In March, the SEC charged Holmes with “massive fraud.” Last month, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California indicted Holmes for wire fraud and conspiracy.
Besides charisma and drive, Holmes and Nyad share other characteristics of accomplished con artists. Here’s one: the ability to convince people of the supposed purity of their motives. Former Secretary of State George Shultz on Holmes:
Everywhere you look with this young lady, there’s a purity of motivation…. (Bad Blood, p. 207)
Photographer Catherine Opie on Nyad:
One of the things that has been most incredible to me in terms of…following you through this process is the utter honesty in it. (Diana Nyad & Catherine Opie, 34:03)
Retired US Marine Corps General James Mattis, current Secretary of Defense, on Holmes:
“She has probably one of the most mature and well-honed sense of ethics—personal ethics, managerial ethics, business ethics, medical ethics that I’ve ever heard articulated,” the retired general gushed. (Bad Blood, p. 207)
Reporter Gio Benitez on Nyad:
She’s just this brilliant, brilliant person who has reflected so much on, really, the meaning of life…. She did [this swim] for the human spirit…. And I think that’s what’s really fascinating about this: it’s someone who has really, really taken a look at life…at a really deep level. (Diana Nyad Discusses Historic Swim, 55:45)
. . .
Another con artist trait that Holmes and Nyad share: they are both great at convincing others of their ostensible greatness. One of Holmes’s professors at Stanford, according to Carreyrou, held that…
…Holmes was a once-in-a-generation genius, comparing her to Newton, Einstein, Mozart, and Leonardo da Vinci. (Bad Blood, p. 280)
According to Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, Nyad is…
…the greatest long-distance swimmer in the history of the sport. (From “Just Keep Swimming”—full text here)
. . .
Author Virginia Heffernan (of Slate’s inimitable TrumpCast, among other places) recently wrote about Carreyrou’s book, as well as about other attempts to understand Holmes, for Wired magazine: “Elizabeth Holmes’ Downfall Has Been Explained Deeply—By Men.”
To get an unmediated look at Holmes, by men or otherwise, Heffernan went to the source:
[Holmes] didn’t talk to Carreyrou for his book, understandably…. But she has been giving talks now for a decade. So I watched them all.
Thank you, Virginia! That saved me alot of time. Since I’ve watched every Nyad video I could find, we can compare notes.
Before that happens, though, I want to say one thing about Heffernan’s premise. Men may not be the best gender to explain Holmes. But males—especially politically powerful, aging, white, conservative ones—have some explaining to do nonetheless. Take a look at the Theranos board, which Holmes engineered, by the way, to have no power over company decisions. Here are the members as of June 12, 2014:
- George Schultz, former Secretary of State
- William Perry, former Secretary of Defense
- Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser
- Sam Nunn, former U.S. Senator
- Bill Frist, former U.S. Senator (and a heart-transplant surgeon)
- Gary Roughead, retired U.S. Navy Admiral
- James Mattis, Retired USMC General and current Secretary of Defense
- Dick Kovacevich, former CEO of Wells Fargo
- Riley Bechtel, former CEO and chairman of the Bechtel Group
So this charismatic, young, female powerhouse plugged into something that caused the above fraternity to abandon all reason. Holmes’s feat should provide a field day for the Freudians and Jungians among us, but it comes down to this: Holmes turned out to be an incredible con artist when it came to aging male pillars of the military-industrial-governmental complex.
Holmes didn’t want the board’s permission or guidance, she wanted its cover, its air of authority. Its members gave it to her, no questions asked—just like Nyad’s famous friends ask no questions while covering Diana with a facade of respectability.
. . .
Back to the videos. “The idiosyncrasy of Holmes’ brain,” writes Heffernan, “was obvious almost from the second she started talking to audiences.” Heffernan continues:
It’s in her you-gotta-have-faith success creeds. She’s relentless with them, has no shame about even the worst speakers-circuit clichés—a combination of curdled prosperity gospel and you-go-girlism from the aughts.
I couldn’t have put it better myself—about Diana Nyad.
In her article, Heffernan quotes from the Holmes videos. I’ll repeat those quotations below, then follow them with parallel sentiments from Holmes’s aquatic equivalent.
Failure? Not in MY dictionary:
In 2009, at 25, [Holmes] told a small group at Stanford that the ticket to success was “conviction” that you could “make something work, no matter what.
There were thousands of people on that beach. They were crying. They were weeping. And it’s because they want to chase dreams too. But most don’t. But at least whatever dreams they have…they know that, if they just don’t give up, and I think I represented that ethic—don’t give up, and you will eventually make it to your other shore. (Diana Nyad on coming out, authenticity, & her epic swim, 7:30)
In other words, yes, this feat may be impossible for mere mortals to achieve; but I have the conviction, the fortitude, the “titanium cap of will” to make it happen!
On surrounding yourself with believers:
[Holmes] went on to say, “The worst possible thing in the world is to have someone who doesn’t believe in you.”
Nyad had surrounded herself with inexperienced trainers whose main qualifications seemed to be skill at squash racquets and unbridled adulation of the heroine. “It isn’t whether they know swimming,” Diana insisted. “It is whether they love you.” (“And One Who Failed,” Newsweek, 28 Aug 1978)
For Nyad, the above attitude carried over all the way to her 2013 swim. Many members of her crew had no experience helping out on marathon swims. The ones who did have experience had it with only one swimmer: Diana Nyad.
On the right to question:
“Every time you create something new, there should be questions,” Holmes said. “To me that’s a sign that you’ve actually done something that is transformative.” [Holmes says this after being forced to admit that there were problems at Theranos.]
[P]eople have a right…. But I didn’t mind those people…. Most of them were very reasonable and respectful. They just said, ‘Any big record needs to be vetted. And I agree with that. And I said, ‘I’m here for it.’ [Nyad says this after the marathon swimming community pushed her to address questions about her Cuba-Florida swim.](Nyad on Cheating Allegations)
On converting the heathens:
“First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world,” she said.
I heard from sports scientists, nutritionists, marine biologists, other marathon swimmers, other endurance athletes, plenty of fans. The whole world had now stamped this quest impossible…. Well…they’re all forgetting the one key factor that surpasses all the rest. That’s the power of the human spirit. (Find a Way, via The Art Of)
On haters:
After Carreyrou’s initial Theranos expose appeared in the Wall St. Journal in 2015, Holmes shrugged off all the specifics as…
…sourced by “the people who said to me there was no way I was going to succeed and be able to build this kind of company.” (Heffernan)
According to Nyad, those same sorts of people, all two of them, cause her no distress:
Believe me, I sleep very easily at night…. There are people who don’t believe Neil Armstrong ever went to the moon. And so there are only two left—there are two guys—and they’re at it…. Strong and heavy. And I just try to look to the New York Times and, today, People Magazine named [Find a Way] their book-of-the-week, and people like you who come out with respect. There’s plenty of positive. And just these two guys, I just have to let them go. (Politics & Prose)
. . .
Update: The other guy stopped ranting awhile back. But he’s still an infidel:
