Page 52 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

It is worth mentioning that at the time Markopolos was president of the Boston Security Analysts
Society, a trade group with a membership of 4,000 professionals. He didn’t have to show up
incognito at Spitzer’s speech, wearing a bulky overcoat and clutching a sheaf of documents wrapped
inside two plain brown envelopes. He could have just called Spitzer’s office directly and asked for a
meeting.
I asked him about that:
Markopolos: That’s another regret of mine. I hold myself responsible for that. Spitzer was the
guy. I should’ve just called him. Maybe I would’ve gotten through, maybe I wouldn’t have,
but I think I would have.
MG: You had standing. You were—

Markopolos: President of the Security Analysts.…If the past president or current president…
calls the boss and says, “I have the biggest scheme ever. It’s right in your backyard,” I think I
would’ve gotten in.
MG: Why don’t you think you did that?
Markopolos: Woulda, coulda, shouldas. Regrets, you know. There’s no perfect investigation and
I made my share of mistakes, too. I should have.

Markopolos sees his mistake now, with the benefit of over a decade of hindsight. But in the midst
of things, the same brilliant mind that was capable of unraveling Madoff’s deceptions was incapable
of getting people in positions of responsibility to take him seriously. That’s the consequence of not
defaulting to truth. If you don’t begin in a state of trust, you can’t have meaningful social
encounters.
As Levine writes:
Being deceived once in a while is not going to prevent us from passing on our genes or seriously
threaten the survival of the species. Efficient communication, on the other hand, has huge
implications for our survival. The trade-off just isn’t much of a trade-off.
Markopolos’s communication at the library was, to put it mildly, not efficient. The woman he
gave the envelope to, by the way? She wasn’t one of Spitzer’s aides. She worked for the JFK
Library. She had no more special access to Spitzer than he did. And even if she had, she would’ve
almost certainly seen it as her responsibility to protect a public figure like Spitzer from mysterious
men in double-size overcoats clutching plain brown envelopes.

5.

After his failures with the SEC, Markopolos began carrying a Smith & Wesson handgun. He went to
see the local police chief in the small Massachusetts town where he lived. Markopolos told him of
his work against Madoff. His life was in danger, he said, but he begged him not to put that fact in
the precinct log. The chief asked him if he wanted to wear body armor. Markopolos declined. He
had spent seventeen years in the Army Reserves and knew something about lethal tactics. His
assassins, he reasoned, would be professionals. They would give him two shots to the back of the
head. Body armor wouldn’t matter. Markopolos installed a high-tech alarm system in his house. He
replaced the locks. He made sure to take a different route home every night. He checked his
rearview mirror.

When Madoff turned himself in, Markopolos thought—for a moment—that he might finally be
safe. But then he realized that he had only replaced one threat with another. Wouldn’t the SEC now
be after his files? After all, he had years of meticulously documented evidence of, at the least, their
incompetence and, at the most, their criminal complicity. If they came for him, he concluded, his
only hope would be to hold them off as long as possible, until he could get help. He loaded up a
twelve-gauge shotgun and added six more rounds to the stock. He hung a bandolier of twenty extra
rounds on his gun cabinet. Then he dug out his gas mask from his army days. What if they came in
using tear gas? He sat at home, guns at the ready—while the rest of us calmly went about our
business.