Craig Greiwe, currently favored to lose the 7 June 2022 Los Angeles mayoral primary election by a wide margin, has submitted to a polygraph “test” and is challenging other candidates to also do so, as Travis Schlepp reports for KTLA. Excerpt:
It’s no secret that many voters are skeptical about trusting the word of their elected politicians. One candidate vying to be the next mayor of Los Angeles says he’s putting his money where his mouth is and is challenging his opponents to do the same.
Craig Greiwe, a business exec and one of 12 people hoping to succeed Mayor Eric Garcetti as L.A.’s highest public official, held a press conference Wednesday to announce a challenge to his competitors: answer important questions about your campaign, while hooked up to a polygraph test, and share the results with the public.
“There is no difference between an empty promise and a lie. They are all lies,” Greiwe said in a news release. “There has to be an end to the lies. I am willing to stand on the steps of City Hall and go on record under lie detector about anything and everything the voters and political journalists want to know.”
Greiwe is considered a longshot in June’s mayoral election, with both U.S. Rep. Karen Bass and businessman Rick Caruso sporting sizeable leads in most polls, but the former chief strategy officer for marketing firm R&C PMK is hoping his apparent transparency will resonate with voters.
The mayoral candidate announced the results of his polygraph test during a press conference at City Hall Wednesday morning. Greiwe said he completed the lie detector test on May 11 and provided an image of him apparently strapped up to the machine, as well as a document with his purported results.
He answered four questions as part of the polygraph test:
• Have you ever been under a criminal or ethics investigation or inquiry?
• Do you want to be more than mayor, such as senator or governor?
• Will you put the city’s interests above your own personal and business interests?
• Do you believe that Roe v. Wade is settled precedent?Greiwe answered “no,” “no,” “yes” and “yes” to the four questions. John Grogan, who is listed in the document as a senior polygraph examiner for CertifiedPolygraph.com, described Greiwe’s responses as having “no deception indicated.”
Greiwe’s polygraph proclamation is a cynical publicity stunt. As a graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Greiwe is presumably aware that polygraph “testing” is not a reliable way of determining whether a person has spoken the truth. (Indeed, it has no scientific basis at all.) Furthermore, had Greiwe not passed his polygraph with John Grogan, he could have kept it quiet, sought out another polygraph operator until he obtained the desired result, and then only announced that.
It should be noted that John Grogan, who conducted Greiwe’s “test,” has a particularly poor reputation even amongst polygraph operators, a fact of which Greiwe should have been aware had he done any due diligence. The late Jack Trimarco, a career FBI special agent and polygrapher who in retirement performed for the Dr. Phil show, denounced Grogan as a “fraud.”
A couple of points I would like to make about the pseudo-science of polygraphs and the related voice stress analyzers in regard to fake veracity:
First, Grogan evidently knows where his bread is buttered, so of course he is going to give Greiwe the result he wanted to receive. Likewise, if Greiwe took a VSA the operator would also give the result of no deception indicated. It is no great secret that the so-called lie detector performers tend to have flexible morality. We can look at the racist, felony condoning Ribicoff’s on the polygraph end and the fake doctorates at the VSA sector to give credence to this statement.
I have heard from a parole officer that convicted sex offenders are allowed to pick their own examiners in my state, so I can only imagine how much cash is being passed under the table.