The movie High Crimes includes a scene where a person has been taught how to beat a polygraph "test." The DVD release of this movie includes as a "special feature" a segment on polygraphs with former FBI Special Agent Suzane (Sue) J. Doucette, who was a consultant for High Crimes.

An AntiPolygraph.org reader who prefers to remain anonymous has transcribed this special feature, which is reproduced here for discussion purposes. The headings ("Polygraphs," "Intimidation," etc.) appeared on the screen between segments.

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High Crimes (2002)
DVD Special Features
Liar Liar: How to Beat a Polygraph (5 minutes: 50 seconds)

Sue Doucette, FBI Consultant

Polygraphs

If you're a criminal suspect, you certainly have a right to refuse a polygraph examination, and most attorneys will advise you to refuse a polygraph.  Polygraph examinations are not considered confidential records, unless, you have it administered to you through your attorney, where then it's covered by the attorney-client privilege.  Often people say "lie detector," and that's really not what the polygraph is.  It reads physiological signs.  It, it has equipment that helps you to look at someone's blood pressure, their cardiovascular, their pulse, their respiration, and the sweat on the finger tips.  If you talk about normal people, like 99% of us out there in the world, myself included, you probably can't beat a polygraph.  You believe that it's this magic machine that's going to tell someone that they can read your mind.  And in fact they try to do that.  When you're given a polygraph, they bring you in and they do everything in the environment to take control. They have the chairs a certain way, and sometimes they'll take your jacket away from you to kind of show you that they're in charge.  It's designed to elicit any admissions, so they'll say, you know, have you ever stolen anything?  Well, then usually most people will say, well when I was in third grade I stole a piece of candy from the teacher's desk, and you know, and they'll go on and on, and say, except for that, have you ever stolen anything? Until they can try to get you to say yes, but usually that question doesn't even count.  It's a control question. It's not even designed to test your honesty. It's designed to test your stress to the particular question.

Intimidation

One reason the polygraph is so successful is that the people are able to frighten you.  Even if you're not deceptive on a polygraph and you have a perfect reading, very often the polygraph operator will lie to you, and say, I'm sorry, but there's something wrong in this polygraph. It looks like you're showing a reaction to this particular question. Can you tell us why you might be reacting to this particular question? And they'll just go on and on, and a polygraph can take 3 hours. It can take 8 hours. There've been 11-hour polygraphs. And what that 11 hours basically is, is an 11-hour interrogation, under extreme, hostile conditions.  It's important to stress, that despite what polygraphers will tell you, that it's 99% accurate, most of that accuracy is based on confessions that they elicit out of the people.  They may not necessarily have read the chart that way, but the person breaks down and confesses. You can't just simply rely on the fact that if someone passes a polygraph, they're telling the truth. And also, if someone is inconclusive or deceptive on a polygraph, yes, they're showing some sort of physiological response, but we don't know what that response is to.  There's nothing scientific that says they're definitely lying, and if they are lying, you don't know what they're lying about, until they confess.

Aldrich Ames was a very damaging spy, who was a CIA operative in the Soviet division of the CIA.  During the time that he was doing this spying, he was administered CIA polygraphs, and he passed those polygraphs.  Well, about a year before he was arrested, the CIA realized they had a mole in the Soviet Division, and so they started looking back at polygraph records, and they started investigating a hundred innocent people, who had done nothing wrong, whose polygraphs were actually more deceptive than Aldrich Ames, who was a spy.

Beating the Box

There's a whole counterculture of people out there that use methods to defeat the polygraph, and they train people to beat the polygraph. There's varying ways.  When you have a control question, you're supposed to show a more significant response. Some things that they tell people to do, you should bite down on your tongue very subtly during that question and for 10 to 15 seconds after the question, except of course when you're saying yes or no. And the pain that's created will create a response on the control question. Then when you get to the relevant question, it'll show less of a response.  There's the old pucker test, and I'm not talking about your lips, but people are taught to have a little squeeze during the control questions. But now the new chairs are motion detectors or sensitive, movement sensitive.  So they are taught, you know, to sit on their hands and practice doing this.  Now, the polygraph examiners response to the countermeasures is counter-countermeasures. They get paid to administer polygraphs, so they want everyone to rely on them heavily. So they are developing counter-countermeasures to defeat the countermeasures that are existing, hence the chair that detects movement. Often you'll be taught, asked to take your shoes and socks off so make sure the old tack in the shoe isn't there. But it takes a lot of self-control, a lot of focus, a lot of energy, and for most people there's no way that they're going to be able to employ any countermeasures. The polygraph operators of today are well trained, but your occasional sociopath, pathological liar, your spy, people like that are so trained in deception, and they live lifestyles of deception, that it's second nature to them.

