I read with interest the comments in which the writer accused you of treason for your instructions for defeating the new PCASS tool to be used in a war zone on possible enemy personnel as a method of screening.

Your response was about what I expected as were the comments of your allies on this site.  Your "reasoning", however for your "instructions" was a bit confusing.  You state that you exposed the inadequacies of the instrument so that the soldiers who use it will understand that it doesn’t work.  How is that relevant?  Even if the instrument is less than perfect or flawed, how are you doing anything for Americans by exposing a method by which our enemies can possibly defeat the tool that is being used?

Are you familiar with General George Patton’s creation of the “First US Army Group”?  It was a cardboard and canvas “fake” tank division created and manned to fool the Germans into believing that Calais would be the primary invasion site.  It was quite successful.  I can assure you that the cardboard tanks were incapable of firing a shot at the enemy yet they performed extremely well.

We are extremely fortunate that you weren’t around in World War II.  I’m sure you would have sent a communication out to the world to let them know that the tanks were really cardboard and that they don’t really work.

Your hatred for polygraph has driven you to a point that you are willing to jeopardize the lives of soliders in battle in an effort to make your point.  Let’s face facts Mr. Maschke, it’s you who have exposed yourself and its your genitals that are showing here.  You really screwed up this time and it’s apparent you know it based upon the quickness with which you relegated your comments and the response it received off of  the front pages and back into the archives of your website.

skip.webb wrote on Apr 18^th, 2008 at 2:39pm:


Here we go!! If you can't change the fact that your silly machines don't work then, FLY THE AMERICAN FLAG!! That will get some to agree with you regardless of reason. 

In an atempt to shed some light on your rediculous statements ( not to change a simple mind that would think it up)
The difference between your comparision with Pattons program and Polygraph is that THE MILITARY IS ACCUALLY RELYING ON THE POLY RESULTS!!!  I'm sure this fact escapes you.
I think George ponting out that this machine is even less effective than a full Polygraph (which... well we know how effective that is !) is protecting our country and troops. Lets' give our forces technology that accually works. If the Polygraph is a method of screening people in war then guess what we don't need water boarding just give the troops a crystal ball so they can find out anything they want. 
But please continue to post since you show the ingnorance that pervails in the Polygraph community.

Mr. Maschke, You missed my point.  You are not an expert in credibility assessment nor did you conduct the research.  You may have an informed opinion about the equipment but it is merely your opinion.  Let’s suppose that you had an opinion about some other piece of equipment in use by our forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Maybe a IED detector or a night vision device.  Let's also suppose that you believed (in your opinion) the equipment was not perfect or had some weakness.  Would you print out and distribute to the enemy, the instructions for circumventing the IED detection device or some method by which one could negate the effectiveness of the night vision device?  Suppose the armor on our vehicles was less than perfect or had some flaw.  Would you provide our enemy with instructions on where to attack the vehicle or how to take advantage of the weakness?

That's exactly what you are doing now and that to me is an act certainly not taken by a patriot but an enemy.

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Unless you've been under a rock since 2001, you may recall that training manuals recovered in Afghanistan in 2002 had an entire chapter devoted to lie detection, how it's supposed to work and how to defeat it.  Whether or not any of that is accurate isn't the point.  The point is that community of people with whom we are at "war" has drawn its conclusions about lie detection and distributed it widely.  The only thing that's new and different about the PCASS is that it comes in a cute, handheld package.  But its makers still purport that it's a lie detector, and it will be just as ineffective as a full-sized model against anyone who believes it's just a prop.

George's opinion is indeed his opinion, and yours is of no more or less value than his or mine.  Without hard, scientific data to prove one way or the other, the entire field if credibility assessment is nothing but opinion, even if it has been put in the form of a computer program and sold to the government at a ridiculous price.  (And that's my opinion.)

--Auntie

Auntie Polygraph wrote on Apr 18^th, 2008 at 6:40pm:


Sorry Auntie, you, like the other Maschke minions just don't get it.  This is the second time I have heard some version of "the enemy could have gotten this information in other places."  That, my friend is completely irrelevant to the conversation.  Most of the terrorist "foot soldiers" we are dealing with are NOT the "best and the brightest" of the terrorist world.  They are foot soldiers, nothing more.  To Osama and his inner circle, they are nothing more then "cannon fodder".  Remember the video we found that showed Osama laughing over the stupid hijackers in the rear of the planes on 9/11 not knowing the pilots were going to actually fly the planes into the WTC???

Well in this case, the enemy was about to be faced with a device they had never seen before.  They would be unsure, afraid of the possibility that maybe these American infidels would be able to look into their thoughts.  Oh no, some would wonder, what to do, what to do…???

Of course, once word got out this device was being used, the smarter of them would have started looking around, trying to check it out (just like the cardboard tanks), but that would have taken TIME and TIME is what we need in combat.  Even then, without anything directly addressing this new “truth machine”, they would had to take the time to research, collect, analyze, and disseminate, which is by the way, expensive, difficult, requires resources, and takes lots and lots of TIME, time we needed to get a couple of steps ahead…

But oh no, not in this case.  In this case, Mr. George Maschke, our expatriate friend, holed up safely in the Netherlands, did the job for them.  In very little time at all (because he obviously doesn't have anything else in his miserable life) he researched, collected, analyzed, and disseminated to the enemy what (in his opinion) was the very information they needed to use to defeat an American intelligence gathering tool.  He did it deliberately, and maliciously, knowing full well that this website is one of the first places his Arab friends would come to looking for the answers.

