Words in the silence among the weapons

Richard Butler, over a year ago now, was describing his experience with UNSCOM of attempting to inspect Iraq's putative weapon stashes. Not long afterward I thought that one thing he described might be one for the Dag's Dictionary ( www.abc.net.au/sydney/richardglover/ features/dagsdictionary.htm).

Am wondering if now he would change his description of the situation. A riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma may describe Russia -- another few layers of opacity may be around in a civilization whose people have been dancing between the world powers of the time back to thousands of years BCE in Persia & Mesopotamia.
In any case, the same situation does happen at other times (in fact, it may be becoming more common in things like political interviews [EXAMPLES?] ), so finding a more succinct word or phrase would still be useful.

He described a scene where an Iraqi officer was lying to him. He knew the officer was lying. The officer knew that Richard Butler knew the he was lying. Richard knew that the officer knew that Richard knew he was lying. But they both played along with straight faces, asking & answering questions.

(And they said the diagram for Knowledge Nation was complicated? Hah!)