Most polygraphers, or polygraph operators, say that you don't actually beat the polygraph, you actually beat the operator, and that a good operator won't be susceptible to countermeasures.  But of course that's very controversial, and I think in this day and age when you have people like Aldrich Ames beating the polygraph, I think it's clear that people can and do beat the polygraph.

Detective Work

The polygraph cannot replace good old-fashioned investigative detective work.  You have to really hit the pavement, and do the work to make a case. You can't just hook wires up to someone, and say that this is going to magically solve a case.  The polygraph is not admissible in court, and that's because it's never been proven scientifically reliable.
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It's evident from her remarks that Sue Doucette has visited AntiPolygraph.org and perused our book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. While I agree with many of the points she makes, her comments on polygraphy and polygraph countermeasures are nonetheless fraught with inaccuracies that stand in need of correction.

First, Doucette says, "If you talk about normal people, like 99% of us out there in the world, myself included, you probably can't beat a polygraph" and later, "...it takes a lot of self-control, a lot of focus, a lot of energy, and for most people there's no way that they're going to be able to employ any countermeasures." Here, Doucette is way off base. Polygraph countermeasures are relatively simple and easy to employ. Indeed, in peer-reviewed studies by Charles R. Honts and collaborators, roughly half of programmed-deceptive test subjects (who were "normal people") were able to beat the polygraph with no more than 30 minutes of instruction. See the bibliography of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector for citations and article abstracts.

Second, her explanation of probable-lie "control" questions is vague. Here's a concise explanation: the polygrapher, while admonishing the examinee to answer all questions truthfully, secretly assumes that denials in response to certain questions -- called "control" questions -- will be less than truthful. One commonly used control question is, "Did you ever lie to get out of trouble?" The polygrapher steers the examinee into a denial by suggesting, for example, that anyone who would do so is the kind of person who would have committed the kind of crime under investigation. The polygrapher scores the "test" by comparing physiological reactions to these probable-lie control questions with reactions to relevant questions such as, "Did you kill John?" If the former reactions are greater, the examinee passes; if the latter are greater, he fails. (This simplistic methodology has no grounding in the scientific method. For more on "control questions," see Chapter 3 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.)

Third, Doucette says, "Well, about a year before [Aldrich Ames] was arrested, the CIA realized they had a mole in the Soviet Division, and so they started looking back at polygraph records, and they started investigating a hundred innocent people, who had done nothing wrong, whose polygraphs were actually more deceptive than Aldrich Ames, who was a spy."

Doucette got it wrong, apparently misremembering the account of the Ames case provided in Chapter 1 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. We wrote:

Quote:


The CIA's infamous polygraph jihad (which reportedly ensnared well over the hundred or so people Doucette reports) came after Ames' arrest on 21 February 1994, not before.

Fourth, in a reference apparently intended to include AntiPolygraph.org, Doucette says, "[t]here's a whole counterculture of people out there that use methods to defeat the polygraph, and they train people to beat the polygraph." Doucette is wrong to suppose that those of us involved in the antipolygraph effort are a "counterculture." Our values are not at odds with those of mainstream society, and many of us have backgrounds in the military, law enforcement, and intelligence communities.

Our efforts in exposing polygraphy for the fraud that it is, and in helping protect the innocent against polygraph abuse by making polygraph information (including information on countermeasures) readily available and free, does not make us a "counterculture." No more so than Ms. Doucette's having taken a principled stand against sexual harrassment in the FBI (she resigned, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, and testified before Congress) makes her a member of the  "counterculture."

Fifth, Doucette says, "Often you'll be taught, asked to take your shoes and socks off so make sure the old tack in the shoe isn't there." While we mention this counter-countermeasure for the tack-in-the-shoe countermeasure in Chapter 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, all available evidence suggests that polygraph subjects are not "often" asked to take off their shoes and socks.