several topic areas (like the topics you saw on the questionnaire). If you have been assigned to the truthful condition it is important you appear as honest and sincere as possible so that the interviewer believes what you say about your beliefs. If the interviewer believes you then you will keep the money you have earned in the study; if the interviewer decides that you are lying, you will risk losing the money you have gained in the study.
“• If you have been assigned to the deceptive condition, when you are interviewed you should try to appear as honest and sincere as possible when you are lying so that the interviewer believes that you are telling the truth about what you say you believe. If the interviewer believes you, you keep the money you have earned in the study; if they do not you risk losing the money you have earned in the study. …
“Your interview will be videotaped in order that we may later analyze what happened during your participation in the study. Your interview will be transcribed and reviewed by a member of our research team. Your videotape will be identified only by a research number. Our research team will keep the videos and will not give them to other people or organizations. You will not be identified in the videotape.
“If at any time you wish to stop participating as a subject in this study, let your interviewer know by verbally stating your desire to end your participation. Once you state your desire to end your participation to the interviewer, the video camera will be stopped and any recorded materials will be erased.”
A proviso later in the document reveals that in fact others may at some point review the participant’s performance: “Records of your participation in this study will be held confidential so far as permitted by law. However, the investigator, the sponsor or it’s [sic] designee, and, under certain circumstances, the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and the New England Institutional Review Board (NEIRB) will be able to inspect and have access to confidential data that identifies you by name. … By signing this consent form, you authorize the investigator to release your medical records to the sponsor, the OHRP, and the NEIRB.”
Diosa passed. He got his $150.
“For me,” he said, “it was fun.”
“Nothing Good”
Yale Photo
Advocates for Latino community groups in town, on the other hand, blasted the similar project Morgan announced he was planning to conduct at the now-quashed Yale research institute. They criticized the idea of relying on local immigrants to help the federal grants weed out alleged liars; they questioned the eventual use of such research, whether it would help the U.S. conduct future foreign interventions like past ones in Nicaragua and Angola. “We’re not lab rats,” said one of the advocates, John Jairo Lugo. (Read more about that here.)
In interviews before the controversy broke last week, Morgan (pictured) defended the research, saying it was for benign purposes: to help the military communicate better with people abroad. In one interview with a weekly campus publication, the Yale Herald, he discussed his research approach with a reporter at the private center on Church Street.
Morgan was less forthcoming about his private research center at the Gold Building when reached by phone for this story. “I really don’t comment on private work with private companies,” he said.
He was reminded that he had in fact conducted an interview with the Yale Herald there.
“The Yale Herald has a lot of erroneous information in it. I actually am talking to an attorney. I think I have a good defamation suit,” he replied.
“Everybody has assumed a lot of erroneous things,” about his research, he said. “Nothing good is going to come from conversations with reporters. I am not legally allowed to comment on” work for private companies. He declined to offer any information about the Center for Research and Development except to say he doesn’t own it.
Which is true, according to state business records. A Yale-affiliated psychiatrist named Vladimir Coric, Jr. started the business in 2005 and serves as its president.
Reached by phone Friday, Coric sent questions about the study back to Morgan. “It’s a contract research organization,” he said of the research center. “Specific questions should be referred to the principal investigator of the study, who is Dr. Morgan.”
Some colleagues in the field argue that Morgan got a bum rap in last week’s controversy. They say he opposes torture or other “advanced interrogation” techniques, that he has pioneered a humane, respectful way of communicating with people from other cultures.
Local immigrant advocates like Kica Matos are more skeptical of Morgan’s use of New Haven immigrants for terrorism-related or military research. Matos, a longtime Fair Haven-based immigrant rights activist, said she and fellow organizers are gearing up a campaign to urge local Latino immigrants not to participate in Morgan’s research.
Matos said Morgan’s current study at the Gold building “troubles” her because it racially profiles “vulnerable communities of color.” She also questioned the ultimate purpose of the research into how to question and assess responses from foreign-born Latinos.
“Interrogations are inherently coercive,” said Matos, the director of immigrant rights & racial justice for the national Center for Community Change. “The FBI is not a friend of communities of color. They have a long history of engaging in the most subversive and devious engagement with communities of color. COINTELPRO is an example.”