[supercat]

Interesting use of the word was... apparently Mike used to be something other than what he is now. Take a look at this web site and decide for yourself. Detecting Deception Through Statement Analysis

Interesting site, though I found at least one bit I'm not so sure of:

# "As I was walking home last night I could hear someone following me."
"I could hear" is future tense. "I heard" is past tense.

How is the conditional "future tense"? To my mind, saying "I could hear someone following me" has a different meaning from "I heard someone following me". The latter would suggest that there was a distinct moment in time when the speaker noticed the sound of the person following, and the person did not physically hear the sound prior to noticing it. The former would suggest that the person started physically hearing the sound of the person following before they took notice of it. Rather a different meaning justifying the different phraseology.

[Shadrak]

He is saying, when the tense in a sentence is changed or incorrect, the person may be trying to deceive you. Further questioning is needed to determine the truth.

Past Tense - I heard a noise!
Present Tense - I can hear you.
Future Tense - I hope I can hear what he has to say.

LEO's need to be able to determine when someone is being deceptive or just uses bad grammar.

As he states in his book, "People's words will betray them."