Forty-five participants were randomly assigned to: (1) a truth-telling condition in which participants were asked to recall a videotaped event they had just seen; (2) an uninformed deception condition in which participants who had been given only guidelines about the content of the videotaped event were asked to recall the event as though they had seen the videotape; or (3) an informed deception condition in which participants received information about CBCA before they were asked to pretend they had seen the videotape. CBCA raters scored the accounts and compared the total CBCA scores of the three conditions. The study also examined the extent to which CBCA assessments could correctly classify truthful and deceptive accounts, first by means of a discriminant analysis and secondly by asking a British CBCA expert to judge the veracity of the statements. Liars were capable of influencing CBCA assessments. First, the CBCA scores of liars who were informed about CBCA were similar to the CBCA scores of truth tellers and significantly higher than the CBCA scores of liars who were not informed about CBCA. Second, the objective status of the participant (truth teller vs. informed liar) could not be successfully predicted in a discriminant analysis on the basis of total CBCA scores. Third, statements of the majority of informed liars were assessed as truthful by a British CBCA expert. Notes, tables, references, appendix