After my last post (here)
in which I mentioned the case of US v. John Z. DeLorean, I got a slew
of messages (well, three) asking me to say more about how linguistic
analysis helped the car manufacturer get his acquittal at trial. So
here it is, in abbreviated form.
It's a lot of work analyzing 64 audio- and videotaped conversations.
After I corrected all the transcripts (always the first step), getting
them in jury ready condition, I started with a topic analysis to find
out who brought up which topics throughout. Then I clustered the topics
of each speaker to get a picture of what was most on their minds, their
agendas in other words. The first 30 or so conversations were between
DeLorean and an undercover FBI agent who posed as a banker. At first
the banker said that he thought he could get DeLorean's company either
a loan or that he could help find some investors in the company.
After several months of no progress along these lines the banker told
DeLorean that he couldn't get him a loan but he'd keep on trying to
find investors. Then he added, out of the blue, that he was also
involved in a drug importation business. If DeLorean would care to
invest 5 million dollars in it, this might solve his financial problems.
DeLorean's responses were non-committal because, as he testified, he
wanted to keep open the possibility that the banker might still be able
to find some investors. Several more conversations followed and
DeLorean still didn't bite on the banker's drug scheme. His substantive
topics continued to be about his problems getting the motor company up
and running and his need for investors to keep it afloat, accompanied
by a lot of bragging about how successful his new car would be. At one
point DeLorean told the agent an outright lie. Evading the banker's
persuasive efforts, DeLorean said that his last 2 million dollars had
already been taken by the bankrupcy court. Undaunted, the agent then
urged DeLorean to turn over either the titles of a few cars just off
the assembly line or some stock in his ski equipment manufacturing
plant. Getting nowhere with this, the government then switched tactics.
At the very time that these conversations had yielded nothing on which to base an indictment, other agents had just caught a drug smuggler flying
drugs into the country. When they questioned him, he told them that a
few years ago he had lived next door to the DeLorean family in San
Diego. Their sons, in fact, had kept in touch with each other over the
years. The name, DeLorean, leaped out at the agents and they got this
pilot to become a cooperating witness and visit with DeLorean to try to
convince him to buy into their drug scheme.
This secretly videotaped, 40 minute meeting took place at the L'Enfant
Plaza Hotel in Washington DC on September 4, 1982. It became the major
evidence used in the case. The pilot's task was to convince DeLorean
that if he would just invest something, anything, in their scheme, this
would be taken, as he put it, as "an act of good faith." It wasn't made
clear exactly what he meant by this. DeLorean assumed that
they meant it as an act of good faith to encourage them to find
investors. The pilot then put some charts on the coffee table and
showed DeLorean how his investment in their operation would make him
enough money to escape bankruptcy. When he explained that these were
"Colombian folks running a dope program," DeLorean's response was,
"It'll be dangerous." Taking this as a positive sign, the pilot went on
to explain how an $800,000 investment could return 40 million. He
pointed out that there were two ways to go -- either interim financing
or buy 100 kilos, a $300,000 investment, and get 14 million in return
within ten days, time enough to forestall bankruptcy.
To this proposal, DeLorean told another lie: "I'm getting money through
an Irish group. It's gotta be legitimate." He went on to explain how
"tough these guys" are. The plant was in Ireland, so this
reference, though not explicit, referred to the IRA. It was DeLorean's
way of saying thanks but no thanks, along with a hint of threat
in case he was pushed too far. Note that DeLorean did not explicitly
say "no," but certainly this could be inferred. It also still
left the door open for the agents to find investors, now DeLorean's
only hope for saving his company. Changing the subject, DeLorean then
asked, "Is their investment as a loan or as an equity investment?" The
pilot replied, "Their interest is in megamillion dollar coke sales...so
their interest is in stock." The government now believed that it had
all it needed and they quickly indicted DeLorean.
A cumulative analysis of all 64 conversations showed that DeLorean's
major substantive topic was to get either a loan or investors. The
agent went along with this at first, saying he'd try to help him, then
introduced the new topic, the drug scheme, over and over again without
dropping the topic of finding investors. DeLorean didn't bite. At
the final September 4 meeting we hear the two men talking about
"investment," with neither of them explicit about who was investing in
what. Both use the noun subject with no direct object, leaving this
ambiguous. DeLorean meant, "you invest in my company," while the
agent meant, "you invest in our drug operation." How to unravel this
ambiguity? Through the meaning that DeLorean conveyed throughout the 64
conversations, coupled with the fact that DeLorean never said "yes" to
any of the agents' proposals.
The prosecution in this case was based on several illusions that it
probably hoped would convince a jury to convict.
1. The piling up of 64 recordings gives the illusion that there
must be a huge pile of incriminatory evidence here. There wasn't. One
clue to the government's failure to get the evidence it wanted is that
the investigation went on for about a year before the indictment was
made. This indicates that the earlier tapes did NOT give them what they
needed.
2. The prominence of an indicted millionaire manufacturer is often
thought to be fair game for jury conviction. Obviously, not every
millionaire is a crook but there is often a negative illlusion or
predisposition that this is true.
3. The contamination principle was at work in this case. The very
mention of illegal stuff like drugs leads to the illusion that the
target is involved up to his ears, whether or not he really is.
4. The illusion that the agents' topics and agenda were about illegality
tends to override DeLorean's topics and agenda that he wanted only a
loan or investors.
5. The illusion created by ambiguity, noted above, can lead to the
interpretation of guilt unless words like "investment" are set in their
proper context.
Despite their lack of linguistic analysis, the government plowed right
on, believing only one hypothesis, that of DeLorean's guilt. Good
intelligence analysis investigates multiple hypotheses in the effort to
reach conclusions. Not having done this, the government wasted heaps
of taxpayer money on a lost cause and a failure to convict. The
sad thing is that DeLorean suffered even more.