This is not necessarily a complaint about polygraphy. I just want to tell others my experience, so that they do not make the same mistake I made.
On the day I passed my proficiency test for Arabic, I was ecstatic. I had been contacted several weeks before by a defense contractor to work as a linguist for the CIA. I was hoping that now, finally, all those years of hard work as a student of foreign languages would finally pay off. I had graduated from Brown University having written my thesis on medieval Spanish and Latin, I had spent three years teaching abroad, two in China and one in the Czech republic, and I had studied Arabic for a total of about seven years. I speak eleven languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Latin, Greek, Czech, Mandarin, and Cantonese. At the time, I was enrolled at Georgetown studying Arabic and Computational Linguistics. I worked as an Arabic font consultant and designer for a small government-funded organization.
The job I was going after offered to pay my tuition and benefits -- so, as a student, it was as if I had died and gone to heaven. The proficiency test was extremely rigorous -- the one thing people don't understand about Arabic is that it is not one language, but rather several different mutually unintelligible dialects resting under a literary language which is completely divorced from all of them. The literary language alone takes up to ten years to fully master. To gain even a passive understanding of these dialects takes several more years of intensive study. This exam tested the student's comprehension of both the dialects and the literary language, spoken at full speed.
When I realized I had passed, I was relieved: the major hurdle was over, and now all I needed was to allow the background investigation to take its course. I decided not to look for other jobs, and stick to my 800/mo gig even though I could barely survive off of it, because I knew that soon I would be doing profitable, interesting, and useful work. The moment came, the clearance was almost over, and all that was required was a simple polygraph exam, and my career as a linguist in the service of my country would begin.
I went in with high spirits, trying to ignore the gruff attitude of my polygrapher as he strapped me to the chair. There was a map of the Middle East on the wall. "Oh, so you're interested in the Middle East?" No response. We started with a few preliminary questions, and then, I admitted to something which was unforgivable. I had done research on the polygraph and how it worked. I noticed the polygrapher write something briskly on his clipboard and circle it emphatically.
On the second question, the polygrapher turned off the machine, sat down and said "You're not doing very well with this. Is there anything that you'd like to talk to us about?" I then admitted to being nervous about the finality of the occasion. The polygrapher then proceeded to get a clipboard and ask me for the names of every foreign national contact that I knew, after which he would ask, "are you concealing foreign contacts from the CIA?" After five hours of listing every foreigner that I had ever known, I am accused of lying, and using the information I had gathered in my research to manipulate the results of the exam. The polygrapher then said, "You clearly do have issues. I think you should go home and think about what you're doing." I guess I was not as shaken up as I should have been -- I knew a mind game when I saw one, so I really didnít take it very seriously.
The second interview was just as bad. The second polygrapher spent an hour trying to convince me of the machine's legitimacy, and I let him talk. "What was I doing wrong?" "Well, you tell me!" Or, "If you keep doing what you're doing, we're going to make you dig your own grave." I was called on for fidgeting, for breathing the wrong way, for not looking in a certain direction, for answering "No, I don't" instead of "No." The polygrapher did admit, however, that they had found no derogatory evidence on my record: I have no criminal record, no bad credit history, nor have I been associated with any groups involved in the overthrow of the United States, nor have I committed any act of fraud, espionage, or terrorism. None of the people interviewed during the investigation had anything derogatory to say about me.
And then, I made a serious, grave error: I had originally just said, insofar as my drug use is concerned, that I was simply an experimental user in college. I had smoked marijuana five times afterwards, at parties. I was not asked for this information, I just volunteered it, and it was written down meticulously. I don't know why I did this: it was not because I was afraid of their machine. I guess I realized I had made a mistake, and I wanted to be straight about it.
After that day, I was never contacted again, and I assume that I will not get this position as a linguist. My advice to all of you who must undergo this process is this: If you have done anything that you think would be questionable, you probably are not the kind of person they want. The polygraph has no scientific validity whatsoever -- basically, you are putting yourself in the hands of someone who is not qualified to judge your behavior. Your polygrapher has taken a course lasting several months. Although the video at the orientation stresses that it is the "equivalent of a Masters Degree," it soon becomes clear that they do not have any background whatsoever in either criminology or behavioral psychology, even though they are vested with the power to destroy your career based on their judgement of you. My impression was of lower-middle management types, not particularly well-educated, who act out their frustration and resentment on anyone who appears a bit too different... after all, they spent their lives walking the straight and narrow, so why should they let you get away with living a life that might have been more interesting? They are a cross between a quack therapist and a downsizing consultant.
The slightest smidgin of self-doubt or self-correction will be used against you. If you are suspected of doing something, you might as well have done it. Anything that renders you unusual or different is exponentially more important to them than your education or skills.
The government badly needs linguists specializing in Middle Eastern languages, and effective translation of intercepted material could save thousands of American lives. The government has, literally, terabytes of intercepted text in Farsi, Urdu, Pashto and Arabic, much of which contains information that could allow our intelligence agencies to prevent future terrorist activities. Let us not forget that Osama ben Laadin might not have escaped from Tora Bora had the Americans used Dari-speaking agents to ask the locals about his whereabouts. As for me, despite the fact that I speak three Middle Eastern languages and am learning a fourth, I will not be employable towards this end for the next five years. I could market myself as a linguist in the private sector, but one must remember that the bias here is overwhelmingly in favor of native speakers. Even after five years is past, my reputation will be tarnished and it will be a challenge even to get people to consider me for employment. Moreover, I will also not be able to take advantage of the many scholarship opportunities from the government for students of foreign languages. I also want to add that this exact same thing has happened to about seven of my friends and classmates, who study languages such as Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.
I am only grateful for two things. I am grateful that this event befell me at the beginning of my career as a linguist, rather than sometime during the middle, when I would have a record of government service which might diminish my chances of working in other fields. Secondly, I am grateful that I have decided to study computational linguistics, which will allow me to use my knowledge of foreign languages to develop technology which, hopefully, will help intelligence agencies track down terrorists. Of course, many of these positions also require clearances, but there is certainly more leeway.
I've lived in places that don't have the good things that so many of us take for granted. I love this country, and I never again want to see her humiliated, insulted, or tarnished at the hands of her real enemies. I badly want to use what I have worked so hard to achieve to protect her.