And what was Mr. Maschke's response when I asked him who he thought he was "helping" by publishing this information?  He said something about the "emperior having no clothes.'  What the hell does that have to do with him knowingly providing aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States???!!!

I repeat my earlier assertion.  George Maschke is a traitorous snake, so wrapped up in his blind goal to end the use of anything that even resembles polygraph, that he is willing to risk the lives of every American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan to do it.

I think I am going to be sick...

So the argument against George's posting of that info amounts to:

Military people risking their lives relying on a paper-tiger device are better off than when they used no device at all?

That makes perfect Neo-Con sense. Instead of coming up with a device that does work, we'll just send out the broken one and try to keep word from getting to the enemy about them.. 

From the logic presented here in the "against" column, apparently, a gas gauge that reads randomly is better than none or a functioning one. 

Thats brilliance on par with the genius that got us into Iraq over imaginary WMDs..

Maybe we should send over Scientology E-meters. They are about as effective as these devices and since we're just trying to "scare ingnorant natives" into believing our magic juju, would likely be just
as effective..

skip.webb wrote on Apr 18^th, 2008 at 6:06pm:


Mr. Webb.

Assuming for a moment that what you said above is true, since when is stating an opinion an act of treason?

nonombre wrote on Apr 18^th, 2008 at 7:06pm:


Calling me a "Maschke minion" does absolutely nothing to further the credibility of your argument.  You'll notice that I didn't bother calling you a "polygraph putz."  Could you explain why you find that sort of behavior necessary?

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"The enemy" has had the information published in Mawsu'at al-jihad since before 2002, when a copy was acquired and translated.  I would imagine that there are as many copies of that floating around the terrorist world as there are copies of Southern Living on Georgia coffee tables.  In other words, the cat is not only out of the bag, he's lived a long, happy, post-bag life and died of old age.  That's what makes it relevant.

Your argument would seem to be that if we convince ourselves that "the enemy" doesn't know what the PCASS is, it must be so whether it is or not.  That's not what I'd call a winning strategy.  A good interrogator is mindful that his subject may very well know what the device is and isn't revealing that fact.  Of course, if the device were able tell if a subject were lying with perfect certainty, that issue could be resolved very quickly and the remainder of the interrogation would be a breeze.

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Of course.  The foot soldiers get given one mission, and if they return they may get another one.  Good operational security practice would dictate that they be sufficiently insulated from those planning their activities.  We don't send our generals out to kick in doors in Basrah, why should they?  Those that are the "best and brightest" are the ones who end up in a position to know something of real value.  They've read the manual and are intelligent enough to realize that something that someone says can tell if they're lying probably can't.  I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed never got anywhere near a lie detector when he was interrogated.  Why do you think that might be?

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"The enemy" was about to be faced with a variation on a device they'd seen before.  The only way an interrogator can make good use of a lie detector is if the subject believes it actually works, and the only way to do that is to say "this device can tell me if you're lying."

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The advantage the PCASS has over some other equipment is that it's compact and can be deployed en masse.  Unfortunately, doing so solves the dissemination problem because the process of making a decision about it happens multiple times in parallel over multiple, smaller areas.  These guys aren't out preparing PowerPoint presentations for their Tuesday Jihad intelligence briefing, they're bringing back news of what they encountered for those directing their actions to sort out.  You're thinking like someone who's part of a large, bureaucratic intelligence organization.

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George is, to the best of my knowledge still an American citizen.  (George, please correct me if I'm wrong.)  I am reasonably confident that if the United States thought it had a sufficient case of treason, he would be no more safely holed up in Holland than Cleveland.  If he has committed crimes as heinous as you describe, I fail to understand why you, as a patriotic American, are wasting valuable time here on this message board and aren't spending every spare moment making sure the government brings this insufferable cur to justice.

This story was given wide exposure by the American news media with nary a mention of the discussion on this site.  How come you're not calling for Brian Williams' head on a pike?

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Allow me to draw a parallel from cryptography, a field with real science behind it:  if the algorithm is secure, disclosure poses no threat.  If this device actually worked reliably, it wouldn't matter if ads for it were plastered on every billboard in Baghdad.  The emperor may have clothes, but they could very well be limited to a pair of skimpy undies.

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Since we're busy hurling unrelated insults, your grammar blows chunks.  You're using the word "polygraph" as if it were a proper noun.  It's not, and use of a non-proper noun requires an article beforehand.  The only people I've ever heard refer to the polygraph without an article are people who are polygraphers or are otherwise connected to the field of lie detection.  I must conclude that you are one of those people.  Am I correct?

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Please come back after you've finished.  Your auntie finds you amusing.

--Auntie

P.S.:  I'd also like to add that for those who claim what is being discussed here constitutes "intelligence information" are perhaps barking up the wrong tree.  The government does something special with intelligence information (which, by the way actually has a legal definition):  they classify it.  Is there classified material posted anywhere on this site?