Various scenes in the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles imply that Cameron is capable of telling lies when her mission requires it.
A conversation in "Vick's Chip" confirms that Cameron is capable of lying (see Quotes section).
There are a significant number of plot points that hinge on statements made by Cameron:
"Pilot"[]
Cameron's presence in the past[]
- John: So you just have like a account here?
- Cameron: Safety deposit box.
- Sarah: When did you open that?
- Cameron: 1963. (walks by an engraving that says, "THIS STONE WAS SET 1963 THIS DAY MARCH 7")
If this is a true statement, the question must be asked: how long has Cameron been operating in the past? If that operation has not been continuous, did she actually ever return to the future of her origin? If not, what has she been doing for 36 years (less the 73 days of actively hunting the Connors)? However, since Sarah addresses Cameron as "you" when she asks whether or not she has a safety deposit box, it is entirely possible that Sarah is referring to the Resistance as a whole and not Cameron personally. If the safety box is more of a collectively owned, Resistance asset, rather than Cameron's personal resource, then it is not necessary for Cameron to have travelled back to 1963 to open it.
The isotope weapon from the vault[]
- John: Is that from the future?
- Cameron: Can't bring anything through when you come. Not weapons, not clothing. Nothing. You send someone back to build it.
Future objects can certainly travel through time, if encased in living tissue, or encased in mimetic polyalloy. Parts of a weapon could most certainly have been smuggled back in time.
The mission of the Engineer[]
- Cameron: Engineer got a job building the vault. So we'd always have a way back home.
Which "we" is Cameron talking about? All Tech-Com temporal agents operating in the past, or the Connors specifically? She could be talking about the potential for taking the Connors to "her" home in the future, which means her use of the TDE (to skip Sarah's death and escape Cromartie) was a change in the reason for the TDE to exist.
"Gnothi Seauton"[]
Vick's Mission[]
- Cameron: The one at the safe house was sent there for those fighters.
Not so much a lie, as an uninformed assumption. From Vick's captured chip the Connors later learn in Episode 108, that he was married to Barbara Chamberlain. His primary mission was to monitor her activities and protect her pet project ARTIE from threats. He was not "sent" to hunt down the Resistance fighters in the safe house as Cameron states. It added the resistance cell to its target roster the moment Vick detected Sayles tailing Barbara.
Safety and Identification[]
- John: So if I was to walk right by one...
- Cameron: They'll walk right by you. They don't know what you look like.
- John: Hey! Look over here! It's me! Connor! John Connor! (Episode 205)
In Episode 205 the Terminator sent to eliminate Martin Bedell is able to verify John´s Identity just by his outward appearance. The match is strong enough to override his mission priority. Obviously, Skynet has an idea what 16-year-old John could look like (In 1999 Cromartie had none), however it required John to declare himself to the terminator for it to initiate an analysis.
"Dungeons & Dragons"[]
The destruction of future tech components[]
- Cameron: Every component must be destroyed beyond repair or recovery. Even a single unaccounted for piece of the endoskeleton could alter the course of technological evolution. And hasten the arrival of Judgment Day.
Perhaps here she is simply specifying "unaccounted for" components (like the hand) being a threat. The flesh farmed off Vick's chassis ("Vick's Chip"), and the bar of coltan ("Heavy Metal") are, in her eyes, "accounted for", and in accordance with some as yet unrevealed mission parameter.
It was revealed in "Ourselves Alone" that Cameron is under orders from Future John to keep some components captured from other machines that she had destroyed.
"The Demon Hand" / "Samson & Delilah"[]
Was Cameron really "Scrubbed" during reprogramming[]
Cameron claims she was "scrubbed" by the resistance to ensure reprogramming success and has no memory of her actions in Skynet's service. When damage temporarily disrupts the resistance programming, she reverts to Skynet mode and hunts John Connor on a mission to terminate him ("Samson & Delilah"). This means that either she was not wiped, and merely "patched", or that the hardware itself is very much like a ROM flash, and Skynet's influence on terminators is fundamentally hardwired into them, with "scrubbing" serving to lessen the things in RAM that the reprogramming effort has to overcome.
It is also demonstrated already that once she goes offline completely due to a chip removal, the "full boot sequence" of chip re-insertion allows the resistance reprogramming to "load" over the residual Skynet influences, much like any other "long/late/last to load" assigned startup software on any PC. When she was damaged, the shut-down and reboot were both incomplete, leaving her in a partial load state, where the Skynet hardwired directives were in place without the Resistance "override" software safely loading.
"Allison from Palmdale"[]
Cameron claims a faction of the machines does not want to eradicate humankind.[]
During the interrogation of Allison Young, Cameron tries to coerce information about the location of John Connor's Resistance camp by trying to establish that she is a member of a faction of machines not interested in pursuing Skynet's campaign of eradication against humanity.
Cameron "adopts" Jody's false tale about the origin of her new necklace.[]
When John asks her about where her necklace came from, she repeats the lie told by Jody about it being from a small shop.
"Born to Run"[]
Will you join us?[]
When James Ellison delivers Catherine Weaver's message asking Cameron: "Will you join us?" she claims not to know what she means. Her immediate dismissal of Ellison - and later actions at Zeira Corp - suggest that she understands perfectly.