So. Who's lying? Two versions don't mean there's a lie, memory experts say
Bruce Taylor Seeman,  Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Condoleezza Rice insists it happened like this. Richard Clarke says no, it happened like that. So who's lying?

Perhaps neither, according to memory experts, who say humans have a deep capacity to persuade themselves -- even in the face of conflicting evidence -- that they're telling the truth.

"There's a powerful brain mechanism that restructures memories to maximize our position in a story," said Dr. Charles Raison, an Emory University psychiatrist. "Both sides are doing that, I'm sure."

Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, testified recently before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Her testimony contrasted with that of Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief who recently seized the public stage with allegations that the al-Qaida terrorist network was not an urgent concern in the Bush administration before Sept. 11, 2001.

One of them could have been lying. But authorities on memory say disconnects on that episode and others may just as likely be blamed on quirks of the human mind, particularly as it operates in times of stress.

For the most part, memories are reliable, serving as vital survival tools for humans to keep track of events in their surroundings.

"If memory were mostly filled with error, you'd be dead," said Larry Cahill, a neurobiologist at the University of California-Irvine. "As a species, we'd have been selected out a long time ago."

But memory is far from infallible, and the information we store in our brains is vulnerable to everything from the power of emotions to the influence of self-interest.

"There's a perpetual bias in our memories," Raison said. "We overestimate the good we've done, and downplay the negatives in our lives. This is all germane to what happened on 9/11. People have built-in tendencies to structure memories along certain pathways, and really believe it. It's a trait that goes along with survival."

Rice may believe fervently, for example, that progress on a missile defense system showed the administration was confronting terrorist threats, said Douglas Herrmann, chairman of psychology at Indiana State University. On the other hand, Clarke may see these efforts as proof of negligence.

"I don't think it means there's no truth," Herrmann said. "It just makes it harder to get to the truth."

Memories can be flawed even when they seem completely certain.

They begin at the moment an event occurs, and it's long been understood that people construct varying versions of shared experiences. "It's like the blind men feeling the elephant," said Robin West, an associate psychology professor at the University of Florida. "They all get different views of it."

Researchers believe the stress of a particular moment has a profound impact on memory quality. An example is the Washington-area sniper case of 2002, when detectives were hindered by conflicting witness accounts, West said.

Whether stress was a factor in Rice's or Clarke's memories immediately after Sept. 11 is unknown. While overwhelming trauma may interfere with memories, a lesser level of stress may actually cement them.

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