Bella’s intro: I can’t think of anyone whose scholarship on the psychology of deception I admire more than Professor Maria Hartwig’s. Mark Fallon is a former Special Agent and has led some of the most important counterterrorism operations in modern history. He also wrote the book critiquing the U. S. government’s torture program. I am so grateful to them for writing this important guest post.

I could not share this with you as soon as they wrote it, though. It had to be reviewed by the United States government first. That’s ironic, because the authors are challenging the government’s sweeping pre-publication review process in this article. That challenge is part of their broader examination of the role of bullshit in the contemporary American political scene, and how it undermines freedom and democracy.

I posted the first part of this article on my blog at Psychology Today. If you have come here from there, you can start reading at Part II.

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