...Ana passed a DIA-administered counterintelligence polygraph examination in March 1994, answering questions designed to ferret out espionage, sabotage, or unauthorized disclosure of classified information. It was the one and only polygraph test the DIA gave her in her sixteen-plus-year Department of Defense career. Some investigators believe that Ana defeated the lie box by using the sphincter-muscle trick the Cubans taught her. Others point out that Ana's ease in beating the system exposed the inherent weakness of polygraphs, investigative tools that are not admissible in US courts of law. After Ana's arrest, DIA interrogator Lisa Connors spent days asking Ana how she beat the "lie box." The Cubans had told Ana that American-administered polygraphs were easy to fool, and Ana kept repeating in her head that the test was flawed. "What I really wanted to know was, did she really believe what they told her about how ineffectual a polygraph was, or was she a sociopath?" Connors said. She never answered her own question.



Regardless of how Ana pulled it off, she was now truly in the clear. When colleagues later raised doubts about her, the successful lie-detector results kept them off the scent. "The polygraph test in 1994 made her even more dangerous by deflecting suspicion away from her. She was freer to pursue her espionage," the DIA would later admit in an internal training film, The Two Faces of Ana Montes.