It was true that Keyser had health problems, but the remark was widely interpreted, including by some close to Keyser, as disparaging.26
Mitchell ended her questioning with an expression of admiration at how well-educated Ford was about the neurological effects of trauma, and she wondered if she knew the best way to plumb the memory and get to the truth when interviewing trauma victims. It was not, Mitchell noted, an interview cut up into five-minute increments, but a sustained interview with a trained questioner in a private setting—a technique called a “cognitive interview.” “This is not a cognitive interview. Did anybody ever advise you from Senator Feinstein’s office, or from Representative Eshoo’s office to go get a forensic interview?” Mitchell asked. No one had, said Ford. “Instead, you were advised to get an attorney and take a polygraph, is that right?” Mitchell asked. “And instead of submitting to an interview in California, we’re having a hearing here today in five-minute increments. Is that right?”
Mitchell referred to an article about the use of the cognitive interview, a technique that is considered effective at eliciting accurate statements. It is also useful for questioning subjects whose veracity is in question. Studies have shown that, properly conducted, cognitive interviews can distinguish between honest and deceptive witnesses with more than 80 percent accuracy.27 If the senators on the Judiciary Committee had truly been interested in determining whether Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth, they could have done so more reliably in a private interview that also would have satisfied her professed concerns about privacy and convenience.
Instead, Mitchell was unable to ask Ford to give an uninterrupted narrative, to repeat it chronologically and in reverse, or to make a drawing of the scene. But she did employ several important features of the cognitive interview. For instance, she established rapport at the beginning by allowing the witness to offer an extended version of her story, only later going back to clarify inconsistencies. She presented her questions in collaborative terms, asking the subject to help her understand. She confronted Ford about inconsistencies in a piecemeal fashion, avoiding an opportunity for her to come up with a single comprehensive explanation for all her inconsistencies, as witnesses often do when they are lying. Mitchell had uncovered a number of problems with Ford’s testimony, but she had done so in such a gentle way that it was not clear that Ford had recognized what was happening.
The media certainly didn’t pick up on what Mitchell had revealed. The incomprehension that Cynthia Alksne of MSBNC revealed was typical: “You build a cross-exam to a crescendo and you spend hours planning it and you’ve had this witness for a lot of time. I’ve never seen a worse crescendo in my whole life. I mean, that was awful. To end on that. I mean, it was mind boggling that’s the way it ended about ‘this is five minutes’ or ‘you should have been in L.A.’ or ‘why weren’t you here?’ It didn’t even go out with a whimper. It went out with a simmer. I mean, I don’t even know what that was. That’s the worst cross-exam I’ve ever seen. Am I wrong?”28
The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, were not cross-examining Ford, nor were they playing to the cable news peanut gallery. Their only concern was a very small audience—the Republican senators whose votes were in question and which they could not afford to lose—in particular, Senators Flake and Murkowski.
These senators also cared deeply about the protocols of the Senate and suspected that the Democrats were simply using Ford as a weapon against Kavanaugh. They were dismayed by the revelation that Feinstein was responsible for Ford’s being represented by the political animal Debra Katz. In fact, the performance of Ford’s attorneys during the morning’s questioning was, for these senators, the most interesting part of the morning’s hearings. Katz and Bromwich had interrupted when Ford was asked about her legal representation and tried to keep her from talking about whether she knew about repeated offers of the Senate interviewers to come to her. Grassley had made that offer to her lawyers and even repeated it on television. If Ford was to be believed, they had kept this information from her, forcing their timid client into the spotlight of a Washington hearing. Republican senators, including some who were key votes, were appalled by Ford’s attorneys. They felt that people who cared for her should have told her about the repeated offers to travel to her.