New York Daily News staff writer Robert Ingrassia reports. Excerpt:
If Rep. Gary Condit knows more than he’s saying about the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy, he’s got reason to fear a full-fledged lie detector test.
I should know. I underwent a polygraph exam yesterday — and got caught in a lie.
In the process, I learned that when given by a pro, a lie detector test is tough to beat. I also found out that the test has more to do with what’s going on in your mind than what’s happening to your body.
Condit took a polygraph and passed, his lawyer said last week. But Washington, D.C., police and Levy’s parents dismissed the results because cops had no role in the questioning.
Before yesterday, I had thought a polygraph worked like an X-ray machine. Show up. Take the test. Get the results.
Private investigator Bill Majeski, a former New York detective, set me straight. He has conducted thousands of polygraph tests and caught plenty of liars.
What polygrapher William J. Majeski didn’t explain to reporter Robert Ingrassia is that the question in response to which he was “caught” lying (whether he had ever lied about something important as an adult) is a textbook example of a probable-lie “control” question, that is, one which polygraphers secretly expect no one to be able to truthfully answer with a simple “no.” Ingrassia was successfully duped into thinking that “a lie detector test is tough to beat,” but he clearly remains uninformed about “the lie behind the lie detector.”